Lunar robot to begin field tests in Hawaii
PITTSBURGH, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says an 880-pound robot designed to locate water and other resources on the moon will soon be field tested in Hawaii.
Built by Carnegie-Mellon University's Robotics Institute for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the robot named Scarab will spend nearly two weeks next month conducting a simulated lunar mission.
Scientists said Scarab, designed to operate at minus 385 degrees Fahrenheit on just 100 watts of power, has a rocker-arm suspension that allows it to travel over steep, rocky inclines and to lower itself to the ground for drilling operations. The drill will cut a core of lunar material, pulverize it and heat it to 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit, university researchers said. Scarab will also be equipped with a gas chromatograph to analyze the gases released by the heat, thereby identifying individual chemicals in the lunar material.
The Nov. 1-13 field test will be held on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano that's Hawaii's highest mountain.
Most angioplasty patients not stressed
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they've found patients receiving elective angioplasty and stenting aren't first stress tested, as called for in medical guidelines.
Percutaneous coronary intervention, or PCI -- the clinical name for angioplasty and cardiac stenting -- is used to open narrowed coronary arteries. Guidelines published by the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Intervention state that, for most patients, vessels to be dilated by PCI must be shown by non-invasive stress tests to be "associated with a moderate to severe degree of ischemia."
The researchers said prior studies showed patients undergoing PCI according to the guidelines had better outcomes.
To determine if the guidelines were being followed, researchers from the University of California-San Francisco, the Maine Medical Center and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center analyzed data from a random sample of nearly 24,000 Medicare patients 65 years of age or older, who had elective PCI at U.S. hospitals during 2004.
The researchers said they found 44.5 percent of the patients underwent stress testing during the 90 days before the elective PCI procedure.
The study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Termites helped destroy New Orleans dikes?
NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've discovered evidence termites might have been to blame for the failure of some New Orleans dikes during Hurricane Katrina.
Louisiana State University Professor Gregg Henderson says he discovered Formosan subterranean termites (Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki) in the floodwall seams of some New Orleans dikes five years before Katrina struck.
After the dikes were breached in 2005, Henderson and colleague Alan Morgan inspected 100 seams for evidence of termites where major floodwall breaks had occurred. They said they discovered 70 percent of the seams in the city's London Avenue Canal, which experienced two major breaks during Katrina, showed evidence of insect attack, as did 27 percent of seams inspected in the walls of the 17th Street Canal.
Henderson said the termites might have contributed to the destruction of the levees in New Orleans by digging networks of tunnels, which can weaken the levee system.
"I believe the termites pose a continuing danger that requires immediate attention," Henderson wrote, suggesting New Orleans' 350 miles of levees and floodwalls should be surveyed for termite damage.
The researchers detail their findings in the fall issue of the journal American Entomologist.
Study: Diabetes found linked with TB
HOUSTON, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. medical researchers say patients with type 2 diabetes might be at increased risk of contracting tuberculosis because of a compromised immune system.
Scientists at the University of Texas School of Public Health previously reported type 2 diabetes was the leading factor for developing TB in the U.S.-Mexico border area.
Assistant Professor Blanca Restrepo and Drs. Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch say they've have conducted three new studies that further illuminate the previous findings.
The scientists said they discovered the immune systems of patients with type 2 diabetes and tuberculosis respond differently, compared with patients with TB alone. Restrepo and her colleagues found innate and type 1 cytokine responses were significantly higher in patients with tuberculosis who had diabetes than in the control group of patients with TB and no diabetes.
The researchers report their findings in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and in a recent issue of The Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases.
