/oss/taxonomy/term/2426/all en /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/if-youre-getting-old-you-can-blame-klotho <p>There is no shortage of stories professing the existence of a Fountain of Youth somewhere in the world, always just out of reach. Bathing in its water was claimed to undo the damage of old age. Nowadays, if we are to listen to the hype emanating from the scientific literature, it seems the Fountain of Youth was inside of us all along.</p> Fri, 29 Sep 2023 13:58:22 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 9668 at /oss /oss/article/history-general-science/word-cisgender-has-scientific-roots <p>In 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary<a href="https://public.oed.com/blog/december-2015-update-new-words-notes/"> </a><a href="https://public.oed.com/blog/december-2015-update-new-words-notes/">added the word “cisgender”</a> to its ever-evolving listing. It defines the adjective as “designating a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds to his or her sex at birth” and is contrasted with “transgender.”</p> Fri, 12 Nov 2021 17:15:12 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 8920 at /oss /oss/article/general-science/seen-and-unseen-consequences-albinism <p>Today I learned two things. First, that we apparently have an albino squirrel on our campus. Second, that seeing an albino squirrel before a test is good luck.</p> <p>While I have seen photographic evidence of the former, I remain skeptical of the latter. I think it might just be a great marketing gimmick for the<a href="http://albinosquirrel.com/about.html"> Albino Squirrel Preservation Society</a> founded on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. (I am not making this part up!)</p> Fri, 13 Dec 2019 15:00:00 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 8046 at /oss /oss/article/pseudoscience-reviews/genetic-astrology-naturopath-ben-lynch <p>Are you Hufflepuff or Gryffindor? Erudite or Dauntless? Or maybe you know your Myers-Briggs Type to be ESTP? Or how about plain old astrology? Are you a Capricorn?</p> <p>Belonging to a discreet category can be reassuring to many people. We’re told we have <i>these</i> traits but not <i>those</i> traits, and we get a cool label we can use to recognize other members of our in-group. It provides clarity and security. But while I have seen genes that cause cancer, I had never seen Cancer in genes… until I read Ben Lynch’s book, <i>Dirty Genes</i>.</p> Tue, 26 Nov 2019 21:38:09 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 8008 at /oss /oss/article/health-general-science/are-you-there-race-its-me-dna <p>What would you say is Liam Neeson’s race?</p> <p>I ask this question because in this era of the gene, of people swabbing their cheeks to know where their ancestors came from, and of racism glazed over with the shiny patina of science, many people feel confused about race. They have heard that it’s a social construct, but that can be hard to square with rumours that only Black people have sickle cell anemia. And if 23andMe can report on your ancestry, isn’t that proof that race exists at the biological level?</p> Thu, 08 Aug 2019 15:41:10 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 7849 at /oss /oss/article/pseudoscience/thetahealingr-money-youll-spend-never-existed <p>It must have looked like they were testing for telepathy. One self-described healer and their patient, sitting face to face, were each wearing what I would describe as a rugby helmet covered in electrodes, the tangle of cables coming off of the skull cap looking like a cyberpunk ponytail.</p> <p>This strange experiment was published in 2016. The goal? To see if the central claim of a method called ThetaHealing® could be confirmed by looking at real-time brain activity.</p> Thu, 01 Aug 2019 16:00:00 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 7844 at /oss /oss/article/general-science/ambiguous-genetics-invite-woo <p>If you could know every letter in your DNA, would you be better off?</p> <p>Our recent obsession with kits like 23andMe’s certainly seems to indicate that many of us believe there is important knowledge (and fun) to be gained from probing our genome. But there is a significant gap between recognizing the alphabet of a foreign language and understanding one of its books.</p> Tue, 16 Jul 2019 19:49:48 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 7831 at /oss /oss/article/health-general-science/they-say-its-genetic-my-parents-dont-have-it <p>When we’re told a condition we have is “genetic”, it’s tempting to think it means our parents had it, and their parents before them, all the way up to some mysterious Eve-bites-the-apple event. But if you’re told you have muscular dystrophy and your parents don’t have it, what’s going on? A trip to IKEA may help answer that.