female
dr. dolittle | July 19, 2017 Samples of fish species from the Poeciliidae family show the diversity in color, fin size and body shape. Kansas State University researchers studied 112 species of these live-bearing fishes and found that males and females evolve differently. Image courtesy of Kansas State University
Dr. Michael Tobler and Dr. Zach Culumber at Kansas State University examined 112 species of live-bearing fish (Poeciliidae) and have made some interesting discoveries about their evolution. Their analyses included information on body shape, fin size, where the species are found and information on global…
dr. dolittle | January 22, 2015 Photo of a red-eared slider turtle by Nightryder84.
Dr. Thane Wibbels (University of Alabama at Birmingham) is interested in studying how temperature affects the sex of red-eared slider turtle embryos. For humans, the answer is simple: sex chromosomes. You know, the combination of XX means girl and XY means boy.
Turtles are not that simple. Temperature is a factor in determining whether the embryo will be male or female. If the eggs are incubated at 78.8 degrees F, the hatchlings will all be male. If they are incubated at 87.8 degrees, they will all be female. As I'm sure you've guessed,…
dr. dolittle | October 26, 2014A recent study published in the American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology presents evidence that altering the sex of just the fat body in heads of fruit flies (Drosophila) causes them to have stress responses similar to the opposite sex.
Males and females vary in their response to stress. It turns out that this difference is not unique to mammals as male and female fruit flies also show similar variations. In fruit flies this is thought to be due to differences in the neuronal circuits between the sexes, which may also explain some of the variability…
dr. dolittle | August 20, 2014 Image of electroacupuncture to the back from www.sandiegohealingarts.com
A new study published in AJP-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology suggests that electroacupuncture to the abdominal region may prevent increases in blood sugar concentrations after a meal by affecting insulin sensitivity and circulating free fatty acid concentrations. Granted this is not comparative physiology research, I find it interesting that electrical stimulation can have such a large impact on metabolism, in mice at least.
Drs. Nicola Abate and Jiande Chen, lead investigators on this study, fed…
dr. dolittle | September 5, 2013Scientists at the Smithsonian National Zoo have now confirmed that the new panda bear cub born on August 23rd is a girl and Tian Tian is her father.
tsmith | May 24, 2011This wasn't the post I wanted to write about the ASM conference. There's been lots of great science discussed (I've tried to tweet some of it, but the wifi in both the conference center and my hotel have been spotty, so I've not had a chance to write anything comprehensive). Instead, I'm ticked off and venting via dashed-off blog rant.
[Me, trying to make a purchase]: Do you have any of these in a box that doesn't say "from someone in New Orleans who loves you"? I was going to get them for my lab and that might be kind of creepy.
[Retail salesguy]: Your lab? I'm not sure those are good for…
edyong | March 17, 2010For most men, the thought of taking on the burden of pregnancy from their partners would seem like a nightmare, but it's all part and parcel of seahorse life. After mating, female seahorses and pipefish lay their eggs into a special pouch in the male's belly and he carries the developing babies to term. They may seem like a shoe-in for a Dad-of-the-year award but this apparent display of paternal perfection has several macabre twists.
A recent study showed that pregnant pipefishes can also become vampiric cannibals, absorbing some of their brood for nutrition if their own food supplies are…
edyong | March 11, 2010Not Exactly Pocket Science is a set of shorter write-ups on new stories with links to more detailed takes by the world's best journalists and bloggers. It is meant to complement the usual fare of detailed pieces that are typical for this blog.
Geneticist sequences own genome, finds genetic cause of his disease
If you've got an inherited disease and you want to find the genetic faults responsible, it certainly helps if you're a prominent geneticist. James Lupski (right) from the Baylor College of Medicine suffers from an incurable condition called Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, which…
edyong | March 10, 2010The animal on the right is no ordinary chicken. Its right half looks like a hen but its left half (with a larger wattle, bigger breast, whiter colour and leg spur) is that of a cockerel. The bird is a 'gynandromorph', a rare sexual chimera. Thanks to three of these oddities, Debiao Zhao and Derek McBride from the University of Edinburgh have discovered a truly amazing secret about these most familiar of birds - every single cell in a chicken's body is either male or female. Each one has its own sexual identity. It seems that becoming male or female is a very different process for birds than…
edyong | March 7, 2010Sex might be fun but it's not without risks. As your partner exposes themselves to you, they also expose you to whatever bacteria, viruses or parasites they might be carrying. But some animals have a way around that. Ekaterina Litvinova has found that when male mice get a whiff of female odours, their immune systems prepare their airways for attack, increasing their resistance to flu viruses.
Litvinova worked with a group of mice that were exposed to bedding that had previously been soiled by females in the sexually receptive parts of their cycle. She compared them to a second more monastic…
sciencepunk | March 1, 2010Graphic artist Philip Bond drew this awesome set of female astronauts.
You can see the whole collection on his Flickr page.
edyong | December 16, 2009In science, we don't often get to talk about male repression, but a new discovery gives us just such a chance. It turns out that ovaries can only remain ovaries by constantly suppressing their ability to become male. Silence a single gene, and adult ovaries turn into testes. That adult tissues can be transformed in this way would be surprising enough, but doing so by changing a single gene is truly astonishing.
As embryos, our gonads aren't specific to either gender. Their default course is a female one, but they can be diverted through the action of a gene called SRY that sits on the Y…
edyong | June 1, 2009History has had no shortage of outstanding female mathematicians, from Hypatia of Alexandria to Ada Lovelace, and yet no woman has ever won the Fields medal - the Nobel prize of the maths world. The fact that men outnumber women in the highest echelons of mathematics (as in science, technology and engineering) has always been controversial, particularly for the persistent notion that this disparity is down to an innate biological advantage.
Now, two professors from the University of Wisconsin - Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz - have reviewed the strong evidence that at least in maths, the gender…