Gizmodo: sperm

Tragus Headset Designer Likely Had Baby Batter On the Brain

Jack Loftus — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 13:30:00 EDT

The Tragus Bluetooth headset concept is a clever idea for people who misplace theirs between calls, save for the fact that it looks like a colorful sperm is about to swim into your ear canal.

The ~~flagellum~~ squiggle is a clip that fastens the earpiece to your shirt collar when not in use.

We'd say that's incredibly handy, if not for all the lame "is that hair gel?" jokes you'll get from your friends. [Design Blog]

Proteus Motor Swims Through Bloodstream, Looks Pretty Much Like a Sperm

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:30:00 EST

The tiny Proteus motor, at only 2.5 times the width of a human hair, is small enough to enter the bloodstream and perform duties previously requiring some surgical slice-and-dice.

Researchers at Australia's Monash University developed the tiny motor to minimalize the risk of certain, more invasive surgeries. After being injected into the bloodstream, it can carry a camera and other sensors to monitor a patient without the danger that cutting and sewing presents. To move, it uses a spinning tail that spirals at 1295 RPM, and uses piezoelectricity (which uses mechanical stress to create electrical potential) for energy.

Oh, and here's my required Fantastic Voyage reference: This bloodstream sperm motor is named for that movie I never saw! [GizMag]

USB Drive Proves Fertility Conventions Give Out the Best Swag Ever

Sean Fallon — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:40:00 EST

Attendees can get some pretty cool swag at big conventions, but I have yet to see a product as functionally hysterical as this sperm-shaped USB drive handed out at the American Society For Reproductive Medicine's (ASRM) 2008 conference. I'll tell you what—whipping this thing out at while using your laptop at Starbucks should prove interesting.

[Thanks Eric!]

Bad News: Cellphones Make Your Sperm Stupid

Adam Frucci — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:52:59 EDT

Bad news, dudes and ladies who hope to someday be impregnated by said dudes! According to some researches from the Cleveland Clinic, cellphones wreck your sperms up, making them too stupid to knock ladies up.

Basically, because we keep phones in our pockets within a few inches of our hanging brains, there's a decent chance that the radiation emitting from them is dumbing up our balls. Or, to put it more scientifically or whatever: "We believe that these devices are used because we consider them very safe, but it could cause harmful effects due to the proximity of the phones and the exposure that they are causing to the gonads." So says lead researcher Ashok Agarwal, the Director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine. Bummer.

The study involved taking samples of semen from 32 dudes and putting half of it within a couple of inches of a phone on talk mode for an hour. It's the equivalent of people keeping their phone in their pocket while they use a Bluetooth headset. The results?

Overall, researchers found an increase in oxidative stress such as a significant increase in free radicals and oxidants and a decrease in antioxidants. Agarwal says that equals a decrease in sperm's quality, including motility and viability. Evidence of oxidative stress can appear under other conditions, including exposure to certain environmental pollutants or infections in the urinary genital tract.
"On average, there was an 85 percent increase in the amount of free radicals for all the subjects in the study. Free radicals have been linked to a variety of diseases in humans including cancer," said Agarwal. Free radicals have been linked to decreased sperm quality in previous studies.

Of course, since this experiment was done on sperm outside of the body, there's no way to know if the human body and all the skin and such between your pocket and your internal sperms do a decent job of blocking the kill-o-beams your phone emits. But hey, maybe it's time to ditch that Bluetooth headset just to be safe, eh? [CNN]

Plasma Sperm Are Huge in Japan

matt buchanan — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:30:47 EDT

No, it's not just a microscope. It's a man barometer. And real men? They have plasma sperm. Lots of them. Besides, have you ever seen your own sperm swimming? Please don't tell me, that's just what it asks on the box. No really, Chen, I don't wanna know. [Tokyo Times]

Sperm Could Be the Slave Drivers of the Nanobot Future

Sean Fallon — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:30:47 EST

Scientists are investigating the possibility of using the "tiny assembly line that powers the whip-like tail of sperm" to send medical nanobots racing throughout the body. In order to work, these devices would have to be made from biomedical components—and at that size, "biology would provide the best functional motors." This approach seems bizarre, but apparently it could help solve the problem of supplying energy to thousands of minuscule internal devices that can fight or ward off disease. How long it will be before these spermbot slave drivers become a reality is anyone's guess. [MSNBC]

Salmon Sperm Make for Better LEDs

Jason Chen — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:20:43 EDT

Andrew Steckl, a photonics expert from the University of Cincinnatti, has discovered that salmon sperm makes for better LEDs. He came to this disgusting discovery from analyzing biological materials and coming to the conclusion that DNA serves as a better material for intensifying LED properties. The best part: the fishing industry just throws away this salmon sperm! It's perfectly good sperm! What a delicious waste! I mean![UC via Treehugger]

Even More Scientists Claim Cell Phones Damage Your Sperm

Adam Frucci — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:50:46 EDT

Bad news for the breeders among us: there are a bunch of studies out there that point towards cell phones as a new cause of infertility and retarded sperm. A new report by Cleveland Clinic researchers adds to the evidence and has some bad news for us gadget junkies:

"Those men who used a cell phone for more than 4 hours per day had the biggest decrease in properties in sperm especially the count, quality, and quantity of the sperm. They are significantly impaired in these men."

Time to line my pockets with lead. It's for the good of the species, after all. –Adam Frucci

Textually [via Core77]

Using Cellphones For Too Long Destroys Your Sperm

Gizloco — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 08:43:49 EDT

So it turns out that using a cellphone for extended periods of time can totally destroy your sperm count, lads. A recent study carried out by researchers in the U.S. and doctors in India found that using a cellphone for more than four hours per day both reduces sperm count and ravages what sperm you have left, leaving the little guys all but useless. The findings could be chalked up to all that lovely radiation coming out of cellphones, with the eyes, breasts and testicles being most likely to absorb those wacky waves. Oh, and texting is just as bad, too, apparently.

So if you have no interest in ever having children, tough guy, keep yapping away on that cellphone. Don't worry, you would've made a bad father anyway. – Nicholas Deleon

Men who use mobile phones face increased risk of infertility [The Daily Mail]

Scientists Eliminate the Need for Males

Charlie White — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 13:48:10 EDT

Science has created all sorts of fascinating devices for us to enjoy, but now it's produced technology that could eliminate the biological need for the biggest whores for all that tech, males. English scientists figured out how to grow stem cells from a female embryo into sperm, and those she-cells are perfectly capable of doing the same thing guys do with some wood and a good splooge.

The good news, guys, is that this technique hasn't been perfected yet. Even though six out of seven of the baby mice produced using this experimental jism survived into adulthood, all of them suffered what the scientists called "adverse events," or what we here at Gizmodo like to call "pussywhipped syndrome." – Charlie White

Women could make sperm [Irish Health, via Dvorak Uncensored]