Tara C. Smith
Associate Professor, lab rat (microbiologist/infectious disease epidemiologist) and occasional blogger, full-time nerd.
tsmith
Posts by this author
February 29, 2008
I really need more time to fill in a gap in my microbiology education: environmental microbiology. I run across papers all the time that are absolutely fascinating, and wish I had a free year to just take some additional coursework in this area. For instance, a paper in today's Science magazine…
February 28, 2008
Just wanted to say how appreciative I am to those of you who took the time to read and/or comment on this week's guest posts from my students. Though a few of them did take part in the comments section (something I didn't require), I know that they were all following along and appreciated the…
February 27, 2008
This is the sixth of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By Ousmane Diallo
I was dumbfounded when I read this news article relating HPV to the increase of lip and oral cancers because of oral sex.
It reminded me my younger years, as a med student, debating with my professor of…
February 27, 2008
This is the fifth of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By Rachel Kirby
There are about 500,000 (or approx 1 in 544 people) in the United States who suffer from Crohn's disease, and is most prevalent in both men and women between the ages of 20-30. Crohn's Disease is an…
February 26, 2008
As part of his ongoing series of interviews following the 2007 Science blogging conference, Bora today has his Q&A with yours truly.
February 26, 2008
This is the fourth of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By David Massaquoi
Working in public health is an interesting and satisfying job. Adding infectious disease investigation to such task makes the job not only difficult but the challenges of encountering numerous disease…
February 26, 2008
This is the third of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By Whitney Baker
While working out at the gym last night, I was perusing the latest SHAPE magazine to help pass the time. In it, I read a small article about researchers finding an association between Adenovirus-36 and…
February 25, 2008
This is the second of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
By Courtney Cook
Scientists have been aware of a relationship between infections and mental illnesses for quite some time. For example, during the 1918 influenza pandemic, some patients were seen to exhibit a delirium…
February 25, 2008
This is the first of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease.
by Matthew Fitzgerald
Viruses cause cancer?
Cancer researchers have for decades known that viruses can cause cancer. It is now estimated that 15% of the world's cancers are caused by infectious diseases including viruses…
February 24, 2008
...my grad students.
My spring semester course is on infectious causes of chronic disease, looking at the role various infections play in cancer, autoimmune disease, mental illness, and other chronic conditions. Since I've often discussed the importance of having scientists communicate with the…
February 23, 2008
I received a very nice email from a high school student looking for a mentor for a research project on progeria:
Currently, I'm in a science research program at school where we choose a topic of interest and study it for a period of three years, as well as design an experiment and carry it out…
February 22, 2008
I write about zoonoses (diseases transmitted between animals and humans) quite a bit here, but I don't think I've ever written about animal-human sex. Here at Scienceblogs, though, you never know what you'll find, and colleague Darren Naish has a post about, well, traumatic anal intercourse with a…
February 21, 2008
I've written previously how people will do crazy things for aesthetics. I know some would consider any tattoo in this category; I can't since I have a few myself. However, I'd never heard of a 3D tattoo before. I don't mean just the art appears to make the tattoo stand out and look 3-dimensional…
February 21, 2008
Last fall I wrote about the bizarre case of University of Pittsburgh geneticist Robert Ferrell. Dr. Ferrell, you may recall, had been prosecuted for sharing generally-harmless strains of bacteria with a colleague, SUNY-Buffalo art professor Steven Kurtz. Dr. Kurtz then used the bacterial cultures…
February 12, 2008
Four cases of measles have now been confirmed at a San Diego charter school--the first reported outbreak of measles in school-age kids in that city in 17 years. Unsurprising twist:
None of the children, including the one most recently reported with the disease, has been vaccinated.
New…
February 11, 2008
Well, it sure is Monday. 2 grant decisions back, no money. In the meantime, I'm up to my ears in bacteria samples, so I'll send you over to the LA Times, where they have an entertaining pair of stories: The Science of the Orgasm, and Call him Doctor "Orgasmatron:"
He was in the operating room…
February 8, 2008
The fever hit suddenly in the form of a piercing headache and painful sensitivity to light, like looking into a white sun. At that point, the patient could still hope that it was not yellow fever, maybe just a headache from the heat. But the pain worsened, crippling movement and burning the skin…
February 7, 2008
It's not certain there will be a decision immediately, though:
From the Iowa State Daily:
The Iowa Board of Regents will meet Thursday to discuss the tenure denial appeal of Guillermo Gonzalez, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State, at its regional meeting on the ISU campus.…
February 5, 2008
Joshua Lederberg passed away on Saturday.
Joshua Lederberg, Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist who shaped the field of bacterial genetics, and served as chair of The Scientist's advisory board since 1986, died on Saturday (February 2). He was 82.
Lederberg shared a Nobel Prize in physiology…
February 5, 2008
I mentioned previously a clash between religion and public health, where a Liberian immigrant was jailed for importing bushmeat. She argued that infringing upon her religious freedom in this manner was unconstitutional; authorities argued that she couldn't put others at risk because of her…
January 31, 2008
You're probably familiar with the Seinfeld episode where George commits yet another social faux pas, getting caught "double-dipping" a tortilla chip. Just in time for your Superbowl festivities, turns out a soon-to-be-published manuscript (described in the New York Times) examined just how many…
January 29, 2008
Yesterday I mentioned the controversy over needle exchange programs as an analogy to the objection the administration has to providing heroin anti-OD kits containing Narcan to drug users. In a bit of good timing, the LA Times has an article about a 73-year-old HIV+ lay preacher, of all people, who…
January 28, 2008
An ongoing outbreak of Salmonella associated with turtles has now sickened more than 100 and caused a quarter of that number to be hospitalized:
Cases have been reported in 33 states, but mostly in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Most of the patients have been children.
No one has…
January 28, 2008
Via new acquaintance Tom Levinson of the Inverse Square blog comes an all-too-familiar story of our "compassionate conservative" administration putting their own morality above proven public health programs:
Fact 1: public health officials around the country...are distributing rescue kits […
January 25, 2008
A few months back, I blogged about World Rabies Day, noting that this virus is still a huge public health threat in many areas of the world. A few weeks ago, biologist Olivia Judson wrote a post on a potential "coffin for rabies" on her New York Times blog, describing more about the reality of…
January 23, 2008
Though there still may be some lingering doubt about the cause of the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of plague, the pathogen behind the outbreaks that have taken place in the last 150 years or so is much less ambiguous.
While Koch and Pasteur ushered in the golden age of microbiology, an…
January 21, 2008
As I mentioned previously, I spent the weekend in North Carolina discussing blogging, science, medicine, and other sundry topics with about 200 other bloggers and interested folks at the 2008 Science Blogging Conference. The sessions were excellent, and I loved the "unconference" format. Science…
January 18, 2008
In parts one and two of the "What caused the Black Plague?" series, I discussed objections that had been raised to the conclusion that the bacterium Yersinia pestis was the cause of this pandemic, and the weaknesses with those criticisms. In today's installation, I'll discuss actual molecular…
January 17, 2008
Yesterday I introduced criticisms that have been raised against Y. pestis causation of the Black Death and subsequent plague outbreaks. Today I'll discuss what I see as weaknesses in these criticisms, after the jump.
Selective quoting and interpretation of evidence
First and foremost, a big…
January 16, 2008
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has taken up residence in sport teams, prisons, schools, the military, and even swine. A new article in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that, at least in Boston and San Francisco, it's also causing a lot of infections in men who have sex…