UC Science Today

If you’ve been around awhile, chances are you’ve experienced foods that were once touted to be good for you, suddenly becoming the worst thing you could possibly eat. Or at least that’s how it feels when there’s a lot of media coverage about the latest scientific studies. Take eggs, for example. Over the years, these nutrient-rich orbs have gone from what’s for breakfast, to heart-attacks waiting to happen … only to be redeemed again as a healthy choice. Of course, moderation is key – for anything, but what gives when it comes to such nutritional see-saws? We asked nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic of the University of California, Davis. "Part of the problem is that we just have natural variability between people, and if we keep trying to find the answer about how a certain diet affects all humans, we're probably never going to find the answer, and we're going to keep having these sort of pendulum swings back and forth. Eggs are good for you, eggs are not good for you, eggs are good for you, eggs are not good for you because every time you get a different population, you'll get a different answer. Really, it's that eggs are good for some people at certain points in time, and eggs are not so good for other people especially at certain points in time. So, you know, we just need to try to figure out, how do we understand how different people respond to different diets at different points? And, again, it's not even just about, how do you respond to eggs? It's today versus three years from now versus 10 years ago. It's very different. People change over time and people are very unique and individual. And it's the overall context, too. That's often something that's really forgotten and missed. It's like, you know, we try to isolate these foods as if we eat them in isolation of other things. Of course, we eat them as complete diets. So let's say I'm on a vegan diet except I eat eggs. The effect of those eggs might be very different than if I eat eggs, but I'm actually on a Paleo-type diet, where I'm also eating a lot of other animal products. So it's really all about context and trying to understand how different people vary and change and respond to these different dietary treatments."

It's a workday, just after lunch. You have a deadline and there's plenty of time left in the day to get the task done. If only you could stop thinking about other things. One thought can lead to your mind just...wandering away. This can't be good, right? You've probably been scolded as a kid for daydreaming in class. But in recent years, neuroscientists and psychologists have found that there are some very redeeming qualities to this mental state - in fact, it could be an essential cognitive skill. Here's an excerpt from an interview conducted with one of those researchers.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, might be close to finding a drug that could cure glaucoma, which is the world’s second-leading cause of blindness. Karsten Gronert, a professor of optometry, says it has been a long process of trial and error. "With decades worth of research there have been several approaches to try to develop neuroprotective drugs that somehow can stop once you see neurodegenerartion. And there have been several approaches and none of them actually were able to stop the progression of neurodegeneration." But Gronert discovered that astrocytes - cells in the eye retina - produce lipid signals that protect nerves from damage. And when the eye is stressed, the astrocytes stop making the protective signal. "It was an unexpected finding. This means it has some unknown role with nerves that we were not aware of." So, if researchers can find a way to protect astrocytes, they might get on the right track to fight glaucoma.

How does one make a brain atlas? John Ngai, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley explains. “You can think of it as a taxonomy. You might think about what are all the species of birds that there are on Earth, you might think of it as needing to first identify those types.” So, just like with a bird encyclopedia, UC Berkeley neurologists are trying to find and organize brain cells into a catalogue of sorts. “We know there are many different types of neurons in the brain. They look different. We might have some ideas about how they function differently. But we have no rational way of categorizing them. But using new molecular and genetic techniques, we have a very powerful way of classifying them.” The brain atlas is an ambitious multimillion-dollar project that will help researchers better understand how brain cells wire up and function. And that could be the key to cure of neurological diseases, including autism and Alzheimer’s. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, affects over two million people worldwide. The neurodegenerative disease strikes when the immune system attacks myelin, layers of a fatty insulating membrane that surround nerve fibers and help send nerve signals faster. Ari Green, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, has found an over the counter allergy drug called Clemastine that could possibly help repair damaged myelin. “It was originally designed back in the 1970s as an antihistamine and we were excited that it showed the evidence that myelin repair is possible even with injury that is not immediate or acute, but has been there for some time." Green says because of possible side effects of the medication, Clemastine is only a prototype for a better myelin repairing drug that researchers have yet to develop. "What we want is a drug that has a very targeted effect that would be capable of inducing this repair without causing other side effects."

Exposure to flame retardant chemicals or PBDEs during pregnancy can affect children’s neurodevelopment. Environmental health scientist Tracey Woodruff of the University of California, San Francisco, found ten-fold increases in a mother's PBDE levels could lead to a drop of 3.7 IQ points in her child. While that may sound like a small number… "If you look at it over a population, it becomes very significant, because you have everybody exposed to PBDEs at a smaller risk. The small risk over a large population means that you can have a relatively large number of people who can have some type of effect." If this happens, the population level IQ could get shifted. This means there will be more people with an IQ score of about 70, which is considered a mentally-impaired category. “It can also decrease the number of people who are in the mentally-gifted categories." PBDEs can be found in many household items from furniture to toys to electronics. So, Woodruff says buying flame retardant-free products could make a big difference in your children’s health.

Believe it or not, neuroscience is still considered a relatively new field of medical research. That’s because there’s still a lot of the unknown about our brain. For instance, how do brain cells wire up and function? To answer this question, John Ngai, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, is creating a brain catalogue or - as researchers call it – an atlas. “So the idea behind this brain atlas project is to identify all the cell types in the mouse brain as a model for understanding the human brain and then to understand their physiological properties, how they connect with other so this can be used as a basis for understanding not only normal function of the brain, but also how diseases might progress and eventually how you might treat those diseases in human neurological conditions." The effort is part of the federal government’s BRAIN Initiative, which launched four years ago. Its ultimate goal is to understand brain circuits well enough to devise new therapies for diseases of the human brain and nervous system.

Glaucoma is the world’s second-leading cause of blindness, and it affects about 80 million people worldwide and has no cure. But vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered molecules that could probably halt the progression of the disease. Gronert: “We identified a novel factor, a new factor that potentially protects the optic nerve against damage, which is one of the underlying causes of glaucoma. That’s Karsten Gronert, a professor of optometry at UC Berkeley. He says, for decades, academic labs and pharmaceutical companies were trying to find treatment for glaucoma, but couldn’t show any promising results. This is probably because they were targeting the disease when it was already too late. "Once you have a degeneration of the optic nerve head, which is what causes glaucoma and eventually leads to blindness, that process is irreversible and cannot be stopped.” So Gronert and his colleagues took a different route. Instead of trying to fix what has been permanently damaged, they focused on prevention - protecting the mechanism that stops nerve degeneration.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have started an ambitious project to build a brain atlas. According to neuroscientist John Ngai, the goal is to create a catalogue of different brain cells. "The human brain contains about 80 billion neurons, nerve cells. And of the neurons we suspect there could be hundreds, if not thousands of types of distinct types of those cells, but until recently we really haven’t had a way of categorizing or classifying those cells in a quantitative or rational way." But why do researchers need this mapping tool? "In order to understand how the brain processes information and gives raise to things like cognition, emotion, we really need to know what different parts are." Ngai also hopes this atlas will help scientists understand brain cells’ connections well enough to launch new therapies for treating cognitive and neurological diseases.

Social connections are important and can make you happier, according to psychologist Iris Mauss of the University of California, Berkeley. But how can those who are, shall we say, not so easy going build such a network? Mauss says – just be yourself, and open up to others. “People who are perceived to be more authentic are better liked by others and have better social connections. And we have found that if you hold in your emotions, you stifle them, then others tend to perceive that as.. on average, finding you less authentic.” Mauss says accepting your negative emotions could also help you become more personable. “Having that accepting attitudes about your own emotions will make you be more open about your own emotions which I believe would be perceived by others as greater authenticity.” So, if you shy away from sharing your feelings, just give it another try!

Will software engineers ever be able to outsmart hackers and build an unbreakable wall of defense? Dawn Song, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley says it’s possible, but don’t expect results in the near future. Part of the reason is due to artificial intelligence, or AI. “On one hand AI – these techniques can really help us to enhance our capabilities for defenders to build stronger defenses, but also on the other hand unfortunately it could be misused by attackers. In the long run, we do hope that the defenders will win, but in the short term it could make it easier for attackers to develop new attacks, but can be much, much harder for defenders to build sufficient defenses.” So, what will it take for programmers to win this cat-and-mouse game? According to Song, the advancement of artificial intelligence allows researchers to better identify vulnerable spots in software installed on our smartphones, laptops and tablets.

It seems there’s more to high-density lipoproteins, or HDLs, than we previously thought. Nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic of the University of California, Davis, led an analyses of how the composition of complex sugars attached to HDLs called glycans are linked to the body’s inflammatory response. Traditional markers like LDL cholesterol, body mass index and blood pressure are not able to predict whose HDL is pro- or anti-inflammatory. "That’s something that had not really been looked at very extensively before. So, how can we actually start to look at people to see what their metabolic phenotype might be like that’s something other than how we’ve categorized them so far?” Being a nutrition researcher, Zivkovic is looking into which diets are pro- or anti-inflammatory. "I think we can actually start to think about the possibility of giving people recommendations to improve their health that take into account both who they are as genetically, but also what they choose."

Medical students at the University of California, San Francisco, are learning about the human body in a new, experimental setting. Anatomy professor Derek Harmon is piloting a virtual reality class. But as exciting as it sounds - not every student is thrilled about the 3D experience. "I think one potential negative with virtual reality is that some studies quote that something like 20 percent of people or 1 out of 5 have this motion sickness." So, Harmon says for that reason some of his anatomy students opted out. But the class is optional, designed in addition to the traditional mandatory classes taught on cadavers. "Virtual reality is one way we are looking at it. We are looking at augmented reality concepts too. Potentially mixed reality like a HoloLens, to try to make sure that we can get as many students involved in this type of space as possible." According to Harmon, the concept of spatial building that three-dimension provides is a very important skill for medical students. And it’s easier to understand using virtual reality.

