UC Science Today

It’s hard enough feeling under the weather on terra firma, so imagine how it must be for astronauts in Deep Space. We spoke to a senior research scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who is helping NASA develop a handheld medical diagnostic device for space travel. Matthew Coleman says it may even contain biomarkers for radiation sensitivity, which is a concern in microgravity since there is much higher levels of radiation beyond our atmosphere.

"And so if you’re somebody that’s more sensitive to radiation exposure, you may not want to go out on too many spacewalks and you may need to limit those sorts of activities and therefore, somebody else will have to complete that mission requirement."

Meanwhile, researchers at UC San Francisco are calling for access to a good education in the hopes of preventing dementia and other mental problems affecting memory and thinking. Psychiatrist Kristine Yaffe has made a connection between poverty and dementia later in life. She says people with higher income usually get a better education than those who struggle financially, so improving the quality of education would be a great start.

"Even if you have the same number of years of education, the quality of education may not be as good."

And while on the UC San Francisco campus, we visited Dr. Anthony Kim at the School of Medicine to talk about stroke, which affects almost 800 thousand Americans every year. He explains that not all of these patients fully recover and says doctors need to put more effort into helping stroke patients get better.

"Most of our interventions post-stroke are geared towards preventing the next stroke and we have relatively fewer interventions that are geared toward actually improving the recovery."

To hear these and other episodes about the latest research at the University of California, subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud. Thanks for listening, until next time, I’m Larissa Branin.

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Stories mentioned in this roundup:

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We’ve all seen astronauts floating around weightless in the space shuttle and while it seems like fun, prolonged exposure to microgravity results in bone loss and muscle atrophy. Matthew Coleman, a senior research scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says there are other concerns, too.

"You also have different levels of ionizing radiation that you’re being bombarded by in space because here on Earth, we’re protected because we have an atmosphere. But when we go beyond the atmosphere and beyond where the Space Station is now, there’s going to be much higher levels of radiation."

Coleman is part of a team of researchers working on a single, handheld diagnostic device that may contain a host of biomarkers, including some for radiation sensitivity.

"And so if you’re somebody that’s more sensitive to radiation exposure, you may not want to go out on too many spacewalks and you may need to limit those sorts of activities and therefore, somebody else will have to complete that mission requirement."

The mental health of aging adults seems to consistently improve with age. But in the same study of adults ages 21 to 100, researchers discovered that those in their 20s and 30s had far worse levels of psychological well-being than any other period of adulthood.

"I must say, I was actually surprised in our study by this very high level of stress and depression and anxiety that we found in the younger age groups."

That’s study leader Dilip Jeste of the University of California, San Diego. He explains that there have been other studies reporting that in one’s twenties, there’s a high level of well-being that slowly comes down towards mid-life and then it starts to improve again.

"My personal feeling is that adolescence is a difficult period of life, so how is it possible that suddenly in the twenties you would have the best wellbeing level? That’s not possible. So, I do believe that our findings are more consistent with what is happening, at least now."

Jeste adds that their findings suggest more attention should be paid to the mental health of younger adults.

It’s time for the weekly roundup again. This week we spoke to a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory about how the amount of carbon dioxide that trees and plants have been grabbing from the atmosphere has increased over the years. Trevor Keenan says explains that plants have been ‘inhaling’ more carbon dioxide through photosynthesis but they did not ‘exhale’ more CO2 into the atmosphere through respiration.

"So, this is called the CO2 fertilization effect, a well-known and widely-studied effect of how CO2 affects plants. During the last decade, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere continue to go up and this means that plants have more CO2 to use."

And while this sounds like a good thing, Keenan warns that the threat of global warming is still there and this study underscores the value of protecting vital ecosystems. Next up, we find out that economic hardship can actually shape the way our brain works. Psychiatrist Kristine Yaffe of UC San Francisco explains that poverty affects cognitive function due to a concept called ‘cognitive reserve’.

"And what that means is the more you grow your brain, the more you have education, the more it is simulated, the more complex your occupation is, the more complex your lifestyle activities are, your leisure activities."

By understanding this, Yaffe hopes researchers can help prevent cognitive diseases later in life. And speaking of issues later in life, we really enjoyed our time with Dilip Jeste, a geriatric neuropsychiatrist at UC San Diego. He told us that the mental health of older adults actually improves with time, even in those with physical ailments.

"We wanted to look at, not only the physical illnesses and cognitive problem, but also the positive characteristics. Things like resilience, optimism, social engagement, compassion, wisdom. So, we got a much more comprehensive understanding of aging that many of the studies do."

To hear these episodes and more like them, subscribe to Science Today on iTunes. You can also follow us on Soundcloud or Facebook. Thanks for listening…until next time, I’m Larissa Branin.

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Stories mentioned in this roundup:

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/plants_carbon

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/brain_poverty

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/aging_happy

Now that recreational marijuana has been legalized in California and a handful of other states, public health experts are raising concerns over its advertising and distribution.

