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A.Marine
Bacteria May Lead to a New Source of Anti-Cancer
Drugs
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A bacteria living inside
a small marine animal may be the source of a new
drug compound that can be developed to fight cancer.
Margo Haygood, a researcher at the Scripps Institution
of Oceanography at the University of California,
San Diego, says this anticancer compound is found
inside a bryozoan.
Haygood:
A bryozoan is an animal - it looks like a plant but
it's actually a colonial animal, which means it has
many small individuals that all live together. The
amazing thing about it is that even animals that are
considered a nuisance like this, because it grows
on boats, can still be full of surprises and still
have very worthwhile human uses.
Narrator:
Haygood identified a gene that produces the anticancer
compound and will now be exploring ways to grow
the bacteria outside these marine animals.
Haygood:
Since we have been able to find the genes of
the right sort, we are cloning out the whole biosynthetic
pathway to make the compound to be able to make
lots and lots of it so that we can have as much
as we need for being able to treat disease.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Informally Analyzing the Smiles of National Leadership
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Doctor Paul Ekman, a psychology
professor at the University of California, San Francisco,
has studied human facial expressions for over forty
years. In the wake of the September eleventh attacks,
he now finds himself informally applying his expertise
to some national leaders, including Homeland Security
Director Tom Ridge.
Ekman: Sometimes when I watch
television, I see the kind of smile that Ridge shows
when he talks about the latest threat or about the
latest person who's gotten Anthrax, well then I'm
looking very carefully to see what kind of smile is
he showing?
Narrator: Ekman says what he sees are
smiles that simultaneously convey gravity and reassurance
- which can be a bit confusing.
Ekman:
None of that's being deliberately deployed. Even these
social smiles, these polite ones, the tactful ones,
the agreement ones, we do those without thinking,
they've become a habitual part of our conversational
style. It's their absence that might worry us, not
their presence.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Seeking Clues to the Cause of the Most Powerful Earthquakes
Narrator:
This is Science Today. An international group of scientists,
including Casey Moore, a professor of earth sciences
at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are seeking
to understand the cause of the most powerful earthquakes.
Moore, one of the chief scientists leading the research
project, says they're using special drilling technology
from the oil industry to measure and monitor physical
properties of a fault zone off the shore of Japan
- and they're doing it in place.
Moore:
So that it's like instead of measuring the density
or the porosity of something that's removed from its
original environment, you measure right where it is
and you get a truer sense of its behavior.
Narrator:
In particular, Moore says they're looking at fluids
flowing along fault zones.
Moore:
We want to use the nature of the fault zones and the
fluids as a monitor for movement of the fault because
when the Earth is stressed, when there are forces
on it, it behaves like a sponge and it starts to squeeze
out some of the water. So at this stage, people are
just trying to understand how the faults behave.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
The Evolutionary Advantages of Sexual Reproduction
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Evolutionary biologists have
wondered for years just why sexual reproduction is
more common than asexual reproduction - especially
since asexual populations have the advantage of producing
more offspring. Now, researchers at the University
of California, Santa Barbara, have demonstrated for
the first time that the accumulation of beneficial
mutations is faster in sexual populations. Biologist
Marlene Zuk, of the University of California, Riverside,
has also done work in this field and says that's because
sexual reproduction provides more variation in offspring.
Zuk:
You make fewer of them and they're not as much
like you, but what if they're better? Let's say that
you're in a population where there's some disease
that's attacking everybody. Well, parasites are doing
this because they're able to exploit some aspect of
your genotype. Let's say they can do better to attach
to your intestinal lining. Well, if you have a bunch
of offspring that vary in the quality of their intestinal
lining, then maybe one of them is going to be able
to resist the pathogen.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
A Little Common Sense Goes a Long Way in Reducing
Heart Disease
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Americans have dramatically
reduced their risk of dying from heart disease by
using a little common sense. This according to Doctor
Lee Goldman, a researcher at the University of California,
San Francisco who found that Americans are living
longer simply by smoking less, eating healthier and
lowering their cholesterol.
Goldman:
Every now and again, what your mother told you to
do was right. And our paper really emphasizes the
tremendous public health benefit of healthy living
and paying attention to some of the most basic of
risk factors. It doesn't seem like rocket science,
but the benefit to the U.S. population is really very
substantial.
Narrator:
And Goldman says his research shows that ongoing efforts
should have reasonably similar benefits.
Goldman:
Our analyses suggest that really simple preventative
measures probably explain half or more of the decline
in heart disease mortality in the U.S.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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