Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2023 February 25

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February 25

Kids without male sperm

Few years ago, I read report that "Men lose fatherhood monopoly" some female scientist has found that mice sperm can be used to make human female pregnant. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-79711/We-create-babies-men-claim-scientists.html

Now all these reports are coming.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/14/scientists-create-sperm-eggs-using-skin-cells-fertility-ethical-questions

https://www.earth.com/news/pregnancy-without-men-mice/

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/05/world/synthetic-embryos-stem-cells-scn/index.html

I want to know, is it possible that in future a woman can become pregnant, have healthy babies, without any contribution from men? Means no sperm donor, IVF also. Totally zero contribution from male. A child whose biological father is not human male? Liontess79989 (talk) 04:44, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

It is thought to be technically possible through cloning. See also #How close to men being irrelevant? above.  --Lambiam 07:52, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Ha ha, I can see why the Daily Mail is deprecated, but actually I think they are more reliable than Fox News. Duplicating the chromosomes like that would leave progeny that are very liable to die of any number of mutations. Having two chromosomes compensates for a lot of mutations by having a better copy on the other chromosome. I can't think of any good reason to try it out with human egg cells and I'm pretty certain therefore any ethics committee would nix any such experiment. The Daily Mail is always good at wheeling out all the experts and producing a sensation though! :-) NadVolum (talk) 16:25, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand so much, but I think you are saying, Dailymail article is wrong. And Lambium is saying it is possible through cloning. This means two human females can give birth through cloning. If the animal clones are healthy, then human clones will also be healthy?Liontess79989 (talk) 12:56, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

There is no guarantee that a technique that works 100% on one species will work at all on the next. All we can say, as long as it has not been tried, that it is plausible it will work, since other primates (specifically macaque monkeys) have reportedly successfully been cloned.  --Lambiam 21:11, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Storm colors

Why storm colors were changed this morning again? The previous colors were very well-known. I thought that these were standardized. --40bus (talk) 13:07, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Hey there, 40bus! See Wikipedia:WikiProject Weather/Color RfC. Tails Wx 13:42, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

It would be much better I think to have an option to say what kind of problem one has seeing just like one can set the font size. Then CSS or JavaSCript could automatically adjust the colours appropriately on pictures marked as supporting that, or mybe even patterns for some formats. Fine having colours that work sort of without adjustment but far better to just use colours that are chosen to be adjusted. NadVolum (talk) 17:59, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Aren't there skins in our preferences for that? Abductive (reasoning) 19:26, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I had a quick look and I couldn't see anything except some gadgets to change the color of text and background. NadVolum (talk) 23:12, 26 February 2023 (UTC)