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A.
Girls with ADHD are Under-diagnosed
Narrator:
This is Science Today. It's long been reported that
boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,
or ADHD, outnumber girls by an approximate ratio
of three-to-one. But University of California, Berkeley
psychologist, Stephen Hinshaw, has released a new
study suggesting girls with ADHD have been greatly
under-appreciated and in turn, are under-diagnosed.
Hinshaw:
Boys are more noticeable when they have ADHD because
they have the type of it that's salient in a classroom.
Girls are relatively more likely to show the type
of ADHD that's much harder to detect - unless you
do more careful testing.
Narrator:
Hinshaw says greater public awareness is crucial,
since neuropsychological testing of girls with ADHD,
who may otherwise 'suffer in silence', clearly showed
impaired functioning.
Hinshaw:
So, we're convinced that at least as long as the
treatments are invoked, girls with ADHD can be successfully
managed and helped with their social and academic
skills, but they won't get treated unless they get
identified and assessed.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
A Study Raises Concerns over U.S. Dental Health Care
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A recent study of the nation's
dental health care found there are growing disparities
between the current system of dental health care and
the population it serves. Researcher Elizabeth Mertz
of the University of California, San Francisco, led
the study.
Mertz: There's a whole segment
of the population that these advances are not getting
to and so we call these the underserved population
- tend to be more minority populations, elderly populations,
children, anyone with developmental disabilities or
are medically compromised, that just don't have the
suburban or urban access to care or they don't have
the financial ability to have access to care.
Narrator: Unlike the nation's health
care systems, Mertz says dental health care does not
have any open door providers.
Mertz:
It really shows that the dental profession has been
able to keep themselves segmented in sort of their
own little cottage industry - not really integrated
at all into the larger systems of care that are forced
to deal with all of the uninsured and all of the underserved.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
The Real Threat of Smallpox
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Smallpox has probably caused
more deaths from infectious disease than any other
disease in history. The last case of smallpox in the
world was reported in Ethiopia in 1976 and in 1980,
scientists announced that vaccines had been successful
at eradicating smallpox from the world. George Rutherford,
director of the University of California, San Francisco's
Preventive Medicine and Public Health Division, says
previous assumptions that the disease could be easily
controlled in the case of another outbreak were wrong.
Rutherford:
This assumes that one hundred percent of the population
is immune to smallpox. The correct number for that
is zero percent.
Narrator:
That's
because the smallpox vaccine only protects for about
twenty years and the U.S. stopped vaccinating civilians
over thirty years ago.
Rutherford:
So, basically nobody's immune anymore. Once you're
exposed, you don't only have to use small pox before
exposure-smallpox vaccine. You can use it after exposure
as well. You have about a three- or four-day window.
If you immunize somebody within that window three-to-four
day method, you can prevent them from getting smallpox.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Natural Fertilizer Discovered in the Deep Ocean
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Nitrogen is the most abundant
element in our atmosphere and a primary nutrient for
all green plants. Usually, organisms get this essential
element from other sources and yet, there are some
organisms that can convert nitrogen gas from the atmosphere
for use in their system. Jonathan Zehr, a professor
of ocean sciences at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, says this conversion is called nitrogen-fixation.
Zehr:
In the oceans we're particularly interested in where
organisms get nitrogen and how they get nitrogen because
in the larger parts of the ocean, there are vanishingly
low concentrations of nitrogen.
Narrator:
Zehr discovered that the deep ocean is actually
teeming with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which is an
important finding because microscopic plants in the
oceans depend on nitrogen and this affects fish yields.
Zehr:
But on top of that, the availability of nitrogen
controls how fast these little plants grow and how
much carbon dioxide they can fix - which has implications
for the global greenhouse effect and how much carbon
dioxide the oceans may be able to absorb.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
The Best Prevention of Head Injury is Protection
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Of the various popular sports
that American children are involved with, bicycling
and basketball cause the most injuries in children.
And yet most of these injuries - especially those
to the head - can be prevented. In fact, Dr. David
Hovda, director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research
Center, says protection is better than anything else
in terms of preventing serious head injury.
Hovda:
Unfortunately, we've seen a number of kids that that
have been hurt either riding bicycles or rollerblading
that didn't think it was fashionable enough to wear
a helmet at that particular time.
Narrator:
Hovda says falls from bicycles or while rollerblading
can be especially dangerous, since they often combine
two dangerous movements: acceleration and rotation.
Hovda:
The reason why this rotation is so deadly is that
it takes the nervous tissue and it twists it and the
greatest amount of torque happens in the middle part
of the brain which is where a lot of the real critical
areas are in terms of life support, heart rate and
respiration.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, Larissa Branin.
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