Design that Heals — MASS Design Group

Interesting thoughts on the Built Environment by MASS Design group (https://massdesigngroup.org). Their film, “Design that Heals” just screened at the Architecture and Design Film Festival in NYC.  Watch the trailer below: MASS Design is interested in the long term effects of architecture on communities and the environment, and focuses on creating built spaces that are thoughtfully …

Good germs. Bad germs. An interesting new citizen microbiology project.

This is definitely worth checking out – a Citizen Microbiology project on the Built Environment From the Good Germs project. More on the project: There is a growing popular and policy interest in the microbiome, and the possibilities of more nuanced or ‘probiotic’ ways of living with germs. To date however there has been limited …

OMG – I want one: “Smartphone Microscope Lets You Play Games With Microbes”

OMG.  I want one. I want two. No – I want dozens. Caption from Gizmodo: “Introducing the LudusScope, a 3D-printed, open-sourced system that lets you control and play games with living microbes on your smartphone. Tormenting single-celled organisms has never been so much fun.” Source: This Smartphone Microscope Lets You Play Games With Microbes   …

Another possible microbe-related unintended consequence of the Flint water crisis 

The NY Times is reporting that an outbreak of Shigellosis in Flint may be connected to the water crisis there (in that people’s changes in their hand cleaning and other washing behaviors due to the water may have contributed to the outbreak).  See the story (linked below) for more details.  If true this is yet …

New paper: MIxS-BE annotation of public fungal barcode sequences

Public fungal sequence data are often not annotated to the degree desirable. This makes it difficult to zoom in on all sequences recovered from some particular country or some specific host. This holds true for the built environment as well – there is no straightforward way to target all fungal sequences generated from, say, bathrooms …

Worth a read: Contributions of pioneering women in indoor environment and health

Worth checking this out I think. Source: Contributions of pioneering women in indoor environment and health – Nazaroff – 2016 – Indoor Air – Wiley Online Library From the introduction: On occasion, this journal has recounted historical achievements in the indoor air sciences. Sundell[1] provided a broad-ranging overview. I have written about the history of …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, October 1, 2016

Microbes in subways Bioaerosols in the Barcelona subway system – X. Triadó-Margarit – Indoor Air ($6 to rent, $38 to own) (…) We examined the microbiological composition and abundance in space and time of bioaerosols collected in the Barcelona subway system during a cold period. (…) Multitag 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene was used to …