Red Raiders take trip to Waco

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After a 21-6 home loss Sunday to the Oklahoma Sooners, the Texas Tech softball team heads to Waco to face the Baylor Bears in a three-game series starting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Getterman Stadium.

The Sooners opened the series with a 9-1 win. Propelled by five home runs, Oklahoma followed its opening win with a 13-5 six-inning win over Tech.

Techs 21-6 loss to the Sooners sealed the series sweep for Oklahoma. The Red Raiders trailed Oklahoma 10-6 at end of the fourth inning, but the Sooners ran in 11 runs at the top of the fifth to end their final game of the series against Tech in five innings.

Coach Gregory said the team had to take the positive out of its series versus the Sooners to move past the series loss.

I think that you have to look for the good or youre going to wallow in self-pity, Gregory said. If you dont do that, you miss opportunities and you dont teach kids the right things.

Baylor awaits Tech after winning its opening series of Big 12 play versus the Oklahoma State Cowgirls. The Bears took the first two games versus the Cowgirls 2-1 and 8-7, but dropped the last game of the series 1-0.

Oklahoma States one-run win against the Bears ended a 10-game winning streak for Baylor.

Techs matchup versus Baylor marks a special occasion for freshman outfielder Kaylee Strickland, as she faces her sister Jordan, a Baylor senior infielder, for the first and only time.

Its her senior year, so shes also trying to make it back to the World Series, Strickland said. If we can take that from her, then no mercy.

In Techs last six games versus Baylor, it has won only one game. Techs last win over the Bears came in 2013 at Waco as the Red Raiders ran in six runs versus Baylors four.

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Red Raiders take trip to Waco

NASA Astronaut NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly to Spend Record-breaking Year in Space – Video

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NASA Astronaut NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly to Spend Record-breaking Year in Space
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has begun his adventure. Over the next year, he and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will live in the International Space Station, USAToday reports. The spacecraft...

By: Herbert Ma

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NASA Astronaut NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly to Spend Record-breaking Year in Space - Video

NASA tests 'flying saucer'

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This artist's concept shows the test vehicle for NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), designed to test landing technologies for future Mars missions.(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA has given the world another glimpse of its revolutionary flying saucer technology, which will play a crucial role in future Mars missions.

The 15-foot wide, 7,000-pound test vehicle underwent a spin test on a table at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. during a live broadcast Tuesday, ABC News reports.

The flying saucer is part of NASAs Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project, which aims to develop landing vehicles for future missions.

NASA says the project tests breakthrough technologies that will enable large payloads to be safely landed on the surface of Mars, or other planetary bodies with atmospheres, including Earth. According to the space agency, the technologies will also offer access to more of the red planets surface by enabling landings at higher-altitude sites.

As part of its LDSD research, NASA will fly a rocket-powered saucer-shaped test vehicle into near-space from the Navys Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii, in June.

Last year an LDSD test in Hawaii was deemed a success by engineers, despite the vehicles huge parachute apparently failing to deploy properly, according to Space.com.

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NASA tests 'flying saucer'

NASA wants you to check out its flying saucer

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SenNASA is inviting the public to watch the next test flight of its innovative flying saucer-shaped vehicle designed to land heavy payloads on Mars.

The vehicle, officially known as the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), measures 4.5 metres (15 feet) wide and weighs over three tons. Its innovative two-part braking system comprises a doughnut-shaped inflatable braking shield and a gigantic parachute.

The inflatable brake shield, called the supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator (SIAD-R), is designed to unfold and inflate to increase a spacecrafts size and atmospheric drag.

After slowing down under the brake shield, the vehicle is designed to deploy the 33.5-metre wide Supersonic Ring Sail Parachute, the largest parachute ever flown.

The technology is not only being designed to enable heavy payloads to land on the surface of Mars, but also to allow landings at higher-altitude sites, giving access to much more of the planet's surface.

Up to now, the one ton Curiosity rover has been the heaviest craft to land on Mars, employing a complex landing system including a supersonic parachute and a "sky crane" which lowered the rover onto the Martian surface. Current Mars landing techniques date back to NASA's Viking mission, which put twin landers on Mars in 1976.

NASA is planning to land even bigger payloads, including vehicles, cargo, crew and human habitats. The agency is therefore developing the technology for a landing system which can place payloads of up to 40,000 kg on the surface of Mars, or other celestial bodies.

