Catchy title: “Boosting bacteria in drinking water may improve health” but hard to come by evidence for this idea

All you germaphobes, you might not want to read this: Boosting bacteria in drinking water may improve health – health – 10 August 2012 – New Scientist.  Or the post here at the microBEnet blog a few days ago from David Coil about this same topic. The article discusses a paper from Lutgarde Raskin’s group at …

Paper of interest: Microbiology of asthma

Very useful review paper came out this week discussing the microbiology of asthma.  Thanks to David Thaler for pointing this one out.  The review discusses the role of microbes in both the development and prevention of asthma.  While not explicitly concerned with the built environment, the “hygiene hypothesis” has obvious implications for the indoor microbiome.

80beats at Discover story on office microbes #microBEnet #PLoSOne

Quick post here New post from 80beats on the office microbes study from Scott Kelley that I wrote about a few days ago: What Microbes Are Growing In Your Office? Science Wants to Know | 80beats | Discover Magazine Plus some new news stories about the study Men’s Offices Have More Bacteria, Study Finds The higher …

The hidden diversity of offices – what microbes are lurking there? #PLoSOne

A new paper from Scott Kelley is out: PLoS ONE: Office Space Bacterial Abundance and Diversity in Three Metropolitan Areas. This work was supported in part by the Sloan Foundation’s program in Microbiology of the Built Environment (which is the same program that funds microBEnet). Lots of interesting stuff in the paper.  Certainly the most visually …

Summary of the 2011 “Microbiomes of built environments symposium”

Good to see this summary come out: Microbiomes of built environments: 2011 symposium highlights and workgroup recommendations – Corsi – 2012 – Indoor Air – Wiley Online Library. Even better that it freely available, though I am a bit dubious of the Wiley Open Access Option as applied by this journal since on the PDF there …

Yes, Virginia, you “emit” microbes when you walk into a room

Glad to see this paper on emission of bacteria by people is now available under Wiley’s “Open Access” option: Size-resolved emission rates of airborne bacteria and fungi in an occupied classroom – Qian – 2012 I am particularly glad since this one got a lot of media coverage and I think it is VERY important for …

Lots of press for recent Sloan-funded study: “Size-resolved emission rates of airborne bacteria and fungi in an occupied classroom”

This study came out online in February and provided a very interesting look into the role of human occupancy in relation to indoor biological aerosols.  Most strikingly the authors found that millions of bacteria and fungi are added to the air in an occupied room, mostly through stirring up previously deposited organisms. Yesterday an article …

Paper on fungal “barcoding” using ribosomal ITS region

A new paper is out supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s “microbiology of the Built Environment program” — Nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer ITS region as a universal DNA barcode marker for Fungi.  It is available for free to all via the PNAS “Open Option”. The paper discussing work assessing the potential for …

“Measuring knowledge of indoor environmental hazards” – Rosenthal 2011

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 …