A. The Language You Speak May Affect Half of What You See
Narrator: This is Science Today. According to new research, the language you speak may affect half of what you see. University of California , Berkeley linguistics professor Paul Kay, who co-led the study with the University of Chicago , says the idea that language affects perception is called the Whorf hypothesis.
Kay: The basic idea is that the language you learn influences the way you think and that people who are native speakers of different languages will have different thought processes as a result of the language that they speak.
Narrator: The researchers were able to support the Whorf hypothesis, but only in the right visual field, which feeds the left side of the brain where language function resides. They did this using color tests because if your language has different words for colors, like shades of green and blue, then it's easier to distinguish them visually. But if your language does not have two separate words to distinguish them, your right eye can't tell the difference.
Kay: And we found a strong effect that such was the case.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Two Genes That May Predict Early Heart Attack Risk
Narrator: This is Science Today. A pair of genes has been discovered that could help doctors predict early heart attack risk. A study by the University of California , San Francisco , along with The Cleveland Clinic and Celera Genomics looked at over 2,000 heart attack victims to identify these genes. Dr. John Kane, director of the UC San Francisco Cardiovascular Research Institute, explains.
Kane: Each of the two genes that we are reporting here have a variant form of the gene, structurally different, which is more commonly found in people with heart disease, suggesting very strongly that that gene has an effect on the risk of heart disease.
Narrator: One of the genes is linked to clotting, which can lead to a heart attack. And Kane says the heart attack risk from both the genes they've identified is comparable to the risk from being a heavy smoker.
Kane: Smokers who smoke a pack of cigarettes a day will experience an approximate doubling of the risk of heart attack, but each of these genes contributes about that much increased risk of heart attack as well.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
C. A New Type of Telescope is in the Works
Narrator: This is Science Today. An astrophysicist at the University of California, Davis is leading the effort to build a new type of telescope that will provide digital imaging of faint objects across the sky. It's called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and astrophysicist Tony Tyson says the goal is to map matter that physicists say make up 95 percent of the Universe – the mysterious dark matter and dark energy.
Tyson: It's invisible, it doesn't emit any light, it doesn't absorb any light, you can't see it by virtue of its shadow. Big clumps of it basically have an over density of mass, and it deflects light from the distant universe, and it moves the positions of things in the distant universe. It's a kind of cosmic mirage.
Narrator: Tyson says the telescope will also track objects such as asteroids and huge bursts of energy.
Tyson: It opens up a new window on the universe.
Narrator: The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, set for use in 2012, will also include the largest digital camera ever built – with three billion pixels. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Novel Development May Improve Results After Cataract Surgery
Narrator: This is Science Today. Lactate tolerance is a training regimen in which athletes push themselves with hard exercise intervals to build up a tolerance for lactic acid. Now, exercise physiologist George Brooks of the University of California , Berkeley has discovered the cellular mechanism behind what coaches and athletes have known based on their experience and feel. Brooks says accumulated lactic acid is transported from the muscles to the mitochondria – the powerhouse of the cell – where it is efficiently burned as fuel.
Brooks: What we call this is the lactate shuttle. It's the idea that lactate gets
made in one place and can be used in an adjacent site or some other site quite
far removed in the body.
Narrator: Brooks explains that the tolerance coaches and athletes have strived for really involves the body's efficient way of removing lactic acid.
Brooks: So what they're doing by pushing their athletes with hard intervals is building up the cellular apparatus, the mitochondria in the muscle that allow the athlete to work hard, generate lactic acid but then to use it - not have it linger and accumulate, which will be a great discomfort.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Challenging Consumer Assumptions about Organic Farming
Narrator: This is Science Today. A University of California study has found that, with the exception of reduced exposure to pesticides, the growth in organic agriculture has not resulted in better working conditions for farmworkers. This is contrary to some consumer assumptions that organic producers get more benefit from organic production than conventional agriculture. Another study, conducted by Julie Guthman, a community studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz , also challenged popular assumptions about organic farming.
Guthman: Even at its best, organic farming never looked like the imaginary that people impose on it because California never had a class of family farmers who grew for the market with their own family labor. I mean California agriculture has been based on migrant wage labor since we moved into specialty production – actually, before then in the 19 th Century. So, I think if we're concerned about ecological farming and social justice in farming, we need to create new imaginaries and not go back to a past that never was.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
