This Bionic Penis Can Cure Erectile Dysfunction

Scientists have developed an eight-inch remote-controlled metal penis that may help men struggling with severe erectile dysfunction. Developed by researchers from the University of Wisconsin in the US, the heat-activated device can be used at the press of a button in just two minutes. The implant will help revive the sex lives of people who fail to respond to drugs like Viagra or other treatments, experts say. The implant is made from nitinol – also known as “memory metal” – which is a mixture of nickel and titanium. It can change shape when heated or cooled The Sun reported, at body temperature of 37°C, the implant is just a couple of inches long. However, when heated to 42°C, it expands to eight inches. A shape memory alloy-based penile prosthesis represents a promising new technology in the treatment of erectile dysfunction. Surgeons can make a tiny incision at the bottom of the penis and insert the implant – made from stretchy latex covered with a coating of memory metal. Attached to one end is a tiny heating coil. The soil can be turned on by a remote held over the groin, generating a metal field which triggers a current. The coil then warms the implant, making it expand and fully erect. A cool flannel makes the swelling go down.

California Targets Cows To Combat Warming

California is taking its fight against global warming to the farm. The nation’s leading agricultural state is now targeting greenhouse gases produced by dairy cows and other livestock. Despite strong opposition from farmers, Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation in September that for the first time regulates heat-trapping gases from livestock operations and landfills. Cattle and other farm animals are major sources of methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas. Methane is released when they belch, pass gas and make manure. The new law requires dairies and other livestock operations to reduce methane emissions 40% below 2013 levels by 2030. Officials are developing the regulations which take effect in 2024.

New IVF Tech Lets Doc Take Baby 'Cellfies'

New IVF technology being developed in the United Kingdom is allowing parents to obtain baby ‘cellfies’ – images of their children when they are just a few cells in a petri dish. In recent years, IVF clinics have developed cutting-edge time-lapse photography designed to monitor cell development in the first few days, so that doctors can pick the healthiest embryo for implantation in the womb and boost the chances of having a baby. The technique has also allowed parents to witness beginning of their child’s life at the very moment of conception, and in the crucial few days after fertilization. Clinics in the United Kingdom are also set to start trialing technology to allow prospective mothers and fathers to watch the live footage as the embryos are developing in the lab. Time-lapse technology has allowed researcher to get all these images from the first few days after conception and put them on a USB stick so that parents have pictures of their children, literally, from day one, when they are still in the laboratory. But it won’t be long before parents will be able to dial into the clinic using a unique number and see how their embryos are getting on in real time. Embryos are very sensitive, so in the past researcher could only get them out every 24 hours and have a look at how they were doing, but now they photograph them every 10 minutes. The pictures go way beyond than the current earliest images taken by ultrasound of babies in the womb.

Nuclear-Waste Batteries That Will Last For 5,000 Years

Scientists have developed a new technology that uses nuclear waste to generate clean electricity in a nuclear powered battery. Researchers from the University of Bristol in the UK have grown a man made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate a small electrical current. The development could solve some of the problems of nuclear waste, clean electricity generation and battery life, researchers said. Unlike the majority of electricity generation technologies, which use energy to move a magnet through a coil of wire to generate a current, the man made diamond is able to produce a charge simply by being placed in close proximity to a radioactive source. There are no moving parts involved, no emissions generated and no maintenance required, just direct electricity generation. By encapsulating radioactive material inside diamonds, researcher turns a long term problem of nuclear waste into a nuclear- powered battery and a long-term supply of clean energy. The team has demonstrated a prototype ‘diamond battery’ using Nickel-63 as the radiation source. However, they are now working to significantly improve efficiency by utilizing carbon-14, a radioactive version of carbon, which is generated in graphite blocks used to moderate the reaction in nuclear power plants. Research by academics at Bristol has shown that the radioactive carbon-14 is concentrated at the surface of these blocks, making it possible to process it to remove the majority of the radioactive material. The extracted carbon-14 is then incorporated into a diamond to produce a nuclear-powered battery. Carbon-14 was chosen as a source material because it emits a short-range radiation, which is quickly absorbed by any solid material. This would make it dangerous to ingest or touch with your naked skin, but safely held within diamond, no short-range radiation can escape. In fact, diamond is the hardest substance known to man, there is literally nothing researcher could use that could offer more protection. Despite their low-power, relative to current battery technologies, the life-time of these diamond batteries could revolutionize the powering of devices over long timescales. Using carbon-14 the battery would take 5,730 years to reach 50% power, which is about as long as human civilization has existed. Researchers envision these batteries to be used in situations where it is not feasible to charge or replace conventional batteries. Obvious application would be in low-power electrical devices where long life of the energy source is needed, such as pacemakers, satellites, high-altitude drones or even spacecraft.

