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A.
The First Comprehensive Study of Organic Agriculture
Narrator: This is Science Today. The fastest-growing segment of farming today is organic agriculture. In California, experts expect up to 20 percent of crops will be in organic production by the year 2024. Given such statistics, Julie Guthman, an assistant professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, conducted the first comprehensive study of organic agriculture in California – and it has yielded some surprises.
Guthman: There's this real counter-cultural imaginary that goes with organic farming and that these farmers have been selling to health food stores and co-ops for twenty-five or thirty years and there's still people that do that, but clearly almost everybody in California has seen organic food proliferate in their grocery store – so there's obviously more that's going on there that meets the eye.
Narrator: Contrary to the small farmer ‘myth', Guthman says much of the growth in organic agriculture comes from growers who made the switch from conventional farming to organic and then recruited other experienced conventional farmers to join them.
Guthman: So, they were looking for value.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
PET Scans are Better Predictors for Alzheimer's Disease
Narrator: This is Science Today. A UCLA study has found that a PET scan vastly improves a doctor's ability to accurately predict Alzheimer's Disease, the most common form of dementia. Dan Silverman, associate director of UCLA's Alzheimer's Disease Center, says the PET scan is a functional imaging measure.
Silverman: Meaning that we look at how active each part of the brain is at the time that the scan is being obtained, as opposed to normal structural imaging methods that are common in clinical practice, like CT scans or MRI scans.
Narrator: Basically, the PET scan measures a patient's brain metabolism – and that would include neurodegenerative patterns in the brain that occur with Alzheimer's disease.
Silverman: We found that by adding PET to the diagnostic evaluation of these patients who had mild cognitive changes, that we could improve our accuracy in predicting what would happen to them in the future. And that has the implication of also enhancing our ability to be able to intervene earlier in the course of their disease.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
January is National Glaucoma Awareness Month
Narrator: January is National Glaucoma Awareness Month. This is Science Today. Glaucoma is a sight-threatening condition in which the optic nerve is damaged and affects about 3 million Americans. Dr. Robert Weinreb of the University of California, San Diego says pressure builds in the eye because fluid cannot drain properly.
Weinreb: In the case of glaucoma, for some reason, the drain gets blocked and the fluid is entering the eye but cannot leave the eye at the same rate that it's entering. And this causes the fluid pressure to increase in the eye...very much like if you stop up a drain in the sink in your kitchen, the fluid level is going to rise.
Narrator: If the internal pressure is not alleviated, it can damage the nerve fibers in the optic nerve and cause vision loss.
Weinreb: Initially, our treatment consists of a series of eye drops that reduce the amount of fluid flowing into the eye or open up the drain.
Narrator: The key to preventing glaucoma is early detection and Weinreb recommends those at risk have an annual exam. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A New Cardiac Monitoring System is Tested in Ambulances
Narrator: This is Science Today. A new emergency cardiac monitoring system is being tested out in ambulances in Santa Cruz county – a mountainous region in California where drive times to hospitals are very often long. The system, designed by the University of California, San Francisco, can send vital data by cell phone directly to ER.
Drew: We have a saying that time is muscle, meaning that for ever second and minute that ticks by where the artery is closed, more of the heart muscle is damaged. And that damage is irreversible, it doesn't grow back.
Narrator: Study leader Barbara Drew adds that the new ‘tele-electrocardiography system' gets a dozen views of the heart every 30 seconds and can detect ischemia – the damaging blockage of an artery. Transmitting this information to ER via the phone will speed up treatment.
Drew: The doctors and nurses could see what trouble the heart was in and have things all ready to go, so that when the wheels got to the curb of the emergency department, there would be a minimal delay in opening up the artery.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Glacier Studies Offer Insight into Global Climate Change
Narrator: This is Science Today. Geologists at the University of California, Riverside have been studying glaciers to better understand global climate changes such as global warming. Associate professor Lewis Owen says by looking at the deposits left behind by ancient glaciers, we can draw exact analogies to modern climate conditions.
Owen: There are several things that we can get out of glaciers – essentially, we look into changes in precipitation and changes in temperature. So if we can work out how the glaciers have responded in the past, we can work out what the variation of precipitation and temperature has been.
Narrator: Owen dated the glaciers with a combination of walking the terrain where glaciers once existed near Los Angeles, making computer models of the changes and utilizing a new technique for dating past glaciations called cosmogenic radionuclide dating.
Owen: So one of the real interests is to reconstruct what glaciers are and how fast they move. And because of these new dating techniques, we can really start to say when and where they were at a particular time and reconstruct regional, and then global scale change.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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