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| STORIES ABOUT: sperm |
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| Males Over 35 Less Likely to Have Children |  | Even in these modern days, when the lifespan of humans surpasses an all time record, women over 40 are generally believed too old to have babies, yet somehow there is no mention of the limit age men become less fertile at. If 40 looked like a rather young age to stop having children, a new study now shows that men older than 35 have significantly less chances of becoming fathers. The study involved 12,200 couples with fertility problems.
... [read more >>] | | 07 July 2008, 05:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Lubricants Paralyze Sperm Cells |  | Do you want a kid? If your answer to this is in the positive, it’s time you forgot about lubricants, at least about some of the commercially available ones. As signaled by a new research presented at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists annual meeting, in New Orleans, some lubricants appear to paralyze sperm cells.
"Most commercial lubricants are toxic to sperm, and couples who want fertility should th ... [read more >>] | | 09 May 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| New Method Catches Rapists in 30 to 45 Minutes |  | DNA is the irrefutable proof in many outstanding criminal cases. However, about 250,000 DNA samples aimed to detect a rapist can remain anywhere from 3 to 12 months in forensic laboratories backlogs, and this gives suspects more than enough time to make themselves disappear.
The issue could be solved by Jessica Voorhees Norris, a Ph.D. candidate in forensic chemistry at the University of Virginia: her newly developed method f ... [read more >>] | | 08 May 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| How to Have Sex with a Flower |  | Sex toys may be made not only of plastic; and only by humans. Nature has got its own. For humans, many flowers have an erotic symbolism, like the rose in the Western World (and this, since the ancient Greeks and Romans, who identified the rose with their goddesses of love – Aphrodite, respectively Venus), but also ... [read more >>] | | 14 April 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Humans Are Not Made Monogamous |  | Of course, when Hollywood stars or politicians have extramarital affairs, the whole world rumbles. But if we peek into human biology, anthropology and sociology, the monogamous human appears as a very weird notion.
We are mammals, and if we look to the mammalian world, just 3 to 5% of the about 5,000 species of mammals form lifelong, monogamous bonds – this is the case of beavers, wolves, gibbons, jackals, foxes, some bats, dwarf deer ... [read more >>] | | 12 April 2008, 06:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Four-Day-Dead Soldier's Sperm for Fertilization |  | If this intercession succeeds, it would be a world's first. A soldier's widow has achieved success in having sperm taken from his body and frozen four days after he died in Iraq. Sgt. Dayne Darren Dhanoolal, 26, assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 69th Armour Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, in west Georgia, died on March 31 because of an explosion that occurred near his vehicle, in Baghdad. Hi ... [read more >>] | | 09 April 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| How to Sexually Outcompete Bigger Guys |  | Do you think that only the big hunks get some humping action? In fact, it is all about strategy adapted to the size, as revealed by a new research published in the journal "Ecological Entomology."
In the beetle world, the large males are those winning a direct fight for the mating game, as their large jaws exclude any smaller rival from the competition. But the battle is not lost by the smaller males. In male sap be ... [read more >>] | | 08 April 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| The Genetic Bases of Sex and a First Anti-Malaria Vaccine |  | This is a breakthrough in explaining egg fecundation and a research that could help us fight against many deadly bugs. A team made of researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center and Imperial College London has described the basic gene mechanism of reproduction, in a research published online in the journal "Genes and Development."
Besides explaining why most species cannot interbreed, the study could have a firs ... [read more >>] | | 31 March 2008, 05:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Vitamins and Healthy Sperm |  | Mexican men know the secret of the chili. It's about folate, a vitamin abundant in liver, leafy green vegetables, citrus fruits, sunflower seeds and legumes (beans and their relatives). It may sound more familiar to you that women of child-bearing age must have proper levels of folate (vitamin B9) in their diet for delivering healthy babies, but a new study published in the journal Human Reproduction and carried out by a team at the U ... [read more >>] | | 20 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| 80% of the Lubricants Harm the Sperm |  | Using a lubricant may improve sex ... and that's all. Fertility is wiped out. A new research published in the journal "Fertility and Sterility" shows that 80% of the lubricants seem to be sperm killers. Only one out of 5 vaginal lubricants did not significantly lower the motility of the sperms or the integrity of the sperm chromosomes.
