A. Physicists Discover the First Direct Evidence
of an Elusive Particle
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A team of
physicists recently discovered the first direct
evidence of the elusive tau neutrino, a virtually
mass-less component of matter. Phil Yager, a physicist
at the University of California, Davis, who participated
in the experiment, says the word 'neutrino' comes
from 'neutrolino' which means 'little neutral one'
and refers to the particle's having no electric
charge and barely any interaction with surrounding
matter.
Yager:
They
travel typically all the way through the Earth without
interacting or longer. So they're very, very hard
to discover. You need lots and lots of them and
you need a sensitive device.
Narrator:
Previous research had established there were two
other types of neutrinos and twenty-five years ago,
a partner of the tau neutrino was discovered, called
the tau lepton. Now that the tau neutrino has actually
been detected, Yager says the stage is set to build
other experiments that may go beyond the Standard
Model of elementary physics.
Yager:
As I always like to say, it won't cure male pattern
baldness or anything like that, but it's understanding
they way the world works and there's hardly anything
more exciting than that.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
A Positive Relationship Between Pain and Inflammation
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Physical pain is not an experience
many of us consider positive, but it does have its
good points. Not only does it alert our body to
possible danger, but researcher Holly Strausbaugh
of the University of California, San Francisco says
pain also seems to prevent the body from slipping
into states of chronic inflammation.
Strausbaugh:
Inflammation is the body's first
line of defense against invading organisms or irritants
or things like that. And usually inflammation's
really good at dealing with these organisms and
getting rid of them and making us better. But if
it's not properly controlled and it keeps on going,
chronic inflammatory disease can result.
Narrator:
Pain
is experienced when inflammation builds up. Strausbaugh
found molecular evidence suggesting this pain then
signals the brain to put the brakes on inflammatory
response before it reaches a disease state.
Strausbaugh:
And how it does that is, it inhibits
the first white blood cells called neutrophils that
go into the inflammatory lesion.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
What's Behind the Upward Trend in Maximum Human
Life Span?
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Since 1970,
there's been a slow upward trend in the maximum,
human life span. Demographer John Wilmoth of the
University of California, Berkeley, recently published
these findings and says this trend accelerated mostly
due to medical improvements in the treatment of
cardiovascular disease.
Wilmoth:
And there are various interventions
that have improved the chances of survival once
somebody suffers a heart attack or a stroke or rehabilitation
therapies and drug therapies that reduce the risk
of a subsequent attack and help people to recover.
But then there are also medical means of treating
some of the risk factors of heart disease and stroke,
such as hypertension and high cholesterol and these
play a role as well.
Narrator:
But whether the upward trend in life span continues
depends on our ability to maintain the current pace
of progress in improving survivorship at older ages.
Wilmoth:
In other words, we need to still stay focused on
what's going on at younger ages because that's where
development occurs, that's where the body is gaining
what it's going to have later in life.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Small Telescope with Big Implications
Narrator:
This
is Science Today. A robotic telescope system called
ROTSE, which was the first to capture a gamma ray
burst in action, is surprisingly inexpensive compared
to the standards of modern science. James Wren of
the Los Alamos National Laboratory says everything
on this system was pulled together with off the
shelf products.
Wren:
The ROTSE system itself consists of four Cannon
telephoto lenses, two hundred millimeter - just
normal things you can put on your very own camera
and attached to those are CCD cameras which are
electronic cameras and they work just like a normal
camera. All the computers we use are normal, store-bought
desktop PCs.
Narrator:
With such humble components, ROTSE has proved
to be a valuable tool for astronomers. It has a
wider field of vision than large telescopes and
can take about a thousand images a night of different
locations.
Wren:
And
this data is very useful to astronomers who are
looking for objects that can change on time scales
that are short, as opposed to large observatories
which only look at a single region of sky sometimes
once every few weeks.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Is Alzheimer's Disease Intrinsic to Aging?
Narrator:
This is Science Today. It's true that the older
a person is, the higher the odds are for getting
Alzheimer's Disease, but this debilitating illness
is not inevitable. Bruce Reed, co-director of the
University of California, Davis Alzheimer's Center,
says although the disease is in fact common, normal
aging is common as well.
Reed:
There is a degree of memory loss that happens normally
as people age and it's very different than Alzheimer's
disease and it's not that everybody's destined to
get it. And it's not that if people get old enough
they can't remember anymore. So there really is
a normal and healthy side to aging and then there's
this disease process.
Narrator:
In fact, Reed says it seems the incidence of Alzheimer's
Disease peaks sometime around age eighty-five and
begins to decline after that.
Reed:
It actually seems to be linked to some genetic
factors and that with certain genetic factors the
peak incidence is earlier - probably in the seventies.
And then if you get through that, the risk actually
begins to decline, which suggests that it's a disease
process that is not intrinsic to aging.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
