UPDATED AT BOTTOM – TURNS OUT NEWS STORY WAS VERY MISLEADING Wow. Just got pointed to this news story: BBC News – Closing hospital windows ‘increases infection risk’. It reports on work from Cath Noakes from the University of Leeds. The work is published in a non open-access journal “Building and Environment” which I do not …
(From Linsey Marr at Virginia Tech) We are seeking a post-doctoral researcher for a project to develop a nanotechnology-based sensor for airborne viruses. The ideal candidate will have experience with experimental techniques related to the generation, sampling, and detection of specific microorganisms in bioaerosols. The post-doctoral researcher will be co-advised by Dr. Linsey Marr and …
Another SIGS meeting report of interest: Meeting Report: Fungal ITS Workshop (October 2012) | Bates | Standards in Genomic Sciences. This one discusses issues in sampling and characterizing fungi using ITS sequencing.
A new meeting report is out in the SIGS journal: The Hospital Microbiome Project: Meeting Report for the 1st Hospital Microbiome Project Workshop on sampling design and building science measurements, Chicago, USA, June 7th-8th 2012. | Smith | Standards in Genomic Sciences. The report discusses a meeting involving many interested in microbiology of the built environment …
I’ve put together a collection of photos from the first few sampling events for our microbes in space project (Project MERCCURI). This will be updated as we receive photos from events over the next 6 months or so.
The Health in Buildings Roundtable will meet Tuesday, April 23rd from 8 to 4:30 at the Natcher Center on the NIH campus in Bethesda. The line-up includes a diverse set of speakers and topics. We saw nothing in the program posted on line mentioning microbial ecology, microbiology, or microbes, but the program might be of …
A reminder from the conference organizers that the meeting in May is fast approaching and that everyone should have their travel arrangements in order. The preliminary program is online and more information will be coming soon. (This conference is by invitation only)
So last night was the first large-scale public microbial sampling event for project MERCCURI (a.k.a. Microbes in Spaaaace!). Around 330 teachers from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) conference bought tickets to the game. After the game many of them came down on the court to take photos, shoot baskets and sample the microbes on …
This article, about “Moving the Office Outside” talks about the energy savings and psychological benefits of creating outdoor office spaces. Sadly microbes don’t get a mention, even though there’s an ever-growing body of work showing that indoor air is less healthy than outdoor air (both in terms of chemical composition and microbial makeup).
Today our Project MERCCURI team gave a presentation at the National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) meeting in San Antonio. We talked mostly about the project, but also about ways that teachers could incorporate microbiology of the built environment in their classrooms. There’s a lot of interest in taking the kinds of work being done in …