🚀 go-pugleaf

This is my first posting so please excuse any botches :-)

I vaguely recall (sorry, don't remember where) a study that found out
that fetal development in bird eggs involved the cells at the bottom of
the undifferentiated cell mass *always* differentiated into the head (or
some other specific body part--I don't remember).  The obvious
conclusion would be that gravity provides a sort of compass for the same
types of cells (neural, muscular, etc) to aggregate in the same place.
I think the source went on to say something about babies conceived and
developed without gravity possibly ending up as just a mass of cells.

I think the next shuttle flight (or one forthcoming) involves an
experiment about this.

John H. Kim
jokim@jarthur.Claremont.EDU
uunet!muddcs!jarthur!jokim