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A.
Getting the Most out of Fruits and Vegetables
Narrator:
This is Science Today. By now we all know that consuming
more fruits and vegetables can lower our risk of
disease. But Cheryl Rock, an associate professor
of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University
of California, San Diego, says there's still some
confusion about what's the best way to eat these
foods.
Rock: A lot of times when I talk with groups,
they think when I say fruits and vegetables, it
means it has to be fresh, uncooked, organically
grown.
Narrator: But Rock says even canned fruits
and vegetables can be very nutritious. Fruit juices
are another excellent source of vegetables and fruits.
Rock: But when a bottle says a hundred percent
fruit juice, it may not necessarily be the best
type of fruit juice. For example in the United States,
a major constituent of a lot of juices, is apple
juice, which isn't completely without value, but
it's nowhere near as nutritious as an option like
orange juice or tomato juice. So, you have to be
a little bit savvy about what your choices might
be.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
B.
The Insightful Process of Lunar Gardening
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The best way to learn about
how early solar system activity affected the Earth
is to study the moon. Paul Renne, a geologist at the
University of California, Berkeley, says that's what
he and his colleagues decided to do when looking into
the impact history of meteoroids on Earth.
Renne: The Earth is a terrible recorder of
ancient events. We have an atmosphere, we have oceans,
we have plate tectonics. I mean, basically, the Earth
cleans itself up very, very quickly. The moon by comparison,
preserves its record really well.
Narrator: Ancient meteoroid bombardment
is evident in the lunar soil samples taken by the
Apollo missions. The molten rock and soil that formed
from these impacts were churned up with all the detritus
and debris on the surface of the moon.
Renne:
That's a process that's called lunar gardening, which
when you first hear about it, invokes some little
man coming out and raking the moon everyday. But no,
lunar gardening is just this constant churning that
happens with impacts of meteoroids and comets and
so forth.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Soy as A Cancer Preventative
Narrator: This is Science Today. Soy has long
been touted as a cancer preventative and now there's
some scientific evidence supporting this. University
of California, Berkeley researchers discovered a gene
in soybeans which produces a protein that has an anti-cancer
effect. Alfredo Galvez, an associate professor in
nutritional sciences, says when injected the protein,
called lunasin, stopped cell division in both normal
and cancer cells.
Galvez: So for it to be used as a therapeutic
drug, then we have to have a way of targeting mainly
cancer cells. So that's the challenge right now for
the use of lunasin, is to combine it with a good targeting
system, so that it can only seek out cancer cells
and kill it.
Narrator: Lunasin's effects were similar to
the anti-cancer drug Taxol, but Galvez says lunasin
has an advantage.
Galvez: If we want to produce the protein in
large amounts or even to modify it, it's easier to
do that because we have the gene for it. Unlike Taxol,
where you have to extract the compound from the bark
of an endangered Pacific yew tree, you're actually
limited in terms of producing the compound.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Sound Way To Conserve The Land
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Since light doesn't travel
far in water, oceanographers have long used sound
technology, or acoustics, to see images beneath the
surface. John Hildebrand, a professor in the Marine
Physical Lab at the University of California's Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, is using the same technology
for soil prospecting.
Hildebrand: The thing that interested me was
the fact that archeologists now, the things that they
study are in the ground and the technique that they
use to discover these, you can see many times from
the surface that there is a site. But if you want
to locate particular features it's often done more
or less by random or maybe directed or controlled
excavation.
Narrator: Instead, Hildebrand developed a new
device called ground penetrating sonar, which can
be used in cases where an image in the ground is needed,
but digging is not a consideration.
Hildebrand: For example, a site that's inside
a National Park. You don't want to dig up everything
inside a National Park but you'd like to know what's
there and so it's a non-destructive way of looking.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
An Ultrasound that Supports Pre-Natal Bonding
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Expectant mothers who see very
detailed pictures of their unborn child with 3-D ultrasound
may have an advantage when it comes to pre-natal bonding
and management. Thomas Nelson, a professor of radiology
at the University of California, San Diego studied
what effect these images had on mothers who smoked
during pregnancy.
Nelson:
While the results from that study were inconclusive
for a number of reasons - not the least of which is
most mothers know it's not good to smoke so they're
a little embarrassed to participate in such a study
making use of that, it was a very positive outcome
in encouraging the fact that this is a very powerful
way to help parents relate to their unborn child in
a very positive way.
Narrator: 3D-ultrasound is much clearer than
the sometimes fuzzy images produced by 2D-ultrasound.
Nelson: With the 3D-ultrasound images, you
see a complete image of, for example, the entire face
of the baby. It's not something that you need to be
trained to recognize and then say 'oh yes, I understand.'
It's intuitively obvious to you what you're looking
at.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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