Artificial Intelligence has been developing fast – and it’s making more and more decisions on humans’ behalf. From simple web searches to e-commerce to self-driving cars. But researchers like Dawn Song, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, are struggling to find the best ways to protect this technology from hackers. “One thing we are looking at how we can use AI and deep learning techniques to develop stronger security capabilities to enable us to build better defenses. One of our recent works uses advanced deep learning techniques to try to identify software vulnerabilities in IOT devises.” Deep learning techniques are advanced algorithms, which allow researchers to process massive amounts of data. “The advantage of deep learning is that it can enable us to build very large data sets. And now we have very good computation framework and hardware to perform a variety of tasks.” But as machines becomes smarter, so do viruses that attack them, so scientists are challenged to stay one step ahead of hackers.

When you accept your own negative emotions – you will likely have a more positive outlook on mood swings than people around you have. That’s according to Iris Mauss, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you have an accepting attitude for other people’s emotions that tend to make those other people feel better and it helps you respond to their distress in a more constructive way.” Mauss says this mindset is invaluable for parents who often deal with their little ones’ tantrums. “Small children have difficulty regulating their emotions because, they are - children." But if their moms and dads are responsive and understanding – “We believe that over time that might actually help children develop better emotion-regulatory skills. ” And not only that. Mauss says if you learn how to accept your negative emotions, you’ll become a better role model for your kids.

Sleep disorders during pregnancy can lead to a preterm birth. To improve sleeping patterns of mothers-to-be, Jennifer Felder, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, is running an intervention research. “So we are doing a research on expecting moms and it is a digital intervention for sleep during pregnancies, so we are able to recruit women across the nation and in Canada. So we are hoping to have a really broad reach with that." Besides pre-term birth outcomes, Insomnia is linked to other problems in pregnant women. “Poor sleep during pregnancy may also increase risk of perinatal depression and there are some data that suggests that it might increase risk of suicidal ideation, gestational diabetes, cesarean section births. So it does appear to have really broad consequences both psychologically and physically." Treating sleep disorders might help reduce the rate of pre-term births, which affect 1 in 10 women in the United States.

Virtual Reality becomes a reality in medical research. Derek Harmon, a professor of anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco, is working with software companies to develop 3D brain scan visualization tools. “With your two hand-held controllers of the virtual space you can slice with one axes and then the other and see a view of a head CT scan. In real time you can see all these different angles and again, build on special arrangement of the body, which I don’t know where else you can even do something like that.” Harmon has just started a pilot curriculum that offers virtual reality anatomy classes to medical students, so a 360-degree view of a digital human body using Google glasses. Harmon says lessons like these will help students become better physicians in the future. “If you have a company that built the software for you, you have pre-selected layers of tissue, organs and whatever you want to learn from, which does a lot of legwork for you and because of that people can start experimenting with it. I think it is so early on in the technology, but there is a lot of promise on things that you really can’t do on another type of medium."

How much stress can you take? Maybe you’re OK with a small bump in the road, like a parking ticket or a spat with your neighbor. But what about more serious troubles? “Things like going through a divorce, financial troubles, unemployment. Those are pretty big stressors.” That’s Irene Mauss, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In her recent study, she discovered that you will be much better off if you accept your negative emotions, no matter how bad they are. “We found the same positive effect of emotional acceptance. I don’t know at this point where the upper boundary is, but from other research we can speculate that actually there is no upper boundary in terms of the intensity of stressors." But Mauss says accepting your negative emotions doesn’t mean accepting negative reality. You should still work on making positive changes in your life if things took a wrong turn.

A couple of decades ago flame retardants – or PBDEs - were widely used in furniture because of the fire safety standards. But that policy has since changed in many states, including California. “Because of concern about increasing exposures as well as the facts that people were concerned about in terms of how they may be affecting neurodevelopment, PBDE were phased out for use.” That’s Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. She has run a study measuring pregnant women’s exposure to PBDEs that can affect children’s neurodevelopment and lower IQ. Woodruff found that despite a series of bans, these chemicals are still ubiquitous in our homes. “So we see decline in some of the exposures, but we see that we still going to have exposures for a while because they are still hanging around, they probably still in a lot of furniture." Woodruff urges policymakers not to weaken environmental health laws.

Medical students at the University of California, San Francisco, are learning about human anatomy not only on cadavers, but also in virtual reality. This is part of a new pilot curriculum led by anatomy professor Derek Harmon. "The students, as soon as they learn the material on actual cadavers, on skeletons, or in the lab itself, they could go into the space where we had virtual reality set up and they could do the exact same type of lesson, but they could take it piece-by-piece off of the model in the virtual space, which means they could physically walk around the virtual model getting this kind of 360 degree view that they could not get in the lab." This way, even though students can’t feel the virtual body, they can explore its every little detail. "You can really quickly see that it helped more with the depth level and by that I mean from the superficial skin level down to the deepest part in the body, because they can take every piece layer-by-layer off." Harmon says in just a couple of years VR's popularity will likely skyrocket among medical doctors.

What really makes you happy or sad? According to Psychologist Iris Mauss of the University of California, Berkeley it is not so much about what’s happening to you, but how you perceive the situations you are in. "How you relate to your own emotions, transforms the experiences that you have in some way." Mauss says the right way of thinking is the best way to protect yourself from moodiness, depression and anxiety. "If you accept your negative emotions as just a natural response, you are going to pay less attention to them and so while they exist and happen, they blow over pretty quickly. Another idea is if you accept the negative emotions you have, you basically don’t punish yourself for feeling them and you avoid piling negativity upon negativity." Or if you simply don’t chalk up your misfortunes to “bad luck,” this alone might cheer you up.

If your home has furniture that contains flame retardant materials, you may want to consider getting rid of it. A study by Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, has shown that exposure to flame retardant chemicals, or PBDEs, may affect your health. "The thing about the flame retardants use in a polyurethane foam is that they are not bound to the polyurethane, so they can get out and they can get into dust, and then they can migrate through dust, and people can get exposed through the dust, and they can also get into food. Another thing about PBDEs is that their chemical structure is such that it makes them persistent: once they get out they don’t break down, they hang around in the environment." According to Woodruff, pregnant women and children are especially vulnerable. PBDEs may slow down children’s neurodevelopment, lower their IQ and possibly increase the risk of ADHD. "Children may be more highly exposed to PBDEs, as it gets out in dust, because they are lower to the ground, they crawl around, they put their hands in their mouth." So, not having furniture with these chemicals is the safest bet.

About a quarter of all the global climate change problems we’re seeing today can be attributed back to our food system and the dietary choices we’re making on a daily basis. "This is greater than all of the cars on the planet; in fact it’s about twice as much global warming pollution as the cars." That’s Benjamin Houlton, director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis. He studies the connection between climate and diet. For instance, just switching from a meat-heavy American diet to a Mediterranean diet, which has less meat, more fish and lots of vegetables is not only good for your health, it’s good for the planet’s health, too. "If we all switch to a diet like the Mediterranean diet – that is equivalent to taking somewhere around a billion cars off of the streets in terms of vehicle emissions each year. So, it’s a huge number that has a tremendous amount. In terms of percentages, it could solve up to 15 percent of global warming pollution by 2050. We thing these are really important things to understand; our dietary choice does matter and it’s something we can do every day."

How do you handle stress? Psychologist Iris Mauss of the University of California, Berkeley wanted to learn how people deal with stressors, so she ran an experiment that involved exposing study participants to uncomfortable situations. “We stressed everybody out by having them giving an impromptu speech that we said would be videotaped and later scrutinized by judges. It’s an experience that people find very unpleasant. ” But the way one reacts to a stressful situation like this changes the outcome. “We found that people who tend to be more accepting of their negative emotions actually responded with less stress to that experience.” According to Mauss, their study refutes previous notions that fewer bad things happen to happier people. It’s just that these people often see their negative experiences in a positive light.

Exposure to flame retardant chemicals or PBDEs during pregnancy can affect children’s neurodevelopment. That’s according to Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. “There’s been studies in multiple locations including the United States and in other countries around the world and what was found was that women with higher exposures to PBDEs during pregnancies, their children had lower IQ scores.” Woodruff says they measured IQ scores of 5 to 7-year-old exposed to these chemicals in infancy. “For about 10-fold increase in PBDEs there was a drop of IQ score of about 4 IQ points." But how did women get exposed to the chemicals? Turns out, through furnishings at home. “PBDE flame retardants are the class of chemicals that were used primarily in upholstered furniture, so polyurethane foam. They were put in as a requirement to flammability standards. They are also used sometimes in electronics."

Can pregnant women be cured of insomnia? Jennifer Felder, a clinical phycologist at the University of California, San Francisco, is testing out a therapy called cognitive behavioral treatment, which could help expecting mothers fight sleep disorders. “There is not currently much research on how best to treat insomnia during pregnancy. We know that cognitive behavioral treatment is effective for insomnia generally, but we don’t yet know if it is effective during pregnancy. “ Felder’s study shows that insomnia during pregnancy put women at a higher risk for delivering before 34 weeks of gestation. But according to Felder, doctors don’t always see lack of sleep as a problem. “Insomnia is often going undetected. It maybe dismissed as part of the normal process of pregnancy.” Yet, In the United States one in 10 women deliver their babies preterm, so Felder hopes the insomnia therapy could reduce the rate of preterm birth.

Can parents protect their children from developing asthma and eczema? Michael Cabana, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, believes it could be possible if parents follow these recommendations very early in their children’s lives, starting from birth. “Longer duration of breastfeeding might be helpful, avoiding the use of antibiotics is also important and it seems to be a beneficial effect of vaginal delivery." Cabana’s recent study also showed that positive health effects of probiotics might be overstated, despite a widely accepted belief that they help prevent eczema or asthma in kids. Cabana says researchers need to take a closer look at children’s microbiota. “I think as we develop better tools to understand microbiota and how that microbiota evolves and what is a normal microbiota in a normally developing child I think that is the type of background information we still need to continue and develop."

Do you feel bad when you’re moody, upset or depressed? Well, don’t be. Negative emotions are not so bad. So says Iris Mauss, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “We found that some people regard their negative emotions with some suspicion. But some people actually have what we call emotionally excepting stance. They regard their negative emotions as something very natural, part of life that doesn’t need to be avoided or altered or pushed away.” Turns out, this type of thinking may work in your favor. "Paradoxically, people who actually accept their own negative emotions more, tend to have less negative emotions when they face stressful events, and then overtime sort of like a healthy diet this decreased experience of negative emotions adds up to better psychological health, more well-being, satisfaction with life and also less depression.”

