Quick post here about an upcoming architect conference in Atlanta, GA hosted by the American Institute of Architects (AIA)… May 14-16th 2015. Here’s a bit of information from the organizer (they noted that they’d like to do more with connecting microbiome research and design): Submit a proposal of your own. Let this be your big …
Recently Brent Stephens from the Built Environment Research Group asked me what the most popular posts on microBEnet have been to date. I was intrigued, so decided to do some digging in Google Analytics and share the results. One thing worth noting is that the top 10 blog posts were scattered among the top 40 …
(update 10:00am, 6-12-14; added a 13th video from UT Austin) (update 10:15am, 6-16-14; new link for the Oregon video since previous version was cropped) Part of the requirement for attendees of the 2014 Microbiology of the Built Environment Conference in Boulder, CO was that each lab submit a 2-minute video describing their research. Amazingly, 12 …
Back in May we posted about a Gizmodo article entitled “Concrete-Dissolving Bacteria Are Destroying Our Nation’s Sewers”. This article highlighted Sloan-funded work by Mark Hernandez and others that describes some of the biochemistry and microbiology behind concrete corrosion in sewers. A (fee-required) paper describing that work has just come out, with a press release focused …
Just wrapped up the 3rd Annual Sloan Conference in the Microbiology of the Built Environment. We saw 20 presentations, a number of posters, and had some time to set up new collaborations, argue methods, and eat good food. I’m going to take a different approach to my conference report here, I’m only going to talk …
Just came across this article entitled “Rainwater harvesting tanks enable spread of dangerous pathogens, study shows”. The article describes a fairly straightforward set of findings from rainwater storage tanks in South Africa. Researchers found Legionella, Klebsiella, Giardia, Salmonella, and Yersinia. Not a friendly-sounding list of bugs. However, I have the usual set of issues with …
With a URL asking “is this the most important building in the country?”, I had to check this one out. This article from SmartPlanet describe the “Facility for Low Energy Experiments (FLEXLab)”, housed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in CA. Basically it’s a fancy building that allows designers, architects, builders and others to test various …
Interesting article about a “living alternative to concrete”. Ignoring the fact that the final product is not actually living, this is a pretty cool idea. This product uses bacteria to produce a concrete-like substance using much less energy than traditional methods. A number of similar ideas are the in the works including mushroom-grown bricks. Some …
This year’s ASM meeting in Boston provided a chance for many of the Sloan-funded grantees working on the microbiology of the built environment to get together for a dinner for a good mix of socialization and collaboration. Here’s a few pictures, courtesy of Paula Olsiewski.
The following is the Executive Summary of a report on the AAAS “Microbiomes of the Built Environment Symposium”, March 27th, 2014, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The full report can be found here. The research field of Microbiomes of the Built Environment (MoBE) is relatively new, evolving about ten years ago from …