|
A.
Managing Arthritis in High-Risk Patients Safely and Cheaply
Narrator: This is Science Today. There's been a lot of controversy about the best ways to treat patients with arthritis - especially those who are at high risk of developing complications such as ulcers and other gastrointestinal problems. In the past, these patients were treated with Cox-2 inhibitors, such as Vioxx - a drug that the FDA recently took off the market due to its link to cardiovascular complications. But a new UCLA study, led by Dr. Brennan Spiegel, has found a safer – and cheaper – alternative.
Spiegel: What we're realizing now is that the answer was under our nose for years and it was actually to take medications like Ibuprofen and Naproxen, and just combine them with another readily available medicine, the proton pump inhibitor, which is now available over the counter. 423 That combination it turns out, is not only safer and not only more effective, but also less expensive than using a Cox-2 inhibitor.
Narrator: Proton pump inhibitors are acid-reducing drugs. For the first time, Speigel compared therapies head-to-head using a sophisticated computer analysis. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
A New Tool Gives Scientists New Insight into Ozone
Narrator: This is Science Today. A new way to measure the amount of stratospheric ozone present in the upper troposphere has been developed by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Physicist Cyndi Atherton of the Atmospheric Sciences Division explains that the stratosphere is where the ozone hole is and the troposphere is the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere, where ozone is a pollutant and greenhouse gas.
Atherton: So the two layers are very different in terms of how ozone is formed and what the role in the ozone is. Our group has a global model, so it's three-dimensional and it goes all the way up to the troposphere and the stratosphere, which is very important. In the past, people only modeled either the troposphere or the stratosphere and the other one was just pretty boundary condition, the computers just couldn't support it, but now we can.
Narrator: This gives researchers a way to realistically look at how much ozone is being formed from pollution in the troposphere versus how much is coming from the stratosphere.
Atherton: So it gives us an idea of how effective controls of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides can be in controlling ozone.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Wind Power to Play a More Prominent Role in the Future?
Narrator: This is Science Today. Wind power as an energy source is beginning to play a much more prominent role than it has in the past. But as Ryan Wiser, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory explains, wind power currently contributes a relatively small fraction of our electricity needs.
Wiser: Wind power contributes about .5 percent of the nation's electricity needs. Solar power contributes far less than even that level. Historically, the reason has been cost. Wind and solar have been higher costs energy sources, but over the last ten years of so, technology advances for wind and to a lesser extent, solar, have driven down those costs pretty considerably.
Narrator: Wiser says we are on the verge of seeing significant expansion of these renewable energy sources, but wind power will never contribute to 100 percent of our nation's supply.
Wiser: I suspect that within the next twenty to thirty years, you may see renewable electricity sources increasing from their current ten percent share to perhaps as high as twenty and thirty percent. But there's still going to be a need for those other conventional sources as well.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Decades Later, How Has the War on Cancer Fared?
Narrator: This is Science Today. While there's been some criticism about the war on cancer, which was launched in 1971, the progress that's been made since then has been staggering. Michael Karin, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, who has provided new insight into the connection between inflammation and malignancy, says in terms of increasing our knowledge, the war on cancer has been very successful.
Karin: The important thing about this war on cancer is that the money was not tied to anything specific. It just was really to increase our knowledge. For instance, some of the most important discoveries in basic molecular biology, all the tools that we use in these studies were supported by this type of investment. People doing inflammation research, most of them don't even think of cancer. In the beginning, it was not even obvious that it would be linked to cancer, but progress in inflammation research definitely benefits cancer research and the war on cancer.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
The Benefits of a Calorically-Restricted Diet
Narrator: This is Science Today. Eating three square meals a day is considered the standard practice for a balanced diet and optimal health. But a University of California, Berkeley study has found evidence that less may be more. Researcher Marc Hellerstein demonstrated that lab mice performed better – and had less cancer risk – on a calorically restricted diet.
Hellerstein: Animals that are calorically restricted are super healthy, they run, they are more active. They are leaner, they have more muscle mass relative to fat, they have better looking coats, their immune system is better, they have a longer reproductive life span. It seems as though they are generally healthier in addition to living longer, than animals that just are allowed to eat all the time.
Narrator: Hellerstein adds that in nature, having access to so much food is not always the norm.
Hellerstein: Animals go through periods where they look for food and when they get a lot of food, they eat – they have to then go periods where they don't have food. So, it may be more natural from an evolutionary term to have intermittent periods of food deprivation and then food surplus.
Narrator: Hellerstein's next step is to see how humans fare on a diet in which calories are restricted a few days per week, as opposed to everyday. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
|