When we think about our food system, we need to factor in that about 33 percent of the land area is now used for animals for food. And according to Ben Houlton, director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis, that has a huge influence on the global climate cycle. "We have to think about the methane that’s being released from animals and rice patties and areas where we’re growing food. And we have to consider this nitrous oxide gas that’s being produced from the fertilizers we’re feeding to the microbes that live in the soil." Nitrous oxide, or N2O, is the third largest contributor to global warming. Houlton and his colleagues identified nitrogen ‘fingerprints’ in soil samples to trace its journey and model how it moves through ecosystems and escapes into the air or water. Without adding the nitrogen cycle, Houlton says previous climate models were underestimated. "Our discovery helped improve that understanding greatly so that we can now put this into our global models and help policymakers make better informed decisions."

Why do pregnant women tend to suffer from sleep disorders? Financial status of the future mothers could be one of the reasons leading to insomnia. That’s according to Jennifer Felder, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco. “Women of color and women from more economically disadvantaged background are disproportionately affected by poor sleep during pregnancy so it is possible that this may explain part of the reason we have such big disparities in the preterm birth rate.” Lack of resources brings along other inequality factors affecting pregnant women’s sleep. "Stress and psychological problems, noisy neighborhoods, discrimination and racism, not feeling safe.” Felder says researchers studying different disciplines – be it psychology, environmental science or public health - need to combine their efforts in helping low income pregnant women improve sleeping patterns.

Are yogurt, kefir and other probiotics really good for you? Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, believe the benefits of these products may be overstated. Michael Cabana, a professor of pediatrics, came to this conclusion while trying to figure out if a probiotic strain called LGG helps prevent the development of eczema or asthma in kids predisposed to these diseases. “At two years of age we found that there is no difference in eczema levels between the kids. Despite the fact that previous studies have shown this probiotic strain helps prevent eczema in other countries, in the San Francisco area we didn’t find the same results.” The UCSF findings further fuel the ongoing debate about the benefits of friendly bacteria in dietary supplements. “We still learned a lot from this study and we still continue following these kids. It is probably more complicated than just giving a probiotic supplement.” Genetic factors and other types of baby food, including breast milk, also affect a child’s microbiota. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Environmental pollutants can damage our health, but how much do we know about their harmful effects? As part of a prenatal patients’ study, Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco has surveyed OBGYNs. The goal was to find out if doctors inform their patients about environmental health as part of their prenatal care. “We actually surveyed doctors, obstetricians to ask them do you talk to your patients about environmental health, what do they say to you, do you think it is an important issue to ask them. And doctors by and large, at least obstetricians said we think this issue is really Important, but we don’t talk to our patients because we don’t have the kind of information we need to give to them.” Woodruff and her team are now filling in the gap integrating environmental health into clinical care. “One thing we have been doing is working with their professional societies to provide this foundational information so it is easier for a physician to give a patient information about environmental exposure they are concerned about.”

How technological advances are factored in climate change models by University of California

Private space tourism is no longer a faraway dream. In fact, Thomas Lang, an imaging scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, is trying to predict what tourists’ lives would be like in space. Researchers, for example, already have plans for designing commercial space habitats. “What happens when you have private space stations? And those stations are geared for commercial activities. You would have people doing manufacturing or research or some other activity in space.” The most pressing question for researchers is how to provide space tourists with an adequate training so they could stay in good health. “Does it have to be NASA-like training program? Will they cut these health requirements down? What’s going to be the right trade off?” Lang says, aging happens very quickly in space and can severely affect astronauts’ bones with lifetime bone structure being lost in just six months. But according to Lang, this could probably be prevented.

How important is it for pregnant women to get enough sleep? Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have recently conducted a study linking the lack of a good night’s rest to complications at delivery. “Our study was the first to examine insomnia diagnosed during pregnancy and the risk of preterm birth. And our findings suggested that women with an insomnia diagnoses during pregnancy are at nearly two times higher risk for delivering before 34 weeks of gestation”. That’s UCSF clinical psychologist Jennifer Felder. She urges mothers to pay extra attention to sleeping patterns in order to protect their babies. “And this is really important because In the United States one in 10 women deliver their babies preterm. And it is now the leading cause of death before the age of 5 globally.” Scientists hope that by treating sleep disorders they could reduce the rate of preterm births. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Every year, more than 25 thousand pounds of chemicals are imported or manufactured in the United States, but scientists have very little data on many of those chemicals’ heath effects. Tracy Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, explains. "We do know a lot about some environmental chemicals, so air pollution, cigarette smoke, some carcinogens and chemicals that cause effects other than cancer. There is still a lot of scientific knowledge to be gained about any of the industrial chemicals that we are using currently in the market place and we are exposed to.” Woodruff says the effect of chemicals on humans is often underestimated, because most studies involve lab animals. “But that doesn’t really reflect somebody who lives in a neighborhood that has a lot of crime or they are low income and so they have a lot of other stressers in their lives.” Woodruff says measuring the combined health effects of people’s social and environmental hardships could give researchers a more complete picture.

Every year, almost 2 million Americans suffer from traumatic brain injury, which often lead to severe memory loss and learning disabilities. Peter Walter, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, has recently discovered a drug that can completely reverse these impairments in mice. “The mice learned better. They have a better ability of taking short term memory and storing it in long term memory. It is a drug that enhances synaptic plasticity that allow memory to form.” Scientists need to conduct more studies to learn if the same improvements can be achieved in humans. “Whether we can extrapolate it to humans is still an open question. Mice’ brains are very different from human brains.” But since traumatic brain injury is a serious problem with no approved therapies available for patients, these studies may offer researchers new insight. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

This week on Science Today, we learned something that many of you probably already know – and that’s how curiosity is often the main ingredient in scientific discovery. So many of the researchers we interview every week, often make breakthroughs by simply wondering about the world around them or asking different questions. In the case of nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic at UC Davis, in her case it was a picture that prompted her to a discovery that the composition of sugars coating HDL particles in body may be a biomarker for disease. "It was an electron micrograph of the inside of an arterial wall and it was hairy looking, right? And it’s because the endothelial cells that line the inside of your arteries are actually covered with these sugars. They’re kind of like these structures that help make sure certain things get through and certain things don’t get through from the bloodstream. And when I saw that picture I realized, well if your cells that these HDL particles have to kind of interact with are covered with sugars, then the HDL must be covered with sugars, too." And at UCSF, environmental health scientist Tracey Woodruff wanted to understand how chemicals in the environment intersect with health disparities. "For example, African American women have higher rates of adverse birth outcomes like preterm birth and low birthweight. Is it because one of the reasons of this health disparity is because there is some type of environmental factors that are also combining with the factors that are due to their circumstances, that put their pregnancy more at risk?" And additional stressors like discrimination or domestic violence are exacerbated by environmental factors like air pollution or cigarette smoke. So by asking this question and digging further, Woodruff hopes their findings may lead to the implementation of better environmental policies, especially in impoverished areas that often get exposed to chemicals. And these are just two University of California researchers who are trying to make a difference in the world. Subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud to hear about others. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/curiosity_research

Sometimes, breakthroughs in science really do come down to simple curiosity. That was definitely the case when a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis decided to look more closely at the composition of HDL particles in the body. One of HDL's jobs is to transport cholesterol out of cells. Nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic says it was a picture that prompted her to question if HDL may be covered in glycans, or sugars, and how that may impact the body. "It was an electron micrograph of the inside of an arterial wall and it was hairy looking, right? And it’s because the endothelial cells that line the inside of your arteries are actually covered with these sugars. They’re kind of like these structures that help make sure certain things get through and certain things don’t get through from the bloodstream. And when I saw that picture I realized, well if your cells that these HDL particles have to kind of interact with are covered with sugars, then the HJDL must be covered with sugars, too." Their ultimate finding that these sugars do influence anti-inflammatory proteins in the body could lead to biomarkers for disease. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Everything that humans are used to on Earth changes in space and that’s what astronauts should be prepared for during long space trips. “You are now in microgravity, which means that you don’t have these loads on not just your skeleton, but your skeletal muscle, your heart, your sense of balance.” That's imaging scientist Thomas Lang, of the University of California, San Francisco. He explains that astronauts are exposed to a dangerous level of radiation, which increases the risk of cancer and brain damage. “To some extent in lower Earth orbit we are protected by Earth’s magnetic field, but once we go to, as proposed to these NASA missions, back to the Moon or to deep space habitats in cislunar orbit, there we are going to be exposed to solar, wind, as well as galactic heavy ion- radiation.” Add to that isolation and the absence of daylight, and space travel might not seem so appealing. But researchers like Lang are working on strategies to make space trips a healthier experience.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have discovered that a specific virus called cytomegalovirus, or CMV, could trigger childhood leukemia - a type of cancer that strikes about 15,000 American children each year. “We found evidence of this virus at birth and it was found more frequently in children that went on to get leukemia. This virus was found years before diagnosis.” That’s study leader Adam de Smith, who says CMV could also lead to other diseases. “Children born with CMV may have developmental defects and particularly hearing los affected with CMV virus. So it is a pretty big public health issue and one thing that may come out of this research is a potential for a vaccine against CMV virus.” While the development of this vaccine has been a priority for American health officials, the process is complicated. So De Smith says a lot more research needs to be done before a vaccine is available.

Virtual reality may help people with a visual condition called amblyopia, in which there is reduced vision in one eye. Neuroscientist Adrian Chopin of the University of California, Berkeley, says they’re treating patients with this visual defect by having them play 3D computer games that, he says, could restore their eyesight. “Virtual reality is really developing tremendously right now. We are trying to develop a new game. That is something in between a video game industry and treatment.” Chopin hopes this new 3D computer game treatment will overwrite the old dogma that adult patients’ amblyopia cannot be cured. “Now we have all these optometrists and ophthalmologists out there telling the patients very often that there is nothing that can be done for them because they are too old and they needed to be treated when they were children. And we realize it is not true. I mean, it is difficult to change it, but it is not that it is impossible." Chopin says the virtual reality study is already showing signs of success with some patients’ eyesight significantly improving.

