Very very interesting article in the Globe and Mail by Alex Hutchinson: Destination — not the flight — more likely to make you sick, study says – The Globe and Mail. The article discusses the issue of people (well, mostly athletes) getting sick when they travel. What is fascinating is that a few lines of evidence indicate …
Another good indoor microbiology video from the BioBE Center
Love this, from Ashley Bateman and the BioBE Center.
Another new Sloan-funded project in the microbiology of the built environment called “To analyze and model the establishment of microbial communities over time on different office surface materials in different climates”. This project is being undertaken by Greg Caporaso at Northern Arizona University. Full description below: The goal of this project is to understand successional patterns …
The Sloan foundation has recently announced funding for several new projects in the microbiology of the built environment, we’ll be describing each of them in more detail here. First is a project called “Effect of Pipe Materials, Water Flow, and Chemistry on the Building Plumbing Microbiome”. This work will be performed by Amy Pruden, Marc …
Every day there are numerous news reports dealing with “mold” and the built environment. It’s usually a mix of scaremongering, cleaning suggestions, and the occasional bit of interesting science. Generally we avoid this topic, since surprisingly little is actually known about what fungal species are actually associated with human health impacts. This story just caught …
A paper from MIT researchers, A Metric of Influential Spreading during Contagion Dynamics through the Air Transportation Network, a study of contagion dynamics shows that airports are among the more hazardous locations on your travel itinerary. Published in PLoS One, the paper is freely downloadable at this link The authors write: “Characterizing the early-time behavior …
Interesting new paper on cleaning surfaces … and what seems to work or not work: Residual viral and bacterial contamination of surfaces after cleaning and disinfection. It is an advanced PDF in AEM – not sure if people have access to the advanced PDF or not – unclear if those are freely available. I have added it …
So here’s a question. Every couple of weeks I see articles about the wonderful benefits of having plants indoors. However, we’ve published in the past about how there’s little to no evidence that plants actually do anything meaningful in terms of indoor air quality (see here and here). The new rage seems to be biowalls… …
Quick update: A few days ago I wrote about a Legionnaires outbreak in Chicago at the Marrioott hotel: Time for hotels to start surveying their microbes. CNN is reporting that the hotel has identified a putative source for the Legionella bacterium that causes Legionnaires: the fountain in the lobby and/or a spa: Chicago hotel shuts fountain, …