*cough*... it might just be the flu talking!

If you are wondering about the rather diffuse and widely spread nature of recent posts on this blog, folks, then please bear with me for a little while longer. I've been under the cosh (as many of you know since soon after our last Café Scientifique meeting) from this nasty flu that's laying low much of the great Central Valley this February. I hope to be back to regular speed soon - although I'll have a great deal of catching up to do workwise, so the blog may rely more on student postings which should start trickling in faster soon...

And btw, this video from the local ABC affiliate (also linked above) actually shows some of the local incubators where my particular virus probably came from - my younger child's preschool or the older one's elementary!

Of all the great infectious diseases my immune system was primed to handle growing up around Bombay, the flu was the least of anyone's concern as far as I remember, yet here it is decades later knocking me out for weeks in this temperate zone! Go figure!! And maybe one of you students can tell me why the flu might have been less of a worry in the tropics than in the temperate zone.