New papers on the intersection of human activities and microbes, selected from my daily MicrobiomeDigest blog. Microbes in the house Generation and Characterization of Indoor Fungal Aerosols for Inhalation Studies – Anne Mette Madsen – Applied and Environmental Microbiology (OA) (…) The aim of this study was to develop an inhalation exposure system to be able to examine …
Microbes in the house Seasonal Dynamics of the Airborne Bacterial Community and Selected Viruses in a Children’s Daycare Center – Aaron J. Prussin II – PLOS ONE (OA) We have investigated the microbial community of the air in a daycare center, including seasonal dynamics in the bacterial community and the presence of specific viral pathogens. …
Happy Valentine’s Day! Here is a new post expressing my love for everything microbial and built. Based on real science and yes, there is chocolate. The great indoors Indoor microbial communities: Influence on asthma severity in atopic and nonatopic children – Karen C. Dannemiller – The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology ($$) We sought …
Here is a new set of papers that came out in the past week(s) that I posted at MicrobiomeDigest, but that I also wanted to share here. Three of these papers are from BMC’s Microbiome journal, which recently has published several other built environment microbiology papers, so it’s worth checking out. Microbes in buildings Moisture …
Time for an update with recent papers on the microbes of the built environment. I have many, so I will break them up into two different posts. Microbes in buildings Microbial Density on Electronic Devices – Sulan Kith – Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci Human participants each used an tablet, smart phone and media player for 20 minutes. We predicted that microbial density would …
Many of us are familiar with the story of the wolves in Yellowstone that scare away hungry elk herds from tasty young willows (although the ecology of Yellowstone is probably more complicated than that). Nonetheless many ecologists are keenly interested in what has been termed the ecology of fear in communities of plants, birds and mammals. The ecology of fear describes the role of …
There is a new report from the American Academy of Microbiology out that may be of interest: Viruses Throughout Life & Time: Friends, Foes, Change Agents. In a way this could be seen as a formal declaration of viral love by a collection of eminent scientists. Mostly I agree with what is in the report, through …
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 …
Registrants for the March AAAS Symposium are recipients today of the following message from Anette Olsen at AAAS. “I’d like to let you know that the videos of each panel is now online, but they currently remain unedited. We anticipate another two weeks before the edited versions are placed online. In the meantime, here is …
A recent microbe.net post discussed the use of copper as an antimicrobial to prevent infections in healthcare settings. This is not a particularly new concept, but unfortunately, the literature appears dominated by authors who received funding from the copper industry and its associations. Such industrial funding is not unique to copper and is, sadly, more …