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POPSAre you my sister or my daughter? Although this story makes me feel uncomfortable, there have been plenty of cases where orphaned children are brought up by their older siblings who act as surrogate parents. And likewise, plenty of cases where grandparents bring up their grandchildren effectively acting as their parents. Sometimes the children are even deceived into believing their mothers are their sisters. The family relationship quagmire is nothing new although this use if IVF technology is definitely unusual..
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POPSSchool Portraits I've always bought a copy of the school portraits simply because I wanted to encourage the school photographers to come back.
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POPSRedheads are bullied in the UK I had no idea. Another story in the paper yesterday was about a family of four children with red hair who've been bullied at school and in their neighborhood. The only solution offered to them was to dye their hair! And these are grade school aged kids!
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POPSGene Therapy Not Needed The genome revolution isn't all about re-engineering our genome. In a mis-titled article-- Gene therapy: how science moved from hype to hope --Mark Henderson of The Times UK talks about the many different gene variants that have been identified recently that are common in the general population and yield a smaller effect compared to major gene mutations affecting only a small subset of the population, e.g., Huntington's or cystic fibrosis. But rather than focusing on actually changing our genes, as the title would suggest, the article concludes with the idea that environmental factors are easier to manipulate than genes because gene variants with smaller effects are neither sufficient nor necessary for causing disease. I'm glad this point was emphasized so that people don't fall into the trap of believing in genetic determinism . As for the commenter who wondered why research focuses on disease- causing[/b
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POPSMy Big Goals The end of my big dreaming days came when I got my PhD. If I had continued along a traditional career path, I'd probably have had goals like wanting to make tenure track, be a full professor, win some sort of award or other. But now? I can't even think of any extravagant goals that I might want to achieve. I'm happy with my life the way it is. I'm striving but not killing myself doing it. Does that make me a loser?
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POPSCoffee Shop No-No's I read The Atlantic.... It's just one of a handful of magazines I read. Guess I'm a pretentious world class intellectual!
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