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A.
Older Adults Accentuate the Positive
Narrator: This is Science Today. In the words of an old song, ‘you've got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative'. According to new memory research, it seems that's just what older adults do when making and remembering their choices in life. Clinical psychologist Mara Mather of the University of California, Santa Cruz, says as people age, they rely more on a strategic thought process that favors positive emotional outcomes.
Mather: We can take a group of older and younger adults who are equally accurate in memory, but the older adults will remember things in a way that will enhance their current emotions more, so they'll remember more of the positive than the negatives. It doesn't really look like it's just because older adults are forgetting things – it looks like it's really a strategic type of thing.
Narrator: Mather says their findings differ from most types of studies looking at age differences.
Mather: In most types of research on aging, if you're showing decline physically, you're often showing decline cognitively. Whereas this is something where it's the group of older adults who are doing best in terms of their cognitive aging.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
A Study Dispels an Antidepressant-Suicide Link
Narrator: This is Science Today. A new UCLA study disputes recent claims that antidepressants are linked to suicidal behavior. Study leader, Julio Licinio, a professor of psychology and medicine, says in fact, suicide rates in this country have dropped steadily since Prozac and similar drugs, known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, first came onto the market.
Licinio: What we show is that since 1960, the mortality for suicide, it was increasing from 1960 until the end of the Eighties. It's a steady increase and then in 1988, which is exactly when the first of these SSRIs came to the market. Since then, death by suicide has been dropping precipitously.
Narrator: Licinio says that the biggest cause of suicide is actually untreated depression.
Licinio: The highest likelihood for suicide ideas and thoughts and eventually, actions is in the context of untreated depression and people should keep that in mind before they make a decision as to whether they get treated or not.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Software that Provides 3-D Virtual Environments
Narrator: This is Science Today. Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego have created a software application that constructs three-dimensional virtual environments using live video feeds. Computer science and engineering professor, Neil McCurdy, says the program is called ‘RealityFlythrough'.
McCurdy: It's basically just situating still photographs or live video in a three-dimensional environment. So, basically what we're doing is we're flattening space to two dimensions and then trying to re-project this in three dimensions.
Narrator: McCurdy says the viewer can then navigate the integrated, interactive environment as if it were a video game. Such a program has various uses, including disaster response scenarios.
McCurdy: Where first responders are wearing head-mounted cameras and they fan out through a disaster scene and they're broadcasting their live feeds back to command and control. Command and control could then monitor these live video feeds and get situational awareness as they move through the scene, on their own.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Device Improves ICU Patient-Doctor Communications
Narrator: This is Science Today. Patients in intensive care units, who are unable to speak, can now communicate their needs and concerns to doctors and nurses using a dry-erase communication board called the EZ-Board. UCLA Medical Center nurse, Lance Patak, who developed the EZ-Board, describes how it works.
Patak: There are several columns on the board. There's an ‘I am' column, where they can describe their state of being or their feelings – “I am short of breath, I am gagging, I am hot”. There's a column where they can list different things they want – “I want my family, I want a blanket, I want to be turned and so on and so forth.
Narrator: In a research project, Patak found that the EZ-Board, which is being used in hundreds of hospitals nationwide, did more than improve ICU patient and doctor communication.
Patak: It significantly reduced levels of frustration and communication during periods of mechanical ventilation. Also, it decreases the need for pain and anxiolytic medications.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. New Technique May Lead to Innovative, Sight-Restoring Therapy
Narrator: This is Science Today. A neurobiologist at the University of California, Berkeley has given ‘blind' nerve cells the ability to detect light by inserting a light-activated switch in brain cells normally insensitive to light and turning those cells on with a green light and off with ultraviolet light. Richard Kramer, a professor of molecular and cell biology, explains why light is a nice way to influence neurons.
Kramer: With light, the cell is sort of a point and shoot kind of system – the cell that you're pointing at and only that cell will be directly affected by that light beam. And with a laser, you can make a light beam very small in size. And so you can individually affect single nerve cells or even parts of single nerve cells and at the same time, by using this scanning approach, you could affect many nerve cells in patterns.
Narrator: This technique could one day lead to an innovative therapy that could restore sight to those who have lost it through disease.
Kramer: And that would involve engineers making such a device that would scan light onto your retina.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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