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A.
Experts Warn Against Cheap Medical Fixes
Narrator:
This is Science Today. There have been reports of
a disturbing trend in which people are purchasing
medication at the pet store in an effort to inexpensively
self-treat their ailment. Dr. Don Klingborg, an
expert in veterinary medicine at the University
of California, Davis, says doctors' reports of this
phenomenon have surfaced in medical and veterinary
journals.
Klingborg:
People coming to them with sicknesses had previously
treated themselves primarily with drugs that they
bought from pet stores that were designed for treating
aquarium fish.
Narrator:
There are many factors why, including cost and lack
of insurance. But also, some veterinary medicines
have similar names or active ingredients used in
human antibiotics - ampicillin is one example.
Klingborg:
The problem is that ampicillin isn't always
ampicillin. It can come in a variety of different
strengths and it can be formulated in a couple different
kinds of ampicillin and so just because it says
ampicillin, doesn't mean it's the ampicillin you
and I would take for ourselves or give to our children.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Adaptive Optics on the Keck II Telescope
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Astronomers at the University
of California, Berkeley have witnessed the largest
eruption in the solar system on Jupiter's moon, Io.
Franck Marchis, a co-leader of the team, explains
how adaptive optic technology on the Keck II telescope
in Hawaii allowed for this discovery.
Marchis: Adaptive optics is a
new technique, which is installed on the new telescopes
now. And it's allowed us to collect in real time the
effect of the turbulence, or the atmospheric turbulence
of our atmosphere.
Narrator: Marchis says that by using
a system of mirrors, adaptive optics can effectively
remove the twinkle from the stars and stabilize a
high-resolution image, making it the premiere technology
for viewing thermal activity in space.
Marchis:
So this
kind of eruption is not possible to see without adaptive
optics. We need this kind of system to see it because
you need high resolution. Because we observe from
the ground in multi-wavelengths - that means in different
colors of infrared, we get information about the thermal
eruption.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
The Tremendous Impact of Genetic Sequencing
Narrator:
This is Science Today. There's no doubt that in recent
years the sequencing of the genomes of a large number
or organisms has made a major impact on science. At
the University of California, San Francisco, the fairly
recent sequencing of the yeast genome has changed
the way experiments have been conducted in researcher
Erin O'Shea's laboratory.
O'Shea:
The ability to look for related proteins in other
organisms and to determine if what one is studying
in one organism is conserved in another organism -
that's a very powerful thing.
Narrator:
And the technology itself - including the use of DNA
microarrays to study the expression of the transcription
of all the genes in the genome at one time has also
been very useful.
O'Shea:
We're doing a lot of other things - most of them centered
around understanding how cells sense and respond to
things in their environment, whether they're a yeast
cell or a human cell.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Promising Future for Chinese Medicine and Conventional
Therapy
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A recent University of California,
Berkeley study suggests that combining Chinese herbal
medicine with standard therapy is an effective treatment
for chronic hepatitis B, which affects 350 million
people worldwide. Researcher Michael McCulloch says
they looked into whether adding Chinese herbal medicines
to the standard treatment of interferon, improved
the outcomes of patients with chronic hepatitis B.
McCulloch:
The way in which treatment for hepatitis B is
measured is through hepatitis B surface antigen, the
E antigen and hepatitis B viral DNA. What we found
was that in each of those three different outcomes,
adding Chinese herbal medicine to interferon increased
the effectiveness of alpha-interferon by one and half
to two times.
Narrator:
McCulloch
offers this advice to individuals seeking a Chinese
medicine treatment plan for chronic hepatitis B.
McCulloch:
Review that treatment plan with their liver disease
specialist, so that everybody agrees on what's being
done and everyone's aware of the full treatment plan.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
African Americans at Higher Risk of Diabetes
Narrator:
This
is Science Today. Over the past two decades, the prevalence
of diabetes in the nation's African American population
has gone up 33 percent. University of California,
Davis nutrition specialist, Lucia Kaiser recently
helped conduct a California-based diabetes awareness
study and says one of the problems is a lack of information
about the disease in African American populations.
Kaiser:
One of the things they said was there's a lot of information
about other diseases, but given the fact that they're
at high risk for diabetes, there's relatively little
little information that was coming from the doctor's
offices. In fact, there was confusion about whether
they were being screened at all.
Narrator:
Kaiser says one of the key factors for the high rate
of diabetes is obesity and lack of exercise.
Kaiser:
It's both genetic factors, as well as lifestyle that
has changed in the last century that's causing a problem
in this population - but not only in African Americans,
but in the population as a whole in the United States
because diabetes is on the rise among all groups.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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