Oh my. This story is littlered with so much over the top germophobia I do not know where to begin: The Dirt on Your Sponge – NYTimes.com. The story, by Penelope Green, discusses how Tod Maitland and Matthew Flannery have developed a sponge cleaning system called “SpongeBath”. This is going on sale on Amazon and Bed Bath and …
Nice new paper that may be of interest: PLOS Pathogens: From Dandruff to Deep-Sea Vents: Malassezia-like Fungi Are Ecologically Hyper-diverse by Anthony Amend. Malassezia are commonly found in many studies of human skin and when they have been found in other places sometimes it is thought that they are vagrants having come from the skin of humans or …
Note – Jonathan Eisen invited Jack Gilbert to write a post about the Earth Microbiome Project especially in light of the recent paper on the topic by Gilbert et al. (see Eisen’s blog post about this paper here). Post by Jack Gilbert submitted by email to Jonathan Eisen. The Earth Microbiome Project started as …
Just a quick reminder here that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation put out a call this summer for proposals from post-docs working on the microbiology of the built environment. The proposals are due this Sunday, September 1st. See our previous post with the details here. The very short description of the call: Research Area …
For anyone looking for another reason to fear hospitals, nosocomial infections (hospital acquired infections), or spinal injections, here is a story for you. Contaminated spinal injections were given to patients in 20 states and led to 751 individuals developing fungal meningitis and 64 deaths. FDA and CDC officials conducted a preliminary investigation and discovered a …
If you have any interest in large scale microbial ecology – either to do it yourself or to make use of the results or to just watch it as it happens, you should read this paper: BMC Biology | Full text | The Earth Microbiome project: successes and aspirations. It outlines the history and goals and …
There was a very interesting artilce in the New York Times on August 21 bu Michael Kimmelman: In Redesigned Room, Hospital Patients May Feel Better Already. The article focuses on a move by the University Medical Center of Princeton to redesign hospital rooms. And Kimmelman discusses a variety of issues associated with hospital design. And there were …
Just a quick post here. Got alerted to this paper by Google Scholar updates: A Combined Approach to Assess the Microbial Contamination of the Archimedes Palimpsest. And I was drawn into it immediately by the first line in the introduction The transmission of ancient texts through the ages appears to be an almost miraculous event …
In the 2011 paper “Microbial Biogeography of Public Restroom Surfaces” Noah Fierer and others found that some of the toilet flush handles had similar microbial communities to those of the restroom floor, suggesting evidence of the germaphobic practice of flushing the toilet with a foot. I was curious to know if we could find other microbial …
Just got this from Amy Pruden, via Paula Olseiwski. Seems like a potential opportunity to get some funding for the microbiology of the built environment from NSF. The “Concept” of the program is described below: The Science and Technology Centers: Integrative Partnerships – Concept The Science and Technology Centers (STC): Integrative Partnerships program supports innovative …