mammal
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Researchers produce healthy mice without using fertilized eggs
A mammal needs fertilized egg cells to have children, right? Not so fast. University of Bath scientists report that they're the first to successfully breed healthy mice without any fertilized eggs, instead relying on inactive embryos. The team first doused eggs in strontium chloride, which prevents them from going into a state of arrest while they're turned into embryos -- previous attempts to fool the eggs saw them die within a few days. Researchers then inserted sperm nuclei that reprogrammed the embryos, readying them for the wombs of their surrogate mothers.
Mammalian embryos can grow in space
An experiment aboard China's Shijian 10 (SJ-10) satellite has proven that mammalian embryos can develop in space, according to the country's state-ran media. SJ-10, the country's recoverable spacecraft, left Earth on April 6th carrying 19 experiments, including 6,000 embryos inside a sealed, microwave-sized container. China's scientists wanted to know if they'd grow as they would here on Earth. After all, if we want our descendants to colonize space, we must first be sure that our species can reproduce outside our planet.
Daily iPhone App: Pangolin bounces its way through your custom-made platforms
Last year, I participated in the game jam at 360iDev, and my idea for a game there was to make a touchscreen 2D puzzle platformer where you could swipe across the screen to create platforms to close gaps or create a navigation path. Given that I'm still a beginner game programmer, that game didn't get too far past the prototype stage, but the talented folks at developer Feedtank have been thinking along those same lines, it seems, and created this very colorful and well-made game called Pangolin. In Pangolin, you follow the titular scaled mammal, bouncing its way around a 2D world, while you use two fingers on iOS' touchscreen to make platforms for it to bounce off of. The game borrows a mechanic from golf, in that you only get a limited number of platforms to place while you try to bounce the little guy from one end of each of the game's 40 levels to the other. The action is quick and clean, so that you always have ideas about where to place platforms, and the game's style is very well done -- it's colorful but not overwhelming. Extra gems to find in each level provide a lot of replay value, and of course given the golf-style scoring, you can always try to go back and finish a level in fewer, more elegant shots. The game's nice responsiveness lets you do this well, too. Restarting a level is always quick and easy. Pangolin is a great puzzle platformer, but it's not quite the game I had in mind back at that game jam (maybe I will make that game someday), but it does smartly use the touchscreen to let you create your own bouncy platforms, and hopefully kick your little Pangolin right into the gems and the level exit he needs. You can download Pangolin and play 10 levels right now for free, with more available via in-app purchase.
