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
It's a new year, and it will be a busy one here in Iowa when it comes to evolutionary biology. I want to highlight two upcoming events: Iowa City's first annual Darwin Day celebration featuring a lecture by Massimo Pigliucci, and an upcoming symposium on evolution and intelligent design,…
It's been quite awhile since I've had a real vacation. Most of my "vacations" are spent traveling back and forth to relatives' and friends' houses, and this Christmas holiday has been no exception. After a jaunt to Ohio to visit family, I'm currently in the metro D. C. area visiting a friend, and…
Hadn't even realized this was ongoing, but the 2006 Medical Weblog Awards are underway. Nominate your favorite medical blog here; several Sciencebloggers have already been mentioned, but spread the love.
Set up as a tribute to the late Carl Sagan, the latest Skeptics' Circle is up at Humbug Online.
Ho ho ho, and welcome to the early Christmas edition of Animalcules. Sit back, grab some hot cocoa, and click below to open your Christmas gift of some of the most interesting microbiology-themed blog posts over the past month.
To start us off with, in a new blog to me (the Cornell Mushroom blog…
The latest Tangled Bank is up over at Salto Sobrius, a new Encephalon can be found hosted by Evil Monkey at Neurotopia, and the latest Feminist's Carnival can be found over at the imponderabilia of actual life. And while you're blog carnival-ing, don't forget to send along entries for tomorrow's…
Apologies. I scheduled this post to appear this morning, and it's drawn a few comments. However, it also double-posted for some reason (we underwent an upgrade last night so things have been a bit wonky), and when I unpublished the duplicate, it also took the comments from the site. (I can see…
After the discussion here and elsewhere in yonder blogosphere about women and stereotyping, Cornelia Dean in the New York Times writes about recent meeting aimed at helping women advance in science, where bias still rages.
This fall, female scientists at Rice University here gathered promising…
Libya to execute HIV medics
(Previous posts on the topic)
A court convicted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor Tuesday of deliberately infecting 400 children with HIV and sentenced them to death, despite scientific evidence the youngsters had the virus before the medical workers came…
...okay, dog. A certain beagle and his friends are featured in this week's Grand Rounds, hosted over at Nurse Ratched's Place. And, while you're in a Christmas blog carnival mood, don't forget to drop me a post for this month's belated edition of Animalcules--send them to aetiology at gmail dot…
Via Stranger Fruit comes this gorgeous shot of an aurora over Des Moines, Iowa.
This month's Seed magazine contains a feature on the year in science at Scienceblogs, complete with a "class photo." See if you can find your favorite sciencebloggers...
So, razib relates a recent observation of the apparently rare species hottus chicas scientificas at a local wine bar. Shelley's ticked:
Not sure whether to be more irked that Razib suggests that smart women aren't hot (and vice versa), that hot women don't like sci fi, or than sci fi somehow…
Today's New England Journal of Medicine has an article (free access) with more information on the Tripoli Six, who are still awaiting their December 19th verdict.
I know some of you out there have written some microbiology-related posts, so be sure to send them along to me (aetiology AT gmail DOT com) tonight for inclusion in tomorrow's edition of Animalcules.
[Update: I've only received a few entries, so I'm going to try this next week for a Christmas…
If the last circumcision post caused a lot of heat, this news is likely to cause even more of an uproar worldwide. From NBC News comes word that the NIH will be announcing shortly that they're stopping two trials looking at circumcision and HIV in Africa, because the intervention group (those who…
I've written previously about how it's a bad idea to import exotic pets, after "exotic" African species of small animals were imported into the United States and housed alongside prairie dogs that were also to be sold as pets. The African animals brought along with them their own diseases,…
It's that time again. The December edition of Animalcules will go live this coming Thursday, here at Aetiology. Send your entires to me: aetiology at gmail.com by Wednesday evening. Also be sure to check out today's Grand Rounds over at Anxiety, Addiction, and Depression Treatments.
As I've been busy this week, other Sciencebloggers (with Revere leading the fray and more posts here) have updated everyone on the newest developments in the case of the Tripoli Six (previous update here), the six medical workers on trial for their lives in Libya, accused of spreading HIV to more…
Aka, the 49th Skeptics' Circle, and it's a serious piece of work. Even if you don't normally hit the carnival links, you really oughta check this one out--I don't even want to think about how much time was put into this one.
In the comments to my Republicans want to legislate when fetuses feel pain" post, David notes:
What really gets me is if they were interested in preventing abortion, the most effective way seems to be by providing people with the tools and education to not get pregnant in the first place. If they…
GOP wants law to define when fetuses feel pain
While they still can, House Republicans are looking at scheduling a vote next week on a fetal pain abortion bill in a parting shot at incoming majority Democrats and a last bid for loyalty from the GOP's base of social conservatives.
***
The bill, by…
Revere over at Effect Measure has an excellent post linking together the current bird flu situation with John Snow's investigations of 19th century cholera outbreaks. It's an interesting take on the situation--check it out.
Esther Lederberg dies at 83
Stanford University microbiologist Esther Miriam Zimmer Lederberg, a trailblazer for female scientists and the developer of laboratory techniques that helped a generation of researchers understand how genes function, has died at Stanford Hospital.
Professor Lederberg,…
Welcome to the newest edition of Pediatric Grand Rounds. Grab a chair, get comfortable, and take a gander at the latest blogging in the field of pediatrics.
The dish in the blogosphere
First, the hottest topic of the week (at least, from the collection of posts submitted here): environmental…
Via Dynamics of Cats comes notice that two frequently-cited bloggers on Scienceblogs.com, Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance and Jennifer of Cocktail Party Physics, are gettin' hitched. Two bloggers in love...could anything be cuter? A collective "awww" is in order, I think--congrats!
I'm traveling tonight and tomorrow to take the kids and myself back to Ohio for Thanksgiving (props to U of Iowa for not having any classes next week), so my internet access will be limited. So this is the last call for submissions for Pediatrics Grand Rounds, which I'll write up Saturday…
PZ and others have already blogged about this, but since it deals with public health in a big way, I thought I'd give it a mention here as well. Seems Bush has made yet another highly questionable appointment in the Department of Health and Human Services. Shocking, I know.
The Bush…
Check it out over at Bamhaus, and much thanks to Andreas for hosting this month's carnival. If anyone wans to volunteeer for future months, be sure to drop me a line; next edition will be Thursday, December 14th and is looking for a good home.
I was just lecturing yesterday on streptococci, and discussing how the diseases caused by the group A streptococcus (Streptococcus pyogenes). This is the bacterium that causes diseases as varied as "strep throat," streptococcal toxic shock syndrome, and necrotizing fasciitis (aka the "flesh-…