A. American Women Are Not Getting Enough Sleep
Narrator: This is Science Today. American women are not getting enough sleep according to a survey sponsored by the National Sleep Foundation. Study leader Kathryn Lee of the School of Nursing at the University of California , San Francisco says this was not surprising.
Lee: I've been studying women for over twenty years in various phases of their life, so it wasn't surprising to me. I think what was surprising was that almost half had a sleep problem every night and those included things like snoring and breathing problems as well as restless legs and insomnia, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep.
Narrator: Lee says one thousand women of all different ages and races were polled. Sixty percent reported getting fewer than one or two nights of good sleep each week.
Lee: Psychologically, we found that not only is sleep deprivation causing more mental health problems in itself with things like depression, but that women who are depressed are more likely to have poor sleep. In that sense, we're not sure which comes first.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
The Public Health Risks of Building Dampness & Mold
Narrator: This is Science Today. Building dampness and mold raises the risk of a variety of respiratory and asthma-related health problems by up to 30 to 50 percent. Those were the findings of a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory analysis. William Fisk, acting director of the Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division, co-wrote the paper.
Fisk: There's been a growing concern and interest in moisture problems and mold in buildings in the United States and throughout the world. There's long been some evidence of dampness in buildings being associated with various health effects, but it hadn't really been reviewed systematically.
Narrator: The latest analysis is based on a 2004 study that Fisk conducted, which found that excessive indoor dampness was a public health problem, but that study did not offer an overall quantitative assessment.
Fisk: The key point is that dampness and mold are an important public health problem. It's one that we can reduce. The key is to do a better job and to design construction, operation and maintenance of buildings. So, very practical ways of reducing this public health problem.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Advances in the Treatment of Breast Cancer
Narrator: This is Science Today. As surgical techniques become more sophisticated and allow physicians to do less of surgery, breast cancer patients are able to recover much more quickly and are available to continue with other treatment regimens. Dr. John Butler, chief of surgical oncology at the Chao Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, Irvine, has made a number of advancements with the use of minimally invasive surgical techniques.
Butler: We've made advances in decreasing the amount of surgery and changing it from an inpatient procedure to an outpatient procedure and now we're just beginning to see changes in terms of radiation therapy, where instead of having to undergo radiation for a six-week period of time, the radiation can be completed within a one-week period of time.
Narrator: The UC Irvine center is one of only 39 facilities nationwide designated by the National Cancer Institute as a comprehensive cancer center. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
The 'Waggle Dance' of the Honeybee
Narrator: This is Science Today. For nearly half a century, there's been scientific controversy about the meaning of the honeybee's ‘waggle dance'. Is it actually a coded message used to guide other bees to new food sources? New experiments by a team of British researchers support this famous theory. But what exactly happens during this ‘waggle dance'? James Nieh, who studies bee communication at the University of California, San Diego, explains.
Nieh: The waggle dance has this waggle phase, where she's moving her abdomen back and forth in a fairly straight line. And then she goes back and makes the figure eight and loops around again and then she does the waggle phase.
Narrator: If the honeybee is waggling and her head is pointed straight up, that's telling the other bees in the nest to go in the direction of the sun. Straight down means go in the opposite direction.
Nieh: And if she is waggling at 90 degrees to the left, it means go 90 degrees to the left of the sun. The distance to the food source is encoded in the duration of the waggle run. So, the longer that she spends doing the waggle, the further away the food source is.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E. West Nile Virus Takes its Toll on Birds
Narrator: This is Science Today. Recent reports have indicated that the West Nile Virus has taken a worse-than-expected toll on seven species of North American birds, including robins, bluejays, and house wrens. The hardest hit species has been the American crow – with up to 45 percent of their population cut since the West Nile virus first emerged in the United States in 1999. Research entomologist Bill Reisen of the University of California, Davis, describes how the virus enters into areas where there are communal roosts of birds such as the American crow.
Reisen: These birds will have up to ten billion particles of virus in their blood by the time they die per millimeter of blood and so they're just essentially a sack of virus. They'll get ill and land in people's yards and then infect any mosquito that feeds on them with so much virus. So, these birds then amplify the virus and when they go out to forage from the communal roosts and then become ill, they don't return, so they can move the virus.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
