While recent studies of the microbiology of the built environment (MoBE) have greatly increased our understanding of microbial community structure and composition on surfaces and in air within the spaces in which we live and work, most have been driven and led primarily by microbiologists with the building science community playing a supporting role. Perhaps as …
Alex Pasternack at Vice.com’s Motherboard channel has some very interesting thoughts on domes. Giant, massive, city-bestriding domes, starting with the Great Stink Dome of Hangzhou, which was erected to contain vapors emanating from the site of a former insecticide factory. Pasternack’s article discusses some of the fascinating history related to the idea of dropping domes …
Every time you bend over the public water fountain to take a drink and see the gunk at the bottom, do you wonder what’s living in it? Microbiologists do… This 2013 study from Finland collaborated on a study examining biofilms on the drinking water distribution system in office buildings. They started sampling right as the …
“Susceptibility of green and conventional building materials to microbial growth” Indoor Air journal, accepted for publication Abstract Green building materials are becoming more popular. However, little is known about their ability to support or limit microbial growth. The growth of fungi was evaluated on five building materials. Two green, two conventional building materials and wood …
One reason that it can be difficult to bridge across different fields is just learning the vocabulary and jargon of the field. So happy to have found this: Vocabulary of the Indoor Air Sciences while browsing the web site for ISIAQ – the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate. It even has 43 …
Just discovered this site from Georgia Tech: Built Environment + Public Health Clearinghouse. It has some useful information about schools, courses, training activities and general information relating to what they call “at this critical intersection of health and place.” Some of the resources are pretty minimal but there is still a lot there that I found helpful …
I’m proud to announce that the sample collection for the building science component of Project MERCCURI is complete! In early May, Koichi Wakata from JAXA (Japan’s space exploration agency) collected swabs swabs of surfaces aboard the International Space Station. Back in June last year, Jenna, Wendy and I went to the Johnson Space Center in …
For the last few months I have been working on building up on microBEnet social media resources relating to “Building Sciences” and the “Built Environment.” One aspect of this search has been to look for blogs that focus at least in part on “Building Sciences” or the “Built Environment.” This has been much more difficult than collecting …
There is a new blog post from the Department of Energy pointing to a resource that may be of use: White House Highlights Two Energy-Slashing, Open Data Initiatives | Department of Energy. This post highlights two steps featured in the “Energy Datapalooza” activity going on now: KEY BUILDING TECHNOLOGIES OFFICE STEPS INCLUDE: – Anonymized building …
Heard a very interesting story on NewsHour yesterday about portable classrooms: The story is reported by Katie Campbell of KCTS in Seattle. Some of the issues discussed in the context of “reinventing” portable classrooms include carbon dioxide monitoring, sustainability and the Living Building Standards, using solar for electricity, natural ventilation instead of noisy HVAC units, …