A.
The Positive Side Of Pain
Narrator: This is Science Today. Physical
pain is not an experience many of us consider positive,
but it does have its good points. Not only does
it alert our body to possible danger but researcher
Holly Strausbaugh of the University of California,
San Francisco says pain also seems to prevent the
body from slipping into states of chronic inflammation.
Strausbaugh: Inflammation is the body's first
line of defense against invading organisms or irritants
or things like that. And usually inflammation's
really good at dealing with these organisms and
getting rid of them and making us better. But if
it's not properly controlled and it keeps on going,
chronic inflammatory disease can result.
Narrator: Pain is experienced when inflammation
builds up. Strausbaugh found molecular evidence
suggesting this pain then signals the brain to put
the brakes on inflammatory response before it reaches
a disease state.
Strausbaugh: And how it does that is, it
inhibits the first white blood cells called neutrophils
that go into the inflammatory lesion.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
B.
The Little Scientist In The Crib
Narrator: This is Science Today. New psychological
evidence suggests babies and children under the
age of four have brains that are smarter, faster
and busier than any adult's. Alison Gopnik, a psychology
professor at the University of California, Berkeley,
says in comparison, adult brains are less flexible.
Gopnik: We're less good at learning new things
- at considering and entertaining new possibilities.
I think the great advantage that children and babies
have is that they're extremely good doing at this.
They haven't had all this experience and practice
in using information, that they're so much more
open to new possibilities. They are literally more
active and more connected than adult's brains are.
Narrator: Gopnik stops short of supporting
the old theory that a baby's mind is like a sponge.
Gopnik: They're not really like a sponge,
if a sponge means that they're just taking everything
in. On the contrary, part of the reason exactly
why they can learn so much is because they only
pay attention to some things, not others. And they
change what they think about the world bit by bit
- the same way that adult scientists change what
they think about the world bit by bit.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
C.
A Small Telescope Has Big Implications
Narrator: This is Science Today. A robotic
telescope system called ROTSE, which was the first
to capture a gamma ray burst in action, is surprisingly
inexpensive compared to the standards of modern
science. James Wren of the Los Alamos National Laboratory
says everything on this system was pulled together
with off the shelf products.
Wren: The ROTSE system itself consists of
four Cannon telephoto lenses, two hundred millimeter
- just normal things you can put on your very own
camera and attached to those are CCD cameras which
are electronic cameras and they work just like a
normal camera. All the computers we use are normal,
store-bought desktop PCs.
Narrator: With such humble components, ROTSE
has proved to be a valuable tool for astronomers.
It has a wider field of vision than large telescopes
and can take about a thousand images a night of
different locations.
Wren: And this data is very useful to astronomers
who are looking for objects that can change on time
scales that are short, as opposed to large observatories
which only look at a single region of sky sometimes
once every few weeks.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
D.
The Future Of Infrastructure Inspection
Narrator: This is Science Today. A prototype
of a moving, high-speed, radar-equipped bridge inspector
called HERMES, has been successfully giving engineers
accurate diagnostic information about the state
of roadway concrete and bridge decks. Jose Hernandez,
a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
who helped designed HERMES, says it won't be long
before a series of states in the country will build
a second prototype to improve the system.
Hernandez: Make it more robust and try to
get it closer to an engineering prototype that could
then be transferred to the commercial sector.
Narrator: The efficient HERMES system poses
to revolutionize the costly, time-consuming way
infrastructure are currently inspected.
Hernandez: I believe that it's a matter of
time before this kind of technology would be the
way of inspecting and maintaining our infrastructure
and the time will come when they'll be so many of
them out there. I mean, it will be a common thing
and the states will all have a fleet of these things.
And not only would they be used for inspecting bridge
decks, but roads.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
E.
Getting The Most Out Of Your Muscles
Narrator: This is Science Today. Muscle atrophy
refers to the shrinkage of muscle fiber from lack
of forceful exertion. Dr. Kenneth Baldwin of the
University of California, Irvine worked with NASA
to come up with an exercise routine to prevent this
from occurring in astronauts traveling through space.
Since muscle atrophy parallels the aging process,
Baldwin says their findings can also be applied
to the general public - especially those over forty.
Baldwin: What we've learned over the years
is that we should be using more activity regimens
that are called high force, low frequency - as in
lifting against a very heavy object.
Narrator: But how does one know if they're
putting enough stress on their muscles?
Baldwin: One simple way is that if you are
lifting weights and you can basically generate about
ten contractions during one session and by the tenth
contraction you can hardly move that object, you
are pretty sure that that individual muscle group
is being adequately stressed.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
