It’s not quite the Human Genome Project, but researchers are starting to publish data from a study of bacteria inside 1,400 homes. The point of the study is to set a baseline from which to start systematically understanding what’s present, where and why. One hope is that data will assist with efforts to reduce infections contracted in hospitals, with a result of 60,000 annual deaths. Presumably, future studies will address other indoor air contaminants.
A side note. This new project brings more data to the world According to Eric Schmidt of Google, the world now creates in two days the same volume of data that was generated during the course of history up to 2003.