Not much to add to this story other than to say that this is one of those examples where germophobia seems certainly justified: Dentist’s office a ‘perfect storm’ for HIV, hepatitis exposure – CNN.com.
Lee Ann Kahlor and her team at the University of Texas Interviewed nearly fourscore U.S. researchers in academia, government, defense and private industry to try to understand researchers’ perceptions of the challenges and opportunities for science communication to a wider audience (lay and decision makers). Here is what Dr. Kahlor said about the work: “Two …
Jessica Green gave another great TED talk recently, this time talking about engineering buildings to influence microbial communities. Check it out. The software that they’re developing in collaboration with Autodesk looks really cool.
Researchers from the University of Oregon, UC Berkeley, Cornell, and Texas looking at bacterial and fungal communities in the built environment had a great video discussion on our methods for surface sampling. Watch the video on YouTube Notes on the discussion and equipment used by each group should be coming soon. Thanks again to everyone …
We have two new papers out from our lab as part of our microBEnet supported undergraduate genome sequencing project: Lo JR, Lang JM, Darling AE, Eisen JA, Coil DA. 2013. Draft Genome Sequence of an Actinobacterium, Brachybacterium muris Strain UCD-AY4.. Genome Announc. 1(2):e00086-13. doi:10.1128/genomeA.00086-13. Bendiks ZA, Lang JM, Darling AE, Eisen JA, Coil DA. 2013. Draft Genome …
Growing microbes in space sounds cool. Collecting microbes from sporting events is also cool (“excuse me, could I see that basketball after the game?”). Having fans collect samples with a chance that some of them will fly to the space station is a great way to engage people. Put them all together and you get …
(cross-posted from our static page on the project which will be updated as we move forward) Project MERCCURI is a collaboration of microBEnet with the Science Cheerleaders, Nanoracks, NASA, and SciStarter.com. There are three components to the project: 1) Collecting microbial swab samples from the International Space Station (ISS) and examining the microbial communities therein …
Just out in today’s edition of PLoS Medicine: Adapting Standards: Ethical Oversight of Participant-Led Health Research. The article raises questions (in my mind) about the ethics related to human genome sequencing projects. We ask, what is “informed consent” when you have your genome sequence published? What about your children’s interests, your siblings’, your descendants’ and …
Fun microbiology news this week. The BioBE Center has a new paper that is getting a lot of press. The paper is about microbes and roller derby. Really. If you want the inside story check out the guest post by Ashley Bateman from the BioBE Center on my Tree of Life Blog: The Tree of Life: …
Some of us doing bioaerosol sampling had a video conference to discuss methods in the field. The goal was to swap experiences, considerations, and ideas as the field moves forward. It was a great conversation among researchers from Berkeley, Oregon, Cornell, and Univ. of Texas. Summarized notes are in the works and will be uploaded …