...situations. Same sex parents have equal parental rights as the standard male and female parents. After they split and have a child or children involved they can end up having a custody battle. Judges have to be very careful and be very educated on this matter in order not to end having their judgment overturned because they simply violated the other parent’s constitutional rights. This happened in a case I read about dealing with a same sex couple that split up and had a child. The partner of a lesbian birth mother in a civil partnership can now be considered in law to be the child's second parent, if the child was born after 6 April 2009, and can be named on the child's birth certificate (http://www.bionews.org.uk/page_116900.asp). The male sperm donor did not want to be involved at all. This just left the two ladies battling it out for parental rights. The female that carried the child thought she had all the legal rights as the parent but it played out differently. The court ruled that the female that was the egg donor had equal parental rights. They are still working out the visitation and child support kinks. The situation of a female getting in vitro fertilization without the approval of her ex- boyfriend surely has to be illegal in some many ways with so many people at fault. There is an article about a female named Anetria that stole her...
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...THE SPERM AND THE EGG The Sperm and The Egg PSY/ 265 March 20, 2014 I am Egg. I have taken the long, dark journey into the infundibulum. This is the outermost part of the woman’s fallopian tube. Sperm, my soul mate, has been waiting for me to make this trip for an eternity. The sperm is the germ cell of a male. We can now finally meet. I have been waiting for this instant for so long now. I am very much looking forward to meeting him. I am one of some 400,000 eggs that have developed in this woman’s ovaries since puberty. Some 400 of us have survived to this point in her life and have ripened into ova. I finally get to be the one ova that is released during this month’s ovulation. The other ova have their growth suppressed by me for this special event. My home has always been the ovary. I am now moving into a new spot in town, the fallopian tube. Here I will await my friend Sperm’s arrival. It has taken me some time to get from the ovary to this point. Now, only two weeks remain before the woman’s next menstruation. I am so small that this 4 inch tube has taken me a long time to traverse. The cilia that line the tube helped to push me along down the tube’s length. The cilia are miniscule hair-like structures that make this possible. They were able to move me along at a rate of an inch each day. Today is my first full day in the fallopian tube. I trust that Sperm will be making...
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...million sperm enter the vergina soon afterwards millions of them will either flow out of the vergina or die in the civic environment however many survive because of the protective elements provided in the fluid surrounding them, next the sperm must past the cervix and open into the uterus, usually it is tightly closed but for a few days it stays open whilst the woman ovulates, the sperm swim through the cervical mulches, then once inside the cervix the sperm continues swimming towards the uterus then millions will die trying to make it through the mulches, resident cells from the woman’s immune system mistake the sperm for following intruders and can kill thousands more, then half of the sperm head for the fallopian tube, and the other half swim towards the tube containing the unfertilised egg, now only a few thousand remain, inside the fallopian tube tiny cilliur push the egg towards the uterus to continue the sperm must serge against this motion but some of the sperm gets caught in the cillur and die, at long last the sperm meet the egg only a few dozen of the 3 hundred million remain, the sperm must push through the first layer on the egg to reach the outer layer of the egg, the zone polucida when the sperm reach this they attached to specialised sperm receptors on the surface which trigurs there actor zones which realise active jensises enabling to sperm to borrow into the layer. The first sperm to make contact will fertilise the egg after this journey a single sperm attaches...
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...bacteria gets exposed to any give antibiotic, most of the bacteria will die. However, if some bacteria cells have resistance due to plasmids, they will survive. They will then pass this trait to their offspring, which will be a fully resistant generation. 3. Tooth reduction is one of the major evolutionary trends that developed among major vertebrate groups that allowed for the transition from aquatic to terrestrial life. Evolution of limbs and being able to breath air are other evolutionary trends that took place. 4. The nonvascular plants and even a few vascular plants like ferns reproduce by having the sperm swim through the external environment. This swimming requires a water film in the external environment, and also requires that the ovum be in a structure close enough to the ground that the sperm can swim to it. Gymnosperms and angiosperms make pollen. Sperm are confined within a pollen grain. So no swimming is required. Wind and animal pollination/dispersal has helped plants a lot. If a plant lives in the water and let a bunch of its gametes...
