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A.
Frogs Seen as Warning Sign for Environmental Harm
Narrator:
This is Science Today. For years, scientists studying
changes in the environment have looked to declining
amphibian populations as an early warning sign for
ecological damage. Biologist Tyrone Hayes of the
University of California-Berkeley says frogs serve
this purpose because they offer a sensitive model
for scientific study.
Hayes:
One, their eggs are unprotected. So whereas
a bird or a reptile is inside of an eggshell, and
a mammal is inside of the mother, from the time
of fertilization an amphibian is exposed, throughout
all those critical developmental stages where limbs
are developing and sex is developing, they're exposed
to whatever is in the environment.
Narrator:
Research has so far focused on declining frog populations
in North America, Europe and Japan, but Hayes says
new work is showing the scope of the problem.
Hayes:
There's good evidence that the problems are
global, and that they are increasing. You know the
number of people who report areas, in some cases
pristine areas, where historically we know there
were lots of amphibians and now there are none.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
A New BASIS for Detecting Biological Attacks
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore
and Los Alamos National Laboratories have developed
a system to detect airborne biological agents in the
event of a terrorist attack. Livermore Project Manager
Dennis Imbro describes the Biological Aerosol Sentry
and Information System, or BASIS.
Imbro: The first component is
a collector. These are low-cost collectors that we
can deploy in buildings, outdoors, anywhere we think
there could be an incident. It basically collects
aerosols on a filter paper. Those papers are then
brought to a laboratory where they're tested for the
presence of agent using DNA diagnostics.
Narrator: Imbro says that without BASIS,
it would take 5 to 7 days to discover that there's
been a biological attack.
Nasstrom:
Our system would provide warning within hours of an
event and give the authorities the capability to jump
on this very quickly, start a response operation,
getting the people who are exposed into treatment.
Narrator:
BASIS
was first used at the Salt Lake City Olympics. For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Patient Deaths and Ill Health Linked to a Nurse Shortage
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A recent, national study
has found that a shortage of nurses contributes to
nearly a quarter of the problems that result in death
or injury to hospital patients. Charlene Harrington,
a social and behavioral scientist at the University
of California, San Francisco, says this shortage has
also been identified in nursing homes.
Harrington:
The nurses that go to work for nursing homes
tend to be less well educated than the ones that go
to hospitals because they're making about fifteen
percent below what they would make in a hospital.
So you have a very unstable labor situation.
Narrator:
Harrington was part of a study based on an expert
panel of nursing home care, which recommends better
staffing.
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:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A One-Stop Shopping Environmental Center
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Researchers at the University
of California, Riverside's College of Engineering
Center for Environmental Research and Technology -
otherwise known as CE-CERT - are working to improve
the understanding of the environment and develop an
assortment of future environmental technologies. Joe
Norbeck, director of CE-CERT, likens it to one-stop
shopping.
Norbeck:
If you look at the air pollution problem on an urban
and regional scale and you look at all the parts of
that complex system, what CE-CERT does is address
just about every one of those parts, with the exception
of health effects work.
Narrator:
Some of the projects at CE-CERT include building vehicles
of the future powered by hydrogen; measuring emissions
from vehicles of all types using a state-of-the-art
laboratory on wheels, and studying transportation
systems research.
Norbeck:
When we first started, a lot of people thought we
were just for California, but actually our program
now is international and the purpose of it in our
initial mission was to be an interface between industry
and the regulatory community.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
The Promise and Challenge of Predicting Diabetes
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Right now people who suffer
from diabetes can only hope to manage the disease
by regulating their insulin levels. But a new drug
developed by Jeffrey Bluestone of the University of
California, San Francisco, has shown promise in treating
patients who are still in the early stages of Type
1 diabetes. Bluestone says the implications of the
drug go beyond its immediate impact.
Bluestone:
We can intervene in this disease early on, and
if we can identify individuals who are at high risk
of getting the disease then we could maybe even intervene
before they become diabetic which is of course what
we'd all like.
Narrator:
But identifying those susceptible to diabetes is difficult.
Scientists know that obesity is a big factor in Type
2 diabetes, but diet alone is not the answer.
Bluestone:
Since both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are increasing
significantly in numbers, there must be more to it.
Whether it's a genetic component in our population
and our breeding, or whether it's some environmental
aspect of virus infections or something like that,
nobody knows.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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