The unnamed suffering of scientists: counting ... sperm, counting stars

Although technology has made great progress, there are many things that scientists still have to do manually: visual observation and manual counting, such as counting stars or counting sperm.

The advancement of technology today has greatly assisted scientists in research in all areas. But not every job can use machines.

Many researchers in the world when talking about memories in their scientific life have shared the work to be done manually, time-consuming.

Count . sperm

Victor W. Weedn, a research expert in forensic science at George Washington University (USA), shared that the most boring job he had ever done was sitting counting sperm.

The sperm is very small (the head is about 5 µm long - 5 milliseconds, and the tail is 50 dàim long), has no specific color and is white cloudy so it is difficult to see under the microscope. The researchers used a special dye to turn the sperm head red and the blue tail for easy viewing.

Scientific research is inherently demanding and time-consuming - (Photo: Freepik).

The problem is that the sperm's tail is often cut off from the head. If not checked carefully, it is easy to confuse with other living sperms.

"To make sure the numbers were not wrong, we were forced to sit and count every dead sperm. Imagine having to sit glued to a microscope to count millions of sperm in every milliliter of human sperm." , this job does not count in hours or minutes, " Victor W. Weedn said.

Counting flies eggs

Similar to sperm count, Nilay Yapici, a neuroscientist researcher at Cornell University in the US, said: "When I was ready to graduate in 2007, in an attempt to identify a protein present in flies. Vinegar and mosquitoes, I genetically engineered 400,000 flies and manually counted millions of eggs.

In later years, algorithms and artificial intelligence developed but manual tally was still the fastest method. "

Counting the wood life cycle

The life cycle of a woody tree helps scientists know many other things related to the growth of the tree, such as growing conditions, age of the tree.

Usually scientists use a computer program totaling the circles, but in some places with high drought tolerance, the rings are so dim that the naked eye should be used.

Count . stars in the sky

Daryll LaCourse, an amateur astronomer at NASA's Zooniverse science project, said: "I'm just one of thousands of scientists commissioned by NASA to look for exoplanets in data from the Telescope. Kepler took billions of photos with millions of stars.

Computer technology sometimes misses small planets so we have to observe and count every single bright dot. At least 4,000 stars have been found through visual observation and counting. "

Cheese extract

Tonya Schoenfuss, a dairy specialist at the University of Minnesota (USA), said the university's lab uses a titration method (add a solution, drop by drop, until they neutralize) to quantify the protein. in cheese.

However, before the standard, many operations are very time-consuming and must be done manually. For example, boil the cheese for hours with sulfuric acid to dissolve it.