microBEnet Microbiology blog of the day: The Aspergillus Website Blog

Going through the list of Microbiology Blogs we have curated at microBEnet and going to try to feature one of them every day or so.  And just going to do this in semi-alphabetic order. Today’s blog: The Aspergillus WebSite Blog  Author: Graham Atherton Tagline/Summary: The Aspergillus Website is dedicated to providing information on aspergillus, aspergillosis, aspergilloma and other …

Hands off the moldy docs (for your own good?)

French archive employees handling moldy documents were found to be more likely to experience headaches, fatigue, eye or throat irritation, coughing, and rhinorrhea (stuffy nose) than their co-workers breathing the same air but not handling moldy documents . The culture and qPCR-based analysis of air samples showed Penicillium chrysogenum, Cladosporium sphaerospermum, and Aspergillus versicolor were …

Hurricane Sandy and the Microbiology of the Built Environment: Guest Post by James Scott.

(The following is a guest post by James Scott, from the University of Toronto) The receding waters of hurricane Sandy left a trail of destruction along the eastern seaboard of North America – demolishing homes and businesses, flooding neighborhoods and transportation systems, disrupting electricity and water supplies. The havoc wrought by Sandy poignantly affirms the brutal …

Meningitis/steroid case highlights desperate need for more studies of microbiology of the built environment

Well, the meningitis outbreak tied to steroid injections gets scarier and scarier by the day: Poor Sanitation Found at Pharmacy Linked to Meningitis Outbreak – NYTimes.com.  One of the latest pieces of news is that the pharmacy that was “compounding” the steroids for injection appears to have been a “microbiology of the built environment” nightmare.  Some …

Storify of tweets from QIIME/VAMPs meeting and ITS fungal meeting in Boulder

For those wanting to catch up on the workshop discussions that happened last week in Boulder, we’ve pulled together all the tweets into a Storify! Includes coverage of the QIIME/VAMPS bioinformatics workshop, and the subsequent fungal meeting focused on resources for ITS gene barcoding. [View the story “QIIME/VAMPS and ITS fungi #microbenet meetings” on Storify]

Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomics Meeting 2012: Microbiology of the Built Environment Session

Last night was the Microbiology of the Built Environment session at the bi-annual Lake Arrowhead meeting.  This session was organized and sponsored by microBEnet.  I recorded some of the talks and will post those videos here after some editing. Here’s a summary of the speakers and the topics discussed. The first speaker was James Meadow …