First of all, Happy Halloween everyone. I think my costume this year will be a blogger! For those that don’t know me, I’m Brent Stephens, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL. I call my research team the Built Environment Research Group …
Just got an e-mail about a new postdoc opportunity at NC State – contact details are listed below for anyone interested in applying: DATE: Position available immediately (November, 2013). SALARY: Commensurate with training and experience. APPOINTMENT: 100% research RESPONSIBILITIES: To conduct research on the relationships between cockroach and bed bug infestations and the microbial communities in infested homes. This …
Italian architect Carlo Ratti, Director of the MIT SENSEable Cities Lab, presents an entertaining Ted Talk “Architecture that senses and responds” on the use of sensors in buildings to monitor occupant behavior and environmental conditions for input to the management of the buildings and other human-made systems. Once we know the critical environmental variables that …
The Today Show on NBC collected some built environment samples to send to space with Project MERCCURI this morning. Here’s the video of them swabbing the set and the primary camera. Very cool… Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Indoor Air and Climate Change URL: http://www.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2014/2014_star_indoor_air.html Open Date: 10/23/2013 – Close Date: 01/23/2014 Here are some of the important details: Summary: EPA announces an extramural funding competition designed to support research that improves understanding of how climate change affects human health through indoor air quality as adapted by building designs and uses. Proposals should …
New paper out from the microbiology of the built environment community: MIxS-BE: a MIxS extension defining a minimum information standard for sequence data from the built environment. The joint first authors are Elizabeth Glass and Yekaterina Dribinsky. And the senior author is Lynn Schriml. The paper is simple but I think very important – it describes …
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) held a conference last week on the topic “Environmental Health in Low Energy Buildings.” Although you wouldn’t necessarily guess it from the name, the society is a lively, welcoming group of folks from all over the world interested in improving the built environment. At this …
Well – three recent news stories show an increasing awareness and impact of microbes in the built environment on sports, of all things: Grambling State Tigers’ players send letter of complaint to administration – ESPN Third Tampa Bay Buccaneers player tests positive for MRSA staph … A’s have another sewage leak during win over Angels …
Just got the good news that microBEnet will continue to be funded by the Sloan Program in the Microbiology of the Built Environment for the next two years. After three years of attempting to help the field with “curation, communication, collaboration, connection” we have taken this as an opportunity to re-assess our direction and goals. …
Microbial pathogens, including viral, bacterial, and fungal species, are transmitted via both airborne and surface contact routes in indoor environments. Breathing, sneezing, and coughing are important sources of many of these species, with the microbes being aerosolized and dispersed in microscopic liquid droplets that may settle to nearby surfaces or evaporate into smaller droplet nuclei …