Search
Filter by Topic
- People (212) Apply People filter
- Publications (126) Apply Publications filter
- Reproduction (126) Apply Reproduction filter
- Experiments (105) Apply Experiments filter
- Processes (91) Apply Processes filter
- Theories (82) Apply Theories filter
- Technologies (70) Apply Technologies filter
- Disorders (65) Apply Disorders filter
- Legal (41) Apply Legal filter
- Ethics (32) Apply Ethics filter
- Organizations (27) Apply Organizations filter
- Organisms (20) Apply Organisms filter
- Outreach (16) Apply Outreach filter
- Religion (4) Apply Religion filter
- Places (2) Apply Places filter
- DNA (1) Apply DNA filter
- Publication (1) Apply Publication filter
- Reproductive Health Arizona (1) Apply Reproductive Health Arizona filter
Betty Friedan (1921–2006)
Betty Friedan advocated for the advancement of women's rights in the twentieth century in the United States. In 1963, Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, which historians consider a major contribution to the feminist movement. Friedan also helped establish two organizations that advocated for women's right, the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1963 and, in 1969 the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NAARL). Friedan argued for legalizing access to abortion and contraception, and her advocacy helped advance women's reproductive rights.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Early Infantile Autism and the Refrigerator Mother Theory (1943-1970)
In 1943, child psychiatrist Leo Kanner in the US gave the first account of Early Infantile Autism that encouraged psychiatrists to investigate what they called emotionally cold mothers, or refrigerator mothers. In 1949, Kanner published Problems of Nosology and Psychodynamics of Early Infantile Autism. In that article, Kanner described autistic children as reared in emotional refrigerators. US child psychiatrists claimed that some psychological or behavioral conditions might have origins in emotional or mental stress, meaning that they might be psychogenic.
Format: Articles
Francis Maitland Balfour (1851-1882)
During the 1870s and early 1880s, the British morphologist Francis Maitland Balfour contributed in important ways to the budding field of evolutionary embryology, especially through his comparative embryological approach to uncovering ancestral relationships between groups. As developmental biologist and historian Brian Hall has observed, the field of evolutionary embryology in the nineteenth century was the historical ancestor of modern-day evolutionary developmental biology.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Parasitic Twins
Parasitic twins, a specific type of conjoined twins, occurs when one twin ceases development during gestation and becomes vestigial to the fully formed dominant twin, called the autositic twin. The underdeveloped twin is called parasitic because it is only partially formed, is not functional, or is wholly dependent on the autositic twin.
Format: Articles
Subject: Disorders, Reproduction
"Behavioral Thermoregulation by Turtle Embryos" (2011), by Wei-Guo Du, Bo Zhao, Ye Chen, and Richard Shine
In "Behavioral Thermoregulation by Turtle Embryos," published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in April, 2011, Wei-Guo Du, Bo Zhao, Ye Chen, and Richard Shine report that turtle embryos can move towards warmer temperatures within the egg when presented with a small, 0.8 degrees Celsius gradient. This behavioral thermoregulation may benefit the embryo's fitness by accelerating the rate of development enough to decrease the incubation period by up to four and a half days. Embryos are generally thought to have little control over their surroundings.
Format: Articles
Subject: Publications
"Congenital Cataract following German Measles in the Mother" (1941), by Norman McAlister Gregg
In Australia in the 1940s, Norman McAlister Gregg observed a connection between pregnant women who contracted the rubella virus, or German measles, and cataract formation in their children's eyes. Gregg published his findings in the 1941 article Congenital Cataract following German Measles in the Mother in Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society of Australia. In the article, Gregg analyzed seventy-eight cases of congenital cataracts and suggested that the mothers' environmental factors could cause birth defects, otherwise known as teratogenic effects.
Format: Articles
Subject: Publications
Gunther von Hagens (1945- )
Gunther von Hagens invented a plastination technique and created Body Worlds, a traveling exhibit that has made anatomy part of the public domain. Von Hagens invented the plastination technique in 1977 while working at Heidelberg University in Heidelberg, Germany. Von Hagen's plastination technique preserves real bodies and tissues by the removal of the fluid and replacement with resin. Body Worlds features three-dimensional, plastinated human bodies.
