Tara C. Smith
Associate Professor, lab rat (microbiologist/infectious disease epidemiologist) and occasional blogger, full-time nerd.
tsmith
Posts by this author
June 20, 2006
[From the archives; originally posted November 25, 2005]
I discussed here new research on venom evolution that topples some old conventional wisdom. It seems this and another study are already making large waves in that field.
Genealogy of Scaly Reptiles Rewritten by New Research
The most…
June 20, 2006
[From the archives; originally posted November 22, 2005]
Carl Zimmer has a post today about the work of Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry on the evolution of snake venom. If that name sounds familiar to those of you who aren't reptile specialists, you may have run across Dr. Fry's homepage, or you may have…
June 19, 2006
[From the archives; originally posted November 28, 2005]
Have you ever wondered how Kevin Bacon and the lights of fireflies related to malaria and power grids? I know it's something that's kept me up many a sleepless night. One word: interconnections.
Many of you have probably heard of the "Six…
June 16, 2006
[From the archives; originally posted October 20, 2005]
Measles is one of those diseases that we don't give much thought to in the United States anymore. Following an incubation period of about 10 days, flu-like symptoms appear: fever, malaise, cough, congestion, conjunctivitis. Soon, the rash…
June 16, 2006
Welcome to the June edition of Animalcules! Apologies for the lateness; I only had a few minutes to get online yesterday, and that was mainly devoted to checking email and making sure there were no crises that needed my attention. So, without further ado...
From the Scientific Creative Quarterly…
June 15, 2006
As Janet has surely mentioned by now, we're kicking off a The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon!
I write a lot on here about science education. Indeed, that's a big motivator for having this site at all. Science is endlessly fascinating, and it's a pleasure…
June 15, 2006
[From the archives; originally posted November 16, 2005]
I know, everyone's so sick of all the new "omics"es. But "metagenomics" is one that I don't see going away anytime soon. At its core, metagenomics is a way of looking at organisms in concert as a complex ecology, rather than as an individual…
June 14, 2006
[From the archives; originally published November 18, 2005]
Malaria is one of the world's leading infectious killers. World-wide, almost 40% of the world's population is at risk of acquiring this disease--many of them in poor countries with limited resources to control the disease. Each year,…
June 14, 2006
[From the archives; originally posted October 27, 2005]
Pili (singular: pilus) are bacterial organelles--thin tubes of protein that function in attachment and bacterial sex, as well as immune evasion. Traditionally, studies of pili have been carried out in gram-negative bacteria, such as E. coli…
June 14, 2006
It's "vacation"--sort of. Thanks to the magic of scheduled posts, even as this pops up I'm probably somewhere in central Illinois at the moment. I'll be in Ohio for a few days to play with my new nephews, and yet a third new nephew who was just born this past weekend. Then it's off to D.C. for a…
June 13, 2006
Sunday's New York Times has an article discussing the worldwide increase in diabetes:
The number of people around the world suffering from diabetes has skyrocketed in the last two decades, from 30 million to 230 million, claiming millions of lives and severely taxing the ability of health care…
June 13, 2006
Sometimes it's amazing just how little we know about the microbes around us. For precious few microbes, we know a good deal about virulence factors--genes and proteins that, when present, increase the severity of disease either in animal models or in humans (or both). However, much of this…
June 13, 2006
This week's Ask a Scienceblogger question is:
"Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?"
Musings below the fold...
First, I'll note that this question was actually somewhat difficult for…
June 12, 2006
Holy cow, they're breeding like rabbits.
RPM and Paul have set up a genetics blog carnival, Mendel's Garden:
So if you have posts about any aspect of genetics, send them on and let's see what happens. The deadline for submissions is 11:59 pm on June 15.
Possible topics could include classical…
June 12, 2006
About two weeks ago, Cognitive Daily linked an article discussing The Paradox of the Perfect Girl.
