UC Science Today

In 1989, UC Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson began to study a group of people who had been married at least 15 years or 35 years, depending on age, to get a better sense of what fairly successful marriages are like. This was not purely a behavioral study, as they also managed to collect genetic samples from many of these 156 couples. In this interview excerpt, Levenson explains the implications for future couples. Robert Levenson: "Well, one of the things that motivated us to do this study is that we felt this might be the last opportunity to study the dinosaurs of marriage. The people who had 50 years with a particular person. And at the time we started in the 80s it looked like the divorce rate was reaching 65 percent in this country. Seven out of 10 marriages ending in divorce. And so here was a group that grew up in a different era and had you know sort of stayed together and we wanted to understand them just in case they disappeared from the earth. Well, I think things are different now and you know we’re in this period of flux in marriage. A lot of people don’t marry. The divorce rate has gone back down again to 50 percent. I don’t know whether the modal marriage for the millennial generation will be, you know, marry once, marry twice, marry three times. But I think the basic biology here, the relationship between behavior and biology doesn’t require you to be married. You know this is a statement about what counts in terms of your being happy in a relationship. And although our tools may not be strong enough to detect these in the first and second and third years, I still expect that these genetic influences are having the same effects on relationships today as they did, you know, 20 and 40 years ago in those marriages." Branin/host: "Right and as you say with the dinosaurs, I mean I think that’s the joke, you know, people will say about their grandparents - they stuck together even though they didn’t seem very happy and yet they did." Robert Levenson: "Now that might happen again. You know we go through these pendular kinds of sociological changes and for a while it seemed like we were in sort of a casual relationship. People lived together, they didn’t marry, but who knows what it’s going to be like in the future. And who knows probably the best bet is the pendulum will swing back and maybe people will form better marriages and will find ways of making better mate selection. And maybe even genes will play a role in that. And you know you’ll go and you’ll talk to your grandma and your grandpa and they’ll give you advice and then you’ll go to your geneticist and she’ll give you advice and you’ll put that all together in this kind of unique algorithm that will say okay I’m going to go this way. And then if you’re smart you’ll listen. And if you’re not you’ll say ah, I know best. I’m just going to marry whoever I want to. But I don’t think human nature is going to get re-writ in any particular, you know, in any short period of time." Want to hear the entire interview? https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/robert-levenson Or, listen to several experts, including Levenson, describe our brain in love in this discussion: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/brain_love

If you’ve been around awhile, chances are you’ve experienced foods that were once touted to be good for you, suddenly becoming the worst thing you could possibly eat. Or at least that’s how it feels when there’s a lot of media coverage about the latest scientific studies. Take eggs, for example. Over the years, these nutrient-rich orbs have gone from what’s for breakfast, to heart-attacks waiting to happen … only to be redeemed again as a healthy choice. Of course, moderation is key – for anything, but what gives when it comes to such nutritional see-saws? We asked nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic of the University of California, Davis. "Part of the problem is that we just have natural variability between people, and if we keep trying to find the answer about how a certain diet affects all humans, we're probably never going to find the answer, and we're going to keep having these sort of pendulum swings back and forth. Eggs are good for you, eggs are not good for you, eggs are good for you, eggs are not good for you because every time you get a different population, you'll get a different answer. Really, it's that eggs are good for some people at certain points in time, and eggs are not so good for other people especially at certain points in time. So, you know, we just need to try to figure out, how do we understand how different people respond to different diets at different points? And, again, it's not even just about, how do you respond to eggs? It's today versus three years from now versus 10 years ago. It's very different. People change over time and people are very unique and individual. And it's the overall context, too. That's often something that's really forgotten and missed. It's like, you know, we try to isolate these foods as if we eat them in isolation of other things. Of course, we eat them as complete diets. So let's say I'm on a vegan diet except I eat eggs. The effect of those eggs might be very different than if I eat eggs, but I'm actually on a Paleo-type diet, where I'm also eating a lot of other animal products. So it's really all about context and trying to understand how different people vary and change and respond to these different dietary treatments."

