Jockstrip: The world as we know it

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND

Thousands of the oldest stars in the Milky Way may have originated in other galaxies. Young-Wook Lee, an astronomer at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, tells United Press International this new finding promises to help solve one of the long-standing problems in modern astronomy surrounding the age of the universe.

Scientists have believed the Milky Way condensed from a whirling cloud of gas that collapsed into a disk after billions of years. The first objects to emerge were some 150 to 200 globular clusters, each made of 10,000 to 1 million stars -- presumably the oldest stars in our galaxy.

Lee says new evidence suggests some of these globular clusters might, in fact, be substantially younger, captured "from a satellite galaxy about 1 billion years younger than the Milky Way."

The investigators came to this conclusion by measuring the patterns of interstellar light pulses. Their study is found in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

(Thanks to UPI's Charles Choi in New York.)

NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS

A British House of Lords report says researchers should make more of an effort to reduce the number of animals used in experiments.

The British Broadcasting Corp. says the report goes on to note using animals in experimentation will continue in the "foreseeable future" to guarantee medicines and compounds are safe for human use.

The BBC says a scientific procedures committee for the parliamentary body looked at regulations governing animal experiments and talked with hundreds of people who are concerned many experiments are unnecessary.

The committee also talked with U.K. scientists -- who noted experiments in England are the most tightly regulated in the world. The BBC says researchers are only issued a license if they can show there are no alternatives to using animals and the potential benefit of the experiment outweighs any suffering by the animals.

TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING

In Pasadena, Calif., astronomers are tracking a mile-wide asteroid that may be on a collision course for Earth -- in the year 2019. Dubbed 2002 NT7, the asteroid was discovered July 9 and is about 1.24 miles in diameter.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the threat of a collision is small, according to spokeswoman Martha Heil.

"With the information we have, we can't rule out that it might hit Earth," Heil said, but more observations of the asteroid's orbit probably will show that it will miss. "Nobody here is really worried about it. This happens fairly often. There are about 25,000 objects of this size in existence," she added.

Scientists say 2002 NT7 would be moving at more than 10 miles per second were it to eventually hit the Earth. Such an impact, depending on where it took place, could cause severe damage. An asteroid believed responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was only about five times bigger than 2002 NT7.

(Thanks to Michael Smith, UPI Science News, in Toronto)

AND FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY

A trio of relatives from Turkey who share an extremely rare genetic mutation that results in severe obesity have lost nearly half their body weight after being treated with shots of the hormone leptin.

The three family members -- the only known adults in the world who carry the genetic mutation -- are unable to produce enough of this key hormone, which is linked to appetite control.

Dr. Julio Licinio, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, says leptin deficiency may lead to obesity and recently researchers have discovered obese people produce too much of the hormone and their bodies simply stop responding to its appetite cues.

When the trio arrived in Los Angeles, they immediately began taking daily leptin injections. After 10 months, each patient had lost half his or her body weight -- more than 150 pounds.