A must read on indoor microbiology: Sources of airborne microorganisms in the built environment 

2013-5-19MBPF Source: Sources of airborne microorganisms in the built environment | Microbiome | Full Text Really nice new review paper by Aaron Prissin and Linsey Marr. It covers research on sources of airborne microbes including Humans Pets Plants Plumbing HVACs Water damage Dust Outdoor air Really thorough with tons of references and discussion of the …

Fascinating look at the design of a science infographic (on life in dust)

Designers Martin Krzywinski and Barbara Jeannie Hunnicutt provide a peek behind the scenes, and explain how they developed a data visualization based on bacterial genome information derived from dust. Source: The Evolution of a Scientific American Infographic: Secret Life in Household Dust – Scientific American Blog Network This is an absolutely fascinating look behind the …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, November 30, 2015

A selection of new papers of interest for this readership, collected from my blog MicrobiomeDigest: Microbes in the air Evaluation of the potential for virus dispersal during hand drying: a comparison of three methods – Patrick T. Kimmitt, Keith F. Redway – Journal of Applied Microbiology ($$) Aims: To use a MS2 bacteriophage model to compare three …

A cloud of cloud things for detecting clouds

For the past couple of years, there has been a storm gathering on the horizon of indoor air quality monitoring. Nucleating around crowd-funding sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, these devices seem to advect along roughly similar trajectories. The teams working on these projects have created a sort of high pressure system wafting high-quality industrial …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, November 8, 2015

Here are the papers on the built environment microbiology that I found in the past weeks. For more microbiology papers, please check out my daily blog MicrobiomeDigest. Copper surfaces are associated with significantly lower concentrations of bacteria on selected surfaces within a pediatric intensive care unit – Michael G. Schmidt – American Journal of Infection …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, September 6, 2015

Here are the microbiology of the built environment papers that were already featured on my MicrobiomeDigest blog this week, all in one handy edition. The first paper is about dust, so Siouxsie & The Banshees – Cities In Dust would match perfectly. The ecology of microscopic life in household dust – Albert Barberán – Proceedings B …

Recent Built Environment Microbiology papers, July 6, 2015

Several new papers about microbes and the built environment came out or came up in my searches this weekend, so time for another installment. Since one of the papers is about prison workers, you could play Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues while reading this post. Open Access: Coccidioides Exposure and Coccidioidomycosis among Prison Employees, California, United States – …

Recent Built Environment Microbiology papers, June 8, 2015

It’s World Oceans Day, so I have included a couple of papers today about the anthropogenic influence on marine microbes. Other recent papers cover microbes in school dust, metabolites in houses with moisture damage, dental units, rust, and arsenic removal filters. Suggested song to play while reading this post: Jack Johnson — Only The Ocean Book …

Exposure to dust and dirt increases mouse gut microbial diversity

Appropriate song to play while reading this post: Farmhouse – Phish Just a quick post today about a paper that was published in Environmental Microbiology this week. Not open access, alas, but it looks like a good study. Exposure to soil, house dust, and decaying plants increases gut microbial diversity and decreases serum IgE levels …

Housing characteristics and microbial communities in homes of asthmatic children

Appropriate song to play while reading this post: Harder To Breathe – Maroon 5 Asthma severity can be affected by several indoor and outdoor conditions, including dust and microbes. In a paper that came out last week in Indoor Air, researchers from Yale University applied NextGen DNA sequencing to characterize the bacterial and fungal communities in house-dust sampled from …