Like the cement-producing bacteria, this falls under the category of “using microbes to construct the built environment.” Projects like these have no bearing on the natural microbial ecology of structures, but still go to show that the relationship between humans, microbes,and the built environment is complex and can take many forms. In this work, researchers …
For those interested in microbes and art, here is an article for you: Mold attack on frescoes and stone walls of Gradac monastery The PDF of the article is available here. Basically they looked at biofilms and molds on stone frescoes because of the possibility that they may lead to deterioration of the frescoes.
Interesting new article in Time Magazine’s healthland: A New Study Shows That Sitting Close to a Sick Person on a Flight Can Make You Sick – – TIME Healthland. The article is based on a new paper in Emerging Infectious Diseases: Transmission of Influenza on International Flights, May 2009 which basically examines transmission dynamics of flu within …
One of the goals of the microBEnet project is to help get more people who work on a topic related to microbiology of the Built Environment to share more. And one aspect of this our hope that more people will share slides (and audio or video) from presentations they have made. So – to help …
A potentially very interesting master’s thesis has just shown up in my weekly automated searches of Google Scholar: OhioLINK ETD: Lindelof, Kara. The work is titled “Contribution of Biosolids-derived Bioaerosols to the Airborne Microbial Population” and it is by Kara Lidelof at the University of Toledo. And it is available for free (they say Open Access …
A new paper of possible interest just came out in the Open Access journal BMC Infectious diseases: | Five-Years Surveillance of invasive Aspergillosis in a University Hospital. Perhaps of most relevance to microBEnet is the discussion in the paper of the high fraction of cases that appear to be hospital acquired and what can be done …
I updated my slides from my talk at Indoor Air 2011 with audio. Here they are: Eisen.indoor air2011 http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=eisen-indoorair2011-110613124957-phpapp02&stripped_title=eisenindoor-air2011&userName=phylogenomics View more webinars from Jonathan Eisen We are working on getting some other presentations up here but are dealing with some sharing/copyright issues first.
Next in my ongoing series of posts related to beneficial microbes in the built environment… using Pseudomonas to restore 17th century Italian frescoes. Apparently these particular frescoes were improperly restored in the 1960’s using some kind of gelatin glue that now causes salt crystals to grow on the art. Both chemical and mechanical removal methods …
During Indoor Air 2011 there was a lot of buzz about this report which came out halfway through the meeting. The full title is “Climate Change, the Indoor Environment, and Health (2011)”. This 246-page report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Acadamies goes into great detail about the various ways that climate change …
There is an interesting new (and open access) paper out: Geographic Distribution of Environmental Relative Moldiness Index Molds in USA Homes. Before the Indoor Air 2011 meeting I just returned from, I would not have understood as much of what is discussed in the paper as I do now. But I think the paper does a …