A. An Emotional Link between Health and Socioeconomic
Status
Narrator:
This is Science Today. It's been known for decades
that poverty is linked to higher rates of illness
and death. But a University of California, San Francisco
study has found a link between health and socioeconomic
status that goes beyond the poverty line. Psychiatrist
Nancy Adler, who led the study, says people who
considered themselves higher up on the social ladder
tended to be healthier and less stressed.
Adler:
In some
ways it's equivalent to the animal research. If
you study non-human primates, you can see very clearly
that they've formed dominance hierarchies and the
more dominant animals are healthier and being lower
in the social hierarchy there has the same kinds
of associations as with humans. They have more athlerosclerosis,
they have higher levels of cortisol, which is a
stress hormone, and they live shorter lives.
Narrator:
Adler
says their study is consistent with the idea that
stress determines health.
Adler:
It
suggests one way this may operate is that people
who feel themselves chronically lower on the hierarchy
may feel a sense of chronic stress and then that
has to do with possible interventions to buffer
some of the biological effects of stress.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
A New Study Highlights the Need for Better Staffing
and Training in Nursing Homes
Narrator:
This is Science Today. It's estimated that in fifty
years, there will be a fourfold increase in people
over age 85. Charlene Harrington, a professor of
social and behavioral sciences at the University
of California, San Francisco says with this surge
will be an increase in nursing home care. Currently,
Harrington says nursing homes are greatly understaffed.
Harrington:
It's really a deplorable situation because in this
country, probably a third of the nursing homes are
below standard. And there's one point eight million
people in nursing homes and so one third of them
are getting poor care and that is in large part
because of poor staffing.
Narrator:
Harrington is part of a study based on an
expert panel of nursing home care that recommends
better staffing in nursing homes.
Harrington:
The nursing assistants are paid just above minimum
wage, there's a very high turnover and they don't
have enough training. So that's another thing that
we're recommending - much more training for the
nursing assistants.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Researchers Work To Prevent a Common Form of Childhood
Leukemia
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Each year, about 25 hundred
children in this country are diagnosed with acute
lymphoblastic leukemia. Joseph Wiemels, a research
molecular epidemiologist at the University of California,
San Francisco, says this is the most common form
of childhood leukemia and it's on the rise. The
goal now, is to understand why.
Wiemels:
From understanding comes prevention. Childhood leukemia
is a very curable disease, it's curable in seventy
percent of cases, but there are actually costs from
the cure itself. The chemotherapy can cause developmental
abnormalities or secondary cancers later in life,
so the best thing to do is prevent it.
Narrator:
Wiemels and his colleagues discovered evidence suggesting
there are two genetic changes that cause this form
of leukemia - one occurring in the womb, and the
other mutation formed in early childhood, due to
environmental factors.
Wiemels:
We believe
that those environmental factors have to do with
an aberrant response to common infections and we
believe that those infections are the cause of the
second mutation.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Future Flight that 'Skips' Across the Atmosphere
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A hypersonic aircraft that
can travel ten times the speed of sound by skipping
across the atmosphere, has actually been designed
- but it'll be a while before passengers can book
quick flights across the globe. Aerospace engineer
Preston Carter of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory who designed HyperSoar, says that's because
there are several logistics that need to be worked
out.
Carter:
HyperSoar is a long, slender shape. Engineers call
it a wave rider and it's kind of an interesting
shape in that a wave rider creates a shock wave
as it flies through the atmosphere and the vehicle
actually rests upon that shock wave and rides kind
of like a surfboard rides on a wave.
Narrator:
Passengers
would experience twenty seconds of weightlessness
every two minutes - sort of like being on a swing.
Carter:
Some people
speculate they'll get motion sickness. That might
be true. People wonder how you move around. Good
questions! I think all this stuff is do-able, but
it will have to evolve.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Insights into our Solar System
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Direct evidence that distant
planets do indeed exist was recently uncovered when
one was witnessed actually passing in front of its
star. Geoff Marcy is one of the astronomers from
the University of California, Berkeley who made
the discovery.
Marcy:
This is an event in nature that we've always expected
would happen and to have it actually occur was sort
of stunning. When you expect something long enough
and it doesn't happen, you begin to think it'll
never happen and we certainly were beginning to
think, well maybe this lucky transit of a planet
just won't occur. But then boom! It happened out
of the clear blue and so we were quite excited.
Narrator:
Another discovery is that the extrasolar planets
orbit in ellipses, rather than the circular motion
of the planets in our solar system.
Marcy:
We
have to wonder whether or not indeed our solar system
is unusual compared to solar systems in general.
We had always thought that our solar system was
a run-of-the-mill, garden-variety planetary system,
but maybe in fact it's some sort of cosmic freak
and that our solar system is very, very special.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