These Bacteria Kill Bugs That Are Drug Resistant

Predatory bacteria – that eat others of their kind – could be a new weapon in the fight against drug-resistant bacteria or ‘superbug’, a new study suggests. A naturally occurring predatory bacterium is able to work with the immune system to clear multi-drug resistant Shigella infections in zebra-fish, researchers from Imperial College of London and Nottingham University in the UK said. It is the first time the predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorous has been successfully used as an injected anti-bacterial therapy and represents an important step in the fight against drug-resistant infections, or ‘superbugs’. Shigella infection is responsible for over 160 million illnesses and over one million deaths every year – and is a common cause of travelers’ diarrhea. Cases of drug-resistant Shigella are also on the rise as, although the diarrhea usually clears up without treatment, antibiotics are often used even in mild cases to stop the diarrhea faster. To investigate Bdellovibrio’s ability to control drug resistant Gram-negative infections, researchers injected zebra-fish larvae with a lethal dose of Shigella flexneri strain M90T, resistant to antibiotics. Bdellovibrio was injected into the larvae’s infection site and a decrease in the number of Shigella was seen. In the absence of Bdellovibrio, zebra-fish Shigella numbers rose.

Embroys Development 'Pause' For Up To A Month

Scientists have found a way to pause the development of early mouse embryos for up to a month in the lab – and later resume normal growth – a finding with potential implications for assisted reproduction, aging and even cancer. The research involved experiments with pre-implantation mouse embryos, called blastocysts. Researchers from University of California, San Francisco in the US found that drugs that inhibit the activity of a master regulation of cell growth called in mTOR can put these early embryos into a stable and reversible state of suspended animation. Normally, blastocysts only a last day or two, max, in the lab. But blastocysts treated with mTOR inhibitors could survive up to four weeks. Researchers showed that paused embryos may quickly resume normal growth when mTOR inhibiters were removed, and developed into healthy mice if implanted back into a recipient mother. The drugs appear to act by reducing gene activity across much of the genome. The researchers believe that it should be possible to extend the suspended animation for much longer than the 30 days observed in the present study.

This Gene Could Help Fight Obesity

Scientists have identifies a gene that could protect against obesity by increasing the feeling of fullness, a finding that may lead to potential new therapies to treat eating-related disorders. Researchers from King’s College London and Imperial College London in the UK tested a high-fat diet, containing a fermentable carbohydrate, and a control diet on mice. They looked at the effect on food intake of those with and without the FFAR2 receptor, a protein coding gene. The results showed that mice fed the diet containing fermentable carbohydrates were protected against obesity. However, this protection was lost when the FFAR2 receptor was not present. Indeed, those with the receptor showed an increase of 130% in the satiety inducing gut hormone peptide YY, as well as an increased density of cells containing PYY, leading to an increased feeling of fullness. Obesity is currently one of the most serious global threats to human health, determined by genetic background, diet and lifestyle. We know that supplementing our diet with non-digestible carbohydrates reduce appetite and body weight gain, but in this study researcher demonstrate for the first time the essential role of the FFAR2 receptor in enabling specific dietary constituents to reduce food intake and protect against obesity. With this discovery, researcher can start to look at whether we can use diet or pharmaceutical means to change the cellular make-up of the gut in order to treat a host of disorders. This a major step forward in understanding the relationship between diet and appetite regulation. Until a few years ago dietary fiber was a thought of as inert, and having very little effect on physiology. So the fact it actually has a major impact on cells that help control appetite regulation in the colon is amazing. Researcher’s challenges now are to translate this into a technology that we can apply to humans. Researcher need to understand stand how they can use the knowledge and insight gained to develop food systems that are attractive to a large percentage of the population.