A. The FDA Calls for Warnings on Overusing Antibiotics
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The Food and Drug Administration
recently proposed placing warning labels on antibiotics
to remind doctors that overuse is harming their
effectiveness. Epidemiologist Lee Riley of the University
of California, Berkeley says it's well known that
overuse gives bacteria more chances to evolve and
become drug-resistant. But Riley adds it's hard
to get doctors not to prescribe antibiotics when
they're not needed.
Riley:
In
most teaching hospitals, I think everybody's aware
that overuse of antibiotics does contribute to the
emergence of a drug-resistant organism. It's not
a new concept. But for some reason, to actually
put that concept into practice is very difficult.
Narrator:
That's because Riley says often times
doctors are under pressure from their patients to
prescribe antibiotics.
Riley:
And what happens in these patients is, if they don't
get anything, they go to some other physician. I
think the physicians just have to be honest enough
and brave enough to educate the patients that they
don't need antibiotics in every sniffle and sore
throat and cough.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
A Personal Carbon Monoxide Sensor
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new, lightweight and inexpensive
carbon monoxide sensor has been developed by scientists
at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Field-testing
found these small sensors are more accurate than
the personal monitors currently on the market. Michael
Apte, a scientist in the Lab's Environmental Energy
Technologies Division says before, there was no
affordable way to accurately measure carbon monoxide
in the field.
Apte:
This device actually gives you numbers
for carbon monoxide exposure. Something you could
wear on your body or you could place it in a space
and it will give you an average concentration over
the period of time that you have it on for - typically
eight hours. So it's good for measuring worker's
exposure to carbon monoxide.
Narrator:
It can also be placed in a residential
setting to gather average exposure rates in a home
over a one-week period.
Apte:
Carbon monoxide is very toxic. There are about nineteen
thousand poisonings every year and it makes it the
number one cause of poisoning in the United States.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Magnetic Levitation Catches NASA's Eye
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The first
practical and inexpensive way to develop a magnetic
levitation, or maglev, train system has attracted
the attention of NASA engineers. Physicist Richard
Post of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
says his maglev train model, which uses a unique
array of permanent magnets to cause trains to levitate
over railways, led to a contract with NASA to build
a higher speed model.
Post:
What they'd like to do in the long
term is to build a system like this to help launch
rockets. So you'd build it up the side of a mountain
and get the rockets up to maybe Mach point 8 - almost
the speed of sound - before you fire the rockets
off and then take off from that initial speed.
Narrator:Such
a maglev system would save NASA thirty to forty
percent of their rocket fuel.
Post:The
whole objective is to reduce the cost of launching
rockets. A rocket is terribly inefficient when it's
first lifting off the pad and this obviates that
problem largely.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Air Pollution In Urban & Rural Areas
Narrator:
This is Science Today. When one thinks of air pollution,
images of smoggy cities with lots of combustion
come to mind. While a day in the country may seem
like a respiratory respite - there's pollution in
rural areas too. Lara Gundel, a staff scientist
at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says
it's just from another source.
Gundel:
Country and rural areas have a different mix of
particles. Can have a lot more soil dust for example.
Unpaved roads, agricultural operations that will
generate usually bigger particles that'll be brown
rather than gray or black, like we see in urban
air because of their mixture of soil.
Narrator:
There are also smaller particles of pollution
in rural areas that have dramatic health impacts.
Gundel:
Pesticide application for example will generate
a lot of gas phase pollution that when it rains,
will allow these pesticides to be picked up into
particles and water droplets. And so, there are
actually high levels of pesticides in the rural
particles and not quite so much influence of combustion.
So they're different kinds of problems.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
A Better View of Brain Development
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Magnetic resonance imaging,
or MRI, has given researchers the ability to non-invasively
study the brain and provide insight into normal
and abnormal development. Dr. Jim Barkovich, a neurology
specialist at the University of California, San
Francisco, says in the last few years, researchers
have been doing more MR imaging of fetal brains.
Barkovich:
Why
do we do this? We do it because maybe someone has
done a screening ultrasound and seen something that
looked a little bit suspicious or didn't look quite
right and we can get a much better look at the brain
using magnetic resonance imaging.
Narrator:
These images are enhanced by placing
coils on the surface of the head, which give researchers
better resolution.
Barkovich:
So by using this technology developed here at
UCSF, we can go from seeing the brain pretty well,
to seeing very clear, high resolution images of
the brain that help us to spot these disorders of
brain formation.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
