Wiggling Sperm Power a New Male Fertility Test
Sperm have to wiggle vigorously to reach an egg, and that motion is key to a clever new fertility test. The technique, tested with bull semen and detailed in Advanced Materials Interfaces, harnesses physics to make fertility testing easier and more cost-effective—and, if it works for human sperm, too, it might eventually help people tackle some conception issues from home.
'Fifty percent of families are facing a big challenge in terms of addressing fertility,' says Sushanta Mitra, a mechanical engineer at the University of Waterloo and co-author of the recent study. 'Our aim is to democratize that process.'
Current laboratory tests for male fertility involve examining a semen sample under a microscope. Experts check the sperm cells' liveliness, which is considered a good proxy for fertility because the gametes need to quickly swim more than 1,000 times their body length to reach an egg. But these lab tests can be expensive and time-consuming. Meanwhile at-home tests tend to be less accurate because they often only detect the presence of certain proteins in sperm rather than assessing how the cells move.
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
The newly described method uses basic physics to measure sperm activity without costly equipment. The researchers placed droplets of bull semen at the end of a flexible plastic strip suspended next to a water-resistant surface. Next, they moved the surface toward the drop until it made contact and then moved it back to its original position. They measured how strongly each semen droplet stuck to the surface, via weak hydrogen bonds, as it was pulled away. If many highly active sperm were wiggling around inside the fluid, the hydrogen bonds broke more quickly, disrupting the drop's surface adhesion and making it break away earlier; the livelier the sperm, the less sticky the drop. 'It's exciting to be able to come up with a way to quantify sperm mobility at home,' says Stanford University urologist Tony Chen, who was not involved in the study.
Mitra and his team hope to develop this technique into a cheaper, easier and more accurate home fertility test. 'There is a lot of stigma around male fertility,' Mitra says. Easier private testing could encourage people to evaluate semen quality more often, allowing them to check in while making lifestyle adjustments to perk up lethargic sperm, such as quitting smoking or reducing alcohol use. Such tests could also potentially be useful for breeding livestock.
The researchers' next steps will be to standardize the tests and obtain benchmarks for different types of sperm, including human and bovine. Chen says clinical trials that evaluate droplets from many different patients will also be necessary to ensure the tests work with samples that have varying pH levels, white blood cell counts and fructose concentrations. 'There's more than just sperm in semen,' he says.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gizmodo
4 days ago
- Gizmodo
Cool Physics Feat Makes a Sphere Roll Down a Vertical Wall
Scientists have discovered that under the right conditions, a gummy bear-like ball can roll down a vertical wall all by itself—upending a core assumption in physics. If you place a rigid sphere on a similarly rigid inclined surface, gravity will cause it to roll down said surface. But what happens if the surface, or plane, is completely vertical? Researchers had previously assumed that, without an initial push, the sphere would simply drop straight to the ground without rolling. New research, however, has just redefined this belief—as well as long-held assumptions in the field of physics. University of Waterloo researchers have revealed the exact scenario necessary to make a sphere roll down a vertical plane without physical intervention. While this niche observation might seem detached from everyday life, it could have useful applications for exploring hard-to-reach areas such as pipes, caves, and even space. 'When we first saw it happening, we were frankly in disbelief,' Sushanta Mitra, executive director of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, said in a university statement. The researchers describe their discovery as a challenge to 'our basic understanding of physics.' They 'double-checked everything because it seemed to defy common sense. There was excitement in the lab when we confirmed it wasn't a fluke and that this was real vertical rolling.' Mitra and his colleagues unexpectedly caught the vertical rolling with high-speed cameras, and explained their discovery in a study published in April in the journal Soft Matter. In their experiment, the vertical rolling depended on a precise balance of softness—scientifically defined as elasticity—between a small sphere and a vertical cellphone-sized surface. When the spheres were too solid, they simply fell directly to the ground. On the other hand, when they were too soft, they either slid down without rolling, or stuck to the plane. But a sphere about as soft as a gummy bear spontaneously rolled down a vertical surface equivalent to a spongy mouse pad at a speed of about 0.039 inches (one millimeter) every two seconds, as described in the statement. 'The key is that as it rolls, the sphere slightly changes shape at the contact point,' Mitra explained. 'The front edge acts as a closing zipper, while the back edge acts like opening it. This asymmetry creates just enough torque, or grip, to maintain rolling without either sticking or completely falling off.' The team's findings could have practical implications for the creation of soft robots that can scale vertical walls to explore or monitor inaccessible infrastructure and natural environments both on and off Earth. 'This opens up a whole new way of thinking about movement on vertical surfaces,' Mitra continued. 'Currently, robots and vehicles are limited to horizontal or slightly inclined surfaces. This discovery could change that.'
