4 ms·

Much better coverage can be found here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.

by brass9 13y ago

Much better coverage can be found here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.ht...

gjm11 13y ago
Or, perhaps better, here: http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/july/ratios.html http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/july/ratios.html -- this being where ScienceDaily copied it from. (There's actually a tiny bit of extra information in the Stanford version, namely its last sentence.) Or here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0067867 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... -- this is the journal article it's all about, and reports the research in much more detail.
1123581321 13y ago
All that is being discovered is that sons mean more grandchildren, and a few groups (billionaires, top-ranking wives) are cherry-picked because they have more sons. Dung flies are mentioned but they are not even mammals, and they aren't sex selecting their sperm. That said, though the article claims a mechanism is unknown, diet can influence whether a girl or boy is conceived: http://genderdreaming.com/2011/05/the-french-gender-diet/ http://genderdreaming.com/2011/05/the-french-gender-diet/ http://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(10)00549-3/abstract http://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(10)00549-3/abs... My own wild guess is that the observed diet factors, or at least certain states of the body that diet can cause, account for any statistically significant distributions of sex, not a mysterious sperm-guiding mechanism.
- upquark 13y ago
  Thank you for the links, very interesting. There is also this: http://genderdreaming.com/family-balancing/natural-gender-swaying/science-behind-gender-swaying/ph-balance/ http://genderdreaming.com/family-balancing/natural-gender-sw... I have noticed that in some small immigrant population pockets in the US the majority of offspring is boys, and I've been wondering about the biological causes for this phenomenon. The explanation I heard is that the acidity can be regulated by stress levels of the female, causing more boys to be born in a more stressful environment. At the time I thought it's pure pseudoscience.

by brass9 13y ago

Much better coverage can be found here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.ht...

gjm11 13y ago

Or, perhaps better, here: http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/july/ratios.html http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/july/ratios.html -- this being where ScienceDaily copied it from. (There's actually a tiny bit of extra information in the Stanford version, namely its last sentence.) Or here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0067867 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... -- this is the journal article it's all about, and reports the research in much more detail.

1123581321 13y ago

All that is being discovered is that sons mean more grandchildren, and a few groups (billionaires, top-ranking wives) are cherry-picked because they have more sons. Dung flies are mentioned but they are not even mammals, and they aren't sex selecting their sperm. That said, though the article claims a mechanism is unknown, diet can influence whether a girl or boy is conceived: http://genderdreaming.com/2011/05/the-french-gender-diet/ http://genderdreaming.com/2011/05/the-french-gender-diet/ http://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(10)00549-3/abstract http://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(10)00549-3/abs... My own wild guess is that the observed diet factors, or at least certain states of the body that diet can cause, account for any statistically significant distributions of sex, not a mysterious sperm-guiding mechanism.

upquark 13y ago
Thank you for the links, very interesting. There is also this: http://genderdreaming.com/family-balancing/natural-gender-swaying/science-behind-gender-swaying/ph-balance/ http://genderdreaming.com/family-balancing/natural-gender-sw... I have noticed that in some small immigrant population pockets in the US the majority of offspring is boys, and I've been wondering about the biological causes for this phenomenon. The explanation I heard is that the acidity can be regulated by stress levels of the female, causing more boys to be born in a more stressful environment. At the time I thought it's pure pseudoscience.