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A.
Can the Internet Motivate Teens to Lose Weight?
Narrator: This is Science Today. An American team of astronomers has discovered a record-breaking fifth planet around a nearby star called 55 Cancri – making it the only star aside from the sun known to have five planets. Geoffrey Marcy, a University of California, Berkeley astronomy professor, is a member of the search team.
Marcy: This new planetary system has some characteristics reminiscent of our solar system – a big planet outside like Jupiter, four smaller planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars inward. Although, these planets orbiting inward are much bigger than the terrestrial planets that are near our sun.
Narrator: Unfortunately, Marcy says they don't have a single picture of one of them.
Marcy: What we would love to do is to have a space-borne telescope that NASA presumably would build, hopefully with our European collaborators. 109 And this would take the first snapshots of these other planets, maybe with enough detailed resolution to see the surfaces on them to see whether liquid water in the form of oceans and lakes making life possible, but even more so, getting the signs of life on those planets.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin
B.
Scientists Sequence the Genome of a Disease-fighting Organism in the Sea
Narrator: This is Science Today. University of California, San Diego scientists have solved the genomic puzzle of an organism discovered in the oceans with the potential for producing disease-fighting compounds. Daniel Urdway, a post-doctoral researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography says they've sequenced the genome of Salinispora Tropica, an organism that grows in mud in the Bahamas.
Urdwary: It's been known for some time that this organism produces lots of active molecules. There's one particular molecule called Salinisporamide that's in clinical trials and seems to be very effective against certain types of cancers.
Narrator: By examining the genome sequence of this organism, researchers can look for other similar molecules.
Urdwary: By using genomics, you get to look at everything. You get to look at the blueprint of life for the organism. You see everything that it can possibly do. And that can tell you how to go in and change your laboratory conditions to find drugs that could be useful.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Pharmacists are a Wealth of Information
Narrator: This is Science Today. Despite years of effort to reach out to local communities, the role that pharmacists play as health care providers remains unclear. Those were the findings of a University of California , San Francisco study conducted by Dr. Sharon Youmans, an assistant professor of clinical pharmacy.
Youmans: A lot of people aren't aware that we have four years of training, so it's sort of the same length of time as medical school. In addition to learning the drugs, we learn all the intimate details of the drugs. How the bodies metabolize them, excrete them, all the drug interactions that may occur, not only with other drugs but with other diseases, with other foods and herbals, so we're trained to recognize those.
Narrator: Youmans says today pharmacy schools are training students about lifestyle changes, too, such as smoking cessation or weight loss.
Youmans: So it's treating the whole patient, not just focusing on one thing. So, we're a wealth of information. We're usually more accessible than a physician because you could actually walk in and ask to speak to a pharmacist.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D. Remote-Controlled MRI Scans
Narrator: This is Science Today. Radiologists at UCLA and engineers at Siemens Medical Solutions have developed software that enables off-site imaging experts to operate MRI scans of patients by remote-control. Dr. Paul Finn, chief of diagnostic cardiovascular imaging at UCLA says the program provides access to specialized MRI skills wherever they are needed.
Finn: The advantages are potentially if you have a limited number of very specialized technologists and let's say they are on call or they want to provide help or input to technologists elsewhere on campus or potentially elsewhere in the country or on the planet somewhere – then they can do that by logging on and joining the local technologist online. It's a little bit like having online help on your computer.
Narrator: The UCLA study found that the quality of the remote scans was superior to onsite scans by a less experienced technologist.
Finn: This reflected the greater experience of the remote control operator in these cases.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
How Forest Fires May Cool the Northern Climate
Narrator: This is Science Today. Countering hypotheses that forest fires in Alaska, Canada and Siberia warm the climate, scientists at the University of California , Irvine have discovered that forest fires in northern regions, called boreal forests, may actually have a slight cooling effect on the climate. James Randerson, an associate professor of Earth System Science at the university, says their findings are counterintuitive.
Randerson: In that fires release lots of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and so that may actually warm the climate, but we found that when you take into account all the different ways that the fire influences climate, including emitting ozone and little particles – aerosols – into the atmosphere and also inside the perimeter of the fire the reflectance changes.
Narrator: That's because trees are killed and their needles are gone.
Randerson: And so what ends up happening is the surface is more reflective. All the sunlight reflects off the snow and is scattered into space and so that leads to cooling and that's slightly stronger than the warming from the greenhouse gases.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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