A.
Good News For A Popular Blood Thinner
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new study found that warfarin,
a popular blood thinner, does not weaken the bones
of older patients, as once suspected. Dr. Steven
Cummings, a professor of medicine at the University
of California, San Francisco says researchers were
concerned about warfarin because it suppresses the
production of vitamin K.
Cummings:
Vitamin K, we know now to be a very important vitamin
for the development and maintenance of bone. So
there's been concern that men and women who take
warfarin might have weaker bones because their body
was deprived of vitamin K.
Narrator:
Cummings says their study differed from others,
since it tracked women for two years - not just
a single point in time
Cummings:
We also looked at the rates of change in their bone
and were able to compare it to a group of six thousand
women who were not taking the medication. We found
that women who were taking warfarin were no more
likely to develop fractures and the rate of change
in their bone was just the same as for women who
were not taking warfarin.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Designing The EKG Of The Future
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new way to use an electrocardiogram
may greatly improve the outcome of heart attack
patients. Barbara Drew, an associate professor in
nursing at the University of California, San Francisco,
came up with a converter which attaches to a traditional
3-view electrocardiogram and comes up with nine
more views of the heart.
Drew:
If the heart gets into trouble, that shows up on
the electrocardiogram but you need to look at a
lot of views of the heart in order to be sure that
you spot it.
Narrator:
There's also talk of using this EKG converter to
monitor patients in the ambulance.
Drew:
Could that be by telephone, transmitted to the emergency
department so that the doctors and nurses could
see what trouble the heart was in and have things
all ready to go. We have a saying that time is muscle,
meaning that for every second and minute that ticks
by where the artery is closed, more of the heart
muscle is damaged and that damage is irreversible.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
A New Sealing System Gets Around Obstacles
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new aerosol sealing system
developed to fix leaky air ducts, has been found
to save both energy and labor costs. Mark Modera,
a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory says the system seals ducts from the
inside.
Modera:
The idea behind getting to the leaks from inside
the duct system was that we'd had field studies
where we've found that most of the cost, maybe 80%
of the cost of sealing the ducts would be the labor
associated with trying to find the leaks, get to
the leaks and seal them.
Narrator:
There've been similar ideas in other fields - such
as inserting robots through gas lines to tape up
leaks. The problem was, they literally ran into
obstacles.
Modera:
Every time there's a Y or a T or any sort of intersections,
it has troubles or even bends for that matter....it's
not very good with bends. So then, we came up with
the idea - well, if we could get particles to travel
around those bends and go to the leaks, that would
be best.
Narrator:
The particles Modera uses are made of vinyl acetate.
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Searching For New Planets The Cheaper Way
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Astronomers at the University
of California, Berkeley may have come up with a
cheaper way to search for new planets. Barry Welsh
and his colleagues look for stars that are similar
to Beta Pictoris, the first star discovered to have
proto-planetary activity.
Welsh:
That's still a well observed star and it's the number
one candidate for a planet within fifty light years
of the sun. We found another two stellar systems
that've got comets going round them. These stars
are about 300 light years away.
Narrator:
Welsh says his team basically looks for what's left
over once the planets have been formed.
Welsh:
It's a lot easier to find that mainly because when
planets are being formed, the whole formation process
is essentially obscured from view. It all happens
behind very dense, cold clouds of gas and very dense
cumulations of dust and you have to use special
equipment to see through those clouds. Everything's
sort of formed by the time that we look at these
things, so a lot of the gas and the dust is gone
away and so it's easier for us to see because there's
no curtain obscuring the view.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Working To Alleviate Low Back Pain
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Excessive heavy lifting is
known to harm the back, but Jeffrey Lotz of the
University of California, San Francisco, says just
sitting in a chair for a long period of time can
also do harm.
Lotz:
It's been shown in various studies that periods
of inactivity can be as harmful to the back as periods
of excessive activity.
Narrator:
Lotz is studying how various mechanical loads affect
the discs of the spine in an animal study - the
first of its kind to demonstrate heavy loads actually
alter the physiology of the disc.
Lotz:
We think that this model will allow us to define,
hopefully, a boundary of how much force on the back
and the duration of either inactivity or excessive
activity - which is beneficial.
Narrator:
In the meantime, Lotz recommends moderate exercise.
Lotz:
Your disc by itself doesn't have any blood supply,
so there's obviously cells in the disc which need
the blood supply in order to be healthy and part
of the way you get nutrition to the disc is through
physical activity and so you need a certain amount
of force in the back to keep your discs healthy,
but obviously, too much can be bad as well.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin
