In a a new study (also covered by Smithsonian.com), researchers placed 572 bags of leaf litter in 20 sites within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and found that rates of decomposition varied by as much as 40%, correlating with the level of radioactive contamination at the site. The authors suggest that this is a worrying development, …
Just found an interesting new paper via automated Google Scholar searches: The Bio-Community Perl toolkit for microbial ecology. By Florent Angly, Christopher Fields, and Gene Tyson in Bioinformatics. Here is the abstract: Summary: The development of bioinformatic solutions for microbial ecology in Perl is limited by the lack of modules to represent and manipulate microbial community profiles …
Just got alerted by Paula Olsiewski & Eileen Choffnes to this paper Role of Transportation in Spread of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus Infection, United States by James Lowe, Phillip Gauger, Karen Harmon, Jianqiang Zhang, Joseph Connor, Paul Yeske, Timothy Loula, Ian Levis, Luc Dufresne, and Rodger Main. The paper is in the CDC journal “Emerging Infectious Diseases” and …
A really interesting aspect of Japan’s most recent and disastrous earthquake and tsunami involves microbial impact on cultural property and documents. Even as a student in microbiology, I never considered how these natural disasters could exacerbate the problem of biodeterioration. A 2013 article by Gu et al summarizes some important information presented at The International …
There was a recent flash in the news about the ‘5-second rule’ when a group of microbiologists at Aston University in the UK released results from a study (that, from what I can tell, is unpublished). The summary reads, “The study…monitored the transfer of the common bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus from …
I thought this might be of interest to some of the “microbiology of the Built Environment” crowd. I gave a talk at the UC Davis Bodega Bay Marine Lab as part of the Workshop on Applied Phylogenetics on the “Evolution of DNA Sequencing”. I posted the slides to Slideshare and am embedding them here. I …
This study by C. Balagna et al from 2012 looks at the application of their product on spacecraft. They covered a commercial polymer generally used in aerospace with an antimicrobial made of silver and silica using radio frequencies. This was done in an attempt to mitigate the amount of contamination of spacecraft surfaces. When in space, …
You could say that I’m milking this one study design – one in which we surveyed the airborne microbial communities and surfaces around different units of a university housing complex – and you’d be right. But for good reason: it’s a powerful study design. We have replication of residential units of a common design across …
This interesting article published in “CLEAN- Soil, Air, Water” (behind a paywall) in March 2013 aims to describe an efficient procedure for sampling airborne microbes and fungi in indoor environments. Airborne bacteria and spores commonly induce respiratory systems such as asthma and allergies, so they are an important component of the built environment. Gauzere et …
After over a year of collecting and screening hundreds of samples from the built environment we have just sent our collection of 48 “finalists” to Florida for the upcoming launch. Samples have come from all over the country including NFL/NBA/MBL games, sites of historic interest (e.g. the Liberty Bell), and a number of schools. These …