Legionella outbreak in Edinburgh

Just a quick one here. Though people should not focus ONLY on pathogens in buildings it certainly seems that outbreaks of Legionella such as this one: Legionnaires’ Disease Outbreak, Scotland: Man Dies In Edinburgh | UK News | Sky News. could be used to call attention to the need to better understand microbiology of the …

Sloan Meeting on microbiology of the built environment #microBEnet

More detail on the Sloan Meeting on “Microbiology of the Built Environment,” via storify: ———————– UPDATE February 2019 Storify is no longer in existence. Fortunately we were able to convert the Storify summary to one via Wakelet. Wakelet details: Link to Wakelet Site: Sloan Meeting on microbiology of the built environment #microBEnet PDF of Wakelet …

Thoughts on “The Inaugural Conference on the Microbiology of the Built Environment” just finished

Well we’ve just wrapped of the first (of three) annual conferences on the Microbiology of the Built Environment here in Boulder.   I thought the meeting went really well, a big thanks again to the organizers Mark Hernandez and Alina Handorean. There were a lot of tweets during the meeting which we’ll collect using Storify and …

80beats at Discover story on office microbes #microBEnet #PLoSOne

Quick post here New post from 80beats on the office microbes study from Scott Kelley that I wrote about a few days ago: What Microbes Are Growing In Your Office? Science Wants to Know | 80beats | Discover Magazine Plus some new news stories about the study Men’s Offices Have More Bacteria, Study Finds The higher …

Upcoming symposium on the Indoor Microbiome at the American Association for Aerosol Research meeting, October 8-12 2012 (Minneapolis)

Here’s a really interesting sounding upcoming symposium on the indoor microbiome, chaired by Jordan Peccia and Tiina Reponen.   This will take place on October 9th, 2012 at the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) meeting in Minneapolis. The description is below: Continually evolving molecular biology and computational methods are catalyzing the further integration of the …

Request – terms to add to glossary for Microbiology of the Built Environment

Quick post.  We are starting to build a glossary on terms and their definitions to help people read/understand papers and stories about microbiology of the built environment. If you have any ideas for terms to include, let us know. Among those on our list PCR rRNA diversity phylogenetics metagenomics transcriptomics annotation culturing UNIFRAC Illumina DNA …

The hidden diversity of offices – what microbes are lurking there? #PLoSOne

A new paper from Scott Kelley is out: PLoS ONE: Office Space Bacterial Abundance and Diversity in Three Metropolitan Areas. This work was supported in part by the Sloan Foundation’s program in Microbiology of the Built Environment (which is the same program that funds microBEnet). Lots of interesting stuff in the paper.  Certainly the most visually …

Crosspost: Kimberly-Clark’s deceptive self serving PR regarding germs in the workplace #BadReportingToo

Crossposting this from my “Tree of Life” blog. First I saw of this story was here: Study: Bacteria fills office break rooms – Local News – Houston, TX – msnbc.com Something sounded off with this.  I think it was the fact that it involved “Cleaning products company Kimberly-Clark” that raised some alarm bells.  The involvement of …