Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Melanie Harrison

  • 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

  • Diversity in Science Carnival #14: Women’s History Month–Exploring the role of women in the STEM enterprise

    …and I close with a quote from it. It’s a letter by Chitra Thakur-Mahadik, who earned her PhD in biochemistry and hemoglobinopathy from the University of Mumbai and served as staff scientist a Mumbai children’s hospital for 25 years. She wrote to her younger, “partially sighted” self that, “The future is ahead and it is not bad!” She goes on to say, “Be fearless but be compassionate to yourself and others… be brave, keep your eyes and ears open…

    Authored by on March 29, 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

  • Historical Chemists Part II

    post she held for 33 years. Dr. Carr was also a devoted aunt,a fashionable dresser, and a talented storyteller. She had a relationship with Mary Sherrill, another professor at Mt. Holyoke, whom she shared a residence with for 26 years. Emma Perry Carr was the first recipient of the Garvan Medal. Marie Sklodowska CuriePhoto from Wikimedia Commons Physicist & Chemist Marie Sklodowska Curie was the first twice Nobel Prize laureate.  …

    Authored by on September 7, 2012

  • The sperm don’t care how they got there, Rep. Akin

    so if a rape resulted in pregnancy, the woman must somehow have been having a good time. Ergo, ’twas not a rape. This Guardian piece expands on that history but doesn’t get into why such a concept lingers into the 21st century. A lot of that lingering has to do with a strong desire on the part of some in US political circles to make a rape-related pregnancy the woman’s fault so that she must suffer the consequences. Those conseq…

    Authored by on August 20, 2012

  • Vaccination attitudes are contagious

    …ir vaccination decisions, Brunson found a couple of trends. First, 59% of the people in nonconformers’ “source networks” recommended “something other than complete, on-time vaccination.” But only 20% of the conformers’ source networks suggested anything other the CDC schedule. In other words, regardless of whether they vaccinated their kids partially, fully, delayed, or on time, they were basically choosing wha…

    Authored by on April 24, 2013

  • The fear factor in vaccination decisions

    How does fear influence vaccination decisions? by Tara Haelle         Part one on the impact of social networks on parents’ vaccination decisions explored how the way people moralize vaccination might play a part in how receptive they are to data about vaccines. But moral undertones only partly explain the phenomenon seen with Twitter and in Emily Brunson’s study, however. There is also the fear factor. “We are hard-wired for fear,&#…

    Authored by on April 25, 2013

  • 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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