Biology

Having one or more older brothers boosts the likelihood of a boy growing up to be gay -- an effect due not to social factors, but biological events that occur in their mother's womb, according to a study published today. In an analysis of 905 men and their siblings, Canadian psychologist Anthony Bogaert found no evidence that social interactions among family members played a role in determining whether a man was gay or straight.

SACRAMENTO - Two of the nation's largest biotech companies - Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks and Genentech Inc. of South San Francisco - are fighting in Sacramento to keep a tight grip on some of their most lucrative drugs. At stake is a potential market worth tens of billions of dollars for pricey biological medicines they make from human blood, serums, bacterial cultures, viruses and other microorganisms. They are used to treat cancers, immune disorders and many other complex diseases.

The United States, after all, was built by the "socially unfit" from other countries. The issue Mr. Donahue deals with is not abortion. It is the control of people. Good biology? Not from what I've learned so far. It's just another poor case for eugenics. PAUL YAMASHITA Castaic

An environmental group has warned that a federal agency's plan to designate 98.4 acres as critical habitat for an endangered plant in western Riverside County is inadequate and could result in the extinction of the species. In response to a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service earlier this month designated the small area just west of Lake Elsinore as critical habitat for Munz's onion. The wildlife agency also rejected the center's request for it to protect habitat for the endangered San Jacinto Valley crownscale, which inhabits portions of the San Jacinto River flood plain near Hemet.

Coastline Community College has been awarded a three-year, $184,320 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a "virtual biology laboratory." The Fountain Valley-based college will use the money to research, produce and evaluate a cost-effective CD-ROM-based computer program. The project will be designed as an interactive simulation of a biology lab experience. The lab will be targeted for use by students enrolled in introductory biology courses.

Brushing aside opposition from scientists and religious groups, the State Board of Education in Austin gave final approval to 11 new biology textbooks that contain Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The board had given preliminary approval to the books. Opponents had argued that weaknesses in the evolution theory were not adequately presented in the books. But scientists and educators argued that the theory was widely believed and a cornerstone of modern scientific research.

Cal State Northridge has received a $700,000 grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute aimed at increasing the number of minority students graduating in biology. Joyce Maxwell, acting associate dean of the School of Science and Mathematics, who wrote the proposal for the grant, said she hopes to double the number of American Indians, African-Americans and Latinos graduating in biology as well as other sciences over the next four years.

Orange Coast College has received $40,000 from the George Hoag Family Foundation toward construction of a high-technology biology lab. The biology multimedia lab, scheduled to open in the spring, will use computer equipment in plastination research, where fat and water cells are replaced with plastic compounds that make specimens more durable. The special software simulates clinical situations and analyzes laboratory research.

Researchers adept at analyzing the genetic threads of human diversity said Sunday that the concept of race--the source of abiding cultural and political divisions in American society--simply has no basis in fundamental human biology. Scientists should abandon it, they said.

Alabama is maintaining its distinction as the only state where biology textbooks include a sticker warning students that evolution is a "controversial theory" they should question. The State Board of Education voted in Montgomery without dissent to place the disclaimer on the front of 40,000 new biology textbooks to be used in the state's public schools. The board included the same statement in course guidelines for science teachers.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court was asked Tuesday to decide who should raise a 3 1/2-year-old girl who was given up by her single mother: the South Carolina couple who adopted her at birth or her biological father, who invoked his rights as a Cherokee Indian to claim his child. The justices spent part of the morning as family court judges, and they did not envy those who must decide such emotionally trying disputes every day. "Domestic relations pose the hardest problems for judges," said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

More than 200 million years ago, toothy crocodile-like creatures stalked a hot, dry mega-continent while squid-like mollusks with spiral shells drifted in the surrounding ocean. Then, in what passes for an instant in geologic time, they vanished - making way for the age of the dinosaurs. How some 50% of terrestrial vertebrates and an even larger share of marine life died off in the late Triassic period has become more clear from new research published online Thursday in the journal Science.

