science news: Gender-related issues
penny April 10th, 2007
Not all of these are specific to humans, but nonetheless, just as interesting:
Female stem cells work better. (also here) Remember the buzz about stem cells (and cloning) before? Stem cells are present in our bodies, and they are capable of renewing themselves so that they show promise in medical therapies for many diseases. There are now indications that stem cells from females are much more effective in regeneration than those from males. The sturdier sex they say 
Females do better if they wait a while. This is in context with a particular type of birdcalled Green wood hoppoes. For them, the theory of having offspring early in life maximises the number of offspring you will have does NOT apply. At least not for the female. It seems that the birds, when they care for their young, end up being isolated from the social group, and hence become physiologically “less fit”, causing them to die much earlier. So the much more mature female birds who are more adapted to “being alone” are able to reproduce much more in their lifetime since they live longer. Doesn’t this make you think about the analog in female human life?
[off-topic] Funnily enough though, this piece of news also reminds me of the “True Love Waits” seminar we had in high school. I dunno about you guys, but I think private schools, especially the sectarian ones [though they claim they are non-sectarian.. they are!!] have a tendency to indoctrinate kids too much that they turn out as biased people with an unleveled sense of judgment. I don’t really know at this point whether I want my kids to turn out this way.
Fewer men are being born in recent years. Researchers cannot explain exactly why this is so, but their latest findings in a study in the US and Japan show that there are less male than female births. They are looking into environmental and nutritional (and also late age) factors that cause men to be “less likely” to father boys. Sex ratios are important characteristics of a species that serve as indicators of the “health” of our kind. Not to alarm anyone, but this seems to me that in the long run, women will be fighting over scarce men. Paano na ang freedom to choose?
Very scary thought.
Naalala ko tuloy yung episode dati ng Sliders. Hehehe.
if you watch Children of Men film, yun ang nakakatakot na scenario ng possible future. imagine the youngest living person in the world is 18yrs old. Female cannot bear child anymore because of various reasons.
with regards to female waiting… i think people who can bear children ‘wait’ to have them, since they have a notion that the can have it anytime. (same as getting married).
and… i read in some books that you can ‘do something’ to have your prefered gender. something about female-gender-carrier sperms having longer life in the uterus versus their counterpart, but they ’swim slower’. figure it out.
In China where they prefer male, and abortion is legal, the trend is reverse - fewer female.
By the way, here’s something to cheer you up:
Video: Catholic Mother Scolding her Son upon learning that he is an atheist.
I’m sorry, I might have been misleading. This does not say that there are fewer male than there are female. It just says that there are fewer male BIRTHS (this is to the order of several hundred thousands, by the way). I do not have the sex ratios at the moment (my bad research, sorry) but whatever they are, fewer man vs women is not what I meant.
Sorry again.
Reptiles’ sex determinism is actually influenced by the ambient temperature shortly before cell division. I’m not aware of any studies done on human embryos (lawsuits all around pag nagkataon! hehe).