Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

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  • Pregnancy 101: The science behind the wand of destiny

    …s reproductive health. For blogs, check out this list on Babble, and this list on BlogHer.       [1]Wilcox AJ, Baird DD, Weinberg CR. Time of implantation of the conceptus and loss of pregnancy. N Engl J Med. (1999) Jun 10;340(23):1796-9….

    Authored by on November 26, 2011

  • How pregnant are you? Let’s find out

    …or “slipping” the top plate), they flow bottom-to-top. Samples and reagents are loaded in one configuration, and the chip is “slipped” to start the readout process. The SlipChip design Source: Nat. Commun. 3:1283 doi: 10.1038/ncomms2292 (2012). Here’s how the authors describe it: In the SlipChip, two pieces of glass etched with microfluidic wells and channels are assembled together in the presence of mineral oil. A fluidic path is for…

    Authored by on January 6, 2013

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

    …e X Extra: A triglyceride can have up to three different fatty acids attached to it. Canola oil, for example, consists primarily of oleic acid, linoleic acid, and linolenic acid, all of which are unsaturated fatty acids with 18 carbons in their chains. Why do we take in fat anyway? Fat is a necessary nutrient for everything from our nervous systems to our circulatory health. It also, under appropriate conditions, is an excellent way to store up…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • After Newtown missteps, journalists get guidelines

    Protip: Don’t diagnose based on speculation. by Jessica Wright                Attention journalists: If you’ve been calling people “nuts” or “deranged” in your stories, the Associated Press is recommending that it’s time you stopped. This guideline — along with the common-sense assertion that writers shouldn’t diagnose individuals with a mental illness based entirely on speculation — is part of a new recommendation added to the AP styleboo…

    Authored by on March 27, 2013

  • Pregnancy 101: My placenta looked like meatloaf, but I wasn’t about to eat it.

    …of us are involved in policing the neighborhoods, some of us build structures, some of us communicate information, some of us deal with food, some of us get rid of waste, etc.  Every cell gets a job (it’s the only example of 100% employment rates!). Now back to the cells in the fertilized egg.  As they start to learn what their specific job will be, the cells within the sphere will start to organize themselves.  After about 5 days after fertil…

    Authored by on July 27, 2012

  • Pregnancy 101: Peas made me puke, but not just in the morning

    …d picked up on my soaring level of discomfort and without missing a beat, ate all my peas when Diane wasn’t looking. We ended the evening with my stomach contents intact, but barely. The next morning, as I was preparing my 18 month-old daughter’s daycare lunch, I remembered that we were provided with a parting gift of sautéed peas. I took them out of the fridge and proceeded to aliquot them into containers more suitable for a toddler. As I rem…

    Authored by on February 14, 2012

  • Miscarriage: When a beginning is not a beginning

    …heory, or ladybusiness expert, I have learned a lot about miscarriage. Only it wasn’t miscarriage, it was spontaneous abortion. Except that some didn’t like the term spontaneous abortion and used intrauterine mortality (Wood, 1994). Or fetal loss. Fetal loss is probably the most common. There is also pregnancy loss (Holman and Wood, 2001). You can use that term, too. Oh, or a-conceptions (a for abortion), compared to l-conceptions (l for live bir…

    Authored by on September 5, 2012

  • The Amazing Antibody and its Therapeutic Potential

    …ll recognize and attach itself to the invader, which is scientifically referred to as an antigen.  When an antibody attaches to an antigen, it signals to our body to get rid of it.  Amazingly, each antibody can only recognize 1 antigen, which is why we need so many different types of antibodies!      To get a better idea of how antibodies work, it is important to learn their basic structure.  Antibodies are ‘Y’ shaped proteins, and have both co…

    Authored by on October 12, 2012

  • Depressing genes

    …ch experience — yet it was obvious he didn’t have the knack for it. This student’s dogged pursuit of a mental health career made me wonder what kind of emotional turmoil he experienced which would make him think, at age 19, that psychiatry was the only vocation worth working towards. Then there were the two graduate students who both worked incredibly hard and were both prone to obsess about their experiments. Each burned off stress in quit…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

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

    …nt 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 used with mammography. Approval of a device of this nat…

    Authored by on September 21, 2012

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