UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

NASA to set final STS-120 launch date

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Oct. 15 (UPI) -- A final decision is expected this week regarding the launch date for space shuttle Discovery's next mission to the International Space Station.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration managers are to meet Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to conduct a final readiness review for the upcoming flight. The STS-120 mission is targeted for launch Oct. 23.

Shuttle program mangers met for two days last week and among topics discussed were the reinforced carbon-carbon coating on panels positioned at the leading edge of Discovery's wing. There have been indications the edges of a couple of panels have lost small amounts of their upper-level coating.

NASA's Engineering and Safety Center has recommended replacing three of Discovery's 44 panels -- a move that would require postponing the launch. Critics of that decision, however, note the shuttle has flown at least twice with the panels in the current condition, and with no indications of degradation.

A final decision on that matter and a firm launch date are expected to be determined during Tuesday's meeting.

Schizophrenics gain by practice, not meds

MANHASSET, N.Y., Oct. 15 (UPI) -- A U.S. study suggested cognitive gains in schizophrenic patients treated with newer antipsychotic medications are due to practice effects, not the drugs.

Second-generation antipsychotic medicines were designed to improve the speed, clarity, and rationality of thought among people with schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses.

But psychiatric researchers at the Zucker Hillside Hospital and the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research studied the cognitive performance of 104 people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia who were taking second-generation medicines.

The medical scientists tracked those patients and 84 healthy, age-matched controls on 18 measures of thinking by asking them to take a series of cognitive tests three times during a four-month period. At the end of that time, the researchers found both the patients and the healthy controls showed the same cognitive gains.

The study’s lead author, Terry Goldberg, said: "It is a sobering finding (since) the field has just accepted that these medicines enhance cognition. But it may be that (patients are just) getting better at doing the same test over time.

"If it's just a practice effect, it is a big problem," he added.

The study appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Study: 'Electromagnetic wormhole' possible

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 15 (UPI) -- U.S.-led physicists have shown the same mathematics that can create an "invisibility cloak" can also be used to generate an "electromagnetic wormhole."

University of Rochester Professor Allan Greenleaf and colleagues used a variation of their findings on cloaking to suggest the possibility of building a sort of invisible tunnel between two points in space.

"Imagine wrapping Harry Potter's invisibility cloak around a tube," said Greenleaf. "If the material is designed according to our specifications, you could pass an object into one end, watch it disappear as it traveled the length of the tunnel and then see it reappear out the other end."

Current technology can create objects invisible only to microwave radiation but the mathematical theory allows for the wormhole effect for electromagnetic waves of all frequencies.

The research by Greenleaf and Professors Matti Lassas of Helsinki University, Yaroslav Kurylev of University College London; and Gunther Uhlmann of the University of Washington appears in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Animal food allergens are 'unmasked'

LONDON, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- British and Viennese scientists have found the relatedness of an animal food protein to a human protein determines whether it can cause an allergy.

In theory, all proteins have the potential to become allergens. But scientists from Britain's Institute of Food Research and the Medical University of Vienna found the ability of animal food proteins to act as allergens depends on their evolutionary distance from a human equivalent.

"This explains why people who are allergic to cow's milk can often tolerate mare's milk but not goat's milk", said Clare Mills of the Institute of Food Research. "Proteins in horse milk are up to 66 percent identical to human milk proteins, while known allergens from cows and goats are all less than 53 percent identical to corresponding human proteins.

"Overall we found that only an animal food protein that is less than 54 percent identical to a human equivalent could become allergenic".

The study is to be published Tuesday in the online issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.