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A. Nationwide Clinical Trial Tests an Artificial Cervical Disc
Narrator: This is Science Today. A group of neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons at the University of California at Davis Medical Center are taking part in a nationwide study investigating the use of an artificial cervical disc to surgically treat people with degenerative disc disease. Dr. Kee Kim, co-director of the medical center's Spine Program, says the current therapy is spinal fusion of damaged discs.
Kim: So, instead of fusing the spine, we still take the pressure off the spinal cord nerve by removing the disc and the bone spur, but we put in the device commonly referred to as artificial disc into where a disc used to be so that motion can still be preserved after the surgery instead of eliminating the motion with fusion surgery.
Narrator: The artificial disc mimics normal movement of the neck and could eliminate a second surgery that spinal fusion patients often have due to the added stress on discs adjacent to the fused section.
Kim: So, depending on how the outcome of this particular clinical trial is, the FDA may or may not approve its use.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B. Data Confirms Fishing Puts Targeted Species in 'Double Jeopardy'
Narrator: This is Science Today. For the first time, research indicates that fishing promotes the boom and bust fluctuations of fish stocks from highs to lows. Researcher George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography says the study was based on data obtained by the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries, or CalCOFI.
Sugihara: Normal fisheries data is based on landings – that means fish caught. The CalCOFI data sampled both exploited – or fish species – and unexploited. That's not found in fisheries data. Fisheries data don't have any records on fish that aren't caught – it's a catch-22.
Narrator: The question has long been, if there is an impact, is it due to fishing or some environmental effects?
Sugihara: What the CalCOFI allowed us to do is make a comparison of fish that were exploited and unexploited living in the same environment, so we could factor out the environment as the cause. When you analyze those data, the exploited fish stocks showed much more variability in their abundances than the unexploited ones.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Nanotube Membranes Offer Cheaper Desalination
Narrator: This is Science Today. A nanotube membrane on a silicon chip that's the size of a quarter may offer a cheaper way to remove salt from water, a process that's called desalination. A team of physicists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory created the membrane using nanotubes, which are molecules made of carbon atoms that are 50 thousand times thinner than a human hair. Olgita Bakajin led the team.
Bakajin: What we found is that both gas and water go through carbon nanotubes faster than classical physicists predict. This scientific discovery allows us to think about making very permeable filters with very small pore sizes.
Narrator: The big application is the development of desalination of water.
Bakajin: What we would like to do is develop it for both industrial and humanitarian purposes. So that hopefully coming up with a cheaper way to clean up the water, that could have an impact in a lot of places in the world and we're hoping to also work with some foundations to bring that technology to people who need it.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D. Pluto is No Longer Defined as a Planet
Narrator: This is Science Today. In the summer of 2006, the International Astronomical Union, or IAU, a group of scientists that decides astronomical rules, decided that Pluto – formerly the ninth planet in our solar system – was not a planet after all. Seran Gibbard, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, explains that based on new discoveries in recent years, planets are now defined using three criteria and Pluto no longer makes the cut.
Gibbard: There's been controversy for years about whether Pluto was a planet because it doesn't have a very circular orbit and it crosses the orbit of Neptune , actually. Which now is what essentially disqualifies it as a planet.
Narrator: Basically the IAU has ruled that a planet must be large enough that its gravity makes it round, it must have cleared its path of any objects and it must orbit the sun.
Gibbard: Because otherwise the moon – all the moons of all the giant planets would be planets, right, because they're round, many of them are round.
Narrator: Pluto is now defined as a dwarf planet, which is a new category of objects. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. Rich Medical Drug Resources at the Bottom of the Sea
Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California , San Diego discovered and are studying a rich medical drug resource in deep ocean sediments. The work is led by William Fenical, director of the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine.
Fenical: In the deepest parts of the ocean, in those cold, dark and muddy environments at the bottom of the sea live microorganisms in very large amounts that produce new antibiotics. And they are exactly the same types of microorganisms that have provided antibiotics for the pharmaceutical industry for the last sixty years.
Narrator: Land-based microbial sources for new drugs began dwindling about a decade ago and yet, before this research, the oceans – which cover 70 percent of the planet's surface, went unexplored.
Fenical: What we're finding is a whole new source of antibiotics, anti-cancer agents and other drugs to treat a variety of different kinds of diseases.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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