Microbiome informed design – air quality, avoiding filtering, and lichens

This is one of those stories / articles / posts that simultaneously fascinates me and freaks me out a bit and for which I fluctuate wildly between those two points of view: bioME – RSA Human By Nature Entry on Behance By Candice de Aguiar Her basic design idea here is to allow for more microbial diversity …

Interesting and important new paper: Microbial composition of purified waters 

There is an interesting and potentially important new paper out from Caitlin Proctor, Marc Edwards and Amy Pruden: Microbial composition of purified waters and implications for regrowth control in municipal water systems in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.  The abstract is below:

Is your spacecraft contaminating the universe?

An article at Space.Com discusses a new push to make sure that spacecraft do not inadvertently contaminate the places they are visiting (e.g., Mars).  What microbes are on space vehicles and how to make sure the parts that are sent to other planets are “clean” or “sterile” is an interesting and active area of research. …

From NC State: Citizen Science Effort Highlights How Little We Know About Invisible Life in Our Own Homes 

Scientists are announcing the discovery of thousands of unidentified species living in and around homes in the United States. NC State has a press release / mini story about the recent paper from the Wildlife of Your Homes project — Source: Citizen Science Effort Highlights How Little We Know About Invisible Life in Our Own …

Rob Dunn on “The First National Inventory of All Household Life (on a swab)”

In dust one can record the actions of storms, the wearing of mountains, the consequences of industrialization. The study of dust has a long history. Geologists consider it. Toxicologists too. Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes look to dust to discern where a criminal might have traveled. But perhaps the most telling feature of dust …

Sarah Zhang updates “What I Learned From Sequencing the Bacteria in My Apartment”

. Sarah Zhang at Wired has updated her post from three years ago about bacteria in her apratment with reference to a new study just published from the Wildlife of Your Homes study of bacteria and fungi in homes.  Definitely worth a look. Source: What I Learned From Sequencing the Bacteria in My Apartment | …