Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

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  • The Only Mother’s Day Gift Guide You Will Ever Need

    …embedded a little science here and there in the links. ) While the celebration of mothers is not a new concept, the modern version of Mother’s Day is a far cry from the ancient festivals that honored Cybele .  However, in 1907, when Anna Jarvis invented the modern Mother’s Day as a means to pay homage to her own mother, it was not her intention to use moms for profit. But, alas, by the 1920s, this well-intended national holiday quickly mo…

    Authored by on May 9, 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

  • Think pink? I’d rather raise a stink

    Are some of these possible signs of breast cancer presentin a famous work of art? Image: public domain, US gov by Liza Gross, contributor [Ed. note: This article was originally posted on KQED QUEST on October 3, 2012. It is reposted here with kind permission.] Just a generation ago, October belonged to the colors of fall, when “every green thing loves to die in bright colors,” as Henry Ward Beecher said. (Growing up back East, you read…

    Authored by on October 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

  • Yvonne Brill: she made the satellite revolution possible

    …;t be more different. Yet both theoretical physics and rocket science are creative endeavors, and their best practitioners change the way we explore our Universe. So it was with rocket engineer Yvonne Brill, who died on March 28, 2013 at age 88. She held the patent on the “dual thrust level monopropellant spacecraft propulsion system,” a complicated name for an extremely important invention. Basically, Brill found a way to use a single type of ro…

    Authored by on April 9, 2013

  • Colon Cancer Awareness Month: Get your ass screened. We mean it.

    Don’t want this growing in your colon?Get screened. Via Wikimedia Commons. It started a few months after I had my second son. A pain. Sharp, unrelenting, abdominal. Occasional blood from a place where blood isn’t supposed to appear: the rectum. There. Got the R-word out of the way. After I had laparoscopy for presumed endometrial scarring as the cause of the pain, the pain nevertheless persisted. So, I was referred to a gast…

    Authored by on March 7, 2012

  • If you try one detox this year, make it this one

    …is 7, values above 7 are basic, and values below are acidic. But our bodies vary from location to location in what the “just-right” pH should be. So what does a “steady pH” even mean? The pH of your stomach, a nice digestive 2? The pH of your muscle and muscle, around 7? The pH of your vagina, at 4? One fruit can’t possibly do all of these things, and it’s doubtful that it even does one of them. What about acai berries and other foods “packed wi…

    Authored by on January 21, 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

  • 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

  • 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

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