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Search Results for: label/William Sears

  • Motherhood, war, and attachment: what does it all mean?

    is son love football, that they spoke with their pediatrician about it, and that their son will continue with football at least into middle school. There’s a bit of wary nodding, and then, back to the Pinewood Derby. Scene 2: Two mothers meet on a playground. After a little conversation about their toddlers, one mother mentions that she still breastfeeds and practices “attachment parenting,” which is why she has a sling sitting next to her. Th…

    Authored by on May 16, 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

  • Pertussis: Get the vax or at least listen to why you should

    …ook away their right to choose whether their children get vaccinated, it actually just ensures they get good medical information before they make that choice. Photo by Dave Gostisha at sxc.hu. The bill-now-law, AB 2109, proposed by a pediatrician, requires parents to get a statement signed by a health care practitioner that the parents/guardians have received accurate, evidence-based information about the risks and benefits of vaccine…

    Authored by on October 10, 2012

  • Modern Astronomers

    …an excellent science communicator, researcher, andleader.  She earned her B.S . from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii in the 1980s. At NASA she led the imaging team of the Voyager 2’s encounter with Neptune and became known for her science communication for it.  She returned to MIT as a scientist for nearly a decade. Among her honors, she has received Vladimir Karpetoff Award , Klumpke-Roberts Award,…

    Authored by on January 19, 2012

  • What do you know about Charles Darwin?

    …ilitating health problems in later life. Today is Darwin Day, so designated because Charles Darwin (and Abraham Lincoln,while we’re at it) was born on February 12. Darwin’s year of birth was 1809, so he’d be 204 today were humans capable of a tortoise-like lifespan. I often wonder what Darwin would make of today’s persistent caricatures of him as upending science or religion or both with his ideas. I’m not a Darwin…

    Authored by on February 12, 2013

  • Happy belated birthday, Mary Anning!

    shop permanently. By what he calls a “curious stroke of luck,” he has all of the 18th century papers of his great-great-great-great (that’s four) grandfather, including diaries, accounts, letters, and even shopping lists. In 2011, he published the story of this ancestor’s life as a social history, “The Life of a Georgian Gentleman,’ and thus, a blog was also born. We thank Mike for having graciously given us permission to publish his post here b…

    Authored by on May 25, 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

  • Evidence Based Parenting Carnival

    ans for us. Melinda Wenner Moyer, of The Kids column at Slate, @lindy2350 Melinda is a freelance science and health journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. She writes The Kids, Slate’s parenting advice column, and won the 2012 Society of Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology Media Award for her Slate piece The Truth About Epidurals. Polly Palumbo, Momma Data, @mommadata Momma Data debunks, demystifies and elaborates on information in the…

    Authored by on April 2, 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

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