Pregnant women exposed to social stress and environmental chemicals, have a higher risk of prenatal developmental problems and low-birth-weight babies. Study leader Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, says the key here is the combined effect of the risk factors. “Our study was evaluating the literature to understand what the combined effects were of being exposed to environmental chemicals and stresses that people may experience during life. Stresses that are due to things like living in poor living circumstances, issue that might be due to discrimination like racism, etc. or poverty." Babies born to mothers exposed to these hardships are at higher risk of developing multiple diseases in childhood and having cardiovascular problems and diabetes in adulthood. “We have to do a better job of figuring out how do these varies factors that influence somebody’s health work together rather than just studying them separately, because they might be in combination more important.”

Space missions are exciting, but they’re risky for astronauts’ health. The lack of gravity in space may seriously damage their musculoskeletal systems, especially the spine and hip. Thomas Lang, an imaging scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, has recently discovered crucial details about bone loss in space. “What we did in our study is to look at how this corresponded to architectural changes in the hips. We used a 3-dimentional approach called quantitative computed tomography and in particular in the hip we found the trabecular bone – the spongy bone in the center of the medullary canal in the hip - was lost at about up to 3 percent per month.” That’s similar to the bone structure that 70 or 80-year old women might lose in a year. “The driving factor is disuse. Very similar to what happens when somebody has a spinal cord injury and they sit down in a wheel chair.” One solution is to ensure that astronauts get strenuous workouts in space.

Hi there – I’m Larissa Branin, host of Science Today and it’s that time of the week again where we go over some of the stories covered this past week. First, we learned that by the end of the century climate change will likely cause a decline in wheat and barley yields by up to 33 percent. This statistical model was developed by a team of researchers led by UC Davis. Graduate student Matthew Gammans, who worked on the study, told us it was based on 65 years of weather records and data from wheat and barley yields in France.  “So we started by looking at the relationship between weather and yields and then using some climate change projections, we forecasted that relationship into the future to see what we can expect to happen to these yields.” Their work is one of the first flexible statistical models applied to these cereal crops, which means that every potential temperature was included in the analysis. We then chatted with public health professor Kristine Madsen of UC Berkeley about soda consumption in the U.S. falling to a 31-year low last year. Instead, consumers seem to be reaching for lower-calorie produces, including bottled water. Madsen had found similar findings in Berkeley, California after the city passed the nation’s first soda tax back in 2014. “Even in the comparison cities of Oakland and San Francisco, there was an overall increase of 20 percent in water consumption. But it was 63 percent in Berkeley. So, it looks like people were switching from sugar-sweetened beverages to really what I would say is the healthiest alternative.” Speaking of healthy alternatives, there’s even more reason to never start smoking. We learned that even if parents quit before conception, their prior smoking habit may still put their child’s health at risk. UC San Francisco researcher Adam de Smith studied dust in homes where children were diagnosed with leukemia and found an increased level of tobacco particles in the carpeting. “If a family is smoking relatively heavily, they might not even be smoking in the house, they might be smoking outside, but when they come into the home, particles drop onto the carpet. If they have children several years later, we have found that those particles can remain there several years later. So it is possible if a child is playing around on the carpet, he may still be exposed to toxic particles that could perhaps increase the leukemia risk.” And even frequently vacuuming does not eliminate all the dust. So again – all the more reason to never pick up the habit. Well, that’s all for now. If you want to keep on top of all the latest science and health news coming from the University of California system, you’ll find UC Science Today on iTunes. Please subscribe and thanks for listening. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/cereal_yields https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/soda_consumption https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/smoking_parents

Parents who used to smoke, but quit before conceiving, may still put their child’s heath at risk. Researchers of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco, have studied dust in homes where children were diagnosed with leukemia and found an increased level of tobacco particles in the carpeting. UCSF Associate Researcher Adam de Smith explains the connection. “If a family is smoking relatively heavily, they might not even be smoking in the house, they might be smoking outside, but when they come into the home, particles drop onto the carpet. If they have children several years later, we have found that those particles can remain there several years later. So it is possible if a child is playing around on the carpet, he may still be exposed to toxic particles that could perhaps increase the leukemia risk." Studies show that even if you don’t smoke inside the house and frequently vacuum, only about 10 percent of dust gets removed. So de Smith says, best way to protect your children from tobacco-contaminated dust exposure is to never start smoking.

What’s the best way to treat people suffering from substance abuse? Jennifer Mitchell, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, has been studying the hormone oxytocin as a possible cure for addictions, due to its ability to reduce stress, anxiety and social discomfort. “By enabling people to make better social connections and by attenuating the craving for that other substance or act, or giving them a better set of tools with which to embark on this road to recovery, and it is not that it is to say that it is like a panacea: you are going to take a little intranasal oxytocin and everything is going to be perfect, but perhaps it could be one of many tools that people use to get better and get back into a healthy life style.” Mitchell says oxytocin could be a substitute for those self-medicating with alcohol, opioids or even gambling. “Whether or not it is related to depression or stress or anxiety or PTSD, the bottom line is they are experiencing the state of despair.” Mitchell hopes doctors will start offering oxytocin as a therapy.

Soda consumption in the United States fell to a 31-year low last year. This, according to the trade publication, Beverage-Digest. Instead, consumers seem to be reaching for lower-calorie products, including bottled water. This is something public health professor Kristine Madsen found in a University of California, Berkeley study, which was conducted after the City of Berkeley passed the nation’s first soda tax in 2014. "Even in the comparison cities of Oakland and San Francisco, there was an overall increase of 20 percent in water consumption. But it was 63 percent in Berkeley. So, it looks like people were switching from sugar-sweetened beverages to really what I would say is the healthiest alternative." Madsen agrees that many consumers are becoming more health conscious. But even trends could have a role in the decline of sugary drinks – like all of the eco-friendly water bottles being carried around these days. "So, that ‘cool factor’ is really important and could absolutely be an important driver moving people to healthier choices, you now, in beverages and in diets in general."

By the end of the century, climate change will likely cause a decline of wheat and barley yields by 17 to 33 percent. Those were the findings of a new statistical model by the University of California, Davis. Matthew Gammans, a graduate student who worked on the study, says it was based on 65 years of weather records and data from wheat and barley yields in France. "So we started by looking at the relationship between weather and yields and then using some climate change projections, we forecasted that relationship into the future to see what we can expect to happen to these yields." Their work is one of the first flexible statistical models applied to wheat and other cereal crops. "When I say “flexible”, I mean not just kind of the average temperature or the max temperature, but kind of looking at exposure to every temperature bin, so every potential temperature is included in the analysis and it’s the first to apply that to Europe and it’s also the first to use that kind of flexible methodology to look at both fall and winter and summer seasons – so really trying to understand what’s driving these yield changes."

The sight of farmers in China, bent over rice fields enveloped in air pollution, inspired researcher Colin Carter of the University of California, Davis to find out how surface ozone was impacting their most important crop. "You couldn’t see from one end of the field to the other. And the sunlight wasn’t even getting to the plants. So it sort of struck me that pollution today in China is a bigger issue for agriculture than climate change is. The two are related, but they are different." For the first time, Carter and his colleagues were able to identify a specific stage of a rice plant’s development as being vulnerable to surface ozone, a form of pollution that’s similar to smog. This information can be used to help the country implement regulatory policies to control surface ozone during critical stages of a rice plant’s growth. "The factors that cause surface ozone also lead to climate change. So, if the pollution is controlled, not only will it give immediate benefit to agriculture, but it will also help in the battle against climate change."

Taking care of a loved one suffering from dementia is not an easy job. In fact, family members who look after sick relatives, often suffer from depression and could use some caregiving, too. That’s according to Robert Levenson, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Part of it is just an understanding that this is really important, really prevalent and preventable in a way. We don’t know how to cure dementia, but I think we can probably keep caregivers a lot more healthy.” Levenson’s recent study shows that depression of family caregivers may contribute to dementia patients’ earlier death. He suggests this is where social services can step in and help caregivers. “We are talking about providing some health with making meals, letting caregivers have a few hours to get out of the house and maybe get some exercise. Some of these solutions to these problems are low-tech, not high-tech, low-cost, not high-cost." Dementia is a growing public health problem. Five million Americans have the disease and this number is expected to reach 8 million in just 15 years.

More than a third of American adults are obese. Experts often call it an epidemic and have long been struggling to find ways to fight obesity. “Knowledge is definitely a great way to combat that. That’s what happened with cigarette smoking when it became obvious this is going to be detrimental. Are we at that stage yet, I don’t think so. We are still going to have an epidemic and people are still becoming more and more obese. And it is a problem and we need to find solutions." That’s Andrew Dillin, a molecular biologist of the University of California, Berkeley. He is looking into the possibility of defeating obesity with our - nose. “Can we actually go through human population, the obese people and actually test their sense of smell? Maybe we can stratify the obese population, attenuating their sense of smell may be very beneficial." This hypothesis is based on Dillin’s recent study. It showed that lab animals without a sense of smell were not gaining extra weight and were losing excessive pounds. Dillin hopes scientists could soon test if this could also work in humans.

Many American parents are concerned about preschools becoming too formalized – with teachers being too focused on kids’ academic performance rather than play. But academically-rich activities at a young age is not a bad thing, according to Bruce Fuller, professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley. “Preschool educators then feel they gotta have kids ready to do well on tests and there’s been a good deal of research showing that in preschools that are just play-focused, a lot of kids spend time wandering around classrooms, a lot of youngsters are in dress-up corners for 40-50 minutes." Fuller says while children have a good time, they don’t learn as much as they should at a preschool age. “Kids’ brains are like sponges. They can pick up pre-literacy skills, new vocabulary. They can pick up understanding of math concepts quickly. Our finding pushed the early education establishment to think how can we blend playful activity and move from childrens’ natural curiosity while at the same time challenging them in cognitive ways to boost their growth, when they are three or four years of age.”

HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, is often referred to as the ‘good cholesterol’. That’s because HDL particles remove cholesterol out of our cells and out of our bodies. But a University of California, Davis study has found there’s more to HDLs than that. Angela Zivkovic, an assistant professor of nutrition, explains. "They don’t just suck cholesterol out. They also actually interact with your immune cells and do some really interesting things to modify the way that your immune system is responding to different things. So, it looks like they can really be remodeled." Zivkovic found that the composition of HDLs, particularly the amount and structure of sugars called glycans, varies in individuals. And this can cause different functions, including influencing the body’s inflammatory response. "It’s not really been understood how exactly that happens, and so what we’re really interested in is, how can you change the composition of the HDL particles to get them to be more anti-inflammatory?" The hope is, HDL sugars can be tested to better predict one’s susceptibility to disease.

Hey there! This week on Science Today, we learned how the sense of smell impacts our metabolism. According to Andrew Dillin, a molecular biologist at UC Berkeley, if there is a lack of smell the body is wired to burn all the food that comes in. It doesn’t store any of it. And Dillin discovered that lab animals lacking a sense of smell remained thin even after gorging on fatty food. “There is something about the wiring of the sensory system of smell into the brain to control the rest of the body’s metabolism." But before you think you’ve found the perfect diet, Dillin says scientists still don’t know exactly how the sensory organs for smell are integrated with the brain. That requires more research in the lab – and then there will be more work looking into if the mice research translates to humans. While on campus, we visited psychologist Robert Levenson, who told us that when it comes to looking after loved ones with dementia, caregivers really need to give it their all. “If you are not able to bring your A game to caregiving, the whole quality of caregiving might suffer. As caregivers get more depressed, their level of the stress sort of permeates the entire household. It might be almost contagious in a way that a virus would be contagious. But this would be a psychological virus." Levenson hopes that social services can step in to help caregivers who are depressed, which would not only improve their quality of life, but boost the mortality of the dementia patients they’re looking after. Well, that’s it for this week. To hear more stories about University of California research, check out UC Science Today on iTunes or Soundcloud. I’m Larissa Branin, thanks for listening. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/smell_metabolism https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/caregiving_dementia

The preschool system in America needs a lot of improvement. That’s according to Bruce Fuller, a professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley. “Preschool in America is about 50 years behind preschool in Europe, preschools in Scandinavian countries like Finland or Sweden. Even UK, which has a more conservative political history. These countries fund high quality pre-K for low income and true middle class families. They might not subsidize pre-K for wealthy families, but for the true middle-class quality pre-K is pretty well funded.” America’s approach is quite different. “In many parts of the country the lowest quality pre-K are in true middle class communities, communities where families earn $52-53,000 a year. They don’t qualify for government subsidies, but they can’t pay high fees." So Fuller says very often low qualified pre-K teachers get hired. “And it is really the middle class of America that’s hurt the most."

If family caregivers for dementia patients become depressed, they may not be able to give their disease-stricken loved ones the full attention that they need. And this may even contribute to the patient’s earlier death. This, according to Robert Levenson, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you are not able to bring your A game to caregiving, the whole quality of caregiving might suffer. As caregivers get more depressed, their level of the stress sort of permeates the entire household. It might be almost contagious in a way that a virus would be contagious. But this would be a psychological virus." But there might be a different explanation for this dynamic, what Levenson calls - reverse causation. “And that is even if we measure depression many, many years before the death of the patients, it may be that if the patients destined to die early, they are already more difficult for caregivers to care for. So their decline may have been causing some of that depression.”

When you are hungry, you may notice that your sense of smell grows stronger. But what happens to our appetite if we have a stuffy nose? According to Andrew Dillin, a molecular biologist of the University of California, Berkeley, we don’t necessarily eat less, but our metabolism does get affected. “If there is this lack of smell, this perception of the sense of smell, the body is wired to burn all the food that comes in. It doesn’t store any of it." While working on his study, Dillin has discovered that lab animals lacking a sense of smell remained thin even after eating fatty food. “There is something about the wiring of the sensory system of smell into the brain to control the rest of the body’s metabolism." And while this may sound like a great way to lose weight, scientists still don’t know exactly how the sensory organs for smell are integrated with the brain. Dillin says this requires more research in the lab – and then there will be more work looking into if the mice research translates to humans and if they, too, can effectively lose weight if their sense of smell is altered.

This week on Science Today, caregiving was a theme – from helping out dementia patients and those who look after them; to giving rice crops in polluted China the best chances to thrive. And even a story about how a college dining hall’s desire to care for the planet, led to an interesting way to cut down on food waste. First, did you know that one in 10 people age 65 and older suffer from dementia? And that the disease takes a toll only on patients, but their caregivers, too. We spoke to psychologist Robert Levenson of UC Berkeley. His new study showed that rates of depression among caregivers are about four times higher than non-caregiving adults in the same age group. And that a depressed caregiver contributes to a faster decline of the loved one with dementia. "If you are being cared for by a quite depressed person, you are going to live, on average, by about 14 months less than if you are being cared for by a person who is not very depressed. This is a significant shortening of life." And at UC Davis, we met with Colin Carter, a professor of agricultural and resource economics. He cares about how surface ozone impacts rice plant production in polluted China. "There’s a critical period during the growing season where you have a day of extremely high ozone that it can reduce the yield up to 1 percent – just one day. So we measured across the country that yields could be reduced by two percent or more." That may not sound like a lot, but it is when you consider the fact that China is the world’s largest producer of rice and the world’s largest importer. So, Carter is hoping their findings will help China enact regulatory polices to alleviate damaging effects of ozone pollution on rice yields. Finally, in an effort to reduce food waste and create a more sustainable approach to dining, Jill Horst at UC Santa Barbara describes how they dealt with all the half-eaten apples they were noticing in their tray returns. "And it wasn’t because the apple wasn’t good, but the apple was so large. So we decided, well, they have different sized apples, so why don’t we take a look at what would be the best size apple that somebody could consume without any waste?" While students at first questioned these dinky apples and wondered why they had them, Horst put up a display of all the wasted, larger apples to show students. It worked and led to much less waste in the dining hall – meaning much less waste in the landfill. That’s all for this week, if you want to stay on top of University of California research, subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or Soundcloud. Until next time, I’m Larissa Branin. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/caregivers_dementia https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/rice_ozone https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/apples_waste

Narrator: This is Science Today. Sustainable dining is a huge deal on college campuses and the University of California, Santa Barbara is no exception. In fact, for years they’ve been taking an innovative approach towards reducing food waste that incorporates some behavioral psychology. Jill Horst, director of dining services, describes how they dealt with all the half-eaten apples they were noticing in their tray returns. Horst: 9:17 It wasn’t because the apple wasn’t good, but the apple was so large. 9:27 So …we decided, well they have different sized apples, so why don’t we take a look at what would be the best size apple that somebody could consume without any waste? Narrator: They found that a five to six ounce apple was the proper portion. And while the change resulted in much less waste in the dining hall, it wasn’t without some initial push back from students. Horst: “Uh, what happened to the apples? These are, like mini apples”. But we never took anything away, we just sized things the right way. How do you educate them and why are you doing this? And you have a bunch of half-eaten apples as a display to say, this is why we’re doing that. It really resonated with them. Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Male fetuses may be more sensitive than females to maternal smoking, before and during a woman’s pregnancy. Chemicals in tobacco may lead to increased vulnerability of developing lymphocytes and cause genetic damage or what scientists call deletions. That’s according to a study by Adam de Smith, an associate researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. "Male fetuses grow quicker than females. So we think perhaps there could be a higher rate of turnover of immune cells in male fetuses compared with females. Those male immune cells are more prone to developing these deletions." Inflammation in mothers’ bodies during pregnancy, possibly exacerbated by tobacco smoke exposure, might also trigger genetic mutations. "It has been shown that there are differences between the inflammation that’s found in mothers carrying male fetuses compared with females. I believe it is a higher inflammation with a male fetus. So that’s another potential mechanism for increasing the number of deletions."

As America is becoming more culturally and ethnically diverse, researchers are trying to pin down the features of preschools to benefit all children. According to a new study by Bruce Fuller, professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley, African-American children get the most out of a high-quality, rigorous curriculum. “The biggest effect from academic-oriented preschool, the largest punch is felt by poor African American kids. They are ahead by three to four months relative to children that stay at home. ” The results for children from Latino families came out differently. "We did find modest social development on Latino kids from quality preschool, but we didn’t find same cognitive growth. Whether that’s a shortage of bilingual teachers, whether the quality of these programs for Latino kids is weak, we really are not sure.” Fuller says the study adds to the growing debate on what types of preschools should be nurtured in America to improve our pre-K education.

There’s good ozone, and there’s bad ozone. The good is high up in the stratosphere and the bad, a mixture of sunlight and nitrous oxide, is near the surface of the Earth. This pollution affects not only human health, but also plant growth. A research team led by Colin Carter of the University of California, Davis, has made a key discovery about how surface ozone impacts rice production. "There’s a critical period during the growing season where you have a day of extremely high ozone, that it can reduce the yield up to 1 percent, just one day. So we measured across the country that yields could be reduced by two percent or more, which doesn’t sound like a large number, but it is when you consider the fact that China is the world’s largest producer of rice and the world’s largest importer. By identifying this critical stage of development, Carter hopes their data can inform better regulatory policies in China to alleviate the damaging effects of ozone pollution on rice yields and ultimately, the global market.

Over 5 million Americans, which is one in 10 people, age 65 and older suffer from dementia. The disease takes its toll not only on patients, but on their caregivers, too. “Probably the most common thing these days is that the care of patients with dementia largely falls on a spouse or family members. Among caregivers the rates of depression are about 4 times as high as they are among non-caregiving adults at that age group. So it really is a dramatic increase." That’s psychologist Robert Levenson of the University of California, Berkeley. His new study shows that if a family caregiver is stressed or depressed, it contributes to a faster decline of the loved one with dementia. “If you are being cared for by quite depressed person, you are going to live on average by about 14 months less than if you are being cared for by a person who is not very depressed. This is a significant shortening of life." By 2030, rates of dementia will rise to 8 million, making this a pressing national public health challenge.

