MAIN STREAM SUCCESS-CDS 290608

//////////////relishing the rhetoric


////////////TG=

Homosexual behavior due to genetics and environmental factors

Posted: 28 Jun 2008 08:49 PM CDT

Homosexual behavior is largely shaped by genetics and random environmental factors, according to findings from the world’s largest study of twins.

Writing in the scientific journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, researchers from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm report that genetics and environmental factors (which are specific to an individual, and may include biological processes such as different hormone exposure in the womb), are important determinants of homosexual behavior.

Dr Qazi Rahman, study co-author and a leading scientist on human sexual orientation, explains: “This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single ‘gay gene’ or a single environmental variable which could be used to ’select out’ homosexuality - the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex. And we are not simply talking about homosexuality here - heterosexual behaviour is also influenced by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors.

The team led by Dr Niklas Långström at Karolinska Institutet conducted the first truly population-based survey of all adult (20-47 years old) twins in Sweden. Studies of identical twins and non-identical, or fraternal, twins are often used to untangle the genetic and environmental factors responsible for a trait. While identical twins share all of their genes and their entire environment, fraternal twins share only half of their genes and their entire environment. Therefore, greater similarity in a trait between identical twins compared to fraternal twins shows that genetic factors are partly responsible for the trait.

This study looked at 3,826 same-gender twin pairs (7,652 individuals), who were asked about the total numbers of opposite sex and same sex partners they had ever had. The findings showed that 35 per cent of the differences between men in same-sex behavior (that is, that some men have no same sex partners, and some have one or more) is accounted for by genetics. Rahman explains:

“Overall, genetics accounted for around 35 per cent of the differences between men in homosexual behavior and other individual-specific environmental factors (that is, not societal attitudes, family or parenting which are shared by twins) accounted for around 64 per cent. In other words, men become gay or straight because of different developmental pathways, not just one pathway.”

For women, genetics explained roughly 18 per cent of the variation in same-sex behavior, non-shared environment roughly 64 per cent and shared factors, or the family environment, explained 16 per cent.

The study shows that genetic influences are important but modest, and that non-shared environmental factors, which may include factors operating during fetal development, dominate. Importantly, heredity had roughly the same influence as shared environmental factors in women, whereas the latter had no impact on sexual behavior in men.

Dr Rahman adds: “The study is not without its limitations - we used a behavioral measure of sexual orientation which might be ok to use for men (men’s psychological orientation, sexual behavior, and sexual responses are highly related) but less so for women (who show a clearer separation between these elements of sexuality). Despite this, our study provides the most unbiased estimates presented so far of genetic and non-genetic contributions to sexual orientation.”

Source: Queen Mary, University of London

Genetic and Environmental Effects on Same-sex Sexual Behavior: A Population Study of Twins in Sweden. Niklas Långström, Qazi Rahman, Eva Carlström and Paul Lichtenstein. Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Josh says:

I’m glad studies like this are coming out (pun not intended). Once someone’s neurological structure is such that they’re gay, then it cannot be changed; the same goes for someone who is straight. I think many aspects of intelligence work this way as well - there is a proportionally smaller genetic component, but environmental factors during neurological development play the largest role.

///////////////////////////////STRIKE FATIGUE

/////////////////////EATING CHICKEN IS A PRIVILEGE NOT A RIGHT-SUPPORT PETA

/////////////////////HERE AND THERE LEADS TO NOWHERE

///////////////////////MONEY HAI TO HONEY HAI

////////////////////LEARNED HELPLESSNESS OF THE POOR IN FACING NATRL DISASTERS-NYANMAR,NIDNAPORE

/////////////////////////If I try to be like him, who will be like me?
-- Yiddish Proverb

