The theme of a recent New Media in Education Conference held at Columbia University was how digital media has reshaped the traditional academic publishing paradigm. I participated in a session entitled ‘New media publishing: Whither the textbook?‘ in which four panelists spoke about their experiences in this area. I spoke about how I use podcasting, …
Recently thousands of dead and decaying pigs were pulled from rivers in Shanghai and Jiaxing, China. Apparently farmers dumped the animals into the water after the pigs became ill. Porcine circovirus has been detected in the in pig carcasses and in the water. Porcine circoviruses are small, icosahedral viruses that were discovered in 1974 as …
In the past five days we released three science shows on the TWi* network. On This Week in Microbiology (TWiM) episode #52, Vincent and Michael meet up with Ellen Jo Baron to talk about working in a clinical microbiology laboratory. On This Week in Parasitism (TWiP) episode #52, Vincent and Dickson review the life cycle and pathogenesis of the giant kidney worm, Dioctophyme …
This week in virology, parasitism, and microbiology Read More »
Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites, which means that they must enter a cell to reproduce. As virions are too large to diffuse passively across the plasma membrane, cellular pathways for uptake of extracellular materials provide entry routes. The first step in entry is adherence of virus particles to the membrane, an interaction mediated by binding …
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen is a radio show co-produced by Public Radio International and WNYC. The show for the week of 8 March 2013 is called ‘Going Viral‘ and includes seven segments entitled ‘Viruses at the movies’, ‘Does your zombie have rabies’, and ‘Playing against the virus’. They did speak with one virologist for …
On episode #223 of the science show This Week in Virology, Vincent, Alan, and Kathy discuss new influenza virus NA inhibitors, detection of EEEV antibody and RNA in snakes, and replication of the coronavirus EMC in human airway epithelial cells. You can find TWiV #223 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.
