UC Science Today

People react differently to different drugs based on their genetic make-up. At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, medical scientist Mike Malfatti says they’re using their accelerator mass spectrometer to test what’s called microdoses of chemotherapy drugs.

"Where you give the person a very low level dose, one one-hundredths of what the therapeutic dose would be. It has a carbon-14 label tag on it. And with the chemotherapeutic drug that we’re working with, it binds your DNA and then that will kill the tumor cells if you have a high degree of binding in the DNA. And if you have a high degree, it’s a good indication that you will hopefully respond favorably to the drug."

The hope is to personalize cancer treatment. Malfatti and his colleagues are teaming up with the University of California, Davis’s Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"So, it’s a very good collaborative study between technology that we have here at the Lab and then the clinical patients that UC Davis has."

Are certain life goals healthier to pursue than others? In a recent study psychologist Sheri Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley found that people who pursued extrinsic life goals such as fame and wealth were at a much higher risk for mental health issues such as mania, depression and anxiety. Johnson explains that people generally strive for either extrinsic or intrinsic goals.

"Some kinds of goals are very extrinsic. I'd like to be very powerful, I'd like to be very famous. Those are very extrinsically oriented goals where your chief hope is that you're going to be admired, respected, recognized by other people. There are other kinds of goals that we would think of as being intrinsically motivated that are about finding very satisfying moments in your life."

Johnson says the key is to have your intrinsic goals outweigh your extrinsic ones.

"Be focused on other issues in your life, like did I have a nice day, a nice conversation with somebody I love."

Are certain life goals healthier to pursue than others? In a recent study psychologist Sheri Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley found that people who pursued extrinsic life goals such as fame and wealth were at a much higher risk for mental health issues such as mania, depression and anxiety. Johnson explains that people generally strive for either extrinsic or intrinsic goals.

"Some kinds of goals are very extrinsic. I'd like to be very powerful, I'd like to be very famous. Those are very extrinsically oriented goals where your chief hope is that you're going to be admired, respected, recognized by other people. There are other kinds of goals that we would think of as being intrinsically motivated that are about finding very satisfying moments in your life."

Johnson says the key is to have your intrinsic goals outweigh your extrinsic ones.

"Be focused on other issues in your life, like did I have a nice day, a nice conversation with somebody I love."

Are certain life goals healthier to pursue than others? In a recent study psychologist Sheri Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley found that people who pursued extrinsic life goals such as fame and wealth were at a much higher risk for mental health issues such as mania, depression and anxiety. Johnson explains that people generally strive for either extrinsic or intrinsic goals.

"Some kinds of goals are very extrinsic. I'd like to be very powerful, I'd like to be very famous. Those are very extrinsically oriented goals where your chief hope is that you're going to be admired, respected, recognized by other people. There are other kinds of goals that we would think of as being intrinsically motivated that are about finding very satisfying moments in your life."

Johnson says the key is to have your intrinsic goals outweigh your extrinsic ones.

"Be focused on other issues in your life, like did I have a nice day, a nice conversation with somebody I love."

Dealing with serious disease and end-of-life care is oftentimes the ‘elephant in the room’ for patients and their families. Dr. Steve Pantilat who directs the Palliative Care Program at the University of California, San Francisco, says in many cases, once the topic is broached, the floodgates open.

"You often see this with patients and families. That finally having this conversation is a relief. The patient knows that they’re sick. I mean, they get it. We all hope that somehow these treatments are going to make our serious illness go away and they do, often for a long time, but we haven’t changed the fact that we’re all going to die one day and that is also a part of life. And in palliative care, we recognize that – our goal is to help you live as long, as well as possible, for as long as possible, but we don’t ignore the fact that people will make different decisions if they understand really what the future holds and that they can make choices about how they want that to be."

Dealing with serious disease and end-of-life care is oftentimes the ‘elephant in the room’ for patients and their families. Dr. Steve Pantilat who directs the Palliative Care Program at the University of California, San Francisco, says in many cases, once the topic is broached, the floodgates open.

"You often see this with patients and families. That finally having this conversation is a relief. The patient knows that they’re sick. I mean, they get it. We all hope that somehow these treatments are going to make our serious illness go away and they do, often for a long time, but we haven’t changed the fact that we’re all going to die one day and that is also a part of life. And in palliative care, we recognize that – our goal is to help you live as long, as well as possible, for as long as possible, but we don’t ignore the fact that people will make different decisions if they understand really what the future holds and that they can make choices about how they want that to be."

Is fruit juice better for you than soda? That’s a question that nutritional biologist Kimber Stanhope of the University of California, Davis says she’s asked all the time.

"And it drives me crazy that I don’t know the answer for sure. I haven’t found any studies in the scientific literature that have actually compared the consumption of a sugar sweetened beverage compared to a fruit juice sweetened beverage for one day."

So, Stanhope intends to do a two-week pilot study comparing the two. And she says it’s important that this study get done because many scientists have made the assumption that fruit juice is just as bad as sucrose because the fiber is removed. There’s also some evidence supporting that fruit juice is protective against risk factors for metabolic disease.

"There’s also a couple of studies that suggest they’re just as bad, so I’m really looking forward to getting some preliminary data to answer this question."

The human brain is remarkably effective at tuning into certain sounds in noisy settings. But this can be challenging for those with hearing deficits because traditional hearing aids typically amplify all sounds in an environment. Now, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are developing a hearing aid that would process sound the way the brain does.

"One of the things that people that wear hearing aids complain about is if you go into crowded places, that all the sounds are amplified, right, and it becomes really uncomfortable. It doesn't make the task of listening to the person next to you any easier. What our algorithm is doing is more in the realm of getting rid of the background noise and extracting the signal and the idea is that—signals such as speech have a signature which is different than the background sound."

Neuroscientist Frederic Theunissen adds that although testing is still in its early stages, he hopes that the hearing aid will be commercially available in the future.

"It’d be wonderful to be able to help people that have hearing difficulties and really design something that they’re happy to wear in conditions where they’re not happy to wear it now."

Is fruit juice better for you than soda? That’s a question that nutritional biologist Kimber Stanhope of the University of California, Davis says she’s asked all the time.

"And it drives me crazy that I don’t know the answer for sure. I haven’t found any studies in the scientific literature that have actually compared the consumption of a sugar sweetened beverage compared to a fruit juice sweetened beverage for one day."

So, Stanhope intends to do a two-week pilot study comparing the two. And she says it’s important that this study get done because many scientists have made the assumption that fruit juice is just as bad as sucrose because the fiber is removed. There’s also some evidence supporting that fruit juice is protective against risk factors for metabolic disease.

"There’s also a couple of studies that suggest they’re just as bad, so I’m really looking forward to getting some preliminary data to answer this question."

Is fruit juice better for you than soda? That’s a question that nutritional biologist Kimber Stanhope of the University of California, Davis says she’s asked all the time.

"And it drives me crazy that I don’t know the answer for sure. I haven’t found any studies in the scientific literature that have actually compared the consumption of a sugar sweetened beverage compared to a fruit juice sweetened beverage for one day."

So, Stanhope intends to do a two-week pilot study comparing the two. And she says it’s important that this study get done because many scientists have made the assumption that fruit juice is just as bad as sucrose because the fiber is removed. There’s also some evidence supporting that fruit juice is protective against risk factors for metabolic disease.

"There’s also a couple of studies that suggest they’re just as bad, so I’m really looking forward to getting some preliminary data to answer this question."