The Today Show did a follow up piece after we identified a couple of bacteria collected on their set, one of which will go up to the International Space Station in February (see the first piece here). I tried to craft the message here that microbes are everywhere and most of them are harmless or …
Abstracts are sought to address building science issues in the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s program, Microbiology of the Built Environment. The Sloan Foundation is sponsoring a symposium as an important part of the conference. The emphasis of the Sloan Symposium will be on the building science aspects of studies of the indoor microbiome — in …
First of all, Happy Halloween everyone. I think my costume this year will be a blogger! For those that don’t know me, I’m Brent Stephens, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL. I call my research team the Built Environment Research Group …
Indoor Air and Climate Change URL: http://www.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2014/2014_star_indoor_air.html Open Date: 10/23/2013 – Close Date: 01/23/2014 Here are some of the important details: Summary: EPA announces an extramural funding competition designed to support research that improves understanding of how climate change affects human health through indoor air quality as adapted by building designs and uses. Proposals should …
New paper out from the microbiology of the built environment community: MIxS-BE: a MIxS extension defining a minimum information standard for sequence data from the built environment. The joint first authors are Elizabeth Glass and Yekaterina Dribinsky. And the senior author is Lynn Schriml. The paper is simple but I think very important – it describes …
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) held a conference last week on the topic “Environmental Health in Low Energy Buildings.” Although you wouldn’t necessarily guess it from the name, the society is a lively, welcoming group of folks from all over the world interested in improving the built environment. At this …
Well – three recent news stories show an increasing awareness and impact of microbes in the built environment on sports, of all things: Grambling State Tigers’ players send letter of complaint to administration – ESPN Third Tampa Bay Buccaneers player tests positive for MRSA staph … A’s have another sewage leak during win over Angels …
Just got the good news that microBEnet will continue to be funded by the Sloan Program in the Microbiology of the Built Environment for the next two years. After three years of attempting to help the field with “curation, communication, collaboration, connection” we have taken this as an opportunity to re-assess our direction and goals. …
Microbial pathogens, including viral, bacterial, and fungal species, are transmitted via both airborne and surface contact routes in indoor environments. Breathing, sneezing, and coughing are important sources of many of these species, with the microbes being aerosolized and dispersed in microscopic liquid droplets that may settle to nearby surfaces or evaporate into smaller droplet nuclei …
Are the microbes in our homes alive, or are they dead? If they are alive, what are they doing? We plan to answer these questions during my MoBE Postdoctoral Fellowship, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Bacteria in house dust can originate from places such as the outdoors or from the bodies of humans. …