Atlantis begins its 11-day Hubble mission
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., May 11 (UPI) -- Space shuttle Atlantis lifted off Monday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, en route to provide the final servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Veteran astronaut Scott Altman commands the STS-125 mission, with retired Navy Capt. Gregory Johnson serving as pilot. The crew also includes veteran spacewalkers John Grunsfeld and Mike Massimino, and first-time space fliers Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur.
During the 11-day mission the National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronauts will perform five spacewalks, installing two new instruments, repairing two inactive ones and making component replacements that will keep the telescope functioning until at least 2014.
The servicing mission, the fifth, is designed to update Hubble, which has been in operation for 19 years. NASA said Hubble, after it is upgraded, will be 100 times as powerful as it was when it went into orbit in April 1990.
Avastin approved for brain cancer therapy
WASHINGTON, May 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Avastin (bevacizumab) to treat patients with glioblastoma multiforme -- a form of brain cancer.
"GBM is a rapidly progressing cancer that invades brain tissue and can impact physical activities and mental abilities," the FDA said. "It affects about 6,700 persons in the United States every year."
Following initial treatment with surgery, radiation, and/or chemotherapy, the cancer nearly always returns, the agency said.
"This type of cancer is very resistant to therapy and thus challenging to treat," said Dr. Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA's Office of Oncology Drug Products. "Avastin provides a therapy for patients with progressive GBM who have not responded to other medications."
The FDA first approved Avastin in 2004 to treat metastatic cancer of the colon or rectum. It has since been approved for treatment of non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer and metastatic breast cancer.
Avastin is manufactured by Genentech Inc. of San Francisco.
Neutron star crusts: Stronger than steel
BLOOMINGTON, Ind., May 11 (UPI) -- U.S. physicists say they've determined the crusts of neutron stars are 10 billion times stronger than steel or any other metal alloy found on Earth.
The scientists said a neutron star is a star that collapsed when its core ceased nuclear fusion. Exhibiting extreme gravity while rotating as fast as 700 times per second, a teaspoonful of neutron star matter would weight about 100 million tons, the researchers said.
Indiana University Professor Charles Horowitz and colleagues conducted large-scale molecular dynamics computer simulations at the university and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to reach their conclusion.
"We modeled a small region of the neutron star crust by following the individual motions of up to 12 million particles," Horowitz said. "We then calculated how the crust deforms and eventually breaks under the extreme weight of a neutron star mountain."
The work, performed on a large computer cluster at the national laboratory, identified a neutron star crust that far exceeded the strength of any material known on Earth.
Horowitz said the crust could be so strong as to be able to elicit gravitational waves that could not only limit the spin periods of some stars, but that could also be detected by high-resolution telescopes called interferometers.
The research appears in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Study: Drug-eluting stents more effective
NEW YORK, May 11 (UPI) -- A U.S. study has determined drug-eluting stents are more effective than, and equally as safe as, bare-metal stents.
The study, called the largest randomized comparison of drug-eluting and bare metal stents ever conducted, was performed by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation.
The scientists said their landmark study comparing safety and efficacy of the two kinds of stents showed that in heart attack patients undergoing angioplasty, the use of paclitaxed-eluting stents reduced the rates of target lesion revascularization and binary angiographic restenosis when compared with the use of bare metal stents after one year.
The research, led by Dr. Gregg Stone, is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
