Sloan Symposium at Indoor Air 2014 The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program on Microbiology of the Built Environment has awarded a grant to Indoor Air 2014, the 13th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, to be held in Hong Kong from July 7-12, 2014. Paraphrasing a quote on the conference web site from …
We’ve recently received an award from the Sloan Foundation to examine the mycobiota from paired house dust and infant fecal samples collected in the first year of life. The main purpose of the study is to examine how the immediate environment (house dust) may shape the gut mycobiota of infants and affect immune activation and …
ESPN reports that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers management has arranged to have one of their facilities “treated” due to presence of MRSA: Tampa Bay Buccaneers treat facility to prevent MRSA outbreak – ESPN. Seems like this would be a good case study for a team of microbial ecologists with experience in sporting facilities. Calling Project MERCCURI. …
Everyone likes a good mystery story. Particularly when it involves some unknown kind of bacteria growing underwater on spent nuclear fuel rods with no obvious carbon source for growth. Stay tuned.
With the publication of the 6th and last genome paper to come out of our Undergraduate Genome Sequencing Project I thought this would be a good time to reflect on how it all went. To summarize, we had a group of undergraduate students go out into the built environment and attempt to find microbes whose …
I’ve posted a couple of times in the past about the potential for using copper in the built environment to limit bacterial growth and/or pathogenicity (e.g. here and here). I’ve heard and read things about copper which cover the whole spectrum from “it’s a magic bullet” to “snake oil”. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in …
Yet another Legionella outbreak, this time in a retirement home in Ohio that has killed 6 people and sickened a couple dozen others. I feel like the rate of new stories about Legionella outbreaks (at least in the US) has been rising a lot the last couple of years. I found some data from the …
Here’s a story that combines two of my favorite topics these days, microbes and space. In this case students from Japan are building a special satellite to house and photograph slime mold growth (Dictyostelium discoideum). I’m not sure exactly what they’ll learn from this, but it sounds cool! Pictures and data will be publicly available …
Interesting article from a couple days ago talking about the procedures used to assess salmonella contamination in poultry processing plants and some of the issues therein. Not recommended reading if you’re having chicken for dinner anytime soon. h/t to Paula for sending us the link to this article.
Well only a mere couple of months after the 2nd Annual Sloan Conference on the Microbiology of the Built Environment Conference ended I’ve finally gotten all of the talks up onto YouTube. There’s a few missing (opted out or technical problems) but most of them are there. It was a great and informative series of …