Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/play

  • How important for children is imaginary play?

    Olde tyme tea party. Girls engaging in pretend play, 19th c.Photo via Wikimedia; public domain in US. Did you engage in imaginary play as a child? A recent study–which like the organic foods study involved evaluation of existing reports in one big chunk–has led its authors to conclude that imaginary or pretend play doesn’t seem to boost intelligence, creativity, or the ability to tackle problems. The researchers did fi…

    Authored by on September 8, 2012

  • LEGO those gender stereotypes

    My daughter, patiently waiting to get her own balloon jetpack.Photo credit: Phil Blake Why can’t you understand that my daughter wants a damn jetpack? Last weekend, I took my daughters to a birthday party that featured a magician/balloon artist.  He was really fantastic with the kids, and kept their attention for close to 1 hour (ONE HOUR!!!).  At the end of his magic show, he began to furiously twist and tie balloon…

    Authored by on August 29, 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

  • 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

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

    …nt 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 used with mammography. Approval of a device of this nat…

    Authored by on September 21, 2012

  • Vaccination attitudes are contagious

    …ts make about vaccinating their children. It’s a tragic irony that the United Kingdom is in the throes of one of the worst measles epidemics in decades just as the United Nations World Immunization Week is upon us. Over 1,000 cases of the highly contagious and potentially fatal disease have been reported in Wales and in northeast England. Yet measles is preventable with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine – as long as enough people are…

    Authored by on April 24, 2013

  • Parenting paranoia comes in different forms

    …ls because they are not “a big scoop.” Yet they often show that the initial, Big Headline Finding was overblown or even incorrect. That brings me to an example that really pushes my buttons — childhood immunizations. In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and colleagues published a study in the prominent British medical journal the Lancet. The paper examined a hypothesized association between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism, but the…

    Authored by on May 19, 2013

  • Double Xpression: Debbie Berebichez, PhD Physicist

    …ir life stories.  I didn’t have any family members, or anyone else for that matter, that had pursued a career in science, so I didn’t have a mentor or a role model.  I felt an extreme kinship with Tycho Brahe, who in the late 1500’s was locked in a tower, doing all of these calculations for years, hated by everyone in the town.  Go figure! I felt some kinship with these scientists.   But I didn’t have the courage nor the means to switch majors. …

    Authored by on June 2, 2012

  • Leaky gut and wonky immune response might be double whammy leading to inflammatory bowel disease (in mice)

    A case of ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease.Photo via Wikimedia Commons. Credit: Samir. A two-hit punch in the gut might explain why some people find themselves alone among their closest relatives in having inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The double gut punches come in the form of a compromised intestinal wall coupled with a poorly behaved immune system, say Emory researchers, whose work using mice was publishe…

    Authored by on September 13, 2012

  • Motherhood, war, and attachment: what does it all mean?

    The antebellum tales Scene 1: Two fathers encounter each other at a Boy Scout meeting. After a little conversation, one reveals that his son won’t be playing football because of concerns about head injuries. The other father reveals that he and his son love football, that they spoke with their pediatrician about it, and that their son will continue with football at least into middle school. There’s a bit of wary nodding, and then, back to the…

    Authored by on May 16, 2012

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