A.
Boosting the Effectiveness of a Crop Protection Device
Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the University of California , Davis have developed an electronic unit that plays audio recordings of crow distress calls to prevent the birds from causing extensive damage to almond crops. Staff research associate Paul Gorenzel says crow behavior is what makes the device particularly effective.
Gorenzel: Crows have quite an elaborate vocabulary. They have a number of calls that have actual meaning to them. In one particular is called "the death cry of the crow." It's probably a crow that's in the grasp of a predator, it's screaming.
Narrator: This recording would warn other crows to keep away. The device has four different distress calls and Gorenzel says it's important to rotate them.
Gorenzel: Birds eventually habituate to almost anything. That was the idea of having the calls change. It would be something new, it wouldn't be the same call repeating over and over again. We would change it after so many days to a second, third, fourth call. And hopefully that would delay the onset of habituation.
Narrator: For Science Today, this is Larissa Branin.
B.
Carbon Nanotubes May Help Aid Bones on the Bend
Narrator: This is Science Today. Carbon nanotubes are cylindrical carbon molecules that are 100 thousand times smaller than a human hair. These strong, flexible and lightweight structures are useful in many applications, including nano-electronics, optics and materials applications. Now, researchers report they could aid human bones on the mend. Robert Haddon, director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University of California , Riverside , says carbon nanotubes can serve as scaffolds to hold up regenerating bone.
Haddon: Our effort is designed to repair bone on the nanoscale. To try to replace the collagen that the body naturally supplies with our own material, and hopefully to lead to the production of bone.
Narrator: The research was done in a lab setting only, so Haddon says there's much more work to be done.
Haddon: I think the key step is to team up with the right researchers in a clinical setting where we could start to do some testing of the cell lines that are precursors to bone growth.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Addressing Climate Change and California Agriculture
Narrator: This is Science Today. The state of California produces half of the nation's fruits, vegetables and nuts, so recent projections indicating that the state is going to experience a much warmer climate than previously expected, has experts working on dealing with achieving agricultural sustainability. Louise Jackson, of the University of California , Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, says confronting the issue and planning for it now will result in less impact.
Jackson : For example, in agriculture, we're going to be need to be breeding crops that are temperature tolerant. We're going to be having to think about much more stringent water conservation strategies. We're going to be thinking about different tillage regimes that reduce fossil fuel use, that store more carbon, reduce the amount of nitrous oxide that's emitted. So the message here was really clear. Climate change is happening. It's going to have a big effect, and we're going to be able to do something about it in California if we plan now.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Discovery of a Gene Mutation May Help Cat Breeders
Narrator: This is Science Today. The most common heart disease in domestic cats is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which causes an excessive thickening of the muscle in the heart's left ventricle. Now for the first time, researchers at the University of California , Davis School of Veterinary Medicine have helped identify the gene mutation responsible for the disease. Dr. Mark Kittleson says their study focused on Main Coon cats.
Kittleson: Actually, it affects a lot of different breeds and so Main Coons kind have gotten the bad name because we've studied them – unfortunately!
Narrator: Since it is in most breeds and it takes time to develop, the disease is particularly problematic.
Kittleson: The problem in the past is that we've screened for the disease via cardiac ultrasound, echo cardiography, but most of the cats, by the time they have disease, had already been bred. By being able to look for the mutation, we're able to take a relatively young cat, take a swab of cells from inside the mouth and subject that to a mutational analysis.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Ecologists Work to Better Understand the Natural World
Narrator: This is Science Today. One of the biggest questions facing ecologists today as they try to understand the natural world is, why are ecosystems so diverse and what happens when we damage or destroy that diversity? Christopher Wills, a professor of biology at the University of California , San Diego has explored that very question in a recent study of tropical forests worldwide.
Wills: We're looking at rainforests around the world in both the New and Old World tropics where the ecosystem is more or less stable and they have achieved the kind of level of diversity that we tend to think of when we think of undisturbed tropical ecosystems. And our question was what happens to these systems over time?
Narrator: The researchers found that nature encourages diversity, since older trees are more diverse than younger ones.
Wills: The diversity really is reflected at every level of organization. There are many different kinds of animals, of birds, of insects. If you go further down towards what I call the invisible world, which underlies much of this diversity, you'll find a great diversity of fungi, of insects of various kinds, of bacteria, even of viruses.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
