(update 10:00am, 6-12-14; added a 13th video from UT Austin) (update 10:15am, 6-16-14; new link for the Oregon video since previous version was cropped) Part of the requirement for attendees of the 2014 Microbiology of the Built Environment Conference in Boulder, CO was that each lab submit a 2-minute video describing their research. Amazingly, 12 …
A few days ago, the FDA began issuing citations to cheese makers in New York State for the use of wooden shelves and boards for aging cheese, a practice that is permissible by state law and has been used for hundreds of years. Not surprisingly, this made a lot of people pretty angry. A Whitehouse.gov …
Last month a group of us attended the General Meeting for the American Society for Microbiology that was held in Boston. I am finally writing up some highlights of ASM 2014, starting with how much I enjoyed having a fabric poster. As usual for ASM, all posters were presented in a very large hall in the convention …
Back in May we posted about a Gizmodo article entitled “Concrete-Dissolving Bacteria Are Destroying Our Nation’s Sewers”. This article highlighted Sloan-funded work by Mark Hernandez and others that describes some of the biochemistry and microbiology behind concrete corrosion in sewers. A (fee-required) paper describing that work has just come out, with a press release focused …
In response to Hal Levin’s comment on my previous post: Thank you ISIAQ for the “Vocabulary of the Indoor Air Sciences” I am starting to put together some definitions and background information on the terminology of microbial ecology studies. Please suggest any / all terms that you think would be useful to define and I will …
One reason that it can be difficult to bridge across different fields is just learning the vocabulary and jargon of the field. So happy to have found this: Vocabulary of the Indoor Air Sciences while browsing the web site for ISIAQ – the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate. It even has 43 …
Just wrapped up the 3rd Annual Sloan Conference in the Microbiology of the Built Environment. We saw 20 presentations, a number of posters, and had some time to set up new collaborations, argue methods, and eat good food. I’m going to take a different approach to my conference report here, I’m only going to talk …
I’ve been remotely following the Sloan MBE meeting discussions (happening in Boulder, CO this week), and yesterday there was a lot of Twitter discussion focused on data visualization tools. How do we make sense of the millions of DNA sequences we generate from microbial ecology projects in the Built Environment? I thought I’d use this opportunity to highlight …
Well, this is very very interesting: Request for Information (RFI): Ecology Meets Genomics – Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities. IARPA – the equivalent of DARPA for the intelligence agencies – is getting into microbial biogeography (for forensic purposes). They are seeking comments on the general topic. From the call: We hypothesize that by correlating the genetic information …
Right now, in Boulder, CO, the Annual Meeting for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Microbiology of the Built Environment program is happening. More about the program can be found here and here. Alas, I cannot be there this year. But I will be following as much as possible via Twitter. To follow Tweets from the meeting look …