Interesting story here: Mmegi Online :: US embassy refuses to name water bacteria. Apparently the US Embassy in Botswana does regular water testing there (and elsewhere around the world). And the testing identified some issues with the water recently so they sent out a notice to their employees to boil the water. But when asked to provide …
Next in our “People Behind the Science” video series we have an interview with Greg Caporaso from Northern Arizona University. Here he’s talking about his new Sloan-funded project on “Office Surface Microbiomes Across Climates”. Transcript:
Not 100% sure what the main reason for this story is but I guess it is useful: Legionella Not Just Found In Hospitals, Some Homes Infected « CBS Pittsburgh. In my discussions with people about Legionella there is definitely an opinion out there that it is something that happens in big buildings – offices and hospitals …
Another short post here, this time on modeling the spread of hospital-acquired bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer between bacteria is a huge problem in hospitals and these researchers have developed some models for how this process actually occurs in hospitals. They’ve applied their techniques in a couple of real-life situations with interesting results. They found for …
Short post here about a cool-sounding advance in materials science related to microbes in the built environment. A research group at Duke University is working on a material that deforms in response to an electric current, thereby dislodging established biofilms (e.g. on the underside of a boat). Hard to tell how likely this is since …
If you want to watch an entertaining video introduction to why the microbiology of the built environment is really important to you (and all of us), you must watch this video — Meet your microbes. The other day, I asked Jonathan Eisen why his Ted Talk was not linked on the microbe.net web site and …
Yes, Staples to the rescue. They will protect us all from the germs all over our offices. And – kindly – they will sell us all sorts of germ killing materials. Oh – and they will do this by making excessively germophobic claims about germs in our offices. And even better – they will use …
Many reliable and credible scientific journals related to building science most relevant to the microbiology of the built environment are listed here. These are selected based on our personal experience and judgment and do not constitute a comprehensive or definitive list. Indoor Air — International Journal of Indoor Environment and Health Indoor Air provides a …
Many recent microbe.net post links to “blog of the day” provide diverse, interesting reading related to microbial ecology. To identify some worthwhile “building science” blogs, we contacted some of the most knowledgeable building scientists we know. The results suggest some observations comparing building science and microbial ecology. Both domains (“fields,” “disciplines”) are highly diversified, ranging …
Crossposting this from my Tree of Life blog. Well, press releases can drive me crazy. And this one is one of the worst I have seen in a while: IBM News room – 2013-01-24 IBM and The Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology Develop New Antimicrobial Hydrogel to Fight Superbugs and Drug-Resistant Biofilms – United States This …