About 30-50% of the sexually active couples employ vaginal lubricants, but s ... [read more >>] | | 18 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| First Sex Chromosome Gene Connected to Meiosis and Male Sterility |  | Just having a XY sex chromosome formula won't make you a man. Nor the XX formula makes you a woman. Increasing evidence shows that human sex is not caused by sex chromosomes, but by genes placed on those chromosomes. Over 50 genes involved in sex expression have been found so far. 7 operate in the brain even before the gonads are formed. Now add a new one: a team at the University of Pennsylvania has detected a gene, TEX11, ... [read more >>] | | 15 March 2008, 04:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Viagra Destroys the Sperm! |  | Pump it into your body, if erections is what you want, but the miracle pill is not that clean. All impotence drugs traded as Cialis (tadalafil), Levitra (vardenadil), and Viagra (sildenafil) use the same mechanism to induce and maintain an erection. They inactivate the PDE5 enzyme that breaks down cyclic GMP.
Studies show that these chemicals damage the inner ear and hearing loss has already been reported in some subjects in ... [read more >>] | | 25 February 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Sperm Mutations Caused by Alcohol, Tobacco and Pesticides Are Transmitted Along the Generations! |  | You drink like a pig and smoke like a sailor? In this case, it is hard to imagine what type of kids you will have (if you will have). Sperm mutations due to exposure to environmental toxins can be transmitted along the generations, as showed by a research presented at American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Experiments made on rats revealed that sperm mutations induced by exposure to pesticides were found ... [read more >>] | | 20 February 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Air Contamination Causes Sperm Mutations! |  | Air contamination is bad for our health, that is clear: it causes an array of respiratory diseases, from asthma to lung cancer, if chronic. But a new research published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" shows it may hit where men are most hurt: their fertility.
Mice living in areas with polluted air displayed significant higher levels of gene mutations in their sperm, than mice inhabiting zone ... [read more >>] | | 04 February 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| No More Men for Reproduction: Sperm from Female Cells! |  | One day, man's job in the family may be just to cut the lawn and change the light bulb when necessary. This is because researches like this one made at the University of Newcastle could put them out of the reproductive business.
The team led by Professor Karim Nayernia has now created spermatogonia (the cells from which sperm cells come, in other words, proto-sperms), starting with human female bone marrow cells! Previously, the t ... [read more >>] | | 01 February 2008, 05:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Stopping the Sperm Flow With the Remote Control! |  | A remote control can do more than turning on/off a TV; it could control human fertility. An Australian team is working on a device that, located inside the vas deferens (the duct transporting the sperm from testicles to the penis), could stop or release the sperm flow via a remote control.
The technology, published in the 'Smart Materials and Structures' journal, would be a flexible alternative to vasectomy, which i ... [read more >>] | | 29 January 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| What's the Secret of the "Speedy Gonzalez" Fertilizing Sperm? |  | Well, Speedy Gonzalez might have been one of the cartoon heroes of your childhood, but mice are speedy in various aspects, including fertilization. A new research carried out at the University of Liverpool has discovered that field mice found a method of having very rapid fertilization that could also be connected to some cases of human sterility. In the race for fast fertilization, field mice have lowered the immune defense of their body ... [read more >>] | | 24 January 2008, 03:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Sperm Art: He Paints Using His Semen! |  | Art is meant to represent the impossible beyond our imagination. This is beyond the way our imagination regards art, but maybe, in fact, we are conservative and obsolete...
The British Jordan McKenzie, 40, involves in epic auto-sexual orgies for creating a new exhibition, which is the result of his masturbating and ejaculating over the canvas. The artist produces about three works a week. So far, he has produced 55 work of art ... [read more >>] | | 14 January 2008, 14:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| The Sperm-Robots of the Future |  | The nervous swim of a sperm attempting to make you a father could soon have applications others than reproduction. Future minute nanobots could be empowered by whip-like sperm tail imitating structures, wandering around through your whole body.
Sperm would solve the issue of energy supply for nanobots, implants and "smart" probes that would carry drugs, watch enzymes and accomplish other medical tasks, as revealed b ... [read more >>] | | 03 January 2008, 13:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Male Contraceptive Pill That Does Not Decrease Sex Drive |  | Men are rather irresponsible in what concerns pregnancy. By now, they only have two choices: the condom and vasectomy. But, a new male pill could protect against pregnancy and be devoid of secondary effects on sex drive or long-term effects on a man's fertility.
