B. A Unique Glimpse Into Deep Sea Fish Populations

Narrator: This is Science Today. Over the last fifteen years, ocean scientists at the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been studying fish populations living in the vast, muddy plains on the ocean floor more than 13 thousand feet deep. Researcher David Bailey says their first-of-its-kind study gives researchers a unique glimpse into fish populations unperturbed by human influence.

Bailey: What we did is look at an environment where the fish numbers are not being changed by fishing and what we showed is that the numbers of fish are getting driven by changes in their numbers of their prey.

Narrator: In fact, the researchers found a threefold increase in fish abundance in the deep sea driven by food available to the animals, such as dead plankton and carcasses of fish, mammals and crustaceans that fall to the bottom of the ocean. Bailey says this is called a “bottom-up control”.

Bailey: Because it's driven from the bottom, driven by food availability, whereas what people thought was going on previously was it was top down, which is changes in the numbers of predators drive changes and everything else.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.

C. Scientists Zero In on a Gene Linked to Early Heart Attack Risk

Narrator: This is Science Today. A series of genes, which could indicate a higher risk of heart attack, has been discovered by a collaborative team of scientists, including those at the University of California , San Francisco . Dr. John Kane, a professor of medicine and director of UCSF's Cardiovascular Research Institute, says one of the genes, called VAMP 8, expresses a protein essential to early stages of blood clotting – a process that can lead to heart attacks.

Kane: The VAMP 8 gene looks very much like a target of interest immediately because it's involved in blood platelets whose task it is to recognize the need for formation of a blood clot and to initiate that clot.

Narrator : Kane explains that this process is one of the main causes behind heart attacks.

Kane: Blood clotting is important, of course, because almost all examples of heart attack result from the formation of a blood clot that occludes one of the coronary vessels that leaves part of the heart deprived of blood supply.

Narrator: The University of California team collaborated with The Cleveland Clinic and Celera Genomics. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .

D. A Workstation Intervention That Improves Musculoskeletal Health

Narrator: This is Science Today. A year-long ergonomics study evaluated workstation interventions on the musculoskeletal health of customer service workers. David Rempel, a professor of medicine at the University of California , San Francisco and director of the Ergonomics Program at UC Berkeley, says the padded forearm support board effectively reduced upper body pain linked to workers' computer use.

Rempel: At the end of the year, we determined that their pain in their shoulders and neck and their right arm were less when they used a forearm support board than those people who did not use a forearm support board.

Narrator: Rempel says unlike wrist rests, a forearm support board is wider and the pressure is not applied directly to the wrist area.

Rempel: The forearm support board – it attaches to the front edge of the desk and it's wider than a wrist rest, so it really supports the arm in the bulky part, the muscle part of the forearm. The wrist rest is narrower and sits right in front of the keyboard, so the forearm support board transferred some of the load from the arms onto the meaty part of the forearm where the muscles are, instead of right at the wrist.

E. A World-Renowned Marine Mammal Research Center

Narrator: This is Science Today. The University of California , Santa Cruz is
home to one of the top centers for marine mammal research in the world. At the Long Marine Laboratory, researchers have developed specially designed tanks and equipment for studying marine mammal diving physiology, bioacoustics, and cognition. Biologist Terrie Williams, who has been studying marine mammals such as dolphins, says their research program tries to accomplish two different things.

Williams: We've got the up-close physiology, biology of these animals that we do in a controlled setting like this. And then we want to know how does that really work out in the wild? What does a wild dolphin need in order to make it?

Narrator: Williams says they've been looking in particular at whether temperature is a big factor in these animals' lives.

Williams: How much do they need to eat during different seasons and then how much of a metabolism change can we expect because of the idea of global climate change and water temperature changes that we're certainly seeing off our coast?

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.