Tara C. Smith
Associate Professor, lab rat (microbiologist/infectious disease epidemiologist) and occasional blogger, full-time nerd.
tsmith
Posts by this author
September 29, 2007
In another case of TV shows being prescient, abuzz here at other Scienceblogs is this story, which sounds like a bad B movie: " 6 die from brain-eating amoeba in lakes." The amoeba in question is a species of naegleria, which was featured on the medical drama House last year. According to the…
September 28, 2007
I rarely watch TV, but I'm always up for a good nerd show. So when I was contacted from a representative of the PBS affiliate in L.A. about a new show they were doing in conjunction with WIRED Magazine, I was definitely interested. The show is called WIRED Science (you can watch the pilot or…
September 27, 2007
Via PZ, I see that yet another Catholic bishop in Africa is claiming that condoms are laced with HIV:
The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.
Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-…
September 27, 2007
I asked yesterday what readers considered the most important diseases in history. This was prompted by a new ASM Press book, Twelve Diseases that Changed Our World, written by Irwin Sherman.
As I mentioned, Sherman included many diseases readers expected--plague, cholera, tuberculosis,…
September 26, 2007
This week's anniversary edition of Grand Rounds is up over at Kevin, M.D., while a new Tangled Bank is up today at Aardvarchaelogy.
September 26, 2007
I'll have a review up tomorrow of a new ASM press book, Twelve Diseases that Changed Our World. However, I'm interested first in what readers would nominate as the most important diseases in history. Sure, some are "gimmies," but the author, Irwin Sherman, makes a few choices I'd not have…
September 25, 2007
So, after all the kvetching the Discovery Institute did over the Guillermo Gonzalez tenure denial case, why aren't they rushing to the defense of one Steve Bitterman, a community college professor at Southwest Community College here in Iowa. The case is still developing, but what is known is that…
September 24, 2007
Busy week; working on getting a grant and a manuscript revision out the door. In the meantime, Jake has a post on abstinence-only versus "abstinence-plus" education, and why neither is working that well, and Orac discusses a topic I want to get to but it's one of those long 'n' involved posts I…
September 20, 2007
One of the organisms I work with is the group B streptococcus, Streptococcus agalactiae ("GBS"). This is a relative of the bacterium that causes strep throat. Typically, GBS causes disease in the very young and older age groups; it's one of the most common causes of meningitis in newborns, for…
September 20, 2007
Facebook, for anyone unfamiliar, is a social networking site, a more organized and less gaudy version of MySpace. Originally started for college students, Facebook opened up to anyone with an email address earlier this year. You can post a mini biography, let others know what you're up to, keep in…
September 19, 2007
You've heard about the depressing state of funding today in biomedical science. That's only part of the reason why increasingly, graduate students and post-docs are looking outside of academia for jobs, as discussed recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Researchers today have access to…
September 19, 2007
Yes, you heard it here, folks.
Is it any wonder that HIV researchers are so outraged by these people?
September 19, 2007
I've been terrible about submitting to and promoting fellow bloggers' carnivals lately, so here are two to take note of: the latest Grand Rounds is here at Six Unto Me, while you can get your fix of ecology bloggin' at the most recent Oekologie over at Fish Feet.
Finally, if you're looking for…
September 18, 2007
...They make be spreading disease.
British hospitals are working on keeping that in check by implementing a new dress code:
British hospitals are banning neckties, long sleeves and jewelry for doctors -- and their traditional white coats -- in an effort to stop the spread of deadly hospital-borne…
September 17, 2007
Regular readers may have seen me mention on occasion my father's rather large family. My dad is the youngest of a family of 13 children--12 of whom survived to adulthood. Before my dad was born, he lost a brother to complications from infection with chicken pox; he had a severe infection and…
September 17, 2007
Do you have a few minutes? Care to lend you time by completing a short survey to help answer the titular question?
[EDITED TO ADD: thanks! We reached 1000 survey responses in just about 10 hours' time, so the survey is now closed...we really appreciate your participation!]
This survey attempts…
September 14, 2007
Just a quick post to note that fellow ScienceBlogger Nick Anthis has up a post on HIV denial in South Africa. Though this is a topic I've touched on, he goes into a deeper history of it, including more about the cultural reasons for denial (whereas I typically focus more on the science).
In other…
September 13, 2007
Clostridium difficile is an emergent bacterium. A close relative of the bacteria that cause tetanus and botulilsm (Clostridium tetani and Clostridium botulinum, respectively), C. difficile is an intestinal bacterium that can cause colitis. C. difficile has until recently been a fairly rare cause…
September 12, 2007
I mentioned that it's microbiology week at fellow Scienceblog Deep Sea News. Today's post over there is on "bioprospecting" in the sea--looking for naturally-produced chemicals that we can harness for employment as drugs or other uses. For example:
Over the last 20 years at Harbor Branch…
September 11, 2007
...so claims this headline. Only the story screws it up.
The article highlights this dissertation research by Charles Courtemanche at Washington University in St. Louis. Courtemanche's thesis is that the rise in gas prices causes more people to walk, ride bikes, or take public transportation (…
September 11, 2007
I mentioned in this post on Marburg virus that another outbreak of hemorrhagic fever had been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire). It's now been officially reported by labs in Congo and Gabon that, indeed, this new outbreak is due to the Ebola virus. More on this…
September 10, 2007
September 8th was world rabies day. In the United States, this was celebrated with the news that the canine rabies strain appears to be eliminated from this country. In the U.S., rabies in both humans and domestic animals remains rare, though the virus remains endemic in several species of…
September 10, 2007
We owe a lot to the sea for studies of microbiology, so why not? Head over to Deep Sea News this week and check out their microbiology posts.
September 7, 2007
Or something like that.
I rarely watch TV, but one of the few things I watch every now and then are reruns of the multiple incarnations of Law & Order shows when I run into them on TNT or one of those cable stations. They have all kinds of "ripped from the headlines" story plots, but this is…
September 6, 2007
Correcting misinformation can backfire.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "…
September 6, 2007
While E. coli typically makes the news as a food-borne pathogen, that's only one facet of the bacterium. It can be deadly, sure, but it also helps us digest our food; it produces vitamin K for us; benign strains can even protect us from invading pathogens. It's one of the most-studied bacterial…
September 4, 2007
Denial has real consequences-- MMR plea by doctors as measles cases treble in 11 weeks:
Parents have been urged to give their children the MMR vaccine as it was revealed Britain is in the middle of the worst measles outbreak for 20 years.
The unprecedented warning from the Health Protection…
August 31, 2007
As I mentioned in the introductory post, we know incredibly little about the very basics of Marburg virus ecology and epidemiology. The sporadic nature of outbreaks of illness, their occurrence in remote areas of Africa lacking established medical research capabilities, and often in countries…
August 31, 2007
Those familiar with the history of influenza probably know about the 1918 outbreak of swine influenza in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In the fall of that year, the National Swine Show and Exposition in Cedar Rapids opened, bringing people and their hogs from miles around. Soon after it opened its doors,…
August 30, 2007
As I've noted before, filoviruses are some of my favorite pathogens. I don't work on them myself--though in the pre-children era I certainly thought about it--but I find them absolutely fascinating to read about and follow the literature. Mostly, I think, this is because after knowing about them…