UC District Court rules on whether bacteria are a pollutant

Well, I am no lawyer but this certainly seems interesting from a microbial point of view: Court’s Reasoning That “Bacteria” Is Not A “Pollutant” Favorable For Policyholders In Other Cases – Insurance – United States.  From the article: That court found that “under Louisiana law, Legionella and Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria” — the bacteria which cause Legionnaire’s …

Microbiomes and the Athletic Arena: Indoor Track Facility Microbiome in conjunction with Salivary and Nostril Microbiomes of Indoor/Outdoor Runners (MoBE Postdoctoral Fellowship)

Microbiome studies involving sports, especially non-contact sports, have yet to become a focus of basic or clinical research. Studying indoor track facilities and the athletes that use them has the potential to demonstrate human effects on the microbiome of a built environment and reciprocated effects of the built environment on the human microbiome; this using …

How dirty is your money?

Harper Adams University in the UK recently posted a news article describing some intriguing work being done by Senior Lecturer Frank Vriesekoop, who has been investigating, among a slew of other interesting topics, whether banknotes can transfer bacteria, including pathogens.  The original paper (unfortunately, not Open Access) in which his work was reported can be found here. …

MoBE Postdoctoral Fellowship: From Source to Tap: Linking the Drinking Water Microbiome to Human Health

Infectious diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide, so it is critical that we characterize exposure routes of infectious agents, including those resistant to antibiotics. The source of infectious agents is often attributed to the environment. But, few studies have explored what types of environmental exposure introduce opportunistic microbial pathogens or what actions may …

Open Source Building Science Sensors

This is just a quick post to introduce some early work products resulting from a really exciting project my team has been working on: the Open Source Building Science Sensors (OSBSS) Project (funded by the Sloan Foundation). The goal of OSBSS is to to design and develop a network of inexpensive, open source devices based on …

2014 Microbiology of the Built Environment Fellows

The Sloan Foundation has recently announced their 2014 Microbiology of the Built Environment Postdoctoral Fellows.   The awards, along with the titles of the projects are below.  Congrats all!   Look forward to detailed blog posts from all the awardees describing their upcoming projects.   Huan Gu at Syracuse, along with Dacheng Ran. “Understanding and controlling biofilms …

Position in Microbiomes of the Natural and Built Environment at UIUC

A short blip of the full job posting from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They are  inviting applications for four full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty positions, and one of the desired areas of expertise includes: (3) Microbiomes of the Natural and Built Environment.   This area addresses …