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  • As Seen on TV! Restoring Hair with LASERS!!!!!!

    The author’s rapidly-expanding forehead. Anyone who watches TV, reads magazines, or flips through catalogs has seen some interesting products. Maybe they seem plausible to you, maybe they don’t. However, a little investigation shows they are based less on science and well…actually working, and more on wishful thinking. At worst they’re actual con-jobs, designed to separate you from your money as efficiently as p…

    Authored by on September 28, 2012

  • Historical Physicists

    Featured today are 10 more women who broke boundaries by their presence in physics. They lived from 1711 to 2000. While I again limited information to one paragraph, I tried to highlight how they got their start, what universities, family members, and scientists were supportive of them. For these women, without the support of fathers, mothers, husbands, and mentors (all male with one exception) their life in science would not have happened. Whil…

    Authored by on February 21, 2012

  • 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

  • Autism and the DSM-5

    …questions in the context of these criteria. I’ve expanded on a couple of these reports at length elsewhere, as have others with an interest in the subject. The short version is that studies overall indicate that at the least, 10% of people who would currently have an autism diagnosis under the DSM-IV-TR criteria would lose that diagnosis under the DSM-5, and some studies go as high as 55% in their estimates. Even more troubling? The committee’s s…

    Authored by on April 23, 2013

  • Making Light in Electronics

    By DXS Physics Editor Matthew Francis   A while back, I wrote about one of the most common ways of making electric light: fluorescent bulbs. Understanding fluorescent lights requires quantum mechanics! While a lot of quantum physics seems pretty removed from our daily lives, it’s essential to most of our modern technology. In fact, reading what I’m writing requires quantum mechanics, since you are using a computer (maybe a handheld…

    Authored by on April 20, 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

  • 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

  • Vaccine fears: What can you do?

    …ad out” the schedule or reduce the number of vaccinations. In fact, the evidence supports the schedule as it’s recommended. The fear of vaccination is not new. Since Edward Jenner and his cowpox inoculation at the turn of the 19th century, people have latched onto the fear of the known—those needles!—and unknown—what’s in those things? What might be considered the first anti-vaccine cartoon appeared in response to Jenner’s proposed inoculation of…

    Authored by on December 4, 2011

  • From spiders to breast cancer: Leslie Brunetta talks candidly about her cancer diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up

    …cancers are diagnosed as IDCs. Those cancers start with the cells lining the milk ducts. The ones in the left breast were invasive lobular carcinomas (ILCs), which start in the lobules at the end of the milk ducts. Only about 10% of breast cancers are ILCs. Oncologists hate lobular cancer. Unlike ductal cancers, which form as clumps of cells, lobular cancers form as single-file ribbons of cells. The tissue around ductal cancer cells reacts to t…

    Authored by on January 31, 2012

  • I Am Mental Illness: a quarter-century chronicle

    Hit hard from an early age with no safety net in sight by AM [Trigger warnings: references to/descriptions of suicide attempts, self-harm, sexual assault, addictive behaviors] In my late teens, I found a journal entry I’d written at 11, “Sometimes I’ll be happy, then BOOM 1 bad thing + I wanna scream ARGH!!” [sic] I don’t remember writing it or when exactly I began to develop my mental illnesses but they started young and take up much of m…

    Authored by on February 22, 2013

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