Many women will escape this way of the hormone pills that make them prone to breast cancer and other diseases. It also involves sharing the responsibility for contraceptio ... [read more >>] | | 28 December 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Top 7 Sperms |  | Sperm? That's simple: a cell with a flagellum that moves through a liquid called semen and attempts to fecundate an egg. Well, this is the human case, but nature can amaze you!
1.Which are the performances of human sperm compared to our relatives? Humans, like animals, experience a fierce competition for sex. And this competition does not stop with mating, as a woman can be promiscuous. That's how sperm competition emerges. A ... [read more >>] | | 15 December 2007, 07:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Mutant Sperm Map Guides to Deadly Mutations |  | Those little naughty sperms seem to have an increased vulnerability to mutation. The team at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute focused on four unstable areas in the DNA where rearrangements cause genetic diseases called genomic disorders, and discovered that some of these mutations were more frequent in sperm than believed.
In 2006, the same team led by Dr Matt Hurles revealed that losses or duplication of DNA stretches of the human ... [read more >>] | | 04 December 2007, 07:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Twisted Sex War: Males Refusing to Have Sex So As to Preserve Sperm! |  | Classic theories talk about the sex war, in which males must bang everything they catch, while females must choose the best to have the best offspring. But a new research presented at the Zoological Society of London, and carried on the African topi antelopes (Damaliscus lunatus) (a close relative of the more known wildebeest) points to the fact that males too can play hard to get; they can even reject advances from aggressive females they ... [read more >>] | | 29 November 2007, 08:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Why Do Echidnas Have Four-Headed Penises? |  | There may be animals with double penises (like lizards, snakes or sharks) out there, others to possess a double-headed penis (like marsupials), but echidna is unique: it has a four-headed penis!
Scientists have been puzzled by this odd anatomy. Echidna does not even use its penis for urination and it gets it out of the body only in erection.
When resting, the penis is kept inside a cloaca. Echidna and its relative, the platypus, fo ... [read more >>] | | 27 October 2007, 06:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| World's Most Common Sexually Transmitted Disease Induces Severe Male Sterility |  | I’m sure you’re quite well informed on many aspects related to HIV, syphilis or gonorrhea, but the STD you're more likely to experience is Chlamydia, the "Silent Epidemic" (called so because in women it may not induce any symptoms and will linger for months or years before being diagnosed). In men, Chlamydia can sometimes induce abnormal discharge from the penis and swelling of the testicles, but it is silent in most subject ... [read more >>] | | 25 October 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| 'Strong' Sperm, Impotence, Male Menopause and Varicocele |  | Varicose veins may look gross on a woman's feet, but in men’s case, the problem is not only aesthetic. Especially when the veins are located in the ‘wrong place’. They can produce infertility, impotence and an array of severe issues.
Two new reports from physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center reveal that a common factor of male infertility are varicoceles (varicose veins) in th ... [read more >>] | | 19 October 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| What Causes Headless Paralyzed Sperms? |  | Oddly shaped sperms or too few sperm cells are the factors that make men (in almost 50 % of the cases) the culprit for a couple's infertility. In many cases, this is due to genetic defects (mutations).
Scientists believe they have discovered a gene which plays a critical role in the development of sperm.
A team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has discovered a mutation in the Jhdma2a gene that could be responsi ... [read more >>] | | 18 October 2007, 13:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Want Better Sperm? Then Ejaculate Daily! |  | Sex works on the principle of positive feed back: more sex just improves our ‘performance’. A team from Sydney University says that men with damaged sperm should have sex daily to increase the chances of getting their partner pregnant. In many cases, couples with fertility issues abstain from sex for several days to boost sperm numbers before trying to conceive.
But the new research claims that this could mean lower-quality s ... [read more >>] | | 17 October 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| The Best Perfume Coming From Vomit |  | If we pay huge prices for perfumes coming from the anal glands of the musk deer and civet cat and coffee coming from the dung of civet cat, why should we be surprised by the fact that one the most expensive perfumes is actually vomit?
