microBEnet Grant Renewal 2017-2019

We are happy to announce that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has renewed the grant supporting microBEnet for one final time, through 2019.   As the “Microbiology of the Built Environment” program comes to an end at the Sloan Foundation, we will use this time to focus on sustainability, both of the microBEnet website and the …

EPA: Opportunity to comment on air and radiation issues – Executive Order 13777

(Thanks to Paula Olsiewski for passing on this information from the EPA) Dear Stakeholder, Consistent with Executive Order 13777, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) is hosting a public teleconference on April 24, 2017, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. EDT to solicit input on specific air and radiation …

2017 Innovation Lab on Quantitative Approaches to Biomedical Data Science Challenges in our Understanding of the Microbiome

Quick post here sharing an interesting sounding event “2017 Innovation Lab on Quantitative Approaches to Biomedical Data Science Challenges in our Understanding of the Microbiome“.   From the website:   The BD2K Training Coordinating Center is organizing an Innovation Lab to foster new interdisciplinary collaborations among quantitative and biomedical researchers to address data science challenges in …

ISIAQ Healthy Buildings 2017 Asia

Of interest to many microBEnet readers.   From the website: On behalf of the Organizing Committee, we cordially invite you to attend the Healthy Buildings 2017-Asia (HB2017-Asia), being held from September 2 to 5, 2017, at the College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan. The HB2017-Asia inscribes itself on the path of a …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Summary and Class Materials

As introduced a few months ago, our lab (with indispensable help again from Ashley Vater) taught a new research-based freshman seminar course.  The impetus for this course was one that we ran last year, testing if Swabs to Genomes was possible in a 10-week quarter.  Given the complexity and expense of the genome sequencing, we …

A serendipitous demonstration of the power of social media in the classroom

“Social media is a waste of time”, “You should be writing grants”, “Spend more time at the bench and less time on Twitter” I don’t really want to wade into this discussion too strongly… there are a number of great resources out there documenting the utility of social media in science and science communication (examples …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 10, Antibiotic Resistance Measurements

Since this was the last week of the quarter, we didn’t require the students to blog as in the previous 9 weeks.  Also, mostly we recapped what had happened in the class and discussed various assignments.  But the students did measure the antibiotic resistance of their strains, and we also had a powerful demonstration of …

Summary and talks/slides from Workshop on the Microbiome of the International Space Station

Just a quick post here that all the information (including slides and videos) from a really interesting CASIS sponsored workshop are online.  The topic relates to the most extreme built environment to date… the International Space Station.   The workshop was called “Exploring the Microbiome/Immunome and Disease on the International Space Station” and took place back …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 9, Antibiotic Resistance

(This blog post was prepared by students enrolled in the Koala Poop Microbiome Class in the Fall of 2016 at UC Davis) This week we focused on antibiotic sensitivity on the individual bacteria that were identified last week. The day before class, the bacteria that we have been working with all quarter were recultured in …