Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/evolution explainer

  • Biology Xplainer: Evolution and how it happens

    …he population will change over time. It will be adapted to its environment. It will evolve. Other mechanisms of evolution A pigeon depicted in Charles Darwin’sVariation of Animals and PlantsUnder Domestication, 1868. U.S.public domain image, via Wikimedia. When Darwin presented his idea of natural selection, he knew he had an audience to win over. He pointed out that people select features of organisms all the time and breed the…

    Authored by on January 29, 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

  • From spiders to breast cancer: Leslie Brunetta talks candidly about her cancer diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up

    …very giving. I live in Cambridge, MA, where I could actually make choices about where I wanted to be treated at each phase and know I’d get excellent, humane care and where none of the facilities I went to was more than about 20 minutes away. Some things that women might have some control over and that their families might help nudge them toward: Find doctors you trust. Ask a lot of questions and make sure you understand the answers. But do…

    Authored by on January 31, 2012

  • Friday Roundup: dissolving mice, preschooler paleontologist, evolution cake, and more 2011 retrospective

    Burrunan dolphin, a new species discovered in 2011 Cool science and science ewwws Can Mountain Dew really dissolve a mouse?  Barry White’s voice may have been low, but how well could his boys swim? French botanist Jeanne Baret botanized around the 18th-century world dressed as a man. Now, she gets some recognition.  Have you had a child? Would it make you feel better to know that you each still carry around cells from one anothe…

    Authored by on January 6, 2012

  • Dinosaur Aunts, Bacterial Stowaways, & Insect Milk

    …eggs in a variety of terrestrial environments. As other mutations randomly arose and were favored by selection, milk composition became increasingly complex, incorporating nutritive, protective, and hormonal factors (Oftedal 2012). Some of these milk constituents are shunted into milk from maternal blood, some- although also present in the maternal blood stream- are regulated locally in the mammary gland, and some very special constituents are u…

    Authored by on July 17, 2012

  • Hormonal birth control explainer: a matter of health

    …ich exists to prepare an egg for fertilization and to make the uterine lining ready to receive a fertilized egg, should it arrive.  Fig. 1. Female reproductive anatomy. Credit: Jeanne Garbarino. In the theoretical 28-day cycle, fertilization (fusion of sperm and egg), if it occurs, will happen about 14 days in, timed with ovulation , or release of the egg from the ovary into the Fallopian tube or oviduct (see video–watch fo…

    Authored by on March 5, 2012

  • Wordless Wednesday: Women scientists talkin’ ’bout evolution

    You’ll find a couple of Double X Science contributors in this one. Enjoy…and pass it along!…

    Authored by on November 23, 2011

  • Thanks, Mom, for not eating me

    …he’s so cute, I could just eat him up!” No, grandma. Just … no. Happy Mother’s Day! Supporting Literature J. Bartlett,  Filial cannibalism in burying beetles, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1987), pp. 179-183 [PDF] Hope Klug and Michael B. Bonsall, When to Care for, Abandon, or Eat Your Offspring: The Evolution of Parental Care and Filial Cannibalism, The American Naturalist, Vol. 170, No. 6 (Decembe…

    Authored by on May 13, 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

  • Childbirth and C-sections in pre-modern times

    …y down the pelvic canal, with its skull bones eventually sliding around and overlapping to get through the pelvis.  Culturally, we have another way to deliver these large babies: the so-called caesarean section . Up until the 20th century, childbirth was dangerous.  Even today, in some less developed countries, roughly 1 maternal death occurs for every 100 live births, most of those related to obstructed labor or hemorrhage ( WHO Fact Sheet 2010…

    Authored by on July 2, 2012

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