UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander becomes silent

PASADENA, Calif., Nov. 10 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says its Phoenix Mars Lander has ceased communications after operating for more than five months -- two more than planned.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot's arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight to charge batteries that operate the lander's instruments.

"The project team will be listening carefully during the next few weeks to hear if Phoenix revives and phones home," NASA said in a statement. "However, engineers now believe that is unlikely because of the worsening weather conditions on Mars."

While the spacecraft's work has ended, the analysis of data from the instruments is only in its earliest stages.

"Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I'm confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed May 25, 2008.

"Phoenix not only met the tremendous challenge of landing safely, it accomplished scientific investigations on 149 of its 152 Martian days as a result of dedicated work by a talented team," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

New rheumatoid arthritis therapy proposed

NEW YORK, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- A U.S.-led international group of scientists has identified a potential therapeutic target to treat inflammatory disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Researchers at the Hospital for Special Surgery said their finding reveals two molecular pathways, the Notch and Toll-like receptor pathways, are linked and that manipulating a protein called RBP-J involved in both pathways, could serve as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

"This is a basic science (paper) with translational and clinical implications, as it identifies a potential new therapeutic target in the treatment of inflammatory disorders," said Dr. Lionel Ivashkiv, the hospital's director of basic research.

"Before this study, we knew that the Notch pathway was important in development and that the Toll-like receptor pathways were important in acute inflammation, and now we know that those two things are linked in acute inflammation and cytokine production," said Ivashkiv.

The work that included Dr. Xiaoyu Hu, Allen Chung, Jong Dae Ji and Indira Wu, as well as scientists from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Japan's Kyoto University, the Scripps Research Institute and Germany's University of Wurzburg is to appear in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Immunity.

The search for dark matter might soon end

MUNICH, Germany, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- A German-led consortium of scientists says the search for the mysterious substance known as dark matter could soon end.

The researchers say dark matter is believed to account for 85 percent of the universe's mass but has remained invisible to telescopes since scientists, more than 75 years ago, inferred its existence from its gravitational effects.

Now the Virgo Consortium has used a massive computer simulation of the evolution of a galaxy to "see" gamma rays given off by dark matter.

The scientists say their findings could help the in the search for dark matter and open a new chapter in the understanding of the universe.

The Virgo research involves scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, the University of Victoria in Canada, the University of Massachusetts and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Volker Springel of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics led the computer simulations which took 3.5 million processor hours to complete.

"This calculation has redefined the state of the art in cosmological simulations," said Springel. "At times I thought it would never end."

The study is reported in the journal Nature.

Study links genes to brain aneurysms

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Nov. 10 (UPI) -- A U.S.-led team of scientists has found three chromosome segments, or loci, where common genetic variations can create a significant risk of brain aneurysms.

Yale University medical scientists said their finding represents a large step toward unraveling the mysteries of brain aneurysms, the often fatal rupturing of blood vessels that afflicts 500,000 people worldwide each year and nearly killed U.S. Vice President-elect Joe Biden two decades ago.

The international team led by Dr. Murat Gunel and Dr. Richard Lifton scanned the genomes of more than 2,000 people suffering intracranial aneurysms along with 8,000 healthy subjects. The subjects were from hospitals in Finland, the Netherlands and Japan, and the results were similar in all groups, indicating the variations increase risk among diverse human populations.

"Even though we have made significant strides in treating unruptured aneurysms, until now we have not had an effective means of identifying the majority of individuals at risk of developing this deadly problem," said Gunel. "These genetic findings provide a starting point for changing that equation."

The research that included Kaya Bilguvar, Shrikant Mane, Christopher Mason, Murim Choi, Emilia Gaal, Yasa Bayri, Luis Kobl, Zulfikar Arlier, Sudhakar Ravuri and Matthew State appears online in the journal Nature Genetics.