she should play lotto...

A 16 year old girl named Pamela has given birth to triplets.

Wowee, right. Teen pregnancies aren't really that shocking anymore.
WRONG! This is her SECOND TIME giving birth to triplets... When she was 15 she gave birth to all-girl triplets, and now again. She also had a son when she was only 14. So, as far as teen pregnancies go, she definately wins the medal. Apparently the chances of giving birth to triplets without using fertility treatment is 8,000 to 1. So pulling, or pushing, that one twice is pretty good.

from this article.

invisible sperm and their trickery

It turns out we were wrong, sperm aren't tiny animals that battle their way through the fallopian tubes, fighting the woman's warriors sent out by her immune system. Only one brave sperm knight to conquer and be so honored with the fertilizing of the egg. It's so much less complicated than that. What is actually happening is the sperm have something like an invisibility cloak. This is in the form of a sugar glycoprotein that makes the cell undetectable by the always guarding immune system. So the sperm can sneak past as if it were part of the woman's body. This is a valuable adaptation and some cells, like cancer cells and HIV infected white blood cells have adopted it to achieve their much less valiant goal of destruction. I hope we can find ways to make organ donations invisible to the body by adhering these glycoproteins to the transplanted organ. Now that would be valiant.

From this article by the BBC.

why pregnant women don't tip over

From the NY Times:

"Pregnant women do not tip over, and researchers say an evolutionary curve has a lot to do with the reason why. During pregnancy, the abdomen grows by nearly one-third and the center of mass shifts forward considerably. That increases pressure on the spinal column, strains the muscles and generally reduces stability. Researchers looked for an additional mechanism, besides the woman leaning back, that might have compensated for the increased strain of pregnancy.

What they found, said Katherine K. Whitcome, a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard and the lead author of the paper, was evidence that evolution had produced a stronger and more flexible lower spine for women. After studying 19 pregnant subjects, Ms. Whitcome found that the lumbar, or lower back, curve in women extends across three vertebrae, as opposed to just two in men. And the connecting points between vertebrae are relatively larger in women, and shaped differently in ways that make the stack more stable and less prone to the bones shifting out of alignment or breaking."

Way to go scientists! Non-Related: I was watching a Carl Sagan video on YouTube about the human brain, and he said that the brain library contains 10,000 times more volumes than the gene library. YIKES! Billions and billions, right.

I think I love twins

Identical twins occur once every 400 births, non-identical twins (fraternal twins) occur once every 70 births, triplets once every 7,500 births, and quadruplets once every 620,000 births.

Nicky Owen from England gave birth to identical twin boys. Seven years later in 2003, she gave birth to fraternal twins. She herself is an identical twin.

The incredible odds of this happening are so very slim: 11,200,000 to one!

From an article in The Daily Mail that I found through my library database. It wont let me link it... But it's true, it really is.

smart babies drink breast milk

All issues of breastfeeding aside, the news is in!

BBC News has a new report out with the results of a study showing the effects breastfeeding has on IQ. There's a certain gene called FADS2 that breaks down fatty acids that prohibit brain development. This intelligence enhancing gene is present in the milk of 9 out of 10 breastfeeding women.

"The argument about intelligence has been about nature versus nurture for at least a century," said Professor Terrie Moffitt, a co-author on the paper. "However, we have shown that in fact nature works via nurture to create better health outcomes."

I think formula feeding most definitely has its place, sometimes being the only thing sustaining a new life. But it's also nice to know nature has proven itself once again as being superior to a deceptively marketed alternative.

world population clock!

At 8:31pm EST, the population of the world was estimated to be 6,628,876,289!

I've always wanted to know the estimated population at any given second.

NOW I KNOW!

I found this website that tells you exactly that.
It's incredible, and kind of scary, even if it's an only estimate.

When I finished this post at 8:42pm, the estimate was already at 6,628,877,872.
That's an increase of 1,583 people in only 11 minutes!!! Sheesh.

twinsies times two

To have twins twice, none the less on the same day of the year is another fantastic statistic to be a part of. This has only been recorded twice in all of history, both instances happening fairly recently.

Laura Shelley gave birth to twins Melissa and Mark on March 25th, 1990. Then, in 2003, another set of twins Kayla and Jonathon were born, ON MARCH 25TH! That's two sets of twins on the same day of the year.

Caroline Cargado became the second case, with her twins Keilani and Kahleah on May 30th, 1996, then Mikayla and Malia in 2003.

What are the odds? I couldn't find any information about whether the women and their lovers were on fertility drugs, so I'm assuming the phenomenon of twinning occurred naturally, which happens about 15% of the time. Then, they could have had the twins on any of the 365 days of the year. So the chances are 15% of 1 in 365, which is a .041% chance; basically against almost all odds.

SUPER TUESDAYS!

It being Tuesday, you should know this baffling fact:

On average, there are 16% more births on Tuesdays than any other day of the week!

Why is this? Most scheduled caesarian sections are done on Tuesdays and the most spontaneous births also occur on this day. There's no particular reason for scheduling c-sections on Tuesdays, except for the contract signed by all obstetricians when they are licensed. It states:

In order to maintain the glorious statistic known as,
"SUPER TUESDAY"
all caesarian sections are to be scheduled on Tuesdays.