UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

NASA: Astronauts busy aboard the ISS

HOUSTON, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have begun a week's work of joint operations that will include three spacewalks, NASA said.

Space shuttle Discovery docked with the space station at 8:54 p.m. EDT Saturday, delivering more than seven tons of cargo and a new crew member for the station and its Expedition 20 crew.

The space agency said the astronauts will, among other things, transfer 15,000 pounds of supplies to sustain the six-person crew on the station.

NASA said the astronauts Monday were to transfer the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module from Discovery's payload bay to the station's Harmony node.

Astronauts Nicole Stott and Tom Kopra swapped duties after the docking, with Stott handling flight engineer responsibilities aboard the station until her return home aboard space shuttle Atlantis during its STS-129 mission in November. Kopra is to return aboard Discovery Sept. 10 after 57 days in space.

The docking marked only the second time in history 13 people are on one spacecraft -- seven STS-128 astronauts and six Expedition 20 crew members -- and only the second time two European Space Agency astronauts -- Christer Fuglesang of Sweden and Frank De Winne of Belgium -- were on board the ISS.

The ESA said Fuglesang, during his first space trip in December 2006, was welcomed to the orbital outpost by Thomas Reiter of Germany -- the first ESA astronaut to be a member of an ISS Expedition crew.

Diarrheal bacterial linked to colon cancer

BALTIMORE, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers, in studies involving mice, link a diarrhea-causing bacteria to a type of colon cancer.

Study leader Dr. Cynthia Sears of The John Hopkins University School of Medicine says strains of this common bacteria -- Bacteroides fragilis -- sometimes trick immune system cells into allowing colon tissue to be continuously inflamed and may set the stage for malignancy.

"This could be the H. pylori of colon cancer," Sears says in a statement.

H.pylori is a bacteria known to cause stomach ulcers and is suspected of causing the majority of stomach cancers, she said. The studies in mice suggest Bacteroides fragilis may use tissue inflammation to cause colon cancer in a similar way that H. pylori causes stomach tumors, the study says.

Sears says enterotoxigenic bacterium -- germs widely known to cause diarrhea in children and adults -- have been linked in a previous study in Turkey to 40 percent of colon cancers. These bacteria can colonize in the gut causing no symptoms in some people, while diarrhea and colon inflammation linked to cancer growth develops in other people.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Medicine.

IBM scientists image molecule structure

ZURICH, Switzerland, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- IBM scientists in Switzerland say they've become the first researchers to obtain a high resolution image of the chemical structure of an individual molecule.

The scientists said they achieved the unprecedented resolution using non-contact atomic force microscopy, marking a milestone in surface microscopy and advancing exploration of electronic building blocks on the ultimate atomic and molecular scale.

Although progress has been made in the characterization of nanostructures on the atomic scale with atomic force microscopy, the scientists said imaging the chemical structure of an entire molecule has never been achieved with atomic resolution.

IBM scientists Leo Gross, Fabian Mohn, Nikolaj Moll and Gerhard Meyer, in collaboration with Peter Liljeroth of Utrecht University, used an atomic force microscope in an ultrahigh vacuum and at very low temperatures to capture individual hydrocarbon molecules. The scientists said they were able to look through the electron cloud and see the atomic backbone of an individual molecule for the first time.

"Scanning probe techniques offer amazing potential for building prototypes of complex functional structures and for tailoring and studying their electronic and chemical properties on the atomic scale," said Meyer, who leads the scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopy at IBM research facilities in Zurich, Switzerland.

The researchers said their findings, reported in Science magazine, will open new possibilities for investigating how charge propagates through molecules or molecular networks.

Study may lead to new obesity therapies

ORLANDO, Fla., Aug. 31 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say their discovery of a genetic mechanism that controls the body's fat-building process could lead to new obesity and diabetes treatments.

University of Central Florida researchers, led by Pappachan Kolattukudy, dean of the university's Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, found a gene called MCPIP controls the development of fat cells. Until now, the scientists said a different protein has been universally accepted as the master controller of fat cell formation.

"Our research has shown that MCPIP is a regulator of fat cell formation and blood vessel formation that feeds the growing fat tissue," Kolattukudy said. "Therefore, a drug that can shut down its function can prevent obesity and the major inflammatory diseases resulting from obesity, including diabetes and cardiovascular diseases."

The findings are to be reported in the October issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. An advance version is now available online on the journal's Web site.