A.
Stress Hormones Play Crucial Role in Development of Alzheimer's Disease
Narrator: This is Science Today. New research led by the University of California at Irvine indicates that stress hormones play a crucial role in the development and progression of Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Frank LaFerla, a professor of neurobiology and behavior, say their work with mice revealed that stress increased the build-up of plaques and tangles, lesions that are associated with Alzheimer's.
LaFerla: So what was remarkable was that these stress hormones were able to lead to this market build-up of the plaques and tangles in these mice at ages when they typically don't have these kind of lesions in their brain. And this build-up occurred over a very short time period of about seven days. So it suggests that stress could be a major risk factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease.
Narrator: These findings suggest that managing stress and reducing certain medications prescribed for the elderly could slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease, which affects up to five million Americans every year. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
B.
Analyzing Screening Procedures for Air Cargo on Passenger Airlines
Narrator: This is Science Today. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is participating in a multi-agency effort to better understand the technological and operational issues associated with explosives detection for air cargo. Howard Hall, a program leader at the Lab, says they're analyzing existing explosives detection technology to determine how best to apply those procedures to air cargo on passenger airplanes.
Hall: The equipment was really designed for checked baggage and cargo is different from checked baggage, but we will understand at the end of this, how effective we can be with that existing technology.
Narrator: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched this pilot program last summer at the San Francisco International Airport . Two other, as yet unannounced federalized airports will also participate.
Hall: The bottom line for us is to provide credible, reliable information to the policy makers on the operations impacts and effectiveness of this technology in the air cargo environment, so that they can make the best decision possible as to how to protect the country.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
C. Secondhand Smoke Adversely Affects a Critical Period of Lung Development
Narrator: This is Science Today. For fifteen years, researchers at the University of California, Davis have been studying how air pollution affects lung structure and function. Kent Pinkerton, director of the UC Davis Center for Health and the Environment, is particularly interested in understanding how particles are deposited in the lungs, how they change location and what their fate may be over time.
Pinkerton: And especially, how that may impact on a rapidly growing lung system in the neonatal stage and I think this is an area where we can do a tremendous amount of research.
Narrator: In fact, Pinkerton's research group recently described in unprecedented anatomical and biochemical detail how cigarette smoke can damage the lungs of unborn and newborn children. In particular, Pinkerton found that environmental tobacco – or secondhand smoke – affects a critical period of lung development, when millions of tiny cells called alveoli are being formed. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
D.
Developing Genes that Enable Rice to be Flood and Salt Tolerant
Narrator: This is Science Today. Globally, rice is the most important food for humans and every year, millions of rice farmers in the poorest areas of the world lose their entire crops to flooding. Now researchers have developed a gene that enables rice to survive complete submergence. Julia Bailey-Serres, a professor of genetics at the University of California , Riverside is a member of the research team.
Bailey-Serres: A conservative estimate of the crop damage that's done internationally is one billion dollars per year and that's U.S. dollars. This unfortunately affects the poorest of farmers as well and so the impact on poor farmers when they are supplied lines that are submergence tolerant could be tremendous.
Narrator: The researchers are also interested in combining two traits in rice lines – the submergence tolerant with a salinity tolerance trait.
Bailey-Serres: Because in many flood prone areas, the water that's submerging the plant is actually saline water because this is in river delta areas.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
E. Sophisticated Technology Offers Efficient Tracking of Ground Contamination
Narrator: This is Science Today. A computer-driven technique called reactive transport modeling, which has traditionally been used as an engineering tool, is now being applied to Earth Sciences research. Carl Steefel, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says combined with high-resolution images of mineral surfaces and sophisticated computer clusters, the technology can create three-dimensional models that simulate reality.
Steefel: If you've got contamination in the ground, you often want to know two things; you want to know how fast is that contaminant going to move and is that going to be a threat to drinking water supplies? So you need these models to describe that accurately.
Narrator: Steefel adds that another important use is in remediation.
Steefel: If you want to clean up the contamination, you may come up with various schemes to try to flush the system – but it turns out that the computer models are a much more efficient way to do the preliminary design of these kind of field tests then simply going out into the field and start pumping fluids into the subsurface.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