It's a workday, just after lunch. You have a deadline and there's plenty of time left in the day to get the task done. If only you could stop thinking about other things. One thought can lead to your mind just...wandering away. This can't be good, right? You've probably been scolded as a kid for daydreaming in class. But in recent years, neuroscientists and psychologists have found that there are some very redeeming qualities to this mental state - in fact, it could be an essential cognitive skill. Here's an excerpt from an interview conducted with one of those researchers.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, might be close to finding a drug that could cure glaucoma, which is the world’s second-leading cause of blindness. Karsten Gronert, a professor of optometry, says it has been a long process of trial and error. "With decades worth of research there have been several approaches to try to develop neuroprotective drugs that somehow can stop once you see neurodegenerartion. And there have been several approaches and none of them actually were able to stop the progression of neurodegeneration." But Gronert discovered that astrocytes - cells in the eye retina - produce lipid signals that protect nerves from damage. And when the eye is stressed, the astrocytes stop making the protective signal. "It was an unexpected finding. This means it has some unknown role with nerves that we were not aware of." So, if researchers can find a way to protect astrocytes, they might get on the right track to fight glaucoma.

How does one make a brain atlas? John Ngai, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley explains. “You can think of it as a taxonomy. You might think about what are all the species of birds that there are on Earth, you might think of it as needing to first identify those types.” So, just like with a bird encyclopedia, UC Berkeley neurologists are trying to find and organize brain cells into a catalogue of sorts. “We know there are many different types of neurons in the brain. They look different. We might have some ideas about how they function differently. But we have no rational way of categorizing them. But using new molecular and genetic techniques, we have a very powerful way of classifying them.” The brain atlas is an ambitious multimillion-dollar project that will help researchers better understand how brain cells wire up and function. And that could be the key to cure of neurological diseases, including autism and Alzheimer’s. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, affects over two million people worldwide. The neurodegenerative disease strikes when the immune system attacks myelin, layers of a fatty insulating membrane that surround nerve fibers and help send nerve signals faster. Ari Green, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, has found an over the counter allergy drug called Clemastine that could possibly help repair damaged myelin. “It was originally designed back in the 1970s as an antihistamine and we were excited that it showed the evidence that myelin repair is possible even with injury that is not immediate or acute, but has been there for some time." Green says because of possible side effects of the medication, Clemastine is only a prototype for a better myelin repairing drug that researchers have yet to develop. "What we want is a drug that has a very targeted effect that would be capable of inducing this repair without causing other side effects."

Exposure to flame retardant chemicals or PBDEs during pregnancy can affect children’s neurodevelopment. Environmental health scientist Tracey Woodruff of the University of California, San Francisco, found ten-fold increases in a mother's PBDE levels could lead to a drop of 3.7 IQ points in her child. While that may sound like a small number… "If you look at it over a population, it becomes very significant, because you have everybody exposed to PBDEs at a smaller risk. The small risk over a large population means that you can have a relatively large number of people who can have some type of effect." If this happens, the population level IQ could get shifted. This means there will be more people with an IQ score of about 70, which is considered a mentally-impaired category. “It can also decrease the number of people who are in the mentally-gifted categories." PBDEs can be found in many household items from furniture to toys to electronics. So, Woodruff says buying flame retardant-free products could make a big difference in your children’s health.

Believe it or not, neuroscience is still considered a relatively new field of medical research. That’s because there’s still a lot of the unknown about our brain. For instance, how do brain cells wire up and function? To answer this question, John Ngai, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, is creating a brain catalogue or - as researchers call it – an atlas. “So the idea behind this brain atlas project is to identify all the cell types in the mouse brain as a model for understanding the human brain and then to understand their physiological properties, how they connect with other so this can be used as a basis for understanding not only normal function of the brain, but also how diseases might progress and eventually how you might treat those diseases in human neurological conditions." The effort is part of the federal government’s BRAIN Initiative, which launched four years ago. Its ultimate goal is to understand brain circuits well enough to devise new therapies for diseases of the human brain and nervous system.

