First Sampling for Project MERCCURI

Last week Jenna Lang, Russell Neches, and myself headed over to the Sacramento King’s basketball arena to collect samples before the game as part of project MERCCURI (a.k.a Microbes in Spaaaaace!). Our goals were: 1)To get culture samples, of which one representative will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) for the “microbial playoffs”. 2)To …

Announcing Project MERCCURI (a.k.a Microbes in Spaaaaace!)

(cross-posted from our static page on the project which will be updated as we move forward) Project MERCCURI is a collaboration of microBEnet with the Science Cheerleaders, Nanoracks, NASA, and SciStarter.com. There are three components to the project: 1) Collecting microbial swab samples from the International Space Station (ISS) and examining the microbial communities therein …

Job Opportunities with the US Green Building Council (USGBC)

(posting this e-mail from USGBC) New Opportunities at USGBC:Thought Leadership and Research on Building Materials Understanding, communicating and analyzing building materials is a critical frontier for the green building industry. Google has recently provided a generous grant to USGBC to, in part, advance thought leadership and applied research in this area. As part of this project, USGBC …

Troubleshooting 16S PCR from A/C filters (or other annoying substrates)

One of our goals at microBEnet is to increase communication and collaboration between people working in the disparate fields that make up the “microbiology of the built environment”.   Most of what we’ve posted about in the past relates to general information and events… but we’d also like to host more technical information that would help …