In the new issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine will detail their findings in penile tissue regeneration. Using twelve New Zealand White rabbits with damaged penises, the team engineered replacement tissues using each rabbit's own erectile tissues. They then injected these replacement cells into scaffold made from rabbit penises that had been stripped of their cells; the scaffold act as support for the developing cells. The scaffolds were then implanted in the rabbits, after which the organized tissues began to form.

Once the penises were fully formed, the rabbits were just as sexually active as rabbits with non-reconstructed genitals, mating with female rabbits within a moment of introduction. The team also found that the rabbits' sexual performance was fully functional, and several female rabbits became pregnant and produced healthy offspring as a result of the encounter.

Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest University Baptist, believes that the same technique can be applied to human males who have erectile cells, but have damaged or deformed penises — as well as men looking to upgrade their current equipment. The procedure probably wouldn't require scaffolding from another penis, however. Researchers are currently looking into printable structures made from collagen and other materials.

Artificial Penis Tissue Proves Promising in Lab Tests [LiveScience]

Over at Waxy.org, Andy Baio wonders if this was a tribute to the infamous Second Life protest, or if it's just that griefers all think alike.

I prefer to think it was the visionary act of cutting-edge futurists who were inspired by the amazing example of Second Life. Just proves that the real world is being affected by all that beautiful inventiveness in the virtual world. I mean, peniscopters! It's the kind of genius that we'd never be exposed to if we couldn't let our imaginations roam free in virtual worlds. I feel more liberated already. Now if only somebody would make a swarm of these things. We could call it . . . cockswarm. Thanks, Eliot!

Kasparov Griefed by Flying Penis [via Waxy]

Wong, who saw the film at the Philly Film Festival and loved it, explains the plot thusly:

Jennifer is a photographer who was born with at least 7 clitorises. She is an insatiable nymphomaniac whose enthusiastic lovemaking often ends in the death of her partners. She lives a life devoid of any hope of happiness until she crosses paths with Batz.

Batz has a 24 inch, drug addicted penis with a mind of its own, literally. After Jennifer accidentally sees Batz monster phallus, she has a renewed hope that she may have finally found her one true love. Unfortunately, before the two can get together and live happily ever after, Batz penis detatches from his owner and goes out on a rampage around town, attacking every hot, naked girl it can find.

Frank Henenlotter's Got a New Movie! [AICN]

Luckily, the rat gets his chow. Or will the chow fight back? After all, once you're a zombie, all your body parts take on a life of their own.

It won't surprise you to find out that this brilliant movie is the brainchild of my personal deity Brian Yuzna, with special effects provided by Screaming Mad George. They're the same team who provided you so much pleasure several weeks ago with this NSFW scene from Faust where a lady's body parts suddenly get a little . . . out of proportion. Basically, you always know you're watching a Yuzna flick because there will be lots of creative gore mixed with foot fetishism and weird sex.

I highly recommend Beyond Re-Animator — this scene hardly does justice to a movie where one of the bad guys spends most of the movie as a severed torso swinging from bar to bar through the prison. And of course, the zombie rat and zombie penis meet again several times . . .

Beyond Re-Animator

Giger painted "Necronom IV" (above) in 1976, and it later ended up becoming the inspiration for the Alien design he did for Ridley Scott when he began working on the film. You can definitely see the beginnings of the final Alien creature here, except for those sunglasses and what can only be described as an alien dickhead.

Giger's painting "Necronom V" (seen below) presents an alien being in stark contrast to the one shown in IV, and looks much more sensuous and feminine than the one in IV. Thank god he lost the sunglasses and shortened that head up a bit, because it looks a bit more ridiculous than scary. Of course, if we saw anything coming at us that had been drawn by Giger, it would surely result in a bladder-emptying race in the opposite direction.

Check out the video below where he explains what went into the design, and how he loathes the light. We always figured him for some sort of undead creature of the night.