Ambergris comes from the intestines of the sperm whales. It is actually a biliary secretion whose role has been puzzling the researches throughout time. Sperm whales feed exclusively on squids, t ... [read more >>] | | 06 October 2007, 13:02GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| How to Drink Sperm to Become a Strong Man |  | Researches show that strict "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" are very rare, making less than 9 % of the human population (thus, over 90 % of the people are bisexual!), yet many societies, including the western ones are traditionally harshly punishing homosexuality. And if researches made on humans, but also on animals, show that hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish, insects, lizards, snakes, turtles, salaman ... [read more >>] | | 06 October 2007, 11:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Human Sperm; Blonde, Blue Eyed Children and the Mad Cow |  | Mad cow hits hard in our plans of spreading the European seed. American families that want to have the blond, blue-eyed Scandinavian toddler find it now harder to get that sperm. In May 2005, the FDA banned sperm import from any European country with cases of mad cow disease, from Denmark to the UK. Now even the best-stocked sperm banks are affected by this decision. "We still have a little bit left, but not much," said Claus Rod ... [read more >>] | | 02 October 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Fertilization Through Oral Sex! |  | Oral sex is practiced by many people also as a contraceptive measure. Not few still believe that sperm would get through the digestive system to fertilize the eager egg. But sperms can be more varied and act weirder than we can imagine. And if there are bug males who fertilize the female by stabbing her into the abdomen and the sperm cells make their way to the eggs through the blood stream, you should also know that there are sp ... [read more >>] | | 29 September 2007, 07:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| How to Sterilize a Man: Male Contraceptive Devices! |  | It's so easy to leave the contraception responsibility to the woman... Still, lately, the scientific research has been providing ideas and concepts for so many products designed for males... Including a male contraceptive device: The Intra Vas Device (IVD), tiny implants that stop the flow of seminal liquid.
There are two IVD types tested right now. The American variant developed by the Shepherd Medical Company is made of a pair ... [read more >>] | | 26 September 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Mitochondria and Sperm's Survival and Competitiveness |  | Mitochondria are the little fabrics of energy for the cell, where sugars and fats are burned, resulting energy, water and carbon dioxide. They have their own DNA, distinct from the nuclear one and mutations in the mitochondrial DNA have resulted to be one of the main causes of low sperm count and mobility in humans.
But the mitochondria are inherited from the female only and from the point of view of sexual selection, female-l ... [read more >>] | | 20 September 2007, 14:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| What Launches Your Antibodies Against the Sperm? |  | Contaminants, stress and other factors brought by modern life are blamed for the increasing rates of infertility, but few have heard about immune infertility, a quite common cause of couple sterility.
Immune infertility is amongst the 80 autoimmune disorders discovered so far and the best known are Multiple Sclerosis and Type 1 Diabetes. This reproductive disease installs in both men and women, causing their immune systems to attack sp ... [read more >>] | | 13 September 2007, 14:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Males Anticipating Sex Produce Better and More Sperm |  | We have known ever since the Pavlov experiments that a method of learning is conditioning: when we associate something with food, we start salivating and so on (remember the Pavlov's bell and dog?). But who had thought that conditioning also works for sex? At least for quail males, making them better breeders!
Male quails placed in environments they started associating with mating sired more offspring than their untraine ... [read more >>] | | 06 September 2007, 15:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Stronger Sperm, Mutant Children |  | Sperm competition can go really wild, and sometimes, the race for fertilizing an egg goes beyond natural selection. This seems to explain the higher than normal rate of a mutation that stops skull growth and induces joined fingers and toes, as the same mutation also spurs the division rhythm of the cells that form sperms.
One in every 70,000 children is born with the Apert syndrome, translated into fused bones in the head, hands and fe ... [read more >>] | | 31 August 2007, 14:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Could Two Women Produce Their Own Baby? |  | Women already say that man is an appendix of the penis. As sex toys already replace the penis, only the sexual function remains. And when this will be gone, too, what will be men’s fate?
If amongst vertebrates, only sharks and some lizards have been known to reproduce without requiring sperm for fertilization, a phenomenon called parthenogenesis ("virgin birth"), no mammal (thus species with a body structure like ours) is kno ... [read more >>] | | 21 August 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| The Booby Traps Posed by the Sperm Banks |  | You can imagine the expectations of a woman who appeals to a bank sperm: the father must be tall, muscular, wide shouldered, with nice a*s, and a big penis. And when the creature they give birth to after nine months of pregnancy looks like ET and has some rare mutation or genetic disorder...
A novel New Scientist's report shows that even if sperm banks carefully screen their donors, the protocols for protecting donors lead to dist ... [read more >>] | | 11 August 2007, 05:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| A Woman's Promiscuity Determines the Sperm's Speed and Power |  | Humans, like animals, experience a fierce competition for sex. And this competition does not stop with mating, as a woman can be promiscuous. That's how sperm competition emerges. A new research has tried to see how sperm speed connects to the species’ sexual behavior, while placing us amongst other primates.
