Word: sperm
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...come to the rescue. Geneticist Manuel Gordon of Michigan State University has succeeded in partially controlling the sex of unborn rabbits. His system depends on the fact that when a mammalian ovum is fertilized, the sex of the individual into which it will develop is determined by the sperm that does the fertilizing. Half the sperm cells have X chromosomes, which produce females. The other half have Y chromosomes, which produce males. So a way to start to control sex might be to separate the sperm cells into X and Y fractions before insemination...
...sperm whales, try to listen to them, will you?" These were about the last words heard by the crew of the research vessel Atlantis before casting off last spring from the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution on a voyage to trace currents in the Atlantic. They were shouted at dockside by tall (6 ft. 1 in.), intense Harvard Zoologist William Edward Schevill...
...startled by Schevill's request. He is always asking colleagues to eavesdrop on sperm whales-not when the whales are puffing and blowing on the surface, but while they are submerged. Schevill wants to pin down once and for all the ancient reports that big (up to 65 ft.) sperm whales "talk" to each other beneath the surface, although they have no vocal cords. Last week's issue of the British magazine Nature carries a report by Schevill and L. Valentine Worthington, an oceanographer on the Institution's Atlantis, that produces scientific evidence to support what oldtime...
Click. Click. Click. Off North Carolina, Worthington was manning an echo-sounding receiver on a regular project when he heard a loud hammering. "Cut out the racket," he yelled. "I can't hear a damn thing." After everyone on board lad indignantly denied hammering, a herd of six sperm whales slowly broke water near...
...since he worked with the Navy during World War II. During his work he made tapes of underwater sounds, later tried them out on an ancient mariner from the whaling port of New Bedford. One sound always got an instantaneous response from the ex-whaler: "That's a sperm snappin' his spouter...