Here’s my report from Day 2 of the Microbiology of the Built Environment Conference in Boulder… the 5th annual and last of its kind! Storify of the tweets from the day below. The opening talk on Day 2 was by Martin Taubel from the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland, “Of house dust and …
A just-published article by Desroches et al, “Extrolites of Wallemia sebi, a very common fungus in the built environment,”in the journal Indoor Air describes a previously unidentified metabolite of Wallemia sebi , a very common fungus in houses worldwide, although relatively more common in north temperate climates. The authors (including David Miller) write that it …
Well this is both weird and very interesting: 3D houses “grown” like bones | SmartPlanet. Sort of a combination of 3D printing, bioinspired design, and architecture. Not sure what the future of this is but if they want to have walls that grow / respond to stresses they could consider making them actually alive. Maybe it …
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 …
Nice mini feature on Noah Fierer in the the New Scientist: Intrepid explorer of the microbe jungle in your home The feature is basically an interview with Graham Lawton and covers many topics of interest to studies of “microbiology of the built environment.” Good stuff in there on natural history, germaphobia, toilets and more. Definitely worth …
Another “scary microbe that lives in your house/office/car” story. In this case, the fungi Fusarium which can be pathogenic, particularly for people with immune deficiencies. To be fair, the authors of the scientific study take pains to point out that “the serious infections caused by fusaria are relatively uncommon and that these fungi may even …