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Discussing causes, origins, evolution, and implications of disease and other phenomena.
Tara C. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology. Her research involves a number of pathogens at the animal-human nexus. Additionally, she is the founder of Iowa Citizens for Science and also writes for The Panda's Thumb and previously for WIRED SCIENCE's Correlations. Please note the views expressed on this site are Dr. Smith's alone and may not be representative of the groups mentioned above.
"...a veritable expert on tawdry cosmetic procedures gone horribly awry..."--Kevin Beck
Follow Tara on Twitter: http://twitter.com/aetiology
May 31, 2006
Category: Book & movie reviews
Just in time for college graduations comes a new book, "100 Science words every college graduate should know." It's an interesting browse. Others have mentioned it (and Chad even did a pretty nice breakdown of words by discipline); I just...
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 3:00 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Influenza
I'm dealing with my own little epidemic (daughter managed to catch the stomach bug that's been going around her school, meaning she has to miss her last day as a kindergartener, poor thing). I found one post in the queue...
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 11:30 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Academia
You've probably seen this floating around the other Seed blogs this week: Since they're funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH, NSF, and so on), should scientists have to justify their research agendas to the public, rather than just grant-making...
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 9:30 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 30, 2006
Category: General Epidemiology
Busy today, so sequels are on tap. There's an interesting story from Nature news that's a nice follow-up to this recent post on how microbes can influence weight. More after the jump....
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 2:15 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Misc.
Leftover from last week's zoonotic diseases course: I do sometimes get away from the hind end of animals....
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 10:55 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blog carnivals
A new Grand Rounds is up over at KidneyNotes. Check out what's happened this week in the medical blogosphere....
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 8:47 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 26, 2006
Category: Women and science
I was heading out, but first I just want to point y'all over to this excellent post of Janet's regarding women and "nerd culture". Now I'm really leaving......
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 3:00 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As pointed out yesterday, flu blogging has been light this month, even though there have been interesting developments. As such, to catch up a bit, I'm posting an overview of the current Indonesian cluster and some other thoughts below the...
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 1:40 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: General Epidemiology
Species of the bacterium Clostridium have long been a scourge of humans. They are gram-positive, spore-forming bacteria that can be found in the soil around all of us. The spores then germinate when exposed to anaerobic conditions. Clostridium botulinum is...
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 9:00 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 25, 2006
Category: General Epidemiology
I write a lot on here about evolution, and more about epidemiology. A recent article in Emerging Infectious Diseases discusses a unique combination of the two: 2,500-year Evolution of the Term Epidemic. I've said before that I'm about the farthest...
Posted by Tara C. Smith at 3:15 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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