Belinda Smith
speaker
2,605 appearances
27 recordings
4 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 3d ago
Belinda Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 27 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.
Appearances
And the present theme is Northern Queensland.
Why?
Well, there's a centre of excellence at the James Cook University, particularly using indigenous knowledge as a source of ideas and to apply to creating a local industry to help everybody in so many ways.
Meet PhD student Deanne Walter and Professor Alec Lucas, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine.
And they're worms.
Tell me, what are we looking at?
There's a screen, so we're not seeing them directly, but they're looking like several elegant worms wriggling around.
What are they?
The human hookworm, and you said the rat worm.
So they're all in there, in that glass.
Why have you got them?
I must say on the screen they look rather elegant, but I'll move slightly away to where Alex is.
Alex, what's the main project going on here?
We have a number of interests in parasitic worms, particularly in hookworms, which is what you're looking at here.
Our interest really circles around what we refer to as the secretome of the worms, all the molecules that they secrete out of particularly their mouth or their anterior end.
And in an infected rat or in an infected human,
such as myself with the human hookworm, the worms bury their anterior end or their head with these beautiful mouth parts that they have that have cutting plates or teeth, depending on the species, and they latch on to the gut wall very much like a leech.
And they do that because they suck blood.
These worms feed on blood and the adult stage of the worm that lives in the small bowel is about one centimetre long.
So they have a voracious appetite for blood.
Showing 2381–2400 of 2,605 · page 120 of 131
← Previous
Next →