• Welfare workers report that girls in gangs are often raped by the male members of the gang as part of initiation, but many of them accept this as routine. "The girls think they are going to be protected by the gang if they have sex with one person but then they find there are more boys there," said Teresa Pointing, chief executive of In-volve, a charity that works with teen girls. • According to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Sasha and Malia Obama have not been vaccinated for swine flu. The vaccine is currently unavailable to the twogirls because they are not at high risk. • Doctor Patrick O'Brian recalls being shocked at the state of pregnant women in Uganda, a country that apparently has some of the worst maternal care in the world. In efforts to address this issue, he started a program with the University College Hospital in London that works to distribute medicine to women in need and offer pre and post-natal care to mothers. • Researchers have found that breast reduction surgery may have unexpected benefits. Through testing the removed tissue, doctors may be able to better identify patients at risk for breast cancer. Another upside to breast reduction? Decreased back pain and increased range of movement. • According to a new study, well-educated older women who live alone report a lower emotional well-being than breast cancer patients who live with a partner. •  A little girl from Brooklyn has made the news for a heartbreaking letter she wrote to Sasha and Malia Obama. Bianca's mother was shot several years ago by an abusive boyfriend, and the 6-year-old and her father are still struggling. In her letter, she begged for help for her family, and readers of the Daily News have been quick to respond. • Researchers have found that sperm itself - and not just the fluid it travels in - may transmit HIV to healthy cells. Doctors previously suspected that sperm could transmit the virus, but they were unable to prove this until recently. • A revealing new poll from the UK shows that 90% of expecting mothers are denied the choice as to where they will give birth. The vast majority of women in Britain are not offered the option to give birth at home or at a birthing center attended by a midwife. • The Daily Beast on sexism in nonprofits: "Charity is not allowed to use the same tools as business because society subconsciously regards it as female, and discriminates against it the same way it has historically discriminated against women." Read the rest of their interesting take on charity here. • Good news: The Saudi king has decided not to flog a female journalist charged with participation in a television show in which a man spoke publicly about his sex life. • Among women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, breast cancer is diagnosed six years earlier than in previous generations. Doctors don't know if women are screened better today, or if hormonal and environmental factors are giving women cancer earlier. • Jury selection will begin today in the trial of the first 12 male members of the polygamist sect whose Yearning For Zion ranch was raided last year. Flora Jessop, who escaped the compound 15 years ago, said she's happy to see the men go on trial but, "What I'm upset the most about, I think, is the fact that none of the women have been indicted, as well. ... I think that the women were nothing but pimps on that compound and giving their daughters over to these perverts knowing what was going to happen to them." • A study by the National Center for Voice and Speech found that female teachers used their voices about 10 percent more than males when teaching and 7 percent more when not teaching. Female teachers speak louder than male teachers at work. All teachers spend more time talking than most professionals and are at a greater risk for hurting their voices. • Debbie Davis, 29, of Sunderland, England has been named Britain's top Avon saleswoman. She started selling the cosmetics when she was laid off five years ago and now she's making $408,000 a year. • 14-year-old Dutch girl Laura Dekker says she will wait until the school year is over to begin her attempt to become the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe. She had planned to head out in August but was stopped by authorities who said she was too young. The court is expected to rule on her case by Friday. • Elizabeth Edwards told a local news station that John Edwards said of their relationship, "Perhaps [it's] not the great love story that we hoped, but maybe a great love story nonetheless." Well, most great love stories don't involve the man possibly fathering a child with another woman. • After more than 120 years, the Beloit's girls reformatory school in Kansas closed for good in August. Before 1983 the institution often housed girls who hadn't committed criminal offenses, but were considered "incorrigible," "immoral," or had suffered abuse at home. Under some administrations, girls were punished with huge doses of vomit- and diarrhea-inducing castor oil, humiliated with forced hair clipping, or even sterilized. • After a "concerned citizen" in Yulee, Florida tipped the police that the Girls Gone Wild bus was in town, police organized an undercover investigation and arrested seven women who complied with the organizers' request that they "show their breasts so they could be photographed/filmed or so they could have their breasts spray painted. The women were charged with indecent exposure along with the bar's owner and two Girls Gone Wild employees, who were each charged with illegally operating a sexually oriented business. •