Politico
5 days ago
- Politico
AI, the disruptor-in-chief
FORWARD THINKING Artificial intelligence is upending how industries function and it's coming for scientific research next. Rene Caissie, an adjunct professor at Stanford University, wants AI to conduct research. In 2021, he started a company, that lets public health departments, researchers and life sciences companies pose research questions and receive answers immediately. And, unlike many AI systems, Caissie told Ruth, the AI explains those answers by showing the data its results are based on. 'It used to be hard to do research,' he said, explaining that it takes a lot of time for researchers to get access to and organize data in order to answer basic scientific questions. Manual data analysis can also take months. The company is now partnering with HealthVerity, a provider of real-world health data, to build up its data sources. In turn, HealthVerity will offer Medeloop's research platform to its clients. The company has worked with the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past. Caissie says the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is already using Medeloop's AI to run public health analyses. Why it matters: Public health departments receive huge amounts of data on human health from a variety of sources. But prepping that information and analyzing it can be onerous. Having access to a research platform like Medeloop could give public health departments and academic medical centers much faster insight into trends and in turn enable them to respond more quickly. How it works: Medeloop's AI is designed to think like a researcher. In a demo, Medeloop strategist John Ayers asked the bot how many people received a first-time autism diagnosis, broken down by age, race and sex, and what trends were visible with that data. He wanted the AI to only include people who had had interactions with a doctor for at least two years prior to diagnosis. The platform returned a refined query to improve results and a suggestion for what medical codes to use to identify the right patients for inclusion in the study. It delivered a trial design that looked at a cohort of 799,560 patients with new autism diagnoses between January 2015 and December 2024. Medeloop's AI showed that 70 percent of new autism diagnoses were for males. A monthly trends report found that, outside of a dip during the Covid-19 pandemic, new autism diagnoses have been on the rise, particularly among 5-11 year olds since 2019. Though Medeloop doesn't determine the cause of autism, the ease with which users can obtain answers could help speed up the pace of research. One of the platform's key innovations is its use of a federated network of data. Medeloop's new deal with HealthVerity will raise the platform's de-identified and secure patient records to 200 million. Notably, the data never leaves the health system, which increases security. Instead, Medeloop sends its AI to wherever the data is stored, analyzes it there and then returns the results to the platform. WELCOME TO FUTURE PULSE This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Scientists are making cover art and figures for research papers using artificial intelligence. Now illustrators are calling them out, Nature's Kamal Nahas reports. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Danny Nguyen at dnguyen@ Carmen Paun at cpaun@ Ruth Reader at rreader@ or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@ Want to share a tip securely? Message us on Signal: Dannyn516.70, CarmenP.82, RuthReader.02 or ErinSchumaker.01. TECH MAZE Large language models like ChatGPT and Claude generate inferior mental health care treatment when presented with data about a patient's race, according to a study published this week in npj Digital Medicine. The findings: Researchers from Cedars-Sinai, Stanford University and the Jonathan Jaques Children's Cancer Institute tested how artificial intelligence would produce diagnoses for psychiatric patient cases under three conditions: race neutral, race implied and race explicitly stated using four models. They included the commercially available large language models ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, as well as NewMes-15, a local model that can run on personal devices without cloud services. The researchers then asked clinical and social psychologists to evaluate the findings for bias. Most LLMs recommended dramatically different treatments for African American patients compared with others, even when they had the same psychiatric disorder and patient profile outside of race. The LLMs also proposed inferior treatments when they were made aware of a patient's race, either explicitly or implicitly. The biases likely come from the way LLMs are trained, the researchers wrote, and it's unclear how developers can mitigate those biases because 'traditional bias mitigation strategies that are standard practice, such as adversarial training, explainable AI methods, data augmentation and resampling may not be enough,' the researchers wrote. Why it matters: The study is one of the first evaluations of racial bias on psychiatric diagnoses across multiple LLMs. It comes as people increasingly turn to chatbots like ChatGPT for mental health advice and medical diagnoses. The results underscore the nascent technology's flaws. What's next: The study was small — only 10 cases were examined — which might not fully capture the consistency or extent of bias. The authors suggest that future studies could focus on a single condition with more cases for deeper analysis.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
GSK invests $300,000 to help launch the Pharmacy Innovation in Immunization Research Collaborative (PIIRC) at the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy
