Yet another adult stem cell miracle, this time in the field of hair restoration.
The human head comes equipped with 100,000 tiny hair follicles, from each of which grow a single hair.These follicles are produced by the embryo in the first stages of pregnancy, and it was thought that no further replacement follicles could be produced during life.
The Pennsylvania team found that a particular gene important in wound healing, called wnt, appeared to play a role in the production of new hair follicles.
In its experiment, small sections of the outer skin layer, or epidermis, were removed from mice.
Just this act appeared to awaken stem cell activity in the area, the scientists said, which included the production of a number of hair follicles.
If the action of the wnt gene was blocked, no hair follicles were produced; but if it was boosted, then many more hair follicles were produced, with the skin layer eventually being indistinguishable from surrounding areas.
More significantly, the same procedure can speed would-healing.
I like my full head of hair, but I've always figured that if I went bald I could still be cool like Captain Picard.
MW said: "I've always figured that if I went bald I could still be cool like Captain Picard."
Definitely, but there's a difference between cool "like" Captain Picard.. and cool "as" Captain Picard. No one can put the similar parts together and be "as" cool as him.
Personality, among other things, makes the bald man.. not the other way around.
I don't want burst your bubble hear, but a guy whose hobby is archeology and who goes to Riza to read books is most definitely not cool. CPT Sisko on the other hand is totally cool. If you listen really closely, you can hear the theme from "Shaft" as he walks past.
I can't believe I used "hear" for "here". Not cool at all.
RS: That's not all he did on Risa. No bubble has been harmed; you have as much of a right to be wrong as anyone on what's "cool". Picard also excelled at Track and Field while in Starfleet Academy and took on some surly Naussicans twice his size who were harassing him and his friends (nearly losing his life, were it not for an artificial heart).
Sisko is fine, but he's not comparable to Picard.. in any category.
RS: Don't forget that Picard took on a bunch of Klingons single-handedly when helping Worf restore his family honor.
And Picard got kidnapped by like, every race in the universe and somehow managed to escape. He's like a hardcore combination of Macguyver and Socrates.
Don't forget, P-diddle totally owned the Borg.
MW: Yes, "Redemption" was a very good 2-part episode.
DD: Interesting combination of people you proposed. What's even more interesting is how accurate it is.
Yes, the Borg and Picard go way back.. they also go way back with Janeway.
Well, if this is going to turn into a Star Trek post I have to throw my two cents in. Picard was the Jimmy Carter of Starfleet. Talk, talk, talk. I know I'm going to get booed and hissed by the hardcore fans for this, but I have to with Jonathan Archer. When he went after the Xendi to save the human race...come on.
Meh... "Enterprise" was the most annoying of the Star Trek series. There's nothing about it I found appealing. The final episode was the worst of all the series' finales (in spite of its inclusion of Riker and Troi), the stories were boring, and the characters were one-dimensional.
TNG was the best, followed closely by Voyager, then DS9, then the Original Series, and then finally, Enterprise.
IC: Picard wasn't the Carter of Starfleet, that's ridiculous. He blew up all sorts of crap.
Quite right. He destroyed: a Borg cube or two, a Borg sphere, the Scimitar (Nemesis), an ancient base on Iconia, a Klingon Bird of Prey or two, Dr. Soren's star-killing missile platform, a Son'a ship, and more things that I can't think of right now. As encyclopedic as my knowledge of Star Trek is, it's hard to comb through all of the episodes and movies to get a complete list.
Picard also surrendered the ship at every chance, particularly early on. Kirk'd've blown it up.
The last episode of Enterprise was partially bad *because* of Riker and Troi, not *in spite of* them.
RC: Wrong. The final episode of Enterprise was bad , period. Including Riker and Troi, from what was a good episode of TNG but a relatively minor one in the grand scheme of things, didn't help the episode at all.
Picard didn't really surrender the ship, and definitely not "at every chance". He initialized the self-destruct sequence many times.
I'm not saying he didn't have his moments. The show would have been even more boring had he not.
And the series finale of Enterprise was great, despite a fat, old Riker. Though I would have rather it been more about the founding of the Federation and less about him trying to make up his mind.
TNG was not boring. Several episodes were well-written and had interesting science-related topics.
Some excellent episodes: Yesterday's Enterprise, Devil's Due, Schisms, Timescape, Cause and Effect, Parallels, The Inner Light, Drumhead, and of course All Good Things.
I'm not saying it wasn't good. It was, mostly in the later seasons when Berman and Piller took over. Which is when most of the episode you mentioned took place. But you forgot to mention any of the episodes with Lwaxana Troi. Those were my favorite.
MW, but reading was all he planned to do on Risa. Nothing against Picard, but he just wasn't cool. In the pantheon of Star Trek coolness, he might edge out Scotty or Chekov, but only just. He was no where near as cool as Kirk, Sisko, or, Ryker (playing jazz with a trombone is way cool).
And just so everybody knows, I am not saying that the Picard character wasn't tough, smart, or brave; I am just saying he wasn't cool.
Q was and always will be one of my huge favorites. A line of his from the TNG series finale, "All Good Things..."
"Is that all this has been to you? Just another spacial anomaly, just another day at the office.."
And Rob Smith, your definition of "cool" is way off. Part of Picard's coolness *was* his intelligence, his persona, and his interest in archaeology. It certainly helped him (and the rest of the ship) in the wonderful "Masks" episode, where the ship was being transformed into an ancient city by a space-bound archive and Data acquired the personalities of many of its citizens. Picard's archaeology background helped him decifer how to complete the cycle of events and save the ship.
His not-often-explored-on-the-series hobby of playing Dixon Hill, Private Eye on the holodeck was pretty cool too.
IC: Seasons 1 and 2 of TNG were not as appealing as seasons 3-7, but I don't think it had anything to do with who was in charge of the show's development. Seasons 1 and most of 2 of Voyager weren't the greatest either, in my opinion. The reason for that, in both shows, is that the characters themselves aren't fully developed and polished in the beginning.
Looking back over the entire span of both shows, knowing all points along the arc of the characters' development, gives us a different perspective than we had when we first met Picard, Janeway, Riker, Chakotay, et al. Naturally, going back and watching "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Caretaker" is going to leave us feeling bored or otherwise disappointed.
Well, for me it was the action. The first few season of TNG was more about the intellectual aspect. Later season seemed more action oriented mixed with the cerebral.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Portal:Main
Are you sure it was the action? Or was it the development of the characters that made the action mix with the cerebral in a compelling way? I suspect it's the latter.
And by character development I'm not talking only about the events on the show that made the characters how they are, I'm also talking about how the actors and actresses refined and polished their performances of those characters.