When Law follows Science: Supreme Court unanimously confirms recent study of bacteria on cell phones

  Well, who would have thought.  Just yesterday a paper came out from the BioBE Center on how the microbes on cell phones reflect the microbiome of the person using the phone (Meadow JF, Altrichter AE, Green JL. (2014) Mobile phones carry the personal microbiome of their owners. PeerJ 2:e447).  In the paper they comment …

Vocabulary and jargon in microbial ecology and some background information

In response to Hal Levin’s comment on my previous post: Thank you ISIAQ for the “Vocabulary of the Indoor Air Sciences” I am starting to put together some definitions and background information on the terminology of microbial ecology studies.  Please suggest any / all terms that you think would be useful to define and I will …

Thank you ISIAQ for the “Vocabulary of the Indoor Air Sciences” #microBEnet

One reason that it can be difficult to bridge across different fields is just learning the vocabulary and jargon of the field.  So happy to have found this: Vocabulary of the Indoor Air Sciences while browsing the web site for ISIAQ – the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate. It even has 43 …

IARPA getting interested in microbial biogeography, citizen microbiology, and more #microBEnet

Well, this is very very interesting: Request for Information (RFI): Ecology Meets Genomics – Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities. IARPA – the equivalent of DARPA for the intelligence agencies – is getting into microbial biogeography (for forensic purposes).  They are seeking comments on the general topic.  From the call: We hypothesize that by correlating the genetic information …

Sloan Foundation Microbiology of the Built Environment Annual Meeting in Boulder #microBEnet

Right now, in Boulder, CO, the Annual Meeting for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Microbiology of the Built Environment program is happening. More about the program can be found here and here. Alas, I cannot be there this year. But I will be following as much as possible via Twitter. To follow Tweets from the meeting look …

A potentially useful resource: Built Environment + Public Health Clearinghouse

Just discovered this site from Georgia Tech: Built Environment + Public Health Clearinghouse.  It has some useful information about schools, courses, training activities and general information relating to what they call “at this critical intersection of health and place.”  Some of the resources are pretty minimal but there is still a lot there that I found helpful …

Nice resource on “healthcare-associated infections” from the CDC

Just discovered this site from the CDC dedicated to information about Helthcare Associated Infections: Healthcare-associated infections | HAI | CDC.  It has a great collection of links and resources including links to data, research, prevention methods, and more.  Definitely worth checking out if you have any interest in HAIs or hospital associated microbes.

Building a Building Science Social Media Collection

For the last few months I have been working on building up on microBEnet social media resources relating to “Building Sciences” and the “Built Environment.”  One aspect of this search has been to look for blogs that focus at least in part on “Building Sciences” or the “Built Environment.” This has been much more difficult than collecting …