B. Data about Mercury Exposure in Women and Children

Narrator: This is Science Today. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, has recently released a report on childhood exposure to environmental contaminants, which for the first time included data about mercury exposure in women of childbearing age. Environmental health researcher Amy Kyle of the University of California, Berkeley, was one of the report's five authors.

Kyle: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a bio-monitoring study, where they looked at concentrations of chemicals in people's bodies and they looked at mercury for the first time. And they found numbers that I think surprised everyone.

Narrator: The report found that eight percent of U.S. women of childbearing age have blood mercury levels that are higher than recommended by the EPA.

Kyle: And that's a potential risk for women because children who were exposed while they're still in the womb are at risk for effects that affect the way their brain develops.

Narrator: Women of childbearing age or those who are pregnant should limit their intake of fish that is high in mercury, including shark, swordfish, mackerel and tuna. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.

C. Counting Your Blessings Can Improve Your Health

Narrator: This is Science Today. People who count their blessings, so to speak,
not only experience an improved state of emotional and physical well-being, but
also successfully fulfill life goals. Robert Emmons, a psychology professor at the
University of California, Davis proved this long held belief in class.

Emmons: We randomly assigned students into one of three conditions. A third of
them were instructed to write about hassles; another third of them wrote about
things that they were grateful or thankful for and a third group wrote about just major
events that were happening to them during the week, so it was a mixture of good
and bad events.

Narrator: The 'grateful group' were more positive and had fewer physical
complaints - even those who had once considered themselves grumpy

Emmons: So you're not locked into a particular way of looking at the world just
because maybe that's the way in which you typically have approached it in the past
and people can learn to focus on positive things. They can focus on things that
they're thankful for and that can affect their lives - both their mood but also their
physical health, which I think is an important contribution here.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.

D. The Expanding Role of Microsensors in Scientific Observation

Narrator: This is Science Today. The development of wireless microsensor networks may change the traditional, human observation approach towards science. David Culler, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says microsensors can provide the richest picture of an environment ever seen.

Culler: Sensors are things that respond to the physical world and generate electrical signals. And today you can build these very, very tiny structures on a chip that can do that. Examples, temperature, light, humidity, barometric pressure, motion, acceleration, vibration, increasingly, chemical sensors, biological sensors.

Narrator: Culler says there are a number of applications for this technology.

Culler: We're looking for example at monitoring the Golden Gate Bridge. Today there's 75 sensors spread across the bridge. You can imagine having thousands, perhaps maybe even a million sensors, that really would allow people looking at that structure to see how the pieces of it interact, so that they could see how it twists and bends and what parts are fatiguing.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.

E. Other Uses for Botox Studied

Narrator: This is Science Today. The popular wrinkle treatment known as Botox is also the most potent poison known to medical science. It's derived from a molecule that's made by the chlostridium bacteria, the poison that accumulates in improperly canned food that causes botulism. Dr. Richard Glogau, a dermatologist at the University of California, San Francisco says while Botox is used to erase wrinkles, every medical specialty is starting to find a use for this drug.

Glogau: It's turned out to be useful for other things like uncontrolled sweating and treatment of headache. Chronic nerve pains of certain types like shingles. Many of which heretofore have had no effective therapy at all. So it's definitely a molecule for the new Millennium.

Narrator: Glogau previously found that Botox treatments alleviated migraines.

Glogau: We actually found that we could reliably affect migraine headache by treating not only the same areas that we were treating with wrinkles, but adding the injections at the side of the head and back of the base of the neck.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.