New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, December 24, 2016

Microbes and buildings Bacterial Hygromorphs: Experiments into the integration of soft technologies into building skins – ACADIA 2016: Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture – Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa – Newcastle University (OA) The last few years has seen an increase in the interest to bring living systems into the process of design. Work with living systems, nonetheless, presents …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, September 25, 2016

Microbes and buildings The Microbiome of Green Design: Sustainable building practices may have unforeseen consequences for microbial communities and human health – Carolyn Beans – BioScience ($40 for 1 day) Just as our bodies teem with microbial life, so, too, do the homes, offices, schools, and other indoor spaces where we spend the majority of our …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, September 3, 2016

Microbes in the hospital Extreme Dysbiosis of the Microbiome in Critical Illness — Daniel McDonald — mSphere (OA) (…)  A trial with prospective monitoring of the intensive care unit (ICU) patient microbiome using culture-independent techniques to confirm and characterize this dysbiosis is thus urgently needed. Characterizing ICU patient microbiome changes may provide first steps toward the …

“Bacteria found in infants has also been found in pipes of Maryland hospital”

Just a short post about a news story recently where they have traced Pseudomonas found in NICU infants to the pipes in the building.  It’s still in the early stages of the investigation… but it makes me wonder why routine surveillance isn’t more common.  I feel like we often hear stories about finding Legionella, Pseudomonas, …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, May 22, 2016

Recent papers on microbes of the built environment. Microbes in the hospital Prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus from nares and hands on healthcare professionals in a Portuguese Hospital – Ana Castro – Journal of Applied Microbiology ($6 to rent, $38 to own) The main goal was to estimate the prevalence of methicillin-resistant S. aureus on hands and …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, March 22, 2016

Microbes and humans Review: The Anthropocene: a conspicuous stratigraphical signal of anthropogenic changes in production and consumption across the biosphere – Mark Williams – Earth’s Future (OA) Biospheric relationships between production and consumption of biomass have been resilient to changes in the Earth system over billions of years. This relationship has increased in its complexity, …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, January 29, 2016

An oversight of the new papers that I found covering the intersection of humans, buildings, and microbes. Microbes in buildings Diversity of Bacterial Communities on Four Frequently Used Surfaces in a Large Brazilian Teaching Hospital – Tairacan Augusto Pereira da Fonseca – MDPI Int J Environ Res Public Health (OA) In this study, we aimed …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, November 8, 2015

Here are the papers on the built environment microbiology that I found in the past weeks. For more microbiology papers, please check out my daily blog MicrobiomeDigest. Copper surfaces are associated with significantly lower concentrations of bacteria on selected surfaces within a pediatric intensive care unit – Michael G. Schmidt – American Journal of Infection …

Recent papers on microbiology of the built environment: Microbes in buildings and food

Time for an update with recent papers on the microbes of the built environment. I have many, so I will break them up into two different posts. Microbes in buildings Microbial Density on Electronic Devices – Sulan Kith – Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci Human participants each used an tablet, smart phone and media player for 20 minutes. We predicted that microbial density would …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, September 6, 2015

Here are the microbiology of the built environment papers that were already featured on my MicrobiomeDigest blog this week, all in one handy edition. The first paper is about dust, so Siouxsie & The Banshees – Cities In Dust would match perfectly. The ecology of microscopic life in household dust – Albert Barberán – Proceedings B …