Month: January 2024

Enlarge / Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX last night launched the first six Starlink satellites that will provide cellular transmissions for customers of T-Mobile and other carriers.

SpaceX said it launched 21 satellites overall, including "the first six Starlink satellites with Direct to Cell capabilities that enable mobile network operators around the world to provide seamless global access to texting, calling, and browsing wherever you may be on land, lakes, or coastal waters without changing hardware or firmware. The enhanced Starlink satellites have an advanced modem that acts as a cellphone tower in space, eliminating dead zones with network integration similar to a standard roaming partner," the company said.

Besides T-Mobile in the US, several carriers in other countries have signed up to use the direct-to-cell satellites. SpaceX said the other carriers are Rogers in Canada, KDDI in Japan, Optus in Australia, One NZ in New Zealand, Salt in Switzerland, and Entel in Chile and Peru.

Enlarge (credit: Gerard Soury)

The mythical Hydra may have been able to grow one of its many heads back every time it suffered a decapitation, but there are actual creatures capable of regenerating parts of their bodies bitten off by hungry predators. Jellyfish are one of them.

From salamanders to starfish to the actual hydra (a tiny hydrozoan named for the fearsome beast of legend), animals that are capable of regeneration all start the repair process by forming a blastema. This clump of proliferative cells, which are similar to stem cells, can repopulate body parts by dividing over and over again. While the cells are still undifferentiated in the beginning, they eventually form specific cell types like muscle and skin.

The process of blastema formation in some other animals has been studied, but how they form in jellyfish was still a mystery. Led by postdoctoral researcher Sosuke Fujita, the team at the University of Tokyo and Tohoku University in Japan wanted to establish a baseline for non-bilaterian regeneration by finding out how a blastema helps regrow tentacles in jellyfish. Would their blastema formation process be different from that in bilaterians?

Enlarge (credit: Leon Neal | Getty Images)

Merchants who have been suspended from selling goods on Amazon’s marketplace are turning to a cottage industry of lawyers to regain access to their accounts and money, amid growing scrutiny of how the retailer treats independents.

Millions of accounts on the leading ecommerce platform have been prevented from engaging in sales for alleged violations of Amazon’s broad range of policies and other bad behavior. Even temporary suspensions can be a critical blow to the small business owners who rely on online sales.

Four ecommerce-focused US law firms told the Financial Times that the majority of the cases they took on were complaints brought by aggrieved Amazon sellers, with each handling hundreds or thousands of cases every year.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers)

Tesla found new homes for 1.8 million electric vehicles last year, it revealed on Tuesday afternoon. That will no doubt please CEO Elon Musk—it means the company has met its sales volume goal given to investors when it released its 2022 financial results at the end of last January.

Tesla built 494,989 vehicles in the last quarter of 2023, of which 18,212 were the more expensive but aging Models S and X. More importantly to the bottom line, Tesla built 476,777 Models 3 and Y. For the same three months, it delivered 484,507 EVs, of which 461,538 were the popular Models 3 and Y.

Cumulatively, Tesla built 1,845,985 EVs—1,775,159 Models 3 and Y and 70,826 Models S and X. And it delivered 1,808,581 EVs (1,739,707 Models 3 and Y; 68,874 Models S and X)—meeting the 2023 sales goal of 1.8 million cars sold.