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...to the ability to conceive a child. The success depends on internal and external factors. Nutrition, diet and exercise are all key in the overall chance of conception. But there may be factors that may be out of your control. Infertility refers to the inability to conceive a child naturally. About 10% of women (6.1 million) that range in the ages of 15-44 have fertility issues. But infertility isn’t just a woman’s problem. One-third of all infertility issues are due to issues with the man. One of those is called Azoospermia. In a normal male, the testicles in the scrotum produce sperm that flows through the epididymis, vas deferens, and seminal ducts. Sperm mixes with fluid in the seminal ducts to form semen. Azoospermia is a condition where there are no sperm in the semen. Non-obstructive Azoospermia refers to abnormal sperm production and obstructive Azoospermia refers to normal sperm production with some sort of obstruction. Many years ago there wasn’t much hope for those with non-obstructive Azoospermia as it was thought they would never be able to conceive a child. Luckily with advancements in testing and diagnostic procedures it is now known that there is an equal chance of the capability of both non-obstructive and obstructive Azoospermia men to conceive child through IVF treatments. What is the treatment for Azoospermia? Is there hope for those men with Azoospermia? Does the diagnosis of Azoospermia rule out the chances of ever conceiving a child? Although...
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...vagina. He releases millions of sperm when ejaculation occurs. And the sperm have been deposited they have a long and arduous journey ahead of them, like salmon entering the mouth of a river to swim upstream to spawn. Some of the sperm swim straight up into the fallopian tubes through the cervix and uterus. - And some of them are so fast, that sperms have been found in the tubes in as little as a few minutes after ejaculation. I’m one of them joining the rides. Some sperms die in the acidic vaginal fluid; and some enter the cervical mucus and cervical crypts. During this time, the sperms are released in small numbers and these continue to swim towards the fallopian tubes. Over the millions of sperms released in an ejaculate, only a few hundred of us will make the arduous trip unto the egg successfully. Perhaps this is why so many millions of sperms are produced in the first place even though only one is needed to fertilize the egg - because the wastage is so prodigal. During the time the sperm spend in the female reproductive tract, while swimming towards the egg, they acquire the capacity to fertilize it - a process called capacitation. When the sperms reach the corona cells (only a few hundred successfully make the trip, guided by chemicals produced by the egg which serve as guiding beacons to the sperms) they become hyperactivated - they start beating their tails in frenzy. This is useful because it provides the mechanical energy the sperm head needs to burrow its way through...
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...THE SPERM AND THE EGG 01 The Sperm and the Egg Jessie Stolberg PSY/265 Jori Reijonen, Ph.D THE SPERM AND THE EGG 02 Twenty-six years have passed, and Grace, one of the many million eggs produced while still in the fetal ovaries will finally take the journey to become fertilized. It has been a long wait for her, but soon she will join with Leon, the lucky sperm who will help Grace form a new individual. Leon, being the only sperm discharged out of many million for the day is on a mission to successfully complete his journey. His sole purpose is to meet up with Grace and let the creation of a new individual begin. In the seminiferous tubules, inside the testes, Leon's life begun. He moves himself to the epididymis before the ejaculation, waiting for the push that will guide him through the urethra. While in the urethra, a secretion from the prostate gland is mixed with him in order to help him on his journey to find his female ovum better known as Grace. Leon and the secretion are discharged by strong forces due to contractions of the pelvic muscles. They are followed by a fluid containing sugar from the seminal vesicles, which are glands that empty...
