Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Steven Chu

  • Double Xpression: Debbie Berebichez, PhD Physicist

    …m.  My femininity allows me to be a voice in a field that has tended to isolate themselves from the public, which is bad. Some of my colleagues have become a little snobbish.  The fact that I have serious credentials (PhD and 2 postdocs) shows that I had to work like crazy – looks and personality can only go so far.  It s hard work that gets you there! Serious science communication has a lot of math and problem solving in order to explain things…

    Authored by on June 2, 2012

  • 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

  • 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

  • Congress Is Killing Medical Research

    …ould be a huge blow to biomedical research, crippling some research programs for years to come. And for those who want to look at this from an economic perspective, NIH funding is a terrific investment. A nonpartisan study in 2000 concluded: “Publicly funded research in general generates high rates of return to the economy, averaging 25 to 40 percent a year.” The same report provided detailed examples showing about how NIH-funded work saves billi…

    Authored by on March 6, 2013

  • Dr. Oz is worried about your fillings

    …much mercury is safe, then? According to the EPA, 0.1 micrograms of mercury per kilogram of body weight per day is safe.  For an adult who weighs around 150 pounds, that’s about 7 micrograms.  A 6-ounce can of tuna has about 20 micrograms of mercury, about 3 times the safe amount per day.  Scientists do have real concerns that mercury in tuna and other fatty fish might present a health hazard. Dr. Oz’s device seemed to show that 61 micrograms of…

    Authored by on May 23, 2013

  • Geektastic gift-giving ideas from Double X Science!

    …3 Make science cuter than ever. The Chemistry Cat Meme Pin, Etsy, $1 Buy these in bulk and hand them out to all your friends.  Chemistry and cats = a winning combo in our book. Art Cell Division 20 – Original Watercolor Painting, Etsy, $125 Artologica translates science into beauty with this brightly colored interpretation of cell division. Even the non-scientist will appreciate this. Deep Sea…

    Authored by on December 6, 2011

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

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