( research assistant will join him at Cap...)Effect of Prolonged Stay in Space Studied Using Fruit Flies,Health

research assistant will join him at Cape Canaveral to conduct the post-landing tests. Von Kalm, who began teaching at UCF in 1997, focuses most of his research on the effects of steroid hormones on the development of fruit flies. Because of their genetic similarities to humans, the flies provide a good model for understanding how steroids can affect the development of humans, he said.

The flies on the shuttle will travel in 10 small containers, each of which is about the size of a computer zip disk. Two separate groups of flies will be kept in a Kennedy Space Center research lab during the mission. To help researchers rule out variables aside from gravity that could affect the flies, one group will be subjected to the same temperatures and vibrations experienced during space flight. The other group will be kept in normal room conditions. The shuttle also will carry a small amount of a fungus known as ‘Beauveria bassiana,’ an approved organic pesticide that is not harmful to humans. Kimbrell, von Kalm and their colleagues will examine whether the reduced gravity makes the fungus more potent.

Flies will be exposed to fungi from the shuttle and fungi kept in a lab, a move that will help determine if various effects are results of the flies' weakened immune systems or the fungi becoming more virulent in space. The future direction of Kimbrell's and von Kalm's research will depend on the results of the upcoming experiment and the level of cutbacks in funding for NASA's life sciences research. The shuttle launch will be the second NASA mission in the last two months with ties to UCF research.

UCF optics professor James Harvey and two graduate students designed the Solar X-ray Imager on board the GOES-N satellite that was launched in May. The new X-ray telescope will help to improve the monitoring of weather activity such as hurricanes. It also will aid in monitoring and predicting space weather, which can disrupt cell phones, cause blackouts,
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