Capsular Polysaccharide and Pneumococcal Disease

This week looking at the capsular polysaccharide of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Want to know how I know? I wrote it :)

Insert stock photo of pneumo. Check.

It seems a little wrong to blog my own paper but in reality more people will read this blog entry than will read the paper itself, and that’s fine. Its relevance is very narrow and the work very preliminary but really it’s the drive behind the work that is important. So lets talk about Streptococcus pneumoniae (aka the pneumococcus or simply pneumo) for a second to set the scene.

Welcome Canterbury Students!!!

I put up a post a few weeks ago about the double disaster to hit Queensland. First a devastating flood and then a tropical cyclone of all things! Well things haven’t let up for the southern hemisphere. On the 22 of February a massive and devastating earthquake rocked Christchurch, New Zealand the largest city on the south island with a population of 376,000, breaking the city in half.

Damage to the iconic Christchurch Cathedral // Crown Copyright 2011, NZ Defence Force

Money for Kittehs and Puppehs!

I've never asked for money on the blog and I never will, for me anyway. I've always blogged for the fun of it and to improve my writing skills etc. etc.

But this post is a little different, because of this guy.

Micky

What a week!!!

I have grown accustomed to the largely monotonous and repetitive life of a PhD student recently. Wake up, go to Uni, set up experiment, experiment fail, go home, sleep, rinse and repeat ad infinitum. But this week has been different.

There is significantly less Kung Fu in science than I was led to believe. Turns out its mostly repetitive bench work.

Third hand smoking - Can we ban this poison already?

I’m not going to write a post on why smoking is bad, it’s too obvious and if you don’t understand why then your probably never going to find this post anyway. I’m not even going to talk about second hand smoking, ie. blowing your death cloud at me on the street. Again it’s obvious why it’s bad and may even be worse than smoking the cigarette itself as second hand smokers don’t get the benefit of a filter. No, this post is about third hand smoking, a fun new way smokers can harm those around them long after they have butted out.

Yeah. That looks healthy.

Flooding and disease

I’m not sure what the coverage has been like overseas but most of the east coast of Australia has been hit pretty hard. First there were biggest floods Australia has seen for a VERY long time that started in Queensland and continue to affect the east cost of Australia. Then, instead of letting Queensland off the hook for a few weeks nature hit the coast with a cyclone THE SIZE OF THE U.S.A. that might move so far inland that it could dump rain into my state, which is a desert, halfway across our island continent.

Shoutout

I strongly suggest you go read two very good posts I came across today.

The first by my friend Thomas at Disease of the Week is about leprosy in all its glory and celebrating World Leprosy Day! He's a funny guy and leprosy is always fun to read about.

The second is by FoS blogger Emily Willingham. A great piece on woo and oversimplification of science in the media specifically referring to the 'link' between having your children's tonsils out and your children becoming overweight. Apparently this common surgery is extending the childhood obesity epidemic. Well not really.

I have nothing more today, just liked these posts and thought I would share them :).