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Hubble spacewalkers complete all tasks

HOUSTON, May 18 (UPI) -- The fifth and final U.S. spacewalk to repair and refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope was completed Monday with all goals of the mission accomplished.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel, among other things, installed new protective thermal insulation panels on the telescope's three bay doors and replaced one of the telescope's fine guidance sensors that provide pointing information, as well as determining precise position and motion of stars.

The fifth and final planned Hubble repair spacewalk began at 8:20 a.m. EDT and ended at 3:22 p.m.

After completing their scheduled tasks, the astronauts cleaned up the space shuttle Atlantis payload bay in which Hubble was tethered and where the work was performed. They then closed the space telescope for what's expected to be the last time.

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The work performed during the mission was designed to allow the space telescope to continue working to at least 2014, It was to be placed back into orbit Tuesday.

NASA said Hubble' science observations are expected to resume approximately three weeks after the shuttle departs.

Before ending the 7-hour and 2-minute spacewalk, Grunsfeld said: "This is a really tremendous adventure that we've been on, a very challenging mission. Hubble isn't just a satellite -- it's about humanity's quest for knowledge."


Certain gene defects lead to breast cancer

CHAPEL HILL, N.C., May 18 (UPI) -- U.S. cancer researchers say they've determined that defects in a specific gene might eventually lead to breast cancer.

Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said cancer is a disease of runaway cell proliferation. Normally, a variety of genes coordinate to keep cell growth under control and on track, but if a gene goes awry another can compensate to keep cancer from developing.

However, in the case of a gene called p18, the scientists discovered its defects can override other gene's attempts at compensation.

"This gene is an inhibitor of cell proliferation -- essentially, it is the brakes that keeps the cell from growing out of control," Professor Yue Xiong said. "If the brakes aren't working, the cell will not be able to stop when it needs to and instead will continue to grow and divide until it turns into cancer."

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The study that included Associate Professor Charles Perou and researchers Xin-Hai Pei, Dr Feng Bai, Matthew Smith, Jerry Usary and Cheng Fan is reported in the journal Cancer Cell.


Spitzer Space Telescope is out of coolant

PASADENA, Calif., May 18 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says its Spitzer Space Telescope is out of the coolant used to chill its infrared instruments and has entered a warm mode of operation.

After more than five years of searching the cosmos, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration says Spitzer will warm up slightly, with only two of its infrared detector arrays operating.

Spitzer ran out of its liquid helium coolant at 6:11 p.m. EDT Friday. Scientists and engineers will spend the next few weeks recalibrating the instrument for warm-mode operation.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer mission, with science operations conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology.


Device continuously monitors cancer growth

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 18 (UPI) -- A Massachusetts Institute of Technology team says it has created the first implantable device that can continuously monitor cancer growth.

Surgical removal of a tissue sample, a procedure known as a biopsy, is now the standard for diagnosing cancer. But biopsies only offer a snapshot of the tumor at a single moment in time.

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MIT Professor Michael Cima led the team in developing the device that can monitor a tumor for weeks or months after the biopsy.

The scientists said the implants could one day provide up-to-the-minute information about what a tumor is doing -- whether it is growing or shrinking, how it's responding to treatment and whether it has metastasized or is about to do so.

"What this does is basically take the lab and put it in the patient," said Cima, who conducted the experiments using a mouse model.

He said the devices, which could be implanted at the time of biopsy, could also be tailored to monitor chemotherapy agents, allowing doctors to determine whether cancer drugs are reaching the tumors.

"This is one of the tools we're going to need if we're going to turn cancer from a death sentence to a manageable disease," Cima said.

The work was described in a paper published online last month in the journal Biosensors & Bioelectronics.

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