A reader emailed me about Grosjean et al (2007), an article released Sunday in Nature Neuroscience about the mating choices of fruit flies. They found that homosexual activity could be "turned on and off" in experimentally mutated drosophila melanogaster males. The mutation is in a gene that the team has named GB, or "genderblind." The GB gene ( Read more... )

To the Health editors of the New York Times:

I was extremely disappointed with Nicholas Wade's article "Pas de Deux of Sexuality Is Written in the Genes" (4/10/2007). While Mr. Wade was correct to reference Larry Cahill's excellent 2006 review, it seems as if Mr. Wade read only the abstract. Dr. Cahill is fairly clear in his review that while ( Read more... )

Cooke and Wardle (2005) surveyed British schoolchildren on foods they had tried, and found that trying more foods did not significantly change the percentage disliked. In general, girls liked fruits and vegetables more than boys did, whereas boys liked meats, processed meats, and eggs more than girls did. Both groups liked fatty and sugary foods ( Read more... )

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Patri Friedman pointed out Robert Lee Hotz's (2005) report on research by Hunt Willard and Laura Carrel. Willard and Carrel's work has focused largely on x chromosome inactivation, and the way in which this expresses itself in between-and-within sex phenotypes. Hotz quotes Willard: "In essence, there is not one human genome, but two: male and ( Read more... )

An October 10th article in the UK's Daily Mail begins with the statement "We all know men and women speak a different language when it comes to love and housework, but when we're ill, doctors treat us the same." While this point is arguable, the article's point about women being treated as slightly smaller men is valid. As previously noted in ( Read more... )