Infectious Thoughts

Just who are these SciFunders anyway?

Siouxsie Wiles • May 03, 2012

• crowdfunding,
• scifund

Just over 48 hours in and the SciFunders have so far raised nearly 30,000 US dollars for their research. Want to know who these SciFunders are? Here they are! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efQeEo_uMCg&feature=youtube_gdata … Read More

SciFund Challenge – Day 1!

Siouxsie Wiles • May 03, 2012

• crowd funding,
• evolution,
• microbiology,
• scifund

What a start to round 2 of the SciFund Challenge. Over 18,000 dollars raised for science so far! How about the stats for my project Evolution In Action? The last 24ish hours have seen 15 contributors donating $840 to support my research — that puts me at a third of the way to my target! A special thanks go … Read More

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Round 2 of the SciFund Challenge is now live!

Siouxsie Wiles • May 01, 2012

• bacteria,
• bioluminescence,
• crowd funding,
• evolution,
• Infectious Diseases,
• scifund

I’ll be spending the next 31 days trying to raise money for my research using the crowd funding model on the RocketHub platform, where contributors exchange small donations (in the 10-100 dollar ballpark) in return for ‘rewards’. As a microbiologist who makes glow-in-the-dark bacteria for a living, my rewards are things like sending donors a picture of their name … Read More

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Crowdfunding science: The SciFund Challenge

Siouxsie Wiles • Apr 11, 2012

• crowdfunding,
• Jai Ranganathan,
• Jarrett Byrnes,
• petridish,
• RocketHub,
• scifund

In late 2011, two ecologists from the US National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in California embarked on an exciting experiment: to see if the crowdfunding model [1] successfully used by ‘Creatives’ [2] could be applied to funding science. And enthuse the general public about science in the process. Dr. Jai Ranganathan and Dr. Read More

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Coming soon: more science crowdfunding

Siouxsie Wiles • Apr 08, 2012

• crowdfunding,
• evolution,
• scifund

Round 2 of the SciFund Challenge starts in May Next month scientists from all over the world will be taking their passion to the masses to raise money for science. And I’m one of them! Here is a little teaser for my project. Watch this space…. Find out more about the SciFund Challenge here. Read More

Antibiotics and asthma

Siouxsie Wiles • Mar 19, 2012

• antibiotics,
• asthma,
• Brett Finlay,
• OVA

Administering antibiotics in infancy leads to enhanced susceptibility to asthma At least in mice. Brett Finlay and colleagues, at the University of British Columbia, report in the journal EMBO Reports that treating baby mice with the antibiotic vancomycin not only changed the types of bacteria found in the gut, but was also associated with an increased susceptibility to … Read More

Glow sushi!

Siouxsie Wiles • Mar 18, 2012

• Auckland University,
• David Tobin,
• Don Love,
• fluorescence,
• fluorescent proteins,
• GFP,
• GloFish,
• jellyfish,
• Lalita Ramakrishnan,
• Mycobacterium marinum,
• Mycobacterium tuberculosis,
• sushi,
• TB,
• tuberculosis,
• World TB Day,
• zebrafish

When I first heard of this (and thanks to the lovely Alan Huett for the heads up), I immediately thought it was due to the common bioluminescent bacteria often found on fish and which can show themselves if said fish is left too long before eating. It turns out to be sushi made using genetically modified fluorescent zebrafish … Read More

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Vitamin C: Primal panacea? Yeah, right!

Siouxsie Wiles • Mar 07, 2012

• Capital University of Integrative Medicine,
• CUIM,
• panacea,
• paul callaghan,
• Ponsonby News,
• Thomas E levy,
• Vitamin C

Those that know me, know I regularly rant about the bastion of local journalism that is the Ponsonby News, a whopping 150 page A4 magazine which lands free in my letter box every month (except January when they take a well earned rest…), one of almost 17,000 distributed around Auckland’s inner suburbs. The Ponsonby News is essentially an enormous advertising … Read More

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Emotive hysteria trumps opportunity to educate (now there’s a surprise!)

Siouxsie Wiles • Mar 05, 2012

• 3Rs,
• Alison Ballance,
• animals,
• Margo White,
• Matthew Haggart,
• NAEAC,
• NZ Herald,
• NZ Listener,
• Otago Daily Times,
• Our Changing World,
• Radio New Zealand National,
• research,
• Richard Blaikie,
• three Rs,
• University of Otago

University’s death toll – 25,000 animals in two years So screams the front page of the print version of the March 5th edition of the New Zealand Herald (online here). The story was originally written by Matthew Haggart for the Otago Daily Times and concerns the statistics on animal use for research and teaching at the University of … Read More

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Survival of the brightest

Siouxsie Wiles • Mar 04, 2012

• bacteria,
• bioluminescence,
• Margarita Zarubin,
• marine,
• zooplankton

Regular readers will be well aware of my obsession with bioluminescence, that beautiful light produced by things like fireflies and glow worms. So I was excited to see this paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Margarita Zarubin and colleagues have discovered why so many non-symbiotic marine bacteria are bioluminescent. It turns out that … Read More

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