Study in Royal Society journal on how relationship status influences sex ratios
...ths in the United States, I find a small excess of sons among births to parents who were married or living with an opposite sex partner before the child's conception, compared to births to parents who were not. This is the first evidence that household arrangements can affect the human sex ratio at birth,...New Royal Society journal studies
...adoxically predicts that workers prefer to produce sons in colonies headed by a once-mated queen. Using behavioural observation and genetic method, we evaluated the fate of eggs by workers in colonies of a paper wasp. Our results showed that the workers produced eggs according to the theory while they als...Why attractive (but costly) males get the girls
...ghters that laid more eggs within a given time and sons that were more attractive. The benefit stems in la...ng view: look at the reproductive success of mom's sons and daughters before judging her taste in mates. ...Fitness correlates of song repertoire size in free-living song sparrows
...oire size on offspring performance was stronger in sons than in daughters. Although they do not yet know whether these patterns reflect genetic or environmental effects on males or their offspring, their results suggest that female song sparrows would leave more descendants in both current and subsequent...Childhood deficits in the cerebellum may be linked to adult alcoholism
...is study, two thirds of the original subjects were sons of fathers with a history of alcoholism; one third consisted of sons of fathers with no history of alcoholism. Of the original 330 babies, 241 completed the 30-year fol......rial DNA, which is passed on from mothers to their sons and daughters. This enables the researchers to decipher the characteristic genetic markers of both parental lineages. UA is collaborating in a joint venture with Family Tree DNA, a company specializing in tracing ancestry using genetics. The company...Less intense response to alcohol sheds light on genetic tracing of alcohol dependence
...ism. First, the risk for alcohol dependence in the sons and daughters of alcoholics is four times higher than in the general population. Second, the rate of increased risk for alcoholism persists in children of alcoholics even if they are adopted at birth and raised by non-alcoholics. Finally, identical t...Fragile X-related disorder difficult to diagnose; guidelines suggested in new study
...g chemotherapy to treat breast cancer. She had two sons with Fragile X syndrome. The researchers concluded she had FXTAS after a genetic test using DNA from a blood sample showed that she carried the FMR1 gene. Her symptoms became mild again after chemotherapy stopped. "About 1 in 259 women carry the FMR1...New theory tests sex ratios under asymmetrical local mate competition among parasitoid wasps
For many species, the ratio of sons to daughters a mother produces can have a profound effect on her evolutionary success. Too many sons, or too many daughters, may mean a female does not pass on as many copies of her genes to the next generation as another mother. The crucial determin...In Western bluebird as well as human families, accumulated wealth encourages stability
...orage together, and the mothers are nicer to their sons than they are to other males of the same age, even...heir offspring, this could also play a role in why sons stay. What our experiment shows is that reducing resource wealth causes sons to leave their parents,......evant to children of alcoholics has focused on the sons of alcoholics. In contrast, symposium participant...ral reasons for a preponderance of research on the sons of alcoholics," said Aruna Gogineni, assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University S...Duke biologist/poet is up to 'animal mischief'
... Over time, and with the critical eye of his older sons Robert, 9 at the time, and David, 7, he arrived at the collection that would become "Animal Mischief." "I could get a sense of which poems they really liked; which ones made their faces come alive," said Jackson of his young editors. "Their brother,...Breast cancer book for children wins the 2006 Nathwani Prize
...eautifully illustrated by one of Catherine's older sons to help children understand the different emotions they may feel. Catherine Thornton comments, "I am overjoyed at winning this award. I really wanted to create something that would help other families in a similar situation to ours. I think it is ...Prenatal health strongly influences future economic success
...cent less likely to graduate from high school, and sons of infected mothers earned approximately $2,500 less per year than those who did not have fetal influenza exposure. Additionally, those who were in utero at the height of the epidemic had 20 percent higher disability rates at the age of 61. "This b...Early exposure to synthetic estrogen puts 'DES Daughters' at higher risk for breast cancer
...mothers who used it. To see if DES daughters and sons were also at greater risk of cancer or other serious illnesses, in 1992 the National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded a long-term study that assembled all known "cohorts," or groups of DES daughters that were already being studied (some since the 1970s)...UCLA study uncovers new risk factor for schizophrenia
...cience and Human Behavior. "We don't know whether sons who match are not affected -- or are more affected and less likely to come to term." In 2002, Palmer and her colleagues discovered that infants are twice as likely to develop schizophrenia later in life when they possess a cell protein called Rhesus...Bird moms manipulate birth order to protect sons
... turn up in a house finch's nest, she shelters her sons from the blood-suckers by laying male eggs later t...osed to mites for a shorter period allows both the sons and the daughters to survive long enough to leave the nest. "Sons are more sensitive to the mites...A little of what you fancy does you no good
...fitness inheritance, using reproductive success of sons and daughters as measures of their fitness. Overal...l fitness was good for daughters but not sons, and sons born of high-fitness mothers had substantially fewer offspring than those with low-fitness mothers. ...'Fruit fly dating game' provides clues to our reproductive prowess
...oose successful mates they will see no benefits to sons and will only incur the cost of less-fit daughters, says Dr. Chippindale. "Sexually antagonistic genes, may be harmful or compromise fitness by reducing fertility of the opposite sex." Dr. Chippindale suggests that this phenomenon may operate in fa...... queen correlated with reduced rearing of workers' sons or greater worker reproductive policing. Were the ...field) compared 90 species and found that workers' sons are reared 100 times less in species with a queen mated to multiple males. They also found worker po...