UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

NASA to honor Astronaut James Lovell

WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says it will honor astronaut James Lovell Jr. for his contributions to the U.S. space program.

Lovell, 81, will be presented with an Ambassador of Exploration Award during a Friday ceremony at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum in Lexington Park, Md. He will then present the award to the museum, which will put it on display.

NASA is presenting Ambassador of Exploration Awards to the first generation of explorers in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs for realizing America's goal of going to the moon. The award is a moon rock encased in Lucite, mounted for public display. NASA said the rock is part of the 842 pounds of lunar samples collected during six Apollo expeditions from 1969 to 1972.

Lovell, born in Cleveland and raised in Milwaukee, was the pilot for the Gemini 7 mission and the command pilot for Gemini 12. He and fellow crewmen Frank Borman and William Anders were the first humans to leave Earth and travel to the moon during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. On Lovell's fourth mission, he was the commander of Apollo 13.

Biographical information about Lovell is available at http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/lovell-ja.html.

Cancer metastasis protein is discovered

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., March 31 (UPI) -- U.S. cancer researchers say they've identified a molecule known as protein kinase D1 that is key to enabling a tumor cell to metastasize.

Mayo Clinic scientists in Florida say the finding may lead to a technique that can stop cancer from spreading elsewhere in the body -- the process that most often leads to death.

The researchers, led by cancer biologist Peter Storz, found that if PKD1 is active, tumor cells cannot move, a finding they say explains why PKD1 is silenced in some invasive cancers.

Storz's team has been investigating a process known as actin remodeling at the leading edge -- the most forward point -- of such migrating tumor cells.

"The events that reorganize the actin cytoskeleton at the leading edge are complex -- a multitude of molecules act in concert," Storz said. "But it appears that PKD1 must be turned off if cancer cells are to migrate.

"Now that we have identified PKD1 as key regulator in processes regulating actin-based directed tumor cell movement, we can begin to think about designing treatments to stop invasive cancer cells from metastasizing," he added. "The basic mechanisms we have uncovered are key to developing those strategies."

The study appears in the online edition of the journal Nature Cell Biology.

World's largest laser built in California

LIVERMORE, Calif., March 31 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Energy says the National Nuclear Security Administration has certified the completion of the world's largest laser.

Located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility in California, the laser is expected to allow scientists to achieve fusion ignition in the laboratory, obtaining more energy from the target than is provided by the laser.

"Completion of the National Ignition Facility is a true milestone that will make America safer and more energy independent by opening new avenues of scientific advancement and discovery," said NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino. "NIF will be a cornerstone of a critical national security mission, ensuring the continuing reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile without underground nuclear testing, while also providing a path to explore the frontiers of basic science and potential technologies for energy independence."

The Energy Department said the stadium-sized NIF is capable of focusing all of its 192 individual beams onto a spot about two-hundredths of an inch in diameter at the center of its 32-foot diameter target chamber in billionths of a second.

Slow-growing TB bacteria is discovered

LONDON, March 31 (UPI) -- British medical scientists say the discovery of a large number of slow-growing Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria might lead to new anti-TB drugs.

Until now it was thought that M. tuberculosis bacteria in the lungs of TB patients were rapidly multiplying. However recent research by Simon Waddell and colleagues from St George's University of London and the University of Leicester revealed the tuberculosis bacteria in the sputum of TB patients resemble bacteria that are growing very slowly or hardly at all.

Waddell said that has caused concern, since slowly growing bacteria are non-responsive to treatment with isoniazid, one of the main antibiotics used to treat TB. The researchers said their findings might explain why it takes six months to treat pulmonary TB, while most bacterial infections are treated in days.

Waddell presented the study Monday in Harrogate, England, during a meeting of the Society for General Microbiology.