Biofilm-forming bacteria get ride on final space shuttle trip (on purpose)

The last flight of the Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for early July and there’ll be some cool microbes aboard.  Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus are both biofilm-forming bacteria with serious health consequences, particularly in hospitals.  The researchers involved in this project are interested in the effects of microgravity on biofilm formation, and have some preliminary …

Is your pillow trying to kill you as well? More excessive media hype about indoor microbes.

“How your pillow is the perfect breeding ground for gruesome array of pests and diseases”. This headline from the Daily Mail in the UK was one of many yesterday relating to a study presented at the Healthcare Associated Infections 2011 conference in London on Tuesday.  As usual, the study didn’t make any actual associations between …

Is your dishwasher trying to kill you? Maybe, but no evidence of that from this work

A new paper coming out in the journal Fungal Biology is getting a lot of press.  The paper is: Dishwashers — A man-made ecological niche accommodating human opportunistic fungal pathogens Normally, I try to avoid writing up blog posts relating to papers that are not at least freely available online so that anyone out there can …

Viruses aid in the construction of more efficient solar cells.

Like the cement-producing bacteria, this falls under the category of “using microbes to construct the built environment.”  Projects like these have no bearing on the natural microbial ecology of structures, but still go to show that the relationship between humans, microbes,and the built environment is complex and can take many forms. In this work, researchers …

Forget about snakes on a plane – how about viruses on a plane? #flu #influenza

Interesting new article in Time Magazine’s healthland: A New Study Shows That Sitting Close to a Sick Person on a Flight Can Make You Sick – – TIME Healthland. The article is based on a new paper in Emerging Infectious Diseases: Transmission of Influenza on International Flights, May 2009 which basically examines transmission dynamics of flu within …

Using bacteria to help restore works of art

Next in my ongoing series of posts related to beneficial microbes in the built environment… using Pseudomonas to restore 17th century Italian frescoes. Apparently these particular frescoes were improperly restored in the 1960’s using some kind of gelatin glue that now causes salt crystals to grow on the art.  Both chemical and mechanical removal methods …

New report on climate change and possible effects on the indoor environment, particularly green buildings

During Indoor Air 2011 there was a lot of buzz about this report which came out halfway through the meeting.  The full title is “Climate Change, the Indoor Environment, and Health (2011)”. This 246-page report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Acadamies goes into great detail about the various ways that climate change …

Beneficial bacteria in urinals

Another cool example of using beneficial microbes in the indoor environment… in this case using Bacillus strains to reduced odors in pub urinals.  The company (CBIO) that markets this device called the “Clearinator” also has other neat sounding microbial-based devices such as the “Bactaerator” and the “Baccelerator”. Pretty simple really, they find bacterial strains that …