Are you suffering abdominal pain or discomfort, fatigue, nausea, flatulence, heartburn, and acid reflux? Have you been having difficulty urinating, or experiencing pain while doing so? Oh, and one other question—have you been spontaneously expelling microscopic bits of disintegrated dog fetuses through your urethra? If you answered “yes” to all of the above, then you may [...]

Inside Higher Ed has an interesting interview with Professors Kelly Ward (Washington State University) and Lisa Wolf-Wendel (University of Kansas) the authors of the new book Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family. The whole thing is worth a read, including important points about how liberal arts colleges tend to be less family-friendly than [...]

Trigger warning: discussion of violence against women.

Trigger warning: discussion of violence against women and graphic mention of miscarriage.

Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German, Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family, some of the NPG blogs [...]

I am slowly working on a book chapter on adolescent hormonal contraception, based on this blog post and conference presentation. I wanted to share some findings for your perusal. I’ve intentionally left out much analysis in favor of keeping things open-ended. I’ve been curious about whether there are general guidelines out there for medical doctors [...]

This is a re-post, with slight editing, of a piece I wrote on the old blog after last year’s AAPA meetings. I would like to keep thinking on this topic so thought I would share this before I write anything new for the Sci Am space. Variation in adolescent menstrual cycles, doctor-patient relationships, and why [...]

As I mentioned Wednesday, Building Babies, the volume edited by me, Katie Hinde and Julienne Rutherford will be out in only a few months in one of the fastest turnarounds I know of for a book of this nature. It also happens to be awesome. I shared an interview with Lady Editor Katie on Wednesday, [...]

After almost two years of work, Building Babies is off to the presses, due to be out late August/early September! Building Babies: Primate Development in Proximate and Ultimate Perspective is a volume co-edited by me, Katie Hinde, and Julienne Rutherford about the many mechanisms and broader adaptations involved in – you guessed it – building [...]

In his SciAm post addendum (scroll to the bottom), Jesse Bering has been very gracious. This post really isn’t about that now-infamous advice column, but about broader ways to interrogate claims people make. This post is another way of thinking about Sci and my #scio12 session on “Sex, gender and controversy” (see our other session [...]

It’s the end of 2011, and I have a number of reasons to celebrate: a wonderful family, a wonderful job, a fun gig at SciAm, a roller derby season about to start back up again, and Science Online 2012 in a few short weeks. It’s the time of year to reflect on what we have [...]

Some weeks back, I came across a case report published in 1999 in the journal Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology [1]. It presented a twin pregnancy wherein one of the fetuses seemed to be at a younger developmental stage in its mother’s womb compared to its sibling. It wasn’t the first time that I had [...]

Depending on your perspective, Twitter can either be a valuable source of breaking news, or a fire hose of miscellaneous, often dubious information. Microsoft researchers are investigating whether the microblogging service could serve another, more scientific function—to spot signs of postpartum depression in new mothers based on changes in how and what they tweet. The [...]

Since last August, I’ve been counting down the days until my 30th birthday this Wednesday. You see, I’ve got money coming my way—not just in the form of birthday checks from my grandmother and aunts—but an even larger chunk of change, spread out over the entire year. Starting August 1, I, along with millions of [...]

Mothers-to-be know they must be extra vigilant about what they put in their bodies—avoiding too much seafood, and making sure they get plenty of fruits and vegetables, for instance. But research has been piling up suggesting that the mother’s overall weight and metabolic health before—and while—she is pregnant can also have a lasting impact on [...]

Infant mortality is at its lowest rate ever. Now fewer than three percent of babies worldwide die within the first five weeks of life, which is surely cause for celebration. Many of the infants who have been saved, however, did not enter this world easily. A new analysis published online Thursday in The Lancet found [...]

It’s one of the great frustrations of obstetric medicine: humans have been reproducing for hundreds of thousands of years, and yet doctors still haven’t unraveled the mystery of why some women give birth well before their babies have fully developed in the womb. Despite researchers’ and physicians’ best efforts, the rate of preterm births—defined as [...]

The benefits of breast-feeding for babies have proved to be myriad, and an increasing number of studies are finding long-term health benefits for mothers, too, including reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and lower odds of some cancers. A new analysis confirms earlier observations that breast-feeding helps to decrease a mother’s risk of developing type 2 [...]

Cigarette smoke plays an undisputed role in the development of lung and other cancers. Carcinogens in the smoke damage DNA, which often results in mutations in genes that promote the development of cancer. It’s also well known that secondhand smoke can have effects indistinguishable from active smoking. While maternal tobacco smoking has been associated with [...]

HIV infects an estimated 430,000 infants and children worldwide each year. Although many of those cases are contracted from an HIV-positive mother during pregnancy or birth, some 40 percent of infected children get the disease through breast-feeding. But because of health risks associated with formula feeding—especially in resource-poor regions—the World Health Organization still recommends breast-feeding [...]

Sea horses and their cousins in the syngnathid group are the only known animals in which the male gets pregnant and bears the offspring. In these unusual reproductive circumstances, however, the next generation often does not thrive—or even survive. A new study of sea horse cousins called pipefish found that the males can be particular—and [...]

This seems to have become unofficial volcano week, here at ScienceBlogs. If you haven’t been following the coverage of the Eyjafjallaj