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A.
A Major Boost for Academic Researchers
Narrator: This is Science Today. A private-public partnership is making it possible for academic researchers to use high resolution satellite images – data that was once too expensive to use. David Siegel, a professor of geography at the University of California , Santa Barbara , says a collaboration between the university and a private company called Terra Image USA , is cutting down the cost by nearly 90 percent.
Siegel: A single scene, which is a snapshot taken from space on a 60 kilometer by 60 kilometer basis, can cost anywhere from a couple thousand dollars to eight thousand dollars. And if you want to do science at the cutting edge, you need to have enough of those that you can resolve temporal change.
Narrator: Siegel is using the high-res satellite images to study maps of kelp cover in the ocean.
Siegel: We don't have a really good handle on where and why it forms and how it changes. I requested six scenes, every two months for the next three years – that would cost me something like $85,000 to do this, if I had to pay. So, it's truly an amazing opportunity.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
B.
An Early Diagnostic Test Can Save Lives ... and Money
Narrator: This is Science Today. The UCLA School of Dentistry is close to developing a standardized saliva-based test for oral cancer, which affects over 30 thousand Americans every year. Dr. David Wong, director of UCLA's Dental Research Institute says having such a test available in the near future will not only save lives, it will lead to a significant cost savings in treatment.
Wong: Oral cancer is the most expensive cancer to treat. It costs 200 thousand dollars to treat a case of stage four oral cancer and these individuals have less than 20 percent survivability in five years.
Narrator: The saliva-based test can be used as a non-invasive, early diagnostic tool.
Wong: For a stage 1 tumor, it could be a simple, excisional biopsy that could be less than a thousand dollars. So, significant reduction in health care costs. So, there is all this inherent value that is embedded within a test that is obviously clinically useful. That's what we're building the science to.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
C.
Improving Genetic Studies of Human Disease
Narrator: This is Science Today. A new study is providing a method for scientists to take into account European ancestry when looking for genes involved in disease. Michael Seldin, chair of the Rowe Program in Genetics at the University of California , Davis Health System, led the study.
Seldin: What we found was that the largest difference was between Northern and Southern European countries in our initial analyses. Now these differences in Europe are quite small compared to the differences between different continents. But even so, these differences can lead to false results in doing various studies to find disease-linked genes.
Narrator: Knowing that Europeans fall into two genetic groups may improve genetic studies of human disease such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, hypertension and Diabetes Type 1 and 2. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
D.
Geocoding Techniques Used to Study Asthma
Narrator: This is Science Today. Computer mapping of residential locations, or geocoding, was used in an asthma study conducted by researchers at the University of California , San Francisco . Study leader, Paul Blanc says by linking this data to general U.S. census information, investigators were able to determine a strong link between socioeconomic status of an area and health measures of asthma.
Blanc: In the past people have used things like zip code and the problem with zip code is there's not particularly a rhyme or reason for a zip code on a pure socioeconomic basis. You can make some generalities, but there are very mixed zip codes.
Narrator: Blanc says the next step is using the same geocoding approaches to look into factors such as traffic density and land use patterns in one's surrounding area.
Blanc: We can say how far in miles someone is from agricultural land, how far they are from what kinds of agricultural lands and also say something about the types of plants and their surroundings.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
E. Researchers Look into a Fundamental Scientific Question
Narrator: This is Science Today. Scientists can distinguish whether materials were formed inside or outside of the solar system by examining the isotopic ratios of these materials. John Bradley, director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recently found an isotope ratio that was a fingerprint of a pre-solar environment.
Bradley: Basically, we just use the isotopes to prove that some of the organic matter in these particles actually comes from the interstellar medium. It was formed long before the solar system was even here. This research is chasing what is perhaps the ultimate, scientific question. Where did we come from? How did life get started on Earth? And this is perhaps one of the most complicated problems in science today – understanding how a primordial piece of organic goop made the transition from something that's dead to something that's self-replicating in life. I think in the next fifty years or so, we will answer that question.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin .
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