A.
The Lung's Innate Immune System
Narrator : This is Science Today. For the first time, scientists have outlined an organ-specific innate immune system. Dr. Eyal Raz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, explains that our lungs have a unique defense mechanism to protect against microbial invaders and fight off unwanted bacteria without causing collateral damage to the system.
Raz: Innate immunity, this is a kind of immediate protective response that is generated in the host against environmental microbial agents that interact with us and the interesting finding here is that each organ has its own strategy to deal with that.
Narrator: Raz says that this reaction is unique to the lung, and that other organs would try to eliminate the bacteria altogether.
Raz: If you take this bacteria and put them in the spleen, the spleen will mount a kind of, almost, holy war against the bacteria. It will go and chase them and kill them. If it happens in the lung, and the lung actually responds to the bacteria without any limitation, we are going to suffer.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Technology Offers Geochemists a Detailed Glimpse Underground
Narrator: This is Science Today. Thanks to cutting edge technology and computer resources, geochemists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory can get a detailed glimpse of the hidden physical, biological and chemical processes that drive underground phenomena. Carl Steefel of the Lab's Earth Sciences Division, is among a group of scientists worldwide advancing a technique called reactive transport modeling, which has been used previously by engineers to monitor the spread of contaminants underground.
Steefel: What they did before was primarily to characterize the underground – the water in the rock and geology in particular was mostly a descriptive science. So, what's really different here is the attempt to incorporate all the processes that are taking place here into the computer models, so that we can develop predictive tools that actually simulate the processes that are going on underground, and that includes the change, the water chemistry and rock chemistry.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
An Early Warning System for Tsunamis
Narrator: This is Science Today. New technology under development by scientists at the University of California , San Diego 's Scripps Institution of Oceanography could lead to an early warning system for tsunamis. By looking at GPS data from earthquake monitoring stations, the strength and location of possible tsunamis can be predicted during an earthquake. Geodesist Yehuda Bock describes how the system works.
Bock: Almost instantaneously, because we get the data feeding in real-time, we can then, within a few seconds, say how the stations moved and then compare the motion to the motion expected from these scenario earthquakes. And on the basis of these motions, we can then determine whether a tsunami is likely to occur or not.
Narrator: According to Bock, such a system could have saved lives during the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004.
Bock: The tsunami actually took hours to hit India hit Thailand. So that would've given even more time to react.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
How Green Tea Extract Affects Bladder Cancer Patients
Narrator: This is Science Today. It's estimated that in this year alone, over 60 thousand new cases of bladder cancer will be diagnosed. According to Jian Rao, a member of the UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center, one of the problems with bladder cancer treatment and management is it always comes back.
Rao: You can remove the cancer temporarily, but the cancer keeps coming back from different areas. If the cancer is superficial, you can keep just removing it. The problem is, some of the tumor may eventually become invasive and it becomes metastatic. That eventually will cause people to die.
Narrator: Rao recently led a bladder cancer study that found green tea extract has potential as an anti-cancer agent – proving for the first time that it is able to target cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact. Now the National Cancer Institute is funding a five-year human trial.
Rao: By that time, we can hopefully say conclusively whether the green tea really can help the patient or not.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. A Healthy Breakfast Leads to Healthy Schoolchildren
Narrator: This is Science Today. Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day – especially when it comes to schoolchildren. In a review of national studies pertaining to the relationship between kids' health and school performance, Dr. Howard Taras, a pediatrician at the University of California , San Diego School of Medicine, found that if kids eat breakfast, they will perform better.
Taras : Any school nurse or even front office school secretary will tell you that the ones who don't eat breakfast are the ones who come wandering in with headaches and stomachaches and sleepiness an other problems. So, we've actually validated that suspicion.
Narrator: And although the studies indicate that it's the calories in the meal that make the difference and not necessarily the content, as a physician, Taras recommends parents give their kids as healthy a breakfast as possible.
Taras : Because they're going to live longer with a healthy breakfast than with an unhealthy breakfast. The other thing we found is that if you serve breakfast at school, we get better attendance rates and less tardiness.
Narrator: The study's main findings were that children can learn at optimal levels if they sleep well, eat right and get enough exercise. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