It’s time for the weekly roundup again; first – when you think about preschool, you may think it’s all about quality. And while that’s certainly true, we learned that quantity of time spent in pre-K education is just as important. Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the UC Berkeley says this is especially the case for kids from low-income families. “If kids were growing up in poor households, a lot of these parents were working swing shifts, grave yard shifts, or they can’t afford high quality children’s books. So it is probably a resource problem. But when young kids are growing up in these more impoverished settings, then a quality pre-school can pack a much bigger punch." The same study found that middle-class kids showed no change in their academic performance if they stayed in preschool a whole day vs. half a day. And over at UC San Francisco, we learned more about the study linking maternal smoking with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common form of childhood cancer. Adam de Smith says that moms who smoke during pregnancy and after birth are putting their children at risk of the disease. “In the mothers who are exposed to tobacco smoke, there was a higher rate of deletion in the fetal cells that was likely caused by a particular mechanism. It is an innate mechanism in our immune system, which functions to create antibodies to particularly create diversity in our antibodies. And we think when this mechanism goes wrong, or goes into overdrive and has abnormal effects, it can increase the risk of causing deletions in genes around across the genome.” You can hear these and much more stories about University of California research by following Science Today on iTunes. That’s it for now, thanks for listening! I’m Larissa Branin. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/preschool_time https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/maternal_smoking

If you want to have better stereoscopic vision, you may want to try your hand at dressmaking. Really. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are enrolling participants in a study run by neuroscientist Adrian Chopin. They found previously that dressmakers had better stereovision than other professionals. “If there is a specific pattern of a stereoscopic vision, we may use it as a form of training, to be tested by a training study. So we have people come in, they are not dressmakers. And then we will train them in dressmaking. ” The researchers will test participants’ stereoscopic vision before and after the training trying to spot any signs of improvement. “That will have an excellent clinical implication because right now it is very expensive when people are trying to treat amblyopia. They may have to come see an optometrist and it is very expensive and takes a lot of time.” Chopin says it is way cheaper to sharpen your stereovision with just threads and needles.

Mothers who smoke during pregnancy and after birth put their children at increased risk of a common type of childhood cancer. This, according to a new University of California, San Francisco study. Adam de Smith says their work is the first to find an association between maternal smoking and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. “In the mothers who are exposed to tobacco smoke, there was a higher rate of deletion in the fetal cells that was likely caused by a particular mechanism. It is an innate mechanism in our immune system, which functions to create antibodies to particularly create diversity in our antibodies. And we think when this mechanism goes wrong, or goes into overdrive and has abnormal effects, it can increase the risk of causing deletions in genes around across the genome.” Deletions are genetic mutations that can lead to cancer and other diseases. “We think that the tobacco smoke maybe increasing the abnormal effects of this immune mechanism, that lead to increased deletions. And this maybe through inflammation, because we know tobacco smoke has inflammatory properties.”

The amount of time spent in pre-K education is important, especially for kids from low-income families. This, according to education professor Bruce Fuller of the University of California, Berkeley. “If kids were growing up in poor households, a lot of these parents were working swing shifts, grave yard shifts, or they can’t afford high quality children’s books. So it is probably a resource problem. But when young kids are growing up in these more impoverished settings, then a quality pre-school can pack a much bigger punch." Their study also found that middle-class kids showed no change in their academic performance if they stayed in pre-school for a whole day versus half-day. “If the teachers are very intentional about introducing cognitively challenging tasks, getting around in circle time digging into kids books, teaching kids how to count in colorful blocks, you can sort of get a big boost of that in 3 to 4 hours. After that kids might be outside on playground or the teachers getting tired. ” So, Fuller urges educators and researchers to get a better understanding of how differing features of pre-K may benefit all children.

Hi there, hope you’re all having a nice summer – in case you’ve missed some of our stories, he’s a bit of a recap. First, atmospheric scientist Veerabadhran Ramanathan of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography is looking for a million climate warriors. To get the message out about climate change, Ramanathan is teaming up with 50 University of California academics in various disciplines to propose a hybrid course taught by about 20 faculty that combines videotaped lectures in a class that’s devoted to discussing solutions. "These are people who can roll up their sleeves and try to solve the problem. So, I’m on my own pathway to create those million climate warriors in the UC system." The goal is to pilot these classes first on nine UC campuses and then expand the coursework to other colleges. And on the subject of classes – are you a parent struggling wondering whether or not to send your child to preschool? For four years, Bruce Fuller, a professor of education at UC Berkeley tracked the academic performance of over 6,000 kids up to five years of age. "We have known over the last half century that quality preschools can boost the early learning of children from poor families, but much less is known about the long-term effects of preschool on children from middle class families." But those benefits tended to come from exposure to more academically-intense preschool programs, especially those focused on developing early math skills and verbal communication. While at Berkeley, we learned how neuroscientist Adrian Chopin is trying to help people with a condition called amblyopia, in which vision in one of the eyes is reduced and leads to a loss of stereoscopic vision. "When we train people to have better stereoscopic vision, we put them in front of a computer. We project on a screen, lines of different depth. The task is just to say do you see the line in front or behind the other line, for example." Chopin explained that about 10 percent of people around the world are stereo-impaired, but the rest of us see the world in 3 dimensions and could also benefit from improved stereoscopic vision. Well, that’s all for this week. If you miss Science Today on your local CBS radio affiliate, you can listen to all of our episodes on iTunes. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/climate_warrior https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/preschool https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/good_stereovision

When it comes to composting, there are different phases. There is pre-consumer waste, like scraps from prepping food, and then there’s post-consumer waste, or table scrap refuse, which needs to be separated from the other trash. Jill Horst, director of dining services at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says composting on their campus has evolved over the years. "We started small and we just did pre-consumer waste to compost and we really wanted to do post-consumer because we were trying to divert as much as possible from the landfill." By partnering with a local company, Horst says the campus now has a compost compactor to scrap everything in the dining hall. "So right now, we divert 90 percent of our waste from the landfill, so 90 percent of our waste is going to this composting company up that street. It is huge." And it’s in keeping with the University of California’s efforts to be carbon neutral by 2025.

We can lose our sense of smell because of a disease, injury, or simply - aging, but doctors don’t pay a lot of attention to this problem, according to neuroscientist John Ngai at the University of California, Berkeley. “Most people that write to me or call me, and say I've lost a sense of smell and I would ask them, what does your doctor say? And the doctor says no big deal don't worry about it, right? In fact, there aren't even any good, widely-used standardized tests for smell.” That’s because scientists still don’t really know how to repair the olfactory cells responsible for the sense of smell. But Ngai hopes his new research on stem cells could help find answers. “Now the challenge is to really start digging in to see, can we actually alter what these cells do. We've identified some pathways and manipulated them genetically, and shown that this can affect how the stem cell behaves in terms of, do I make a neuron? Do I not make a neuron? And then the question is, if I actually do, for example, increase the production of neurons from these stem cells, could it actually overcome an olfactory deficit that's caused by a loss of neurons?”

If you have a good stereovision, you could be a perfect fit for jobs that require action, speed and precision, according to neuroscientist of the University of California, Berkeley, Adrian Chopin. “If you are part of a baseball team or a basketball team, it will be easier if you had stereovision. If you already have a good stereovision but that you want to be better, one way to go there is to be a military person." But in his study Chopin mainly targets people with a condition called amblyopia – when vision in one of the eyes is reduced. This often leads to a loss of stereoscopic vision. “When we train people to have a better stereoscopic vision, we put them in front of a computer. We project on a screen lines of different depth. The task is just to say do you see the line in front or behind the other line, for example." Chopin says, over 10 percent of people around the world are stereo-impaired, but the rest of us see the world in 3-dimensions and can benefit from improved stereoscopic vision.

Should you enroll your children in preschool if you can provide a good early education for them at home? Parents struggling with this choice can find useful tips in a new study by Bruce Fuller, professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley. “We have known over the last half century that quality preschools can boost the early learning of children from poor families, but much less is known about the long-term effects of preschool on children from middle class families.” For four years, Fuller tracked the academic performance of over six thousand children up to 5 years of age and found that kids from middle-class families did benefit from preschool. “Those benefits tended to come from exposure to more academically intense preschool programs." Especially, in classes focused on developing verbal communication and early math skills. So maybe parents who prefer home education before their children hit elementary school age, should give pre-K a second thought?

When it comes to getting the message out about climate change, it’s one thing to get political leaders onboard, but you also need public support. In fact, atmospheric scientist Veerabadhran Ramanathan of the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography says he’s hoping for ‘climate warriors’. "These are not just flag bearing, which is important, but people who can roll up their sleeves and try to solve the problem. So, I’m on my own pathway to create those million climate warriors in the UC system." Ramanathan has teamed up with 50 systemwide academics in disciplines like engineering, technology, social science and humanities – to propose a hybrid course taught by about 20 faculty that combines videotaped lectures in a classroom devoted to discussing solutions. The goal would be to pilot it first on nine UC campuses, and then expand the coursework to other colleges. "We are thinking of ‘cradle to grave’ approach; getting people to understand the scientific method and the need to protect nature."

Over 40 million liters of donor blood are collected annually all over the world, but it is not enough to meet blood transfusion demands. On top of that, these donations don’t last long. Blood cannot be stored for more than just a couple of days. So blood centers are in constant demand for new donors. But according to Mark Looney, a professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco this is not the only problem with donated blood. “It seems like we are in an antiquated era of collecting blood from strangers, collecting mature cells from strangers and giving them as a transfusion." According to Looney, foreign blood can bring along viruses and bacteria to a recipient’s body. That’s a big risk. And that’s why researchers are looking for new ways of getting blood to patients. “So if we could come up with a more effective approach, maybe something that is cell based, than maybe it is going to be the way of the future.” Looney says engineered blood cells from patients’ own bodies could be a better solution in modern medicine when it comes to blood transfusion or cell transplants.

