We're covered in germs. Let's design for that.
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0:01 - 0:05Everything is covered in invisible ecosystems
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0:05 - 0:10made of tiny lifeforms: bacteria, viruses and fungi.
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0:10 - 0:14Our desks, our computers, our pencils, our buildings
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0:14 - 0:17all harbor resident microbial landscapes.
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0:17 - 0:20As we design these things, we could be thinking
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0:20 - 0:23about designing these invisible worlds,
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0:23 - 0:25and also thinking about how they interact
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0:25 - 0:28with our personal ecosystems.
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0:28 - 0:31Our bodies are home to trillions of microbes,
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0:31 - 0:34and these creatures define who we are.
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0:34 - 0:38The microbes in your gut can influence your weight and your moods.
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0:38 - 0:41The microbes on your skin can help boost your immune system.
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0:41 - 0:44The microbes in your mouth can freshen your breath,
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0:44 - 0:46or not,
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0:46 - 0:49and the key thing is that our personal ecosystems
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0:49 - 0:52interact with ecosystems on everything we touch.
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0:52 - 0:53So, for example, when you touch a pencil,
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0:53 - 0:56microbial exchange happens.
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0:56 - 1:01If we can design the invisible ecosystems in our surroundings,
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1:01 - 1:04this opens a path to influencing
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1:04 - 1:07our health in unprecedented ways.
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1:07 - 1:09I get asked all of the time from people,
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1:09 - 1:13"Is it possible to really design microbial ecosystems?"
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1:13 - 1:16And I believe the answer is yes.
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1:16 - 1:18I think we're doing it right now,
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1:18 - 1:21but we're doing it unconsciously.
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1:21 - 1:23I'm going to share data with you
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1:23 - 1:27from one aspect of my research focused on architecture
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1:27 - 1:30that demonstrates how, through both conscious
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1:30 - 1:32and unconscious design,
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1:32 - 1:35we're impacting these invisible worlds.
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1:35 - 1:39This is the Lillis Business Complex at the University of Oregon,
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1:39 - 1:42and I worked with a team of architects and biologists
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1:42 - 1:46to sample over 300 rooms in this building.
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1:46 - 1:50We wanted to get something like a fossil record of the building,
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1:50 - 1:53and to do this, we sampled dust.
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1:53 - 1:57From the dust, we pulled out bacterial cells,
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1:57 - 2:01broke them open, and compared their gene sequences.
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2:01 - 2:03This means that people in my group
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2:03 - 2:06were doing a lot of vacuuming during this project.
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2:06 - 2:08This is a picture of Tim, who,
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2:08 - 2:11right when I snapped this picture, reminded me,
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2:11 - 2:13he said, "Jessica, the last lab group I worked in
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2:13 - 2:16I was doing fieldwork in the Costa Rican rainforest,
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2:16 - 2:20and things have changed dramatically for me."
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2:20 - 2:24So I'm going to show you now first what we found in the offices,
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2:24 - 2:27and we're going to look at the data through a visualization tool
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2:27 - 2:30that I've been working on in partnership with Autodesk.
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2:30 - 2:33The way that you look at this data is,
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2:33 - 2:37first, look around the outside of the circle.
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2:37 - 2:40You'll see broad bacterial groups,
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2:40 - 2:42and if you look at the shape of this pink lobe,
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2:42 - 2:45it tells you something about the relative abundance of each group.
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2:45 - 2:48So at 12 o'clock, you'll see that offices have a lot of
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2:48 - 2:50alphaproteobacteria, and at one o'clock
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2:50 - 2:55you'll see that bacilli are relatively rare.
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2:55 - 2:59Let's take a look at what's going on in different space types in this building.
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2:59 - 3:01If you look inside the restrooms,
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3:01 - 3:04they all have really similar ecosystems,
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3:04 - 3:07and if you were to look inside the classrooms,
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3:07 - 3:09those also have similar ecosystems.
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3:09 - 3:12But if you look across these space types,
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3:12 - 3:14you can see that they're fundamentally different
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3:14 - 3:16from one another.
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3:16 - 3:19I like to think of bathrooms like a tropical rainforest.
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3:19 - 3:22I told Tim, "If you could just see the microbes,
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3:22 - 3:26it's kind of like being in Costa Rica. Kind of."
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3:26 - 3:30And I also like to think of offices as being a temperate grassland.
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3:30 - 3:35This perspective is a really powerful one for designers,
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3:35 - 3:38because you can bring on principles of ecology,
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3:38 - 3:41and a really important principle of ecology is dispersal,
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3:41 - 3:44the way organisms move around.
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3:44 - 3:48We know that microbes are dispersed around by people
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3:48 - 3:49and by air.
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3:49 - 3:52So the very first thing we wanted to do in this building
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3:52 - 3:54was look at the air system.
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3:54 - 3:57Mechanical engineers design air handling units
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3:57 - 3:59to make sure that people are comfortable,
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3:59 - 4:02that the air flow and temperature is just right.
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4:02 - 4:05They do this using principles of physics and chemistry,
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4:05 - 4:09but they could also be using biology.
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4:09 - 4:12If you look at the microbes
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4:12 - 4:15in one of the air handling units in this building,
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4:15 - 4:19you'll see that they're all very similar to one another.