Format: Articles
Subject: People, Outreach, Reproduction
Multi-Fetal Pregnancy
In humans, multi-fetal pregnancy occurs when a mother carries more than one fetus during the pregnancy. The most common multi-fetal pregnancy is twins, but mothers have given birth to up to eight children (octuplets) from a single pregnancy. Multiple fetusus can result from the release of multiple eggs or multiple ovulations, the splitting of a single fertilized egg, and fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) which involves the insertion of many fertilized eggs into the mother's uterus.
Format: Articles
Subject: Processes, Reproduction
Florence Rena Sabin (1871-1953)
Florence Rena Sabin had successful careers as both a researcher and public health reformer. When Johns Hopkins University Medical School opened, accepting women and men on the same basis, Sabin was one of the first to enter. After the successful completion of her MD degree, Sabin went on to become the first female faculty member and later full-time professor at Johns Hopkins.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
August Antonius Rauber (1841-1917)
August Antonius Rauber was an embryologist and anatomist who examined gastrulation in avian embryos. He examined the formation of the blastopore, epiblast, and primitive streak during chick development. Subsequent researchers have further studied Rauber's findings, which has led to new discoveries in embryology and developmental biology.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Sperm Capacitation
Sperm capacitation refers to the physiological changes spermatozoa must undergo in order to have the ability to penetrate and fertilize an egg. This term was first coined in 1952 by Colin Russell Austin based on independent studies conducted by both Austin himself as well as Min Chueh Chang in 1951. Since the initial reports and emergence of the term, the details of the process have been more clearly elucidated due to technological advancements.
Format: Articles
Subject: Processes
"Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora" (1941), by George W. Beadle and Edward L. Tatum
George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum's 1941 article Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora detailed their experiments on how genes regulated chemical reactions, and how the chemical reactions in turn affected development in the organism. Beadle and Tatum experimented on Neurospora, a type of bread mold, and they concluded that mutations to genes affected the enzymes of organisms, a result that biologists later generalized to proteins, not just enzymes.
Format: Articles
Subject: Experiments
The Baby Makers (2012)
In 2012, the production company Waddell Media Production released the documentary The Baby Makers. The four-part series, directed and produced by Edel O’Mahony, follows multiple couples in Northern Ireland struggling with infertility problems as they utilize different treatments such as in vitro fertilization, or IVF, egg donation, and egg freezing. IVF is a procedure in which a woman’s egg is fertilized by a sperm outside of her body. Once the sperm fertilizes the egg, a fertility doctor places the fertilized egg back into the woman’s uterus.
Format: Articles
Subject: Outreach
Gattaca (1997)
Gattaca is a 1997 science fiction film produced in the US that depicts a future society that uses reproductive technology and genetic engineering in order to produce genetically enhanced human beings. By selectively choosing certain genes, scientists and physicians ensure that individuals born using reproductive technologies have desirable physical and psychological traits and prevent undesirable traits.
Format: Articles
Subject: Publications
Congenital Vertebral Defects
The spinal column is the central structure in the vertebrate body from which stability, movement, and posture all derive. The vertebrae of the spine are organized into four regions (listed in order from cranial to caudal): cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and pelvic. These regions are classified by their differences in curvature. The human spine usually consists of thirty-three vertebrae, seven of which are cervical (C1-C7), twelve are thoracic (T1-T12), five are lumbar (L1-L5), and nine are pelvic (five fused as the sacrum and four fused as the coccyx).
Format: Articles
Subject: Disorders, Reproduction
John Tyler Bonner (1920- )
The establishment and growth of developmental-evolutionary biology owes a great debt to the work of John Tyler Bonner. Bonner's studies of cellular slime molds have shed light on some of the big questions of biology including the origins of multicellularity and the nature of morphogenesis. The second child of Lilly Marguerite Stehli and Paul Bonner, John Tyler was born 12 May 1920 in New York City and spent his early years in Locust Valley, Long Island (late 1920s), France (1930), and London (1932).
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Paul Kammerer's Experiments on Sea-squirts in the Early Twentieth Century
In the early twentieth century, Paul Kammerer, a zoologist working at the Vivarium in Vienna, Austria, experimented on sea-squirts (Ciona intestinalis). Kammerer claimed that results from his experiments demonstrated that organisms could transmit characteristics that they had acquired in their lifetimes to their offspring. Kammerer conducted breeding experiments on sea-squirts and other organisms at a time when Charles Darwin's 1859 theory of evolution lacked evidence to explain how offspring inherited traits from their parents.
