A bed-rest study with female participants will help scientists understand changes to the immune response and decreased resistance to infection in space.
Investigators with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) are researching the immune system as part of the Women’s International Space Simulation for Exploration (WISE), a collaborative venture that includes NASA, the European Space Agency, the Centre National D’Études Spatiales (French Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency. The study is being carried out by the French Institute for Space Medicine and Physiology (MEDES) in Toulouse, France.
“It is clear from existing data that space flight conditions alter immune responses,” said Dr. Gerald Sonnenfeld, a researcher on the NSBRI’s Immunology, Infection and Hematology Team. “Space has such limited access; to research the immune response, we use a bed-rest model because it provides conditions similar to space conditions - fluid shift to the head and a lack of weight-bearing on the lower limbs.”
More: medicalnewstoday.com
Related Travel Information
China will put a woman in space no later than 2010, the China Daily reported on Tuesday.
The world's third country to put a man into space would start choosing pilots, scientists and engineers for its first wave of female astronauts next year, the newspaper said.
"It is true women aviators have some advantages in terms of flight experience and physique, but we need payload experts with strong science and engineering background to do experiments in outer space," Hu Shixiang, deputy chief commander of China's manned space program, was quoted as saying.
At a reception for three U.S. astronauts visiting Beijing last week,
The success of next week's space shuttle launch is crucial to the future of United States space exploration, more than two years after the Columbia disaster grounded manned flights.
Nasa has undertaken major safety changes on its shuttle fleet since the February 2003 crash in which seven astronauts died, but the space agency acknowledges that flying into space will always carry risks.
"Returning the space shuttle safely to flight and resuming flight operation is the first step in the vision for space exploration," Nasa administrator Michael Griffin told a congressional committee in late June.
More: iol.co.za
National survey finds young women most at risk of HIV/AIDS
JOHANNESBURG, 1 December (IRIN) - Over one in 10 South Africans are living with HIV, with young African women in informal settlements being at highest risk of HIV infection, a new study has found.
The survey was commissioned by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and conducted by South Africa's Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in partnership with the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Centre for AIDS Development Research and Evaluation (CADRE).
The study's breakdown of HIV prevalence by age, race and geographic location indicated that young African women living in informal settlements
Are you a billionaire and want to zip into the space for a quick ride? An NRI Sikh now offers you a chance to do just that. At a price.
Dr Chirinjeev Kathuria, an NRI businessman and one of the promoters of MirCorp, that signed up US billionaire Dennis Tito to space as earth's first space tourist last year, has tied up with a Canadian space firm to form PlanetSpace Corporation.
The goal of the company is to make space flights available to the public by 2006.
"PlanetSpace expects to fly almost 2,000 new astronauts in the first five years of flying and
NASA has announced a $A130 billion plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2020, 50 years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface.
The plans, revealed yesterday by NASA administrator Michael Griffin, involve a new spaceship, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), which will replace the space shuttle by 2012-14. A CEV mission is slated for 2018.
Dr Griffin said the CEV would be a capsule shape, like the Apollo craft that originally took astronauts to the moon, rather than a winged space plane like the shuttle. He dubbed the CEV "Apollo on steroids".
"Much of it looks the same (but)
