18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Bush Administration Science Abuses
After President Bush's 2004 reelection, scientists noticed that the problem was becoming even worse. One example was Bush's appointment of George Deutsch, a twenty-four-year-old Texas A&M University dropout and Bush campaign intern, to a key position in NASA's public relations department. Deutsch set to work muzzling NASA's top climate scientist. James Hansen, once refusing to allow Hansen to interview with National Public Radio because it was "the most liberal" media outlet in the countr...
1 From prohibiting studies that didn't fit their agenda, to refusing to approve drugs approved by the FDA, "faith-based initiatives", etc, etc.
18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
When Does Human Life Begin
Careful and reproducible observations and measurements in the bbiosciences have similarly forced us to repeatedly refine our traditional ideas about what life itself is and when it begins. Is a human being first a life when it emerges from the birth canal? Does it have any legal rights is as a person before then? Or is it a life at the stage of development where > it is able to survive independently outside of the womb even if it is removed from there early, as can happen naturally with pr... 1 
notes
notesIs it at fertilization, implantation, or after birth?
19 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Exercise During Pregnancy
There are two main reasons for concern about exercising during pregnancy. One is that it may reduce the baby's oxygen supply, since exercise, like other sources of stress, reduces blood flow to the uterus. Another risk is overheating. As we have already seen, fetal development is highly sensitive to temperature, and elevations of more than 2^0 C (or above 1020F) can increase the risk of miscarriage and affect the formation of the brain and eyes.
Despite these theoretical concerns, there is ...There are some concerns about the mother exercising during pregnancy, but the benefits appear to outweight the potential deleterious effects and have no apparent effect on the child's IQ.
19 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Fetal Alcohol Syndrom
It is from a public health standpoint, rather than from knowledge of indipercent of pregnant wompr. i^ percent of pregnant women in the United States reported drinking alcohol in the month preceding the survey, and 3 percent admitted to at least one binge. (Alcohol consumption is notoriously underreported in this kind of survey.) Prenatal alcohol use is thought to be responsible for at least 4,000 cases of mental retardation in the United States each year and perhaps ten times that number of ... 1 notes
notesThe effects of alcohol abuse on the developing child has lifelong impact on them as they grow older.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Prenatal Influences as Information for the Fetus
The notion of prenatal influences may conjure up frivolous attempts to enrich the fetus, like playing Mozart through headphones placed on a pregnant belly. In reality, the nine-month-long process of shaping and molding that goes on in the womb is far more visceral and consequential than that. Much of what a pregnant woman encounters in her daily life—the air she breathes, the food and drink she consumes, the emotions she feels, the chemicals she’s exposed to—are shared in some fashion w...Folksonomies: pregnancy fetal development
Folksonomies: pregnancy fetal development
2 Diet and other environmental factors are data for the fetus about the conditions of the world outside the womb and influence its development to be best adapted to that environment.
