Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/labor

  • The vaginal ecosystem.

    …h shows that the human body’s normal microbial complement – aka, its “microbiome” or ecosystem – is an integral part of what it means to be human. (One of my undergraduate microbiology professors, noting that there are, like, 10 bacterial cells for every human cell in a normal human adult, used to say he was a “microbial bus.” But, again, I digress.) The human microbiome helps protect us from infection, enables us to break down and absorb nutrien…

    Authored by on February 25, 2013

  • 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

  • Women, harassment, and construction sites

    …many construction sites have anti-women attitudes, making construction jobs less desirable and/or torturous for women. The United States Department of Labor Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health reported in 1999 that 88% of women construction workers surveyed had experienced sexual harassment at work. I searched high and low for more current data, but no extensive study has been done since then. Most recent information I found…

    Authored by on October 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

  • Pregnancy 101: On the cervical mucus plug and why I’ve never been more happy to hold something so disgusting in my hand

    …and elastic mucus, known as the cervical mucus plug. In non-scientific terms, the mucus plug is like the cork that keeps all of the bubbly baby goodness safe from harmful bacteria. It is quite large, often weighing in around 10 g (0.35 oz) and consists mostly of water (>90%) that contains several hundred types of proteins. These proteins do many jobs, including immunological gatekeepers, structural maintenance, regulation of fluid balance, and e…

    Authored by on December 29, 2011

  • Is there a season for births?

    …ian section: “Oh, not the 4th … how about the following Monday?” Or an obstetrician: “I’m taking the 4th off, don’t schedule anything that day.” There’s also a local peak on Feb 14. Perhaps Valentine’s Day sounds like a good birthday to that hypothetical mom on the phone. And a lot of superstitious people might actively avoid the 13th of any month to escape giving their child an ‘unlucky’ number for…

    Authored by on February 18, 2013

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

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