|
A.
How an Anti-smoking Workplace Affects Smokers
Narrator:
Narrator: This is Science Today. Smokers working
in a non-smoking environment are more likely to
quit than those not in a smoke-free workplace. Dr.
Joel Moskowitz of the University of California,
Berkeley's School of Public Health, was co-author
of a new study which looked into whether California
smoking laws had any effect on workers' ability
to quit.
Moskowitz: We were able to merge the smoking
data with the smoking law data and look at the relationships
between smoking laws and quitting smoking, controlling
for a whole host of other factors related to the
type of smoker and the type of workplace. Then,
seek above and beyond all those factors, whether
a person worked in a community with no law versus
one that worked in a community with a weak or strong
law - whether it made any difference in terms of
their ability to quit smoking.
Narrator: They found that smokers in anti-smoking
areas were thirty-eight percent more likely to quit
over a six month period than those in environments
without strong anti-smoking laws.
Moskowitz: The more you can structure environments
for smokers such that there's no smoke around them,
the easier it is for them to quit smoking.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
B.
A Quantum Leap Seems to Support Moore's Law
Narrator:
This is Science Today. In 1965, Gordon Moore, the
co-founder of Intel, predicted that the density of
transistors on semiconductor chips would double roughly
every 18 months. Raymond Laflamme, a scientists at
the Los Alamos National Laboratory, says this observation,
now known as Moore's Law, accurately describes a trend
that continues today.
Laflamme: Every eighteen months, the size of
devices are shrinking by a factor of two. And if we
look at this trend, it tells us that ten, fifteen
years from now the size of computers, or the transistors
themselves, will be the size of atoms. And at the
time that we reach the size of the atom, the rules
with which we will manipulate the information will
be the rules of quantum mechanics, instead of the
role of classical mechanics.
Narrator: Laflamme
and his group recently created an experimental, seven-qubit
quantum computer within a single drop of liquid. Although
a functional quantum computer is still years away,
this latest advance seems to be following the flow
of Moore's Law.
Laflamme:
So in the future, if you want to have computers which
become incredibly much faster than what we have today,
we'll have to go also in the quantum regime.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Antarctic Sea Ice May Give Researchers Insight into
Climate Change
Narrator: This is Science Today. Variations
in Antarctic sea ice may have played a vital role
in the puzzling low levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide
present during the last ice age. Ralph Keeling, a
researcher at the University of California, San Diego's
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, used a computer
model to gain insight into past climate changes.
Keeling: What we worked on was an idea that
by covering the region where the deep waters upwell
with sea ice, which plausibly might have happened
in a colder climate like the ice ages, you could significantly
reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The gases don't go through a solid very efficiently.
Narrator: Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels
depend on how efficiently carbon dioxide-rich water
from the deep ocean returns to the surface. Recently,
it was discovered that these deep waters primarily
return to the surface around Antarctica.
Keeling: People of course are well aware that
carbon dioxide has a potential for changing climate,
but it's clear from the Ice Age records that the carbon
dioxide concentration itself was influenced by climate.
So, we have potential for positive feedbacks.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
.
D.
Functional MRI and Brain Research
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The use of functional magnetic
resonance imaging technology has given researchers
at the University of California, San Diego the opportunity
to successfully monitor how the brains of sleep deprived
subjects perform during simple learning tasks. But
Dr. Cris Gillin says another area they'd like to explore
is the difference between sleep-deprived men and women.
Gillin: This has not been examined systematically.
We know that men and women have somewhat different
sleep patterns, probably have somewhat different sleep
needs. It would be interesting to see what the effect
of sleep deprivation is and does it differ in men
and women in terms of the task duration of sleep deprivation
and brain responses measured by functional MRI.
Narrator: Using this technology, Gillin says
they'd also like to examine how certain medications,
including caffeine, affect their sleepy subjects.
Gillin: It would be intriguing to know whether
having a cup of coffee before you do this test after
being sleep deprived, would that reverse the specific
brain abnormalities that we saw? So it gives us a
new handle to understand what's really going on.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
A New Study Encourages Dietary Changes to Prevent
Colon Cancer
Narrator:
This is Science Today. It's often assumed that the
older you are, the harder it is to break bad habits,
especially when it comes to diet. But Cheryl Rock,
a professor of Family and Preventive Medicine at the
University of California, San Diego says that's not
necessarily the case.
Rock:
We think that with what we know about individualizing
and food choices, that it's possible to change your
diet at any age.
Narrator: Working with an older population,
Rock and her colleagues have designed a dietary intervention
program called the APPLE study, which emphasizes more
vegetable and fruit intake to reduce the risk of the
recurrence of a colonic polyp, which may be a precursor
to colon cancer.
Rock: Our average participant in the APPLE
study is someone who's in their sixties and seventies
and often retired and they don't want to spend a lot
of time at home cooking. And so, that's a study in
which we emphasize a lot of convenient ways that you
can get this kind of a healthier diet. And the outcome
is that we can prevent the recurrence of colon polyps,
which have been in turn related to the greater likelihood
of developing colon cancer.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
|
