Well this is very interesting. The FDA has announced a competition: U.S. Food and Drug Administration | 2014 Food Safety Challenge. From their site Summary While the American food supply is among the safest in the world, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1 in 6 Americans is sickened by foodborne illness …
Posting this press release I got via email: AIA Foundation, American Institute of Architects and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Launch Research Consortium on Design and Health Request for Proposals Due October 15 For University-led Research Contact: John Schneidawind 202-626-7457 johnschneidawind@aia.org http://twitter.com/AIA_Media For immediate release: Washington, D.C. — Sept. 16, 2014 — The AIA Foundation, along …
Just received the following job posting from Linsey Marr at Virgina Tech: The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech invites applications for a Ph.D. student to study the influence of environmental conditions and aerosol chemistry on the infectivity of airborne bacteria and viruses. Contact Dr. Linsey C. Marr at lmarr@vt.edu to find …
Note – Jonathan Eisen invited Jack Gilbert to write a post about the Earth Microbiome Project especially in light of the recent paper on the topic by Gilbert et al. (see Eisen’s blog post about this paper here). Post by Jack Gilbert submitted by email to Jonathan Eisen. The Earth Microbiome Project started as …
Just a quick reminder here that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation put out a call this summer for proposals from post-docs working on the microbiology of the built environment. The proposals are due this Sunday, September 1st. See our previous post with the details here. The very short description of the call: Research Area …
In the 2011 paper “Microbial Biogeography of Public Restroom Surfaces” Noah Fierer and others found that some of the toilet flush handles had similar microbial communities to those of the restroom floor, suggesting evidence of the germaphobic practice of flushing the toilet with a foot. I was curious to know if we could find other microbial …
Just got this from Amy Pruden, via Paula Olseiwski. Seems like a potential opportunity to get some funding for the microbiology of the built environment from NSF. The “Concept” of the program is described below: The Science and Technology Centers: Integrative Partnerships – Concept The Science and Technology Centers (STC): Integrative Partnerships program supports innovative …
Back in May, I had the pleasure of attending a talk at ASM 2014 by Didier Raoult on the the importance of culturomics. At one point in the talk he mentioned that they just came out with a paper that showed that they could get anaerobes to grow in the presence of oxygen if you …
Recently I was doing field work in southern Africa and marveling at the enormous termite mounds that dot the landscape. Composed of soil, saliva and poop, termite mounds are amongst the most spectacular of the structures built by animals. These fascinating structures maintain the ventilation of termite nests that are actually subterranean. This PBS blog post …
While recent studies of the microbiology of the built environment (MoBE) have greatly increased our understanding of microbial community structure and composition on surfaces and in air within the spaces in which we live and work, most have been driven and led primarily by microbiologists with the building science community playing a supporting role. Perhaps as …