Report of Interest on Home Dampness & Mold from Mark Mendell

An automated Google Scholar search for “Indoor Microbiology” alerted me to this report from Mark Mendell: A Research Agenda on Assessing and Remediating Home Dampness and Mold to Reduce Dampness-Related Health Effects by Mark J. Mandell. This definitely seems of interest to the microbiology of the built environment crowd and anyone interested in moisture effects …

Sensationalist headline from Time on Air Conditioning health risks, but OK story

Another quick post here.  There is a story by Markham Heid in Time of potential interest: You Asked: Is My Air Conditioner Killing Me? | TIME.  A bit sensationalist as a headline but has some good discussion and quotes in it including some interesting comments from Mark Mendell about indoor microbes.

Inside Philanthropy covers the BioBE Center and Sloan MoBE Program 

Just a quick post.  There is a story of interest at “Inside Philanthropy” on the Sloan Foundation MoBE (microbiology of the built environment) Program and the renewal of the BioBE center project.  See Sloan’s Deep (and Kind of Gross) Probe Into the Microbes Crawling All Around You – Inside Philanthropy: Fundraising Intelligence – Inside Philanthropy Although I …

How to choose a metagenomic sequencing strategy – input wanted

So … what goes around comes around.  In 2003 and 2004, I spent a lot of time discussing and arguing with people about what would be the best strategy for making and sequencing Sanger libraries for metagenomic sequencing for the  Sargasso Sea metagenome study coordinated by the Venter Institute (I worked at TIGR at the time and …

The White House wants input on the future of microbiome research (by June 15)

Well this is very promising. The Science and Technology Policy Office of the White House has posted a Request for Information on “Microbiome Research”. Summary: Advanced sequencing technologies have illuminated vast networks of microorganisms that drive essential functions in all environments on Earth. The study of these communities of microorganisms, or microbiomes, is nascent, and …