Contagions Round-up 12: Friends, Romans, and Microbes Naturally

Kristina Killgore of Powered by Osteons looks at oxygen isotopes as a marker for sickle cell disease, gets excited over the discovery of a very full Roman latrine, and a pyramid of 16-18th century corpses in Roccapelago, Italy.
Katy Meyer of Bones Don’t Lie has a post on the highs and lows of being a Roman Gladiator. and a post on Charnel houses (for bone storage)
Four Stone Hearth, the anthropology carnival, has a new home here.
Krystal D’Costa of Anthropology in Practice has a post up on the coolness of being a girl geek and another on digital archaeology at Internet Week.
Bamburgh Research Project began its excavation season last week and they are posting regular updates here.
Antiquarian’s Attic writes about the discovery of unusual round hut foundations found inside the Roman fort at Vindolanda.
and I wrote about the infected lice plaguing Napoleon’s troops on the Russian campaign.

The Giant’s Shoulder’s , the history of science carnival, was hosted by Michael Barton’s The Dispersal of Darwin blog. He also has links to Darwin’s Virtual Library.
Jaipreet Virdi of From the Hands of Quacks finishes her Monday series on Constructing the Naked (Social) Body this week.
The History of Vaccines Blog celebrates 90 years of the Tuberculosis BCG vaccine.
William Eamon of Labrynth of Nature brings us the story of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, a Spanish naturalist in the New World.
Magistra et Mater brings us the problem of barbarian women in early medieval lawcodes.
Tim Clarkson of Senchus writes about the likelihood of the exiled prince Oswald living at Dunaverty during his time among the Scots.
Curt Emanuel, THE Medieval History Geek, finishes his review of Peter Heather’s Empires and Barbarians with a few thorny issues.
Jonathan Jarrett of A Corner of Tenth Century Europe jumps into the gene pool of the Iberian peninsula and takes us back to his favorite places in along the Spanish frontier.
Guy Halstall of Historian on the Edge is grappling with the ethnics of being a historian and climbs a little further up the ivory tower with his response to critics, and then tries to explain a little better again.

Maryn McKenna of Superbug is reporting on how Minnesota’s public health budget cuts could jeopardize the food safety of the nation and reviews the latest scientific reports and news on the German E.coli outbreak.
Connar Bamford of the Rule of 6ix updates us on recent use on the use of viruses in anti-cancer therapy.
Siouxsie Wiles of Infectious Thoughts asks us to rethink our HPV vaccination strategy.
Tara Smith of Aetiology writes about the use of social media by epidemiologists and a four part series on the history of hemolytic uremic syndrome, a major complication of the E. coli outbreak in Germany, the first post can be found here.
James of Disease Prone writes about the anti-cancer properties of some fungi and another on Chagas disease.
Christine Goforth, the Dragonfly Woman, has restarted her dragonfly swarm project and is looking for volunteer spotters. She will have Swarm Sunday reports each week. She also have posts on June bugs and another on diving spiders. I swear as I was reading the diving spider post I kept thinking of the bubble head charm…
Captain Skellett of A Schooner of Science brings us a odd tale of the reporting on genetically engineered ‘transgender’ goats.
Kevin of We, Beasties writes about the science of tattoos and science tattoos.
Jennifer Fraser of An Artful Amoeba has a guest post on Scientific American blogs on When Cells Discovered Architecture and a post on her blog on Fungi in Motion.