Came across this pretty interesting story today, an article in the Guardian entitled “Bacteria from 300-year-old Ovid poetry volume inspires ‘bio-artist’”. Basically the artist found an old book, and then cultured microbes from it, using her own blood to make blood agar plates. Voila, cool microbe art with history mixed in.
The “cheese microbiome” as a model system continues to yield useful results. Model systems for microbiome & microbial ecology studies are really important and it is great to see how this system has continued to develop. This is worth a look. The search for lively bacterial communities led Rachel Dutton, a microbiologist at UC San …
The Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory (ESBL) at the University of Oregon is seeking a new Associate Director of Outreach at the Portland location! At ESBL, as part of the Department of Architecture, we research how buildings, related transportation and land use systems, climate, and human behavior, determine energy and resource use and impact human health. …
To support the services that soils provide we need to regenerate their health. Healthy soils thrive with microbial life. The Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Colorado State University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position to study the microbiomes of soil systems. This position is a 50% research, 40% teaching, and 10% service …
This is truly awesome — sculptures of microbes on display in New York. What better place for a giant statue of E. coli? Source: New York City Salutes a Fecal Microbe That Sickens Millions From the article: Still, the folks behind the show acknowledge that this is a microbe with an image problem.“We were well …
There is a very interesting article by Kate Baggaley in Popular Science from a few weeks ago that is definitely worth a look. “Bacteria and fungi are a menace to paintings, sculptures, and ancient artifacts.” Source: The world’s art is under attack—by microbes | Popular Science It discusses how microbes are damaging various kinds of …
So as more and more companies start marketing cosmetic products with supposedly probiotic microbes in them (see eg., Farris Jabr’s excellent article in the NY Times from two days ago), it is important to recognize that, as the article linked below says “the cosmetic industry is largely self regulated.” Definitely worth a read. Manufacturers are not …
The University of Wisconsin at Madison has announced a new microbiome initiative. See below for more details. The initiative aims to position UW-Madison faculty to be more competitive when applying for federal funding. Source: New campus initiative targets microbiome research
We are happy to announce that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has renewed the grant supporting microBEnet for one final time, through 2019. As the “Microbiology of the Built Environment” program comes to an end at the Sloan Foundation, we will use this time to focus on sustainability, both of the microBEnet website and the …
Nice piece from ASM. Definitely worth a look: Long before microscopes were invented, ancient physicians and scholars imagined the existence of microbes. Source: Ancient Imaginations of the Microbial World