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A.
A New Technique that Detects the Sources of Lead
Exposure
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A technique that can detect
the various sources of lead may help target and
prevent the sometime elusive causes of childhood
lead poisoning. Don Smith, an environmental toxicologist
at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says
the technique they're working on can pinpoint the
"fingerprints" of many different lead
varieties, which are called isotopes.
Smith:
It retains that isotopic fingerprint that we can then
use as a way to assess how lead is being transported
through the environment or more importantly, how children
are being exposed to lead in their household environment.
Narrator:
In the U.S., almost one in every 20 children under
the age of six suffers from lead poisoning. And
yet, current methods of testing used by public health
agencies often can't identify the sources of lead
exposure.
Smith:
It's not their fault, it's just the tools they
have available aren't very sophisticated. Our hope
is that we can demonstrate effectively this is a
viable technique - which it is - and then it can
be adopted as a measure to help evaluate home environments
for lead exposure to children.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
An Important Tool in Breast Cancer Detection
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Fine needle biopsies were once
widely used in doctor's offices to detect breast cancer
until questions about their accuracy led to a decline
in popularity. But Doctor Britt-Marie Ljung, a pathology
professor at the University of California, San Francisco
conducted a recent study finding that with proper
training, the procedure can, in fact, be effective.
Ljung: With no training at all,
you can actually get diagnostic samples in about fifty
percent of cases. Although if I were a patient, I
wouldn't be happy with that. That fifty-fifty chance
is not good enough. To get over ninety-five, you really
need to be an expert at doing this.
Narrator: Ljung's office is already
reporting up to 95 percent accuracy using the low-cost
procedure, which she says is less invasive than other
techniques and allows patients to receive a quick
diagnosis.
Ljung:
We can usually also issue a preliminary diagnosis
at the time of the visit which, particularly for the
eighty or ninety percent of patients who have benign
disease, it's a very nice message to get that quickly.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
A Technique that Dissects the Book of Life
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Our chromosomes are made up
of DNA and within that DNA are genes that encode the
proteins that become the working parts of the cell.
Matthew Coleman, a senior scientist at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, says trying to find
all the genes out there has been a very difficult
task.
Coleman:
Even though you hear about we've completed the
human genome, if we considered the human genome to
be a book, we've kind of found all the words in the
book but we don't exactly understand the chapters
and the paragraphs and the sentences that link it
all together that help us to understand and to read
the book.
Narrator:
So Coleman and other scientists within the Lab's Biotechnology
Research Program, have developed a sophisticated process
that identifies all the genes that belong to a specific
part of each chromosome.
Coleman:
It's definitely a very nice technology because it
overcomes some of the slowness that was in some of
the more traditional approaches that are used.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
More Evidence of the Health Benefits of Soy
Narrator:
This is Science Today. There's more research supporting
the healthy benefits of the soybean - which has long
been regarded for its anti-cancer and its heart-healthy
effects. At the University of California, Berkeley,
researcher Ben de Lumen helped discover that a protein
in soy called lunasin prevents skin tumors from developing
in mice. De Lumen and his colleagues previously found
that lunasin had a significant anti-cancer effect
in humans.
De Lumen:
Soybean is almost a complete food. It has carbohydrates,
it has protein and it has lipids or oil. And right
now in this country only about five percent of the
soybean production in this country is used for human
food - but the figure is increasing.
Narrator:
Still, de Lumen says it may take a while for people
to fully catch on to eating soy products.
De Lumen:
And so, I think the challenge to people who are promoting
soybean as a food product would have to make it more
attractive to people who are not used to eating it.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Better Detection of a Nefarious Disease
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Plague - a disease that has
caused three world epidemics during the course of
human history and killed millions of people - is still
endemic in some parts of the world. Researcher Bert
Weinstein of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
has developed a quick detection system for plague,
which he says really is a nefarious disease.
Weinstein:
It manages to make its living by killing all of its
hosts. It kills the flea essentially by starving it
to death and causing the flea to want to bite everything
it can in sight because it's trying to feed and in
the process, spreading the disease, then it kills
the other animals - rodents, or in the case of humans
- humans. And if there are any fleas on those animals,
when the animal dies, they jump off going looking
for new hosts.
Narrator:
Weinstein says another problem with plague is the
generality of the flu-like symptoms.
Weinstein:
Plague is very treatable with antibiotics if caught
early, so I think the main thing is just being aware
of any potential exposure.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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