Last week, Holly Ganz from microBEnet organized a workshop on “Animals in the Built Environment”, focusing on the intersections between animal care, building design, and microbial ecology. Participants included zoo staff, shelter architects, engineers, microbial ecologists, etc. More detailed meeting reports will follow, but as a teaser here is the Storify from the meeting:
This is a guest post from Nicholas Osborne from the University of Exeter Medical School. I saw a paper of his that seemed very relevant to microBE.net “Indoor fungal diversity and asthma: A meta-analysis and systematic review of risk factors.” (by Sharpe RA, Bearman N, Thornton CR, Husk K1, Osborne NJ). And so I wrote to …
A great new mini review (“The dual role of microbes in corrosion,” Nardy Kip and Johannes A van Vee) discussing the dual role of microbes in corrosion and corrosion inhibition has recently been published in the ISME Journal. Though not OpenAccess, because the article is so relevant to the built environment community, I wanted to …
So – we are hoping to hire an artist to do some contract work for “Gut Check” the microbiome game. And we need some help and advice. We would like the game and all the art associated it to be released under as broad an open license as possible. But we would also like to …
Well, it looks like the White House is requesting feedback on funding priorities relating to Science and Technology topics. See Federal Register | Strategy for American Innovation. In the summary they write: The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic Council request public comments to provide input into an upcoming update of …
If you read this blog, you probably know a thing or two or more about antibiotic resistance. Especially in terms of how humans have aided in furthering it. This LA Times article reports that in mid-September, President Obama signed an executive order aiming to combat drug-resistant microbes. A 20 million dollar prize will be given …
You may have heard the saying that “a butterfly flaps its wings and…” insert your absurd unintended, chaotic, massive consequence here (e.g., a hurricane). We may not have much control over butterflies, but we do make choices as industries, governments, and individuals on which products we produce, regulate, and consume. Examples of such products that …
On September 22-23, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation sponsored a workshop at UC Berkeley entitled: Workshop to advance fungi in the built environment. It was the second workshop the Foundation sponsored to strengthen specific areas within their Microbiology of the Built Environment, the first workshop being on Building Science that Brent Stephens wrote about previously. The workshop …
Guest Blog Post by Dr. Nick Clements, PhD Post-doctoral Researcher, University of Colorado Boulder, Miller Research Group In the event of a disaster, hospitals must have plans in place for receiving a surge of patients with a variety of possible infectious diseases or conditions. Pandemic-causing infectious diseases, such as the viruses that caused the SARS …
Great news here: Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research pledges to make its research open to all. Matt Kaiser – the Head of Research has written this up in a blog post. It is worth reading the whole article. I note – I really hope that the Sloan Foundation can take this approach in the “microbiology of the …