The perfect girl is everywhere. She is your niece, your daughter, your friend's genius kid. She is the girl who makes the valedictorian speech at your son's graduation and the type-A class…
June 12, 2006
So, I see Janet started a "get to know you" post (with a "pi" theme). I'm busy today and was swamped all weekend (and as such, don't have any more lengthy science posts finished), so...answers below the fold.
3 reasons you blog about science:
1. Because I'm a really big nerd, and all things…
June 12, 2006
As I mentioned, the newcomers to Scienceblogs include several neuroscience sites. Admittedly, neuroscience is one of the areas I know least about in biology. A new carnival will leave me no excuses to continue my ignorance.
Hi all you Neuroscience bloggers out there. I -- and many of the other…
June 11, 2006
Like a Saturday roundup, but a day delayed. Some other topics I found interesting this week, but didn't have a chance to elaborate on...
Afarensis mentions new research on the evolution of the Crenarchaeota, a group of archae.
Laura Bush speaks on the President's malaria initiative.
Both Ed…
June 10, 2006
I talk a lot on here about making science more available (and interesting!) to the public. And I've posted previously about "sexy scientists" before. So you might think I'd be all for an effort to combine the two--but is this really necessary?
Ugh.
(Via new Scienceblog, Pure Pedantry.)
June 9, 2006
I wrote recently how evolution and phylogenetic analysis of HIV isolates has provided evidence that the progenitor to HIV jumped into humans in Cameroon or a nearby area. Obviously it's a topic that's interesting to me, but may seem a bit esoteric to some. RPM over at Evolgen has a new post…
June 9, 2006
Lots of changes here at Scienceblogs today. The editors of Seed magazine give the lowdown at Stochastic:
Welcome to the new ScienceBlogs! Beginning today, you'll notice a newly designed homepage (built from your feedback) at scienceblogs.com and the addition of 25 new blogs to our network.
***
We…
June 9, 2006
The new issue of Nature Medicine has a number of excellent articles on topics in infectious disease. I'm going to discuss a few of them in more detail next week (or possibly the week after; next week will be a short one for me), but in the meantime, I'll highlight two articles in particular that…
June 9, 2006
Animalcules, a blog carnival about all things microbial, will return next Thursday, June 15th. I have a few entries, and since it's been a month since the last update, I'll happily take 2 entries per person. Send them to me (aetiology AT gmail DOT com), and the earlier, the better, since I'll…
June 9, 2006
Over at Doc Around the Clock, Dr. IBear has a nice post on Lyme disease: what it is, what it's not, and how to deal with ticks (appropriately, not as his mom removed them). He mentions this:
Most of the time people who get Lyme disease don't even know or remember being bitten by a tick. Thus, it…
June 8, 2006
Busy today, so I've just now had a chance to glance through the blog carnivals I mentioned earlier. Via The Skeptics' Circle comes A Creationist FAQ from the Science Creative Quarterly. Too funny:
Q: What about the fossil evidence?
A: The real fossils are university professors writing papers for…
June 8, 2006
For more Sciencebloggers' views on the "brain drain" question, Stochastic has a round-up over here.
June 8, 2006
The summer 2006 edition of Stanford Medical Magazine has devoted their issue to "The evolutionary war." Being the alumni magazine of a medical school, of course they have an article on "Darwin in medical school." It's a nice overview, discussing a bit of the history of "Darwinian medicine" and…
June 8, 2006
A new Tangled Bank is up over at Get Busy Livin', or Get Busy Bloggin', and a new edition of the Skeptics' Circle can be found over at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles.
June 7, 2006
A recent story detailing an outbreak of sexually-transmitted diseases has gotten a good deal of attention from news outlets and blogs. The reason it's newsworthy is because the individuals affected aren't teenagers or single twenty-somethings; they're senior citizens. So, let me point out the…
June 7, 2006
So, this week's Ask a Science blogger question is:
Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there…