A.
A New Air Sampler May Impact Air Quality Standards
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new air sampler, which
can effectively trap and evaluate fine particle
pollutants in both their solid and gas phases has
been developed by scientist Lara Gundel of the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory. This sampler can greatly
impact future EPA air quality standards and lead
to a definitive understanding of how pollutants
such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and pesticides,
affect our health.
Gundel: I guess the innovations we made were
a way to separate the gases and particles accurately
and then to be able to collective measure particles
and the gases separately and accurately.
Narrator: Gundel achieved this by coating
an inner tube of roughened glass inside the filter
with sticky resin beads, which were finely ground
up until their pores were small enough to trap gas
particles.
Gundel: We quickly decided that this new
technology that we had, these new kinds of sampler
designs, could be used in outdoor air, in general
atmospheric questions.
Narrator: Gundel is currently collaborating
with other scientists and the EPA to test this sampler
at various sites across the country. For Science
Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
The Merits Of Baby Talk
Narrator:
This is Science Today. If you have a child under
the age of four, forget those Mozart tapes and flashcards.
Psychologist Alison Gopnik of the University of
California, Berkeley says what children at this
age really need in the form of mind-expanding education,
are the natural, spontaneous things most of us do
anyway.
Gopnik:
For instance, the way that we talk to babies - that
funny, high pitched voice that we use when we talk
to babies. It turns out that that actually gives
babies just the information they need to figure
out how language works. But none of us do it because
of that. We just do it because that's what you do
when you talk to babies.
Narrator: Gopnik's research found that in
terms of teaching babies, the best you could say
about artificial interventions like Mozart tapes
and better baby bureaus, is that they're useless.
Gopnik: The worst case is that they might
actually distract people from doing the things that
they might not even think about as educational -
like kissing and playing games and talking funny
baby talk and playing hide and seek and peek-a-boo
and all that stuff. That's where the real education
is going on for young babies.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
C.
A Railway Track To The Future
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Railway systems in the future
may have us literally floating on air. Physicist
Richard Post of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory has come up with a way to build trains
that levitate above the railway on powerful magnets.
Although this idea - called maglev - has been around
for a many years, Post is the first to use ordinary,
permanent magnets in a simple, efficient way pioneered
by a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicist
named Klaus Halbach.
Post: So, on a train car, there would be
a flat panel array underneath the train car - these
permanent magnets in the Holbach arrays.
Narrator: This maglev system would cancel
out magnetic fields above the array panel so passengers
wouldn't feel it, but it would concentrate below
where it's needed. Once the train is moving fast
enough, it will then levitate above a track made
of shorted coils stacked together.
Post: And if the power fails to drive the
train, it would slow down a very slow speed and
settle down onto auxiliary wheels. It's what you
call fail-safe or passively stable.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
The Best Options For Certain Heart Attack Patients
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Each year, about 100 thousand
elderly Americans with a heart condition called
left bundle-branch block will have a heart attack.
These patients have a small area of damaged heart
tissue that doesn't allow an electrical current
to pass through in a normal manner. Dr. Michael
Shlipak of the University of California, San Francisco,
says this skews ECG readings and leads to under-treatment.
Shilpak:
In patients with left bundle-branch block, it's
never been known exactly what the likelihood of
them having a heart attack when they come in with
chest pain. We know that they're high risk, we know
they are likely to die if they do have a heart attack,
but if they come in with chest pain, we've never
know what to do.
Narrator:
In a recent study, Shilpak found the best option
is to treat these patients with either thrombolytic
therapy or angioplasty.
Shilpak:
Now, the important thing from the public health
point of view is that the current utilization of
these therapies is very low. As physicians, we have
a long way to go towards optimally treating them
and that was part of the conclusions of our paper.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Laughter May Be The Best Medicine
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The old saying that laughter
is the best medicine rings true when it comes to
dealing with grief. Dacher Keltner, an assistant
professor of psychology at the University of California,
Berkeley says people who could laugh months after
the death of a spouse, functioned better years later.
Keltner: People who showed anger in their
face and also contempt were actually rated as showing
more grief severity one and two years later than
individuals who didn't show those emotions.
Narrator: Keltner's study undermines the
common assumption that those who show anger are
working through their grief in order to do better
later on
Keltner: The laughter shown in the interview
was related to a measure of disassociation, that
is distancing from physiological distress. It seems
as though, as people laugh, they're removing themselves
from the distress associated with the event. Is
it as simple as just getting people to laugh? Our
findings suggest that there are a lot of important
psychological, physiological and, in other studies,
health related benefits to laughter.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