</p> Tue, 11 Jun 2019 15:18:12 +0000 Jonathan Jarry, MSc 7795 at /oss /oss/article/health-videos/new-world-epigenetics-cs24 <p><div class="media-youtube-video media-element file-default media-youtube-1"> <iframe class="media-youtube-player" id="media-youtube-owigdevz-t0" width="640" height="390" title="The New World of Epigenetics (CS24)" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/owIGDeVZ-T0?wmode=opaque&controls=&enablejsapi=1&modestbranding=1&playerapiid=media-youtube-owigdevz-t0&origin=https%3A//www.mcgill.ca&rel=0" name="The New World of Epigenetics (CS24)" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>Video of The New World of Epigenetics (CS24)</iframe> </div> </p> Fri, 18 Jan 2019 17:54:25 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 7544 at /oss /oss/article/did-you-know/queen-ants-dont-have-divine-right-their-thrones-just-right-genetics <p><span>Humans have classified more than 12,500 species of ants, and there are an estimated 10,000 more waiting to be discovered. Besides their incredible strength, almost all of these species have something in common: queens. </span></p> Thu, 02 Aug 2018 17:39:57 +0000 Ada McVean B.Sc. 7200 at /oss /oss/article/videos-quackery/cracked-science-15-genetics-intelligence <p><div class="media-youtube-video media-element file-default media-youtube-2"> <iframe class="media-youtube-player" id="media-youtube-wrxfad48bnc" width="640" height="390" title="The Genetics of Intelligence (CS15)" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/wRxFAd48BNc?wmode=opaque&controls=&enablejsapi=1&modestbranding=1&playerapiid=media-youtube-wrxfad48bnc&origin=https%3A//www.mcgill.ca&rel=0" name="The Genetics of Intelligence (CS15)" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>Video of The Genetics of Intelligence (CS15)</iframe> </div> </p> Thu, 10 May 2018 19:48:03 +0000 Jonathan Jarry, MSc 7081 at /oss /oss/article/technology/cracked-science-04-23andme-and-personalized-genetic-testing <p><div class="media-youtube-video media-element file-default media-youtube-3"> <iframe class="media-youtube-player" id="media-youtube-77rzye2grnw" width="640" height="390" title="23andMe and Personalized Genetic Testing (CS04)" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/77rzye2gRNw?wmode=opaque&controls=&enablejsapi=1&modestbranding=1&playerapiid=media-youtube-77rzye2grnw&origin=https%3A//www.mcgill.ca&rel=0" name="23andMe and Personalized Genetic Testing (CS04)" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>Video of 23andMe and Personalized Genetic Testing (CS04)</iframe> </div> ​</p> Thu, 10 May 2018 17:57:50 +0000 Jonathan Jarry, MSc 7069 at /oss /oss/article/general-science-health-and-nutrition/you-know-dna-meet-even-more-interesting-molecule <p>I remember being introduced to RNA as a disposable DNA copy with a very short life, a sort of mayfly of the molecular world.</p> <p>RNA was how you got from DNA to protein. It was like a set of instructions printed on the most brittle of papers. It might as well have been the medium through which the <em>Mission: Impossible</em> team got their assignment before it self-destructed. In one word, it was uninteresting.</p> <p>We’re all familiar with DNA. It encodes the machinery that creates living beings. But RNA, its oft-dismissed offspring, is much more fascinating.</p> Fri, 22 Dec 2017 00:44:24 +0000 Jonathan Jarry, MSc 6853 at /oss /oss/article/did-you-know/chocolate-genes <p>Chocolate may be about to get better, sweeter and even more irresistible. Scientists have succeeded in sequencing the genome of the Criollo chocolate tree. Due to susceptibility to diseases, cocoa trees normally give a low production of fine quality cocoa.</p> Tue, 23 May 2017 17:46:26 +0000 emily.shore@mcgill.ca 2481 at /oss /oss/article/did-you-know/can-twins-same-genes-have-different-traits <p>Even though identical (monozygotic) twins may have the exact same genetic make-up, it is possible that they can have different features from one another. This is thanks to differences in the womb (also known as “developmental noise”, where individuals can develop differences due to noise in signalling and signal interpretation) and differences in environments encountered after birth. In fact, the genes – albeit identical – can actually be expressed differently, thereby leading to very different drug reactions and susceptibilities to disease.</p> Tue, 21 Feb 2017 04:35:58 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 1497 at /oss