If you’ve browsed the refrigerated section of your local natural foods store lately, you probably noticed a big case full of kombucha where the bottled water used to be. Kombucha is a fermented sweetened black tea that comes in lots…
I had chicken pox when I was 8 years old. This was before there was a vaccine for varicella zoster, the virus that causes chicken pox. When I was growing up everyone got the virus and it made you feel…
This year for Halloween, why not celebrate Marie Curie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize? The good news (for you, not for her) is that she died a gruesome death as a result of exposure to the radioactive…
I have been looking forward to seeing the movie Contagion since it came out last year and I finally got to see it last night. I am a big fan of outbreak/apocalypse/zombie-type movies and, since I’m an immunologist, I thought…
Normally, the term “dead whale” reminds me of long, tedious hours slogging through Moby Dick or sad images of beached or slaughtered animals, but a “whale fall” is a whole ‘nother beast. When dead whales fall to the bottom of…
Happy DNA Day!!!! So, it’s April 20th and you want to celebrate DNA day, but aren’t sure how? What about making chocolate smoothies in honor of Alfred Hershey and Barbara Chase, the rockin’ scientists whose experiment finally convinced everybody that…
Every December the Georgia Tech School of Biology has a holiday party with one of those never ending gift swaps. Most of the presents are silly, and you never know if you are going to wind up taking home…