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A.
A New Approach to Prenatal Ultrasound
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new approach to prenatal
ultrasound could help doctors better identify fetuses
that are small and at high-risk and tell them which
ones are small but healthy. Rebecca Smith-Bindman,
an assistant professor of radiology, epidemiology
and biostatistics at the University of California,
San Francisco, led the study.
Smith-Bindman:
The purpose of this was to evaluate how ultrasound
measurements of fetal size predict birth outcomes.
So, an in-utero measurement, could that be used to
give you some information about what happens at around
the time of birth or after the time of birth?
Narrator:
Smith-Bindman found that fetuses measuring in the
5th percentile during a prenatal ultrasound were between
two and almost fifteen times as likely to have poor
birth outcomes.
Smith-Bindman:
And partly that's interesting because previous work
has sort of suggested maybe the 10th percentile is
a better cut-off and the problem with the 10th percentile
is that identifies a lot of normal babies at being
at risk when they're truly not at risk.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Men Have a Biological Clock, Too
Narrator:
This is Science Today. When it comes to reproduction,
it turns out that men have a ticking biological clock,
too. A new study conducted by researchers at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory and the University of
California, Berkeley, found that with each passing
year, semen quality in healthy adult men declines.
Study co-author, Andrew Wyrobeck of the Livermore
lab, explains.
Wyrobeck:
We found that the ability for the sperm to swim fast
and forward seems to decline almost immediately with
age, starting in the twenties. So the decade of the
thirties is less efficient than the twenties and forties
is less efficient than the thirties.
Narrator:
While there have been indications of these
age effects in men, previous studies have only been
done in the clinical population. Wyrobeck says their
research is one of the first large studies of healthy
men in the general population.
Wyrobeck:
What it means in the most simplistic fashion is that
fertility is a couple issue. If a man of marginal
fertility is with a woman of marginal fertility, they
may have a problem, so it needs to be considered as
a couple issue.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
The Importance of Treating the Depressed Elderly
Narrator:
This is Science Today. With so many budget cuts and
issues on a state and a federal level, mental health
may not be a prominent issue right now. But Patricia
Arean, a psychiatrist at the University of California,
San Francisco, says it's important because there's
substantial research showing that people who don't
get depression in late life, have much better medical
health outcomes.
Arean:
If you're feeling better and healthier, you're more
likely to become more productive contributors to society.
So to ignore it or not do something about mental health
given the cohort of baby boomers aging, it's going
to be a costly thing down the road.
Narrator:
Arean is currently recruiting people age 65 and over
who have depression for a five-year, national study
comparing the effectiveness of two types of psychotherapy
in treating a type of depression in the elderly, which
does not respond well to antidepressants.
Arean:
We're really
trying to figure out all the different avenues in
which depression in late life shows up and how we
can best get treatment to those people.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
How New Technology May Change Consumer Thoughts on
Electricity
Narrator:
This is Science Today. As electricity consumers, we
often don't think about our participation in the electricity
market-a market that has a relatively fixed demand
and a constantly changing supply. But according to
Chris Marnay, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, advances in microgrid technology
that would allow individuals to locally generate their
power and trade it on the market, could initiate a
paradigm shift in how we think about our power.
Marnay:
What onsite generation does in part is just gives
more options to the owners of the microgrid, or the
participants in the microgrid, because they would
self generate under some circumstances, and then they
would buy from the grid under other circumstances.
Narrator:
Marnay
says that giving customers more options would mean
that their response to prices would not be as indifferent
as they are today.
Marnay:
So giving people more options in which to respond
to prices hopefully is a way in which markets could
be helped to function better. And microgrids are one
way of doing that.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
New Insight into the Dietary Role in Certain Cancers
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The rates of prostate and breast
cancers in America are alarmingly high, but in Asia
they are fairly uncommon.This intriguing difference
has led nutritional scientists, such as Leonard Bjeldanes
of the University of California, Berkeley, to consider
how differences in diet contribute to environmental
causes for these cancers and environmental protections
against them.
Bjeldanes:
The suggestion is there's something about the hormonal
activity of our diet that is affecting that. One thing
that we do know is that the Asian diet includes a
whole lot more vegetables than the Western diet.
Narrator:
Bjeldanes says Brassica vegetables like broccoli
and bok choy seem to be protective against prostate
cancer and that a change in diet seems to be affecting
cancer rates in Asian men who immigrate to America.
Bjeldanes:
Asian men, once they've been here, it takes a generation
or two for the cancer rates in their family to reach
the levels of people living in the United States.
And it's very well associated with a change in diet
that these people encounter.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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