While it will be a while before these cells will be useful in the treatment of infertility, don't become too complacent:

A colony of human embryonic stem cells is seen on a computer monitor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
Darren Hauck / Getty

<>The achievement, described in the journal Stem Cells and Development, comes just 11 years after the first human-embryonic-stem-cell line was created — an eyeblink in scientific terms — in the lab of James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin.

Although the development once again raises the specter of creating humans in a petri dish or custom-designing egg and sperm cells for reproduction, lead author Karim Nayernia says that was not his team's intention. Rather, the experiment was a proof of concept that stem cells can generate any cell in the body — not only the dozens of tissues that make up the human body but also those egg and sperm cells that may give rise to altogether new bodies. "Other cell types don't generate the next generation," says Nayernia, a professor of stem-cell biology at Newcastle University. "This makes a very big difference between our study and the study of other cell types from embryonic stem cells."<>


Hat tip to: Time Magazine
& Bloomberg Press

Funko has created a new series of USB flash drives that [successfully, I think] competes with the older Mimoco line of flash drives. They look at lot more like the actual characters, and the packaging says that this set is 'Series 1', so I'd say that there are more Star Wars characters in the pipeline :-)

They will be available in October for US$24.99

Hat tip