Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Lisa Brown

  • 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

  • DoubleXplainer: What is a vagina?

    …I said it. Thirty times in this single blog post. And you should, too. These views are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily either reflect or disagree with those of the DXS editorial team.  See also our Pregnancy 101 series , by Jeanne Garbarino, biology editor…

    Authored by on June 15, 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

  • Literal XX Xplainer: How we can live with two X chromosomes

    …ression of one X chromosome in each cell makes each woman a lovely mosaic of genetic expression (although not true genetic mosaicism), varying from cell to cell in whether we use genes from X chromosome 1 or from X chromosome 2. Because these gene forms can differ between the two X chromosomes, we are simply less uniform in what our X chromosome genes do than are men. An exception is men who are XXY, who also shut down one of those X chromosomes…

    Authored by on June 27, 2012

  • Anorexia nervosa, neurobiology, and family-based treatment

    sume eating. If they were still alive. Bruch’s observations dictated eating-disorders treatments for decades, treatments that led to spectacularly ineffective results. Only about 35% of people with anorexia recovered; another 20% died, of starvation or suicide; and the rest lived with some level of chronic illness for the rest of their lives. Not a great track record, overall, and especially devastating for women, who suffer from anorexia at a ra…

    Authored by on August 10, 2012

  • Hey, doc, as long as you’re down there…

    …loma virus, the pathogen that causes cervical cancer. Since Papanicolaou published his study, cervical cancer rates among screened populations have plummeted, while ovarian and endometrial cancer rates remain unchanged. Some 23,000 American women die annually from those two diseases, and ovarian tumors are especially lethal, as these are often only caught at advanced stages. Clearly, an early detection method is needed, and a new study in Scien…

    Authored by on January 22, 2013

  • The path from science to alarmism: How science gets twisted before it gets to you

    …he spectrum. So take all that with a whole jar full of salt and you’re still looking at, overall, no connection with smoking. If anything, the data would indicate smoking has LESS autism rather than more. After this there are 2 papers on the same chemical. One of them does not contain the word “autism” anywhere. (One of its references has it, but nowhere does it appear in the text of their paper.) The second paper is better. It focuses on the che…

    Authored by on May 4, 2012

  • LEGO those gender stereotypes

    le since the 1950s.  Furthermore, parents may impose toys that are gender “appropriate,” or even punish play that does not align with traditional gender expectations.  But what toys do kids actually want to play with? In 2003, researchers at the University of Nebraska conducted a study to, in part, identify the impact that stereotyped toys have on play in young children.  There were 30 children who participated in this study, ranging in age…

    Authored by on August 29, 2012

  • 10 ways healthcare reform might help people with disabilities

    …ariety of names, including the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), and Obamacare. All of the terms refer to the same federal statute that President Obama signed into law on March 23, 2010. Slideshow: 10 Ways Healthcare Reform Might Help People with Disabilities Click first slide to view….

    Authored by on May 16, 2013

  • 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

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