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Past Shows
April 30, 2005
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Male and Female Brains
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Can you tell if this is a male or a female brain?
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The differences between men and women have been the subject of countless books and endless jokes. But there were no jokes to be heard earlier this year when the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, wondered why there are so few women in the top ranks of sciences like math and physics. He suggested that perhaps it was a question of a difference in intrinsic ability.
His comments set off an avalanche of angry responses from people who thought him sexist and unscientific and wanted him to resign. But there are lots of scientists who work in this field, trying to find out what - if any - the differences are between the male and the female brain, and what these differences might mean. Many of them welcomed the opportunity to present their research and participate in the debate. These are some of the people Quirks & Quarks spoke with:
Dr. Richard Haier is a professor of psychology at the University of California Irvine. His work shows that male and female brains are wired differently. He says men and women are equally intelligent, but they have different brain architectures to do the thinking.
Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen is a professor of psychology and psychiatry and the Director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Based on psychological and behavioural tests, he's found that men are good at what he calls systemizing, while women are good at empathizing. These differences in interest could also affect things like career choices. He says that while socialization and education play a large role in shaping young minds, some of these differences are present at birth.
Dr. Gerianne Alexander is an assistant professor of psychology at Texas A&M University. She says the toys kids play with help shape their brains. Boys prefer to play with trucks and girls prefer to play with dolls, but she says, this is not just because these are the toys they've been encouraged to play with. She's shown in studies of vervet monkeys that toy preferences are in part biological, and says that if kids have a predisposition for playing with mechanical objects for instance, then this could influence their interests later in life.
Dr. Elizabeth Spelke is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. She questions some the research that shows these strong sex differences. She says that even if there are neurological differences, they are vastly outweighed by social pressures and cultural influences when it comes to determining why some people become math professors and others become nurses. She says that obstacles like discrimination and bias are keeping women away, not an intrinsic lack of interest or ability.
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Sea Hare Defences
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Lobster attacking sea hare - Courtesy, Dr. Cynthia Kicklighter
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The sea hare, a type of sea slug, lives a quiet life off the coast of North America. Unfortunately, it's a popular form of food for various predators, including the spiny lobster. The sea hare doesn't have a hard shell and it can't move very fast, so it has had to resort to other methods to protect itself. What it's come up with is a complex mixture of chemicals. Some of them attract the lobsters, others repel, and when they're put together, the whole mess confuses the poor predator. Dr. Cynthia Kicklighter, from Georgia State University, has picked apart this collection of chemicals.
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Ant Trap
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Ants immobilize a grasshopper - Copyright, Alain Dejean and Jerome Orivel |
Julien Ayroles was just an undergraduate student when he first visited French Guiana. On that trip, he and his colleagues observed a remarkable phenomenon. They discovered a tiny species of ant that builds a trap for much larger insects, out of plant hairs and fungus. The trap is like a platform built on top of a twig of the host plant on which the ant lives. The ants wait inside holes in the trap and when an insect - a fly or a cricket - lands on it, they reach up and grab its legs, antennae and wings - whatever they can reach. They pinion their prey, while more ants sting it to death, and then dismember it for consumption. Mr. Ayroles is currently a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne.
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Fixing Diabetes
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Beta cell injections might someday cure diabetes |
In juvenile diabetes, the main problem is a person's insulin-producing cells, called beta cells, have been destroyed. A few years ago, a group in Edmonton, Alberta, developed a technique for transplanting these beta cells from donor pancreases to diabetics. But there aren't enough pancreases to treat every patient. Now, Dr. Alex Rabinovitch, from the University of Alberta, has come up with a new solution. He's found that he can expose pancreases to certain chemical growth factors and stimulate them to produce more beta cells. Right now, he's working with pancreases from organ donors, but in the future, he thinks he'll be able to give diabetics injections that will stimulate their own bodies to build new beta cells, and regain their ability to make insulin.
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Question of the Week: Great Lakes Waves
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This week we have a question from Lisa Brown in Toronto, who asks: Are there known events on the Great Lakes that resemble a tsunami, producing a wall of water?
For the answer we go to Environment Canada’s National Water Research Institute in Burlington, Ontario, where Chuck Southam is a water resources engineer.
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