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A.
A Real-time Pollution Warning System for the Coastal Ocean?
Narrator: This is Science Today. Imagine a real-time pollution warning system for the coastal ocean? Such a breakthrough could help public health officials know immediately when pollution moves into the surf zone, where it can put bathers at risk of gastrointestinal disease, as well as eye and ear infections.
Grant: Ideally, we'd have these sensors detecting pathogens, for example. So, there's Hepatitis A in the water and the detection would say – there's Hepatitis A in the water and we'd all run out of the water. But unfortunately, that's still science fiction.
Narrator: But scientists may be getting closer to such a scenario. Stanley Grant, a professor of chemical engineering and material sciences at the University of California, Irvine, discovered that changes in temperature and salinity collected by current sensor data along the coastal ocean correlates with changes in water quality as soon as they occur.
Grant: And so part of the whole issue of translating that in-situ sensor data into something that's useful to the public really boils down to trying to understand what the connection is between measurements of salinity and temperature and say, pathogens.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
B.
How Agricultural Practices Can Affect Climate Models
Narrator: This is Science Today. Nearly all the models used to predict climate change either do not factor in agricultural regions or assume that farmers behave the same way through time. But when climate scientist David Lobell of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory created models that included recent changes in agricultural practices, such as more irrigation, less tillage and higher yielding crops, he found that these models predicted lower temperatures than previous ones did.
Lobell: The effects were strongest for irrigation and we found that it could actually cool locally the temperatures by up to six degrees. And so it's a very significant effect, if you talk about greenhouse warming, that's on the order of that temperature change or even bigger.
Narrator: While this may not amount to a big effect on a global scale, in agricultural areas such as California , it's a big effect.
Lobell: The key message is if we want to be able to adapt agriculture to climate change, then we're going to have to do a better job of incorporating what farmers are doing into climate models.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
C.
The Future of Synthetic Biology
Narrator: This is Science Today. Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline that essentially puts engineering to biology in order to create new biological systems or redesign existing ones. Jay Keasling, a chemical and bio-engineer at the University of California , Berkeley , says once the standards for synthetic biology are set, it will make biology easier to do.
Keasling: Once we've set these standards and we understand how to put components together in a very reliable way, much as you can assemble components to build a computer right now or a radio, it will be easier to predict how to develop drugs and how to engineer microbes to produce those drugs. We might be able to produce fuels using biology that will compete strongly with petroleum. We'll be able to build sensing devices that will sense pathogens and might even sense tumors and other diseases within our bodies and then come up with a remedy that will be biology-based.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
The Old Chemistry Behind a New Explosives Detector
Narrator: This is Science Today. A portable, inexpensive explosives detector called the ELITE was developed by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Lab chemist Peter Nunes says ELITE is based on a chemistry method called thin layer chromatography, which has been around for over a hundred years.
Nunes: You take a glass plate, put your sample on it and then you use chemicals to move your sample from the bottom of the plate and it moves up. Depending on what type of chemical it is, it stops at different points on the plate and you can make a determination as to what's in your sample.
Narrator: Instead of using a thin layer glass plate, Nunes says they modified ELITE to use a proprietary swipe. The ELITE has ampoules that contain small amounts of chemical reagents that, when broken, cause a color change if explosives are detected. The next step will be using what's called micro encapsulation.
Nunes: And that's where we have little, very tiny spheres that would be part of the swipe itself and inside those little spheres would be our chemical reagents.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
E.
Why Girls with ADHD Need Careful Diagnosis
Narrator: This is Science Today. The ratio of boys to girls with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, is about three to one. Until fairly recently, that ratio was thought to be higher because girls were not getting tested or diagnosed as often as boys. Dr. Stephen Hinshaw, a professor of psychology at the University of California , Berkeley , says that's because boys are more likely than girls to show obvious, outward symptoms.
Hinshaw: Girls are somewhat more prone to show what we call the inattentive type or form of ADHD, where they're not as active, not quite as overtly impulsive. They're suffering in silence with inattention, disorganization, homework failure and so they're not, by definition, as disruptive as boys, so they're not getting referred.
Narrator: Hinshaw says ADHD requires careful diagnosis.
Hinshaw: If we wait too long, the problems are going to intensify. So, how do we span this ground between appropriate psychiatric diagnosis and over-diagnosis? We demand careful assessment. We demand evidence-based treatment.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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