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A.
A Tiny Transistor Breaks New Ground. The story on
Science Today.
Narrator: This is Science Today. A new type
of transistor has been developed that's so tiny;
it's set a world record. Chenming Hu, a professor
of engineering at the University of California,
Berkeley, says he and his colleagues created a transistor
several thousand times smaller than a human hair
and it can hold 400 times more devices than currently
possible.
Hu: What this means to the industry is that
we have shown a way to continue the semiconductor
revolution for at least another twenty-five years.
Recently, there is the concern and perhaps even
a fear that we have come very close to the end of
the road for the semiconductor technology. But this
research has shown that we are still far away from
that limit.
Narrator: Hu says it'll be at least ten years
before this new transistor benefits the consumer.
Hu: What we have demonstrated is the principal.
The physics that says such small transistors can
be manufactured.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
B.
Why Adults Need To Play. Coming up on Science Today.
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Playtime should not be just
for kids. Adults, for psychological reasons, need
to continue playing past their childhoods. Lenore
Terr, a clinical psychiatrist at the University of
California, San Francisco, believes play is one of
the three essentials of adult life.
Terr:
Freud had been asked many, many years ago what made
a normal adult and Freud said, "the ability to love
and to work." Now that was 19th Century Vienna talking
and in 21st Century America, we have to say to love,
to work and to play.
Narrator:
And that doesn't just mean sports. Play can be defined
as anything done just for the fun of it - including
work, dancing, painting, or reading. Play can give
people fulfillment, make them more flexible and Terr
says it could even save some marriages.
Terr:
I think that a lot of marriages fall apart because
the play aspect of the marriage isn't good enough.
It is difficult because men and women play differently
and that they traditionally have different ways of
playing. I think that in some marriages, they have
to compromise and find some ways of play that they
both enjoy.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Researchers Work To Prevent Childhood Leukemia. Next,
on Science Today.
Narrator: This is Science Today. Each year,
about 25 hundred children in this country are diagnosed
with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Joseph Wiemels,
(Wee-mills) a research molecular epidemiologist at
the University of California, San Francisco, says
this is the most common form of childhood leukemia
and it's on the rise. The goal now, is to understand
why.
Wiemels: From understanding comes prevention.
Childhood leukemia is a very curable disease, it's
curable in seventy percent of cases, but there are
actually costs from the cure itself. The chemotherapy
can cause developmental abnormalities or secondary
cancers later in life, so the best thing to do is
prevent it.
Narrator:
Wiemels and his colleagues discovered evidence suggesting
there are two genetic changes that cause this form
of leukemia - one occurring in the womb, and the other
mutation formed in early childhood, due to environmental
factors.
Wiemels:
We believe that those environmental factors have to
do with an aberrant response to common infections
and we believe that those infections are the cause
of the second mutation.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Swinging Over The Atmosphere. The story on Science
Today.
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A hypersonic aircraft that
can travel ten times the speed of sound by skipping
across the atmosphere, has actually been designed
- but it'll be a while before passengers can book
quick flights across the globe. Aerospace engineer
Preston Carter of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory who designed HyperSoar, says that's because
there are several logistics that need to be worked
out.
Carter: HyperSoar is a long, slender shape.
Engineers call it a wave rider and it's kind of an
interesting shape in that a wave rider creates a shock
wave as it flies through the atmosphere and the vehicle
actually rests upon that shock wave and rides kind
of like a surfboard rides on a wave.
Narrator: Passengers would experience twenty
seconds of weightlessness every two minutes - sort
of like being on a swing.
Carter: Some people speculate they'll get motion
sickness. That might be true. People wonder how you
move around. Good questions! I think all this stuff
is doable, but it will have to evolve.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Is Our Solar System A Cosmic Freak? Find out on Science
Today.
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Direct evidence that distant
planets do indeed exist was recently uncovered when
one was witnessed actually passing in front of its
star. Geoff Marcy is one of the astronomers from the
University of California, Berkeley who made the discovery.
Marcy: This is an event in nature that we've
always expected would happen and to have it actually
occur was sort of stunning. When you expect something
long enough and it doesn't happen, you begin to think
it'll never happen and we certainly were beginning
to think, well maybe this lucky transit of a planet
just won't occur. But then boom! It happened out of
the clear blue and so we were quite excited.
Narrator:
Another discovery is that the extrasolar planets orbit
in ellipses, rather than the circular motion of the
planets in our solar system.
Marcy: We have to wonder whether or not indeed
our solar system is unusual compared to solar systems
in general. We had always thought that our solar system
was a run-of-the-mill, garden-variety planetary system,
but maybe in fact it's some sort of cosmic freak and
that our solar system is very, very special.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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