Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Brian Switek

  • A “Brontosaurus” for you

    …nimals—realized the Brontosaurus specimen was actually a member of a previously known species, Apatosaurus. In other words, Brontosaurus isn’t the proper name of any dinosaur. Even though the whole episode happened over 100 years ago, people still react emotionally about it. However, the animal itself was a marvelous creature, whatever name we happen to give it. If your last exposure to dinosaurs was elementary school or Jurassic Park, Swit…

    Authored by on March 13, 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

  • Friday Roundup: 2011 top science lists, radium laced condoms, and the clitoris

    A Double X Science grandma showed us this picture. We thought it was the most ridiculously cute thing we’d seen all year. As 2011 draws to a close, media outlets and science bloggers have busily collated their top-10 (or 12 or 20) lists of science-related cool/interesting/freaky/fantastic stuff this year. Here’s a selection that should keep you busy for about the first half of 2012: Smithsonian’s list , including Fran…

    Authored by on December 30, 2011

  • 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

  • Geektastic gift-giving ideas from Double X Science!

    …3 Make science cuter than ever. The Chemistry Cat Meme Pin, Etsy, $1 Buy these in bulk and hand them out to all your friends.  Chemistry and cats = a winning combo in our book. Art Cell Division 20 – Original Watercolor Painting, Etsy, $125 Artologica translates science into beauty with this brightly colored interpretation of cell division. Even the non-scientist will appreciate this. Deep Sea…

    Authored by on December 6, 2011

  • Parenting paranoia comes in different forms

    …udies reporting no link between vaccines and autism, but let’s face it: Science is slow, and news is fast. In the interval, scary information takes root. The Lancet retracted the article 12 years after its publication, and in 2011, British investigative journalist Brian Deer demonstrated that Wakefield actively falsified data. Still, to this day, vaccination rates have not fully recovered, and many parents remain misinformed and concerned about v…

    Authored by on May 19, 2013

  • Shmeat and Potatoes: The dinner of the future?

    …t on this petri dish to kitchen dish phenomenon. The shmeaty deets When it comes to producing shmeat, scientists are taking advantage the extensive cell culture technologies that have been developed over the course of the 20th century (for a brief history of these developments, check this out).  Because of what we have learned, we can easily determine the conditions under which cells grow best, and swiftly turn a few cells into a few million…

    Authored by on July 20, 2012

  • 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

  • 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

  • Autism and the DSM-5

    …ial social aspect of this change, and the one thing that might, when it comes to autism, elevate the DSM-5 above the level of doorstop. [Image credit: Dave Bullock, UK, via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.]…

    Authored by on April 23, 2013

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