UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

NASA releases unique view of the Milky Way

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency released a never-before-seen view of the center of the Milky Way galaxy Tuesday in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy.

NASA said the composite image commemorates the 400 years since Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens in 1609.

The image was distributed to more than 150 planetariums, museums, nature centers, libraries and schools across the nation.

"Each site will unveil a giant, 6-foot-by-3-foot print of the bustling hub of our galaxy that combines a near-infrared view from the Hubble Space Telescope, an infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and an X-ray view from the Chandra X-ray Observatory into one multi-wavelength picture," NASA said.

Officials said experts from the three observatories assembled the final image from large mosaic photo surveys taken by each telescope. NASA scientists said the composite provides "one of the most detailed views ever of our galaxy's mysterious core."

The project is a collaboration of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; the Spitzer Science Center in Pasadena, Calif.; and the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

The composite image is available at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/spitzer-20091110a.html.

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Higher carotid stenting, poorer outcomes

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers link increased use of carotid arterial stenting to poorer outcomes such as heart attack and stroke.

The study, published in the Journal of Vascular Surgery, associated carotid arterial stenting -- a procedure treating the narrowed neck artery to increase blood flow to the head -- to higher death rates and adverse clinical outcomes, including heart attack and stroke.

The researchers attribute worsened clinical outcomes to the greater number of procedures done -- going from 266 to 1,015 per month after the procedure was covered by Medicare in 2005.

Lead author Dr. Peter Groeneveld of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine said carotid arterial stenting is often the only option for patients who are not healthy enough to undergo surgery. However, the state of health of the patients may inevitably affect clinical outcomes from the procedure, Groeneveld said.

"Nevertheless, stenting should remain a viable and effective treatment option that doctors and patients consider judiciously," Groeneveld said in a statement.

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Antarctic glacial ice loss unprecedented

HOUSTON, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. and British scientists say the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice on the Antarctic Peninsula is unprecedented.

"At no time during the last 14,000 years was there a period of climate warming and loss of ice as large and regionally synchronous as that we are now witnessing in the Antarctic Peninsula," said Steve Bohaty of Britain's National Oceanography Center.

Bohaty said the findings are based on a detailed analysis of the thickest Holocene sediment core yet drilled in the Antarctic Peninsula.

As part of a 2005 research cruise aboard a U.S. icebreaker, he and his colleagues drilled through sediments to bedrock at Maxwell Bay, a fjord at the Antarctic Peninsula's northwest tip.

The scientists determined there was a period of rapid glacial retreat about 10,000 years ago, followed by reduced sea-ice cover and warm water conditions between 8,200 and 5,900 years ago. But the researchers said an important finding of the study is that the mid-Holocene warming interval does not appear to have occurred synchronously throughout the region, and its timing and duration was most likely influenced at different sites by local oceanographic controls, as well as physical geography.

Following the warming interval, the climate gradually cooled during approximately the next 3,000 years or so, resulting in more extensive sea-ice cover in the bay

The core also showed the Antarctic Peninsula area has been warming during the last 50 years, with increased rainfall and a widespread retreat of glaciers.

The study that included scientists from Rice University, the University of Houston and Vermont's Middleburg College appears in the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

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Study finds how to stop some cancer growth

COLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y., Nov. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they might have found a way to stop the growth of certain aggressive tumors for which there are currently no treatments.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory researchers in New York say more than half of human cancers have mutations that disable a gene called p53. When cells lose that gene, tumors grow aggressively. But a research team led by Associate Professor Alea Mills says it's discovered a way of stopping the growth of such cancers.

The scientists said their technique involves turning up the production of TAp63 proteins, which make up one class of proteins produced by the p63 gene. The TAp63 proteins completely blocked tumor initiation by inducing senescence, a state of growth arrest in which tumor cells are still metabolically alive, but fail to divide.

The scientists said they also discovered that by increasing the levels of TAp63 in cells that did not have p53, they blocked the progression of established tumors in mice.

"We were very excited to see that TAp63 shuts down cancer completely independently of p53," Mills said. "This means that we now have a way of attacking cancers that have damaged p53, which are very difficult to treat in the clinic."

The study appears in the journal Nature Cell Biology.