Endeavour is moved to its new launch pad
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Oct. 23 (UPI) -- Space shuttle Endeavour was moved Thursday from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Launch Pad 39A in preparation for a Nov. 14 liftoff.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said the six-hour move had been scheduled for Saturday but that was changed due to a forecast of potentially severe weekend weather at the space center.
NASA said Endeavour was moved from Launch Pad 39B so workers could prepare for the Ares I-X test flight in 2009.
The next item on Endeavour's schedule is a launch dress rehearsal Monday through Wednesday. NASA said that test provides each shuttle crew with an opportunity to participate in various activities, including equipment familiarization and emergency training.
During Endeavour's 15-day mission, the shuttle's seven crew members will deliver supplies and equipment necessary to double the International Space Station crew size from three to six members and, during four spacewalks, they'll service the station's two Solar Alpha Rotary Joints that allow the ISS's solar arrays to track the sun.
Chris Ferguson will command Endeavour, with Eric Boe serving as its pilot. The STS-126 astronauts are Steve Bowen, Shane Kimbrough, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Donald Pettit and Sandra Magnus.
New cancer drug is called impressive
GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say an early trial of a multi-kinase inhibitor has shown impressive tumor shrinkage in patients with a hard-to-treat form of thyroid cancer.
Assistant Professor Pasi Janne of Harvard University Medical School and Professor Steven Sherman of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center said the encouraging results have put the drug's development on a fast track, prompting the accelerated initiation of a large phase III trial.
The compound, XL184, targets cell growth and migration, as well as angiogenesis (blood vessel growth).
The clinical trial that's been initiated will test XL184 with and without erlotinib (Tarceva), a drug used to treat non-small lung, pancreatic and other cancers. XL184 is also being studied in glioblastoma.
The research was presented Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland, during a symposium organized by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer, the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the American Association for Cancer Research.
Global warming produces new life form
MONTREAL, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- Canadian scientists say they've discovered global warming 55 million years ago produced a new form of life.
McGill University researchers, working at a dig in New Jersey, said they unearthed "giant" magnetofossils that were produced by microorganisms from the boundary of the Paleocene and Eocene epochs.
Magnetofossils are the fossilized remains of magnetic particles produced by magnetotatic bacteria -- bacteria that can orient themselves along the Earth's magnetic field lines.
Although the fossils are only about 4 microns long, they are about eight times larger than previously known magnetofossils, the researchers said.
"This is an entirely new class of organism that no one has reported before," said Professor Hojatollah Vali. He said the species lived during a period of abrupt global warming of about 5 degrees Celsius known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
"What's very interesting is we know the specific time frame when these organisms existed," he said. "If you go below it, we don't find them, and if you go above it, we don't find them. Five degrees warmer may not seem like much but there was much more iron available due to increased weathering. The additional iron is required for the microorganism to produce the giant magnetofossils. It is clear a similar abrupt global warming climatic event could have a severe impact upon our biosphere."
The study, which included researchers from the California Institute of Technology, the Curie Institute in Paris and Princeton University, appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists discover how antibiotic works
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Oct. 23 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've discovered how one highly effective antibiotic finds and destroys its targeted bacteria.
University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers said their finding might have great implications for combating antibiotic resistance and promoting antibiotic efficiency.
Specifically, Professor Dimitry Vassylyev and colleagues found the place on bacteria where an antibiotic called myxopyronin launches its attack, and why that attack is successful. They determined myxopyronin binds to and inhibits a crucial bacterial enzyme, RNA polymerase, that's used by all living organisms to transfer genetic instructions stored in DNA to messenger RNA. If RNA polymerase is not functioning properly, the bacteria die.
"Prior to this work, we knew myxopyronin killed bacteria, but we did not know the precise way it accomplished this task," Vassylyev said. "Now we know it binds with RNA polymerase at a specific segment and by doing so, it prevents the bacteria from reproducing. This tells us a great deal about how the antibiotic works, but tells us even more about the workings of RNA polymerase."
The study that included researchers at Ohio State University, New York University and Anadys Pharmaceuticals Inc. appears in the online issue of the journal Nature.
