CHECKUP : NEWS, TIPS AND TRENDS EVERYTHING'S ON SCHEDULE WITH YEAR-OLD CLONED SHEEP.

Hello again, Dolly.

Dolly, the cloned sheep, is still going strong, a Scottish scientist has reported. Born just over a year ago, the animal that made headlines as the first mammal cloned from an adult is old enough to start thinking about motherhood.

Scientists have wondered whether Dolly can have lambs - in other words, can the clone do everything that an animal born of a sperm and egg can do? The scientists who tend to Dolly say they hope to know soon.

``Males are not very interested in Dolly for the moment,'' said Alan Colman of PPL Therapeutics in Roslin, Scotland. ``She's on a diet to get her ready for mating.''

Colman spoke last month in Baltimore at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.

Researchers are also wondering whether Dolly will age normally. Although she was born just over a year ago, the genetic material used for cloning was taken from a 6-year-old sheep. Some scientists have speculated that Dolly may age prematurely. Colman said he just doesn't know yet.

``She looks as perky as any other sheep her age,'' he said.

Tub seat warning

Bathtub seats, which are used to prop up infants during bathing, increase the risk of drowning.

Over a 13-year period, 32 infants between 5 and 15 months of age drowned in the U.S. while in bathtub seats, according to researchers from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Johns Hopkins University.

The seats may provide care-givers with a false sense of security, leading them to believe they can safely leave infants alone in a tub for short periods, the researchers reported in the electronic pages of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Analyses of the drownings showed that nine of the infants climbed out of the bathtub seat, nine were submerged when the seat tipped over, and two slid under the rim of an upright bath seat.

Throws like a novice

Don't ever say someone is ``throwing like a girl.'' It's not only politically incorrect, it's biologically incorrect, the Penn State Sports Medicine Newsletter reports. No scientific data indicates that anatomical differences prevent either gender from correctly throwing a ball. If a male or a female has underdeveloped muscles, is inexperienced, or hasn't hadn't proper instruction, the throwing motion will look strange.

Help for the heart

Heart patients who know that they can count on a friend or relative for help in performing daily tasks such as bathing and taking medications stand a better chance of surviving.

A study of 820 patients found that a year after their heart attacks, those who felt they needed more help were 3.2 times more likely to have died than patients who felt they were given adequate support, said Dr. Steven Woloshin, of the White River Junction Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Vermont and the University of Manitoba.

Patients who said they need much more help were 6.5 times more likely to have died, he reported in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

``Inadequate tangible support was a significant predictor of death and greater functional deterioration,'' he said.

Baby deja vu

Baby see. Baby remember. Infants as young as 6 months can not only imitate actions, but actually remember them 24 hours later - provided the circumstances are exactly the same as they were a day earlier, according to a new study reported at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The youngest age at which scientists had previously demonstrated deferred imitation in infants was 9 months.

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Photo

Photo: Scientists will soon learn whether Dolly, a female sheep who was cloned, has the ability to give birth.

Associated Press