A. Hydrogen + Oxygen = Zero Pollution
Narrator: Hydrogen plus oxygen
equals a non-polluting car. This is Science Today.
Jim Heffel, an engineer at the University of California,
Riverside, led a team that created a prototype fuel-cell
vehicle. A fuel cell is incredibly simple.
Heffel: You add hydrogen and oxygen -- or
air -- and it converts it to electricity and water.
Narrator: In other words, an electric
car. But instead of spending hours charging it up,
all you have to do is put hydrogen back into the
tanks. As a fuel, hydrogen itself is non-polluting
and renewable -- all you need is water.
Heffel: And the other advantage with the
electric vehicle is you're also going to use regenerative
braking.
Narrator: That's a system where
the braking energy is converted back to electricity.
Heffel: So every time you step on the brakes,
you can get some of that energy back.
Narrator: One of the main obstacles
to making fuel cell cars practical is the current
low price of gasoline. But as Heffel points out,
gas will start running out eventually and as it
does, renewable resources are going to start looking
awfully good. For Science Today, I'm Steve Tokar.
B. Not A Replicator, But Pretty
Good
Narrator: This is Science Today.
If you're a scientist and you want a detailed model
of a molecule or a sea floor, come to Mike Bailey
at the University of California, San Diego. He'll
whip you up a laminated paper model -- which looks
and feels just like wood -- on his laminated object
manufacturing machine, one of a number of so-called
rapid prototyping devices that are just now coming
into use.
Bailey: It's unfortunate that the title of
this field is called rapid prototyping, because
that gives people the impression that it's like
a Star Trek replicator -- you ask for it and a little
beam comes down and there it is. And in fact that's
not right. The reason it's called rapid prototyping
is because you don't have to go through a lot of
the traditional manufacturing preparation. Developing
tool paths, designing clamps and fixtures and so
on, you completely bypass that. But the process
itself takes anywhere from maybe 12 to 30 hours.
Narrator: The machine builds up
the model from layers of paper four thousandths
of an inch thick, one sheet at a time. Bailey has
fabricated models of everything from the surface
of Venus to a hard drive component. For Science
Today, I'm Steve Tokar.
C. A Better Grass for Indoor Baseball
Narrator: This is Science Today.
When the city of Phoenix was awarded a baseball
franchise, they came to agricultural expert Steve
Cockerham of the University of California, Riverside.
Since baseball is played in summer, Phoenix had
to have a domed stadium -- but they didn't want
artificial turf.
Cockerham: So they would be interested in
air conditioning this building, so to speak, but
they wanted natural grass. And so they wanted to
know if it was possible to put natural grass in
there and if it was, then how would we go about
it.
Narrator: The answer: design a
better grass. Cockerham and his fellow researchers
invented an indoor natural grass that can tolerate
the low amount of sunlight available in a domed
stadium, yet still be thick and tough enough to
stand up to pro baseball.
Cockerham: This is a retractable roof stadium,
and yeah, we've shown that it's possible -- that
the technology and the development of architecture,
stadium architecture, and grasses and care of grasses
have all kind of come together at the right time
for this to be possible.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm
Steve Tokar.
D. A Laboratory With Muscle
Narrator: This is Science Today.
Type I diabetics don't make insulin, which is essential
for life. In contrast, type II's make the stuff
-- but their bodies just don't use it. That so-called
insulin resistance is mainly in muscle tissue. Meanwhile,
Dr. Robert Henry of the University of California,
San Diego has found a way to keep muscle tissue
alive in the laboratory for months at a time, giving
him the perfect tool to study type II diabetic muscle.
Henry: We can compare it to normal muscle,
non-diabetic muscle, and look at every step of the
action between normals and diabetic muscle.
Narrator: Recent drugs seem to
reverse insulin resistance -- but no one knows how.
Henry feeds those drugs to his laboratory muscles.
Henry: And they do in fact become much more
insulin-sensitive. And we are starting to look at
why they are becoming more sensitive. What the mechanism
is. Because ultimately if we can pinpoint it, we
probably are going to be able to pinpoint the underlying
defect, perhaps the genetic defect causing diabetes.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm
Steve Tokar.
E. All Memories Aren't Created
Equal
Narrator: This is Science Today.
All memories are not created equal. We remember
what's emotionally important to us better than we
do day-to-day events. Neurobiologist Larry Cahill
of the University of California, Irvine says one
reason why that's so is an almond-shaped structure
in the brain called the amygdala. He and his fellow
researchers studied a patient with a diseased amygdala.
Cahill: Now if you were see him and sit down
and talk to him you would have trouble finding out
that anything's wrong with him.
Narrator: What's wrong is the patient's
long-term memory for emotional events.
Cahill: We showed him and a bunch of controls
a short story. Most people remember the emotional
parts of that story better than the non-emotional
parts when you give them a surprise memory test
a week later. Not this patient. He remembered the
relatively non-emotional parts of the story just
fine. But what he didn't do was show the enhanced
memory associated with emotion that you and I would.
Narrator: Cahill says that's strong
evidence that you need your amygdala to get boosted
emotional memories. For Science Today, I'm Steve
Tokar.