If you had to guess who has the sharpest vision, you may think of a surgeon or a dentist, but probably not a dressmaker. But according to University of California, Berkeley neuroscientist Adrian Chopin, it’s dressmakers who have the best stereoscopic vision. “In general we see in 3D. In our mind the environment is in 3D. However, it does not necessarily feel in 3D. So that’s feeling of depth that we call stereopsis is very strongly coming from stereoscopic vision, which means a difference of viewpoint between these two eyes.” But how do we use it in our daily lives? “It is very important in grasping objects, that’s because you need high precision when you put your finger on an object, not to crash it or not to miss it. We also need it for driving, especially when you are at night. Chopin and his team are working on developing tools, like computer games, that could help people with sight disorders to improve their stereoscopic vision skills.

If you are a parent and a smoker, your children’s DNA may be affected, even if you quit smoking before conception. Adam de Smith an associate researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, has found that prenatal smoking by either parent can cause what’s called a genetic deletion in their children. De Smith: 7:40 It is a chunk of DNA that’s missing from a chromosome. The health effects are really to do with a particular area or region of DNA that is deleted. If this region includes important genes, than it usually lead to a health effect.” The researchers looked at the gene deletions in the immune system, which can cause acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common type of childhood cancer. “Thankfully, nowadays cure rates are upwards of 85-90 percent. Even though they have survived the cancers, they go on to health issues in later life. For example, increase risks of heart disease, pulmonary disease and also increased secondary cancer rates. Ideally, we would like to prevent childhood leukemia in the first place.” ]

New ways of studying stem cells allow scientists to better understand how they turn into other types of cells. Neuroscientist John Ngai at the University of California, Berkeley, has discovered a revolutionary method to look at stem cells. He explains that studying these in the past was limited to looking at the entire population of cells at once. “My analogy would be if you come to Memorial Stadium on a big game day and you want to get an idea of how many Stanford fans there are and how many Cal fans there are and where they are sitting. The old way would only allow us to look at the entire stadium and to get an average of red hats and blue hats, and you might get an idea of what fraction of people are wearing read versus blue, but you wouldn’t have a precise definition of numbers, locations or anything like that. So the revolution for us has been the ability to interrogate what genes are being expressed not in the entire tissue but on a cell-by-cell basis.”

Studies of alcohol abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, are mostly focused on male soldiers, while female military members are often excluded. Jennifer Mitchell, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco explains why. “So you can imagine that female subjects that have alcohol use disorder and comorbid PTSD are individuals that have experienced rape or other forms of domestic abuse. And those individuals might respond very well to a drug like intranasal oxytocin, but it’s a very hard subject population for us to identify. ” In a recent study, Mitchell used oxytocin to treat military personnel suffering from depression and anxiety. So far the experimental therapy has been successful, but the results were skewed as only male combat members participated. ‘’We’d love to have good access to that population because then we could perhaps study the effects of intranasal oxytocin in a group of female subjects that have alcohol or substance- use disorder and comorbid PTSD.”

The longer a woman is able to reproduce, before she reaches menopause, the less her risk to have heart failure. That, according to a study by Nisha Parikh, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “This is a very interesting study and a very important study." It is based on medical records of over 160 thousand women gathered by the Women’s Health Initiative in the 1990s – up until 2014. The initiative was set up to address major heath issues causing morbidity and mortality in postmenopausal women. “Over the years the Women’s Health Initiative has been funded by NIH as well as the national Heart Lung and Blood institute. There was a lack of studies on women’s health. And it really represented the first systematic study of women.” Parikh is now planning to expand this research and hopes to discover what exactly drives the association between the menstrual cycle and heart disease.

Hey there, in today’s weekly roundup, we find out how a college dining hall makes a dent when it comes to climate change. Jill Horst, the director of residential dining services at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says they stopped using trays in their dining hall. "It just overall was this big, huge impact. The food waste per person, per tray, reduced by 50 percent. That’s a lot! That’s a significant impact to help with not only the food waste, but food cost." Psychology was definitely at play here, as people naturally want to load up a large tray with food, so by removing it, people were carrying their food to the table and their portions adjusted accordingly. Next, as we’re about to hit the triple digits this weekend in parts of the Bay Area, we spoke to Ronnen Levinson, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who has been studying how lighter, more reflective pavements lessen the phenomenon called ‘urban heat islands’, where dark-colored roads and buildings bring a city’s air temperature up. But in a new study, Levinson found there are some trade-offs. "We found that in many cases, switching to a more reflective pavement technology for example, a light grey cement concrete pavement in place of a black asphalt concrete pavement, requires much more energy and carbon." So Levinson suggests that city officials bear this in mind when choosing pavements. Meanwhile, at another national lab – this time, the Livermore Lab – computer scientists describe a tool they’ve developed to improve the computer network security of government agencies, along with state and local agencies. Domingo Colon says their network mapping system called NeMS, gives network managers a comprehensive view of their computer network environments. "So there are a lot of tools out there that provide different vantage points of network security, but what we needed was something a lot more specific that told us behaviorially what’s happening on our network, and also structurally, how is the composition of our network put together at any point in time. These things provide what’s called “attack surface” for someone from the external world and what you want, as an enterprise, is to reduce that surface." Well, that’s it for now. You can hear these full episodes and more by subscribing to Science Today on iTunes or following us on Soundcloud. Thanks for tuning in; I’m Larissa Branin. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/trayless_dining https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/reflective_pavement https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/computer_networks

In the 1990s, oxytocin, the so called love hormone that reduces stress and anxiety, used to be a popular treatment in America. But this changed a couple of years ago. “Oxytocin used to be FDA approved for use in the United States. It wasn’t removed for any health related, or side effect related reason, it just sort of fell out of favor”. That’s Jennifer Mitchell, neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. She is conducting an oxytocin study to treat active military members suffering from PTSD and alcohol abuse. Mitchell says the hormone is practically side effect-free and should be put back on the market. “That’s an interesting conundrum because the question is what’s the path to reapply through the FDA to make it available for everyone to use. And there are several drug companies now that are also developing intranasal oxytocin for other indications.”

If you suffer from deficiencies in the bone marrow, a tissue in our body that produces blood cells, your lungs can come to the rescue. That’s according Mark Looney, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “It is curious that when patients get a bone marrow transplant or a stem cell transplant, those cells are given intravenously and the first place that they go is the lung. So it could be that the lung is part of a cycle here that is necessary for the maturation of these cells and their normal function”. In his recent study Looney discovered that about 50 percent of platelets are produced directly in the lungs, inside the cells called megakaryocytes. So how will this finding help patients? “Perhaps we can come up with a strategy where we give them megakaryocytes transfusions, and then we put them back in to the vein and they do their natural thing, they go back to the lung and there they produce platelets.” That could be a new way of treatment for patients with a low level of platelets.

One way to fight what’s called ‘urban heat islands’ – a phenomenon in which dark-colored roads and buildings bring cities’ air temperature up – is to change the color of the pavement. That’s according to Ronnen Levinson, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “You can choose a more reflective pavement surface instead of a darker less reflective pavement surface. The more reflective pavement surface will stay cooler in the sun. It also won’t heat the air of the city as much as the darker, hotter pavement will.” But there are trade-offs; Levinson was part of a team that found that the energy spent on manufacturing light-colored pavements can lead to increased carbon emissions. “We found that in many cases switching to a more reflective pavement technology, for example, a light grey cement concrete pavement in place of a black asphalt concrete pavement, requires much more energy and carbon.” So Levinson says city officials need to keep this in mind when they choose pavements.

How can a college dining hall make a difference when it comes to climate change? Get rid of the trays. That’s just what Jill Horst, director of residential dining services at the University of California, Santa Barbara did in an effort to reduce the amount of food waste that the university produced. "It, just overall, was this big huge impact. The food waste per person, per tray, reduced by 50 percent. That’s a lot! That's a significant impact to help with not only the food waste, but food cost." Psychology played a part in this in that people naturally want to load up a large tray with food. "So by removing - the trays, people are managing how to carry their food to the table. And by doing that they're not taking as much. They're taking you know smaller portions to start, and then they could get back up, and go have more food, but it really was about why do we want to reduce food waste, which reduced costs, which helps the environment." To learn more about how the University of California is working to be carbon neutral by 2025, go to: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/climate-lab

Hi there – just catching up with the weekly roundup after a bit of a break. The show did go on, so here are some of the stories covered. First, did you know that heart disease is the leading cause of death among American women? Now, researcher Nisha Parikh of UC San Francisco has found that the age a woman is when she reaches menopause affects her risk of developing heart disease. "We found that a longer reproductive period duration was actually associated with less of a risk of heart failure, and that was mostly driven by the age of menopause, so that having an earlier age at menopause was associated with a higher risk of heart failure." But researchers still don’t know what causes it and are working on further studies to find answers. Meanwhile, across the Bay at UC Berkeley, physicist Jeffrey Neaton is looking to Mother Nature to improve energy production skills. In particular, he’s working on making photosynthesis more efficient. "A leaf can convert the energy in sunlight into fuel with a one to two percent efficiency. A major Department of Energy program that I’m part of, the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, recently developed a prototype material that is made of semiconductors that can go from sunlight to fuel at 10 percent efficiency. Much greater efficiency than plants, actually." So, Neaton is working on creating an artificial leaf that could someday generate fuel and become a new alternative energy source. And finally, we learned something new about our lungs. They don’t just pump air in and out of our bodies – they make blood cells, too. "The lung is quite sophisticated, not just respiring, moving oxygen. Around 50 percent or more of platelets are produced directly in the lung." That’s Mark Looney, a professor of medicine at UCSF. He explains that since platelets are components that make our blood clot, and it used to be thought were formed only in the bone marrow, this new finding will have significant clinical implications. So, that’s it for now. But there’s plenty more research stories at the University of California, so please subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud to keep updated. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin.

