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A.
Software that Enables Remote-Controlled MRI Scans
Narrator: This is Science Today. Radiologists at UCLA and engineers at Siemens Medical Solutions have developed software that enables off-site imaging experts to operate MRI scans of patients by remote-control. Dr. Paul Finn, chief of diagnostic cardiovascular imaging at UCLA says the program provides access to specialized MRI skills wherever they are needed.
Finn: The advantages are potentially if you have a limited number of very specialized technologists and let's say they are on call or they want to provide help or input to technologists elsewhere on campus or potentially elsewhere in the country or on the planet somewhere – then they can do that by logging on and joining the local technologist online. It's a little bit like having online help on your computer.
Narrator: The UCLA study found that the quality of the remote scans was superior to onsite scans by a less experienced technologist.
Finn: This reflected the greater experience of the remote control operator in these cases.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Forest Fires May Lead to Cooling of Northern Climate
Narrator: This is Science Today. Countering hypotheses that forest fires in Alaska, Canada and Siberia warm the climate, scientists at the University of California , Irvine have discovered that forest fires in northern regions, called boreal forests, may actually have a slight cooling effect on the climate. James Randerson, an associate professor of Earth System Science at the university, says their findings are counterintuitive.
Randerson: In that fires release lots of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and so that may actually warm the climate, but we found that when you take into account all the different ways that the fire influences climate, including emitting ozone and little particles – aerosols – into the atmosphere and also inside the perimeter of the fire the reflectance changes.
Narrator: That's because trees are killed and their needles are gone.
Randerson: And so what ends up happening is the surface is more reflective. All the sunlight reflects off the snow and is scattered into space and so that leads to cooling and that's slightly stronger than the warming from the greenhouse gases.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Scientists Study Absorption of Vitamin B12 from Beef
Narrator: This is Science Today. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory operates one of a handful of accelerator mass spectrometers in the nation for bioscience research. This powerful tool, called AMS, is used to study the chemical make-up of substances. Lab chemist Bruce Buchholz says they're using AMS to assess absorption of vitamin B12.
Buchholz: This is really the first clinical use of the technology. Most of the other uses or the applications that we've done have been more academic exercises looking at the metabolism of different compounds or absorption or adducts on DNA for causing cancer of different compounds.
Narrator: The researchers are currently looking at absorption of vitamin B12 from beef.
Buchholz: Meat is one of your primary sources of vitamin B12, so another project is producing beef that is intrinsically labeled with vitamin B12 and then looking at the bioavailability of B12 in a food source versus a supplement.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Researchers Study the Benefits of Pomegranate Juice
Narrator: This is Science Today. A three-year UCLA study has found that prostate cancer patients who drink 8-ounce glasses of pomegranate juice per day kept PSA levels stabilized. Dr. Allan Pantuck, an associate professor of urology, says they measured the doubling time, or how long it takes for PSA levels to double, which is a signal that the cancer is progressing. The researchers found an almost four-fold increase in doubling time – going from 14 months to 54 months.
Pantuck: We see effect clinically and the next question is what is causing the effect and we're actually in the middle of taking it back into the laboratory again where we're looking at what are the molecular mechanisms or what are pathways that seem to be involved in the way pomegranate inhibits the growth of prostate cancer.
Narrator: Pantuck stresses this is not a cure for prostate cancer, but the best scenario is that patients who drink pomegranate juice regularly can ultimately slow the cancer down.
Pantuck: So that people could live out their normal life span and don't die of the prostate cancer they have.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Discover Magazine Chooses its 'Scientist of the Year'
Narrator: This is Science Today. Discover magazine has named a bioengineer from the University of California , Berkeley its ‘Scientist of the Year'. Jay Keasling, a professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering, was recognized for his pioneering work in synthetic biology – a field that Keasling describes as putting engineering to biology.
Keasling: The implications down the road are significant. We'll be able to engineer microbes that will produce any molecule that we want. For instance, new drugs to fight disease. Many of the drugs that are currently available are taken from plants and they are available in very minute quantities – we'll be able to produce these in microbes and also product variants of them, which will allow us to produce drugs inexpensively.
Narrator: Keasling is already working on a way to mass-produce the anti-malarial drug artemisinin, which is currently obtained in small quantities from the wormwood plant.
Keasling: Synthetic biology plays an incredibly important role in the development of this microbe that will produce artemisinin.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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