After months of delay, NASA’s shuttle Atlantis blasted off from the agency’s Florida spaceport Friday in a flawless liftoff, kicking off an 11-day construction flight for seven astronauts bound for the International Space Station (ISS).
Launch occurred on time at 7:38:04 p.m. EDT (2338:04 GMT), as daylight waned here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Storm clouds hovering around the launch facility in the days leading up to launch were hustled inland by sea winds in time for liftoff, just as forecasters predicted, SPACE.com says.
Riding spaceward aboard Atlantis were the seven astronauts of NASA’s STS-117 crew , who have weathered three months of delays to launch their ISS construction mission. The crew is tasked with delivering and installing two massive truss segments and a pair of power-generating solar arrays to the space station’s starboard side.
The launch of Atlantis’ STS-117 mission marks a late start for NASA’s first shuttle mission of 2007, the first of up to four planned for this year.
In late February, a freak hailstorm left thousands defects in the foam insulation of the shuttle’s external fuel tank, forcing the agency to delay the planned March 15 launch for repairs and to decrease the number of planned launches this year from five to four. But the weather seemed to clear Friday, with even late-breaking fog and rain showers at a pair of emergency shuttle landing sites overseas also easing in time for the space shot.
Atlantis is scheduled to dock with the space station at 3:36 pm EDT (1936 GMT) on Sunday, June 10.
Once there, the shuttle astronauts plan to perform at least three spacewalks to install the 17.5-ton Starboard 3/Starboard 4 truss segments and their two solar wings.
Spacewalkers Robert Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang from last December’s STS-116 mission ran into unexpected difficulties while performing a similar retraction maneuver on another pair of solar arrays. The wings got stuck during mid-furl and guide wires had to be coaxed free with tape-covered pliers and other tools before folding away completely.
Friday’s successful space shot marked the 118th launch of a NASA space shuttle and the 28th liftoff of the Atlantis orbiter. It is NASA’s 21st shuttle flight to the ISS.

Scientists working to build a life form from scratch have applied to patent the broad method they plan to use to create their “synthetic organism“.
Dr Craig Venter, the man who led the private sector effort to sequence the human genome, has been working for years to create a man-made organism.
But constructing a primitive microbe from a kit of genes is a daunting task.
Dr Venter says, eventually, these life forms could be designed to make biofuels and absorb greenhouse gases, BBC reported.
The publication of the patent application has angered some environmentalists.
The Canada-based ETC group, which monitors developments in biotechnology, called on patent offices to reject applications on synthetic life forms.
The J Craig Venter Institute’s US patent application claims exclusive ownership of a set of essential genes and a synthetic ’free-living’ organism--that can grow and replicate-- made using those genes.
It has also filed an international application at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which names more than 100 countries where the institute may seek monopoly patents.
Dr Venter’s team intends to construct an organism with a “minimal genome“ that can then be inserted into the shell of a bacterium.
Scientists around the world have been wrestling with the task of generating a so-called free-living synthetic organism for years.
Dr Venter maintains that artificial life forms could produce solutions to global problems such as green sources of fuel and climate change.
The effort could result in “designer microbes“ that produce biofuels such as ethanol, and hydrogen.
They could also be engineered to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Dr Venter first announced that scientists were working on creating synthetic life forms at a conference in California in 1999.

Solar-powered cell phones can be charged by all sources of light.

A well-known Chinese telecommunication products supplier claims to have produced the world’s first solar-powered cell phone.
Setting the phone out in the sun for one hour will provide users with 40 minutes of talk time, however, the phone can also be charged by using other sources of light, including candles, China Daily says.
The phone is a clamshell shaped design and features scale-like solar panels on the top side of the phone, which allows the phone to recharge its battery.
The company says that they have developed the most advanced solar power technology, and own eight patents and have applied for numerous others. Other companies around the world are working on similar products, however, they are still in experimental stages.
China has more than 400 million mobile phones in use within the country, so anything that could be done to reduce the amount of electricity needed to supply them (amongst other things) would be very beneficial.
The company plans to make six of its light energy cell phones on the market this year, and another 30 phones next year.