Infertility could be linked to heart problems. That’s according to Nisha Parikh, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In a new study, the researcher is trying to find out how pregnancy loss, which is sometimes related to infertility, is connected to heart disease. “There has been several studies that shown a link between pregnancy loss, including miscarriage and stillbirth with cardiovascular disease in the future. And we are very interested in our laboratory in studying the mechanisms that underlie this association. ” Parikh says, it also might be a good idea for women and their doctors to follow these guidelines during medial check-ups. “When practitioners, and by that I mean your primary care doctor or somebody’s cardiologist has a woman in their office and they are trying to figure out what their risk for developing heart disease and heart failure is, than reproductive factors and pregnancy factors are important to ask”.

Your mental state often affects the way you handle uncomfortable situations. Jennifer Mitchell, neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco has recently tested what she calls stress reactivity of patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and alcohol abuse. “We make people nervous in a social situation. And that induces really robust cortisol response, increase in heart rate, changes in respiration and blood pressure. And we administer either oxytocin or placebo and then we look to see whether oxytocin enables people to be less nervous and less apprehensive in that situation.” The oxytocin therapy reduces stress and anxiety and also helps patients be more resilient to alcohol cravings. “A lot of people who have troubles with alcohol use disorder and PTSD are self medicating. They are anxious, they are stressed, they are fearful and they find that drinking alcohol ameliorates some of those problems.”

The lungs don’t just pump air in and out of our bodies, they also make blood cells. “A lung is quite sophisticated, not just respiring, moving oxygen. About 50 percent of platelets are produced directly in the lungs.” That’s Mark Looney, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He says platelets are components that make our blood clot. Scientists used to think that they get formed only in the bone marrow. So this new finding will have an important clinical implication. “The dogma in the field for patients with low platelets count is that it is a problem with the bone marrow. Now we have a more nuanced understanding that that is not just cells in that location, but lung is a significant contributor to that. Now with the more complete understanding hopefully we will be able to develop approaches that can more effectively treat these patients.”

Researchers at the University of California, Berkley, are competing with Mother Nature to improve energy production skills. In particular, physicist Jeffrey Neaton is working on making photosynthesis more efficient. “A leaf can convert the energy in sun light into fuel with a one to two percent efficiency. A major Department of Energy program that I’m part of, the joint center for artificial photosynthesis, has recently developed a prototype material that is made of semiconductors that can go from sunlight to fuel at 10 percent efficiency. Much greater efficiency than plants, actually”. Neaton is working on an artificial leaf that could generate fuel and can someday become a new alternative energy source. “Right now the artificial leaf prototypes are not made of materials that are cheap enough or abandoned enough to be saleable to a level where they will impact society yet.” But technology moves forward fast. Take solar panels, for example. In just 10 years, the price of this energy source has fallen by over 60 percent. So, we may want to use an artificial leaf sooner than we think. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin. Time: a little over. The 1st bite can be trimmed I think. Last sentence, in Italic.

Oxytocin is most commonly called the “love” hormone, but it has also been referred to as the "mama bear" hormone. Jennifer Mitchel, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, describes why. “I love my baby, I love my baby so much, that if you get anywhere close to my baby, I will rip you to shreds. So when we administer oxytocin to our populations, we are trying to keep these darker behaviors in mind as well." In a new study Mitchell is also testing oxytocin as a therapy for military personnel who suffer from PTSD and alcohol abuse. She says it is an effective way to keep stress and anxiety in check. "Oxytocin can make one feel more pair-bonded, it is important for maternal attachment, for breastfeeding, for child birth, perhaps falling in love or those feelings associated with falling in love, but it also contributes to sort of non-group behavior. Believing there is an enemy or feeling that you have to protect yourself against others." But so far - Mitchell says - she hasn’t seen any signs of "mama bear"- type behavior in her study group.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death among American women, killing 1 in 3 of them each year. A study by Nisha Parikh, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, showed that the age a woman is when she reaches menopause affects her risk of developing a heart disease. “We found that a longer reproductive period duration was actually associated with less of a risk of heart failure. And that was mostly driven by the age of menopause, so that having an early age at menopause was associated with a higher risk of heart failure”. But researchers still don’t know what causes it and are working on further studies to find the answers. “We need to understand what it is about sort of an increased reproductive period that protects a woman from heart failure. Is it something biologic or is it something related to sociodemographic factors or lifestyle choices. I think all of that will be really interesting to explore in the future.”

Will genetic sequencing become standard procedure for diagnosing disease? by University of California

Solar panels have become a popular and efficient way to make electricity, but they are not as good when it comes to storing it. Now, physicist Jeffrey Neaton of the University of California, Berkeley has found a better way to preserve energy. Neaton: “What we are doing here is thinking about harnessing that energy and not turning it into electricity, but into fuel, much like gasoline. Fuel is a very compact, energy-dense way of storing of energy” Neaton and his colleagues consider photosynthesis as a model to generate fuel and are working on building an artificial leaf that could become a new alternative energy source. “This artificial leaf is a set of inorganic materials that one combined does what a leaf does, which is take sunlight and carbon dioxide and generate a fuel, chemical fuel, and oxygen.” Neaton says it’s still a long way before the artificial leaf become a technology like solar panels, but step-by-step, the idea is turning into reality.

Obsessive thoughts, nightmares and alcohol addiction are often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. In a quest to ease these symptoms, neuroscientist Jennifer Mitchell, of the University of California, San Francisco, is testing the power of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone”. This could be a new therapy for combat veterans and active military personnel. “We are interested in general in developing novel therapeutics for alcohol use disorder and co-morbid PTSD, because it is a population that is very difficult to treat and there are not a lot of treatments currently prescribed for. One of the therapeutics that we are looking at is oxytocin.” This 'love hormone', also called the “moral molecule” and the “cuddle chemical” - makes people feel bonded. It helps us manage stress and anxiety, be more social, trusting and empathetic. “Perhaps the oxytocin could ameliorate some of the signs and symptoms of the alcohol use disorder, the craving and some of the emotional reactivity and the signs and symptoms of PTSD as well.”

When it comes to the future of medicine, think digital! That’s what researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, along with tech giants like Google and Intel - are doing. UCSF pediatric surgeon Hanmin Lee is converting troves of medical records into digital format and storing them in a unified online database. “We do have collaborations through our digital center for health innovation. When we are able to get a power of what I would argue at UCSF, the singular world’s leading research medical institution, and as an aggregate the UC system, really the world’s leading system of academic medical centers, partnering up with the leading companies that make processors that can do machine learning and can do deep learning like Intel, have companies like Cisco and GE that are interface between devices and data, I think it is such a powerful combination, I think that’s exactly where medicine is heading.” Lee says the digital era of medicine will open new doors for experimental studies and the quality of treatment.

A 3D mammogram could be more effective for women with dense breasts than a regular mammography test. That’s because a three-dimensional scan is easier to detect abnormalities in dense tissue. This according to breast cancer researcher Karla Kerlikowske of University of California, San Francisco. But the technology has not been widely used yet. While the FDA approved the devises 5 years ago, only 30 percent of clinics across the country purchased them. Kerlikowske says more studies are needed to prove how reliable 3D scanners are. “The technology often, in particular for devices - not for drugs, for drugs there is always randomized trials - they don’t say you can use this drug for such and such until the FDA approves it. But when it comes to devices, they often get released before there is evidence to show that they are really better than what exists.” But Kerlikowske hopes she will soon have the data. “That’s actually grants we are working on now to try and figure that out who benefits the most from that technology".

The human brain has been studied for several centuries, but there is still a lot we don’t understand about it. And according to radiologist Pratik Mukherjee of the University of California, San Francisco, this includes how concussions affect the brain. “There is a controversy with soldiers that were repeatedly exposed to blasts in the battlefield, about whether they may get dementia in earlier ages and it’s been actively investigated.” Mukherjee says new technology, like higher quality images from MRI scanners, might be an answer that doctors, researchers and injured patients have long been looking for. "The brain is harder than other organs, even other important organs like the heart and so while it’s been recognized that this is a big problem for centuries and even if you look at prior wars, where they talk about shell shock in WWI where they had a lot of artillery explosion for the first time. They are basically describing these repetitive blast injuries, their concussions, but they just didn’t have the tools to understand any of that at that time."

Hi there! It’s been a busy week here at Science Today. We learned that diagnosing brain disorders can often be a challenge for doctors because some psychological diseases have overlapping symptoms. These include memory loss in patients with depression and suppressed mood in people suffering from dementia. But radiologist Cyrus Raji of UC San Francisco led a study, which found that neuroimaging and machine learning can help improve diagnosis. "Each individual had a perfusion neuroimaging, where this is a nuclear tracer injected into them and that allowed the mapping of the blood flow in the brain and that allows us to quantify blood flow in 128 regions and use machine learning analysis to separate who had depression or cognitive disorders or both." Raji explains that machine learning is often used to quickly process and analyze patient’s data in digital format – and it may be used in the future to find new biomarkers that can help in deciphering if one has a brain disorder vs. another issue. While on campus, we also visited pediatric surgeon Hanmin Lee, who is working to get more pediatric grants to provide devices and therapeutics for children. Right now, Lee says when it comes to spending on research and innovation, adults get the lion’s share of benefits. "The market for most drugs and devices is significantly better and bigger and more robust in the adult world. I think we just need to be staunch advocates for children. I firmly believe that that is the best investment that you could make, is in the health of our children." And finally, some great news for advocates for coral reef preservation. A decade-long study led by Jennifer Smith of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography has found that remote coral reefs can thrive despite threats posed by climate change. Smith says coral reefs surrounding remote islands were dramatically healthier than those in populated areas subject to a variety of human impacts, including overfishing and coastal development. "In a healthy coral reef, you have a landscape that is dominated by these beautiful reef building corals that are really the ecosystem engineers - that provides food and shelter for all the other organisms that live in that ecosystem." This shows that preservation efforts can buy researchers time as they figure out how to deal with the threat posed by ocean warming. That’s it for the weekly update – to hear more episodes about University of California research, subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud. I’m Larissa Branin – have a great Mother’s Day weekend.