B. Too Much Animal Protein Linked to Bone Loss in Elderly Women

Narrator: This is Science Today. A new study suggests elderly women, who receive most of their dietary protein from animal, rather than vegetable products, are more likely to have bone loss and hip fractures. Dr. Deborah Sellmeyer, lead author of the University of California, San Francisco study, says one explanation for this may be the fact that animal protein is more acidic than vegetable protein.

Sellmeyer: As we get older - even if we're totally healthy - our kidneys just get less and less able to handle that acid. So the body turns to other sources to help handle that acid and one of the big sources is bone. Bone is made up of calcium, hooked up with what is known as base, which helps neutralize acid.

Narrator: And since vegetable proteins are very high in base, eating more may prevent the body from turning to the base-rich bones. But Sellmeyer says their study is by no means against animal protein.

Sellmeyer:The message is more to maintain a balanced diet and to realize that we should all just start working more fruits and vegetables into our diet.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.

C. The Link between Osteoporosis-related Fractures and Depression

Narrator: This is Science Today. Older women with osteoporosis-related bone fractures of the spine are about five times more likely to suffer another fracture within a year. While the reasons are still unclear, a University of California, San Francisco study has linked depression to fractures. Dr. Mary Whooley, a professor of medicine, found women over sixty- five with depression were more likely to experience fractures than women who were not depressed.

Whooley: These were both spontaneous fractures and fractures that resulted from falls and even some fractures that were not even noticed by the patient, such as fractures of the spine.

Narrator:Depression was also found to hinder recovery from fractures.

Whooley: So, not only does depression increase the risk of fractures once you get the fracture, you're less likely to recover when you have depression. Doctors should be aware that depression is a very serious illness that causes these disabilities. And if treatment for depression is in fact available and if they can use that treatment, they might benefit patients and avoid some of these disabilities.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.

D. Understanding Big Bang Cosmology

Narrator: This is Science Today. A particle accelerator at the Brookhaven National Laboratory has recently produced the highest density of matter ever created in an experiment. Daniel Cebra, a physicist at the University of California, Davis - who participated in a similar experiment last year, says a new state of matter, can improve our understanding of how the universe was created.

Cebra: To put this whole thing in a framework, we're trying to understand big bang cosmology and matter at the very beginning of time.

Narrator: Normal matter consists of protons and neutrons that make up the nuclei at the core of atoms. But going back in time, when conditions were hotter and denser, these protons and neutrons were broken apart into what are called quarks and gluons. Cebra says understanding this state would shed light on where some of the universe's initial, non-uniformity's came from.

Cebra: That can then be modeled into one's models of cosmological expansion. To get an idea of why the universe looks the way that it does.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.

E. Balancing Parenting and Employment

Narrator: This is Science Today. A recent study reported that people in this country work longer hours than those in other industrial nations. In families with two working parents, these long hours become problematic when raising children. Rivka Polatnick, a research sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, says because more than one third of U.S. preteens are taking care of themselves after school, there has to be a better way to combine parenting and employment.

Polatnick: That's not something that's an easy issue, but we need more flexibility in the workplace, we need better options for part-time work, we need better living wages so that parents don't have to face these impossible equations of time versus money.

Narrator: And it's not just a matter of parents busily pursuing material possessions.

Polatnick: It's just to provide good housing, good education - you know, those core things that parents want to provide for their kids. They need to work these kind of long hours and they need full-time incomes. So, we need to find ways to change that reality if we want to have adults with time for their kids. Something has to give.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.