Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Ed Yong

  • 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

  • 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

  • NOC: A whale of a mimic

    Listen to this: What does it sound like to you? (Recording courtesy of the BBC.) If you thought it sounded human, you’re right. It does. But that’s not a human making the sound–it’s a beluga whale named NOC. Shh. The beluga is listening.Credit: via Wikimedia Commons. Dolphins have been trained to mimic people, but the fellow in this recording apparently picked up human-sounding lingo on his own. Researche…

    Authored by on October 22, 2012

  • Friday Roundup

    Measles. It can be deadly , and it’s extraordinarily infectious. How does it spread so quickly? Researchers  have found the answer . Why can’t students perform Web searches and identify credible sites for information? Is first place really so much more meaningful than actual meaning? Moms: Would you accept mail-order chicken pox ? We hope not. Do students quit majoring in science because they suddenly discover it’s HA…

    Authored by on November 5, 2011

  • A history lesson written in … plaque?

    …and health. As they describe in the journal Nature Genetics, the researchers collected calculus samples (ewww) from 34 human skeletons dating from between 400 (late medieval) and 7,500 years ago (mesolithic), as well as from 10 members of the research team for a modern comparison. (Worst. Cleaning. Ev-ah.) They extracted and amplified specific diagnostic segments of microbial DNA from the 16S ribosomal RNA gene, and then sequenced what they foun…

    Authored by on March 18, 2013

  • Do fecal bacteria from face mites cause rosacea?

    …DF], which is drawn to your sebaceous (oil) glands, also on your face. Because they have “piercing-sucking mouth parts,” pedipalps, and eight legs in four pairs, according to one lovingly detailed description in a 1976 paper, they are arachnids, just like spiders. Tiny arachnids that live on your face, taking moonlit strolls when it’s dark and diving for cover in light. They live there, just as you live in a house, except your f…

    Authored by on September 6, 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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