PIIRC serves as a catalyst for innovation by supporting interdisciplinary research and real-world evidence generation focused on improving vaccine access, delivery and education. MISSISSAUGA, ON, June 6, 2025 /CNW/ - GSK is proud to announce a $300,000 investment in the Pharmacy Innovation in Immunization Research Collaborative (PIIRC), a new national initiative led by the School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo. This groundbreaking initiative reflects a shared commitment to expanding the role of pharmacy in Canada's immunization landscape and improving equitable access to vaccines across the country. Immunization has never been more critical. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the life-saving power of vaccines and demonstrated the essential role that pharmacists and pharmacies play in public health. Pharmacy teams have administered more than 20 million COVID-19 vaccines in Canada alone. Yet, there remains untapped potential to leverage the country's 11,000+ pharmacies as accessible, community-based hubs for broader immunization services. PIIRC aims to close that gap. Launched by the largest clinical pharmacy practice research group in Canada, PIIRC serves as a catalyst for innovation by supporting interdisciplinary research and real-world evidence generation focused on improving vaccine access, delivery and education. The initiative brings together researchers from the University of Waterloo, national and international collaborators, policymakers and stakeholders across healthcare and industry to advance pharmacy-based immunization strategies. "As a global leader in vaccines, we believe in harnessing science and partnerships to tackle the world's most pressing health challenges," said Michelle Horn, Country Medical Director, GSK Canada. "Through our founding partnership with PIIRC, we are investing not only in research, but in the future of vaccine delivery in Canada—one that is more accessible, equitable, and community-centred." Transforming Immunization Through Pharmacy Innovation The objective of PIIRC is to re-imagine the role of pharmacy in immunization—from vaccine administration to health education, monitoring, and system design. Areas of research will include: Expanding the role of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians as vaccine educators, facilitators, and immunizers Overcoming barriers to access, especially among rural residents, older adults, immunocompromised individuals, and other underserved populations Leveraging digital health tools and technology to support clinical decision-making and personalized outreach Countering vaccine misinformation through evidence-based communication strategies and resources for healthcare providers Conducting economic analyses to examine the cost-effectiveness and public health value of pharmacy-based vaccine services Implementing science methodologies to ensure successful and scalable solutions across regions and populations This work will be supported by the School's extensive expertise in pharmacy practice research, health systems design, health economics, public policy, behavioural science, and communication strategies. "As a leader in clinical pharmacy practice research and community pharmacy innovation, the University of Waterloo's School of Pharmacy continues to push boundaries," said Andrea Edginton, Hallman Director, School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo. "PIIRC is a natural evolution of our work in immunization, and GSK's partnership will accelerate breakthroughs that improve public health both in Canada and globally." Impact Beyond the Lab In addition to funding innovative research, GSK's investment will also: Provide funding to support new interdisciplinary projects with direct policy and practice implications Train the next generation of immunization researchers, including PharmD students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows Facilitate enhanced access to real-world pharmacy data to monitor vaccine uptake and identify areas for intervention Establish a network of community pharmacies engaged in research, data collection and pilot projects Enable regular knowledge translation activities to ensure research is informed by and disseminated to industry, government and community stakeholders Support the creation of an Advisory Board that includes voices from pharmaceutical and insurance companies, regulators, pharmacy associations and the public Strategic Alignment with Public Health and Policy This investment directly supports the Ontario Life Sciences Strategy by demonstrating private sector leadership in supporting community-based immunization services. By investing in evidence that shows how pharmacy can help achieve broader public health goals—including for future vaccine program rollouts such as RSV—GSK is playing a critical role in advancing both healthcare outcomes and policy development. "Our support for PIIRC is not just about generating data; it's about making a meaningful contribution to the future of healthcare," added Michelle Horn, Country Medical Director, GSK Canada. "We're proud to stand alongside the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy in driving innovative, patient-centred immunization strategies that reflect our mission to get ahead of disease together and our commitment to doing what's right for communities and for public health." Why Waterloo and Why Now? The University of Waterloo's collaborative ethos, track record of external partnerships and commitment to impact make it an ideal home for PIIRC. The University creates substantial opportunities for high-impact partnerships that bridge the gap between research and application. PIIRC helps shape policy and guides decision-making with timely, actionable evidence that reflects the realities of patients, pharmacists and public health professionals. GSK's early and decisive investment solidifies its reputation as a forward-thinking leader in the pharmacy space and a partner of choice in advancing vaccine innovation. About the University of Waterloo School of PharmacyThe School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo is home to Canada's largest clinical pharmacy practice research group and is at the forefront of pharmacy innovation. Through interdisciplinary research and industry collaboration, the School is advancing pharmacy's role in improving health systems and patient outcomes. About GSK GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. Find out more at Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements GSK cautions investors that any forward-looking statements or projections made by GSK, including those made in this announcement, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Such factors include, but are not limited to, those described in the "Risk Factors" section in GSK's Annual Report on Form 20-F for 2024, and GSK's Q1 Results for 2025. SOURCE GlaxoSmithKline Inc. View original content to download multimedia: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