• Dina Babbitt, who as a teenager kept herself and her mother alive at Auschwitz by painting portraits of prisoners for the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, has died at 86. Ms. Babbitt later worked as a commercial artist in America. • U2 is set to become the topic of discussion at an academic conference held at North Carolina Central University in October. U2: The Hype and The Feedback will examine the role of the mega-band in "changing the worlds of music, entertainment, popular culture, humanitarian relief, peace and social justice efforts." • Scientists from the University of Leeds believe that they may have discovered a unique "DNA signature" in human sperm that can only be recognized by eggs from the same species. The "lock and key" model may explain why otherwise healthy men are infertile and why we've never spotted any centaurs roaming around. • Speaking of horses, filly Rachel Alexandra beat out the competition at the Haskell Invitational this Sunday with the New York Times is calling a "preternatural performance." Rachel Alexandra is the first filly in 85 years to win the Preakness Stakes, and she is the only filly to win the Haskell. • 13-year-old Jackie Rodriguez is pretty awesome: She has thrown 25 no-hitters in the past four seasons, but she still tells NPR that practicing an instrument is more difficult than playing softball. • Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes on her new career in television journalism: "I realized I love motivating and I love empowering and I love inspiring people. I did that as an athlete for 18 years, and I am able to do that as a motivational speaker now as well as doing work on television." •  Police in northern Nigeria have found another group of women and children that may have been abducted by the Boko Haram sect. The group of 140 was found locked in buildings in Maiduguri, and many of them were suffering from pneumonia, fever and rashes. • On Sunday, a bid to set a new world record for the number of women photographed wearing bikinis in one place failed when only several hundred ladies showed up at Southend-on-Sea in Essex. The current record was set earlier this month in Russia, when 1,923 women participated in the prearranged photo shoot. • New research conducted by the Tokyo police indicates that 24% of elderly shoplifters are driven to steal by feelings of loneliness, and another 8% cited lack of motivation in life as their main reason for shoplifting. • The 14-year-old Liberian boy charged with raping an 8-year-old girl in Arizona will be tried as an adult, said the Maricopa County attorney. Steven Tuopeh is facing more than 57 years in prison if convicted on all counts. • Researchers at the Heidelberg University Hospital have examined the brain scans of women suffering from anorexia and found that patients with eating disorders are more likely to stick to familiar behavior responses than those in the control group. They linked the patterns in behavior to a certain network pathway, which plays a role in controlling actions under rapidly changing environmental demands. •

• Yesterday, President Obama announced the 16 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. Along with Sidney Poitier and Harvey Milk, six women will be honored, including Billie Jean King, Chita Rivera, and Sandra Day O'Connor. • Here's some good news for the younger generation: The income gap has closed significantly for working women in their twenties. Women in most age groups have come closer to making the same as their male counterparts, with the exception of women ages 65 and older, who have gained no ground since 1979. • A Florida judge has ordered The Tampa Tribune to remove a story about four teens accused of sexually assaulting a classmate with a hockey stick. Judge Battles also requested that the newspaper refrain from printing any court statements until after the case has been tried. • Zoe Williams is just as annoyed with the "debonair non-parenthood" trend as we are. She takes her friend, named only as "X," and her birth partner, "C," to task for treating the birth process like a needless inconvenience. • According to a recent study, many college age dudes know little to nothing about HPV and the health risks associated with it. One participant even referred to HPV as "more of a joke" than other STDs. • Bad news, ladies: It looks like a world without men may be farther away than we hoped. The journal that reported on the human sperm created from embryonic stem cells was found to have contained several plagiarized paragraphs. Experts said that they plagiarism does not necessarily undermine the conclusions of the rest of the paper, but questions have been raised about the study's credibility. • New research has found that redheads are more sensitive to pain than the rest of the population, which may be the reason why gingers are twice as likely to avoid the dentist than people with dark hair. • A recent study indicates that cows are more dangerous than we ever imagined. In the U.S., about 20 people a year die from injuries inflicted upon them by charging cattle. • Cats are evil geniuses, according to new research. • Gerald H.F. Gardner, a physicist and mathematician who worked to eliminate sex bias in newspaper want ads, has passed away at the age of 83 from leukemia. • Police have arrested a 37-year-old woman for padding her bra, under charges of false advertising. Just kidding, she was really smuggling meth. • NPR reports on the Promise Keepers, a men's evangelical group, which has decided to allow women into their services for the first time in 20 years. •

Today's Mad Lib is brought to you by Olivia St. John, who thinks Sarah Palin needs to join "her conservative sisters nursing babies at home," and Neil Lydon, who thinks that now that we have synthetic sperm, feminists want to get rid of all men.

