A little update here. Last week a group of us launched a new participatory science project on the microbiome of cats. It is called “kittybiome” and we have launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for the project — more information about the project and how one can get involved can be found at the Kickstarter home page: …
Michael Fischbach was at UC Davis today and gave a very interesting talk. A few of us were Tweeting from the talk and I compiled the Tweets via Storify and this is posted below.
From May 13-14 2015 we hosted a “Live/Dead Workshop” here at UC Davis where we basically discussed a number of issues related to the topic of figuring out which bacteria are alive/viable in a given microbial community. This is particularly important in the built environment where we suspect that many (most?) microbes are dead and …
A Retirement Symposium for Dr. Norman R. Pace from the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder will be held on 4 – 5 June 2015. The symposium is free and open to the public with generous support provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Agouron Institute. …
A recent study from Su et al tests the effects of ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) on the amount of culturable airborne bacteria in elementary school classrooms. As expected, they found lower concentrations of these bacteria with UVGI treatment. Only the first page of the paper is available, unfortunately, so perhaps this is already addressed, but it …
Appropriate song to play while reading this post: “Fade to Grey” by Visage A new paper in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology touches upon some interesting viewpoints. The paper is called Dysbiotic drift: mental health, environmental grey space, and microbiota, and was written by Alan C Logan. And it’s Open Access, which we all appreciate! The article, which is rather …
Just a quick plug: Jack Gilbert and I are guest-editing a special issue in Microbiome dedicated to Microbiology of the Built Environment. We are now accepting original research, methods, and software article submissions to be considered for the special issue (planned for publication in late 2015). We are looking specifically for work that involves multiple aspects of the …
As the oldest daughter of 3rd generation HVAC/plumbing/electrical small business owners, I held my share of flashlights on service calls and even wrapped ductwork one summer. I loved fiddling and building with the different tools, left-over bits of copper tubing, and other miscellaneous tidbits from jobs. But my heart was more into asking questions about living …
I know I am late to the game here but I am getting more and more fascinated by “chamber” studies in which people are placed in a sealed chamber and then emissions from those people (or from other things in the chamber with the people) are characterized. With ever improving sensors, particle analysis tools, mass-specs …
Household air microbial community resembles that of household surface and occupant’s skin? Maybe, maybe not… By Marcus Leung (Twitter @leungmarcus) Indoor microbial communities, such as those found in indoor air and indoor surfaces, have been shown to be closely connected to microbial assemblages on humans. Also, re-suspension of house dust from surfaces following routine residential …