Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/African sleeping sickness

  • Pregnancy 101: Peas made me puke, but not just in the morning

    …ing. What is morning sickness? Tick-tock. Credit: Jeanne Garbarino It has long been known that nausea and vomiting are common symptoms of pregnancy. In fact, documentation of this phenomenon goes as far back as 2000 BC. However, the term “morning sickness” is a complete misnomer. For one, pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting is not just a morning thing. It can happen at any time of day. Second, the term “sickness” suggests a state…

    Authored by on February 14, 2012

  • African-American and female, doing field research in Africa

    …at Oklahoma State University. She is currently studying African-Pouched Rats, Cricetomys gambianus, an interesting yet largely mysterious animal whose keen sense of smell serves in the detection of landmines. She spent summer 2012 in Morogoro, Tanzania, studying the animals in the wild and in captivity….

    Authored by on January 23, 2013

  • Can the body handle a Mars trip?

    …217;re itching to be one of the first on a Mars colony, you could apply for the chance to go through the Mars One Project’s training – which is, of course, also a reality TV show – and perhaps end up on human outpost in 2023. But I digress…) The real question is, are WE – us actual humans – physiologically ready for such a trip? The health considerations of space travel are no small thing. In fact, in BMJ‘s Christmas issue, S. M…

    Authored by on January 30, 2013

  • The Bright Crystal

    …hen be assembled to recreate the initial molecular structure. In this case, the team collected some 4 million snapshots, 293,195 of which included a diffraction pattern. They combined 61% of those (178,875) to produce a final 3D structure at near atomic resolution. By combining thousands of individual diffraction images (top), you can solve a structure. Shown at bottom is the 2.1-angstrom structure of trypanosomal cathepsin-B (Source) …

    Authored by on December 5, 2012

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …ll selection of different materials: bricks, mortar, iron, glass, and wood. Arranged in different ways, these few materials can yield a huge variety of structures. We encountered functional groups and the SPHONC in Chapter 3. These components form the four categories of molecules of life. These Big Four biological molecules are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. They can have many roles, from giving an organism structure to be…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • Not knowing

    of eleven. When talking to my health care team, they would ask “How many times have you tried to kill yourself?” And I can’t answer. A lot. “Once, twice, five times?” they ask. Over the course of my life, those numbers times 20. For so many times, you’d think someone would have noticed or I’d have succeeded. Believe me, it only made my depression worse when it didn’t work because it was evidence I was too stupid and inept to take my own life pro…

    Authored by on May 24, 2013

  • After Newtown missteps, journalists get guidelines

    …almost twice as likely to say that they don’t want to live or work near a person with mental illness if they read an article about a person with mental illness involved in a mass shooting, according to a study published March 20 in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Interestingly, this tendency is the same even if the article avoids any mention of mental illness. This may be because this link between violence and mental illness is deeply engrain…

    Authored by on March 27, 2013

  • Depression and alcoholism: all in the family

    …s full of depression and alcoholism. In 1st-degree (siblings, parents) and 2nd-degree (grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews) relatives, 11 of 12 people have been treated for depression and/or alcoholism. If we move to 3rd degree relatives, the absolute numbers get higher but the proportion is similar. [Note: I won't draw my family tree to maintain a bit of privacy for my family.] I’d also like to point out that my family members continue…

    Authored by on February 15, 2013

  • #DispatchesDNLee: Handling lady-business in the field

    An African-American woman and scientist in Tanzania by Danielle Lee, Ph.D. Actual field diary entry,  Tuesday, August 7, 2012,  ~8:30 am I cried this morning. In the shower. I was trying (poorly) to suppress screams of pain as I let the water run on my leg. I knew it was going to be bad when I saw blood on my pants as I pulled my field cover pants off.  I had been running into the same bush on line 3 between traps C and D every day. It has scrap…

    Authored by on February 21, 2013

  • Elephant mimics Korean, delighting Arrested Development fans

    …wo female Asian elephants at a zoo became known for using the chirpy mating calls of the Asian elephant instead of the lower-frequency vocalizations of the African elephant. The fellow had to do adjust, evidently. Koshik is a 20-year-old Asian elephant. When you think about animals that mimic human speech, like crows, elephants, and possibly a beluga whale, think about what they have in common with us: They live in complex social groups where co…

    Authored by on November 2, 2012

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