Aerosol transmission of bacteria in a simulated hospital setting (they go far)

Heard about an interesting paper today (sadly not open access) describing airflow simulations in an aerosol chamber.  Basically they showed that if you release bugs from a mannequin, they spread all over the room… up to 3.5 meters away.   A worthwhile study, but not something that wasn’t known already.    What made this get so much …

New probiotic bacteria shows promise for use in shellfish aquaculture

We’ve talked here in the past about the idea of probiotics for buildings (which is many years in the future, if ever) and pretty much everyone has heard about probiotics for human health (currently an issue of much debate). One of the problems with both buildings and people is the difficulty of testing a hypothesis …

Self-sterilizing keyboard – don’t forget – resistance happens

Just a quick one here — been pointed to the existence of a “self-sterilizing” keyboard (e.g., Brier Dudleys Blog | FDA OKs Vioguards germ-killing keyboard | Seattle Times Newspaper.) from a company called Vioguard.  Clearly keyboards could be a “breeding” ground for nasty microbes so cleaning keyboards, especially those used in hospitals, seems like a good …

Interesting concept, confused reporting on beneficial bacteria indoors

I’ve posted several times in the past about various beneficial uses of bacteria in the built environment, including remediation of art and the idea of probiotics for buildings. Today I saw a story about using beneficial bacteria in cleaning liquid, which supposedly “reduced bad bacteria by 1,000-fold compared with standard cleaning techniques”.  Sounds interesting. Where …

Probiotics for buildings: A potential future application of current work on microbes in buildings

Year 2030 1:  Construct a building 2: Spray bacteria and fungi all around the building 3: Wait a few weeks and then open for business Sound crazy?  Not necessarily.  This scenario, or something like it, is the kind of application that could theoretically come out of current studies on the microbiology of the built environment. …