Got pointed to this paper by automated Google Scholar searches that I have for many of the authors of the paper: Conditionally Rare Taxa Disproportionately Contribute to Temporal Changes in Microbial Diversity in mBio by Ashley Shade, Stuart E. Jones, J. Gregory Caporaso, Jo Handelsman, Rob Knight, Noah Fierer, and Jack A. Gilbert. In the paper (which is, …
Recently I participated in the Society for Building Science Educators (SBSE) annual retreat (more about this soon). And at the retreat I saw a fascinating presentation rom Richard L. Hayes who runs helps facilitate something called the Building Research Information Knowledgebase (aka BRIK). BRIK is a “collaborative effort of the American Institute of Architects and the National Institute …
The American Institute of Architects are looking for “Educational Proposals” for their 2015 Convention: See Abstract Scorecard. I just put in a simple proposal to have a 60 minute panel discussion on “Architecture and Microbiology”. But maybe someone else out there would want to put together a more comprehensive proposal on Microbiomes and Architecture and Design and, well, lots of other …
Just a quick note that the late-breaking poster deadline for the annual American Associattion for Aerosol Research (AAAR) conference is Monday, July 21st. This conference will run from October 20-24, in Orlando Florida. Here’s the description of the conference from the website: On behalf of the AAAR 33rd Annual Conference organizers, I am excited to …
Definitely worth checking out this paper from Kyle Bibby’s lab: PLOS ONE: Shift in the Microbial Ecology of a Hospital Hot Water System following the Introduction of an On-Site Monochloramine Disinfection System. A key figure in the paper is Figure 2 which I post here. The figure shows a PCA based clustering of samples based on …
Have you ever said “I boiled a jar to disinfect it”? Well, you were wrong. You should have used “I boiled a jar to sanitize it”. Disinfectants refer to chemical substances used to kill microbes. Therefore, something has been disinfected only if a chemical was used. Heating or irradiating surfaces are methods of either sterilizing (free …
Nice post from Shelly Miller on her blog about why she started using and is still using Twitter: Why I Decided to Join Twitter and Send Tweets | Shelly L. Miller. Shelly is an active member of the “microBEnet” community and I posts a lot of useful information about meetings, science, and related topics at …
The headline above is from an article that someone sent us a couple of months ago that I just got around to checking out. It refers to a paper entitled “Detection of the Urban Release of a Bacillus anthracis Simulant by Air Sampling” published in Biosecurity and Bioterrism which is a journal that I bet …
Alex Pasternack at Vice.com’s Motherboard channel has some very interesting thoughts on domes. Giant, massive, city-bestriding domes, starting with the Great Stink Dome of Hangzhou, which was erected to contain vapors emanating from the site of a former insecticide factory. Pasternack’s article discusses some of the fascinating history related to the idea of dropping domes …
When we talk about animals in the built environment, we tend to mostly think about our companion animals such as dogs and cats. Of course insects and rodents also live alongside us. And many other animals live in built environments, including farms, zoos and aquariums. I study the microbes associated with cheetahs. In captivity cheetahs …