Archive for the ‘Studies’ Category

Embryos Do the Darnedest Things: Pregnant Woman Conceives Again


Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Children tend to deliver a steady stream of surprises, some pleasant and some not-so-pleasant, after they emerge from the womb. Then again, perhaps just as often, children start delivering surprises before their big premiere. Take this baby in Arkansas, for instance. The mother was several weeks into gestation on one child when she got an unexpected and extremely uncommon surprise: she was pregnant again. That’s right- another baby was conceived in her womb weeks after the first one.

Apparently, this is called superfetation. ‘Super’ indeed.

Other more common reproductive surprises include:

Multiples – “Yeah, you know how you were getting ready for one baby? Well, you’re having eight. Isn’t that wonderful?” As a father of twins, I can tell it is wonderful… after three long years of sleeplessness and high stress.

Gender Oops – “You know how you bought all those pink onesies and painted the room pink and bought the entire Barbie collection? Well, it’s not a girl after all. Of course, that means it’s a boy.” Despite advances in ultrasound tech, this continues to happen.

What surprises have you or someone you know had in conceiving children?




‘The Human Family Tree’ uses DNA to trace mankind’s roots to Africa


Sunday, September 6th, 2009

A new special by National Geographic set out to trace the origins of the human race using 350,000 DNA swabs, a joint project between National Geographic and IBM called the Genographic Project. The result is ‘The Human Family Tree’, which illustrates how at least 75 percent of humans came from a single man or woman in Africa tens of thousands of years ago. As resources became scarcer amidst climate change, humans, they posit, moved across Asia and up into Europe, eventually crossing the Bering Strait into the Americas.

A few really interesting tidbits pop up, like a man from Ghana who finds strong traces of European and Asians who find big chunks of Native American. Whether you subscribe to evolution or not, this series should at least pique the curiosity of most family history buffs out there.

The study doesn’t end there. You can submit your DNA to the study by going to their site and ordering a kit. “Where are you really from?” is their tagline. Sounds enticing to say the least.