Child-Robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, looks at Shuhei Ikemoto, a university student, when its hand is clasped by him.

Japanese scientists have developed a robot that acts like a toddler to better understand child development. according to AP, the Child-Robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, was developed by a team of researchers at Osaka University in western Japan and is designed to move just like a real child between 1 and 3 years old.
CB2, at just over 4 feet tall and weighing 73 pounds, changes facial expressions and can rock back and forth.
The robot’s movements are smooth as it is fitted with 56 actuators in lieu of muscle. It has 197 sensors for touch, small cameras working as eyes, and an audio sensor. CB2 can also speak using an artificial vocal cord.
When it stands up supported by a person, the robot wobbles like a child who is learning how to walk.
Minoru Asada, a professor at Osaka University who leads the project for the Japan Science and Technology Agency said the robot was developed to learn more about child development.
“Our goal is to study human recognition development such as how the child learns a language, recognizes objects and learns to communicate with his father and mother,“ he said.

The male hormone-suppressing treatment used against aggressive prostate cancer may help bring on earlier heart attacks in older men, new research suggests.
“The new finding is that in men who have risk factors for heart attack, even six months of androgen-suppression therapy and maybe as little as three months, can cause a heart attack to occur sooner by about 2.5 years,“ said lead researcher Dr. Anthony D’Amico, chief of genitourinary radiation oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
That finding, which comes from analysis of pooled data of studies in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, does not mean that such men should not be treated to suppress the activity of androgens--male sex hormones that spur the growth of prostate cancer cells, D’Amico told HealthDay News.
Instead, “the implication is that a man who needs hormonal therapy to avoid dying from cancer but also has risk factors for heart attack should be sent to a cardiologist for assessment and possible treatment of heart disease before starting hormonal therapy,“ he said.
“ The findings are published in the June 10 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Androgen suppression therapy (AST), as it is formally called, is reserved for men whose cancer is believed to have spread beyond the prostate or who have an aggressive form that is believed to have spread--something that occurs in perhaps 40 percent of cases, D’Amico said.
Other side effects of AST are well-known. It can cause anemia, increase body fat, reduce muscle and cause an increase in harmful bad cholesterol and a decrease in good cholesterol. But AST is also widely used, because it extends prostate cancer survival.
The new information on the treatment’s adverse cardiac effects comes from analysis of data from 1,372 men who received radiation treatment plus AST in three randomized trials and who were followed for at least five years.
But AST will continue to be used in many cases, he added. “There is clearly a group of men where the benefits outweigh the risks,“ he said.
Other efforts to get the best effect from AST while minimizing the damage are under way, D’Amico said. One method under study is to stop the treatment now and then.

Blocking receptors involved in aging increased the lifespan of fruit flies by a third.

In a triumph for pests, scientists have figured out how to make the fruit fly live longer and humans may get something out of the deal. As reported online in Nature Chemical Biology, the discovery that a single protein can inhibit aging holds implications for human longevity and for treatment of some of the world’s most feared diseases.
“This work is important for two reasons,“ said study author Richard Roberts, associate professor of chemistry, chemical engineering and biology at the University of Southern California.
First, it demonstrates that a single inhibitor can dramatically alter lifespan, a very complex trait. It is remarkable that you can alter it with a single genetic change.
“We don’t really need to make fruit flies live longer, but if we understand how to do this, our approach may have direct application to higher organisms, such as ourselves.“
Secondly, Roberts said, the method used by his research group to make the inhibiting proteins “opens the possibility of developing a lot of new therapeutics.“
The study describes a new method for blocking receptors involved in aging and disease across many species, including humans.
Flies with a blocked receptor saw their lives extended by a third, with no apparent side effects.
Why these particular peptides work, and why the receptor they target plays such an important role in fruit fly aging, remain the bigger and yet unanswered questions.

