Thanks to a recent tweet, I saw a paper I would have surely otherwise missed: A method for sampling microbial aerosols using high altitude balloons in the Journal of Microbiological Methods. A method for sampling microbial aerosols using high altitude balloons w/ @nbryan5 http://t.co/jyXLOjEdP7 — Cameron Thrash (@DrJCThrash) November 11, 2014 The proud LSU Tiger …
I wrote this for the Google Scholar blog where it was posted recently.  I am reposting it here becuase I thought it might be of interest to the microBEnet audience.
For many years I have been worried about how space travel will affect microbiomes – of the space vehicles and of the residents (people, other animals, plants, etc). This is one of the reasons we started Project MERCCURI and get involved in looking at the microbes on the International Space Station. It is also why …
We publish a newsletter every month here at microBEnet. And I thought it would be good to also publish to the blog the various summaries and roundups from the newsletter. Past newsletters are archived here. Here are some of the highlights from this latest newsletter. MicroBEnet Blogs A summary of the recent topics posted on microBE.net …
We’ve posted in the past about Baudoinia, also known as the Kentucky whiskey fungus that grows on buildings near distilleries. See our previous posts here and here. This fungus was named and characterized by James Scott from the University of Toronto. Once people affected by the fungus could pin it on the distilleries, the lawsuits …
There is a new genome paper out that should be of interest to many thinking about the built environment, microbes and allergens and related topics: The draft genome, transcriptome, and microbiome of Dermatophagoides farinae reveal a broad spectrum of dust mite allergens. Published as an open access paper (yay) in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology …
On October 7th and 8th 2014, we held a workshop at the University of California, Davis entitled Animals in the Built Environment. The aim of this workshop was to catalyze the study of the microbiology of built environments where animals live by bringing together experts in animal health, building science and microbiology to discuss why these systems are …
Note by Jonathan Eisen Last week I saw an interesting new paper in AEM entitled: Indoor-Air Microbiome in an Urban Subway Network: Diversity and Dynamics. I thought it was of relveance of microBEnet so I wrote to the senior author Dr. Patrick Lee from the School of Energy and Environment and the City University of Hong Kong inviting …
It seems that any time a holiday comes around in the US, the press starts to ramp up the writing of stories about evil microbes that are lurking all around us. And Halloween appears to be no exception. I am now planning on referring to this attitude as “microbophobia” rather than “germophobia” because to some …
A UC Riverside child development center building will be closed for several months in order to clean up mold contamination. Air and surface testing will be performed to certify the building as safe after remediation efforts are completed, but the presumed cause of this is a leaking water source within the walls. Sustained wetting of …