In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Zhuoran Zhang, PhD student at the University of Toronto, about how robots can be used to assist in artificial insemination. Zhang discusses how precise robotic manipulators can be used to extract a single sperm and how sperm can be evaluated for fitness using computer vision.

Maybe you're a full-time student trying to come up with next month's ramen budget. Perhaps you've just lost your job and you're trying to earn a few bucks in between interviews. Or it could be you're just happy to find a career doing something you're really good at. For whatever reason, thousands of men donate sperm every year. Most of them expect a certain level of anonymity that no longer exists.

It is a bit of a stretch, but by no means impossible or even unlikely that a hybrid or a chimera combining a human being and a chimpanzee could be produced in a laboratory. Granted this 1 percent difference presumably involves some key alleles, the new gene-editing tool CRISPR offers the prospect (for some, the nightmare) of adding and deleting targeted genes as desired. As a result, it is not unreasonable to foresee the possibility--eventually, perhaps, the likelihood--of producing "humanzees" or "chimphumans." Such an individual would not be an exact equal-parts-of-each combination, but would be neither human nor chimp: rather, something in between. If that prospect isn't shocking enough, here is an even more controversial suggestion: Doing so would be a terrific idea. The year 2018 is the bicentennial of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, subtitled the modern Prometheus.

Estrous synchronization (ES) and artificial insemination (AI) are reproductive management tools that have been available to beef producers for over 50 years. Synchronization of the estrous cycle has the potential to shorten the calving season, increase calf uniformity, and enhance the possibilities for utilizing AI. Artificial insemination allows producers the opportunity to infuse superior genetics into their operations at costs far below the cost of purchasing a herd sire of similar standards. These tools remain the most important and widely applicable reproductive bio-technologies available for beef cattle operations (Seidel, 1995). However, beef producers have been slow to utilize or adopt these technologies into their production systems.