Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/ice cream

  • Freezing Point: Science never tasted so good!

    …This is because salt will lower the freezing point of water, thereby helping to keep it from turning into an icy mess, even when temperatures are below freezing.  But, it will only work if the walkway is warmer than -9°C (or 15°F).  How does this relate back to ice cream?  Well, we can use the same idea of lowering the freezing point of water and apply it to making cream freeze.  The set-up involves two resealable plastic bags (one quart-size…

    Authored by on December 13, 2011

  • Why Are Snowflakes Always Six-Sided?

    …y water molecules are arranged like they are. Water seems like a simple enough molecule. It consists of one oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms bonded to it. The hydrogen atoms bond to the oxygen atom at a distance of exactly 104.5 degrees from each other (1). Why that particular angle? An oxygen atom has a total of eight electrons. Two of them take up all the available spots in the shell closest to the atom’s nucleus. The remaining six elec…

    Authored by on February 3, 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

  • Why blueberries won’t turn you blue and other blueberry facts

    …of blueberry nutrition includes it as a source of sugar. One cup (148 g) of blueberries contains about 15 g of sugar and 4 g of fiber, a single gram of protein, and half a gram of fat. If you are counting carbs, this cup has 21 g of them. That one cup of blueberries averages about 85 calories, which is approximately the same as a medium apple or orange. While almost all the vitamins and minerals nutrition gurus like to report on are present to s…

    Authored by on September 3, 2012

  • Science, health, medical news freaking you out? Do the Double X Double-Take first

    …ouble X Double-Take: What to do when reading science in the news 1. Skip the headline. Headlines are often misleading, at best, and can be wildly inaccurate. Forget about the headline. Pretend you never even saw the headline. 2. What is the basis of the article? Science news originates from several places. Often it’s a scientific paper. These papers come in several varieties. The ones that report a real study–lots of people or mice or…

    Authored by on April 27, 2012

  • 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

  • Real science vs. fake science: How can you tell them apart?

    …ed marketing scam? Do they use, for example, a Website or magazine or newspaper ad that’s made to look sciencey or newsy when it’s really one giant advertisement meant to make you think it’s journalism? 2. What is the agenda? You must know this to consider any information in context. In a scientific paper, look at the funding sources. If you’re reading a non-scientific anything, remain extremely skeptical. What does t…

    Authored by on December 11, 2011

  • 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

  • Autism and the DSM-5

    …ial social aspect of this change, and the one thing that might, when it comes to autism, elevate the DSM-5 above the level of doorstop. [Image credit: Dave Bullock, UK, via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.]…

    Authored by on April 23, 2013

  • Is the bar high enough for screening breast ultrasounds for breast cancer?

    …n controversial. What’s new is the “Are You Dense?” patient 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…

    Authored by on September 21, 2012

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