Wanted: guidelines for students (and others) for doing a journal club presentation

Just a quick post here to follow up on something I posted to Twitter.  I am trying to compile information and guidelines people have on “How do give a journal club presentation” for students in particular but also for others.  Any links, ideas, information, etc you have on this topic would be greatly appreciated.  

Fungal DNA, mycotoxins, cat allergens and fatigue in classrooms

This recent PLoS One article on Associations with Fungal DNA and Mycotoxins in Classroom Dust seems especially appropriate considering the blossoming of flowers and accompanying seasonal allergies that’s now happening in our part of the world. Sick building syndrome (SBS) is associated with the following symptoms: ocular, nasal, throat and dermal symptoms, headache and tiredness. Norback et al (2016) studied …

Fungal assemblages in bathrooms… sounds interesting but not $38 interesting.

So having gained a reputation as the toilet guy (e.g. Slate, RedOrbit, microBEnet) I felt like I just had to write about this article.  Plus it sounds really cool.   This article is by Jennifer Fouquier (also cool) who is in Scott Kelly’s lab at UC San Diego San Diego State.  The title “Rapid assemblage of …

Electron Microscopy and Fighting Superbugs

Last week, a bunch of news articles came out (like this one) that talk about how we are on track to figuring out new ways to tackle antibiotic resistant superbugs. The research they are referring to highlights a paper recently published in Nature (a closed access journal) by Changjiang Dong’s group at the University of East …

Sequencing bacterial genomes in a class: a Swiss project

Isolating interesting bacteria and sequencing their genomes has never been easier and our lab has worked extensively on this topic, particularly in the context of undergraduate education.   Our first foray into this field came in 2011 with a group of students working on the “Built Environment Genomes Project” and eventually culminated in our Swabs to …

Antibiotic Resistance in Small-Scale Poultry Farming in Ecuador

mSphere, ASM’s new open access journal, published a paper recently called Antibiotic Resistance in Animal and Environmental Samples Associated with Small-Scale Poultry Farming in Northwestern Ecuador, written by Braykov et al. The abstract is as follows: The effects of animal agriculture on the spread of antibiotic resistance (AR) are cross-cutting and thus require a multidisciplinary perspective. …

Making microbiology of the built environment relevant to design

The title of this commentary in Microbiome, “Making microbiology of the built environment relevant to design” gets right to the heart of one of the long-standing issues in the field.  Thanks in no small part to the Sloan Foundation program in the Microbiology of the Built Environment, as well as technological changes in DNA sequencing… …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, February 20, 2016

Set in stone Commentary: Making microbiology of the built environment relevant to design – G. Z. Brown, Jeff Kline, Gwynne Mhuireach, Dale Northcutt and Jason Stenson – Microbiome (OA) Architects are enthusiastic about “bioinformed design” as occupant well-being is a primary measure of architectural success. However, architects are also under mounting pressure to create more sustainable …

Interesting paper on estimating microbial environmental data concentrations in a field setting

Got notified of this paper by some automated Google Scholar searchers I have set up (this one for papers on microbial forensics) and I thought it would be of interest to some.: Source: Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology – Considerations for estimating microbial environmental data concentrations collected from a field setting By Erin E …