A.
A New Personal Carbon Monoxide Sensor
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new, lightweight and inexpensive
carbon monoxide sensor has been developed by scientists
at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Field-testing
found these small sensors are more accurate than
the personal monitors currently on the market. Michael
Apte, a scientist in the Lab's Environmental Energy
Technologies Division says before, there was no
affordable way to accurately measure carbon monoxide
in the field.
Apte:
This device actually gives you numbers for carbon
monoxide exposure. Something you could wear on your
body or you could place it in a space and it will
give you an average concentration over the period
of time that you have it on for - typically eight
hours. So it's good for measuring worker's exposure
to carbon monoxide.
Narrator:
It can also be placed in a residential setting to
gather average exposure rates in a home over a one-week
period.
Apte:
Carbon monoxide is very toxic. There are about nineteen
thousand poisonings every year and it makes it the
number one cause of poisoning in the United States.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Magnetic Levitation Catches NASA's Eye
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The first practical and inexpensive
way to develop a magnetic levitation, or maglev,
train system has attracted the attention of NASA
engineers. Physicist Richard Post of the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory says his maglev train
model, which uses a unique array of permanent magnets
to cause trains to levitate over railways, led to
a contract with NASA to build a higher speed model.
Post:
What they'd like to do in the long term is to build
a system like this to help launch rockets. So you'd
build it up the side of a mountain and get the rockets
up to maybe Mach point 8 - almost the speed of sound
- before you fire the rockets off and then take
off from that initial speed.
Narrator:
Such a maglev system would save NASA thirty to forty
percent of their rocket fuel.
Post:
The whole objective is to reduce the cost of launching
rockets. A rocket is terribly inefficient when it's
first lifting off the pad and this obviates that
problem largely.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Air Pollution In Urban & Rural Areas
Narrator:
This is Science Today. When one thinks of air pollution,
images of smoggy cities with lots of combustion
come to mind. While a day in the country may seem
like a respiratory respite - there's pollution in
rural areas too. Lara Gundel, a staff scientist
at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says
it's just from another source.
Gundel:
Country and rural areas have a different mix of
particles. Can have a lot more soil dust for example.
Unpaved roads, agricultural operations that will
generate usually bigger particles that'll be brown
rather than gray or black, like we see in urban
air because of their mixture of soil.
Narrator:
There's also smaller particles of pollution in rural
areas that have dramatic health impacts.
Gundel:
Pesticide application for example will generate
a lot of gas phase pollution that when it rains,
will allow these pesticides to be picked up into
particles and water droplets. And so, there are
actually high levels of pesticides in the rural
particles and not quite so much influence of combustion.
So they're different kinds of problems.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Keeping Inflammation In Check
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new study has found our
bodies have a finely tuned, active process which
controls inflammation. If not kept in check, inflammation
can lead to chronic inflammatory disease, such as
arthritis, asthma and colitis. Holly Strausbaugh,
a researcher at the University of California, San
Francisco, says in this disease state, the very
cells that are helping us get rid of infectious
organisms can actually begin destroying our own
tissues.
Strausbaugh:
That's kind of the central feature of chronic inflammatory
diseases and surprisingly, with that knowledge,
we know so little about how inflammation is controlled
and people kind of thought before that it was just
sort of a passive process. That once the organism
was gone, then the response kind of went down on
its own.
Narrator:
But Strausbaugh found pain nerve fibers have an
active role in controlling inflammation.
Strausbaugh:
Basically what's happening is that inflammation
is controlling itself because pain is part of inflammation.
So, as inflammation builds up and pain increases,
then pain can feedback basically on itself and lessen
the inflammatory response.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Another Surgical Option For The Nearsighted
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The latest in laser eye surgery
for the nearsighted is the LASIK procedure. Dr.
Brian Boxer Wachler of UCLA says although LASIK
features the same excimer laser used in other treatments,
it's a different technique.
Boxer
Wachler: Instead of doing the laser treatment
right on the very surface, we have another machine.
It's a device called a flap maker and it actually
creates a very thin, precise flap in the top of
the cornea leaving a hinge. And we lift that flap
of skin up, exposing the inner part of the cornea,
the laser pulses comes down just like it would in
the surface treatment reshaping the cornea. The
difference is that we put the flap back - it doesn't
have to grow back like with the surface PRK treatment.
Narrator:
Flaps on the eye may not sound too appealing, but
Boxer Wachler - a former LASIK patient himself -
says it's quick with very little pain afterwards.
Boxer
Wachler: For a couple hours, it feels like there's
an old contact lens in and then that feeling goes
away. So it's almost a painless procedure and another
advantage is that the vision comes back very quickly.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