Format: Articles
Subject: Experiments, Organisms
“Adherence to Combination Prophylaxis for Prevention of Mother-to-Child-Transmission of HIV in Tanzania” (2011), by Inga Kristen, Julius Sewangi, Andrea Kunz, Festo Dugange, Judith Ziske, Brigitte Jordan-Harder, Gundel Harms, and Stefanie Theuring
In 2011, Inga Kristen, Julius Sewangi, Andrea Kunz, Festo Dugange, Judith Ziske, Brigitte Jordan-Harder, Gundel Harms, and Stefanie Theuring published the article, “Adherence to Combination Prophylaxis for Prevention of Mother-to-Child-Transmission of HIV in Tanzania,” in PLoS ONE. Hereafter, “Adherence to Combination Prophylaxis,” the article details the authors’ investigation into the efficacy of a medication regimen called combination prophylaxis to prevent mother-to-child, or MTC, transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, before, during, and after delivery.
Format: Articles
Subject: Publications
Victor Jollos (1887-1941)
Victor Jollos studied fruit flies and microorganisms in Europe and the US, and he introduced the concept of Dauermodifikationen in the early 1900s. The concept of Dauermodifikationen refers to environmentally-induced traits that are heritable for only a limited number of generations. Some scientists interpreted the results of Jollos's work on Paramecium and Drosophila as
Format: Articles
Subject: People
The Debate over DNA Replication Before the Meselson-Stahl Experiment (1953–1957)
Between 1953 and 1957, before the Meselson-Stahl experiment verified semi-conservative replication of DNA, scientists debated how DNA replicated. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick proposed that DNA was composed of two helical strands that wound together in a coil. Their model suggested a replication mechanism, later termed semi-conservative replication, in which parental DNA strands separated and served as templates for the replication of new daughter strands.
Format: Articles
Subject: Theories
Dysmenorrhea as a Menstrual Disorder
Dysmenorrhea refers to painful menstrual bleeding and often includes symptoms such as cramps in the lower abdominal region, pain radiating down to the thighs, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, and headaches. There are two types of dysmenorrhea, called primary and secondary dysmenorrhea, which develop in different ways. In cases of primary dysmenorrhea, people experience painful cramps before and during most of their menstrual cycles, which does not happen as a result of a different underlying condition and is mostly due to hormone imbalances.
Format: Articles
World Health Organization Guidelines (Option A, B, and B+) for Antiretroviral Drugs to Treat Pregnant Women and Prevent HIV Infection in Infants
To address the international Human Immunodeficiency Virus epidemic, the World Health Organization, or WHO, developed three drug treatment regimens between 2010 and 2012 specifically for HIV-positive pregnant women and their infants. WHO developed the regimens, calling them Option A, Option B, and Option B+, to reduce or prevent mother-to-child, abbreviated MTC, transmission of HIV. Each option comprises of different types and schedules of antiretroviral medications. As of 2018, WHO reported that in Africa alone about 1,200,000 pregnant women were living with untreated HIV.
Format: Articles
Subject: Reproduction, Processes, Disorders
The Informed Consent Project
In 2013, Cynthia Daniels and a team of researchers at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, founded the Informed Consent Project. Daniels and the researchers assessed the medical accuracy of information within state-authored informational materials for abortion. States give those materials to women who want an abortion, but using their research, the Informed Consent Project found some information from those materials to be inaccurate, misleading, and coercive.
Format: Articles
Subject: Organizations
“Diethylstilbestrol in the Prevention and Treatment of Complications of Pregnancy” (1948), by Olive Watkins Smith
In 1948, Olive Watkins Smith published 'Diethylstilbestrol in the Prevention and Treatment of Complications of Pregnancy' in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In 632 women treated with diethylstilbestrol, Smith demonstrated that the drug stimulated the production of progesterone, a hormone that regulates the uterine condition during pregnancy.
Format: Articles
Subject: Publications
The Discovery of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
The term Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) was first published in 1973 in an article published in the British medical journal The Lancet. In that article, a group of pediatricians and psychiatrists at the University of Washington Medical School helped to define the morphological defects and developmental delays that can affect children born to alcoholic mothers. Those observations include pre- and post-natal growth deficiencies, minor facial abnormalities, and damage to the developing brain that can result in behavioral, learning, and cognitive abnormalities.
Format: Articles
Subject: Disorders, Reproduction