Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Mice Gestate In Mechanical Womb
For the first time, mouse embryos are grown outside the living womb of a mother mouse.
In a study published in the journal Nature, Dr. Jacob Hanna described removing embryos from the uteruses of mice at five days of gestation and growing them for six more days in artificial wombs.At that point, the embryos were about halfway through their development; full gestation is about 20 days. A human at this stage of development would be called a fetus. To date, Dr. Hanna and his colleagues have grown more than 1,000 embryos in this way.
(Via NYTimes.)
Science fiction fans of course recall the first description of a mechanical womb in Aldous Huxley's 1932 classic Brave New World:
...From the Social Predestination Room the escalators went rumbling down into the basement, and there, in the crimson darkness, stewing warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones, the foetuses grew and grew or, poisoned, languished into a stunted Epsilonhood. With a faint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to where, in the Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror and amazement.
(Read more about Huxley's artificial womb from Brave New World)
Fans of Frank Herbert remember the Axolotl Tanks from his 1969 novel Dune Messiah.
Also, compare the spinning vials from the artificial mouse womb to the vast artificial wombs in Star Wars Episode II:
(Obi Wan examines a clone factory line)
And of course in the 1999 film The Matrix.
(The Matrix farms Neo)
Thanks also to @DuneSF for posting this tweet:
Voila comment le Bene Tleilax a inventé les cuves Axolotl et commencé à cultiver des gholas. @DuneSF
— Elijaah Lebaron (@ElijaahL) March 18, 2021
Sauf que chez Frank Herbert les "cuves" étaient finalement plus "low tech". https://t.co/dhgYM7jucE
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/7/2021)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Biology ")
Tsunami Forecasts Improved By Ionosphere Signals
'Swifter than any tide could ebb, the water was receding from the shore.'
EctoLife Concept Video Artificial Womb For Baby Mass Production
'A great many of these synthetic babies were made
and allowed to grow up under ideal conditions...' - Dr. David H. Keller, 1928.
T. Gondii And The Leaders Of The Pack
'... infected males were more than 46 times more likely to become pack leaders than uninfected males.'
Alien Eyes - Here On Earth!
'...a picture of a cyclopean beast living among the asteroidal rubble of some distant sun.' - Arthur C. Clarke
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Win $250K By Reading Ancient Scrolls Carbonized By Vesuvius
'... it was as if the upper part had been removed, like a cut deck of cards.'
Toy-Like Robot Well-Being Coaches Are The Best
Sumomo will get those office workers into good shape!
AI-Trained Snack App Avatar Goes On Dates For You
'... who let their handbag computers carry all the conversation.'
M-Dwarf Stars May Not Have Habitable Planets
'Thus it came about that the search for a planetiferous sun near a white dwarf star was not unduly prolonged...'
Too Soon To Doom Lunar Farside Observatories
'Earth never shone there, but life was good.'
Amitabh Bachchan Wins Personality Protection
'He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides.'
LIAM F1 UWT Clever Rooftop Windmill
'...a windmill on his roof...'
Scent-Identifying Robot Uses Machine Learning
'It's picking up diphenyl compounds and tetrahydrocarbons...'
Volvo's Autonomous Truck
'They were automatic trucks such as are used for making deliveries...'
Skiing On The Moon - Skiing on Asteroids?
'MacIntyre bent down without a word and picked up the wide skis necessary to negotiate the powdery ash.'
Liberty Lifter X-Plane From DARPA
'...the tremendous speed that the Jupiter was turning up under the thrust of her twenty-four screws whirling on the shafts of twelve powerful motors.'
Robot Performs 3D Bioprinting Inside The Body
'Probably Runciter's body contained a dozen artiforgs...'
Bubloons May Be The Start Of Something Much Bigger
'Spurgle kicked at the letter G... It was a monstrous white thing, ten feet thick, half a city block long...'
Sleeping Pods In Tokyo Railway Stations
'... she was asleep before the lid sealed fully back in place.'
Wist Labs Makes Minority Report Family Videos Come True
Step inside your memory - it's immersive.
Robot Imagines Itself (Not The First Time This Has Happened)
'[Robots] have to discover their hands, feet, and other parts of their bodies'
