A.
Scientists Develop a ‘Five-in-One' Detector for Homeland Security
Narrator: This is Science Today. A new detection system that may one day be used to screen airplane passengers and baggage is being developed by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Staff scientist George Farquar says the system, called Single-Particle Aerosol Mass Spectrometry, or SPAMS, can detect tiny, dust size particles.
Farquar: The real advantage of single particle mass aerosol spectrometry over a lot of other techniques is it's able to detect incredibly tiny, single dust particles in a huge background of other dust particles. And if someone has a small amount of material on them that shouldn't be there, a lot of times you could lose that information just because it's a small percentage of the total.
Narrator: Another advantage with the SPAMS technique is it's designed to be a five-in-one detector.
Farquar: So, we have a five-in-one detector that detects biological agents, chemical weapons agents, explosives and narcotics along with radioisotopes. At this point, we're looking for a commercial partner so that this can be developed and continue undergoing more improvements and field testing.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
The Importance of Studying and Understanding Hearing Disorders
Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the University of California , Irvine School of Medicine are making a number of breakthroughs on the effective use of hearing devices such as the cochlear implants and are discovering novel treatments for hearing disorders such as tinnitus. Dr. Fan-Gang Zeng is the director of the Hearing and Speech Lab.
Zeng: It is important to study hearing disorders because hearing loss is considered an invisible disability and there are about 30 million who suffer from this particular disorder and not only does it have negative impact on the person's quality of daily life but it also causes social and economic issues.
Narrator: Recently, Zeng and his colleagues effectively and simply treated tinnitus by applying a low-pitched sound using an mp3 player, which effectively suppressed the ringing sound perceived by a tinnitus patient and provided temporary relief. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C. A New Instrument May Revolutionize Retinal Imaging
Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have helped develop a new instrument that could provide eye doctors with the capability to better detect, diagnose and treat blinding retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration or glaucoma. Scott Olivier, of the Lab's Optical Science & Technology division, says they designed an advanced ophthalmoscope.
Olivier: The advanced ophthalmoscope that we've developed using new technologies including what we call micro-machined adaptive mirrors enables us to correct the properties of the eye and make sharper images than has been possible in the past.
Narrator: This will allow doctors to see individual structures in the back of the eye and detect the first indications of eye disease much sooner than they could before.
Olivier: So, we've improved the resolution, the ability to see fine details in the back of the eye by factors of three or four or five times better viewing of the eye and gotten down to the level of seeing individual cells.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Major Development in the Treatment of Lou Gehrig's Disease
Narrator: This is Science Today. The delivery of therapeutic molecules across the blood-brain barrier may prove to be a major development in the treatment of ALS – a neurodegenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Cleveland : Lou Gehrig's disease is a disease in which the muscles just stop working because the nerves that innervate them and signal them to contract die. It's a disease typically progressive over a time course of a few years and is almost always invariably fatal.
Narrator: Don Cleveland of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, helped design and test molecules known as antisense oligonucleotides and found that in the lab, when effective doses were delivered; far less of the protein that causes a hereditable form of ALS was produced.
Cleveland : We have no therapy that really slows the course of the disease. Therefore, we would argue that there is hope, real hope for bringing an effective therapy to ALS.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. Researchers Study Environmental Factors that May Trigger MS
Narrator: This is Science Today. Among the 400 thousand cases of multiple sclerosis diagnosed in the United States , ten thousand are pediatric cases – and that figure may actually be as high as 20 thousand, since many cases are missed because symptoms are sometimes mild. Once diagnosed, there may also be a lack of information about the pediatric safety and efficacy of drugs used to treat MS in adults.
Waubant: Because MS is mostly an adult disease all the drugs that have been developed for FDA approval have been developed in studies of patients over the age of 18.
Narrator: Dr. Emmanuelle Waubant of the University of California, San Francisco, led the first study of the safety of using the drug interferon to treat MS in children. Now, she's looking into studying environmental factors that may trigger the onset of MS.
Waubant: Because we know that the impact of MS in adults probably pertains to the first 10 or 15 years of life.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
