A.
The Development of an Advanced Radiation Detection System
Narrator: This is Science Today. An advanced radiation detection system has been developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It's called the Large Area Imager and according to John Valentine, the program leader of the Lab's Detection Technologies, it utilizes astrophysics technology.
Valentine: The Large Area Imager is based on coated aperture imaging, which has been used for many, many years in the astrophysics community, where you put a detection system on a satellite and are looking into space in order to try to image the point sources of light that are coming in there – there are gamma rays coming from stars, as well as light coming from them.
Narrator: In a terrestrial environment, this technology allows the detector to seek and find radiation sources with total insensitivity to variation in an area's radiation field, which can include naturally-occurring radioactive materials.
Valentine: The Large Area Imager has demonstrated detection at ranges approximately on the order of magnitude – a factor of ten larger distances than the commercially, off-the-shelf systems.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
Do Genetics Play a Role in How One Responds to Antidepressants?
Narrator: This is Science Today. Major depression is a common mental disorder and in the last few decades, there's been a revolution in the treatment for depression, primarily involving medication. But there is tremendous variability in how a person responds to medical treatment.
Hamilton : As a geneticist, when I see variability in something, one thing that I think about is whether genetics may play a role in that variability.
Narrator: Steve Hamilton, a psychiatrist and geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco, is analyzing the entire genetic codes of thousands of individuals. The goal is to try to identify common variations in human genes that may help determine whether depressed patients are likely to respond to a certain drug treatment.
Hamilton : Being able to do this will have several different possible outcomes. One, we may be able to develop a predictive profile of who will best benefit and not benefit from a drug such as this. If we were able to predict who's most likely to have a side effect, we can either prepare for it or consider other treatments, either drug treatments or non-drug treatments like psychotherapy.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C. Researchers Study How Air Pollutants Affect Children
Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the University of California, Davis are looking closely at how air pollutants can affect quality of life. Kent Pinkerton, director of the UC Davis Center for Health and the Environment is studying microscopic changes that occur in cells when they react to air pollutants – particularly in children.
Pinkerton: The children that are most affected are those who are the youngest who have a developing immune system, they're still developing their ability to metabolize things. These are the children who are most likely to be susceptible to environmental air pollutants.
Narrator: Pinkerton's studies focus on the San Joaquin Valley in California where bad air is responsible for the nation's highest rates of asthma in children.
Pinkerton: And the studies that we've been doing there are primarily targeted to better understanding if airborne particles within urban areas can actually lead to changes in heart rate variability, as well as changes in the lung, that might be a reflection of something that's going on.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Blood Test that Predicts an Increased Risk of Cardiovascular Events
Narrator: This is Science Today. A simple blood test that detects a hormone that goes up during cardiac stress has been found in a recent study to accurately predict the risk of cardiovascular events and death in patients with known cardiovascular disease. The test is for a protein called NT-proBNP, which is a marker in the blood for a hormone called BNP.
Whooley: We thought it's kind of a litmus test for the heart, telling us how well is the heart doing during that particular moment in time.
Narrator: Study leader Dr. Mary Whooley of the University of California, San Francisco , explains that this test picks up an element of risk that was not otherwise being detected.
Whooley: This is not a test that should be routinely used in patients who have heart disease and certainly not in patients who do not have known heart disease. It does predict increase in risk, but there's nothing we can do about that increase in risk other than giving the same advice that we still do to patients – take your medicines, stop smoking, lose weigh, exercise, keep your cholesterol under control and take your blood pressure medicines.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. New Instrument May Lead to Better Treatment for Blinding Diseases
Narrator: This is Science Today. Clinical trials are underway for a breakthrough instrument that visualizes the eye's retina. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory helped develop an advanced ophthalmoscope that will allow eye doctors to non-invasively visualize a patient's retina at the cellular level, which may lead to better detection, diagnosis and treatment.
Olivier: So, what we have here is an instrument that we hope will allow early detection of eye disease when it's most treatable, as well as an instrument that will enable the medical community to establish the efficacy of the most advanced treatments for these blinding diseases.
Narrator: Scott Olivier, associate division leader of the Lab's Optical Science & Technology department, says these blinding diseases include age-related macular degeneration and glaucoma.
Olivier: These are the main diseases that create vision loss in this country and each one of these are diseases that damage cells in the retina and if we can detect them early, then that will allow us to hopefully treat them much better.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
