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A.
NASA Launches Space Probes to Solve Longstanding Mystery
Narrator: This is Science Today. NASA is launching five identical space probes – the largest number of spacecraft ever attempted by the agency – to solve a longstanding mystery about the origin of magnetic storms, which intensify auroras, or Northern and Southern lights. The probes, which are part of a mission called THEMIS, were conceived and built by scientists at the University of California , Berkeley 's Space Sciences Laboratory.
Angelopoulous: It is a fantastic opportunity for Berkeley , but it also is a tremendous responsibility, so it has been exhilarating, but also excruciating – but great fun!
Narrator: Vassilis Angelopoulous, a research physicist at the Space Sciences Lab, is the principal investigator of the THEMIS mission.
Angelopoulous: The THEMIS satellites are designed to be placed strategically along the Sun-Earth line and track the flow of energy from one to the other, very much like meteorologists use buoys out in the ocean to track large ocean waves as they move from one buoy to another in order to understand atmospheric energy.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
A New Tool Improves Prediction of Stroke Risk
Narrator: This is Science Today. A transient ischemic attack, or TIA, is a mini-stroke that resolves itself, but it puts patients at risk of having a major stroke within 90 days. Half of TIA patients will have a major stroke within the first two days. Knowing who is at imminent risk was the focus of a University of California , San Francisco study. Neurologist S. Claiborne Johnston tested two existing prognostic scores and came up with an improved scoring method.
Johnston: The new score worked better than anything else that people have tried before and it worked very well in all the different populations that we tested it in.
Narrator: The new model is a hybrid of the two current scores that are used to estimate the risk of stroke after a TIA. It's called ABCD squared (ABCD2).
Johnston: D squared because there are two D's basically. Each one of these letters represents some characteristics. We're trying to make it easy for physicians to remember the score. So, A is for age, B is for blood pressure, C is for clinical symptoms, the first D is for duration and the final D is for diabetes. It's a little more comprehensive.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
A Future without Tooth Decay?
Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the UCLA School of Dentistry have developed a targeted anti-microbial therapy called STAMP, which works like a smart bomb in that it targets harmful bacteria in the body while leaving helpful bacteria intact. Dr. Wenyuan Shi, who developed STAMP, says this therapy may someday be used as an alternative to current conventional antibiotics and in many practical applications.
Shi: My ideal dream is to put those STAMPS into baby formula. We're creating a new generation of the population and we'll never need to get tooth decay ever again, because if you essentially don't give the bad bacteria a chance to colonize it, you only allow the good bacteria to stay there and then they can actually protect them for the rest of their life.
Narrator: Shi adds that the potential of this targeted anti-microbial therapy is great.
Shi: It's our ultimate goal just like we wiped out polio in this Earth; it's possible that someday we can rely on technology like this to actually wipe out tooth decay.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
A Groundbreaking, Green Energy Initiative
Narrator: This is Science Today. The Helios Project is a groundbreaking initiative led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that seeks to convert solar energy into sustainable, carbon-neutral sources of energy. Jay Keasling, director of Physical Biosciences at the Berkeley Lab and co-leader of the proposal, says his work with synthetic biology will be an integral part of the Helios Project.
Keasling: We'll be able to engineer plants, for instance, that will produce our fuels or that will produce more readily available feedstock for our fuels; plants that don't need fertilizers or as much water as what we now give them, so that we can less expensively produce our fuels. Once we've set these standards for synthetic biology and we understand how to put components together in a very reliable way – once we have this for biology, it means that we might be able to produce fuels using biology that will actually be economically-viable and compete strongly with petroleum.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. Likening the Human Brain to the Internet
Narrator: This is Science Today. The human brain has long been likened to a computer, but a better analogy may be the Internet according to UCLA neurology professor George Bartzokis.
Bartzokis: The neurons or the nerve cells are in fact the computers and they're all connected by wires, just like in an Internet and the wires actually represent about half the brain and the computer is the other half. 104 these wires in our brain are actually coated with insulation, just like regular wire would be.
Narrator: But unlike regular wiring, the insulation of the wires in the brain – called myelin – does three very important things.
Bartzokis: First, it increases speed of transmission, so just like an Internet; you have a much faster connection. Second, it decreases refractory time, so it actually increases bandwidth. And finally, when you successfully myelinate an entire circuit from one neuron to another, it actually brings whatever that circuit does online, so you can use it in an instantaneous basis. So, really, the analogy with the Internet is actually much better for the brain.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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