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A.
New Study Finds Energy is Lost in Ethanol Production
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new report by researchers
at the University of California, Berkeley, has concluded
that the use of ethanol from corn as a gasoline
additive will do more harm than good to the environment.
Geoengineering professor Tad Patzek, who led the
study, says that using ethanol as a gasoline additive
is like burning the same amount of fuel twice to
drive a car once.
Patzek:
You burn as much fossil fuel to obtain ethanol as
you then can get from burning it for the second
time, and therefore to the extent that a car burns
ethanol from corn, you actually double the emissions.
Narrator:
Patzek's
findings come at a critical time in the United States.
An energy bill has been passed that will double the
amount of ethanol to be used as a gas additive to
5 billion gallons a year by 2012.
Patzek:
Remember by that adding additives, or oxygenates
into gasoline, we are complicating the system. And
in fact, adding ethanol is the ultimate complexity,
because we are running away in the opposite direction.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
What to Do Before Spraying Insecticides
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Those who aggressively spray
insecticides to combat what they perceive as plant
or landscape-damaging insects may be doing these plants
- not to mention the environment - a great disservice.
Mary Louise Flint, an integrated pest management expert
at the University of California, Davis says often
times holes in plants leaves or brown spots in lawns
are caused by under watering plants or using other
incorrect practices.
Flint:
They'll go to the retail nursery and buy an insecticide
and apply it without even looking to see if whether
there is an insect there causing that damage.
Narrator:
So Flint recommends taking a closer look
at what's going on in your garden or landscape before
heading out to the store for insecticides. And even
then, Flint says you may need to do some homework.
Flint:
First of all, you need to determine whether there
is an insect on your plant that is causing damage.
People will spray for beneficial insects, too, not
recognizing that they are good.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Attitudes about Psychiatric Help Shift in Seniors
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Depression in late life is
all too common. The elderly often face a host of problems,
including chronic illness, the loss of loved ones
or the loss of independence. Psychiatrist Patricia
Arean, of the University of California, San Francisco
says in the past, the elderly didn't tend to seek
help for depression.
Arean:
When I first started in geriatrics fifteen years ago,
there was the tendency to hear "I was brought
up to just pull myself up by my bootstraps and just
deal with it" and seeking help was an indicator
that you were weak in some way.
Narrator:
But as baby boomers are becoming geriatric, Arean
says attitudes about seeking psychiatric help are
shifting - yet, there is still some resistance due
to stigma.
Arean:
And so what we try to do in our research group is
to find places where delivery of how services might
be more acceptable, so one area is in primary care
medicine. So we've done some research where we asked
older patients who were depressed where would they
prefer to seek help and the majority of patients would
rather work in primary care medicine.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Scientists Working to Find 'Dirty Cargo'
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Scientists at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory are building and testing
radiation detectors to detect dirty bombs and other
kinds of weapons of mass destruction inside cargo
containers. Program manager Arden Dougan explains
how they test these instruments.
Dougan:
What we did was we put realistic threats inside a
cargo container, we put various cargos inside and
we walked up to the container with the instruments
to see if we could detect them and we didn't just
use PhD physicists to try out these instruments. We
used some volunteers from local customs and Coast
Guard and border patrol to give us their ideas on
how well these worked.
Narrator:
Dougan
says there are many instruments that are commercially
available now.
Dougan:
Many of
them are quite good in use at ports and by law enforcement
personnel. We tested quite a few of them - they're
good. The new detectors we're building will help strengthen
our defense against terrorism.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
How to Put 'Waste Heat' to Better Use
Narrator:
This is Science Today. With today's power system,
about two-thirds of the energy consumed by power plants
isn't converted to electricity; it instead escapes
as waste heat. Chris Marnay, a staff scientist at
the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says placing
power generation where heat is needed, rather than
where it can be conveniently discarded, could drastically
improve efficiency.
Marnay:
If the power generation were much closer to the loads
or if the power generation were configured somehow
that we could capture more of that waste heat, then
the overall process can be much more efficient, even
if the conversion to electricity is less efficient.
Narrator:
Marnay says that using waste heat to drive cooling
and heating systems in buildings could be a great
way to displace the use of natural gas and save electricity.
Marnay:
So by displacing
the electricity that would be used to cool the building,
you're really having a major beneficial effect on
the power system because at the same time that you're
supplying the need to the building, you're also lowering
the load on the power system.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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