Word: y
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...degree of arousal during intercourse determined the offspring's sex; great excitement, he reasoned, produced a boy. In the 1920s, scientists confirmed the existence of human sex chromosomes, two of the 46 chromosomes people normally carry. Ordinarily, women have two X chromosomes, whereas men have an X and a Y. In 1959 the sex determining factor was traced to the Y chromosome. But it was still unclear whether the "switch" consisted of one gene or many...
...find out how sexual differentiation works, Page and his team decided in 1981 to study the sex chromosomes of people who are genetically abnormal: men with two X chromosomes and women with an X and a Y. Despite the genetic reversal, the XX men and XY women, although infertile, appeared normal. The scientists showed that one X chromosome in these men always had a tiny bit of Y attached, while the women's Y chromosomes always lacked that same tiny bit. The TDF gene, they figured, must be contained in that fragment, which sometimes breaks off from the Y...
...their typography. As for the play, it consists of cavorting onstage in this year's most original alphabet book, The Z Was Zapped (Houghton Mifflin; $15.95). Chris Van Allsburg's narrative grants each performer an alliterative role: the D was nearly Drowned, the I was nicely Iced, the Y was Yanked away. His mastery of pencil and graphite dust humanizes the characters and lends them an air of drama, as if they were about to receive major parts in the theater of words, paragraphs and books...
Meeting with representatives of both sides of the conflict last week in the Dominican Republic, Obando y Bravo proposed a truce from December 22 to January 6, as a first step toward a wider truce under a Central American peace plan...
...indirect talks Obando y Bravo held deadlocked when the Contras demanded they center on political reforms in Nicaragua and the Sandinistas insisted they be limited to technical negotiations about a ceasefire...