European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 9, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Males Are better at certain tasks. But then against Are women Boyjan Ziegler United press International t times it May seem men and and women come from different planets. They not Only look different they often think differently and behave differently some of these supposed differences have been chalked up to the misperception a of Days gone by. The entry of women into he work Force has toppled the victorian theorem that women were destined to be wives and mothers White men were the Only ones capable of carrying on the business of state and had no business in he Nursery new observations have replaced the of ones. Women Are still often viewed a the keepers of relationships while men Are viewed As conquerors fighters and builders. Women Are Good at verbal tasks men Are supposedly better at math. Feminists insist Many of the differences if they indeed exist Are probably the result of social conditioning. Some scientists however now say sax hormones and sex related features in brain Structure appear to play a role in certain differences Between male and female skills and behaviour that have nothing to do with reproduction or physical strength. Supporting Hiler conclusions Are tests designed to measure innate skills trying to eliminate As much As possible any influence by the sexual stereotyping the begins at the Cradle and continues throughout life. Scientists say they have found that males on the average Are indeed belter at certain mental tasks than females and females is a group outrun males in others. In neuroscience labs researchers have found differences Between a Tafea and females in the Way brain cells relate to each other. Overall brain Structure end function Are also different in certain ways including How tha two halves of the brain communicate. Evidence indicates a Subtle Wash of sex linked chemicals that begins before birth helps determine the course of brain development is Well As the Structure of the rest of our bodies scientists say. It s my Contention mates and females Are different from the beginning and then our society acts upon them sometimes by exaggerating or distorting the differences sometimes by suppressing them sometimes by ignoring them and saying they re not there said june Reinisch director of Trie Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. Although Trie scientists who Are doing the work say it shows we Are much More the product of our hormones than we May have thought others disagree they Point out it is extremely difficult even in the Best designed study to separate out the effects of environment. I m not really very  said or. Malcolm m. Martin a paediatric endocrinologist and professor of Medicine and paediatrics at Georgetown University medical Center of to studies. Said biologist Anne Fausto Sterling professor of medical sciences at Brown University and author of the myths of gender. Any differences that Are found Are tiny. Everybody agrees to that knowledge about the effects of the fetal brain s exposure to hormones and How they influence the growth of the Organ is still in Early stages. In fact rely each said we Only know one half of 1 percent about the brain altogether. Male and female fetuses Are identical in body and brain for six weeks after Conception scientists believe. After that hormones switch on to direct development of Mala and female body characteristics tha prevalent theory said Wendy Heller a to psychologist in the department of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the University of Chicago is that the fetal brain will automatically begin developing in a female direction unless chromosomes switch on male hormones to override this pattern mar research Fri Are beginning to believe however that the brain is neuter when it starts out and must be influenced by male hormones called Androgen or female oestrogen related hormones to go in either direction. Structural differences that eventually develop Are very Subtle for one scientists say clumps of cells called nuclei in the part of tha brain known As the hypothalamus Are 216 times larger in males. The Corpus Ca Losum the Structure that links the right and left hemispheres of the brain is generally larger in women leading to some tantalizing speculation that communication Between brain halves in females May be More efficient. However said rely sch we have not begun to connect behaviour with Structure some Gross Structure we can link with behaviour some of a research so far has shown girls born to women who look certain progesterone based on masculine hormones to keep Iron mis carrying during pregnancy have distinctly Tomboyish tendencies. Infant females spend More time Silling up in face to face Contact Wilh others while males spend More time in Independent crawling Reinisch said. Those do rotate id some of the adult sex differences people talk about she said. To an Experiment with  12 to 4fl hours old maintained Eye Contact with adults longer than males of the same age. Ii the adults were speaking Lomale newborns looked at them even longer but Lor males the sound of speech made no difference. They still looked away at about the same rate. Females Are More accurate at interpreting the meaning of facial expressions gesture and Lone of voice a Talent sometimes described As intuition. The female is reeding the social data differently it a not some kind of magical thing said Reinisch. Ii has also been noted that among 3-to 5-year-Olds, girls talk to each other More while boys make play noises such a imitating the Roar of rockets. Tests have shown boys Are better at certain Hinds of figuring with numbers and disciplines involving visualizing shapes in three dimensions. These skills Are grouped into a category called spatial ability a Talent supposedly governed by the right aide of the brain. One such test is a rotation test in which subjects Are shown pairs of shapes that depict weird Multi pronged three dimensional constructions of Brick. In each pair one picture remains the same and another is different. The subject must determine if the shape that changed has been rotated and if so. How much or if it is a different Structure altogether. Females tend to be less accurate in interpreting the rotation and take More Lime to do it one expert said. This kind of finding shows there is a sex difference and a very Clear one one that would be hard to attribute to the environment he added. How would any woman know she was supposed to get worse on performance than men these kinds of skins correlate with certain professions for instance someone Wilh Good spatial ability could be expected to be a better architect. Does this mean women can t be architects no he said because women s brains compensate in other ways. But the probability of b woman being a Briff Rajit architect is probably somewhat lower she said. It has been found that lower Levels of testosterone Are linked to lower Levels of spatial ability. This May account for differences in spatial ability Between men and women and among men.  tha primary male hormone has also been linked to higher aggression Levels among men but research so Lar is spares and generalizations Are hard to pin Down. Testosterone is related to aggressiveness but we watched Margaret Thatcher go to War said rely sch referring to the British prime minister and the Falkland islands conflict with Argentina. There Are very aggressive women. These Are the women who would run for president other research has shown that though verbal ability was believed to be controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain in women who often score higher on tests of verbal ability it is linked to both hemispheres. Since spatial ability is a rights Caln function the territory taken up by verbal processing in women might Cut Down on spatial capability. Said Heiler. Scientists search the sea for wonder drugs by Charles Seabrook Cox news services n the never ending quest for cures of human diseases scientists Are going Down to the sea. In scuba gear and submarines they Are scouring the Ocean Depths collecting corals sponges and strange looking Worms any one of which could Harbor the next wonder drug Lor cancer heart disease or infections. Some corals already have yielded promising anti tumor drugs tha t will be ready for Tea Ting on humans within the next year or two. Sponges provide a substance called  an anti depressant that could yield the next major drug to treat severe depression. By the beginning of the next Century most of the drugs used to treat major diseases will have had their beginnings a by to Tum Pho ocoral Elf  Umof Hrvat. In the sea Saya Para hear n. Kaui a biology professor at Atlanta University. Kaul and Pratibha Waltari also of Atlanta University reported earlier this month that they had isolated a compound from a sponge in the Waters off puerto Rico that appears lobe three times More potent than digitalis the most powerful heart stimulant now known to Medicine Kaul says Laboratory tests indicate that the compound has Promise As a Basic ingredient for a whole new class of drugs to treat heart disease. Surprisingly no of has been Able so far to develop a better drug than digitalis which has been used for More than 200 years Kaul says. Like More than 40 percent of today s drugs digitalis s derived from terrestrial organisms isolated Fram the foxglove a 3-Foomall perennial thai grows wild along English country fanes. Page 16 the stars and stripes tuesday september 9,1986