In a way, nanotubes are nature’s smallest candles. These tiny tubes are constructed from carbon atoms and they are so small that it takes about 100,000 laid side-by-side to span the width of a single human hair. In the last five years, scientists have discovered that some individual nanotubes are fluorescent.
That is, they glow when they are bathed in light. Some glow brightly. Others glow dimly. Some glow in spots. Others glow all over.
Until now, PhysOrg.com says, this property has been largely academic. But researchers from the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (VINSE) have removed an obstacle that has restricted fluorescent nanotubes from a variety of medical applications, including anti-cancer treatments.
“Nanotubes have a number of characteristics that make them particularly suitable for use as contrast agents in cells and tissues,“ says Tobias Hertel, the associate professor of physics who headed the research. “Now that we know how to separate out the brightest ones, I hope that researchers will begin considering ways to use them in clinical applications.“
Hertel’s team discovered that if they remove the most buoyant layer from the centrifuge, let it set for a while and then put it back in the ultracentrifuge for another 12 hours, the liquid separates into a number of distinct layers. The topmost layer has a purple color and, when analyzed, proves to contain a surprisingly uniform population of the brightest nanotubes.
Nanotube fluorescence is extremely stable and can last for months. Fluorescent proteins--widely used for imaging living systems--begin fading within a few hours. Quantum dots last several days before degrading.
Hertel’s team is currently working on the next step necessary for many biomedical uses: finding a way to attach molecules to the surface of the nanotubes that will allow them to bind to specific biological targets. The trick is to do so without dimming or extinguishing the nanotubes’ delicate fluorescence.
An example of the possible medical applications of nanotube fluorescence is a collaboration that Hertel and Associate Professor of Biomedical Research Duco Jansen are planning. Jansen has been pursuing research that uses gold nanoclusters to burn away cancer cells. He has developed a selective method for attaching the gold clusters to the surface of tumors and then exposing them to wavelengths of light that cause them to grow hot enough to destroy nearby cells.

An ultra-thin electrode planted in the auditory nerve of the ear may one day offer a superior alternative to cochlear implants for the deaf, researchers say.
According to UPI, a tiny array placed in the auditory nerve of cats transmitted a wide range of sounds to the brain, studies at the University of Michigan’s Kresge Hearing Research Institute found.
The promising implant could allow deaf people to converse in a noisy room, identify high and low voices, and appreciate music--areas where cochlea implants are limited.
“In nearly every measure, these work better than cochlear implants,“ said U-M researcher John C. Middlebrooks.
The possible auditory nerve implants would be of interest to the same people who are candidates today for cochlear implants, the profoundly deaf who can’t hear at all, and the severely deaf whose hearing ability is greatly reduced, Middlebrooks said.
Studies of the electrodes in humans are about five to 10 years away, he said.

Before life emerged on earth, either a primitive kind of metabolism or an RNA-like duplicating machinery must have set the stage--so experts believe. But what preceded these pre-life steps?
A pair of UCSF scientists has developed a model explaining how simple chemical and physical processes may have laid the foundation for life, PhysOrg.com reported.
Like all useful models, theirs can be tested, and they describe how this can be done. Their model is based on simple, well-known chemical and physical laws.
The work appears online this week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The basic idea is that simple principles of chemical interactions allow for a kind of natural selection on a micro scale: enzymes can cooperate and compete with each other in simple ways, leading to arrangements that can become stable, or “locked in,“ says Ken Dill, PhD, senior author of the paper and professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF.
Like these more obvious processes, the chemical interactions in the model involve competition, cooperation, innovation and a preference for consistency, they say.
The model focuses on enzymes that function as catalysts--compounds that greatly speed up a reaction without themselves being changed in the process. Catalysts are very common in living systems as well as industrial processes.
“A major question about life’s origins is how chemicals, which have no self-interest, became ’biological’--driven to evolve by natural selection,“ he says. “This simple model shows a plausible route to this type of complexity.“ Dill is also a professor of biophysics and associate dean of research in the UCSF School of Pharmacy. He is a faculty affiliate at QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, headquartered at UCSF.