Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

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  • Diversity in Science Carnival #14: Women’s History Month–Exploring the role of women in the STEM enterprise

    …s, women working in the trenches of science, contributing to the enterprise of STEM in ways big and small. Women like Arlene Frances Fung, whose bio tells us she was born in Trinidad, went to medical school in Ireland, and by 1968 was engaged in chromosome research at a cancer institute in Philadelphia. From Trinidad to cancer research, her story is one of the millions we could tell about women’s historical contributions to science, if only we co…

    Authored by on March 29, 2012

  • Double Xpressions: Jennifer Canale, the self-proclaimed "Flamboyant Scientist"

    …ive to a point, but when I asked for an erector set for Christmas, I got a Barbie town house. When I wanted to go camping with the Girl Scouts, I was sent to dance school (but, much to my amazement, I enjoyed that until I was 17).  My parents started giving in around 3rdgrade, and I got the panda bear-shaped calculator I wanted, as well as the robot toy 2XL featuring the 8-track tape. My mom would beg me to watch Little House On the Prairie, but…

    Authored by on November 30, 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

  • A history lesson written in … plaque?

    …and health. As they describe in the journal Nature Genetics, the researchers collected calculus samples (ewww) from 34 human skeletons dating from between 400 (late medieval) and 7,500 years ago (mesolithic), as well as from 10 members of the research team for a modern comparison. (Worst. Cleaning. Ev-ah.) They extracted and amplified specific diagnostic segments of microbial DNA from the 16S ribosomal RNA gene, and then sequenced what they foun…

    Authored by on March 18, 2013

  • Colon Cancer Awareness Month: Get your ass screened. We mean it.

    Don’t want this growing in your colon?Get screened. Via Wikimedia Commons. It started a few months after I had my second son. A pain. Sharp, unrelenting, abdominal. Occasional blood from a place where blood isn’t supposed to appear: the rectum. There. Got the R-word out of the way. After I had laparoscopy for presumed endometrial scarring as the cause of the pain, the pain nevertheless persisted. So, I was referred to a gast…

    Authored by on March 7, 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

  • Depression and alcoholism: all in the family

    …I reach, general anaesthetic might be a factor because I had operations within months of each depressive episode. But my genetic load is probably a bigger influence. My family history is full of depression and alcoholism. In 1st-degree (siblings, parents) and 2nd-degree (grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews) relatives, 11 of 12 people have been treated for depression and/or alcoholism. If we move to 3rd degree relatives, the absolute num…

    Authored by on February 15, 2013

  • 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

  • Signs of a heart attack and what you can do

    …n essence, you are trying to be the heart for the victim, to imitate what the heart, a powerful, muscular pump, would be doing. So, the current response to a sudden cardiac death is pretty simple: Chest compressions only, 100 times a minute. Count them out loud as you go. It’s a fast clip. Some people recommend doing it to the beat of the Bee Gees’ song, Stayin’ Alive, if you’re familiar with that. For more information…

    Authored by on January 5, 2012

  • Are children today really suffering nature deficit disorder (TM)?

    …7;t have television to keep them indoors, they also didn’t have child labor laws. The result was that children who once might have been at work at age 4 in a field were now at work at age 3 or 4 in a factory, putting in 12 or so hours a day before stepping out into the coal-smoked, animal-dung-scented air of the city.  Child labor wasn’t something confined to Industrial Revolution Britain, and it continues today, both for agriculture…

    Authored by on April 30, 2012

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