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A.
A Little Support Goes A Long Way
Narrator: This is Science Today. Overwhelmed
couples with young children about to enter school
can avoid unnecessary stress and divorce by investing
just two hours every week in a small support group
over a six month period. These were the findings of
a study led by University of California, Berkeley
psychologists Philip and Carolyn Cowan.
Cowan: If we spend some months around this
slightly, somewhat anxiety-provoking transitions,
when everything is up for grabs and no one knows quite
who's going to do what and how is this going to change
our lives, if we walked through those issues with
couples week after week in this somewhat intimate,
safe surrounding, we found that we could help a lot
of the couples actually make small shifts in their
lives that began to feel more satisfying.
Narrator: And in the long run, Carolyn Cowan
says what helps the couples, helps the children.
Cowan: We actually see that their children
start school at a better place, they do better academically,
they get along better with their peers, other students
at school and they have fewer behavior problems.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
The Remedy For A Growing Problem
Narrator: This is Science Today. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported
obesity is fast becoming a national epidemic. While
the report did not delve into the reason, it suggests
the most likely cause is lack of exercise. Ronald
Krauss, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and member of the American Heart
Association's Nutrition Committee, says while there's
not a total consensus on the what the best exercise
regimen should be, it's clear the nation is not doing
enough.
Krauss: If we want to eat as much as we're
eating, we're going to have to exercise more. If we
don't exercise more, we're going to have to eat less.
There's no two ways about it. That's the only way
to deal with the obesity epidemic that we're now facing.
Narrator: Krauss stresses some exercise is
better than none at all.
Krauss: While we want to encourage at least
minimal physical activity in the population as a whole
and certainly to balance what we're consuming in terms
of calories, we also think that people should recognize
that they could do more. The more physical exercise
you can build into your life, the more steps you can
take - literally - to get out of your chair and move,
the healthier you're gonna be.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
The Positive Side Of The "Terrible Twos"
Narrator: This is Science Today. Most parents
have no doubt heard about, and perhaps feared, that
time in a child's life coined "the terrible twos".
Alison Gopnik, a psychology professor at the University
of California, Berkeley says as exasperating as toddlers
can be during this rebellious period, it's a time
that's crucial to their cognitive development.
Gopnik: What we've done is a bunch of very
careful experiments to show that between the time
babies are born and the time they're about four, they're
changing their ideas about how other people work in
very regular and systematic ways.
Narrator: This is done during everyday interactions
with people.
Gopnik: So, you can think of the terrible twos
as being a kind of experiment that comes when you're
eighteen months old and you suddenly get this new,
startling hypothesis about other people which is,
"my God, maybe sometimes they don't want the same
thing that I do! Let me check this out and test out
ideas - especially about how other people work.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
The Therapeutic Benefits Of Steroid Hormones
Narrator: This is Science Today. The adrenal
glands produce about one hundred different steroid
hormones, including one called cortisol. This stress-resisting
hormone raises blood sugar, resists shock and fights
infection. Dr. Owen Wolkowitz, a professor of psychiatry
at the University of California, San Francisco, says
it's also by far the most common type of steroid hormone
given medicinally.
Wolkowitz:
That's because cortisol turned out to have very good
anti-inflammatory effects back in the late 1940s,
early 1950s and that led to the development of prednisone
and drugs like that.
Narrator: High levels of cortisol are also
associated with major depression, but it's probably
not the only steroid hormone related to depression.
Wolkowitz is also looking into DHEA for some therapeutic
benefit.
Wolkowitz: Part of the reasoning there is that
DHEA actually has some anti-cortisol effects of it's
own. So it may well be it's not only high cortisol
or low DHEA, but it might be the ratio between them
that might be important and that's not even considering
the other 98 or so other steroids that we have yet
to investigate.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
How Researchers Unearth Traces Of Cannibalism
Narrator: This is Science Today. Over the years,
there's been great debate among archaeologists and
anthropologists about digging up traces of cannibalism.
Tim White, a professor of integrative biology at the
University of California, Berkeley says one way cannibalism
can be traced is by finding bones with cut marks similar
to those used in the butchering of animals.
White: What you find when you look at butchery
practices and people, whether it is our own butchers
in the supermarket or butchers in a hunting and gathering
society, they will with sharp implements, either stone
tools or steel knives, butcher animals in the same
manner. And that manner is controlled by the anatomy.
Narrator: White and his French colleagues found
such tell-tale signs on the bones of six Neanderthals,
including a child, hose remains were found scattered
on the floor of a cave site along with those of red
deer.
White: We can study those red deer skeletons
and learn about the way they butchered those. And
in fact, we present a photograph of the child's jaw
next to a photograph of a deer jaw that has matching
marks.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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