New papers from the past week on the interactions between humans, buildings, and microbes. Microbes in buildings Comprehensive analysis of the skin fungal microbiota of astronauts during a half-year stay at the International Space Station – Takashi Sugita – Medical Mycology ($$) The International Space Station (ISS) is a huge manned construct located approximately 400 km …
“All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” from Monty Python’s Life of Brian When they conquered large parts of Europa and the Mediterranean in the 1st-3rd centuries AD, the Romans brought a lot of …
Happy New Year to you all! Here are some interesting new papers that I found over the holidays. Floors Rapid assemblage of diverse environmental fungal communities on public restroom floors – Jennifer Fouquier – Indoor Air An increasing proportion of humanity lives in urban environments where they spend most of their lives indoors. Recent molecular studies …
Often on this blog, we talk about biofilms in water systems or water-borne pathogens. Even when we discuss the drinking water microbiome, it is seldom with a focus on any particularly beneficial bacteria. Although there has been some discussion about what essentially amounts to probiotics for water, there seems to be little literature in the area …
Happy Holidays! As I already noted on my MicrobiomeDigest blog, the stream of scientific papers does not seem to take a holiday break, so I will keep on posting new papers here. Clean sweep Potential association of vacuum cleaning frequency with an altered gut microbiota in pregnant women and their 2-year-old children — Ekaterina Avershina …
Source: Relative and contextual contribution of different sources to the composition and abundance of indoor air bacteria in residences | Microbiome | Full Text Another very useful paper from the Microbiome journal. This one from Marzia Miletto and Steven Lindow. Here is the Abstract: Abstract Background The study of the microbial communities in the built …
2013-5-19MBPF Source: Sources of airborne microorganisms in the built environment | Microbiome | Full Text Really nice new review paper by Aaron Prissin and Linsey Marr. It covers research on sources of airborne microbes including Humans Pets Plants Plumbing HVACs Water damage Dust Outdoor air Really thorough with tons of references and discussion of the …
Source: The microbiome of the built environment and mental health | Microbiome | Full Text Andrew J. Hoisington, Lisa A. Brenner, Kerry A. Kinney, Teodor T. Postolache and Christopher A. Lowry When I saw the title of this I cringed a bit, worried that this paper would be overselling what we know about the microbiome and …
New papers on microbes inside homes and musea, drinking water systems, during spa treatment, and in an urban estuary. Indoor air Relative and contextual contribution of different sources to the composition and abundance of indoor air bacteria in residences – Marzia Miletto and Steven E. Lindow – Microbiome (OA) We investigated the source-sink relationships of …
In this recent segment on Science Friday, Ira Glass interviews Stuart Firestein about how failure in science is not just inevitable, but is just as important to the advancement of knowledge as the success is. I know that every single person can relate to this idea, which actually applies to far beyond the sciences. I …