As Beijing experiences its first “Red Alert” smog emergency, an aptly-timed bit of quirky performance art is making the round on Chinese social media and the English-language press today. A artist from Shenzhen who calls himself “Brother Nut” spent 100 days walking around Beijing with an industrial vacuum cleaner. He then collected dust into a …
Autumn is not just a beautiful season in which multicolored leaves fall to the ground from their branches. It is also a good time for all kinds of microbes to flourish with the new addition of delicious leaf litter nutrients. A new paper from Irga et al studies the connection between the fungi found on leaf litter and …
Just a quick note that the meeting report from the Sloan-funded symposium “Microbiology of the Built Environment” held at Healthy Buildings Europe 2015 is now available in Microbiome. Summary below: Excess or abnormal microbiological activity is both a cause and a consequence of unhealthful indoor environments. Building research, investigations, and remediation must identify compromised buildings …
As buildings move forward in an attempt to become more “green,” it is important to continue to assess how the microbiology changes with these new systems. A recent study from Keely et al used high-throughput pyrosequencing to look at what microbes live in the different points in grey water systems. The sampling efforts were split into …
Infants born via c-section have a microbiome community composed mostly of skin bacteria [1-3], but the source of these skin bacteria is unknown. People quickly shed bacteria into their environment, leaving their own bacterial signature in a room within hours [4]. Do hospital operating rooms harbor skin bacteria that could colonize c-section delivered infants? A …
The G-20 would be an ideal forum in which to take international action against antimicrobial resistance, writes Jim O’Neill. This is definitely worth a read: How to stop antibiotic resistance threatening global growth Jim O’ Neill (who is the Commercial Secretary to the UK Treasury) writes about how the report from the G20 meeting in Antalya, …
Adding to the list of common surfaces in the built environment that are harboring unique microbial communities — solar panels! If you build a smooth surface exposed to the sun, will they come, like poolside sunbathers vying for the best lounge chairs? A study by Pedro Dorado-Morales and crew came at this question from multiple sides: they …
Did you know that NASA took on the project of creating the world’s greenest building? It’s called Sustainability Base and it’s located right in the heart of Silicon Valley. It boasts incredible energy efficiency and often puts energy back into the grid. And as it’s website says, it’s claimed to have been built to be “furnished …
Saw this paper by Ashley Rose and Josh Neufeld, “Microbial biogeography of a university campus” and just had to check it out. Basically the authors conduced a survey of door handles across 65 buildings and three time points on the Waterloo campus. What I think it most interesting about their results is the finding that …
A selection of new papers of interest for this readership, collected from my blog MicrobiomeDigest: Microbes in the air Evaluation of the potential for virus dispersal during hand drying: a comparison of three methods – Patrick T. Kimmitt, Keith F. Redway – Journal of Applied Microbiology ($$) Aims: To use a MS2 bacteriophage model to compare three …