AAAS Microbiomes of the Built Environment Symposium videos available on-line

Registrants for the March AAAS Symposium are recipients today of the following message from Anette Olsen at AAAS. “I’d like to let you know that the videos of each panel is now online, but they currently remain unedited. We anticipate another two weeks before the edited versions are placed online. In the meantime, here is …

Microbes and the design of animal shelters

Animal shelters provide an essential and beneficial social service, caring for an estimated 9 million pets each year in the United States. Many animals entering a shelter are highly stressed and lack the benefits of standard veterinary care, including vaccinations. Moreover animal shelters are an intensive housing situation that amplifies the transmission of infectious diseases …

“DNA-based methods for bioaerosol analysis” – great resource!

Jordan Peccia has posted the slides from his tutorial, Molecular methods for bioaerosol analysis on Slideshare. If you would like to get a quick overview of molecular-biology based methods, this is a painless, accessible way to do it. You are encouraged to post your comments and questions after you review the slideshow. We hope to …

Lessons learned: The microbes all around us and our buildings — and Jessica Green’s Nautilus article

Illustration (from OpenScar.com) an explanation of the beginning of the spread of SARS in Hong Kong’s Amoy Gardens apartment complex where the index case was in a building 60 meters away from a building where about 45% of the 300 infected individuals at Amoy Gardens lived. Many of the other infected individuals also lived in …

Database of indoor environment-indoor microbiome literature available

You can download the database of over 360 publications that report characteristics of the indoor environment along with the microbes found in the studies. Each publication is entered as a record and includes citation, abstract, keywords, organisms, substrates, and environmental conditions as reported by the authors. The database in MS Access format is searchable for …

MoBE Postdoctoral Fellowship: Indoor aerosol fate, transport, and control: implications for disease transmission

Microbial pathogens, including viral, bacterial, and fungal species, are transmitted via both airborne and surface contact routes in indoor environments. Breathing, sneezing, and coughing are important sources of many of these species, with the microbes being aerosolized and dispersed in microscopic liquid droplets that may settle to nearby surfaces or evaporate into smaller droplet nuclei …

Sloan Foundation’s Indoor Environment Symposium at Indoor Air 2014

Sloan Symposium at Indoor Air 2014 The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program on Microbiology of the Built Environment has awarded a grant to Indoor Air 2014, the 13th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, to be held in Hong Kong from July 7-12, 2014. Paraphrasing a quote on the conference web site from …

Ecology of Disease – Are they ignoring the great indoors?

An article in the Sunday NYT on the Ecology of Disease — paints with a very broad brush that ignores the role of the microbiology of the built (and especially the indoor) environment, where we spend most of our time and most likely acquire most of our diseases. What the article ignores underscores the importance …

Crosspost: An ecosystem in my house? Yes indeed. And with microbes too. #BostonGlobe #microBEnet

Cross posting this from my Tree of Life blog: Well I am very excited about this article in the Boston Globe today: Ecosystem, sweet ecosystem – The Boston Globe. By Courtney Humphries the article discusses the Sloan Foundation program in the “Indoor Environment” that is focusing on microbial ecology of the built environment. I am, well, really into …