Search Results for: label/World Prematurity Day

• The World Will Not End Tomorrow

  ands. That’s why we break things up into decades (ten years) and centuries (ten decades), as well as a millennium (ten centuries). The Mayas liked different divisions of time: their b’ak’tun is approximately 394 years, and they placed a certain significance on a cycle of 13 b’ak’tuns. (I suspect the Klingon language in Star Trek borrowed some of its vocabulary from ancient Mayan.) In the “Long Count,” one…

  Authored by Matthew R Francis on December 20, 2012

• On this Father’s Day, let’s remember the allofathers, too

  …time those of us in the United States have come to expect on weekends, particularly when we work salaried weekday jobs that ostensibly promise weekends off. That means that on top of the anxiety associated with stacking 20 or 30 extra hours onto a 40-hour work week to meet a tough deadline, my husband and my children’s father also feels angst about this inability to be a part of our family time. These are first-world problems, I realize, bu…

  Authored by Emily Willingham on June 16, 2012

• 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 Jeanne Garbarino on June 2, 2012

• The Only Mother’s Day Gift Guide You Will Ever Need

  …embedded a little science here and there in the links. ) While the celebration of mothers is not a new concept, the modern version of Mother’s Day is a far cry from the ancient festivals that honored Cybele .  However, in 1907, when Anna Jarvis invented the modern Mother’s Day as a means to pay homage to her own mother, it was not her intention to use moms for profit. But, alas, by the 1920s, this well-intended national holiday quickly mo…

  Authored by Jeanne Garbarino on May 9, 2012

• We can’t stop preterm births. Can we do more for preterm babies?

  Premature’ is a term with a wide range of implications, and one that is often used interchangeably with “preterm” because they both are rough measures of developmental averages. Babies born before the end of 37 weeks of pregnancy are considered premature. By that definition, I had two premature babies. Yet we left the hospital with them in a matter of 48 hours, with no special care required, and some people would distinguish the…

  Authored by Emily Willingham on November 16, 2012

• Ask not what science can do for you

  …#8211;repeatedly–for more research into fighting metastatic breast cancer. As she notes, no woman survives this cancer. Thirty percent of cases of breast cancer progress to metastatic (spreading) breast cancer, yet only 3% of funding goes to researching it, even as most women diagnosed with it die within three years. Niebur observes that wearing a ribbon does not cure cancer. She writes, “I just want more time.”  Part of giving…

  Authored by Emily Willingham on December 1, 2011

• Life and science challenges: flames, Hawkeye, the needle and the damage done

  (source) Of Heroin, Honorable Mentions, and Hawkeye: A day I will never forget By Double X Science Biology Editor Jeanne Garbarino “I look forward to seeing you in 3 months when you will be a whole person again.” Those were my parting words to a special person in my life who was embarking on an undoubtedly difficult journey toward sobriety.  It was only 7:45am on Friday, June 1st, but already I had learned that the strings from a bi…

  Authored by Emily Willingham on June 6, 2012

• Good Deeds, Good Science: Autism Research Foundation

  …e last two years we have provided funding for autism stakeholders (parents, individuals with autism, teachers, students, etc) to attend the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR). All donations made today, February 29, 2012, will go directly to our IMFAR Travel Grants program, helping us provide more scholarships to IMFAR 2012 in Toronto where they will share their real world autism experience with scientists. These stakeholders will t…

  Authored by Emily Willingham on February 29, 2012

• To Everything (Turn Turn Turn) There is a Season

  Today – June 20 – is the northern Summer Solstice, sometimes known as the Northern Solstice, “first day of summer”, or Midsummer’s Day, depending on where you live. It’s the longest day and shortest night of the year in the northern hemisphere (where I live), though exactly how long or short depends on how far north you live. And of course in the southern hemisphere, today is is the shortest day and longest night, since the seasons a…

  Authored by Matthew R Francis on June 20, 2012

• Happy belated birthday, Mary Anning!

  Mary Anning and a small, non-fossilized dog. (Source) [Today, we’re featuring a post by Mike Rendell, author and keeper of Georgian Gentleman, a blog chronicling aspects of 18th century life. Mike spent 30 years as a lawyer–poor fellow–before he retired to time travel in his mind back to the 18th century, where he has set up mental shop permanently. By what he calls a “curious stroke of luck,” he has all of the 18th century papers o…

  Authored by Emily Willingham on May 25, 2012