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4:19 - 4:22And if you compare this to the microbes
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4:22 - 4:24in a different air handling unit,
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4:24 - 4:27you'll see that they're fundamentally different.
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4:27 - 4:31The rooms in this building are like islands in an archipelago,
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4:31 - 4:33and what that means is that mechanical engineers
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4:33 - 4:36are like eco-engineers, and they have the ability
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4:36 - 4:42to structure biomes in this building the way that they want to.
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4:42 - 4:46Another facet of how microbes get around is by people,
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4:46 - 4:49and designers often cluster rooms together
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4:49 - 4:51to facilitate interactions among people,
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4:51 - 4:55or the sharing of ideas, like in labs and in offices.
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4:55 - 4:57Given that microbes travel around with people,
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4:57 - 5:00you might expect to see rooms that are close together
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5:00 - 5:02have really similar biomes.
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5:02 - 5:05And that is exactly what we found.
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5:05 - 5:08If you look at classrooms right adjacent to one another,
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5:08 - 5:10they have very [similar] ecosystems,
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5:10 - 5:13but if you go to an office
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5:13 - 5:16that is a farther walking distance away,
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5:16 - 5:19the ecosystem is fundamentally different.
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5:19 - 5:23And when I see the power that dispersal has
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5:23 - 5:26on these biogeographic patterns,
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5:26 - 5:28it makes me think that it's possible
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5:28 - 5:32to tackle really challenging problems,
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5:32 - 5:34like hospital-acquired infections.
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5:34 - 5:37I believe this has got to be, in part,
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5:37 - 5:41a building ecology problem.
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5:41 - 5:45All right, I'm going to tell you one more story about this building.
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5:45 - 5:48I am collaborating with Charlie Brown.
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5:48 - 5:50He's an architect,
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5:50 - 5:55and Charlie is deeply concerned about global climate change.
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5:55 - 5:58He's dedicated his life to sustainable design.
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5:58 - 6:01When he met me and realized that it was possible for him
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6:01 - 6:03to study in a quantitative way
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6:03 - 6:06how his design choices impacted
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6:06 - 6:09the ecology and biology of this building,
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6:09 - 6:13he got really excited, because it added a new dimension to what he did.
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6:13 - 6:15He went from thinking just about energy
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6:15 - 6:18to also starting to think about human health.
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6:18 - 6:22He helped design some of the air handling systems
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6:22 - 6:25in this building and the way it was ventilated.
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6:25 - 6:27So what I'm first going to show you is
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6:27 - 6:31air that we sampled outside of the building.
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6:31 - 6:35What you're looking at is a signature of bacterial communities
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6:35 - 6:39in the outdoor air, and how they vary over time.
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6:39 - 6:42Next I'm going to show you what happened
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6:42 - 6:46when we experimentally manipulated classrooms.
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6:46 - 6:47We blocked them off at night
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6:47 - 6:49so that they got no ventilation.
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6:49 - 6:52A lot of buildings are operated this way,
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6:52 - 6:53probably where you work,
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6:53 - 6:56and companies do this to save money on their energy bill.
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6:56 - 7:00What we found is that these rooms remained relatively stagnant
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7:00 - 7:03until Saturday, when we opened the vents up again.
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7:03 - 7:05When you walked into those rooms,
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7:05 - 7:07they smelled really bad,
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7:07 - 7:10and our data suggests that it had something to do with
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7:10 - 7:13leaving behind the airborne bacterial soup
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7:13 - 7:16from people the day before.
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7:16 - 7:18Contrast this to rooms
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7:18 - 7:22that were designed using a sustainable passive design strategy
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7:22 - 7:26where air came in from the outside through louvers.
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7:26 - 7:31In these rooms, the air tracked the outdoor air relatively well,
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7:31 - 7:33and when Charlie saw this, he got really excited.
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7:33 - 7:35He felt like he had made a good choice
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7:35 - 7:37with the design process
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7:37 - 7:39because it was both energy efficient
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7:39 - 7:44and it washed away the building's resident microbial landscape.
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7:44 - 7:47The examples that I just gave you are about architecture,
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7:47 - 7:50but they're relevant to the design of anything.
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7:50 - 7:54Imagine designing with the kinds of microbes that we want
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7:54 - 7:56in a plane
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7:56 - 7:59or on a phone.
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7:59 - 8:01There's a new microbe, I just discovered it.
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8:01 - 8:04It's called BLIS, and it's been shown
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8:04 - 8:06to both ward off pathogens
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8:06 - 8:08and give you good breath.
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8:08 - 8:14Wouldn't it be awesome if we all had BLIS on our phones?
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8:14 - 8:17A conscious approach to design,
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8:17 - 8:19I'm calling it bioinformed design,
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8:19 - 8:21and I think it's possible.
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8:21 - 8:22Thank you.
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8:22 - 8:26(Applause)
- Title:
- We're covered in germs. Let's design for that.
- Speaker:
- Jessica Green
- Description:
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Our bodies and homes are covered in microbes -- some good for us, some bad for us, and some just along for the ride. As we learn more about the germs and microbes who share our living spaces, TED Fellow Jessica Green asks: Can we design buildings that encourage happy, healthy microbial environments?
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 08:43
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