The team led by Jaclyn Nascimento at the University of California in San Diego, US, investigated sperm samples from humans, ... [read more >>] | | 25 July 2007, 14:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| The Long Run of the Sperm - Linked to One Gene |  | You won't believe it, but our sperm cells travel up to 6 meters (20 ft) from the testes to the penis. This journey occurs mostly in the epididymis, a tightly coiled tube that enables the sperms to do what they have to do: fertilization.
A team at the University of Illinois has found a gene crucial for the development of the epididymis. "The findings are the result of a serendipitous discovery," said professor of veterin ... [read more >>] | | 05 July 2007, 14:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Scientists Have Obtained Fertile Cloned Sperm! |  | If a clone organism has 100 % of the genes of an organism, 50 % should not be that difficult to obtain. 50 % of an organism's genes are found exactly in the sperm or eggs. Now American researchers have figured out how to clone sperm, in order to restore fertility in men with very low sperm counts.
By inserting the nucleus of a single healthy mouse sperm into a mouse egg from which the DNA had been removed, researchers at ... [read more >>] | | 04 July 2007, 11:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| How Do Sperm Whales Catch Squids? |  | Squids have excellent eyesight, a keen sense of smell, and the ability to squirt jets of dark ink that mask their escape. But these skills provide little protection against toothed whales, like the sperm whale, which hunt them ruthlessly and easily. "The numbers of squid that are eaten by sperm whales far exceed those harvested by men for food on a worldwide basis," said squid-expert Roger Hanlon of the Marine Biological Laborato ... [read more >>] | | 28 June 2007, 17:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Sperm as a Water Source |  | Some males are able to do anything for sex. And bugs can bring it to extremes.
Praying mantis male really loses its head, as the female starts eating him during the copulation. Spider males won't lose their skin as this is the only thing left of them (the rest has already entered into the female's stomach). Dragonfly males won't get a moment of pleasure if they do not offer the female a meal; so do many spider ... [read more >>] | | 06 June 2007, 16:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Smoking Induces Sperm Mutations |  | There's no doubt that smoking induces cancer.
In the end, cancer is a mutation of the cell's DNA.
But tests on mice have shown that smoking-induced mutations have been proved to occur also in the sperm cells and in this case, the mutations can be transmitted to the offspring. "Here we are looking at male germline mutations, which are mutations in the DNA of sperm. If inherited, these mutations persist as irreversible ... [read more >>] | | 01 June 2007, 16:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Sperm Donors Experience Massive Discrimination Compared to Egg Donors |  | You may expect that compensation rates for males which donate sperm would be significantly lower than for women donating eggs, but a recent investigation made by UCLA Sociologist Rene Almeling revealed discrepancies that cannot be explained by either market forces or the biological differences, defying the basic law of supply and demand. "From compensation rates to the smallest details of donor relations, sperm donors are less valued ... [read more >>] | | 25 May 2007, 17:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Males Can Manipulate Sperm Quantity Depending on Competition and on Female's Quality and Novelty |  | A male's mission is to mate with as many females he possibly can and as often as he can, n order to spread his genes as much as possible.
But it doesn't stop here.
If a male mates only with one female, his offspring won't have much genetic variation.
But roosters come with another method: they can control the quantity of sperm they waste during a sexual encounter, depending on two social factors: competition with ... [read more >>] | | 17 May 2007, 08:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Sperm Competition Shows That Humans Are Not Naturally Monogamous |  | Do you think humans are made for monogamy?
Well, they may try to stay monogamous, but their genetic background says otherwise.
A recent study in sexual adaptation reveals that male sexual behavior is built for "sperm competition", something not found in the strictly monogamous species.
The review points out the fact that physical and behavioral sexual traits displayed by men are signs that males have evolved ... [read more >>] | | 09 May 2007, 05:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
| Sperm + Sugar = Infertility |  | "You're sweet" cannot have sexual connotations. Cause when sugar from your blood cannot be stored in the tissues, that's diabetes. Besides the vast amount of general health problems induced by diabetes, including hearing and kidney disease, nerve damage and blindness, there is also impotence in men (due to circulation problems) and decreased semen quantities. The number of diabetes patients will nearly double ... [read more >>] | | 04 May 2007, 17:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia |
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