Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Allen Institute

  • Tiptoe through the thalamus…

    atively coarse resolution of diffusion MRI to the subcellular level of electron microscopy. That’s a story for another day, but if you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend Sebastian Seung’s eminently readable 2012 book, Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. Back to the Allen Institute datasets. When you click on ‘Mouse Connectivity’, the site presents you with an index of injection sites, 47 in all….

    Authored by on November 19, 2012

  • Notable women biochemists in the 1900s

    …is encouragement of female students. Dr. Simmondsí research focused on the study of amino acid metabolism of bacteria. In 1953, the couple co-authored a textbook that educated a generation in biochemistry. The two died within 2 days of each other in 2007. Florence B. Seibert, by Smithsonian Institute Florence B. Seibert, Pebbles on the Hill of a Scientist. (1897-1991) She earned her A.B. from Goucher college in 1918 and her Ph.D. from Yale Univer…

    Authored by on February 14, 2013

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

    …molecules themselves break down into a surprisingly small number of building blocks. The proteins that make up all of the living things on this planet and ensure their appropriate structure and smooth function consist of only 20 different kinds of building blocks. Nucleic acids, specifically DNA, are even more basic: only four different kinds of molecules provide the materials to build the countless different genetic codes that translate into all…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • Is the bar high enough for screening breast ultrasounds for breast cancer?

    …n controversial. What’s new is the “Are You Dense?” patient movement and legislation to inform women that they have dense breasts. Merits and pitfalls of device approval The approval of breast ultrasound hinges on a study of 200 women with dense breast evaluated retrospectively at 13 sites across the United States with mammography and ultrasound. The study showed a statistically significant increase in breast cancer detection when ultrasound was…

    Authored by on September 21, 2012

  • YES. The CDC childhood immunization schedule is safe. For reals.

    …report, the IOM took up study of the CDC vaccination schedule because there has been concern in some circles that kids get too many shots too soon. The 14 diseases that the current schedule protect against mean kids get up to 24 shots by the time they turn 2, including up to five shots in one visit sometimes. It does sound like a lot. It *literally* sounds like a lot if your kiddo is a crier. But that’s only part of the story. As the IOM no…

    Authored by on January 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

  • Depressing genes

    Can depression be a matter of genetic fate? by Siobhan Mitchell          [This post is the latest installment in our I Am Mental Illness series.] What if you could know if you were fated to be depressed? With the rise of personal genotyping services such as 23andme, almost can find out what their psychiatric ‘fate’ will be, but what do you do with this information once you have it? When I first considered testing myself for depressio…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

  • How helpful are dense-breast right-to-know laws?

    …sk factor for breast cancer; §   mammography sees cancer less well in dense breasts than in normal breasts; and §   women may benefit from additional breast cancer screening. The California law goes into effect on April 1, 2013. It follows four states (Connecticut, Texas, Virginia, and New York) with similar statutes. All have enjoyed solid bipartisan support. Rarely do naysayers or skeptics speak up. Young women who are leading the charge oft…

    Authored by on October 1, 2012

  • Historical Physicists

    Featured today are 10 more women who broke boundaries by their presence in physics. They lived from 1711 to 2000. While I again limited information to one paragraph, I tried to highlight how they got their start, what universities, family members, and scientists were supportive of them. For these women, without the support of fathers, mothers, husbands, and mentors (all male with one exception) their life in science would not have happened. Whil…

    Authored by on February 21, 2012

  • Modern Astronomers

    …an excellent science communicator, researcher, andleader.  She earned her B.S . from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii in the 1980s. At NASA she led the imaging team of the Voyager 2’s encounter with Neptune and became known for her science communication for it.  She returned to MIT as a scientist for nearly a decade. Among her honors, she has received Vladimir Karpetoff Award , Klumpke-Roberts Award,…

    Authored by on January 19, 2012

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