The orange-blossom odor of mosquito-borne diseases… actually attracts mosquitoes.
Science News takes a long whiff of a chemical that smells like oranges and flowers that’s given off by people (and other mammals) infected with […]
epidemiology
Science Art: “Ballon à col sinueux employé par M. Pasteur dans ses expériences contre la génération spontanée”, 1873.
This is some laboratory glassware used in Pasteur’s experiments, as illustrated in Les merveilles de l’industrie, an 1873 science book that has a marvelous gallery […]
Got allergic asthma? Congratulations – you’ve also got some COVID-19 protection.
Science News looks at interleukin-13, an immune-system protein linked with allergies that make it hard to breathe – and make it hard for the SARS-CoV-2 […]
Smallpox vaccine got a boost … from skin bacteria.
The-Scientist explores a strange interaction that helped eliminate smallpox without us even noticing. The vaccine that helped eliminate this killer got an extra boost from […]
Multiple sclerosis is triggered by the mononucleosis virus – they proved it.
Scientific American hails a breakthrough in fighting MS with the definitive discovery that the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes mononucleosis and which 95% of American adults […]
The new COVID19 pill works by creating mutations. This has some virologists worried.
Science covers the controversy around Merck’s new antiviral pill, molnupiravir, which definitely interferes with viruses’ ability to reproduce, which kills nearly all infections … but […]
Bees trained to detect COVID can speed up testing.
Reuters has a sweet story on honeybees that have been trained by Wim van der Poel at Wageningen University to expect a treat every time […]
Science Art: A quarantine safeguards health…, 1936.
Click to embiggen This is how public health was handled in the days before a lot of diseases were considered “eradicated.” It’s from The Body […]
The same genes that protect against Ebola also protect against COVID-19.
The Scientist has some satisfying news to ring in the New Year. The same genetic mechanism that boosts immunity to one lethal pandemic – the […]
Coronavirus has reached Antarctica
Reuters reports on the inevitable – COVID-19 has finally been carried to a research station in the Antarctic, breaking out in more than 30 people […]
Hygiene theater: All the hand sanitizer in the world is kinda beside the point.
The Atlantic looks at the problem with the way public responses to the pandemic have evolved into rituals that look “disinfecting” but really aren’t nearly […]
New COVID hypothesis: not bat meat, but bat mines.
Guano mining is a real thing, and a really fascinating thing. And sometimes a really dangerous thing, too. The Bioscience Resource Project revisits the case […]
Best COVID outcomes were where people stayed home on their own, cell phone data shows.
The Lancet looks at pandemic spread in the U.S. and finds that the places that seem to respond the best took precautions and stayed home […]
The world’s second-deadliest Ebola outbreak just ended.
Nature has some good news about an infectious disease – the outbreak that had killed 2,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo appears to […]
New York’s coronavirus outbreak came from Europe, not China.
The New York Times looks at two different batches of genetic data which both indicate that shutting down travel from China didn’t actually affect the […]