Identical Twins

Chapter EightThe RoommatesSoon after the start of her junior year, Caroline made a sign and taped it to her dorm-room door. It was Sept. 16, 1998."HAPPY BIRTHDAY," it said. "Thanks for being such a great friend. Love, Caroline."Who knows why Jenny and Caroline hit it off so quickly; why they were so good at sharing space; why they liked talking in bed before going to sleep. But the roommates agreed: It would be wrong to say they bonded just because they were twins. It would be too simplistic.

Identical genes do not make identical people.That's important to remember, according to leading scientists, in the wake of a Scottish researcher's announcement two weeks ago that he had successfully cloned an adult sheep and named it Dolly.The report instantly kindled fears and fantasies about the possibility -- perhaps the inevitability -- that a human will someday be cloned.But while clones might bear an uncanny resemblance to their genetic forebears, researchers say that the experience of growing up in a different place and time would ensure identities of their own.Even now, identical twins growing up under the same roof can turn out differently.

They are best friends. They share the same beliefs and feelings, the same sense of style, the same color preferences. And between them, there's 50 year's worth of fashion sense and sensibility.But 25-year-old identical twins Rebecca and Jennifer Cormeny have their own closets and basically their own wardrobes. That doesn't mean that Jennifer won't take a trip down the hallway to peer into her sister's closet. Often, she's stymied by the sheer number of shoes she encounters. For it is Rebecca who tends to accumulate the most footwear, earrings and fashion sundries.

On the eve of Wilde Lake coach Kelly Storr's birthday, the Wildecats presented her with a birthday present with a 53-38 victory over visiting and sixth seed Central of Prince George's County in last night's Class 1A South Region semifinal at River Hill.Wilde Lake's leading scorer, senior Kristen Rissmandel (13.7 ppg), was held scoreless, but her teammates picked up the slack while the senior point guard dished out a team-high eight assists."If you told me before the game Kristen would not score, I would have said somebody else would pick her up because we stress the four others on the court can get it done," said Storr.

Teachers at Davidsonville Elementary knew they were seeing double a lot, but didn't realize just how often until fifth-graders David and Malory Burgess arrived this year.That's when Principal Jeanne Paglee started counting: 11 sets of twins, with at least one set in each grade from kindergarten to fifth grade.Board of Education administrators say they've never heard of so many sets of twins in one county school."No, I don't think it's the water," said Mrs. Paglee, chuckling. The school's problems with its well system are notorious.

SCOTT AND RYAN STEWART, 13, twin sons of Bob an Kathy Stewart of Winged Foot Drive in Westminster.School: Seventh-graders at Westminster West Middle School.Honored for: Outstanding academics, attitude and effort, says one of their teachers, Richard Thompson.Identical twins who have always had a healthy rivalry, they both get A's and B's and participate in several sports."That's a twin thing," said their mother. "It makes them work harder."Goals: The boys don't have firm career goals. Scott (left in the photo above)

In most families, the birth of twins is a dizzying, once-in-a-lifetime event. But in some families, babies arrive two at a time with mystifying frequency, and the tendency can pass from one generation to the next like red hair or musical talent."

A university researcher in Washington has, as an experiment, cloned human embryos, splitting single embryos into identical twins or triplets. This appears to be the first report of such a feat.The scientist, Dr. Jerry L. Hall of George Washington University Medical Center, reported his work at a recent meeting of the American Fertility Society.The experiment was not a technical breakthrough, since he used methods that are commonly used to clone animal embryos, but it opens a range of practical and ethical questions.

YesterdayTrack: Sergei Bubka made a shocking exit when he failed to make even one successful pole vault. And Jackie Joyner-Kersee couldn't keep up with Germany's Heike Drechsler in the long jump, settling for a bronze. And Derartu Tulu won the 10,000 meters -- the first track gold by a black African woman.Tennis: Jennifer Capriati beat Steffi Graf to capture the Olympic gold and pronounced the whole experience "cool." And Germans Boris Becker and Michael Stich, both struggling this year in singles, won the doubles title.

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey is known in the field of psychiatry as th doctor who has spent a lengthy career searching for and talking about the likelihood that a virus could cause schizophrenia.Not one of the dozens of microscopic bugs studied seemed to fit into the puzzle of mental illness. But now, after 20 years, the Washington-based researcher may have hit pay dirt with an organism that has never been described in humans but, for reasons yet unexplained, has shown up in about half the schizophrenics he studied.

Susan Hill dislikes cilantro, and not just a little. "I just hate it," says Hill, 36, an Annapolis stay-at-home mom. "Oh, I do." The fresh herb Hill detests is also known as coriander and Chinese parsley. It looks a lot like Italian flat-leaf parsley. And good thing. Cilantro has so many enemies that it could use a couple of aliases and a way to pass for something else in the herb garden. Once an exotic flavor confined to Mexican, Asian and Indian cooking, cilantro turns up today even in white-bread American restaurants.