NASA is looking to use atmospheric drag as a solution, in a bid to save rocket engines and fuel. Such payloads will require much larger drag devices to slow them down and those devices will need to be deployed at higher supersonic speeds to land safely.

The LDSD had its first test flight in June 2014 when its was dropped from under a large helium balloon at 120,000 ft. The vehicle then fired its rocket motor, propelling it to 180,000 ft at a speed of Mach 4. During descent the vehicle's inflatable doughnut-shaped braking shield succeeded in slowing down the craft, but the second part of the landing systemthe enormous parachutefailed to open properly, causing the vehicle to crash land in the Ocean.

The next test flight is to be streamed live on March 31, from 1600 to 1700 UTC (9 am to 10 am PDT).

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NASA wants you to check out its flying saucer

Penn Medicine Researchers "Smell" New Receptors that Could Underlie the Many Actions of the Anesthetic Drug Ketamine

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Newswise PHILADELPHIA Penn Medicine researchers are continuing their work in trying to understand the mechanisms through which anesthetics work to elicit the response that puts millions of Americans to sleep for surgeries each day. Their most recent study looked at ketamine, an anesthetic discovered in the 1960s and more recently prescribed as an anti-depressant at low doses. Through collaboration with the University of Pennsylvanias department of Chemistry and scientists at the Duke University Medical Center, researchers at Penns Perelman School of Medicine have identified an entirely new class of receptors that ketamine binds in the body, which may underlie its diverse actions. The work is published in this weeks issue of Science Signaling.

Ketamine is believed to act through glutamate receptors to produce anesthesia, but this is unlikely to explain the anti-depressant effect; most antidepressants target G-protein coupled receptors (GCPRs), the largest class of druggable receptors, located in the bodys central nervous system (CNS). To explore the GCPR class of receptors, the investigators screened proteins present in the mouse nasal epithelium, olfactory receptors (ORs), which typically respond very selectively to compounds in the air, giving rise to smell. It turns out that these ORs are also present throughout the nervous system. ORs make up the largest group of GCPRs, yet they are unexplored as transducing components of general anesthesia or of antidepressants.

Our hope is that we can visualize the precise molecular interactions between ketamine and ORs, and in turn, learn how this old drug interacts with these and other GCPRs throughout the central nervous system, says the studys senior author, Roderic Eckenhoff, MD, the Austin Lamont Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at Penn.

Eckenhoff and a team at Duke University began their study by screening ORs of mice and found that ketamine activated only two types out of more than several hundred, known as MOR136 and MOR139. They then used computational modeling and simulation approaches with Jeffery Saven, PhD, professor of Chemistry at Penn to generate structural models of these ORs and to understand exactly how they recognize ketamine. Several amino acid residues were identified as critical determinants. The team found that by mutating these amino acids, they could turn ketamine responsiveness both on and off.

They also tested these conclusions in mice by stimulating the olfactory epithelium via intranasal application of ketamine and showed that olfactory sensory neurons that expressed these unique ORs responded to ketamine, suggesting that ORs may truly serve as functional targets for ketamine.

Here we provide evidence that ketamine has a highly specific interaction with the ORs, indicating that at least some of ketamines actions may result from these or other GCPRs in the central nervous system, says Eckenhoff, noting that our rigorous combination of simulation and experiment indicates that we can design receptors to respond specifically to certain drugs, which gets us one step closer to doing the opposite and designing drugs to interact specifically with certain receptors.

Additional Penn authors include Jose Manuel Perez-Aguilar and Lu Gao, department of Chemistry.

This work was funded by NIH grants (DC010857, DC012095, and GM55876), the National Science Foundation through the Penn Nano/Bio Interface Center (NSEC DMR08-3202). # # # Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $4.9 billion enterprise. The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 17 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $409 million awarded in the 2014 fiscal year. The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania -- recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report; Penn Presbyterian Medical Center; Chester County Hospital; Penn Wissahickon Hospice; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional affiliated inpatient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region include Chestnut Hill Hospital and Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a partnership between Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network and Penn Medicine. Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2014, Penn Medicine provided $771 million to benefit our community.

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A Novel Way to Apply Drugs to Dental Plaque

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Newswise Therapeutic agents intended to reduce dental plaque and prevent tooth decay are often removed by saliva and the act of swallowing before they can take effect. But a team of researchers has developed a way to keep the drugs from being washed away.

Dental plaque is made up of bacteria enmeshed in a sticky matrix of polymersa polymeric matrixthat is firmly attached to teeth. The researchers, led by Danielle Benoit at the University of Rochester and Hyun Koo at the University of Pennsylvanias School of Dental Medicine, found a new way to deliver an antibacterial agent within the plaque, despite the presence of saliva.

