PLOS Blogs Network

Cultural Comic Books for Educating Asian Americans about Hepatitis B

Viet Le — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:13:59 +0000

There’s the story of a young Chinese American couple planning on getting married, but on the day of the proposal the bride-to-be confesses to her fiance that she has hepatitis B. Then there’s the one about a Korean immigrant family …

Empathy and Risk Assessment

Emily Anthes — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:11:44 +0000

I’m a little behind on my reading, so I only just got to last week’s New Yorker. In it, I discovered a remarkable, thought-provoking essay by superstar psychologist Paul Bloom. It’s called “The Baby in the Well: The …

Demonstrating Progress: Building a More Equitable Global R&D System

PLOS Guest Blogger — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:37:39 +0000

Suerie Moon and John-Arne Røttingen from Harvard University call for WHO member states to embrace new approaches to governing the global research and development system.

This week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, WHO member states are debating how …

This Week in PLOS NTD and PLOS Pathogens: Plant-Virus Ecology; a Genomic Strategy Against P. falciparum; Protective Sand Fly Saliva Proteins; and More

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases — Thu, 23 May 2013 23:05:26 +0000

This Week in PLOS Pathogens:

Wild plants interact with many other living entities such as animals, insects, other plants, as well as their physical environment. They are also often colonized by many microbes, including fungi, bacteria and viruses. In this …

Violence Against Women: Implications for our communities, our world and our future

Shaili Jain, MD — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:39:57 +0000

It is near impossible to escape the commanding news headlines: The horrific details that are emerging about the years of violent captivity of three women in a home in Ohio; The fifteen year old Californian teenager who was allegedly sexually …

University of Geneva hosts Citizen Cyberscience

Caren Cooper — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:33:07 +0000

Citizen Cyberscience was at the honour at the University of Geneva on April 22-23, 2013. Tweets below cover the afternoon talks. Continue reading »

Toms River: A New Classic in Epidemiology Writing

Ricki Lewis, PhD — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:59:14 +0000

This week Larry Lewis, PhD, contributes a book review.

Dan Fagin, director of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University, does a great job in “Toms River” of describing the environmental catastrophe in Toms River, NJ. …

Hairy, Sticky Leg Pads are In: How Different Spiders Hunt

Jyoti Madhusoodanan — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:48:02 +0000

Spiders are everywhere (Arachnophobes, stop reading now). They’re among the most successful predators on earth today and colonize nearly every terrestrial habitat (that is, not just ceiling corners and under beds), and occasionally do so in numbers large enough to …

Gun Control, Woopty Doo!

Paul Simpson — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:41:36 +0000

For someone who was lucky enough to grow up and live in a country where guns aren’t household objects, it is difficult to understand America’s addiction to guns and the political resistance to gun control measures despite support for some …

Bacterium excluded from the Eukaryote Club

Roli Roberts — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:43:08 +0000

It’s something you learn in high school – there are two basic approaches to cellular life – prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) and eukaryotes (the rest of us – aardvarks, amoebae, apricots, etc.). Prokaryotes have an open-plan office, with all biological …