UC Science Today

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.

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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.

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.