Interesting article on the possible connection between overworked/burned out nurses and hospital acquired infections: Burned-out nurses linked to more infections in patients – Vitals. Not clear whether any type of causal relationship was established here (though I doubt it). But nevertheless, this is yet another factor to consider when thinking about the transmission of microbes in …
Accidentally wandered into this year old story from what was then MSNBC: Hospital garb harbors nasty bacteria, study says. The story discusses something that is nearly always on my mind when I hear discussions of hospital acquired infections – scrubs. I am amazed, for example, at how many people from the UC Davis Veterinary School/Hospital (which …
There will be a session entitled “The Great Indoors: Recent Advances In the Ecology of Built Environments”, at ESA 2012. This session is organized by Tom Bruns (BIMERC) and Brendan Bohannen (BioBE Center).
One of the difficulties working within the microbiology of the built environment is making sure that the relevant information crosses over the boundaries between building science and microbial ecology since those two groups tend to attend different meeting and read different journals. That’s one of the reasons that we’ve worked to hard to sponsor microbiology …
Sloan Symposium II — Healthy Buildings 2012, Brisbane, Australia, July 9, 2012 written by Hal Levin – Sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s microBEnet project under the Microbiology of the Built Environment program. Following up on the Symposium held at indoor Air 2011 in Austin, Texas, microBEnet organized another symposium to take place at …
(Announcement for the 2013 Genomic Standards Consortium, you can also check out their wiki) The GSC 15 Workshop The 15th Workshop of the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) Date: April 22-24, 2013 Location: National Institute of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, USA GSC 15, ‘Science enabled by Standards’, will be held on April 22-24, 2013 at the National …
Nice mini feature on Noah Fierer in the the New Scientist: Intrepid explorer of the microbe jungle in your home The feature is basically an interview with Graham Lawton and covers many topics of interest to studies of “microbiology of the built environment.” Good stuff in there on natural history, germaphobia, toilets and more. Definitely worth …
Postdoctoral Position in Environmental Metagenomics, Norman Pace Lab, Boulder, CO Available September 1, 2012, three years appointment, NIH salary grades. A three-year Research Associate position is available for participation with a team studying the microbial metagenomics of municipal water distribution systems. Although seemingly a mundane setting, little is known about the microbiology of municipal drinking …
“If I could do it all over again, and relive my vision in the twenty-first century, I would be a microbial ecologist. Ten billion bacteria live in a gram of ordinary soil, a mere pinch held between thumb and forefinger. They represent thousands of species, almost none of which are known to science. Into that …
My last post was about mummy burial sites, so now let’s talk about nuclear waste repositories. There are so many kinds of built environments to chase microbes in. This report is about some microbiology being done in a deep geological repository that is a model site for nuclear waste storage. The work seems mostly culture-based, …