For information on Project MERCCURI, please visit our new website at www.spacemicrobes.org (This page no longer maintained, see above) Project MERCCURI is a collaboration of microBEnet with the Science Cheerleaders, Space Florida, Nanoracks, NASA, and SciStarter.com. There are three components to the project: 1) Space Station Microbiome. Collecting microbial swab samples from the International Space …
Just found a very interesting, very detailed article about keeping space robots / vehicles clean in terms of microbes: RYOT News » Scientists building robots focused on not contaminating Mars. The article reports: The decontamination of spacecraft, an obscure arm of space science, has grown in importance as NASA turned its attention to places such as …
Interesting article via Mashable (from the Atlantic) in September bu How NASA Keeps Earth’s Germs Out of Space. It discusses how to keep the sites where space equipment is built clean and the general issue of planetary protection. Stay tuned for more posts about space as we are involved in a project to sample microbes on …
This article (Mutant space microbes attack ISS: Munch metal, may crack glass) has some issues (e.g., much of it is anecdotal and hard to tell how scientific or even robust much of the detailed are) but it is a very interesting example of the potential importance of microbes in the built environment. You may not care …
As many out there now, I am a bit fascinated by the possibility of studying microbes in space ships. And I guess I got to get my act together because it turns out there are multiple projects out there in this arena. There is a story on Space.Com about a new push in this area: Scientists …
The last flight of the Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for early July and there’ll be some cool microbes aboard. Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus are both biofilm-forming bacteria with serious health consequences, particularly in hospitals. The researchers involved in this project are interested in the effects of microgravity on biofilm formation, and have some preliminary …
New COVID Preprint out from BioBE: Preprint Link: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-940891/v1 We recruited 11 participants that were diagnosed with COVID-19 and studied each for 3 days in a controlled chamber with multiple independent variables. We collected more than 2500 biological samples, particulates, and CO2 in near field (1.2 m) and far field (3.5 m) per each trial. Each …
About a month ago I posted a request for information about guidance for school reopening. See the post here: https://microbe.net/2021/02/06/compiling-information-about-covid19-transmission-masks-filtration-schools-etc/ I spent a while looking at the responses and also soliciting some more and ended up with a few really good documents / sites with information about school reopening. These are Schools for Health. From …
Just a quick one here… a study looking for viral RNA in an intensively cleaned healthcare study showing very little detectable RNA in shared spaces in the hospital (in contrast to patient areas). No viral culturing which is pretty normal for these short notes. “Lack of SARS-CoV-2 RNA environmental contamination in a tertiary referral hospital …
Thanks to Linsey Marr for passing this along. Job description below: Postdoctoral Associate Position Microbial Biodiversity in Trans-Atlantic Dust Plumes Position Description: We invite applications for a three-year NASA funded postdoctoral research position in a multi-institutional and highly interdisciplinary research project. The project goal is to integrate multiplatform satellite and ground observations, as well as …