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General Science and Technology News and Whatnot
Because I thought this might be a good thread to have. If nothing else, maybe this can be used as an article/link dump.
So, anyone heard of this "Project Loon" from Google? Basically, they're planning to use high-altitude balloons to increase internet coverage the world over, and provide connections to people living in areas without internet. Seems to be a real thing, and not a joke, despite the name. I don't really understand the logistics and whatnot of such a project, but it sounds interesting.
In unrelated news, fingernails have stem cells that may enable limb regeneration... or something.
By labelling groups of nail cells so that all the daughter cells they produced were blue, Ito, together with Makoto Takeo and others, showed that the nail base contains a small population of self-renewing stem cells, which sustain the nail’s continuous growth. This ongoing growth depends on signals carried by the Wnt family of proteins
Although the article also says this might not lead to actual limb regrowth for humans:
But Ashley Seifert, a regeneration biologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington is not sure about the parallels. “Amphibians can regenerate a complete digit from any amputation level and they lack a nail organ altogether,” he says. He thinks it is possible that mammals “independently evolved the ability to regenerate digit tips through a mechanism dependent on the nail organ”.
Seifert also points out that if the entire nail is removed, activating the Wnt pathway in the remaining tissue does not stimulate any regeneration.
There's also a short video about that here. That it starts off by mentioning lizards kinda bugs me, mostly because I'm reminded of that Spider-man villain.
Comments
So, the loon thing had a small test in New Zealand. A farmer by the name of Charles Nimmo got to use the internet for like 15 minutes before the balloon(s) got too far away. Presumably, Google are planning to have a large enough number of balloons flying about so stuff like this wouldn't happen.