See here for Part 1 and here for Part 2 both posted in 2013. 27 April 2014. Leiden, the Netherlands Holland in April is orange and green. Following last year’s abdication by the Queen, yesterday was the first King’s Day in decades. The normally stoic Dutch draped themselves in brilliant orange, painted temporary flag tattoos …
I wasn’t able to make it to the Indoor Air meeting this year but I followed the action on Twitter. Here’s a Storify of the tweets using the #microbenet hashtag which was primarily used at the Sloan-funded microbiology of the built environment session. [View the story “Indoor Air 2014 #microbenet hashtag” on Storify]
Paper of potential interest to the microBEnet crowd: Phylogenetics and the human microbiome. It is a preprint in ArXiv by Erick Matsen. It focuses on the human microbiome but discusses the history of methods for phylogenetic analysis of microbial communities and it is quite good. Thanks to Erick for posting this to arXiv so that people …
While not exactly the microbiology of the built environment, studies of the human microbiome are the next closest thing and and understanding of both will be critical to creating healthier living environments. The American Gut project is the largest, crowdfunded/citizen science human microbiome effort, with over 3,000 participants so far (including myself). In addition to …
Gareth Griffith’s Slate article (2012) on endangered microbes told a story that had honestly never occurred to me. Sure, there are endangered species all over the world, and we are all too aware of organizations like the IUCN that classify and aim to preserve such creatures. But none of the organisms on IUCN’s Red List are microbes. …
Quick post here about an upcoming architect conference in Atlanta, GA hosted by the American Institute of Architects (AIA)… May 14-16th 2015. Here’s a bit of information from the organizer (they noted that they’d like to do more with connecting microbiome research and design): Submit a proposal of your own. Let this be your big …
Recently Brent Stephens from the Built Environment Research Group asked me what the most popular posts on microBEnet have been to date. I was intrigued, so decided to do some digging in Google Analytics and share the results. One thing worth noting is that the top 10 blog posts were scattered among the top 40 …
Every time you bend over the public water fountain to take a drink and see the gunk at the bottom, do you wonder what’s living in it? Microbiologists do… This 2013 study from Finland collaborated on a study examining biofilms on the drinking water distribution system in office buildings. They started sampling right as the …
Recently, a bit of an uproar occurred when the CDC reported that workers there had been accidentally exposed to the bacterium that causes anthrax. The lesson from this? Well, I think it is simple. Accidents happen. And they can happen anywhere to anyone. No matter how careful one is. A few days ago a friend …
I’ve been thinking a lot about concrete lately. Mainly, I’ve been thinking about the lack of concrete here in Boulder compared to Houston, where I lived for four years until May this year. As I’m training for a half-marathon, my knees are particularly grateful for the lack of concrete they’ve experienced of late. We’ve also …