UC Science Today

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.

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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."

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.

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.

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.

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Stories mentioned in this roundup:

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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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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Stories mentioned in this roundup:

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/climate_warrior

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/preschool

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/good_stereovision