Soyuz spacecraft is headed toward the ISS
HOUSTON, May 27 (UPI) -- A Soyuz spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday, en route to an historic linkup with the International Space Station.
The Soyuz spacecraft's docking will mark the first time the space station will have a six-member crew, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency said.
Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk and ESA astronaut Frank De Winne will join the three ISS crewmembers already at the station -- Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, NASA astronaut Michael Barratt and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.
The Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft, which was launched at 6:34 a.m. EDT, is scheduled to dock with the space station at 8:36 a.m. EDT Friday. That will also mark the first time all five partner space agencies will be represented aboard the station, NASA said.
For the first four months of his six-month mission, De Winne will be a member of the Expedition 20 crew, serving as a flight engineer reporting to Expedition 20 commander Padalka, the ESA said. During an October ceremony, De Winne will become commander of the Expedition 21 crew until his return to Earth in November. He will be the first European to command the ISS.
Diabetes drug may aid multiple sclerosis
CHICAGO, May 27 (UPI) -- U.S. medical researchers say they've found a drug used to treat diabetes shows protective effects in the brains of some multiple sclerosis patients.
Researchers at the University of Illinois-Chicago College of Medicine say they conducted a small, double-blind clinical trial involving patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis. The patients were assigned to take pioglitazone -- a type 2 diabetes drug commercially known as Actos -- or a placebo. Patients continued their normal course of therapy during the trial.
The scientists said patients taking pioglitazone showed significantly less loss of gray matter during the course of the one-year trial than patients taking placebo. Of the 21 patients who finished the study, patients taking pioglitazone had no adverse reactions.
"This is very encouraging," said Professor Douglas Feinstein. "Gray matter in the brain is the part that is rich in neurons. These preliminary results suggest the drug has important effects on neuronal survival."
The scientists also tested pioglitazone in an animal model of MS and found the drug "can significantly reduce the clinical signs in mice with an MS-type disease," said Feinstein.
"More importantly, when mice who are already ill are treated with pioglitazone, the clinical signs of the disease go away," he said.
The study is reported in the online edition of the Journal of Neuroimmunology.
Ice melting more threatening than believed
BOULDER, Colo., May 27 (UPI) -- Scientists say the ongoing melting of the Greenland ice sheet might drive more water than previously thought toward the U.S. and Canadian coastlines.
Scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research said if Greenland's ice melts at a moderate to high rate, ocean circulation by 2100 could shift, raising sea levels at New York, Boston, Halifax and other cities in the northeastern United States and Canada about 12-20 inches more than in other coastal areas.
The research builds on recent reports that found that sea level rise associated with global warming could adversely affect North America, and its findings suggest that the situation is more threatening than previously believed.
"If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant impacts this century on the northeast U.S. coast from the resulting sea level rise," NCAR scientist Aixue Hu, the lead author, said. "Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise."
The new research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and by the National Science Foundation. It was conducted by scientists at NCAR, the University of Colorado-Boulder and Florida State University.
The study will be published Friday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
New therapy created for muscular dystrophy
MINNEAPOLIS, May 27 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists say they've developed a new therapy for Duchenne musclar dystrophy, a fatal disease and the most common form of MD in children.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School, using a mouse model, said they were able to substitute for the missing protein dystrophin, which forms a key part of the framework that holds muscle tissue together.
The scientists injected dystrophic mice with a protein called utrophin -- a close relative of dystrophin -- that was modified with a cell-penetrating tag, called TAT.
The researchers said their study is the first to establish the efficacy and feasibility of the TAT-utrophin-based protein as a viable therapy for the treatment of muscular dystrophy, as well as cardiac muscle diseases caused by loss of dystrophin.
"This unique approach can replace the missing protein without the complexities of gene replacement or stem cell approaches," Professor James Ervasti, who led the research, said.
The findings appear in the journal PLoS Medicine.
