Rabies – You duded up, egg-suckin’ gutter trash.

   

Dance! Come on! Come on, runt! You can dance better than that! (Photo taken by Thomas Tu)

Imagine an airplane. Good. Also imagine that a small metal shaving has lodged itself into a mechanism of the air-conditioning so that pieces of metal are fed into the spinning fans. This produces a huge pile of identically-shaped metal shavings; some fly off into the electronics bay. The size, shape and composition of the shaving is exactly so that the navigation is subtly, but precisely changed to cause the plane to veer ridiculously close to other planes. Cargo bay doors are also sabotaged, opening up and releasing a payload of metal shavings over other planes, hoping that one will lodge in the exact same place in its air-conditioning unit to start the cycle over again.   

This sounds completely ludicrous, but the complexity is on par with what rabies virus exhibits every single day in its hosts around the world. How the hell does it does this?

Mad Cow Disease aka Bonkers Beef!

Recently I’ve noticed our posts have strayed from talking about diseases to being about the causative agents themselves. We’ve looked at bacteria and viruses and then shown the diseases they cause. Instead of doing the other way around as was originally intended. Based on this we should re-name the blog ‘Pathogen/Microbe/Thing we want talk about of the Week!’, but it doesn’t have a very good ring to it…

To put things right, and because ‘Mad Cow Disease’ is very cool in its own right, we will return to a disease for our topic this week, rather than another bacteria or virus.

Why would you eat at a café that advertises itself with a mad cow? I wouldn’t go there even if the disease didn’t exist…

We Are Family, Come On And Jump On Facebook With Me!

Following the prompting of friends and co-workers we have started a Facebook group for the blog! Thomas will be handling this so if you join up we can send you info regarding upcoming articles, competitions and our secret location where, if you find us, we will be handing out icy cold cans of cola till 3pm! So clicky the linky and join our group and be our (virtual yet still real) friend!

Facebook Group of DOTW!

A sick man coughs – An anthropomorphisation of an influenza virus

Hey guys, this week I was thought I’d write some original material for a change, rather than just reposting old stuff that I’d submitted to On Dit. This is a  short prose on the point of view of an influenza virus that I’d written in the last couple of weeks. I’ve tried to make sure that some science was still in there in some easy-to-understand format, but if something doesn’t make sense, either send me an E-mail or comment in the thread.

  

(Picture taken by Thomas Tu)

 

She is torn away. Like the snapping of a ripcord, her proteinaceous ties to the undulating surface of the cell surface are clipped. She is freed to be jostled violently by the Brownian currents of the syrupy extracellular fluid. They get her nowhere, not that it matters; she has nothing to do, no one to meet, no place to be. Circumstances have pulled her together; they will probably break her apart. 

Insect Death and the ‘Angel Glow’

Who said DoTW! could only do human diseases? Why are you so special huh? Insects get sick too and someone has to care. I care. Also, by showing some sympathy about insect diseases maybe I will survive the invasion and subsequent enslavement of the human race by our most welcome and superior Insect Lords. I pledge to humbly serve thee.

Feed my Lord, grow strong

What do YOU think about DotW?

Hey kids, I told you before that I was going to submit two posts this weekend. I was even going to talk about viruses and stuff. Instead, it’s too hot to do anything thinky, so I’m going to ask you guys for some feedback. Reply in the comments section. Questions below the jump.

Do the keyboardy thing and write to me your deepest, darkest thoughts. (Photo taken by Thomas Tu)

As incentive, I’ll be rolling a dN (where N = the number of comments) and awarding one of you a prize that I haven’t thought up yet, in a week’s time. But it’ll be awesome.

Hepatitis B virus – Remember the vacuum cleaner

This week I’ll be puting up two posts because I like the look of you, kid. First up is actually a repost of my Advertiser article (a similar version of which had also been published in an issue of the Adelaide University student rag On Dit  2007) on my pet virus Hepatitis B virus. I only got one piece of feedback and that was from a Mrs. Fay Towill.

Remember the vacuum cleaner. (Photo taken by Thomas Tu)

Mrs. Towill rang me up at work and also thought it necessary to send me about 50 pages of her own research, including: some highlighted and annotated interpretations of The Quran (specifically bits concerning jihad and hypocrisy); photocopies of other science-related articles (concerning fish sex changes and pain pill addiction); photocopied letters from the office of The Hon Jane Lomax Smith MP and Sir Mark Oliphant (from 1986); and some pages on phycho (sic) physics. I now present to you, the reader, her annotated copy of my article. It’s fairly amazing. You can download it as a .pdf down the bottom of this article or just read on pass the jump for a typed out copy.

Whooping Cough – the disease that takes your breath away

Bordetella pertussis is the bacteria responsible for Pertussis, more commonly known as Whooping Cough and recently responsible for keeping a good proportion of my in-laws quarantined.

Shameless Self Promotion

I don’t think Thomas or I have ever pretended to be good people so it should come as no surprise that if an oppourtunity for us to promote ourselves comes along we will grab it with both hands.

The Advertiser, Adelaide’s daily newspaper, has started to upload a column found in a weekly liftout. Both of us have written for this column, called ‘Can You Believe It?!’, and if you are interested move past the jump and follow the links to some of our pieces that have found thier way online.

Syphilis – or how love drives people crazy

Someone (I’ve forgotten who) gave me Syphilis for my birthday (Picture taken by Thomas Tu)

Craaaazy for feeeeling… someone else

Syphilis is a well-known STD (sexually transmitted disease) because it has a funny-looking name and because it infected an estimated 11.8 million people in 1999 alone. Its street names include: “The Syph”; “The Great Pox”, distinguishing it from the other pox that was going around, smallpox; and “Disease that your mum has #17”.