Spitzer Space Telescope is 5 years old
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A new image from the U.S. space agency's Spitzer Space Telescope was released Monday as part of the telescope's fifth anniversary celebration.
Spitzer was launched Aug. 25, 2003, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The new infrared picture shows a colorful cosmic cloud, called W5, filled with multiple generations of stars.
NASA said the image also provides dramatic new evidence that massive stars -- through their brute winds and radiation -- can trigger the birth of stellar newborns.
"Triggered star formation continues to be very hard to prove," said Xavier Koenig of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "But our preliminary analysis shows that the phenomenon can explain the multiple generations of stars seen in the W5 region."
NASA said W5 spans an area of sky equivalent to four full moons and is about 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia.
Koenig is lead author of a paper about the finding in the Dec. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
FDA approves first bone marrow stimulator
WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it has approved Nplate (romiplostim), the first product that directly stimulates bone marrow platelet production.
The FDA said the new drug will be used to produce needed platelets in patients with a rare blood disorder that can lead to serious bleeding. The condition, which usually develops in adults, is known as chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura, or ITP, a disease that results in a low number of platelets, the blood components that help with clotting. In patients with chronic ITP, the immune system is believed to destroy platelets and the patient's bone marrow is often unable to compensate for that loss, the FDA said.
"This product is important in that it offers a new approach to the treatment of patients with an uncommon blood disorder who are often very ill," said Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
Nplate is manufactured by Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Quake tests to improve U.S. building codes
SAN DIEGO, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers who conducted three months of earthquake simulations say their results will likely be used to revise building codes across the nation.
The scientists from the University of California-San Diego and the University of Arizona conducted the seismic tests on a half-scale, three-story, 1-million-pound concrete structure -- the largest footprint of any structure ever tested on a shake table in the United States.
A series of earthquake jolts as powerful as magnitude 8.0 on the Richter scale were used to test the seismic response of precast concrete floor systems used in structures such as parking garages, college dormitories, hotels, stadiums, prisons and office buildings.
The $2.3 million research project involved testing computer simulations to help design the three-story structure and to determine where sensors should be placed. The data recorded by the sensors were used to take measurements of certain physical phenomena on the structure such as displacements, strains and accelerations caused by the shaking; and to estimate forces in the structure.
The scientists said the $9 million University of California-San Diego shake table used in the research is the largest in the United States and the only outdoor shake table in the world.
New X-ray analysis spots early cavities
TAMIL NADU, India, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Scientists in India say they have developed an X-ray technique that can detect very early signs of dental caries.
R. Siva Kumar and colleagues at RMK Engineering College in Tamil Nadu, say dental caries, known colloquially as tooth decay or dental cavities, is an infectious disease that damages teeth, causes toothache, tooth loss, infection and, in severe cases, death.
Detecting caries in the early stages of development is difficult. But researchers have developed an X-ray image software that reveals the pixel intensities at different X-ray wavelengths, much like the histogram analysis of images by a high-specification digital camera.
Kumar said the newly developed software reveals the X-ray histogram and spectrum are very different depending on whether the teeth X-rayed are normal or exhibiting the early stages of decay. The researchers found that, in the X-ray histogram, the pixel intensities are concentrated in different ranges depending on degree of decay.
The scientists say their new technique could be very useful for dental clinicians and could be extended using neural networks to automatically identify the different stages of dental caries.
The research is reported in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology.
