The Science Corner

Well it seems that NASA has finally put a timeline on the retirement of the shuttles. They are all past their design life so it is not really a surprise.

Atlantis will be the first of NASA's three space shuttles to be retired, most likely in 2008, as the shuttle program winds down in four years, a senior agency official said Tuesday. Atlantis' parts will be used by the remaining shuttles, Discovery and Endeavour, until the aging spacecraft are mothballed in 2010, shuttle program manager Wayne Hale told workers at the Kennedy Space Center last week. Atlantis, which began flying in 1985, as the fourth orbiter in the fleet launched from Kennedy Space Center, was chosen for retirement first since it was scheduled for maintenance, a process that could take two years.

The $3 billion shuttle likely will have four or five more flights to the international space station before retirement. Due to the extent of repairs Atlantis is slated for, it would be sidelined for most of the current shuttle program's lifespan even if not retired, a NASA spokesman said.

NASA has planned 17 more shuttle flights before the program ends in 2010. The next-generation vehicles are expected to be ready no later than 2014.

I am so glad to see some common sense being used instead of the fundamentalist rhetoric that has been very much a part of the governing officials plans for the last few years. We have a president who picks and chooses what science results are allowed to be published and a populace that seems to want to change the US into the next Theocracy just like many of the fundamentalist Islamic countries.

The Ohio school board voted Tuesday, Feb 14 to eliminate a passage in the state’s science standards that critics said opened the door to the teaching of intelligent design.
The Ohio Board of Education decided 11-4 to delete material encouraging students to seek evidence for and against evolution.

The 2002 science standards said students should be able to “describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” The standards included a disclaimer that they do not require the teaching of intelligent design.

(AP) The Mars rover Spirit has hit a home run by landing in a rugged plateau dubbed "Home Plate," but scientists are still trying to decipher its geology. The six-wheeled Spirit reached the northern edge of the broad mesa last week about four months after climbing down from a Martian hill as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

Scientists believe "Home Plate," which stands about 6 feet high, holds important geologic clues to the Red Planet's past. So far, scientists say they are puzzled by what they have seen. Unlike other areas of Gusev Crater that Spirit has analyzed, "Home Plate" is made of a highly layered rocks that are coarse at the bottom and fine at the top. "It's stunning ... by far the best layering we've ever seen at Gusev," principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University recently posted on his Web site.

http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

Once-Condemned Drug May Control Blood Cancer
A drug once denounced for causing birth defects seems to be a promising tool in the fight against a form of blood cancer,
In a late-stage study involving 270 patients, researchers looked at whether the controversial drug, thalidomide, would create a better treatment combination for multiple myeloma when taken with dexamethasone, a commonly used treatment for this cancer.
Thalidomide raised a storm of controversy after it caused serious birth defects in the babies of pregnant women taking the drug to relieve morning sickness. The drug was subsequently withdrawn from the market in the early 1960s, and only recently was it approved in the United States for use in treating a symptom of leprosy.
In this current study, thalidomide was so successful at slowing the cancer, the team stopped the study early and offered the drug to those who were only taking a placebo with dexamethasone.
In fact, the thalomide-dexamethasone combination held the cancer in check for more than 75 weeks on average, as compared to fewer than 30 weeks in patients treated with dexamethasone alone.
"We believe that this data demonstrated the significant benefit that thalidomide provides to patients with newly-diagnosed multiple myeloma," said Patrick J. Mahaffy, president of Pharmion Corporation, the company helping to develop the drug.
Currently affecting over 50,000 people in the United States, multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that causes the overproduction of plasma cells, a type of white blood cell. Left untreated, the disease can cause anemia, kidney damage, increased susceptibility to infection and osteoporosis. There is no cure, but with the right treatment it can be managed.
While thalidomide is often prescribed off-label for the management of multiple myeloma, the Food and Drug Administration is now reviewing the results of the study to consider approving this drug specifically for the treatment of this cancer. Thalidomide is already approved for this use in Australia, Israel, New Zealand and Turkey.
The most common side effects reported by study participants were insomnia, tremors and dizziness. However, ten percent of the patients taking thalidomide suffered from deep vein thrombosis, a disease that causes dangerous blood clots to form. In contrast, fewer than two percent of patients taking just dexamethasone had this problem.
And while thalidomide does still carry a serious risk of birth defects, both Celgene, the company that manufactures thalidomide, and the FDA have agreed on guidelines to ensure that patients do not become pregnant while taking the drug. This program requires all women taking the drug to use two forms of contraception, and men must use latex condoms if they have sex. All patients must undergo monthly reviews, including pregnancy tests for women, before they can receive a new prescription for the drug.
"It's a check and balance system," said Christy Celli, medical information specialist for Celgene.

A new study from Imperial College London shows that robot assisted knee surgery is significantly more accurate than conventional surgery.

The robotic assistant, Acrobat, significantly improves surgeons' accuracy during knee surgery.
The team of surgeons tested whether Acrobot, a robotic assistant, could improve surgical outcomes for patients undergoing partial knee replacement. Acrobot works by helping the surgeon to line up the replacement knee parts with the existing bones.

