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UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Neil Armstrong to dedicate Armstrong Hall

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, is expected to attend next month's dedication of a building named for him at Indiana's Purdue University.

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Armstrong, along with other 14 other Purdue alumni astronauts -- including Eugene Cernan, the last person to walk on the moon -- will attend the Oct. 17 dedication of the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering.

"These alumni are living proof that Purdue really does reach for the stars," said Purdue President France Cordova. "We want everyone to help us celebrate what this wonderful building represents: the spirit of exploration, of challenging conventional limits."

Purdue has 22 alumni who have been selected for space flight, including Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Roger Chaffee, who died in a fire during a launch pad test in 1967.

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In addition to Armstrong and Cernan, space alumni who have confirmed their visit to Purdue for the dedication are John Blaha, Mark Brown, Richard Covey, John Casper, Andrew Feustel, Gregory Harbaugh, Gary Payton, Mark Polansky, Jerry Ross, Loren Shriver, Janice Voss, Don Williams and David Wolf.

Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11 and Gemini-Titan VIII, earned a bachelor's degree from Purdue in aeronautical and astronautical engineering in 1955.


Breath analysis could be blood sugar test

IRVINE, Calif., Sept. 25 (UPI) -- A U.S. study suggests breath analysis might become an effective method of non-invasively monitoring a diabetic's blood sugar level.

University of California-Irvine researchers have found a chemical analysis method developed for air-pollution testing could be used to warn diabetics of high blood sugar levels and the need to administer insulin.

The UC-Irvine chemists and pediatricians discovered children with type-1 diabetes exhale significantly higher concentrations of methyl nitrates when they are hyperglycemic.

"Breath analysis has been showing promise as a diagnostic tool in a number of clinical areas, such as with ulcers and cystic fibrosis," said Dr. Pietro Galassetti, a diabetes researcher at the university. "While no clinical breath test yet exists for diabetes, this study shows the possibility of non-invasive methods that can help the millions who have this chronic disease."

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Study results appear this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


Global warming effects on trees studied

DEKALB, Ill., Sept. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers travel to Canada next spring to study simulated global warming involving about 2,000 sugar maple tree seedlings.

Northern Illinois University Professors Lesley Rigg and David Goldblum have been awarded a $260,000 National Science Foundation grant to simulate global warming on sugar maple seedlings now growing in Canada’s Lake Superior Provincial Park.

The researchers will build rain-exclusion, temperature-controlled structures over the seedlings to simulate temperature increases and dryer conditions forecast for the next century.

Sugar maples -- the dominant tree species in the U.S. northeast -- thrive in cool, moist climates, with seeds germinating at about 34 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Mature trees may be able to handle warming temperatures, but scientists need to determine whether the trees will be able to successfully reproduce and whether the species will be able to migrate northward to cooler climates,” said Rigg.

Some researchers have suggested sugar maple trees, which now extend southward to Georgia, could disappear from the United States.

"We expect that our experimental design … will capture conditions that the sugar maple will experience in the northern part of its range sometime in the next 100 years," Rigg said.

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The study is to be completed in 2010.


Inner-ear cell culture method created

WOODS HOLE, Maine, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers have developed a new laboratory culturing technique that produces cells critical to understanding inner-ear disorders.

Marine Biological Laboratory researchers said their discovery might lead to cures for hearing loss, tinnitus and balance problems.

MBL investigators Zhengqing Hu and Professor Jeffrey Corwin, both from the University of Virginia's School of Medicine, developed a technique for isolating cells from the inner ears of chicken embryos and growing them in their laboratory. The scientists achieved their results by inducing avian cells to differentiate into hair cells via a process known as mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition.

Hu and Corwin were able to freeze and thaw the cultured cells, then grow new cells from the thawed cultures -- a discovery that will make hair cells accessible to more researchers.

"Until now, scientists working to understand many inner ear disorders had to resort to difficult microdissections to gather even small numbers of these cells, which limited the types of research that could be pursued and slowed the pace of discoveries," said Corwin.

The study is reported in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

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