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OAS Wednesday – Semen Boosts the Immune System! Helps HIV
Posted by Kevin Bonham on February 19, 2013 One of the things that bugs me most in pop-sci and woo-woo science is the obsession with “boosting” the immune system. The immune system is in a constant balancing act – tip it too far one way and even normally harmless bacteria become life-threatening. But tilt it too far in the other direction, and you…
Lecture 3a – Cell Biology and the Organization of Multicellular Life #SC-214
Posted by Kevin Bonham on February 18, 2013 [This past fall, I taught a course at Emerson College called "Plagues and Pandemics." I'll be periodically posting the contents of my lectures and my experiences as a first-time college instructor] One of the biggest challenges in organizing this class was figuring out how to incorporate readings into the class material. Since I wanted to give the…
PeerJ – the science journal we need and deserve
Posted by Kevin Bonham on February 12, 2013 I spend a lot of time thinking about the scientific method. I don’t mean that thing you learned in high school, where you make an observation, form a hypothesis, design an experiment etc etc. That’s certainly part of the scientific method, but the linear formula that freshmen are typically forced to memorize sucks the life…
Snow, cold, influenza and colds – Temperature and Infectious Disease
Posted by Kevin Bonham on February 8, 2013 A “potentially historic” blizzard is barreling down on us here in New England, and is poised to drop up to two feet of snow on Boston. All of the schools in the area preemptively closed, our public transit system is shutting down at 3:30pm, and trying to buy groceries last night was bedlam. The snow is just…
Women climbers are amazing too
Posted by Kevin Bonham on January 26, 2013 It occurred to me after I posted my piece last week about rock climbing and arthritis that all of the photos of climbing were of men. This was purely coincidence – I was editing photos of last week’s competition in reverse chronological order, and I’d only finished the photos of the Men’s finals by the time…
Rock Climbing, Fat Fingers and Arthritis
Posted by Kevin Bonham on January 22, 2013 In any physical activity, there is always the risk of acute injury – cuts, scrapes, bruises, and even broken bones are often par for the course. For some extreme sports like rock climbing, where you voluntarily drag your body hundreds of feet into the air on the side of a sheer rock wall, athletes are…
AskScience: Why do microorganisms only begin breaking down our tissues after death? What stops them from doing so whilst we are still alive?
Posted by Kevin Bonham on January 21, 2013 [This question was originally asked on www.reddit.com/r/askscience on Jan 17, 2013] Why do microorganisms only begin breaking down our tissues after death? What stops them from doing so whilst we are still alive? The main reason is that our body maintains a multitude of barriers that largely prevent bacteria and other microorganisms from gaining entry.…
AskScience: Is it possible to get multiple different colds/flu viruses at the same time?
Posted by Kevin Bonham on January 15, 2013 There are a lot of reasons that posts to this blog sometimes don’t happen for months at a time, but one of them is that I can often get sucked down the rabbit hole that is Reddit. If you don’t know about reddit yet, you may not want to click that link, but if you…
Lecture 2b: Genes, Traits and the Central Dogma.
Posted by Kevin Bonham on January 13, 2013 [This past fall, I taught a course at Emerson College called "Plagues and Pandemics." I'll be periodically posting the contents of my lectures and my experiences as a first time college instructor] In my first lecture, I used Powerpoint (well, technically Keynote), but I personally like chalk-talks a quite a bit more. Never mind the fact that classrooms…
Lecture 2a: Intro to Evolution
Posted by Kevin Bonham on December 22, 2012 [This past fall, I taught a course at Emerson College called "Plagues and Pandemics." I'll be periodically posting the contents of my lectures and my experiences as a first time college instructor] Most of this post was written back in September, when it still seemed possible that I would be able to teach the class, write the…
