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A.
Patients Should Skip Botox Parties
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Botox - an injected drug
that is used to ease furrowed brows - is the fastest
growing cosmetic procedure performed today. It's
becoming so popular in fact, that some people are
throwing 'Botox' parties in their home, in which
a professional performs the procedure in a social
setting. Dr. Richard Glogau, a dermatologist at
the University of California, San Francisco, says
it's still a medical procedure - and should be treated
as one.
Glogau:
As a general rule, people in office settings have
a certain routine that provides a fail safe mechanism
and there's less risk of mistakes and I just think
people are better off doing it in a controlled medical
setting than they are outside the office.
Narrator:
A recent Gallup poll found the majority of those
polled would, in fact, rather have Botox injections
in a medical setting.
Glogau:
Ninety percent of the patients that were polled
said that they were not comfortable - they never
considered doing it outside of a medical office
setting, which tells me that patients have more
common sense than the people who are trying to market
this questionable approach to them.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Your Brain is Teaching Your Nose New Tricks
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Any wine connoisseur is aware
that you can train your nose to detect subtle aromas,
but where does this learning take place? Noam Sobel,
professor of neuroscience at the University of California,
Berkeley, has found the ability to learn a new smell
not only occurs in the nose, but also in the brain.
His study involved people learning to detect androstenone,
an odor reminiscent of 'dirty laundry.'
Sobel: What we did was went ahead
and replicated that classic study of taking non-detectors
of androstenone and systematically exposing them to
androstenone to teach them to detect it. But rather
than doing it just ordinarily, we exposed only one
nostril of these non-detectors.
Narrator: Sobel found that although
our nostrils are not neurologically in communication
with each other, the exposed nostril was able to teach
the unexposed one through connections made in the
brain.
Sobel:
The idea is that if the other would learn, even though
it was never exposed, that means plasticity had to
be in the brain.
Narrator:
Sobel's
findings open an exciting dialogue on how the brain
changes and even heals itself. For Science Today,
I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Rising Concern about a Pesticide's Effect on Frogs
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A common pesticide that's already
been found to cause deformities in frogs in a laboratory
has been found to affect frogs native across the Midwest.
These findings suggest that the pesticide, called
atrazine, may be affecting other amphibian populations
nationwide. Biologist Tyrone Hayes of the University
of California, Berkeley, led the study.
Hayes:
Probably the biggest thing that we're looking at now
is this herbicide atrazine, which we believe induces
an enzyme called aromatase, which induces the conversion
of testosterone to estrogen and the resulting effect
is that males inappropriately express estrogen, which
both feminizes and demasculinizes the animals.
Narrator:
The current
data raise concern about the effects of atrazine on
amphibians in general. Yet Hayes says one of the scary
things about atrazine is how widespread it is.
Hayes:
It's the number one selling herbicide in the world
and in the United States, we use somewhere between
60 and 150 million pounds a year. You know, there's
virtually no atrazine-free environment.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Can Chinese Medicine Enhance Cancer Treatment?
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A recent study found that Chinese
medicine, in combination with standard therapy, greatly
enhanced the treatment of patients with Hepatitis
B. Now, researchers led by Michael McCulloch, a doctoral
student in epidemiology at the University of California,
Berkeley's School of Public Health, are planning to
conduct another study to see if Chinese herbs also
benefit patients with breast and lung cancer.
McCulloch:
We're going to do a similar kind of research question.
Does adding herbal medicine to chemotherapy enhance
the treatment outcomes for people with breast cancer
and lung cancer?
Narrator:
McCulloch, who is also a licensed acupuncturist, has
been working with Chinese herbs for two decades.
McCulloch:
Our clinical experience has been that people using
Chinese medicine in conjunction with conventional
care experience lower side effects going through treatment
and better long-term treatment outcomes. We're hoping
to demonstrate that in our next meta-analysis project.
Narrator:
McCulloch hopes their studies will result in an open
dialogue between Eastern and Western medicine. For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Understanding Asymmetries in the Human Brain
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Asymmetries, or rather differences,
between the left and right side of the brain routinely
show up in human brain imaging and yet, Larry Cahill,
a professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University
of California, Irvine, says researchers often can't
explain why.
Cahill:
The sense of the whys is the big 64 thousand dollar
question, not just in this immediate area, but in
the whole area of human asymmetry. My guess is that
as the cortex gets bigger and bigger and more complicated
as you go across species, we're going to more and
more processing within a hemisphere relative to across
a hemisphere.
Narrator:
Cahill recently found that men and women use different
sides of the brain to store long-term, emotional memories.
Cahill:
There's been half a dozen or so brain imaging studies
that have shown differences between the brains between
men and women in various domains, language or mathematical
ability. It's kind of like a few raindrops before
a major storm hits. This is another raindrop.
Narrator:
For Science Today, Larissa Branin.
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