UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News
Posted on: Monday, 19 May 2008, 18:00 CDT
U.S. Jaguar supercomputer upgraded OAK RIDGE, Tenn., May 19 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Energy says upgrades to its Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jaguar supercomputer have more than doubled its performance.
Government scientists said the system recently completed various tests, running applications in climate science, quantum chemistry, combustion science, materials science, nanoscience, fusion science and astrophysics, as well as benchmarking applications that test supercomputing performance.
The Jaguar system, a Cray XT4, now uses more than 31,000 processing cores to deliver up to 263 trillion calculations a second, or 263 teraflops.
The Department of Energy's Leadership Computing Facility is putting unprecedented computing power in the hands of leading scientists to enable the next breakthroughs in science and technology, said laboratory Director Thom Mason. This upgrade is an essential step along that path, bringing us ever closer to the era of petascale computing.
Petascale computers are capable of thousands of trillions of calculations per second.
New hope for chronic lung disease patients ST. LOUIS, May 19 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists have found a new type of immune response that might lead to improved treatment of people with chronic inflammatory lung disease.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said the immune response is activated in patients with severe asthma and COPD -- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
We've cracked the first part of the molecular code that links a viral infection to the later development of chronic inflammatory diseases like asthma and COPD, said senior author Dr. Michael Holtzman, a professor of medicine and a pulmonary specialist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. With this information, we can more precisely diagnose and monitor these types of diseases and then better target our treatment to specific abnormalities. That's a big step forward from simply monitoring breathing status.
The findings are reported in the online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.
NASA offers HD glimpse of life on the ISS HOUSTON, May 19 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency said it will telecast a high-definition glimpse of life in space with a special program to be broadcast beginning Thursday.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said astronaut Garrett Reisman, during his final weeks aboard the International Space Station, videotaped many daily activities in orbit that are anything but routine. A compilation of Reisman's video diaries will be broadcast in high definition beginning at 5 p.m. EDT Thursday.
The program will against be telecast Friday, May 23, and Tuesday, May 27, from 6-9 a.m., 1-3 p.m. and 5-8 p.m. EDT.
The special NASA TV Video File also will be broadcast in standard-definition on NASA TV immediately following the regularly scheduled daily Video File broadcasts.
Reisman, a New Jersey native, has been aboard the space station since arriving on space shuttle mission STS-123 in March. He will return to Earth on the STS-124 flight, targeted to be launched May 31.
Technical information on how to receive the special broadcast in high definition and streaming video, as well as downlink and scheduling information, is available at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.
Huntington's disease animal model created ATLANTA, May 19 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they have developed the first transgenic non-human primate model of Huntington's disease.
The scientists at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University said they expect their achievement to help researchers better understand the disease and develop more effective therapies, as well as lead toward transgenic non-human primate models of other genetic diseases
In the past, researchers have used transgenic mouse models to study the disease, said lead researcher Dr. Anthony Chan. These models do not completely parallel the brain changes and behavioral features observed in humans with HD, thus making the development of a transgenic (rhesus macaques) primate model critical to currently treating and ultimately preventing the disease.
Chan, an assistant professor at Yerkes, added: The transgenic monkeys are providing us with unparalleled opportunities for behavioral and cognitive assessments that mirror the assessments used with humans. With such information &133; we are developing a more comprehensive view of the disease than currently available.
Source: United Press International
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