Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Christie Wilcox

  • 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

  • Organic versus conventional foods–no winner?

    …say what everyone’s saying about it: Organic foods aren’t any better for you, nutritionally, than conventional foods.  According to the NYT report, the Stanford researchers spent four years looking over more than 200 studies, evaluating various aspects of research findings about organic versus conventionally farmed or ranched plants and meats. The kind of analysis they did is called a “meta-analysis” because it goes beyon…

    Authored by on September 4, 2012

  • The real scandal: science denialism at Susan G. Komen for the Cure®

    …mbassador Nancy Brinker, awkwardly attempted to explain the decision, and yesterday, Handel resigned her position. (Whether she’ll receive a golden parachute remains unclear, but former CEO Hala Moddelmog received $277,864 in 2010, despite her resignation at the end of 2009.) The Planned Parenthood debacle brought renewed attention to other controversies that have hounded Komen in recent years—like its “lawsuits for the cure” program that spent n…

    Authored by on February 11, 2012

  • 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

  • Motherhood Defined: It is in the heart of the beholder

    “Motherhood”: Sculpture at the Catacumba Park, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Motherhood.  It can mean many things, and our own definition of it is largely defined by our individual experiences.  To one person, motherhood might simply mean the act of raising children; to another, motherhood might be what defines them.   It is not uncommon to generalize the concept of “motherhood” and lump everyone who upholds a singl…

    Authored by on May 11, 2012

  • The Finkbeiner Test

    …mphasize a woman’s sex, you inevitably end up dismissing her science. I asked her if there was a particular story that epitomized the problem, and she pointed me to this two page profile of Vera Rubin, published in Science in 2002. (Full text is behind a paywall, sorry.) Twelve of the story’s 24 paragraphs mention Rubin’s sex or gender roles. “  Four paragraphs on her science, and she was the one who found dark matter,” Finkbeiner says. It’s time…

    Authored by on March 5, 2013

  • Pregnancy 101: Fertilization is another way to come together during sex

    Human ovum (egg). The zona pellucida is a thick clear girdle surrounded by the cells of the corona radiata (radiant crown). Via Wikimedia Commons. It was September of 2006. Due to certain events taking place on a certain evening after a certain bottle (or two) of wine, my body was transformed into a human incubator. While I will not describe the events leading up to that very moment, I will dissect the way in which we propagate our…

    Authored by on December 3, 2011

  • Pregnancy 101: The science behind the wand of destiny

    …om laughing so hard, let us get back to the science. The first “slice of bread” is called the reaction zone, the “sandwich filling” is called the test zone, and the “last slice of bread” is called the control zone (see figure 2). Each of these zones is coated with capture antibodies, but differ from each other in how they work.  The antibodies on the reaction zone will capture only hCG and will detach from the strip upon exposure to urine. The…

    Authored by on November 26, 2011

  • 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

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