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

  • 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

  • Blog of the Week: PsiVid with Carin Bondar and Joanne Manaster

    This week’s blog selection comes to us via the Scientific American blog network. PsiVid, a “cross-section of science on the cyber-stream,” features two scientists and mothers, Carin Bondar and Joanne Manaster, both known for their work and expertise in sci-filmmaking. Over at their Scientific American blog, you’ll find all things sci-video related, including contest information, the Monday music video, and some commenta…

    Authored by on November 14, 2011

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Bipolar brings anxieties beyond mood shifts

    Bipolar isn’t just moods in conflict–self love and hate battle, too. by Helen Chappell [This essay is another entry in our series "I Am Mental Illness." Trigger warning: discussed suicidal ideation and attempts.] The last time I saw my midwife, she offered me a prescription for Vicodin to help me cope with my severe headaches.  When you’re pregnant, it’s pretty much Tylenol or narcotics or nothing at all for pain.  I turned her down,…

    Authored by on March 1, 2013

  • Don’t take the Cinnamon Challenge

    …innamon Challenge is not some harmless prank. It can have real medical consequences. The Pediatrics authors note that poison control centers in the US took 51 calls related to the challenge in 2011, which more than tripled to 178 in just the first half of 2012. Thirty of these calls required medical attention, including two with “potentially toxic” levels of exposure to the cinnamon. Yes, you read that right: potentially toxic. A comm…

    Authored by on April 22, 2013

  • Friday Roundup: Jane Austen’s arsenic poisoning, breastfeeding and bones, dog bites that trigger pregnancy, and a cranky crab

    Jane Austen. Engraving via Wikimedia Commons, in the U.S. public domain. Curious about how climate has changed over the long term–the very, very long term? This video from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration puts it all into perspective: Jane Austen poisoned by arsenic ?  A mystery author claims that all signs point to arsenic poisoning as the cause of Jane Austen’s death. The rationales that treatments w…

    Authored by on November 18, 2011

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