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A.
Getting the Most out of Fruits and Vegetables
Narrator:
This is Science Today. By now we all know that consuming
more fruits and vegetables can lower our risk of
disease. But Cheryl Rock, an associate professor
of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University
of California, San Diego, says there's still some
confusion about what's the best way to eat these
foods.
Rock:
A lot of times when I talk with groups, they
think when I say fruits and vegetables, it means
it has to be fresh, uncooked, organically grown.
Narrator:
But Rock says even canned fruits and vegetables
can be very nutritious. Fruit juices are another
excellent source of vegetables and fruits.
Rock:
But when a bottle says a hundred percent fruit juice,
it may not necessarily be the best type of fruit
juice. For example in the United States, a major
constituent of a lot of juices, is apple juice,
which isn't completely without value, but it's nowhere
near as nutritious as an option like orange juice
or tomato juice. So, you have to be a little bit
savvy about what your choices might be.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
The Insightful Process of Lunar Gardening
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The best way to learn about
how early solar system activity affected the Earth
is to study the moon. Paul Renne, a geologist at the
University of California, Berkeley, says that's what
he and his colleagues decided to do when looking into
the impact history of meteoroids on Earth.
Renne: The Earth is a terrible
recorder of ancient events. We have an atmosphere,
we have oceans, we have plate tectonics. I mean, basically,
the Earth cleans itself up very, very quickly. The
moon by comparison, preserves its record really well.
Narrator: Ancient meteoroid bombardment
is evident in the lunar soil samples taken by the
Apollo missions. The molten rock and soil that formed
from these impacts were churned up with all the detritus
and debris on the surface of the moon.
Renne:
That's
a process that's called lunar gardening, which when
you first hear about it, invokes some little man coming
out and raking the moon everyday. But no, lunar gardening
is just this constant churning that happens with impacts
of meteoroids and comets and so forth.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Evidence of the Anti-cancer Effects of Soy
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Soy has long been touted as
a cancer preventative and now there's some scientific
evidence supporting this. University of California,
Berkeley researchers discovered a gene in soybeans,
which produces a protein that has an anti-cancer effect.
Alfredo Galvez, an associate professor in nutritional
sciences, says when injected the protein, called lunasin,
stopped cell division in both normal and cancer cells.
Galvez:
So for it to be used as a therapeutic drug, then
we have to have a way of targeting mainly cancer cells.
So that's the challenge right now for the use of lunasin,
is to combine it with a good targeting system, so
that it can only seek out cancer cells and kill it.
Narrator:
Lunasin's effects were similar to the anti-cancer
drug Taxol, but Galvez says lunasin has an advantage.
Galvez:
If we want to produce the protein in large amounts
or even to modify it, it's easier to do that because
we have the gene for it. Unlike Taxol, where you have
to extract the compound from the bark of an endangered
Pacific yew tree, you're actually limited in terms
of producing the compound.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Sound Way To Conserve The Land
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Since light doesn't travel
far in water, oceanographers have long used sound
technology, or acoustics, to see images beneath the
surface. John Hildebrand, a professor in the Marine
Physical Lab at the University of California's Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, is using the same technology
for soil prospecting.
Hildebrand:
The thing that interested me was the fact that archeologists
now, the things that they study are in the ground
and the technique that they use to discover these,
you can see many times from the surface that there
is a site. But if you want to locate particular features
it's often done more or less by random or maybe directed
or controlled excavation.
Narrator:
Instead, Hildebrand developed a new device called
ground-penetrating sonar, which can be used in cases
where an image in the ground is needed, but digging
is not a consideration.
Hildebrand:
For example, a site that's inside a National Park.
You don't want to dig up everything inside a National
Park but you'd like to know what's there and so it's
a non-destructive way of looking.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
An Ultrasound that Supports Pre-Natal Bonding
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Expectant mothers who see very
detailed pictures of their unborn child with 3-D ultrasound
may have an advantage when it comes to pre-natal bonding
and management. Thomas Nelson, a professor of radiology
at the University of California, San Diego studied
what effect these images had on mothers who smoked
during pregnancy.
Nelson:
While the results from that study were inconclusive
for a number of reasons - not the least of which is
most mothers know it's not good to smoke so they're
a little embarrassed to participate in such a study
making use of that, it was a very positive outcome
in encouraging the fact that this is a very powerful
way to help parents relate to their unborn child in
a very positive way.
Narrator:
3D-ultrasound is much clearer than the sometimes fuzzy
images produced by 2D-ultrasound.
Nelson:
With the 3D-ultrasound images, you see a complete
image of, for example, the entire face of the baby.
It's not something that you need to be trained to
recognize and then say 'oh yes, I understand.' It's
intuitively obvious to you what you're looking at.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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