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
-- Eric Hoffer

/////////////////////

‘Martian Soil Good For Asparagus’ David Usborne New York, June 28: Bad for strawberries, great for asparagus and turnips. This is the small-print for gardening enthusiasts buying a second home on Mars, should the day ever arrive when humans colonise it. Scientists in charge of analysing soil lifted from the surface of the planet by the Nasa space probe Phoenix have admitted to being “flabbergasted” by initial results, which suggest it would theoretically be just about perfect for certain vegetables that thrive in mildly alkaline conditions. The tiny sample of soil ~ one cubic-centimetre ~ was lifted from the planet's surface with a robotic arm. It was then mixed with water on board the lander to create a kind of Martian mud suitable for chemical analysis. Phoenix set down on the planet last month. Most scientists had long assumed there would be little on the surface of the planet that would be hospitable to supporting life. But last week they were forced to change their thinking. “We have found what appear to be the requirements, the nutrients, to support life whether past, present or future,” said Dr Samuel Kounaves of Tufts University near Boston. “The sort of soil you have there is the type of soil you'd probably have in your back yard.” The pH level of the sample was somewhere between 8 and 9, with 7 considered neutral. This would seem perfect for growing asparagus and other vegetables, such as green beans, that do not do well with acidity. This does not mean that dropping seeds now would produce a vegetable patch, given everything else about the planet’s environment, including, of course, the lack of water. Even the water question has been the subject of excitement since Phoenix began its work. In an earlier experiment, soil was heated on board the lander to 1,800F, which resulted in the release of water vapour. This suggests that this part of the planet at least was in contact with water at some point, although nobody can say when that was or the volume of water involved. “This soil clearly has interacted with water in the past,” said Dr William Boynton, of the University of Arizona, who led the water content experiment. He added that it could have come in dust particles blown from a different part of the planet. ~ The Independent

////////////////////////Quarter of the planet to be online
by 2012
iTnews June 26, 2008
*************************
The total number of people online
will climb to 1.8 billion by 2012,
encompassing roughly 25 percent of
the planet, with the highest growth
rates in areas such as China,
Russia, India and Brazil, according
to a report by Jupiter Research.
Asia will have the highest online
growth rate compared to other
regions in the world, ans a large
pool of...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=8950&m=33138

///////////////////////THE DARK SIDE OF SUBURBIA

//////////////////////
We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.

— Thomas Fuller

////////////////////NS=

Artificial brain predicts death-row executions

• 25 June 2008
• Paul Marks
• Magazine issue 2662

WHICH inmates on death row will eventually be executed? Many never make the final journey from prison cell to execution chamber - but nobody really understands who will be spared.

Until now. A new computer system can predict which death row prisoners will live and which will be killed - with chilling accuracy. And its dispassionate analysis has confirmed suspicions that the people most likely to be executed are those who have had the least schooling, rather than those who have committed the most heinous crimes.

The US, the only western democracy to retain the death penalty, executes only a small proportion of the people it sentences to death. For instance, just 53 of the 3228 inmates on death row were executed in 2006.

So how were those 53 chosen? "We couldn't see any clear patterns in the data," says computer scientist Stamos Karamouzis, who has been investigating this question ...

/////////////////

Omega-3s are twice as important for girls as boys

• 27 June 2008
• Nora Schultz
• Magazine issue 2662

PARENTS of daughters, listen up. Eating enough omega-3 fatty acids is twice as important for boosting the brainpower of girls as it is for boys.

Several studies have upheld the link between intelligence and higher consumption of omega-3 fats, especially those found in fatty fishes such as salmon. William Lassek at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Steve Gaulin at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wondered whether this effect might be even stronger in girls because women not only use omega-3 fats to build their brains, they also store them on their hips and thighs in preparation for nurturing the brains of their future babies. "The lower body fat is like a bank into which deposits are made during childhood and only withdrawn during pregnancy and nursing," says Lassek.

Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in the US, the pair compared consumption of the ...

/////////////////////LONG DISTANCE DAD

///////////////////////

BBC News

Happy 60th birthday, NHS
Independent - 6 hours ago
Aneurin Bevan's creation remains a vital part of British life after six decades. Ian Johnston reports 'Preventable pain is a blot on any society.




///////////////////////////

Hawking 'close' to explaining universe's inflation

• 28 June 2008
• Zeeya Merali
• Magazine issue 2662

WHY was the big bang so very big? It has been a struggle to explain why the infant universe expanded so rapidly. But now Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge, and colleagues, think they are close to perfecting an answer - by treating the early cosmos as a quantum object with a multitude of alternative universes that gradually blend into ours.

The idea that the universe expanded at a blistering rate in the first 10^-34 seconds after the big bang was proposed to explain why regions of the universe separated by vast distances have such a similar background temperature: before inflation occurred, these regions would have been close together with similar properties. But just why the universe inflated in the first place remains a mystery.

"There's no fundamental theory that can explain why inflation happened in our universe - it's just proposed as an ad hoc solution that explains ...

The complete article is 801 words long.


///////////////////

///////////////////