Their findings have been published in the journal ACS Nano.

We had two specific challenges, said Benoit, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering. We had to figure out how to deliver the anti-bacterial agent to the teeth and keep it there, and also how to release the agent into the targeted sites.

To deliver the agentknown as farnesolto the targeted sites, the researchers created a spherical mass of particles, referred to as a nanoparticle carrier. They constructed the outer layer out of cationicor positively chargedsegments of the polymers. For inside the carrier, they secured the drug with hydrophobic and pH-responsive polymers.

The positively-charged outer layer of the carrier is able to stay in place at the surface of the teeth because the enamel is made up, in part, of HA (hydroxyapatite), which is negatively charged. Just as oppositely charged magnets are attracted to each other, the same is true of the nanoparticles and HA. Because teeth are coated with saliva, the researchers werent certain the nanoparticles would adhere. But not only did the particles stay in place, they were also able to bind with the polymeric matrix and stick to dental plaque.

Since the nanoparticles could bind both to saliva-coated teeth and within plaque, Benoit and colleagues used them to carry an anti-bacterial agent to the targeted sites. The researchers then needed to figure out how to effectively release the agent into the plaque.

A key trait of the inner carrier material is that it destabilizes at acidicor low pHlevels, such as 4.5, allowing the drug to escape more rapidly. And thats exactly what happens to the pH level in plaque when its exposed to glucose, sucrose, starch, and other food products that cause tooth decay. In other words, the nanoparticles release the drug when exposed to cavity-causing eating habitsprecisely when it is most needed to quickly stop acid-producing bacteria.

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A Novel Way to Apply Drugs to Dental Plaque

DREAMer Medical Students at Loyola Stritch Honored to Attend Latino Medical Student Association Annual Policy Summit

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Newswise MAYWOOD, Ill. (April 1, 2015) Four Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine students with deferred action for childhood arrival (DACA) status traveled to Washington, D.C. to address the Latino Medical Student Association (LMSA) delegate congress at its Annual Policy Summit, March 27-28. First-year medical students Diana Andino, Rosa Aramburo, Everado Arias and Manuel Mejia had the opportunity to be advocates on Capitol Hill concerning health care issues including access to care.

I was honored to be in the same room with numerous Latino physicians who provide medical care to underserved communities. I was inspired as I watched leaders in the medical field work together to make an impact in local communities, said Arias.

The students spoke in favor of the passing the LMSA policy that supports Latino students applying for medical school regardless of immigration status. It encourages medical schools to amend their policies to welcome applicants with DACA status and calls for advocacy from medical professional organizations. The resolution was passed along with 15 others that generally seek to promote a more just and equitable health care system in the United States.

Although there is a lot of work to be done, the passage of the resolution was a great first step. It is a privilege to be a part of Stritch and other organizations that are advocating for change in our health care community to open up more opportunities, said Andino.

There is a shortage of Latino physicians in the United States, but I know with the advocacy of LMSA and the work of Loyola Stritch and other medical schools that are opening their doors to new possibilities that the statistics will change. Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we DREAMers have a dream, Arias added.

Loyola Stritch was the first medical school in the U.S. to change its admissions policy to allow individuals with DACA status to openly apply for medical school. In 2014, Loyola Stritch was the first medical school to openly welcome DACA students when seven DREAMer students joined their colleagues as part of the 140-plus member class of 2018.

With media inquiries, please contact Evie Polsley at epolsley@lumc.edu or call 708.216.5313 or (708) 417-5100.

The Loyola University Chicago Health Sciences Division (HSD) advances interprofessional, multidisciplinary, and transformative education and research while promoting service to others through stewardship of scientific knowledge and preparation of tomorrow's leaders. The HSD is located on the Health Sciences Campus in Maywood, Illinois. It includes the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing, the Stritch School of Medicine, the biomedical research programs of the Graduate School, and several other institutes and centers encouraging new research and interprofessional education opportunities across all of Loyola University Chicago. The faculty and staff of the HSD bring a wealth of knowledge, experience, and a strong commitment to seeing that Loyola's health sciences continue to excel and exceed the standard for academic and research excellence. For more on the HSD, visit LUC.edu/hsd.

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DREAMer Medical Students at Loyola Stritch Honored to Attend Latino Medical Student Association Annual Policy Summit