Tara C. Smith
Associate Professor, lab rat (microbiologist/infectious disease epidemiologist) and occasional blogger, full-time nerd.
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Posts by this author
As I mentioned, I spent yesterday morning talking microbiology to a bunch of 3, 4, and 5 year olds in my son's preschool class. It was fun, actually--I took along a prepared slide to show them some bacteria under the microscope, and then took a scraping from my son's tongue and Gram-stained it to…
I started this as a comment to this thread, but perhaps this is enough for its own spin-off discussion. IndianCowboy said:
I'm not denying the influence of these genes on one's ability to maintain a certain weight. I'm not even denying the size of their influence, but one thing that bothers me…
...can be found over at Fat Doctor. 53 entries this week...it's truly a GrandRounds.
Additionally, don't forget to send in submissions for this week's edition of Animalcules to Ruth (contact info at the link). Submissions should be in by 10PM EST tomorrow (Wednesday) to…
An interesting new paper has come out recently, reviving discussion of the effects of "nature" versus "nurture" in the development of obesity. Certainly everyone knows someone--or perhaps, is that someone, who can sit down and finish off an entire pizza without gaining an ounce, while others of us…
Regular readers have probably noticed I rarely do quizzes. I'm just lame like that. But this one was a bit too perfect for this site: What disease are you? My results after the jump.
You Are Ebola!
Also known as Hemorrhagic Fever, you are a risk-taker. You love to travel and experience the…
Seems Janet has been a bit under the weather...and has taken to haiku to describe her ailments. I think this should be the new format for journal case reports.
In other news, I'm heading off to my son's preschool class later this morning to give a talk on germs and hand-washing (and a bit about…
I don't know how other bloggers decide what to post. For me, everytime I run across a "oh, that would be so cool to discuss" topic/link/story etc., I copy the topic/link/story etc. into a new entry here, hoping to have time to elaborate on it at a later date. Some of them I get to--some of them…
If you're in the food service industry, don't go back to work while you still have an intestinal bug. Or, fer crimeny's sake, at least wash your hands thoroughly.
The majority of cases of foodborne gastroenteritis in the United States are caused by noroviruses. This report summarizes an…
(Warning--picture heavy)
I've lived in the midwest almost all of my life. So tornadoes aren't anything new, though luckily, I've never been in a dwelling that got hit by one before. In fact, I've never seen one touch down up close and in person, though I've seen a few funnel clouds in the air.…
I've already gotten several emails (even some worried phone calls!) this morning, making sure I'm OK after tornadoes hit Iowa City last night. I'm fine, the family's fine; parts of Iowa City are not, but it sounds like there weren't any serious injuries. [Edit--I should have read the CNN headline…
As others have mentioned, Scienceblogs got a mention (okay, an entire story) in the Online Journalism Review. And hey, in addition to quoting me, they mentioned my post on Chikungunya--gotta love that. They did misquote me, though (or I misspoke)--I don't have cable. Can't get it in the sticks…
That is one big freakin' Easter Bunny. Even taking into account the angle of the picture making the rabbit look larger, a 3-ft long, 35 pound rabbit? My granny would have called that some good eatin'.
Orac highlighted here a post over at Vox Populi which doubted the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine, in light of the recent epidemic in Iowa. I was prepared to write a whole post on the math of it, but Mark at Good Math, Bad Math saved me some work. Nevertheless, I have a few things to add after…
Okay, so I lied. I was planning to wrap up the emerging diseases and zoonoses series with the post on monkeypox, but I think I'll just continue it as a sporadic event, since a new paper fits into the series perfectly.
I talk a lot here about streptococcus. As regular readers know, there's a…
It's storytime over at Pooflingers Anonymous. Big carnival this time 'round--I'll be reading submissions to this and Tangled Bank well into the weekend, I think.
Not that one. This one. (Complete with video, even!).
You might think a catfish on land would fare as well as an elephant on roller-skates, but a new study reveals they slither around and adeptly catch insect meals.
The finding helps scientists imagine how ancient fish made their first hunting…
A new study in the journal Pediatrics suggests this common procedure may improve the condition of kids diagnosed with attention defecit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I think it's an excellent case of some true "alternative explanations" for the data.
Creationists often try to validate their…
For those of you who'd like to read the rest of the Percy Bysshe Shelley essay I quoted from in this post, you can find the version I have here. A (full?) version of the essay can also be found here; the quote I used is on page 10 of that document, and page 70 of the .pdf.
You can check it out over at Sandra's Discovering Biology, and take a virtual tour of Seattle while you're at it (which was pretty nice...I've only seen the airport there, personally). As always, lots of great stuff, including an excellent overview of Deinococcus radiodurans that would be perfect…
I don't watch a lot of TV, but I'm always up for a good documentary. The History Channel this week is running a series, 10 days that changed America. According to the website,
The History Channel selected 10 teams of award-winning documentary filmmakers to spotlight "10 historic events that…
I attended a lecture yesterday given by Patty Quinlisk, Iowa's state epidemiologist. The bad news: there have been over 500 reported cases of mumps as of Monday, April 10, with more cases in neighboring states (30-50 in Nebraska, for example). She did, however, give a bit more history on the…
...can be found over at Anxiety, Addiction and Depression Treatments. Lots of good posts and several new (or at least, new to me) blogs--check it out.
Via Seed's Daily Zeitgeist, check out the Smithsonian Magazine's photo contest. I'm a photography geek myself, but alas, I just don't have the eye for it to be actually good.
So, Linus Pauling is apparently the hot topic of the day. Janet's already discussed a bit about the whole "wacky older scientist" phenomenon over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, while the first post cited gives you a bit of the background of Linus Pauling, bringing in two new studies on the…
I wrote previously about a recent study that found all sorts of bacterial diversity in a place once thought to be rather barren--the human stomach. One of the species they discovered appeared to be related to an extremophile--microbes that live in extreme environments (in this case, a relative of…
Joseph at Immunoblogging has up Part IV of his series on Mycobacterium bovis. Links to parts I-III can be found here.
Ed did it. Janet's doing it. And, since I totally lack any artistic ability and creativity, I'll do it as well. In the comments to the open thread I posted last week, pough even volunteered an initial design. As I mentioned, I liked the font but I was thinking of something, well, more microbial…
For the final post of the series, I want to discuss yet another outbreak, this one a bit closer to home: that of monkeypox in the United States in 2003.
First, I should note that "monkeypox" is a bit of a misnomer. Though the virus--a relative of smallpox and cowpox--can infect monkeys (and…
[This is one from this past December]
My favorite essay arguing against intelligent design isn't one of Gould's, or Dawkins', or Sagan's. Rather, it's one from an essay that has portions I disagree with, but the eloquent prose simply can't be beat:
"The analogy which you attempt to establish…
Thanks to the miracles of scheduled posts, I'll have a few things on tap today, even though I'm far away from my computer and dealing with a vomiting child (who hopefully, by the time this is published, will no longer be throwing up all over himself, his bedding, anything else within projectile…