CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced the launch countdown schedule for space shuttle Endeavour, which is to launch Aug. 7.

The STS-118 mission countdown will start at 9 p.m. EDT Saturday at T-minus-43 hours, NASA said Monday. The countdown includes 27 hours and 3 minutes of built-in hold time leading to a targeted lift off at 7:02 p.m. EDT, Aug. 7. The launch window lasts 5 minutes.

During the 11-day mission to the International Space Station, Endeavour's crew will add another truss segment to the expanding station, install a gyroscope and add an external spare parts platform. The flight will also include at least three spacewalks and will debut a new system that enables docked shuttles to draw electrical power from the station to extend visits to the outpost.

If the system functions as expected, three additional days will be added to the STS-118 mission.

The mission is the 119th space shuttle flight, the 20th flight for Endeavour and the 22nd U.S. flight to the International Space Station. The mission would be Endeavour's first flight in more than four years.

Diabetes might be linked with sleep apnea

LA JOLLA, Calif., July 30 (UPI) -- A U.S. study suggested that people suffering from type 2 diabetes might be at an increased risk for obstructive sleep apnea.

The research -- the first prospective study to assess the prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea in male and female adults with type 2 diabetes -- was led by Dr. Daniel Einhorn at The Whittier Institute for Diabetes in La Jolla, Calif.

Researchers evaluated 279 adults who suffered from type 2 diabetes and found 36 percent of the patients also suffered from OSA, with men more than twice as likely to have OSA than women. They also found OSA was particularly common in men over the age of 62.

"These findings demonstrate that obstructive sleep apnea has a high prevalence in adults with type 2 diabetes," said Einhorn. "Given that treatment of obstructive sleep apnea has the potential to both decrease blood pressure and improve glycemic control, individuals with type 2 diabetes should be regularly screened for the presence of sleep apnea."

Hurricane frequency, climate change linked

BOULDER, Colo., July 30 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say about twice as many Atlantic hurricanes now form each year than did a century ago in a change possibly linked with global warming.

The new statistical analysis of hurricanes and tropical storms in the north Atlantic was conducted by Greg Holland at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Their study concludes warmer sea surface temperatures and altered wind patterns associated with climate change are fueling much of the increase.

The analysis identifies three periods since 1900, separated by sharp transitions, during which the average number of hurricanes and tropical storms increased dramatically and then remained elevated and relatively steady.

The first period, between 1900 and 1930, saw an average of six major Atlantic storms annually, of which four were hurricanes and two were tropical storms. From 1930 to 1940, the annual average increased to 10, consisting of five hurricanes and five tropical storms. During the final study period of 1995 to 2005, the average reached 15, of which eight were hurricanes and seven were tropical storms.

The study appears in the online issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

Mouse haplotype map is published

BETHESDA, Md., July 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has constructed a mouse haplotype map to help identify genes related to environmental disease.

The research involving the DNA of 15 mouse strains commonly used in biomedical studies appears in this week's online issue of the journal Nature. The data now publicly available in a catalog of genetic variants as a haplotype -- a tool that separates chromosomes into many small segments -- marks the first published full descriptive analysis of the Mouse Genome Resequencing and SNP Discovery Project.

"These data allow researchers to compare the genetic makeup of one mouse strain to another, and perform the necessary genetic analyses to determine why some individuals might be more susceptible to disease than another," said Dr. David Schwartz, NIEHS director.

The paper describes in detail the approaches used to identify 8.27 million high quality SNPs -- single nucleotide polymorphisms -- distributed among the genomes of 15 mouse strains. SNPS are single genetic changes, or variations, that can occur in a DNA sequence.

The data are also available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SNP/.