"You are going to see the rise of mass marketing, branding in order to maximize sales and revenue."

That’s Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Glantz explains that over the years, tobacco companies used additives and chemicals to create a highly addictive product.

“We’ve only seen a little bit of that in the marijuana market. We haven’t yet seen the kind of high tech product engineering designed to maximize use. Because the distributors – mom and pop marijuana market that we have just haven’t had technological capability to do what the big corporations could do once they take control of this market."

Glantz recommends policymakers shape marijuana laws that would minimize consumption.

If you live with a teenager, you’ve probably blamed some of their antics solely on puberty and hormones. But according to new research at UCLA, it’s also that their brains are still undergoing some remodeling. Psychologist Adriana Galván, who directs UCLA’s Developmental Neuroscience Lab, says the common assumption has been that as kids enter the teen years, they need less sleep.

"But in fact, they need just as much sleep, maybe even more so. And there’s actually a tendency for teenagers to sleep less, not simply because they’re on social media or they’re staying up late to complete homework, but because there’s a biological shift in how the brain induces sleep."

Basically, the sleep hormone melatonin, is not released in teens until later in the night. In a study of how sleep affects their developing brains, Galván found that a lack of sleep affects a teen’s pre-frontal cortex the most.

"And that translates into poorer performance on a self-control task – and that impacts their ability to regulate emotions or pay attention in class."

Can economic hardship shape the way our brain works? For 25 years, Kristine Yaffe, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco followed more than three thousand adults with different income levels and found that poverty does affect cognitive function. She says this is due to a concept called ‘cognitive reserve’.

"And what that means is the more you can grow your brain, the more you have education -- the more it is stimulated, the more complex your occupation is, the more complex your lifestyle activities are - your leisure activities."

Yaffe says with that in mind, researchers can prevent cognitive diseases later in life.

"Using your brain in this way, we think may have a beneficial effect in terms of protecting against getting dementia and other kinds of processes that affect your memory and thinking."

As the years fly by, take heart – a University of California, San Diego study has found that despite physical ailments, older adults seem to consistently get happier over time. Dr. Dilip Jeste says the conventional wisdom about aging is it’s all gloom and doom.

"We associate aging with diseases, disabilities, degeneration, dementia and depression. All of the negative things, 2:14 which I find so insulting and degrading, and also it is wrong."

Jeste’s study focused on physical health, cognitive function and other measures of mental health in over 1500 adults, ages 21 to 103 years.

"We wanted to look at, not only the physical illnesses and cognitive problem, but also the positive characteristics – things like resilience, optimism, social engagement, compassion, wisdom. So, we got a much more comprehensive understanding of aging than many of the studies do."

Over the past few decades, the amount of carbon dioxide that trees and plants have been grabbing from the atmosphere has increased. Trevor Keenan, a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, found that plants have been “inhaling” more carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. But they did not "exhale" more CO2 into the atmosphere through respiration.

"So this is called the CO2 fertilization effect - a widely known effect of how CO2 affects plants. During the last few decades, the concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere continue to go up and this means plants have more CO2 to use.”

This sounds like good news since less carbon dioxide is accumulated in the atmosphere, but Keenan says the threat of global warming is still there.

"And so even though the plants are helping us out, whether they will continue doing it is a big question. CO2 in the atmosphere is still going up and so climate change is getting more and more likely to be more extreme."

In the meantime, this research underscores the importance of protecting vital ecosystems.

Because of the recent holiday break, we didn’t run our usual line-up this past week; instead we gave you a hint of the some of the stories to come. This includes an interview with UC San Diego’s Dr. Dilip Jeste. He had some good news about aging and described how his study contradicts the conventional notions that aging is pretty much all ‘gloom and doom’. In this excerpt, Jeste describes what makes their study different.

“Usually, when people mention aging, they are thinking about physical aging, that's the only component that figures in ministries of aging, but aging is multidimensional. Physical health is one dimension. Another dimension is cognitive function, or cognitive health. So, that is what is being studied when we are looking at people with Alzheimer's Disease or other dementias. But the component of aging that is least studied is the psychosocial component of aging."

So, Jeste took a multidimensional approach , which you'll want to hear about next week. And in another upcoming episode, we’ll dial back the years to reflect upon adolescence. Adrianna Galvan of UCLA studies how changes in brain maturation during adolescence relate to adolescent behavior and decision-making. Here she describes why adolescence is often fraught with emotion.

"There is probably an evolutionary reason for why teenagers are more emotional. One reason is that emotions help us connect with other people. And during adolescence, it's really important that we establish good relationships, or understand the social rules of interacting with others, of having romantic partners, and so the emotional reactivity helps adolescents in that regard.”

Don’t miss these and many other stories about the latest research at the University of California. Subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin.

Subscribe to Science Today:

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Stories mentioned in this roundup:

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/jeste_aging

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/emotional_teens