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...”The End of Men” by Hanna Rosin Hanna Rose is an American female journalist. The article “The End of Men”, written by Hanna, focuses on women overtaking a world that used to be based on a social system where only men knew the better way to a brighter and richer future. Rosin uses over one page to describe how couples prefer girls over boys. In the beginning Hanna Rosin underlines one important thing: “For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality.” And she is right. For many years women just wanted to be able to do the same things as men. We wanted to work, we wanted to vote and most of all we wanted to live our lives without being suppressed by a male dominant. But times change, and now it is something different which drives women. On the one hand, she introduces Ronald Ericsson, which is an old biologist and cowboy, and his point of view. He says things like “He’s the boss” and “Breakfast at five-thirty, in the saddle by six, no room for Mr. Limp Wrist”, which I interpret as a gentle kind of male chauvinist thing to say. On the other site in this discussion, is Hanna Rose. She actually manages to convince an old cowboy, and makes him disagree with his own previous thoughts. Like for example: “These mothers look at their lives and think their daughters will have a bright future their mother and grandmother didn’t have, brighter than their sons, even, so why wouldn’t you choose a girl?”. Ericsson also tells about his highly qualified granddaughter while...
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...Below, we'll see how natural identical twins relate to modern cloning technologies.How is cloning done?You may have first heard of cloning when Dolly the Sheep showed up on the scene in 1997. Cloning technologies have been around for much longer than Dolly, though.How does one go about making an exact genetic copy of an organism? There are a couple of ways to do this: artificial embryo twinning and somatic cell nuclear transfer. How do these processes differ?1. Artificial Embryo TwinningArtificial embryo twinning is the relatively low-tech version of cloning. As the name suggests, this technology mimics the natural process of creating identical twins.Open large version In nature, twins occur just after fertilization of an egg cell by a sperm cell. In rare cases, when the resulting fertilized egg, called a zygote, tries to divide into a two-celled embryo, the two cells separate. Each cell continues dividing on its own, ultimately developing into a separate individual within the mother. Since the two cells came from the same zygote, the resulting individuals are genetically identical.Artificial embryo twinning uses the same approach, but it occurs in a Petri dish instead of in the mother's body. This is accomplished by manually separating a very early embryo into individual cells, and then allowing each cell to divide and develop on its own....
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...Harvesting Dead Girl's Eggs Raises Ethical Issues This story is regarding the case of Chen Aida Ayash, a young seventeen year old Israeli girl who passed away in early august of 2011 and whose family was granted a petition by an Israeli court to have her eggs harvested and frozen. Her parents donated her organs and obtained a court order to remove and freeze Chen's eggs. They had initially requested that the eggs be fertilized with donated sperm, but judges declined the petition until the family could prove that Chen had wanted to have children. In my opinion I believe if a woman does not reproduce when she is alive then she shall never reproduce. Scientific studies have proven that collection of a woman’s egg or a man’s semen can be used to reproduce even after death. There were people that agreed and some who disagreed. "It strikes me as unlikely a minor child would have had the capacity and maturity to meaningfully assert an interest in motherhood, let alone motherhood after her death," Judith F. Daar, professor of law at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa Ca, told ABC. The harvesting and freezing of eggs is a delicate procedure called oocyte cryopreservation. Doctors perform egg retrieval by inserting an ultrasound-guided needle into the vagina to locate the ovaries to remove the eggs, which are then immediately frozen. Sometimes people harvest and freeze eggs when fertility is threatened by cancer or other diseases. There are many different views to this decision...
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...gametophyte with two male gametes resulting in a diploid embryo and a triploid endosperm. Pollen is released, and it travels by wind or animal and lands on another flower. When it lands on another flower, self-fertilization can occur or cross fertilization, which means that pollen from one flower pollinates to another flower. The pollen will land on the stigma and with a bit of moisture the pollen grain starts to germinate. Next the pollen tube grows down the style and through the micropyle. Male gametophytes are held in pollen grains that develop into pollen sacs, of the anthers on the stamens. When pollen which is haploid fuses with the egg, which is also haploid, the result is a zygote, which is diploid. For double fertilization the other sperm nuclei is united with the two polar nuclei. Then the ovule develops into a seed. The seed is surrounded by the endosperm which...
