Our perception of spermatazoa was changed forever by Woody Allen’s impersonation of one in Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, and University of Pennsylvania are giving substance to his fantasies, putting the poor little tadpoles through an arduous obstacle course to step up the process of survival of the fittest: according to Prodigy Services Co, the mad scientists have created a new class of silicon chip that can be used for analyzing sperm samples and providing a venue for fertilisation; the technology uses microscopic obstacle courses inside a silicon wafer to weed out unhealthy sperm, and has been used successfully to fertilise a mouse egg; the chips are etched with a virtual theme park of twisting channels, forests of columns, and other features designed to ensure only the strongest of sperm reach their goal, with some passages so small that only a single cell can pass; the researchers have not yet applied for approval to test human fertilisation using the chip, but say that could happen within the next 12 months – Brave New World, or the embodiment of virtual sex.
