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A.
Can the Internet Motivate Teens to Lose Weight?
Narrator: This is Science Today. Can the Internet help motivate teens to lose weight? Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine are leading a novel study to find out. It's called the Patient-centered Assessment and Counseling for Exercise and Nutrition, or PACE, project. Study leader Dr. Kevin Patrick says it's targeting adolescents at risk for diabetes.
Patrick: Our research is focusing on web technologies and providing materials on the web both to the child and the parents that reinforce on a weekly basis, the kinds of messages that the doctor's given them, the health educators given them, that community resources might give them is, we think, a promising approach to extend the reach and impact.
Narrator: San Diego County kids currently enrolled in the year-long, weekly web-based exercise are referred to the PACE project by their doctors.
Patrick: They become educated; basically a lesson plan about what particular foods may be good for them or bad foods for them. And then they'reencouraged to set a goal for the next week.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
The Origins of Clinical Pharmacy
Narrator: This is Science Today. Over forty years ago, a pair of graduate students at the University of California, San Francisco initiated the practice now known as clinical pharmacy. Sharon Youmans, an associate professor of clinical pharmacy at UCSF says it was initially known as the 9th floor project.
Youmans: A couple of grad students went up to the ninth floor with their white coats and their clipboard, just looking around and seeing what they could do in terms of the medications. And so it was kind of an interesting project because the physicians didn't really know – what are you hear for, what are you doing? – because they weren't used to it.
Narrator: The 9 th floor project, which took place in the 1960s at the University of California, San Francisco, started the history of pharmacists being part of the medical team in the hospital.
Youmans: And so it sort of just blossomed into this great new role of pharmacists, which before that, they had just basically been trained to go out and work in the community as retail pharmacists or to own your own business as a pharmacist, for those who didn't stick around and teach in schools of pharmacy.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
The Circadian Rhythm's Role in Ovulation
Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the University of California , Berkeley are studying how the brain's internal clock affects hormone cycles in the body. In particular, Lance Kriegsfeld, a professor of psychology and neuroscience, is looking into how the body clock controls ovulation.
Kriegsfeld: In humans, the ovulatory cycle is controlled by numerous factors; it's controlled by nutritional state, it can be altered due to stressful circumstances, but there is also evidence that there's a strong timing component if you look at women under controlled conditions. They will ovulate typically between midnight and morning time, so there seems to be a temporal component.
Narrator: Kriegsfeld recently found that the Circadian rhythm, or internal clock, may lift the brakes on a molecule that inhibits a substance released during ovulation called gonadotropin-releasing hormone, or GnRH.
Kriegsfeld: Everyone knew that there was a Circadian component to the cycle and they knew that there was a switch from this negative to positive feedback, but how that happened was a big mystery.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D. The Amazing Potential of Carbon Nanotubes
Narrator: This is Science Today. A team of physicists from the University of California , Berkeley and the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have built the world's smallest radio from a single carbon nanotube. Cenzan Ozkan, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Riverside also works with carbon nanotubes and says the potential in this field is enormous.
Ozkan: First of all, it's a very exciting field, very interesting, as you conduct more and more work, you get more enthusiastic and you get more motivated. At the same time, there is just – especially within the last several years – a large number of people have entered this field and that has opened up many possibilities of collaboration.
Narrator: Ozkan's lab is currently partnering with one of the cancer nanotechnology centers that is led by the University of California, San Diego.
Ozkan: There is a lot of research that is going on in this field. That includes the employment of nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, engineered nanoplatforms that can serve as drug therapeutics.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
A Real-Time Advanced Mobile Radiation Detector
Narrator: This is Science Today. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory along with the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Lab and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have developed an advanced radiation detection system called the Large Area Imager. John Valentine, Program Leader of the Livermore Lab's Detection Technologies, says this detector can be carried in a trailer to detect illegal nuclear materials.
Valentine: Potentially, it could be used in a cargo container yard at a point-of-entry. The prototype that is mounted in a fifteen foot trailer consists of two arrays of detectors down the middle of the trailer so that as a vehicle drives down the street, it's looking to the left and to the right for sources. There is then a laptop computer that sits in the front seat that the passenger would basically be monitoring as the vehicle drives around that gives a real time analysis and locations of sources as the vehicle drives around.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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