Tag: pregnancy
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How Pregnancy Tests Led to the Decimation of Frog Populations
With readily available pregnancy tests stocked across drugstore shelves, it is hard to imagine a time when determining pregnancy was not so simple a task. Instead of the easy-to-use plastic cartridge we commonly imagine, the earliest reliable pregnancy tests utilised Xenopus laevis, also known as the African clawed frog (Nuwer, 2013). This method for identifying…
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From Viral Invaders to Evolutionary Enablers: Viruses and the Mammalian Placenta
The placenta is a fascinating organ: not only is it temporary, but it has also enabled animals to give birth to live offspring. In fact, it is the first organ to form in mammalian development, and its ancestral form developed approximately 130 million years ago (Chuong, 2018). The evolution of the placenta brought about the…