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...Lesson 3 Essay Questions: 1- Compare and contrast directional selection and disruptive selection, and provide an example of each. Directional selection occurs when one extreme of a trait is favored and the distribution curve shifts in that direction. An example of this is the human struggle with malaria. The mosquito Anopheles transmits the disease. A new drug for the disease and a insecticide for the mosquito was created. But over the years they became resistant to it and multiplied, shifting the distribution curve toward the resistant type of parasite. Disruptive selection is where any two extremes of a trait are favored over any intermediate phenotype. For example, British land snails are found in low vegetation areas. The thrushes feed on snails with dark shells and in the forest they feed on snails with light banded shells. So each phenotype adapted to their environment. (Mader & Windelspecht, 2012) 2- Many pathogenic bacteria species are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Explain how such adaptations can develop through the process of natural selection. (Hint: Relate this example to the conditions that are necessary for natural selection to occur.) Natural selection is the process that results in adaptation of a population to the environment. This is what happens with antibiotic resistant bacteria. When antibiotic is administered, some bacteria may survive because they are genetically resistant. This bacteria will pass on their genes to the next generation. As...
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...the correct answer. 1. What is also known as fertilized egg? a. gamete c. sperm b. ovum d. zygote 2. When does a new life start? a. When egg and sperm cells unite b. When mature egg cells leave the ovary c. When sperm cells travel to meet the egg cell d. When an egg cell is fertilized by a sperm cell 3. How often does an egg cell mature and leave the ovary? a. once a day b. once a week c. once a month d. once a year 4. When is a female already capable of reproduction. a. becomes 12 years old b. becomes 20 years old c. starts menstruating d. reaches adulthood 5. What do you call the flattened, oval-shaped part of a sperm? a. head c. nucleus b. neck d. connecting piece 6. What is the whitish fluid that carries sperm cells? a. semen c. vesicles b. urine ...
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...Running head: THE SPERM AND THE EGG Assignment: The Sperm and the Egg 1 YOUR NAME PSY/265 DATE NAME OF PROFESSOR The Sperm and the Egg It has certainly been a wild adventure on my way to the infundibulum, which serves as the outer component of a female’s fallopian tube (Nevid, Rathus & Fichner-Rathus, 2005). My name is ‘Egg’. In fact, all of my siblings share the same exact name! I am anxiously awaiting my friends to arrive. They are all named ‘Sperm’ and are considered to be male germ cells. It has been quite a long time since I last saw them. I have been preparing for their arrival for quite some time and cannot wait to see them! It was a daunting task to be here in the first place. The ovary in which I live near had roughly 400,000 other eggs; however, when she was younger, she experienced puberty; as a result, only 1% of us made it to transformed into ripened ova. I am finally able to be the ova responsible for suppressing the development of additional ova in order to be discharged during the ovulation period (Nevid, Rathus, et al., 2005). As soon as I made my journey away from the ovary, I travelled all of the way to the fallopian tube. I am now still in the fallopian tube waiting for my friends to come over. It took a great amount of effort for me to journey through the fallopian tube; as such, ovulation occurs roughly every two weeks prior to menstruation. The tube I travelled through is only four inches in length; however, in order for me to be...
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...and transport sperm (the male reproductive cells) and protective fluid (semen) * To discharge sperm within the female reproductive tract during sex * To produce and secrete male sex hormones responsible for maintaining the male reproductive system Unlike the female reproductive system, most of the male reproductive system is located outside of the body. These external structures include the penis, scrotum, and testicles. * Penis: This is the male organ used in sexual intercourse. It has three parts: the root, which attaches to the wall of the abdomen; the body, or shaft; and the glans, which is the cone-shaped part at the end of the penis. The glans, also called the head of the penis, is covered with a loose layer of skin called foreskin. This skin is sometimes removed in a procedure called circumcision. The opening of the urethra, the tube that transports semen and urine, is at the tip of the penis. The penis also contains a number of sensitive nerve endings. The body of the penis is cylindrical in shape and consists of three circular shaped chambers. These chambers are made up of special, sponge-like tissue. This tissue contains thousands of large spaces that fill with blood when the man is sexually aroused. As the penis fills with blood, it becomes rigid and erect, which allows for penetration during sexual intercourse. The skin of the penis is loose and elastic to accommodate changes in penis size during an erection. Semen, which contains sperm (reproductive...
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