In the latest edition of In the Womb, viewers are taken this weekend for a prenatal sneak peek at identical twins. Born from the same single fertilized egg, identical twins not surprisingly retain a similar physical appearance as they grow up. But this National Geographic Channel special explains that the influences of genes reach beyond physical appearance, affecting personalities, sexual preferences and other characteristics. But despite the similarities that can bond these twins throughout their lives, they are not a 100 percent genetic match.

tv 'In the Womb': In addition to being a comic book nerd, I'm also a science show geek. This Sunday, National Geographic Channel tracks the fascinating lives of identical twins from the very start. Using top-notch graphics, a documentary explores what makes them the same and what makes them different. In the Womb: Identical Twins airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on National Geographic Channel. Tim Swift theater 'Caroline, or Change': Tony Kushner, who crafted the two-part epic Angels in America, takes a lighter tone, kind of, in this semiautobiographical musical set in Louisiana during the civil rights movement.

Exit Clov was never a normal band. Its first EP fused dark prog rock with light pop melodies and politically charged lyrics. Lead singers Emily and Susan Hsu are identical twins - an aspect the press loves to lap up. While the twins are fine with the way this lures the curious to their concerts - the band plays the Funk Box tonight - the sisters want the music, not themselves, to keep the crowd's attention. "My hope is that if you have more stuff to your band, and if there is real musical talent, then that will, in time, surpass whatever gimmick it appears to be initially," Emily said.

Ask one and then the other about her favorite food and you'll get the same answer: Dad's steak on the grill. For Jacque and Brandi Sutphin, identical twins and senior standouts on the No. 2-ranked South River girls soccer team, that one is easy. Dig even further and it's still the same: Medium rare and most of the time without steak sauce, but on occasion they'll reach for a little A-1. "And if one is having A-1, the other is having A-1," said Brandi, who, along with her sister, insists - from favorite music to television shows to subjects in school to Dad's work on the barbecue - there's very little difference between the two. That is until they take the soccer field.

The importance of sharing was never lost on the four sets of twins graduating from Villa Julie College today. Three of the pairs shared the same major and the same classes at the private college in Stevenson. All eight shared living quarters with their sibling for the majority of the four years. The four sets of twins are made up of two sets of fraternal twins -- Erica Gryctz and Lisa Gryctz, 21, and Kim Schmid and Melissa Schmid, 22 -- and two sets of identical twins -- Kristin Earley and Karen Earley, 21, and Tiffany Hresko and Dana Hresko, 21. "We had each other from the beginning," said Kristin, who grew up with Karen in Salisbury and lives with her in Owings Mills.

The Minnesota Twins won the World Series in 1987 and 1991 but never had any real twins. They came close. Twin brothers John and Jim Sevcik were in the team's minor-league system in the 1960s, but only John got called up. And former Twins owner Calvin Griffith had twin brothers (Jimmy and Billy) working in the organization. Now, identical twins Stan and Stew Cliburn are manager and pitching coach of the Twins' Double-A Eastern League affiliate in New Britain, Conn. The 44-year-old Cliburns have already caused some confusion in the Rock Cats' locker room.

Chapter EightThe RoommatesSoon after the start of her junior year, Caroline made a sign and taped it to her dorm-room door. It was Sept. 16, 1998."HAPPY BIRTHDAY," it said. "Thanks for being such a great friend. Love, Caroline."Who knows why Jenny and Caroline hit it off so quickly; why they were so good at sharing space; why they liked talking in bed before going to sleep. But the roommates agreed: It would be wrong to say they bonded just because they were twins. It would be too simplistic.

They are best friends. They share the same beliefs and feelings, the same sense of style, the same color preferences. And between them, there's 50 year's worth of fashion sense and sensibility.But 25-year-old identical twins Rebecca and Jennifer Cormeny have their own closets and basically their own wardrobes. That doesn't mean that Jennifer won't take a trip down the hallway to peer into her sister's closet. Often, she's stymied by the sheer number of shoes she encounters. For it is Rebecca who tends to accumulate the most footwear, earrings and fashion sundries.

Identical genes do not make identical people.That's important to remember, according to leading scientists, in the wake of a Scottish researcher's announcement two weeks ago that he had successfully cloned an adult sheep and named it Dolly.The report instantly kindled fears and fantasies about the possibility -- perhaps the inevitability -- that a human will someday be cloned.But while clones might bear an uncanny resemblance to their genetic forebears, researchers say that the experience of growing up in a different place and time would ensure identities of their own.Even now, identical twins growing up under the same roof can turn out differently.