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Search Results for: label/Courtney Williams

  • Aren’t you curious?

    Source: IFLS By Courtney Williams, DXS contributor Recently my on-line science pal Emily J. Willingham asked on Facebook, “You are a consumer of science. As one, what bothers you about how science is offered to you? What questions do you have? How do you consume scientific information? How do you use it?” She’s going to be blogging on the Forbes network, see her here, and I’m guessing this was the impetus for that particular set of questio…

    Authored by on October 15, 2012

  • 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

  • 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

  • Old ovaries, new eggs? Hatching a debate

    …gy is. Right now, we’re a ways from really understanding the full biology, but we’re making progress.” 1 Direct quote from the third edition of “Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach”, one published by Pearson Education in 2004 and used in medical school classes.  [Image credit: front page and thumbnail oocyte image, public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Article oocyte image also public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.] [Sarah C.P. Williams is a…

    Authored by on May 15, 2013

  • 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

  • Dating research update

    …erences cited within) romantic love at least once in our lives, and can attest to multiple stages with different feelings involved. In order to measure two distinct but not mutually exclusive states, the authors propose a new 20-item Infatuation and Attachment Scales questionnaire. Dutch and Welsh study participants were asked to rate their levels of agreement on a 7-point Likert scale to questions serving as proxies for each state. For example,…

    Authored by on January 31, 2013

  • Notable Women in Science: Historical Astronomers

    tinguished Achievement Award from the University of Michigan.   Even though her chosen field requiring mathematics and physics was dominated by men, Dr. Prince made the decision to pursue her talents. Her research delved into 25 Orionis and contributed to the mathematical development of radar. Her work at the McMath-Hulbert Observatory stands out especially since she was one of the few female solar astronomers at the time, her work was cutting ed…

    Authored by on December 28, 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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