Business, Culinary, Economics, Health, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society, Weird

Pig-Human Organ Farming

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“…doesn’t look promising yet.”

[Update a while later]

On the other hand, there’s this: They’re figuring out how to make store-bought tomatoes taste good. But we have to encourage them:

Consumers, known to gravitate towards the least expensive option, will have to vote with their wallets to keep flavorful tomato options on market shelves.
“The next time you’re in the store, you might consider paying a little more for a more flavorful tomato,” Klee says. If you do, you might find that the tomatoes of the future taste a little sweeter.

As someone who does shop price on tomatoes, I’ll have to try that. Lately I’ve been using fresh where I used to use canned, partly to avoid the extra salt (though you can get canned with no salt added). I may try better ones in my next tomato sauce.

[Update a few minutes later]

Forget growing organs in pigs; we may be able to 3-D print them soon.

Business, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Seat-Back Video Screens

Just when they finally seem to be almost ubiquitous on American, the airline is starting to phase them out:

“More than 90 percent of our passengers already bring a device or screen with them when they fly,” American told workers Tuesday in a message. “Those phones and tablets are continually upgraded, they’re easy to use and, most importantly, they are the technology our customers have chosen.”
The move marks a reversal for Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker, who said less than a year ago that American would have seat-back screens on all of its planes to remain competitive. The carrier this year will receive the first four of its 100 Max aircraft. A decision hasn’t been made on whether to extend the policy to other new planes.

What I hate about them is that it’s almost become a crime on the planes to have a window open in daylight. Being able to look out the window is one of the main reasons I prefer window seats. I hope that bandwidth and cost improve on the in-flight Internet, because I hate Gogo.

Business, Economics, Health, Technology and Society

Curing Mouse Diabetes

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…with pancreases grown in rats:

“These results demonstrate not only that the rat-grown mouse pancreas is functional, but also that it is readily accepted by the immune system of the genetically matched recipient,” said Nakauchi. “In the future, any human organs generated in this way may also be functional and accepted by the immune system of the patient who donated the pluripotent stem cells.”

These results are exciting, but it’s ultimately a proof of concept if you look at what scientists hope to accomplish in the long term. “Their study is well executed and we’re happy to see the result,” Jun Wu, a research associate at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California who was not involved in the study, told Gizmodo. “But that’s rats and mice. To move to humans you have to take another step forward.” Rats and mice are much closer on an evolutionary scale than say, rats and people, or people and sheep, though scientists are working on growing human cells inside pigs as we speak.

Faster, please.

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