A.
Rise of Dinosaurs Not So Rapid After All
Narrator: This is Science Today. A team of paleontologists from the University of California , Berkeley, the American Museum of Natural History and The Field Museum discovered fossils in northern New Mexico that show for the first time that dinosaurs coexisted with their non-dinosaur ancestors for tens of millions of years towards the end of the Triassic Period. Randy Irmis, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, co-led the excavation.
Irmis: We found a new species called Dromomeron romeri and the species is what is called the basal Dinosauromorpha. It's one of these dinosaur precursors and previously, similar species were only known from much older rocks in Argentina. So, this if the first time such an animal has been found in North America and the first time it's been found in the late Triassic. So, this really extends the range of this group of animals.
Narrator: Irmis says this discovery disproves previous notions that dinosaurs rapidly replaced their supposedly outmoded predecessors. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Women are Losing Sleep Trying to Juggle Work & Family
Narrator: This is Science Today. According to a recent sleep survey, American women are sacrificing sleep while trying to juggle work and family demands. Dr. Kathryn Lee, a professor in the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, led a nationally-sponsored 2007 Sleep in America poll. Lee says that women are essentially trying to postpone sleep to get it all done.
Lee: You can always stay up later and think that you'll make it up tomorrow night and you can always get up later and think that you'll make it up tomorrow night and you can always get up earlier in the morning thinking you'll know you'll be tired, but you'll go to bed earlier the next night and that never happens. It just becomes a perpetual state of chronic sleep deprivation.
Narrator: Sleep deprivation greatly impacts mental and physical health, personal lives, professional work and driving safety. Lee suggests women should take a step back and assess their sleep patterns.
Lee: It seems from our poll that work and work issues were a priority, they're doing work up until bedtime and they need to think about making sleep a priority in their lives and relaxing and doing something very soothing in the hour before they go to bed.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C. How Do Forest Fires Influence Atmospheric Chemistry & Climate?
Narrator: This is Science Today. How do forest fires influence atmospheric chemistry and climate? James Randerson, an associate professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine is working to find this out. Randerson's research seeks to improve our understanding of the global carbon cycle, including links between deforestation and fire and drought in the tropics.
Randerson: One of my lines of research is to understand how fire in the future may influence atmospheric chemistry and climate over the next several centuries. And it turns out that fire is a really important process and a tool used by humans for clearing land in the tropics. So, most of the deforestation today in the Amazon and also in equatorial Asia in Indonesia, East and West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo occurs via fire. And people take advantage of drought conditions to burn the forest. And so with future changes in air temperature and also potentially the drought for example, with El Nino, it's possible that fire could be used to a greater or lesser extent in clearing forests.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
The Brain Guides the Development of 'Smart' Neural Prostheses
Narrator: This is Science Today. Neuroscientists and engineers working on the development of neural prostheses are looking to create smart' devices that can harness the brain's plasticity or rather, its capacity to change.
Merzenich: We're trying to understand the principles and rules and we're trying in every way to help in the translation of that to guide the development of these devices, their designs, their operations.
Narrator: Dr. Mike Merzenich, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco , says smart neural prostheses are intended to restore function, through electrical stimulation, to treat neurological damage. One goal would be to regrow missing neurons.
Merzenich: But it has to be remembered in all such instances that you still have to teach new neurons, you still have to teach reconnected circuits what to do because they organize themselves in detail on the basis of progressive learning. All such strategies, there's always the brain plasticity side that's a necessary adjunct to almost any correction that you can make in the brain using these classes of therapeutics.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. Research Aims to Understand and Improve Anxiety Disorders in Dogs
Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco are working to identify and understand the genetic background of panic and anxiety-related disorders in dogs. Geneticist and psychiatrist Steve Hamilton is leading the Canine Behavioral Genetics Project.
Hamilton: We're finding out where in the genome a gene is that might be related to what we're interested in. Then, some hard work comes that we actually have to see is it true that that change in the genome is actually related to the disorder? 2012 The most tragic thing and one of the main reasons we're in this is because the primary reason dogs are relinquished and therefore euthanized in this country is because of behavior problems.
Narrator: Hamilton says if they find that a particular behavioral problem is genetically-based, dogs can be treated much the same way humans are treated for panic and anxiety disorders.
Hamilton: Many of the same medications that are used in humans will work in dogs. So, it will allow owners to make interventions early in life or to make decisions about breeding the dog.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
