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A.
Nearly a Million Adults Lack Help with Essential
Daily Needs
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A new study finds that
nearly a million adults in this country who need
help with two or more activities essential to daily
living, must do without assistance. Study leader
Mitch LaPlante, a professor of social and behavioral
sciences at the University of California, San Francisco,
says there's more emphasis these days on allowing
people to live in the community.
LaPlante:
But there's actually very few studies of how well
people's needs are being met who live in the community.
So this is really a first in terms of describing
how well people's needs are being met.
Narrator:
Essential needs include eating, bathing and dressing.
LaPlante says when such needs are inadequately met
in the community, people are at greater risk of
being institutionalized, regardless of their age.
LaPlante:
This study should provide people who are in the
position of working with people to live in the community
to make sure of that that they are guaranteed the
level of help that they really need in order to
thrive in the community.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Are We a Nation of Couch Potatoes?
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Americans spend nine times
as much time per day watching television or movies
than they do on sports, exercise and all other leisure-time
physical activities combined. Gladys Block, a professor
at the University of California, Berkeley's School
of Public Health, says considering the obesity rates
in this country, their study on human energy expenditure
is a wake-up call for the nation.
Block:
We need to recognize how very inactive we are
as a society because it's only when we recognize it
that we are going to actually take some action to
try to build it into our everyday lives more and we
need to take ourselves in hand about TV watching.
Narrator:
Leisure time physical activities, such as jogging
or going to the gym, were at the bottom of our priority
list.
Block:
People come home at the end of the day and they're
tired and they sit down in front of the TV and then
basically, the rest of the evening is gone. So we
need to be more conscious about how much time we're
spending.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
A Distinct Molecular Key to Overcoming Fear
Narrator:
This
is Science Today. Neuroscientists at UCLA have discovered
a distinct molecular process in the brain that's involved
in overcoming fear. Dr. Mark Barad, who led the research,
says they studied a model for the kind of psychotherapy
famously used in animals by Pavlov, called extinction
of conditional fear.
Barad:
We're trying to understand what the molecular mechanisms
of extinction are so that we can devise medications
that will make extinction go faster and if we can
do that, we believe that we'll be able to make psychotherapy
go faster, because one of the problems with psychotherapy
is that it takes a long time.
Narrator:
The researchers discovered a molecular channel in
brain cells that's required to overcome fear, but
plays no part in becoming fearful or expressing fear.
This may have a huge impact on treating anxiety disorders.
Barad:
This would not reduce people's fear and it wouldn't
impair their ability to learn new associations about
dangerous things. Instead, you would be able to specifically
get rid of a fear that you think was no longer adaptive,
no longer appropriate.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
The Rise of Diabetes Among Immigrant Latinos
Narrator:
This is Science Today. In the last decade, there's
been about a fifty percent increase in diabetes among
the immigrant Latino population in California. According
to a two-year study of Latina women led by Marc Schenker,
a preventive medicine professor at the University
of California, Davis, the evidence is clear that eating
low quality foods, loaded with fat and sugar, are
having a major impact on Latino health.
Schenker:
Obesity is an increasing problem among Latino immigrants
to California, even in some situations such as farm
workers, where you would think obesity would not be
a problem, and yet it's becoming one.
Narrator:
This is in part due to a cultural change in traditional
diets.
Schenker:
When we looked at factors such as fast food intake,
traditional food intake, fruit and vegetable intake,
what we saw was that the profile was worse among women
born in the U.S. or who had immigrated here, compared
to those who were born in Mexico.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Understanding the Environmental Factors that Affect
Children
Narrator:
This is Science Today. It's only been in the last
ten years or so that policy makers began to focus
more on how various environmental factors and conditions
particularly affect children and not just adults.
In this spirit, environmental health researcher Amy
Kyle of the University of California, Berkeley, collaborated
with the Environmental Protection Agency to lay out
the types of environmental factors that are most important
to children.
Kyle:
We find that while lead in blood in children has gone
down overall, we still have a significant number of
children who are still at risk from lead and we really
need to do something about that.
Narrator:
Kyle's study also found that 8% of women in this
country of childbearing age have higher than normal
levels of mercury in their blood and this affects
babies in the womb.
Kyle:
They're at greatest risk while their brains are
still developing. We also have learned that mercury
levels in the blood that the developing child is exposed
to are actually a little bit higher than the mothers.
So it is a significant concern. We need to think about
where that mercury is coming from and see where it
is coming from and see what we can do about that.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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