(Text below from the conference organizers. -David) The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the University of Colorado are pleased to announce the inaugural conference on the Microbiology of the Built Environment, taking place May 31 and June 1, 2012. This is the first event of a conference series that will convene thought leaders across fields …
The Sloan Foundation has made a few new grants as part of their microbiology of built environment program. Here’s a description of the most recent, being undertaken by Maria Gloria Dominguez Bello at the University of Puerto Rico: Title: Microbes of built environments spanning human urbanization “Little attention has been paid to the microbes that live …
At the AAAS Meeting in Vancouver in February there was a session focusing on “The Earth Microbiome Project” and related topics. The session was organized by Jack Gilbert and had a series of talks that may be of interest to those concerned about the microbiology of the built environment. I gave a talk in the …
Here at the intersection of microbial ecology and building science we spend a lot of time talking about “what is known?”… or in most cases “what don’t we know?”. In this sense “we” is considered the sum total of people working on these topics. Until this week, I’d never thought much about “what do non-scientists …
An excellent workshop summary came out today entitled “Challenges in Microbial Sampling in Indoor Environments”. Download the PDF here This workshop was held Feb 14-15 2011 and was a collaboration between the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), and Yale University. The purpose of the Challenges in Microbial Sampling …
Nice little post with an interview with Rich Corsi from UT Austin: WAMC: Dr. Richard Corsi, The University of Texas at Austin – Indoor Air Pollution 2012-03-01. The “Academic Minute” focuses on Indoor Air pollution. Corsi does some really interesting work on the built environment and we have written about him before a few times. For …
An old, badly flawed NASA study reported the air pollutant removal rates for a few common types of houseplants. The NASA researcher had been studying the use of biological wastewater treatment systems which are effective. He did one study before he left NASA and has been advocating the use of plants to clean indoor air …
It is this type of thing that inspires me that a better understanding of microbes in the built environment could be of immense value in many areas: A Trip To The Living City Of The Future | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation. Certainly, we need to do a lot of research into making buildings more …
Just a quick one here. The Home Microbiome Project from Argonne National Lab is featured on the home page of Discover Magazine: Science and Technology News, Science Articles | Discover Magazine. This is part of a feature Discover has linking to SciStarter – a site about citizen science.
Not about microbes but there is an interesting article at Smartplanet on office environments: Office work increases toxicity in bloodstreams? | SmartPlanet. It would be interesting to see whether these people have altered microbial communities in conjunction with increased toxins.