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Friday, December 7, 2012

Terrible Swimmers

Human sperm stained for semen quality testing in the clinical laboratory.

Photo by Bobjgalindo/Wikimedia Commons.

The sperm count of French men dropped 32 percent between 1989 and 2005, and the number of normally-shaped sperm dropped 33 percent. Abnormal sperm morphology is quite common: In many men, only 10 to 15 percent of sperm is appropriately shaped, depending on the standard applied. Why are men so bad at producing regular sperm?

Because sperm are expendable. Men produce millions of sperm every day and ejaculate about 300 million at a time, so evolutionary pressures haven?t punished this inefficiency. Artificial selection, however, shows that higher success rates can be achieved. In bulls, which are selected for their ability to generate viable sperm, between 70 and 75 percent of sperm are morphologically sound. Stallions have a slightly lower success rate, but still outperform men.

Genetic differences account for some of the variability in sperm quality. Of the genetic mutations that are known to cause infertility in mice, 75 percent affect only males. Researchers speculate that more genes may be involved in spermatogenesis than oogenesis, or perhaps egg production has more genetic safeguards to prevent mutations from undermining viability. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective: Women release only between 400 and 500 eggs in their lifetimes, so it?s much more important that each one be viable.

Spermatogenesis is also a lengthy, complicated process, with many opportunities for errors. When you damage a skin cell, for example, neighboring skin cells divide to replace the lost tissue. The process takes a matter of hours or a couple of days at most. By contrast, sperm cells are made from stem cells, which have to launch a long series of changes in daughter cells, including replacing all the cytoplasm and making a flagellum. Human sperm cells are about 60 days in the making.

Got a question about today?s news? Ask the Explainer.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=e7233a2522b6325f51e0bf28b2cbd770

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Soundcloud introduces new UI and features with latest app update

Soundcloud

Soundcloud has always managed to have a pretty respectable app across platforms, and the latest update to their mobile app keeps that tradition going. The app has been revamped with a new UI that uses the sliding panes we've seen in many apps as of late. It not only looks great but more importantly, it works great. Smooth and fluid describes it nicely. Aside from the UI change, Soundcloud did manage to add in a few new features as well that improve the experience as well:

Hear, favorite, repost and comment on sounds shared in your Stream
Record your own sounds with one touch and share to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Tumblr
Includes optional Record Widget for the home screen
Lock screen playback supported

The core features remain as well, they've just been improved. Searching for music, following artists and discovering new music with the app is better than ever. According to Soundcloud, over 10 hours of music & audio are posted every minute to their services so alas, you can take Taylor Swift or whatever it is the cool kids are listening to these days off repeat and go out and discover some new music.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/kO2joq3DAdc/story01.htm

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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Apple reportedly in talks with cable companies regarding live TV for Apple set-top box

Aside from a full-on Apple television, one of the longest running rumors in Apple living-room land is a deal with cable companies and/or broadcast networks for the right to air traditional cable programming on an Apple TV or similar set-top box. However, television is notoriously myopic and future-averse, and Apple has previously sought to disrupt rather than engage their business. But that might be changing. Jessica E. Vascellaro And Shalini Ramachandran, writing for The Wall Street Journal, report that Apple might be trying a more pragmatic approach than before.

The talks illustrate that Apple is seeking a less radical path to expand in television than it has contemplated in the past, namely teaming up with existing service providers rather than licensing content to compete with them directly.

Steve Jobs once elaborated on the problems involved in going to market with a television or television box, namely the cable companies make even the cell phone companies look unified and sane by comparison. It's tough to see Apple compromising on either user experience or control to get a deal like that done either, but the Wall Street Journal has certainly proved credible in the past.

This could just be another in the long history of periodic feeling outs that Apple and Hollywood seem to feel compelled to engage in -- a tug at the thread Apple CEO Tim Cook still feels is there.

The WSJ also once again repeats the rumor that Apple has prototyped television sets, as mentioned above, and as iMore has also heard previously.

Where all of this is going, if any of it is going in the short term, is probably still too early to say, but for most consumers, including Apple consumers, it remains a problem that needs solving.

And the Apple TV remains a single-digit million-selling hobby, rather than the hundred million unit moving solution that typically attracts Apple this days.

The Wall Street Journal

Apple Tv

Television

Cable

live tv

Rumors

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/VoWnc5c3wAQ/story01.htm

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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Egg production after birth questioned

Study finds no evidence of stem cells in mouse ovaries

Web edition : 3:53 pm

Women may indeed be limited to the number of eggs their ovaries contain at birth, a new study finds, directly contradicting recent research that suggests otherwise.

Scientists have long thought that female mammals, including humans, are born with all the egg cells they will ever have. But a few papers, culminating with a study published earlier this year in Nature Medicine, have suggested that ovaries contain rare stem cells that can replenish egg supplies (SN: 4/7/12, p. 8). These egg-producing stem cells could lead to new treatments for fertility problems, ways to delay menopause and advancements in the basic understanding of human egg cells.

Not so fast, says Kui Liu, a molecular reproductive biologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Working with mice, Liu and his colleagues used a technique to identify egg cells and their precursors in ovaries. The team found no evidence of the stem cells in ovaries that reproductive biologist Jonathan Tilly of Massachusetts General Hospital and colleagues recently described in Nature Medicine.

To look for egg-making stem cells in mouse ovaries, Liu and his colleagues genetically engineered mice so that every cell glows green with a fluorescent protein, except for eggs, sperm and cells destined to become gametes. Those cells glow yellow, blue or red. The scientists found cells glowing red ? purported gamete precursors ? in the ovary, but those cells did not divide the way stem cells would and did not produce new eggs, leading the researchers to conclude that stem cells don?t exist in the ovary. The researchers report their work online July 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new finding in no way disproves the existence of egg-making stem cells in the ovary, says Evelyn Telfer, a reproductive biologist at the University of Edinburgh. For one thing, ?these cells are absolutely not the same as the ones Tilly?s got,? she says. The cells Liu found are much larger and are probably already nondividing egg cells.

Liu says his point in publishing the paper is not to say that Tilly is wrong, but to urge scientists to take a hard look at the evidence for and against stem cells in the ovary.

Found in: Genes & Cells

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/342161/title/Egg_production_after_birth_questioned

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Church of England seen delaying women bishop vote

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