About a day To you, Earth probably seems like a fairly stagnant entity. Sure, we are currently dealing with rising global temperatures as well as carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, but in your day to day world, those changes probably seem quite small. Over the history of life on Earth, however, so many things that we […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
August
06
Racism and Birth Inequities, From Biology to Society
posted by Laura Beebe
Image Credit: UNICEF Black mothers in the US are 3-4x more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white mothers (NPR/ProPublica). In addition, 40.6% of Black births are preterm, compared to 33.1% of white births (CDC). Compounding evidence suggests that the lived experience of racism in the US, rather than genetics, health behaviors (e.g. smoking), […]
July
23
Postictal Blues
posted by Donovan Cronkhite
Intro On the morning of January 12th, 2020, I woke up to the sound of my phone vibrating. It was my mom because it was her birthday and I had told her to call me the night before. I had the perfect plan: at approximately 2 a.m. that morning, I snuck into the house (I […]
July
02
The Intersex Brain
posted by Catie Profaci
It is evident that male and female sex characteristics exist on a spectrum, and treating them as fully binary categories invalidates the bodies and experiences of those who express a range of biological sex characteristics. […] But… what about the brain? Are there differences between the male brain and the female brain?
May
21
Get out of my personal s p a c e
posted by Jess Du
How does the brain dynamically represent our personal space? It’s more interesting, and complicated, than you may think.
May
07
Like reality TV? You might be a neuroscientist
posted by Laura Beebe
Imagine … a lush, tropical island with carefully controlled temperature and humidity, where the lights come on and off at regular intervals, where its inhabitants consume dinner in unison from predetermined food sources…. Believe it or not, this paradise exists! It’s called Love Island. And for the many millions of viewers that tune into Love […]
March
18
Is anyone in there?
posted by Timothy Sheehan
How can we tell if someone is aware of what is going on around them? One strategy is to look at their eyes. Eye contact and dilated pupils are a good sign someone is actively engaged in a conversation. If they’re staring off into space or flickering open and shut, it’s a good sign they […]
March
05
The Biochemist's Stone: NAD+
posted by Nicholas A. Nelson
NAD+ (pronounced “N-A-D Plus”) is one of the most fundamental, crucial molecules in metabolism throughout all life on Earth. Life without NAD+ is hard to imagine: it holds irreplaceable roles in nearly every cellular process, from handling oxidative stress, DNA repair, and protein folding through to the generation of cellular energy (ATP). How does one […]
January
30
Love in the Time of PCR
posted by Laura Beebe
(Image credit: CellPress) Renowned geneticist George Church caused a stir last month with his idea for a brand new dating app, in which users submit their DNA for sequencing as a critical part of their profile. Church’s app, “digiD8”, doesn’t connect tech-savvy singles who love all-things-90’s, as the name implies, but rather matches users based […]
January
23
Brains and Buildings
posted by minicontreras
[En Español] There is a fascinating explosion of potential questions to ask when two previously thought-to-be-unrelated fields converge. One night, as I was having a beer in a Chula Vista brewery with my best friend Alma and her husband Ross, I was invited to be conscious about our surroundings. Alma and Ross Majewski graduated from […]
