Now normally I wouldn’t blog about something like this, but I found it too odd to pass up, but first a little background. Gawker Media has just launched a new site io9 which covers all things science fiction(and where science borders fiction). Gawker Media for those unaware of the name is the publisher of sites such as Gizmodo, Valleywag, Kotaku, and my personal favourite, Lifehacker. So, I subscribe to about 90 RSS feeds, but I’m a fairly big fan of science fiction, so taking the plunge, I added this new site to my growing list of feeds. I was shocked at how many stories it was sending at me(and glad that I subscribed to the full feed which gives the full stories instead of snippets that you have to visit the site to get the story from). In the last 24 hours, the site has had 39 posts. If you’re a fan of science fiction, I really encourage you to check it out, although maybe to become a casual reader, because if this amount of content keeps up it seems like it will be a tough feed to read everything for. It probably won’t and they probably had these stories canned, but you never know.

Anyway, after I subscribed to this site, I did some things while periodically checking my feedreader. Within a couple hours of adding this feed, I had two, yes two stories involving semen in my RSS stream. Both were pretty interesting, so I figured I’d blog about them.

The first came to me via Slashdot(originally an MSN story), it was about the potential to use Sperm to power nanobots. Sperm, as some already know, are pretty strong swimmer and their flagellum is powered by adenosin triphosphate(ATP), this compound can propel them to speeds of upwards of 7 inches an hour. Thats pretty intense for a microorganism.

The other came to me through io9. One of scientist’s favourite test subjects, the fruit fly, is incredibly easy to manipulate. How does this relate to sperm you ask? Well, researchers have recently been able to control a female fruit fly’s sexual urges by injecting her with sperm from a male. It seems like the sperm contains several proteins that affect short and long-term behaviour in these flies. In the short term more eggs are produced, and in the long term the flies become less receptive to sex with other males. Many humans also contain the same protein that has seemed to create this effect, but don’t be too alarmed about mind control, the article reports that this desire only seems to last at most 10 days, only enough time to prevent sperm contamination, and it is worth noting that this protein was injected into the fly itself, all the more reason to wear a condom, prevent those mind control rays from affecting you.

Scientists have also done some interesting research on drug manipulation of homosexual behaviour through these same fruit flies, but I’ll let you read about that controversial topic all for yourself.

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