The following is the Executive Summary of a report on the AAAS “Microbiomes of the Built Environment Symposium”, March 27th, 2014, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The full report can be found here. The research field of Microbiomes of the Built Environment (MoBE) is relatively new, evolving about ten years ago from …
Just pointed to this story: Microbial stowaways to Mars identified : Nature News & Comment by Darlene Cavalier, our collaborator on the “Space Microbes” Project MERCCURI. The article reports on a presentation by Stephanie Smith at the ASM 2014 meeting going on in Boston. Smith presented results from characterizing (via culturing) the microbes present on various parts …
Well, I wish I had known that this was going to happen: Need to Know: Innovations in building science | Al Jazeera America. If I had known I would have tried to add a microbial sampling component to the visit to the UC Davis West Davis Village by Phil Torres and Cara Santa Maria. Anyway – …
There is an interesting and important paper out in Microbiology: Hand Bacterial Communities Vary Across Two Different Human Populations by Denina Hospodsky, Amy J. Pickering, Timothy R. Julian , Dana Miller, Sisira Gorthala, Alexandria B. Boehm, and Jordan Peccia. This paper is important for many reasons including the following: They found significant variation in the communities found on …
Metadata collected for MoBE studies can be organized and submitted to QIIME utilizing the MIxS-BE metadata standard. Templates for data submission and a Metadata Standard Submission Guide (see below) will be posted to microbe.net Resources. Please contact Lynn Schriml (lschriml@som.umaryland.edu) for questions regarding mapping your data to the MIxS metadata standard or Gail Ackermann (gail.ackermann@colorado.edu) at QIIME …
Quick post to make available the brochure from the AAAS Microbiomes of the Built Environment meeting that was in DC recently AAAS MoBE Symposium Brochure 2014-2.
OK so I know nothing about this journal Medical Science | Journal. But the cover of their May issue is a figure from a a paper on hospital microbial ecology. The article is Deepa S, Abishek MU, Venkatesha D. The air as harbinger of infections in critical care units. Medical Science, 2014, 8(28), 8-13). Here …
Hypoallergenic pets no more! In a recent article (2013) from PNAS, researchers have found that mice exposed to dust collected from households that had dogs compared to dust collected from households with no pets had significantly lower lung Th2 cytokine mRNA expression levels (IL-4 and IL-13) compared with those treated with dust from no pet houses. …
Quick post – just saw this Tweet from the Airmid Healthgroup Your home’s odor may be making you sick; microbial volatile organic compounds http://t.co/8M7U84L5Oi via @USATODAY – Airmid Healthgroup (@AirmidHealth) May 13, 2014 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js It points to a story in USA Today by Melissa Pandika that may be of interest – Your home’s odor may be …
UPDATE 1 by Jonathan Eisen on May 18, 2014. I have flagged this post as being offensive (see comments for more detail). The author has now lost his permission to post directly without screening and am considering deleting this post (due to the tone of this post and other posts). I am for now leaving it up …