WISE spacecraft is launched successfully
VANDENBURG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., Dec. 14 (UPI) -- NASA's newest spacecraft lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Monday morning, ready to seek out previously undiscovered cosmic objects.
Space agency scientists said the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, named WISE, is on a mission to map the entire sky in infrared light using cutting-edge equipment designed to uncover hidden objects that include stars, asteroids and even galaxies.
WISE was launched at 9:09 a.m. EST Monday atop a Delta II rocket after two previous delays caused by a malfunctioning booster steering engine that was spotted during pre-launch testing Friday. The launch was then moved to Saturday, but finally space agency engineers decided to remove and replace the component.
WISE will circle Earth over its poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times during its nine-month-mission. After its first month in space, during which WISE's instruments will be calibrated, it will begin the task of surveying the whole sky, NASA said. That will take about six months, after which the spacecraft will begin to sweep the sky a second time, covering about one-half before its frozen coolant -- used to expedite the infrared photography -- is exhausted.
The mission's primary lifetime is expected to be about 10 months.
Personality judged by physical appearance
BERKELEY, Calif., Dec. 14 (UPI) -- People can accurately judge some aspects of a stranger's personality from looking at photographs, U.S. researchers suggest.
Study authors Laura P. Naumann of the University of California, Berkeley; Simine Vazire of Washington University in St. Louis; Peter J. Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge in England and Samuel D. Gosling of the University of Texas at Austin asked participants to assess the personalities of strangers first on a photograph posed to the researchers' specifications and then on a photograph posed the way the subject chose.
The participants' judgments were then compared with how the person and acquaintances rated that individual's personality.
The study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that while both poses provided participants with accurate cues about personality, the spontaneous pose showed more insight, including about the subject's agreeableness, emotional stability, openness, likability and loneliness.
"As we predicted, physical appearance serves as a channel through which personality is manifested," the authors said in a statement. "By using full-body photographs and examining a broad range of traits, we identified domains of accuracy that have been overlooked, leading to the conclusion that physical appearance may play a more important role in personality judgment than previously thought."
NASA creates Web site for teenagers
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says it has started a Web site that provides teenagers access to current NASA spacecraft data for use in school science projects.
Officials said the Web site -- Mission:Science -- also allows the students to conduct real experiments with NASA scientists, and helps them locate space-related summer internships.
"This site will allow teenagers, who have their own unique language and style, to get information faster and have fun at the same time," said Ruth Netting, manager of education and outreach activities in NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "NASA provides a vast amount of (science, technology, engineering and math) information online for students of all ages, but this Web site boosts the content available for this age group."
The site also features social networking tools, links to enter science contests or participate in a family science night, information about college research programs, and an array of NASA images, animation, videos and podcasts.
The new Web site is available at http://missionscience.nasa.gov.
Therapy may reverse sickle cell disease
BALTIMORE, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. medical researchers say preliminary results of a new study suggest "mini" stem cell transplants might safely reverse sickle cell disease in adults.
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University said their study involved 10 patients with severe sickle cell disease who received intravenous transplants of blood-forming stem cells. The transplanted stem cells came from the peripheral blood of healthy related donors matched to the patients' tissue types.
Using that procedure, nine of the 10 patients -- ranging in age from 16 to 45 -- now have normal red blood cells and reversal of organ damage caused by the disease.
Dr. Jonathan Powell, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, said the intravenous transplant approach for sickle cell disease does not replace the defective gene, but transplants blood stem cells that carry the normal gene.
Powell said side effects, including low white blood cell counts, were few and very mild compared with conventional bone marrow transplantation. In nine of the 10 patients, donor cells now co-exist with the patients' own cells. One patient was not able to maintain the transplanted cells long term.
The phase I/II study to establish the safety of the procedure was reported in the Dec. 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
