Well, most of the news I see about “germs” being found somewhere or other are germophobia in some way or another. I think this is a different case though: Kitchen Cutting Boards Remain a Source of Multi-Drug Resistant Bacteria After Use. Not sure if what they report is particularly unusual but seems disconcerting at first glance. …
Well, the news just does not get any better / different for cruise ships and microbes. Despite major efforts (or so they claim) by the cruise industry – people keep spreading Norovirus and other such illnesses aboard cruise ships. For example, see: Illnesses Aboard California Cruise Ship Nearly Double. Not sure just what is going …
Just a quick post here. The AAAS Meeting on “Microbiomes of the Built Environment” that was sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation was on Thursday. I have made a “Storification” of the Tweets, Background and Videos from the meeting. I have embedded the Storify below. It can also be accessed directly here. We will be …
OK – definitely want this book.
Tomorrow all day there will be a meeting at AAAS HQ on “Microbiomes of the Built Environment“. I will be speaking at the meeting, and this is one of my major research areas, so I am a bit biased, but the meeting is going to be great I think. And it will be webcast live. …
Well, Jane Brody in “The Well” in the New York Times has a story that is a good example of microbiology of the built environment: A Viral Misery That Loves Company. In it she details her own experiences with Norovirus. And she also discusses how this virus spreads readily in the built environment – day care …
Just read this from NPR – In The Face Of Disaster, Pritzker Winner Shigeru Ban Designs Solutions : NPR. It tells the story of how architect Shigeru Ban has won the prestigious Pritzker Prize in architecture. In addition to being a very socially conscious architect, Ban also has an interesting connection to microbes and building design. …
There are a bunch of stories out in relation to work from MIT on “Living Materials” See MIT News Engineers design ‘living materials’ Value Walk MIT Scientists Develop Living Materials Using 3-D Images Of Bacteria Gizmodo MIT’s Living E. Coli Materials Could Provide Self-Aware Surfaces The Register RISE of the LIVING CHAIR: Boffins recruit E coli to build futuristic …
At a recent meeting of the Sloan Foundation program on Microbiomes of the Built Environment I gave a talk about microBEnet and kind of begged people in the program to send me emails when they had new papers out so we could include them in our reference collection and could blog about them. And one …
Just saw the abstract of this paper: The effects of climbing vegetation on the local microclimate, thermal performance, and air infiltration of four building facade orientations that was published 3/19 in Building and Environment. Authors are Irina Susorova, Parham Azimi and Brent Stephens. I am intrigued from reading the abstract (I don’t have access to the whole paper). …