Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Tinker Ready

  • 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

  • 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

  • The Fatherhood Adjustment

    …lpful. In short, I did not freak out at the prospect of becoming a father. For a lot of men, though, pregnancy is exactly when things begin to get dicey. A longitudinal study in Australia assessed men when their partners were 23 weeks pregnant, and again three months, six months and 12 months after the birth of their first child. In their resulting 2004 paper, the researchers confessed surprise at the findings. They had expected the first few mon…

    Authored by on May 14, 2013

  • Creating viruses to create the vaccines?

    Synthetic viruses could mean a faster flu vax. by Carrie Arnold     In 2009, scientists scrambled to develop a vaccine against the H1N1 influenza pandemic. Although the first cases of illness were reported in March, a vaccine wasn’t ready in the U.S. until late September — a lag of almost seven months. Large amounts of vaccine weren’t available until several months after that. By then, the second wave of infections had peaked, as had much…

    Authored by on May 20, 2013

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • This is good, and I am happy.

    …ality-check voice in my head: “What does it matter? They’re just one of billions. Just blips in the time course of humanity. They are nothing. You are nothing. We are all just nothing, living only a few seconds or 100 years for no rhyme or reason, here one minute and gone the next. What does it matter? We all end up nothing in the end.” It’s a long-winded voice and can go on like that for hours. It’s hard to tell fro…

    Authored by on May 10, 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

  • 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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