UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Large Hadron Collider operations scheduled

GENEVA, Switzerland, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- European officials say the world's most powerful collider, the Large Hadron Collider, will make its first attempt to accelerate a beam of protons next month.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said the Sept. 10 event will follow a required cool-down phase necessary to commission the particle accelerator.

The LHC, located near Geneva, Switzerland, is designed to produce beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine -- and around 30 times more intense -- when it reaches design performance, expected by 2010.

Housed in a 16.7-mile tunnel, scientists said the multibillion-dollar accelerator relies on technologies that didn't exist only 30 years ago. "The LHC is, in a sense, its own prototype," CERN said.

The start-up process is a complex task, officials said, necessitating the cooling of each of the machine's eight sectors, followed by electrical testing of its 1,600 superconducting magnets.

Then the LHC must be synchronized with the Super Proton Synchrotron accelerator, which forms the last link in the LHC's injector chain, scientists said, noting timing between the two accelerators must be accurate to within a fraction of a nanosecond.

The first synchronization test was scheduled for Saturday.

Software might be able to predict disease

CATONSVILLE, Md., Aug. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. and Israeli scientists say they've developed a mathematical technique that can identify lab rats developing a neurodegenerative disease.

Led by Professor Neri Kafkafi of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, the scientists used a mathematical program that analyzed nearly 50,000 predetermined movement patterns that occur when rats roam alone in a small area. Each movement was defined by a combination of speed, acceleration and direction of movement.

The researchers then used the program to analyze the movement of normal rats, as well as rats with a mutation producing a condition similar to the human disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease -- a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative illness that attacks nerve cells controlling movement.

The researchers discovered rats who were healthy at the time, but who had the mutation that would later produce the neurodegenerative disease, used a particular movement pattern significantly less frequently than normal rats.

The authors said being able to identify people who are likely to develop a disease before they experience symptoms could allow researchers to test medicines that might prevent symptoms from emerging.

The study that included Daniel Yekutieli of Tel Aviv University appears in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience.

Fingerprints prove more than just identity

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Aug. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they have developed technology that can detect trace amounts of explosives, drugs or many other substances through fingerprints.

Purdue University researchers say their new technology -- electrospray ionization, or DESI -- can also distinguish between overlapping fingerprints left by different individuals.

Professor R. Graham Cooks, the lead researcher, says DESI can read a fingerprint's chemical signature to determine what a person recently handled.

"The classic example of a fingerprint is an ink imprint showing the unique swirls and loops used for identification. But fingerprints also leave behind a unique distribution of molecular compounds," Cooks said. "Some of the residues left behind are from naturally occurring compounds in the skin and some are from other surfaces or materials a person has touched."

The study that included Purdue postdoctoral researcher Demian Ifa and graduate students Nicholas Manicke and Allison Dill is reported in the journal Science.

Marine bacteria might help fight cancer

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Aug. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've found a marine compound that inhibits cancer cell growth in lab tests and that might lead to new anti-cancer drugs.

University of Florida College of Pharmacy researchers said the patented compound, called largazole, is derived from cyanobacteria that grow on coral reefs.

"It's exciting because we've found a compound in nature that may one day surpass a currently marketed drug or could become the structural template for rationally designed drugs with improved selectivity," said Assistant Professor Hendrik Luesch, the study's principal investigator.

Largazole inhibits enzymes called histone deacetylase, or HDAC, the researchers said. Overactivity of some HDACs has been associated with cancers such as prostate and colon tumors and inhibiting HDACs can activate tumor-suppressor genes.

Although HDACs are already targeted by a drug approved for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, the new compound doesn't inhibit all HDACs equally. That means a largazole-based drug might result in improved therapies and fewer side effects, Luesch said.

Largazole was initially described in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in February. The molecular basis for its anti-cancer activity appeared in the journal's July 2 issue.

Researchers summarized those results Thursday during an international scientific meeting in Athens, Greece.