Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/polycystic ovarian syndrome

  • Hormonal birth control explainer: a matter of health

    …stimulating hormone (blue line), also from the brain, occurs simultaneously. These two hormones along with the estradiol peak result in the follicle expelling the egg from the ovary into the Fallopian tube, or oviduct (Figure 3, step 4). That’s ovulation. Fun fact : Right when the estrogen spikes, a woman’s body temperature will typically drop a bit (see “Basal body temperature” in the figure), so many women have used temperature monitoring to k…

    Authored by on March 5, 2012

  • Hey, doc, as long as you’re down there…

    …loma virus, the pathogen that causes cervical cancer. Since Papanicolaou published his study, cervical cancer rates among screened populations have plummeted, while ovarian and endometrial cancer rates remain unchanged. Some 23,000 American women die annually from those two diseases, and ovarian tumors are especially lethal, as these are often only caught at advanced stages. Clearly, an early detection method is needed, and a new study in Scien…

    Authored by on January 22, 2013

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …ll selection of different materials: bricks, mortar, iron, glass, and wood. Arranged in different ways, these few materials can yield a huge variety of structures. We encountered functional groups and the SPHONC in Chapter 3. These components form the four categories of molecules of life. These Big Four biological molecules are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. They can have many roles, from giving an organism structure to be…

    Authored by on June 8, 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

  • Depressing genes

    ter all, that’s one of the reasons why scientists are trying to identify risk genes: to design better treatments for those disorders. [Image credit: DNA, public domain image from US govt. Image of Prozac, credit Tom Varco, CC 3.0 license.] [Siobhan Mitchell obtained a Neurobiology Ph.D. at the State University New York at Albany (SUNY Albany), followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at University of Washington, Seattle. She currently works at the…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

  • Miscarriage: When a beginning is not a beginning

    …cutoffs for what constitutes early fetal loss, very early fetal loss, and so on. So actual estimates of how much these factors influence fetal loss varies. The safest overall estimate for any given pregnancy is probably about 30%, though one study, even with conservative estimates of pregnancy and fetal loss puts it at 60% (Holman and Wood, 2001). This means, though, that for every two live births a woman has, she’ll have at least one miscarriage…

    Authored by on September 5, 2012

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

    …and I close with a quote from it. It’s a letter by Chitra Thakur-Mahadik, who earned her PhD in biochemistry and hemoglobinopathy from the University of Mumbai and served as staff scientist a Mumbai children’s hospital for 25 years. She wrote to her younger, “partially sighted” self that, “The future is ahead and it is not bad!” She goes on to say, “Be fearless but be compassionate to yourself and others… be brave, keep your eyes and ears open…

    Authored by on March 29, 2012

  • DoubleXpressions — Nazneen Rahman, Cancer Doctor and Jazz Singer

    …t last year I posted some of my songs online and had a really positive response, which was unexpected and lovely. I now have over 1000 followers and have been inspired to make an album which I am hoping to release sometime in 2013. My songs tend be stories about the complexities of life, with lush harmonies, quite a jazzy feel and I have a fondness for a slinky bass line. DXS:  Do you find that your scientific background informs your creativity,…

    Authored by on February 28, 2013

  • Unicorns and Brainbows

    orite, shown below: A cerebellar flocculus, a lobe in the cerebellum, from the original Brainbow paper (Source) Since its original description, researchers have used the Brainbow concept extensively — it has been cited 361 times, according to the Web of Science – and extended it into zebrafish and fruit flies, both species that researchers frequently use in experiments to trace gene expression and how animals develop. But though Lich…

    Authored by on May 6, 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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