US embassy says to boil H20 in Botswana but doesn’t provide details

Interesting story here: Mmegi Online :: US embassy refuses to name water bacteria. Apparently the US Embassy in Botswana does regular water testing there (and elsewhere around the world).  And the testing identified some issues with the water recently so they sent out a notice to their employees to boil the water.  But when asked to provide …

“The Spread Of Hospital-Acquired Bacteria Revealed By Computational Methods”

Another short post here, this time on modeling the spread of hospital-acquired bacteria.  Horizontal gene transfer between bacteria is a huge problem in hospitals and these researchers have developed some models for how this process actually occurs in hospitals.    They’ve applied their techniques in a couple of real-life situations with interesting results.   They found for …

“Wrinkly coating can shimmy off bacteria” – Press release from Duke University

Short post here about a cool-sounding advance in materials science related to microbes in the built environment.    A research group at Duke University is working on a material that deforms in response to an electric current, thereby dislodging established biofilms (e.g. on the underside of a boat).   Hard to tell how likely this is since …

Ugg: Staples launches germophobia campaign (bad); includes images of mites they think are “germs” (idiotic)

Yes, Staples to the rescue.  They will protect us all from the germs all over our offices.  And – kindly – they will sell us all sorts of germ killing materials.  Oh – and they will do this by making excessively germophobic claims about germs in our offices.  And even better – they will use …

Building science journals – a partial list and links to more

Many reliable and credible scientific journals related to building science most relevant to the microbiology of the built environment are listed here. These are selected based on our personal experience and judgment and do not constitute a comprehensive or definitive list. Indoor Air — International Journal of Indoor Environment and Health Indoor Air provides a …

Building “science” blogs (?)

Many recent microbe.net post links to “blog of the day” provide diverse, interesting reading related to microbial ecology. To identify some worthwhile “building science” blogs, we contacted some of the most knowledgeable building scientists we know. The results suggest some observations comparing building science and microbial ecology. Both domains (“fields,” “disciplines”) are highly diversified, ranging …