No snark here, dear readers: We sincerely hope you never lose a body part, especially not one of your reproductive organs. In the event that do you suffer a terrible accident, or if you were born with some kind of abnormality, there’s a team of researchers dedicated to making sure patients not only recover these organs, but go on to live normal lives. That group comes from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, where scientists there are not only working on lab-grown vaginas , but also testing laboratory-made penises. If all goes according to plan, they should be ready for use in about five years. That’s an optimistic claim, that it could take just five years for this technique to reach real-world patients. Incredibly enough, too, the scientists’ research is based on studies of rabbits, of all things. In their trials, the researchers cleansed the donor penis in detergent to remove all the living cells, leaving behind a collagen frame where scientists then seed penile cells harvested from the patient himself. These include smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells, which are necessary for erectile function. The entire process took several weeks, but in tests, the rabbits who received transplants were later able to mate and even reproduce. Now, after years of testing , the team is ready to try this procedure on humans. If successful, this would mean a higher quality of life for men unfortunate to be born with an abnormal penis, or to suffer a catastrophic injury. As Vice notes, penile replacement surgeries currently involve encasing a prosthetic with skin taken from the patient’s arm or thigh. Only with this new procedure would men be able to regain erectile function. It’s worth noting, however, that precisely because this method requires the use of the patient’s own penile cells, it won’t be of use to transgendered female-to-male patients hoping to undergo sex reassignment surgery. Image credit: UIG via Getty Images Filed under: Wearables , Science Comments Via: Vice Source: The Guardian , Wake Forest School of Medicine
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Laboratory-grown penises will be available in five years, say researchers
Remember IllumiRoom ? It’s the Microsoft Research project that pairs an Xbox Kinect with a projector to extend your TV onto a wall, with immersive (and hallucinogenic) effects. Redmond has just revealed that IllumiRoom 2.0 is now called RoomAlive and is a huge leap over what it was last year . The new system projects content throughout your entire room that you can interact with (or shoot), as shown in the insane video below. Instead of a single Kinect and projector, it uses multiple “procams” consisting of off-the-shelf projectors, Kinects and a smaller computer to control them. Microsoft claims that it’s completely auto-calibrating and self-locating, enabling it to calculate the entire 3D geometry of your room in minutes. Once installed, RoomAlive can track multiple players and weapons, letting them hit or blow up creatures, whack-a-mole style. It can also project textures and cyber-critters onto your walls and furniture, transforming your den into a holodeck or a factory, for example. Another demo brought to mind the 3D game in the movie Her , with the players controlling a character that tries to avoid being killed by “robots” emerging from your walls and floor. Finally, there’s a game that requires you to physically dodge booby traps, with any failure resulting in a bloody wound projected virtually onto your body. It looks amazing, but we were also excited by Illumiroom’s potential, and it’s still far from becoming an actual product you can buy. In any case, not too many folks could afford to rig up a room with multiple projectors and Kinects the way Microsoft did. Still, like Oculus , it’s not hard to see huge potential in the research. And unlike the Rift, it could one day transform games into something that actually gets you off the couch. [Image credits: Microsoft Research] Filed under: Gaming , Microsoft Comments Source: Microsoft 