Something overwrought adjective happened today — something that will shake geographical location (the bigger the better) to its core. Person (such as a woman, a scientist, or, for bonus points, a woman scientist) announced something seemingly innocuous. Women are trying to take over the world!

For evidence, we need only look to totally non-credible source:

"Men su7#@k!" says a commenter on large, poorly moderated website, such as YouTube.

"All women should band together to enslave their male inferiors," says writer of obscure 1950s book.

If these influential voices are not enough, consider today's bankrupt culture, in which women any verb that is not "gestate" and men any verb that is not "hunt," "conquer," or "bludgeon." In which woman (bonus if not remotely a feminist) can independent act, yet Ronald Reagan is allowed to die!

As the Bible says, verse (bonus points if it mentions submission, Eve, or the Virgin Mary; minus points for Mary Magdalene). And as ill-defined group such as "some people" have warned, vague alarmist statement.

What will happen to the men of the world if these weird, outdated term for "women" are allowed to take control? What will happen to our values? The only solution is for women like female public figure who is not Ann Coulter to get back in the small, restrictive space so that they can return to euphemism for breastfeeding and men can return to euphemism for bludgeoning.

Triple bonus for including the words "hoar-gnarled," "flibbertygibbet" and "womb."

Synthetic Sperm Brings Mad Feminist Dream A Step Closer [The First Post]

Earlier: Conservative Scribe Is Thankful Sarah Palin Is Headed Home Where She Belongs

Saletan (no, that is not him at left) knows that God struck down Onan for spilling his seed upon the sand instead of his wife, and every Christian faith strictly forbids masturbation as a sexual act not involved in reproduction. But in between spank-the-monkey sessions, Saletan found this study by Australian scientist David Greening, which suggests that daily ejaculation can reduce the number of damaged sperm and improve sperm motility, both of which are key to conception.

Now, some men will (and have) say that this news means men should tell their wives to put out more — you know, the Dennis Prager school of "thought." But, as I said, Saletan's a more reasonable guy.

If your wife is available, and she's game for sex every night, great. But what if she's tired, sore, or not in the mood? What if you have to work late, and she has to go to sleep? What if one of you is out of town? What if your son can't sleep and needs to be with Mommy? Or what if medical advice to have daily sex stresses her out? From a fertility standpoint, says one expert, that kind of pressure "may add even more anxiety and do more harm than good."

However, he says, there is another way for men to improve their sperm without relying on a woman...

Saletan argues that if he's one is only masturbating in service to God's will — getting someone pregnant — and not just because it feels good, the Pope should be fine with it because then masturbation is strictly in service to reproduction.

The Catechism defines masturbation as "the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure." But if stimulating your organs promotes fertility and family formation-the "procreative and unitive purposes" of sexual pleasure, as stipulated by the Church-is it OK to enjoy it? By my reading, the answer is yes.

Saletan believes the Catholic Church should thus sign off on male masturbation (not female, of course, as that serves no reproductive purpose) so he can sleep easy, knowing that his private practices have been cleared by some old guy in Rome.

Wank Thyself [Slate]

Related: Frequent Ejaculation Improves Sperm Quality [Cosmos]

Earlier: Conservative Dennis Prager Knows It's Not Rape If His Wife "Submits"
Dennis Prager Still Thinks Women Should Just Give It Up Already

[Image via candid]

The sperm, created by exposing stem cells to "a special cocktail of growth factors, nutrients and retinoic acid, a derivative of vitamin A," have a head and tail, a special combination of proteins needed for fertilization, 23 chromosomes, and the ability to swim — just like ordinary, ball-produced sperm. However, sperm biologist Allan Pacey (who obviously got his job by losing a game of MASH) is skeptical. He says,

The quality of the images is not of sufficiently high resolution and I would need more data. They are early sperm, but functional tests would be needed to know exactly what has been achieved.

But the most obvious "functional test," using the sperm to fertilize an egg, is exactly what journalists and scientists alike assure us will not happen. Apparently identifying a deep-seated fear triggered by this research, four different news outlets report that the sperm breakthrough doesn't mean scientists will soon be creating human beings in a "dish." EurekAlert quotes lead researcher Karim Nayernia, who says,

While we can understand that some people may have concerns, this does not mean that humans can be produced 'in a dish' and we have no intention of doing this. This work is a way of investigating why some people are infertile and the reasons behind it. If we have a better understanding of what's going on it could lead to new ways of treating infertility.

