Tara C. Smith
Associate Professor, lab rat (microbiologist/infectious disease epidemiologist) and occasional blogger, full-time nerd.
tsmith
Posts by this author
May 25, 2006
I feel a bit guilty. I still get occasional comments on this post about the outbreak of chikungunya on several islands in the Indian Ocean. Since I'm obviously not involved in the actual outbreak investigation, all I have to offer is news reported elsewhere--and it's not exactly been a landslide…
May 24, 2006
Are we always sticking swabs up animals' asses? Why, yes we are.
(More below the fold)
My colleagues teach a summer course on zoonotic diseases. Since influenza is something we study, today we watched (and a few participated in) some wildfowl swabbing and banding. Above is the former: taking…
May 24, 2006
Bora has a giant new Tangled Bank over at Science and Politics. He included 4 of my recent entries (*cough* check's in the mail *cough*) and there are tons of others that look interesting, so check it out. He also took this opportunity to announce that he'll be joining us here at scienceblogs…
May 23, 2006
NBC's science and health correspondent, Robert Bazell, has an opinion piece today on MSNBC: Stop whining about intelligent design.
Scientists should stop whining about threats to the teaching of evolution and spend more time discussing values.
I should note here that most of the piece is strongly…
May 23, 2006
Scary.
A woman is feared to have died from ebola after taking ill on a plane home from Africa yesterday.
Passengers and crew on the flight to Heathrow are understood to be panicking that they have contracted the contagious virus.
They helped the Briton when she was vomiting and bleeding. Some even…
May 23, 2006
Check it out over at Parallel Universes. Again, many good posts over there; in particular, I noticed one on the evolution of the polio virus and how that affects vaccination, and another on how early antibiotic use in children may affect their later development of asthma.
May 22, 2006
In the comments to my post on archaea/eukaryote/prokaryote evolution, John asked:
Is this issue likely to fuel the ID crowd?
Never fear...they're on it. (Via Panda's Thumb; more after the jump).
For those of you who hate to click on anything from Uncommon Descent, here's the meat:
[From a…
May 22, 2006
Razib mentioned here an article in the Boston Globe "which profiles researchers who suggest that variation in gut flora (the mix of bacteria) might be the cause of differences in body weight." The comments are somewhat skeptical, and I started to write a comment on the topic but it became a bit…
May 22, 2006
I've been offline all weekend, and am a day late in mentioning this, but there's a new Pediatric Grand Rounds up over at Blog, MD.
May 21, 2006
Or Saturday roundup, belated. Some interesting stories I didn't have time to cover:
The HPV vaccine, aimed at reducing the incidence of cervical cancer, has moved a step closer to approval.
The Institute of Medicine calls for more research into and oversight of vitamin supplements.
Continuing…
May 20, 2006
Yesterday's Science had a letter to the editor regarding an editorial I mentioned previously (and that was touched on in the comments here as well):
Medicine might benefit most from embracing evolution theory's recognition of individual variation within populations of organisms, a property that…
May 19, 2006
So, archaea are apparently the topic of the week. While I wrote here about the pathogenic potential of some species of these organisms, a new essay in Nature and a new review in Science focus more on their evolution (and the evolution of the other two domains of life) than any health application…
May 19, 2006
Another blog I read has been highlighted in Science Magazine's Netwatch:
WEB LOG: Invasion Chronicles
An outbreak of pine shoot beetles (Tomicus piniperda) has prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture to restrict the export of bark chips and other forest products from Massachusetts, Connecticut…
May 18, 2006
Via coturnix, I found Project Exploration, a non-profit organization "founded in 1999 by University of Chicago paleontologist Dr. Paul Sereno and educator Gabrielle Lyon, to make science accessible to the public-with a special focus on city kids and girls." coturnix has more of the background on…
May 18, 2006
5 Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology staff report brain tumors since mid-April
A Melbourne university has emptied the top floors of one of its buildings after a spate of brain-tumour cases were reported during the past month. Most affected staff worked on the top floor, raising fears that cell…
May 18, 2006
Welcome to the new edition of Animalcules!
First, a few housekeeping notes. If you note the schedule, I've not yet extended it beyond June 1st. I think that, at least for the summer months, Animalcules will be a once-monthly carnival, rather than every other week. If things pick up after that…
May 17, 2006
Blogger reveals China's migratory goose farms near site of flu outbreak
The hypothesis that migratory birds are responsible for spreading avian flu over long distances has taken another knock. Last year, an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain in thousands of migratory birds at Qinghai Lake in…
May 17, 2006
When I was in school, I was taught about the 5 kingdoms of life: Monera (all bacteria), and the eukaryotes: Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia. Since that time, there's been a bit of a change in the organization. This is largely due to investigation of the Archaea (sometimes still referred…
May 17, 2006
Don't forget--if you want a post included in tomorrow's edition of Animalcules, send your entries to me (aetiology AT gmail DOT com) today.
May 17, 2006
So as mentioned elsewhere within the Scienceblogosphere, the Ask a Scienceblogger Question of the week is:
"Will the 'human' race be around in 100 years?"
Short answer: yeah. Long answer: I'm not sure why there were scare quotes around "human" (are we going to mate with cyborgs or something?),…
May 16, 2006
Regular readers know that teaching science is an area of interest. Mike has a post up asking, How would you teach science? He suggests:
I think the problem is that we do a very poor job of teaching the basics. By basics, I mean arithmetic and basic scientific facts. Without that foundation, it is…
May 16, 2006
On a recent episode of the drama House, the medical team finds that a patient improves from his illness when he's infected with a particular species of bacteria, Legionella pneumophila. Though mysterious at the time because the cause of the patient's illness was unknown, it was later determined…
May 16, 2006
Check out this week's best medical-themed blogging over at Doc Around the Clock.
May 15, 2006
I was off this weekend, so I've just now published some of the comments that got caught in the junk filter. My apologies to the authors--contrary to what at least one of you mentioned, I'm not censoring you, and a few comments I agree with also got stuck. Swamped today, but I'll have some new…
May 13, 2006
More topics I'd have liked to discuss, given the time...
The Vigil after Dover. A free public forum, May 17, 2006 8 PM EST at The Florida State University College of Medicine Auditorium. Featuring Eugenie Scott, Michael Ruse, John Haught, Robert Pennock, and others, it will apparently be…
May 12, 2006
A polar bear-grizzly hybrid was found in Canada. My first thought was, "cool!" Then I clicked on the story, and now I'm ticked off, because 1) the bear's dead (why didn't they say it had been shot in the headline? Jerks); 2) the guy paid $45K US for a license to hunt polar bears (and is…
May 12, 2006
Tomorrow is the annual Stamp Out Hunger food collection drive. Sponsored by Campbell's Soup and the National Association of Letter Carriers, this is the largest single-day food drive in the country. You can help by 1) contacting your local post office or mail carrier and see if they're…
May 11, 2006
I very briefly mentioned new research suggesting mercury fillings aren't harmful back here last month. In Saturday's Guardian, Ben Goldacre (who runs the Bad Science blog) had a short article on the topic. In it, he addresses the lack of coverage of the research in the UK media, despite stories…
May 11, 2006
Check it out over at The Second Sight. The theme is "critical thinking crystallized;" very unique!