Well this is disconcerting. A scientist who works for the Naval War College (Mark Lyles) has been doing research on dust from the War Zones in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. And the results appear to be disconcerting. All sorts of elevated levels of toxins are reported to have been found in the dust. Though I …
A new paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B is a bit disconcerting. The paper “Skin as a potential source of infectious foot and mouth disease aerosols” is by Michael Dillon from Lawrence Livermore Labs (I have added the reference to the microBEnet collections at Mendeley and CiteULike). A bit more about the …
Some news agencies have recently been reporting that bedbugs may be doing something even more unpleasant than their normal unpleasantries. Many news sources are reporting on recent information from a Canadian group that looked at what microbes were found in bedbugs in one area. And what they found was pretty nasty. Basically, the deal is …
I had forgotten how great MicrobeWorld was until very recently. It is a great source of news and other information about microbes. It collects recommended links from a broad community of registered users. It posts links to a series of podcasts and other resources. Plus it has links to a collection of background information articles …
A new paper in Applied and Environmental Microbiology is not surprisingly getting a bunch of press “Bacterial Hand Contamination and Transfer after Use of Contaminated Bulk-Soap-Refillable Dispensers” by Zapka et al. I note the article is freely available online. Some of the news stories about this include: Bacteria-Laden Soap Not So Clean : Discovery …
A UN panel has issued a recent report on the cholera outbreak in Haiti. The report reviews genetic, genomic, epidemiological and other studies that relate to the origins of the cholera outbreak. The conclusion is a bit disconcerting – most likely the outbreak was introduced by UN personnel and was related to poor construction of …
Just got information about this course: INTRODUCTION TO FOOD AND AIR-BORNE MOLDS – 2011 (a course in fungal identification) (See the website here International Commission on Indoor Fungi (ICIF)). From the organizer: Introduction to Food- and Air-Borne Fungi. 6-10 June 2011, Ottawa, Canada. For the first time in three years, we are pleased to offer our five …
Fascinating what Google Scholar searches can find sometimes. Did a search for “indoor microbiology” and this came up Investigations of fungal diversity in wooden structures and soils at historic sites on the Antarctic Peninsula by Brett Arenz and Robert Blanchette. In the paper the authors discuss culture based studies of fungi isolated from various buildings in …
There is a new #openaccess article in ISME of great importance to those studying the microbiology of the built environment: The ISME Journal – The genomic standards consortium: bringing standards to life for microbial ecology. This article focuses mostly on those characterizing “marker genes” (i.e., genes of value in phylogenetic characterization of taxa) in some way. …
Heads up for what should be an excellent conference: Gordon Research Conferences – 2011 Program – Microbial Population Biology. Topics include a somewhat unusual mix of human microbiome, emerging infectious diseases, and the ecology of algae used as biofuels as well as a variety of other population biology topics.