• Hitting an Invisible Target in TB Vaccine Design

    I have a troubled relationship with Twitter. It’s an unredeemable hate sort of thing. I’m generally an inane mix of angry opinion and low self-esteem so, in theory, we’re perfect for each other. I just don’t feel it, though. I had a quick look for online videos in the same vein of the YouTube...
  • Finding Beauty in the Macabre

    In a small chapel just outside Prague, a chandelier made from every bone in the human body hangs from a garland of skulls like the world's creepiest wind-chime. Nearby, a coat of arms features an almost comical bone bird—its wings a human hand and its neck a gnarled vertebrae—that pecks at a...
  • Middle of the Road Pays for Pathogens

    To understand why infectious diseases make us ill, it helps to consider disease from the pathogen’s point of view. Bacteria, viruses and parasites did not evolve simply to cause illness and suffering; virulence is simply a by-product of a pathogen’s fight for survival. Because an infectious...
  • Blame the Europeans

    You know when you drive an unfamiliar car and you have to find your way round all these knobs and buttons to make the car go in the direction you want it to go in? M. tuberculosis has the same problem when it comes to the human immune system. This can make things tricky as it’s a pathogen that...
  • Rebranding Tuberculosis

    If infectious diseases were monsters, what would they look like? I imagine malaria would be a terrible mosquito-like creature made of bones, with a wickedly sharp proboscis and a throbbing gut of fiery red blood. Diarrhoeal disease would rise from a swamp of sewage, grinning with its skull’s jaw...
  • Lag phase adapts bacteria to new environments

    Forgotten to defrost the chicken overnight in the fridge? That’s fine—you can leave it to thaw at room temperature, right? It will be quicker, after all… But, within just a few hours, the tiny bacteria hiding in frozen food such as chicken, beef or that left over Chinese takeaway can start to...

Tuesday, 26 March 2013

If you see a baby seat left by the side of the road, DO NOT STOP!!! Local police have released a warning that criminal gangs are using this ruse to lure women into stopping their cars to check on the baby. The location of the car seat will usually be beside a wooded area, and the woman will be dragged out of view of the road,...

Saturday, 23 March 2013

  My theory? Gregg Wallace and John Torode have been replaced with automata programmed with a set number of nonsensical phrases and the ability to construct strings of adjectives that would be better suited to an erotic novel. But Masterchef is a bit like the boy who cried wolf. There is only so many times...