Science Innovations

Scientists have made Human Egg and Sperm Cells using Skin from two Adults of the same Sex. DEEPAK KUMAR  06 MACH 2015 For the first time, scientists have shown that it’s possible for two people of the same sex to create a baby, without the need for outside egg or sperm donation. The most obvious benefits would be for homosexual couples who want to have a child together, but the method could also help couples who have been affected by infertility. The team, from Cambridge University in the UK and Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, built on previous work where baby mice were successfully raised from mouse skin cells that had been converted into what’s known as  primordial germ cells - the precursors of egg and sperm cells. It was a real struggle to replicate the process using human biological matter, but now they’ve finally managed to create new human primordial germ cells using skin cells from five human donors and stem cell lines from five human embryos. “We have

Scientists discover the strongest known natural material in the world Move over, spider silk, there's a new super-material in town. TARUN ALEX  04 MARCH 2015 Spider silk is pretty amazing. It has the tensile strength of a  high-grade steel alloy , and about half that of the synthetic woven material,  Kevlar . It also has just a sixth of the density of steel, which means you could take a strand that’s long enough to wrap around the whole Earth, and  it’d weigh less than 500 grams . This quality means that spider silk would be five times as strong as the same weight of steel. And while we can’t take away from its incredible properties, we just might have to take away its title of ‘strongest natural material’, because researchers have figured out just how strong the teeth of  limpets , a type of marine snail, are. “Until now, we thought that spider silk was the strongest biological material because of its super-strength and potential applications in everything from bu

New research suggests that drinking just one can of caramel-coloured soft drink a day could expose you to unsafe levels of a possible carcinogen. DEEPAK KUMAR   04 MARCH 2015 Soft drinks have never been the most nutritious dietary choice, but new research suggests that an unnecessary coloring ingredient may pose a cancer risk, even to people who consume an average amount of soda. And here's where the problem lies, because 4-MEI has been classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, as a result of " equivocal evidence of carcinogenic activity in female rats ", but no human studies. The chemical in question is a byproduct of caramel colour, a common ingredient that gives colas, root beers and iced teas their dark hue. During production of caramel colour type III and IV, a chemical known as 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI) can be produced.  Of course, that doesn't mean the chemical definitely causes cance