Despite Nayernia's assurances that the sperm will be used to study male infertility and not to create a race of dish-people (and the fact that UK law prohibits the created sperm from being used in actual fertility treatments), critics are concerned. Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics says,

This is an example of immoral madness. Perfectly viable human embryos have been destroyed in order to create sperm over which there will be huge questions of their healthiness and viability.

It's taking one life in order to perhaps create another. I'm very much in favour of curing infertility but I don't think you can do whatever you like.

The idea that curing male infertility is okay but producing embryos "in a dish" is not may speak to an anxiety underlying much of the coverage of this breakthrough: what if artificial sperm meant women could reproduce without men? Though they are quick to quote Nayernia's "dish" reassurances, none of the articles mentioned this anxiety explicitly, perhaps because of a lucky loophole: at this point, only male stem cells can be used to create workable sperm. So men are safe, for now. But as soon as we figure out how to make sperm from our own lady cells, we're going to send all the men to Siberia and use "dishes" to create what we really want — babies!

We expected Slate's William Saletan to be all over this issue, and he probably will be. But today his column deals with a more important question: "Does God want you to masturbate?" The answer: hell yeah, but only because it improves men's "sperm quality" — perhaps protecting them from stem-cell-induced obsolescence.

Scientists Create Human Sperm from Stem Cells [Time]
Scientists Claim Sperm 'First' [BBC]
Human Sperm Created From Embryonic Stem Cells [EurekAlert]
Scientists Claim Breakthrough In Growing Human Sperm From Stem Cells [Guardian]
Experts Query Sperm Creation Claim [Mirror]
Wank Thyself [Slate]

• 15 years ago, Thomas Howard Price beat his wife, Heather Thompson, with a broom handle and pliers, leaving her permanently disabled. 10 years later, Price wrote Thompson a letter from prison in which he threatened to kill her and their children as soon as he was free. Price was released last Friday. • An awesome woman from New Hampshire celebrated her 100th birthday this week with a ride on a Harley. Alice King has been a biking enthusiast since 1927, and for her 100th, her family surprised her with a motorcycle ride. • Last summer, professor Anne York published a study that showed the difference in ambitions of high school valedictorians as broken down by gender. She found that girls were less likely to shoot for high paying jobs, and that many were already concerned with the family/work balance. New York Times blog The Choice revisits the findings, and asks for reader input. • A recent study found that semen "quality" (reproductive capacity) is adversely effected by low antioxidant intake. •  Thanks to Obama (and the failing economy), the Peace Corps has seen a serious increase in the number of applicants this year. • The achievement gap between women and men in math and science has narrowed to the vanishing point, according to a recent study. However, women are still underrepresented in Ph.D. applicant pools. • Police in Northumbria are searching for an escaped wallaby named Hopper. They ask that anyone who has spotted the wallaby to contact them asap. • According to a new study, men don't give a shit about women's health. A Florida State University study found that informing men about the potential medical benefits of the HPV vaccine for their sexual partners did not influence their decision about whether or not to receive the shots. • New guidelines to be published in July aim to aid doctors in identifying bleeding disorders in women. •  In a recent report, the Anti-Defamation League says that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. has declined for the fourth consecutive year. • American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee are set to go on trial for "hostile acts" in North Korea this Thursday. If convicted, they could face up to 10 years in forced labor camps. •  25 years ago, Alexey Pajitnov, who was then working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, created Tetris. Want to celebrate? You can: watch some cheesy ads, learn about the future of Tetris, read about Pajitnov's World of Warcraft habit, or just go play the game. •

Available on Amazon.com for $40, the test looks for Prostate Specific Antigen, a protein found in seminal fluid. It's so accurate that you can use it to detect 30-year-old semen stains, assuming you have some parachute pants that haven't made their way into the wash yet. [Inventor Spot]

Earlier: DIY Semen Detection Kit Enables Peopel To Tell The Difference Between Toothpaste And Cum Stains

