The first episode of our new science podcast, "This Week in Parasitism", is now available. This Week in Parasitism (TWiP) is a podcast about eukaryotic parasites hosted by Vincent Racaniello and Dick Despommier. Following in the path of their podcast 'This Week in Virology' (TWiV), they strive for an informal ...

Influenza virus may be transmitted among humans in three ways: by direct contact with infected individuals; by contact with contaminated objects (called fomites, such as toys, doorknobs); and by inhalation of virus-laden aerosols. The contribution of each mode to overall transmission of influenza is not known. But something that most ...

Host: Vincent Racaniello On episode #57 of the podcast "This Week in Virology", Vincent visited Scotch Plains - Fanwood High School and talked about viruses with high school biology students. [powerpress url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV057.mp3"] Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #57 (68 MB .mp3, 94 minutes) Subscribe ...

The suggestion that yearly immunization against influenza might make children more susceptible to serious disease during a pandemic has generated some controversy. Does this idea have merit? If you have read Being older is a good defense against 2009 H1N1 influenza, you are familiar with the concept of 'heterosubtypic immunity'. ...

The title of this post should not come as a surprise to readers of virology blog - it was shown in 1974 that zinc could interfere with replication of rhinoviruses (see "Zinc and the common cold"). I am referring to the result of my first experiment to study the mechanism ...