Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/fetus

  • Childbirth and C-sections in pre-modern times

    …s  @BoneGirlPhD.] Basically since we started walking upright, childbirth has been difficult for women.  Evolution selected for larger and larger brains in our hominin ancestors such that today our newborns have heads roughly 102% the size of the mother’s pelvic inlet width (Rosenberg 1992). Yes, you read that right. Our babies’ heads are actually two percent larger than our skeletal anatomy.  Fetal head and mother’s pelv…

    Authored by on July 2, 2012

  • Pregnancy 101: My placenta looked like meatloaf, but I wasn’t about to eat it.

    …of us are involved in policing the neighborhoods, some of us build structures, some of us communicate information, some of us deal with food, some of us get rid of waste, etc.  Every cell gets a job (it’s the only example of 100% employment rates!). Now back to the cells in the fertilized egg.  As they start to learn what their specific job will be, the cells within the sphere will start to organize themselves.  After about 5 days after fertil…

    Authored by on July 27, 2012

  • Wordless Wednesday: Cyclops albino dusky shark fetus

    Courtesy of materials scientist and science writer Jenny Morber, video of a bona fide cyclops shark fetus. For more information about how the shark failed to develop two eyes instead of one and had other developmental anomalies, read here. In humans, Vitamin A (retinoic acid) deficiency on the part of the mother plays a role in the development of cyclopia, the techincal term for development of only one eye….

    Authored by on January 11, 2012

  • 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

  • Miscarriage: When a beginning is not a beginning

    …heory, or ladybusiness expert, I have learned a lot about miscarriage. Only it wasn’t miscarriage, it was spontaneous abortion. Except that some didn’t like the term spontaneous abortion and used intrauterine mortality (Wood, 1994). Or fetal loss. Fetal loss is probably the most common. There is also pregnancy loss (Holman and Wood, 2001). You can use that term, too. Oh, or a-conceptions (a for abortion), compared to l-conceptions (l for live bir…

    Authored by on September 5, 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

  • Are your children always on your mind? They may be IN your mind

    …). In this study, researchers examined postmortem brain tissue from 26 women who had no detectable neurological disease and 33 women who’d had Alzheimer’s disease; the women’s ages at death ranged from 32 to 101. They found that almost two thirds (37) of all of the women tested had evidence of the Y chromosome gene in their brains, in several brain regions. The blue spots in the image below highlight cells carrying these “…

    Authored by on September 26, 2012

  • HIV+ doesn’t mean you can’t have children

    …nknown HIV levels near the time of delivery, regardless of whether they were taking recommended antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy. The guidelines state that when there is a low rate of transmission (viral loads lower than 1000 copies/mL), the benefits of a scheduled c-section are unclear. Dr. Levison, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, says that in her practice, women rarely need a cesarean section. The n…

    Authored by on March 11, 2013

  • Mother’s Day: Part of me forever

    Always a part of each other. (Source) Double X Science’s Chris Gunter, science education and outreach editor, wrote this wonderful post for the Last Word on Nothing. We are featuring it here for Mother’s Day because, as she writes, if you’re a mother, you and your child are part of each other forever–and this time, we mean in a scientific sense. Source. This summer I put my Lilkid, as I call him online…

    Authored by on May 12, 2012

  • Xplainer: How do you date a pregnancy?

    …and 22. Pregnancy is often detected after the first missed period. This graphic is intentionally simple, removing all the hormones and other fun stuff (Ed: which you can find here). You’ll note that it says approximately day 14 and day 28. In textbooks, we often see that women have 28-day cycles and everything has a nice schedule. However, women are not textbooks and sometimes have shorter or longer cycles and/or have ovulation at slightly diffe…

    Authored by on October 3, 2012

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