GLAST detects 12 gamma-ray bursts
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., July 31 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says its new orbiting gamma-ray telescope, still in its checkout phase, has detected 12 powerful gamma-ray bursts.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, has been on orbit for slightly more than 40 days. The gamma-ray bursts, NASA said, were detected by the GLAST Burst Monitor, or GBM, which is one of two instruments on the spacecraft.
"We are thrilled to be detecting gamma-ray bursts so early in the mission. GLAST and the GBM are off to a great start!" said Charles Meegan, the GBM principal investigator at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "The detectors are working well and we're really pleased with how the instrument is working."
NASA said GLAST will observe gamma rays ranging in energy from a few thousand electron volts to many hundreds of billions of electron volts or higher -- the widest range of coverage ever available on a single spacecraft for gamma ray studies.
The GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with scientists in France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Sweden.
Drug shows promise as Alzheimer's therapy
NEW YORK, July 31 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists say a drug commonly prescribed to treat immunodeficiencies has shown promise as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease.
Researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and the Weill Cornell Medical Center announced the nine-month interim results of an ongoing Phase II double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of gammagard intravenous immunoglobulin, or IGIV.
Those results show significantly better global outcomes, cognitive performance and daily functioning in patients treated with IGIV compared with initially placebo-treated patients, the researchers said.
The new interim data show persistence of benefits for Alzheimer's patients treated continuously for nine months. The study's lead researcher, Dr. Norman Relkin, said the study is the first to show persistence of benefits for Alzheimer's from IGIV with continuous treatment for nine months. Previous studies discontinued therapy after six months.
The findings were presented Wednesday during an Alzheimer's Association's international conference in Chicago.
A Phase III trial is expected to begin this year.
Scientists create a nanoscale scale
BERKELEY, Calif., July 31 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they have created a nanoelectromechanical scale system sensitive enough to measure the mass of a single atom of gold at room temperature.
"For the past 15 years or so, the Holy Grail of (nanoelectromechanical systems) has been to push them to a small enough size with high enough sensitivity so that they might resolve the mass of a single molecule or even single atom," said physicist Alex Zettl, who led the research and who holds joint appointments at the Energy Department's Berkeley Lab and the University of California-Berkeley.
"This has been a challenge even at cryogenic temperatures where reduced thermal noise improves the sensitivity," said Zettl. "We have achieved sub-single-atom resolution at room temperature."
Using their new carbon nanotube mass sensor, Zettl -- along with researchers Kenneth Jensen and Kwanpyo Kim -- weighed individual gold atoms and measured masses as small as two-fifths that of a gold atom in little more than 1 second.
The research is detailed in the journal Nature.
DNA changes in depression, suicide found
LONDON, Ontario, July 31 (UPI) -- Canadian medical scientists say they have identified DNA changes that occur in major depression and suicide, possibly explaining a cause of such cases.
Researchers led by Associate Professor Michael Poulter of the University of Western Ontario and Professor Hymie Anisman of Carleton University said they are the first to show proteins that modify DNA directly are more highly expressed in the brains of people who commit suicide.
The scientists compared the brains of people who committed suicide with those of a control group who died from heart attacks and other causes. They found the genome in depressed people who had committed suicide was chemically modified by a process normally involved in regulating the essential characteristics of all cells in the body.
The rate of modification in the suicide brains was found to be much greater than that of the control group.
"Interestingly, the nature of this chemical modification is long term and hard to reverse, and this fits with depression," he said. "The whole idea that the genome is so malleable in the brain is surprising. These observations open an entirely new avenue of research and potential therapeutic interventions."
The study appears in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
