Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

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  • 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

  • The degendering effect of social networks and why that might be OK

    [Ed. note: I (Emily) just attended the National Association of Science Writers annual conference in Raleigh, NC, where I moderated a session on managing the information deluge that can overwhelm those of us who deeply engage in social media. During the session, Tinker Ready noted the all-woman makeup of our panel and asked about the role of social media in helping women in science. She also asked me a few questions after the session. Below is a...

    Authored by on November 5, 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

  • Raising the Profile of Women in Science

    By Adrienne Roehrich, Chemistry Editor One of the goals of Double X Science is to raise the profile of women in science. When others are doing this exact same things, we like to let our readers know. Here’s a few recent efforts to expand the public’s knowledge of women scientists: As always, we have our Notable Women in Science series . We cover women in science who have been notable historically and currently. We also have our Double Xpre…

    Authored by on December 14, 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Unicorns and Brainbows

    Brainbow is a mouse with a rainbow brain. By Jeffrey Perkel    A couple weeks ago I wrote about the beautiful world right under our noses, a world visible only under the microscope. The cover image for that post was this picture, a “‘Brainbow’ transgenic mouse hippocampus,” which placed 18th in the 2008 Nikon Small World Photomicroscopy contest. Brainbow technology also won the 2007 Olympus Bioscapes contest, with this be…

    Authored by on May 6, 2013

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