More Fresh Air in Classrooms Means Fewer Absences « Berkeley Lab News Center

(Author’s note, this article is a bit out of date but I just found this draft and am posting it because I think it’s still an interesting study) Trying to get outside my microbiology comfort zone and post some more about building science.  A recent study finding that more fresh air in classrooms correlated with …

An important read on “the future for women in the built environment and land”

Amanda Clack, RICS President Elect tells Womanthology why diversity is a strategy and a source of competitive advantage, not an issue Just got done reading this: Surveying the future for women in the built environment and land: Diversity is a strategy and a source of competitive advantage, not an issue – Amanda Clack, RICS President Elect …

Microbial communities and biodeterioration of Auschwitz buildings

A new open access paper in Frontiers in Microbiology looked at the microbial communities found on buildings of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. I’m currently travelling, so I only have time to post the abstract here.  One Hundred Years by The Cure, a song about war and destruction, seemed a good choice for this post. …

What do moisture measurements tell us?

(Note:  This post was composed in March 2014 but somehow never got published) No environmental measurement is arguably more critical to understanding the indoor environmental factors relevant to the presence of fungi or the potential survival of infectious airborne agents than the moisture measurements. Characterization of the presence of moisture on surfaces, also known as …

Mars Dome – a cool closed system

According to a recent BBC news article, NASA is doing a Mars simulation project to see if six live human beings can survive being isolated in a dome together. From a MoBE perspective, it would be cool to study this system. It’s completely closed to outside microbes – the people living in this dome have to …

Microbiome informed design – air quality, avoiding filtering, and lichens

This is one of those stories / articles / posts that simultaneously fascinates me and freaks me out a bit and for which I fluctuate wildly between those two points of view: bioME – RSA Human By Nature Entry on Behance By Candice de Aguiar Her basic design idea here is to allow for more microbial diversity …

Interesting and important new paper: Microbial composition of purified waters 

There is an interesting and potentially important new paper out from Caitlin Proctor, Marc Edwards and Amy Pruden: Microbial composition of purified waters and implications for regrowth control in municipal water systems in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.  The abstract is below: