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  • Pregnancy 101: The science behind the wand of destiny

    …om laughing so hard, let us get back to the science. The first “slice of bread” is called the reaction zone, the “sandwich filling” is called the test zone, and the “last slice of bread” is called the control zone (see figure 2). Each of these zones is coated with capture antibodies, but differ from each other in how they work.  The antibodies on the reaction zone will capture only hCG and will detach from the strip upon exposure to urine. The…

    Authored by on November 26, 2011

  • Pregnancy 101: Peas made me puke, but not just in the morning

    …ing. What is morning sickness? Tick-tock. Credit: Jeanne Garbarino It has long been known that nausea and vomiting are common symptoms of pregnancy. In fact, documentation of this phenomenon goes as far back as 2000 BC. However, the term “morning sickness” is a complete misnomer. For one, pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting is not just a morning thing. It can happen at any time of day. Second, the term “sickness” suggests a state…

    Authored by on February 14, 2012

  • Pregnancy 101: It Hurts Where?

    …ated pelvic girdle pain comes from the bony joints in the pelvis, which can in turn cause pain and dysfunction in the surrounding muscles. These problems can appear during or after pregnancy. Studies report that approximately 20 percent of women experience these symptoms with pregnancy. For most women, the pain goes away within a few months of childbirth. But for somewhere between 7 and 10 percent of them, it doesn’t. A combination of factors app…

    Authored by on February 10, 2013

  • Miscarriage: When a beginning is not a beginning

    …ntaneous abortion. Except that some didn’t like the term spontaneous abortion and used intrauterine mortality (Wood, 1994). Or fetal loss. Fetal loss is probably the most common. There is also pregnancy loss (Holman and Wood, 2001). You can use that term, too. Oh, or a-conceptions (a for abortion), compared to l-conceptions (l for live birth) (Wood, 1994). A large number of these fetal losses are before or close to the time of implantation. For m…

    Authored by on September 5, 2012

  • Xplainer: How do you date a pregnancy?

    …lopment = embryological age (e.g., developmental biologist) 2 But why are there two types of dates? We might need a bit of a primer on the menstrual cycle and how it relates to pregnancy. Implantation happens between days 20 and 22. Pregnancy is often detected after the first missed period. This graphic is intentionally simple, removing all the hormones and other fun stuff (Ed: which you can find here). You’ll note that it says approximately…

    Authored by on October 3, 2012

  • How pregnant are you? Let’s find out

    …or “slipping” the top plate), they flow bottom-to-top. Samples and reagents are loaded in one configuration, and the chip is “slipped” to start the readout process. The SlipChip design Source: Nat. Commun. 3:1283 doi: 10.1038/ncomms2292 (2012). Here’s how the authors describe it: In the SlipChip, two pieces of glass etched with microfluidic wells and channels are assembled together in the presence of mineral oil. A fluidic path is for…

    Authored by on January 6, 2013

  • 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

  • Hormonal birth control explainer: a matter of health

    …ich exists to prepare an egg for fertilization and to make the uterine lining ready to receive a fertilized egg, should it arrive.  Fig. 1. Female reproductive anatomy. Credit: Jeanne Garbarino. In the theoretical 28-day cycle, fertilization (fusion of sperm and egg), if it occurs, will happen about 14 days in, timed with ovulation , or release of the egg from the ovary into the Fallopian tube or oviduct (see video–watch fo…

    Authored by on March 5, 2012

  • The Finkbeiner Test

    …mphasize a woman’s sex, you inevitably end up dismissing her science. I asked her if there was a particular story that epitomized the problem, and she pointed me to this two page profile of Vera Rubin, published in Science in 2002. (Full text is behind a paywall, sorry.) Twelve of the story’s 24 paragraphs mention Rubin’s sex or gender roles. “  Four paragraphs on her science, and she was the one who found dark matter,” Finkbeiner says. It’s time…

    Authored by on March 5, 2013

  • Depressing genes

    Can depression be a matter of genetic fate? by Siobhan Mitchell          [This post is the latest installment in our I Am Mental Illness series.] What if you could know if you were fated to be depressed? With the rise of personal genotyping services such as 23andme, almost can find out what their psychiatric ‘fate’ will be, but what do you do with this information once you have it? When I first considered testing myself for depressio…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

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