The surgeons looked at 27 patients undergoing unicompartmental knee replacement. The patients were separated into two groups as part of a randomised controlled trial, with 14 having conventional surgery, and the remaining 13 having robot assisted surgery.
Although the operations took a few minutes longer using the robotic assistant, the replacement knee parts were more accurately lined up than in conventional surgery. All of the robotically assisted operations lined up the bones to within two degrees of the planned position, but only 40 percent of the conventionally performed cases achieved this level of accuracy.
The team found there were no additional side effects from using robot assisted surgery, and recovery from surgery was quicker in most cases.

Professor Justin Cobb, from Imperial College London, who led the research team, said: "These robots are designed to hold the surgeon's hand in the operating theatre, not take over the operation. This study shows they can be an enormous help, preventing surgeons from making mistakes. More importantly, by showing how the increased accuracy makes a difference to how well a knee works after surgery, we will be able to develop a new generation of less invasive procedures without the risks of error, providing faster recovery and better functional outcomes for patients."

The study involved both surgeons and engineers from Imperial College, with medical robotics engineers designing the Acrobot prototype, and surgeons testing it.

Professor Cobb added: "This study could have important implications for not just surgery, but also for health economics. By improving the accuracy of surgery, and ultimately improving the outcome for patients, we can make sure the knee replacements work better and last longer, preventing the need for additional surgery."

Scientists say they've found the earliest known tyrannosaur, shedding light on the lineage that produced the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex. The discovery comes with a puzzle: Why did this beast have a strange crest on its head?

Digging in the badlands of northwestern China that appeared in the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," researchers found two skeletons of a creature that lived some 160 million years ago. That's more than 90 million years before T. rex came along.

A two-legged meat-eater, the beast was far smaller than T. rex, measuring about 10 feet from its snout to the tip of its tail and standing about 3 feet tall at the hip. It also sported relatively long, three-fingered arms, rather than the two-fingered stubby arms T. rex had. Scientists suspect it had feathers because related dinosaurs did.

The discovery is reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

http://www.nature.com/nature

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Here on Earth we get rid of our old clothes by dropping them off at the Salvation Army. But what do astronauts at the international space station do?
Friday, they will stuff an old spacesuit with discarded clothes and a radio transmitter and toss it out the door. Complete with helmet and gloves, off it should float like a lost soul in space.
The transmitter will send recorded messages in six languages to amateur radio operators - known as hams - before eventually re-entering Earth's atmosphere and burning up.

The stunt will precede a six-hour spacewalk by Russian flight engineer Valery Tokarev and U.S. commander Bill McArthur to perform maintenance and photography tasks.
The project, known as SuitSat-1, was the brainchild of a Russian ham radio operator. It will send several words in code for schoolchildren listening on the ground. Radio operators will be able to pick up the messages by tuning into FM frequency 145.990 MHz.

Along with the radio transmitter, it also will have internal sensors to monitor temperature and battery power. As the empty suit floats along, it will transmit its telemetry - temperature, battery power and time it has been in space - to the ground.

On a NASA Web site, students and others can track the spacesuit's location. The suit is expected to pass once or twice a day in the U.S., between midnight and 4 a.m., according to NASA.
"We expect the ham radio operators on the ground to be able to receive the suit signal for several days," said Kwatsi Alibaruho, flight director for the spacewalk at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

During Friday's spacewalk, Tokarev and McArthur are scheduled to cover a wide swath of the 240-foot-wide, 140-foot-long floating station as they take on several chores. It will be the fourth spacewalk for McArthur and the second for Tokarev.
One of their chores involves taking steps to protect an important cable connected to a transporter that moves a platform holding the station's robotic arm.
A twin cable which provides power, data and video to the mobile transporter was inadvertently cut in December. Mission managers want to make sure that doesn't happen to the remaining cable. The cut cable will be repaired at a later time.

The other tasks include creating storage space, retrieving a Russian science experiment and photographing handrails, antennas and sensors to see how they have held up in space.
"By the conclusion of this (spacewalk), Bill and Valery will have traversed to the extreme ends of just about every length of the international space station, a rare feat that they are really looking forward to," said Anna Jarvis, NASA's spacewalk officer.
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On the Net:
NASA's Web site on the international space station:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
SuitSat-1: http://science.nasa.gov/RealTime/JPass/25/JPass.asp

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Scientists say they have confirmed that a so-called 10th planet discovered last year is bigger than Pluto, but that likely won't quell the debate over what makes a planet.
The astronomers who spotted the icy, rocky body - informally called 2003 UB313 - had reported only a rough estimate of its size based on its brightness.
But another group of researchers has come up with what is believed to be the first calculation of UB313's diameter.
By measuring how much heat it radiates, German scientists led by Frank Bertoldi of the University of Bonn estimated that UB313 was about 1,864 miles across. That makes it larger than Pluto, which has a diameter of about 1,429 miles.
"It is now increasingly hard to justify calling Pluto a planet if UB313 is not also given this status," Bertoldi said in a statement.
Details were published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Some astronomers have debated over what is a planet and whether Pluto should keep its status. The difficulty is there is no official definition and some argue that setting standards like size limits opens the door too wide.
Michael Brown, the astronomer at the California Institute of Technology who discovered UB313 and announced it last July, said the Germans' measurement seemed plausible. He said his team is using the Hubble Space Telescope to directly figure out its size.
Brown previously reported that UB313 was thought to be larger than Pluto and estimated that it was most likely between 1,398 miles and 2,175 miles in diameter.
If it is determined to be the 10th planet, it would be the farthest-known body in the solar system.
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On the Net:
Nature journal: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html