A.
Seeking Alternatives to Soil Fumigant, Methyl Bromide
Narrator: This is Science Today. For years, strawberry fields have been fumigated with methyl bromide to control for a wide variety of pests. The Environmental Protection Agency has classified the odorless, colorless gas as an ozone-depleting substance and a national phase-out is currently underway. Soil specialist Husein Ajwa of the University of California , Davis , explains there are exemptions for agricultural users with no technically or economically feasible alternatives to methyl bromide.
Ajwa: What we are doing at this point is we are looking into alternative fumigants to methyl bromide, so as we help growers to cope with the loss of methyl bromide as a soil fumigant.
Narrator: Ajwa says the methyl bromide project is a collaborative effort between UC researchers and USDA scientists.
Ajwa: And each person has a different specialty. So, the collaboration between the UC faculty members and USDA scientists actually help us succeed in finding alternatives and replacing methyl bromide.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
An Association Between Heart Disease and Depression
Narrator: This is Science Today. Several studies have shown that patients with depression have an increased risk of developing heart attacks and are more likely to die once they've had the heart attack. Mary Whooley of the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center is leading the Heart and Soul Study, which is designed to try and understand why patients with depression are at greater risk for cardiovascular events.
Whooley: We wanted to figure out what are the mechanisms that explain this? Are there physiological consequences of depression that affect the heart? Like maybe elevated levels of stress hormones that damage the heart in depressed patients or are there behavioral consequences of depression, like not exercising, not taking their medications as prescribed, not eating well that are the reason that patients with depression have an increased risk.
Narrator: Whooley says their research has found such associations.
Whooley: But we haven't yet got to the point where we've put it all together and figured out which ones are responsible. And in all likelihood, it will be a combination of them.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Nanotechnology Speeds Up Detection of Disease-Causing Viruses in Water Supplies
Narrator: This is Science Today. A group of scientists at the University of California , Riverside have received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to rapidly detect disease-causing viruses in drinking water supplies. Marylynn Yates, a professor of environmental microbiology, says she's building on successful campus collaboration with the department of chemical and environmental engineering.
Yates: We're using the talents that each of us has in very different areas to bring together to really try to solve a problem. What we're doing is combining the ability to detect infective viruses using cells, because that's where the viruses can grow and in combination with a lot of these molecular methods that are being developed, get the rapid results that we need.
Narrator: In the last few years, the group has been able to detect as few as one infective particle in as little as twelve hours.
Yates: Clearly, we're doing this in the laboratory, but we are excited about the ability to utilize new advances in the area of nanotechnology to speed that up even more.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D. A Study Focuses on the Causes and Prevention of Astronaut Bone Loss
Narrator: This is Science Today. Astronauts who spend long periods of time in the weightless environment of space experience what's called skeletal unloading, or rather, a loss of bone. This happens because in space, they lose the ability to make enough new bone cells to replace ones that die during the regular course of bone metabolism. When they return to Earth, astronauts are highly susceptible to fracture.
Long: We've decided to see if there's ways in which we could prevent some of this skeletal loss of unloading.
Narrator: Roger Long, a research fellow at the University of California , San Francisco , is one of three scientists chosen by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute to study the causes and possible prevention of this bone loss.
Long: In particular, some of the past research has indicated that one of the hormones involved in bone growth, which is IGF-1, that there's some resistance in the bone. Some don't seem to respond to IGF-1 and we're trying to figure out what what we could do to the bones in order to regain that response.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. A Potential Biotherapy for Melanoma
Narrator: This is Science Today. Melanomas are a deadly form of skin cancer that spread to other parts of the body by sending a chemical signal to the sentinel lymph node – a node that's most susceptible to the early spread of the cancer. Dr. Alistair Cochran of the UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center was able to reverse this immune suppression by injecting patients with a compound that stimulates immune activity in the node.
Cochran: So, it looks as though there is some capacity to rescue the lymph nodes. Now, these data have in fact been repeated – the study has been repeated by a number of groups and they have said essentially the same thing using a number of different biologically-active molecules. So, it does look like the potential is there for this kind of biotherapy prior to the removal of the sentinel nodes and we are at this point beginning to make plans for a clinical trial.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