One of the most promising frontiers in healthcare is biologic medicines - complex substances derived from living cells that can help fight chronic diseases and cancers. To encourage investment in biologics, Congress in 2010 gave drug companies what amounts to a 12-year monopoly on the substances they developed. Now, supporters of biologics are pushing lawmakers in Sacramento and other state capitals to put new hurdles in the way of knock-off compounds, called "biosimilars. " The debate over biosimilars is grounded in doubts about their safety; none have yet been approved for use in the United States.

It was a story Dorothy Atwood DeBolt enjoyed telling, one that any harried parent of young children might find somewhat familiar. The phone rang one day as the busy mother raced around her home, getting ready for an out-of-town trip and wrapping up housework before her kids got home. She answered and a child said: "Mom, this is Jennifer. Can I go to the playground after school?" DeBolt replied: "Sure, honey, but be home by 5," and hung up. Seconds later, she said aloud: "Oh my God, we don't have a kid named Jennifer.

Re "War will be hell for women too," Opinion, Feb. 1 It's fine that Lee Siegel decries the "savagery of wars produced by male egos. " But he waxes sexist in concluding that biology dictates women's unsuitability for combat. Siegel ignores the fact that many women opt to avoid motherhood and instead pursue occupations once held exclusively by men. His argument that wars should be fought by men alone is as specious as his contention that women should by virtue of their being protest war. What Siegel apparently doesn't understand is that some women make superior soldiers, not to mention that some men can quite capably carry signs protesting war. Gene Martinez Orcutt ALSO: Letters: Immigration realities Letters: Making a world less disposable Letters: Cardinal Mahony's shaky defense

WASHINGTON - Leaders of a House committee probing BioWatch, the nation's troubled system for detecting biological attacks, complained Thursday that administration officials had blocked them from seeing documents held by two senior federal scientists known to have been privately skeptical of the nationwide program. The materials are of particular interest to congressional investigators, in part because the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is pushing for a revamping of BioWatch that would cost taxpayers $3.1 billion in its first five years.

In his aptly titled autobiography "A View from Above," basketball great Wilt Chamberlain estimated he "made love to" approximately 20,000 women by the time he was 50. Retired machinist Frank J. Spiegel, 89, so far has made love to only one. "Don't ask me why," shrugs Spiegel, who lives in Costa Mesa with Jeannette, 85, his wife of 70 years. "The only thing I can figure is that I found a woman born in the right month.

About 200,000 years ago, an artisan who lived along a river in northwestern Iraq made a flint scraper, used it to carve and shape a pine tree, then threw it away. While using it, he cut himself. His blood is still on the flint, which now is the property of the Oriental Institute in Chicago. Using new techniques of molecular biology, Australian anthropologist Thomas H. Loy has proved that the blood is human. Such techniques, reported Friday at a meeting of the American Assn.

Los Angeles Unified School District biology teacher Tom Phillips is retiring this month, but on his way out, he's decided to go public with a pet peeve. Phillips believes the continued Christian fundamentalist effort to debunk evolution is undermining science education in the United States, and he has seen evidence of that with his own students at Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy in Wilmington. "Large numbers of Christian Evangelicals have flocked to this school because of its strong academics and have turned it into a publicly supported religious institution," Phillips, 64, said in an email that began several weeks of correspondence between us. The evolution vs. creationism debate has a long history, dating back to the 1925 Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee.

The federal government on Friday proposed protecting 66 kinds of corals under the Endangered Species Act, an acknowledgment that these reef-building animals are suffering so many insults they are threatened with extinction. The proposal, which covers corals in the Pacific and the Caribbean, lists 19 ways that corals are under assault. They include overfishing, pollution, heat-stroke, disease and dissolving in seawater that is turning more acidic. A team of scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service spent more than three years reviewing the health of these reef-building corals before proposing their protection.