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A.
Improving High Altitude Working Conditions
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new way to improve conditions
for workers at high altitudes has been developed
and successfully field-tested by researchers at
the University of California, San Diego. John West,
a professor of medicine and physiology, designed
oxygen-enriched rooms using devices patients with
lung disease have used for years.
West: They have a little thing on the floor,
which generates oxygen from the air, and it's fed
into their nostrils. Here, we're actually feeding
it into the room itself and so instead of living
in a twenty-one percent oxygen atmosphere, we increase
it up to twenty-seven percent.
Narrator: At high altitudes, the air is thinner
and a person becomes deprived of oxygen. This impairs
mental productivity, sleep quality and overall well
being. Today, more people are working at high altitudes
- including miners in Chile and even Cal Tech astronomers
putting up a radio telescope at a site over 16 thousand
feet up.
West: So, the fact that we've been able to
come up with this way of improving conditions in
a relatively simple way is very important.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
B.
New Insight into Alcohol and Drug Addiction
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Researchers have discovered
a way to block a crucial step leading to alcohol and
drug addiction. Rosana Camarini, a researcher at the
University of California, San Francisco, found nerves
in the brain that are involved with learning, share
a common pathway with an early stage of addiction
called sensitization.
Camarini: Sensitization is an increase in the
initial effect of a drug after repeated administration
of a given dose of these drugs of abuse.
Narrator: The goal now is to find a molecule
that can selectively block access to brain receptors
linked to this stage of addiction without blocking
normal learning function.
Camarini:
So we have to work more on that. But it's a pathway
- it's a way to find some drugs that don't have these
side effects, but block some aspects of addiction
that are very important. Like craving, like seizure
withdrawal. So, maybe this kind of drugs can act in
many of these aspects.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
A New Look at Martian Meteorites
Narrator: This is Science Today. Using a process
similar to DNA fingerprinting, researchers at the
University of California, San Diego re-analyzed Martian
meteorites and found no chemical trace of a biological
process. Mark Thiemens, a professor of chemistry,
says it's been thought these meteorites contained
clues of ancient life on Mars. But by measuring sulfur
isotopes found in these rocks, his group only found
an atmospheric influence.
Thiemens: The isotopes give you a very distinctive
signature, so one gets a sort of information. It was
this laboratory that found this new type of isotope
effect that really fingerprints specific processes
that we can look at it and say - we know this is not
biologic, it's in fact photochemical.
Narrator: But Thiemens says that's not to say
there wasn't life on Mars.
Thiemens: Mars was wet. It had an ocean, it
was probably warmer. There very likely could have
been life on Mars. But the feature that we're seeing
in these meteorites is probably not nano-bacteria.
The only way to answer this question for sure is a
return sample taken from the right areas.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
.
D.
A Big Leap for Quantum Computing
Narrator:This
is Science Today. Although functional quantum computers
are still many years away, scientists at the Los Alamos
National Laboratory have made a great experimental
leap forward in their pursuit of one. Raymond Laflamme,
a staff scientist at the Lab, says quantum computers
would be able to crack secret codes or solve huge
mathematical problems much quicker than today's fastest
supercomputing.
Laflamme: Quantum computation is really a revolution
in the way that we're thinking about manipulation
of information. The idea of going and manipulate atoms,
nuclei themselves and manipulate the information with
them, also gather information, strikes the imagination
of the lay public.
Narrator: Using nuclear magnetic resonance
techniques, the researchers created what's called
a seven qubit quantum computer within a single drop
of liquid that's controlled on the outside by radiofrequency
pulses.
Laflamme: What we have done in the last five
years is making demonstration that these ideas are
not completely crazy - that is, we can go down with
today's technology - to atoms and manipulate them.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Understanding Bone Growth and Repair
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A drug that stimulates blood
vessel growth, or angiogenesis, used in cardiac repair
has been found to also help repair bones. Jill Helms,
a professor of orthopedic surgery at the University
of California, San Francisco, says that's because
bone growth and repair are dependent on good blood
supply.
Helms:
I'm realizing how similar the process of bone
healing is to bone development and why it's so important
to study that early process in fetal development.
It gives us so many clues as to what's going on in
the adult situation and so I think that will be a
very fruitful one of research to continue to investigate.
Narrator: Most broken bones do heal completely
within weeks, but sometimes there's delay or they
don't heal at all.
Helms: Not all delays in bone healing are caused
by a defect in angiogenesis, so it's up to us to figure
out what subset of those delayed or non-unions are
caused by a defect in this pathway.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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