• Scientists have come a little bit closer to solving the mystery of what gets sperm in the mood for fertilization. • Aw: a Girl Scout troop from St. Louis decided to use its earnings from the cookies sales to fund a care package for Gene McNeill, a soldier currently serving in Afghanistan. •  President Obama has officially recognized April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month. •  The number of women over 55 who use Facebook has grown roughly 550% in the past six months, making the group one of the quickest growing sectors of the Facebook population. •  A member of the Egyptian parliament has proposed a law that would allow television stations to broadcast the hanging of rapists. Many people are against the law, on the grounds that it would encourage the public to sympathize with the rapists, and possibly lead to more girls marrying their attackers in order to save them from public death. •  On a slightly more positive note, April 18th has been declared the first anti-harassment day in Egypt. • A 30-second ad for Girls Gone Wild interrupted an early broadcast of the Good Friday service at the Vatican on a Philadelphia cable network. The network blamed it on (what else?) a "glitch." • According to this article from the Wall Street Journal there is a war happening, a diaper war. • Two female workers are filing a lawsuit against NYC's Department of Environmental Protection. They claim that the department is rife with sexism, and that over the years they have "grown numb" from finding pornography on their trucks and being called "bitches" and "dykes." •  This fancy feline is being hailed as the UK's only vegetarian cat. Like the most difficult dinner guests, Dante will only eat organic fruits and vegetables. •  Just in case you've been dying to know all about Scott Peterson's life on death row, People has published a helpful guide to the murderer's daily life. • Scientists believe that postpartum depression may serve an evolutionary function. •  A Brazilian woman was refused entry to the UK after border officials discovered that her suitcase was full of lingerie. Officials suspect that she is involved in the sex industry. •  Even though no one asked them, PETA has faxed Michelle Obama's office a letter that urges the first family to "snip" their new dog. • More for the "unsolicited advice" file: Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan advises Obama to keep his "pack leader" frame of mind when playing with the puppy. • Via BoingBoing, the strange case of a man who has "alien hand syndrome" and has been know to engage in involuntary public masturbation. •  A Mississippi State University professor asked his students to submit beautiful and ugly words. He found that words with more syllables are more likely to be considered beautiful (like "eloquent"). • Reversing their previous decision, prosecutors have decided to seek the death penalty for Casey Anthony, mother to murdered toddler Caylee Anthony, whose body was found late last year.

"If I was a young man I would not drink beer, I would not be smoking when I'm trying to conceive a child," Daniels told the BBC. "There are many potential sources of harm to foetal health that remain unexamined. When 60% of birth defects are of unknown origin, why are we not examining one obvious potential source of harm?" the professor reasons.

Even without outside carcinogens, many sperm have defects, according to Slate, because of the body's furious sperm production schedule. It's "a manufacturing decision that sacrifices quality control." Another new study quoted by Slate says that men produce so much sperm to counteract cheatin' women — the massive amounts of semen are created to compete with other dudes' sperm. Apparently in the animal world, the idea of "sperm competition" is old hat; "male flour beetles have spiny penises designed to remove rival sperm from a female's reproductive tract," says Slate. The coronal ridge (the space between the head and the shaft of the penis) in humans is also built to remove rival sperm. Who knew?!

Women in New York City might want to be checking out rival sperm banks, as some local ones have not been inspected since 2004, according to Gothamist. One bank in particular, Idant Laboratories, failed to pass on information to a customer about the high-risk sexual behavior of a donor, and many of the labs are not thoroughly checking the sperm before and after purchase for sexually transmitted or genetic diseases.

So ladies, whether you're getting your sperm the old fashioned way or making a withdrawal from your local sperm depot, make sure you investigate the source. But there's a silver lining if your man is a total lush and you want to get pregs: Sperm is produced continuously in a 74-day cycle, so in less than three months, those drunk-ass semen can get washed away in a cleansing tide of kombucha and green tea.

Drink And Drugs Can Damage Men's Sperm, Study Suggests [Guardian]
Sperm Damage 'Passed To Children' [BBC]
The Merry Band Of Wrigglers: Men, Women, Passion, And Sperm. [Slate]
City Awash In Bad Sperm [Gothamist]

So guys, now's the time you should start calling Alexis Stewart and asking her if you can form a support group. The idea that your seed is potent forever is turning into a myth! Oh, and you may have heard that pot won't make you dumb, but it will make you less fertile in the long run. Boys — go easy on the bong now if you want to have healthy babies one day.

Men Have Biological Clocks, Too [ABC7Chicago.com]