Glaucoma is the world’s second-leading cause of blindness, and it affects about 80 million people worldwide and has no cure. But vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered molecules that could probably halt the progression of the disease. Gronert: “We identified a novel factor, a new factor that potentially protects the optic nerve against damage, which is one of the underlying causes of glaucoma. That’s Karsten Gronert, a professor of optometry at UC Berkeley. He says, for decades, academic labs and pharmaceutical companies were trying to find treatment for glaucoma, but couldn’t show any promising results. This is probably because they were targeting the disease when it was already too late. "Once you have a degeneration of the optic nerve head, which is what causes glaucoma and eventually leads to blindness, that process is irreversible and cannot be stopped.” So Gronert and his colleagues took a different route. Instead of trying to fix what has been permanently damaged, they focused on prevention - protecting the mechanism that stops nerve degeneration.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have started an ambitious project to build a brain atlas. According to neuroscientist John Ngai, the goal is to create a catalogue of different brain cells. "The human brain contains about 80 billion neurons, nerve cells. And of the neurons we suspect there could be hundreds, if not thousands of types of distinct types of those cells, but until recently we really haven’t had a way of categorizing or classifying those cells in a quantitative or rational way." But why do researchers need this mapping tool? "In order to understand how the brain processes information and gives raise to things like cognition, emotion, we really need to know what different parts are." Ngai also hopes this atlas will help scientists understand brain cells’ connections well enough to launch new therapies for treating cognitive and neurological diseases.

Social connections are important and can make you happier, according to psychologist Iris Mauss of the University of California, Berkeley. But how can those who are, shall we say, not so easy going build such a network? Mauss says – just be yourself, and open up to others. “People who are perceived to be more authentic are better liked by others and have better social connections. And we have found that if you hold in your emotions, you stifle them, then others tend to perceive that as.. on average, finding you less authentic.” Mauss says accepting your negative emotions could also help you become more personable. “Having that accepting attitudes about your own emotions will make you be more open about your own emotions which I believe would be perceived by others as greater authenticity.” So, if you shy away from sharing your feelings, just give it another try!

Will software engineers ever be able to outsmart hackers and build an unbreakable wall of defense? Dawn Song, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley says it’s possible, but don’t expect results in the near future. Part of the reason is due to artificial intelligence, or AI. “On one hand AI – these techniques can really help us to enhance our capabilities for defenders to build stronger defenses, but also on the other hand unfortunately it could be misused by attackers. In the long run, we do hope that the defenders will win, but in the short term it could make it easier for attackers to develop new attacks, but can be much, much harder for defenders to build sufficient defenses.” So, what will it take for programmers to win this cat-and-mouse game? According to Song, the advancement of artificial intelligence allows researchers to better identify vulnerable spots in software installed on our smartphones, laptops and tablets.

It seems there’s more to high-density lipoproteins, or HDLs, than we previously thought. Nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic of the University of California, Davis, led an analyses of how the composition of complex sugars attached to HDLs called glycans are linked to the body’s inflammatory response. Traditional markers like LDL cholesterol, body mass index and blood pressure are not able to predict whose HDL is pro- or anti-inflammatory. "That’s something that had not really been looked at very extensively before. So, how can we actually start to look at people to see what their metabolic phenotype might be like that’s something other than how we’ve categorized them so far?” Being a nutrition researcher, Zivkovic is looking into which diets are pro- or anti-inflammatory. "I think we can actually start to think about the possibility of giving people recommendations to improve their health that take into account both who they are as genetically, but also what they choose."

Medical students at the University of California, San Francisco, are learning about the human body in a new, experimental setting. Anatomy professor Derek Harmon is piloting a virtual reality class. But as exciting as it sounds - not every student is thrilled about the 3D experience. "I think one potential negative with virtual reality is that some studies quote that something like 20 percent of people or 1 out of 5 have this motion sickness." So, Harmon says for that reason some of his anatomy students opted out. But the class is optional, designed in addition to the traditional mandatory classes taught on cadavers. "Virtual reality is one way we are looking at it. We are looking at augmented reality concepts too. Potentially mixed reality like a HoloLens, to try to make sure that we can get as many students involved in this type of space as possible." According to Harmon, the concept of spatial building that three-dimension provides is a very important skill for medical students. And it’s easier to understand using virtual reality.

Artificial Intelligence has been developing fast – and it’s making more and more decisions on humans’ behalf. From simple web searches to e-commerce to self-driving cars. But researchers like Dawn Song, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, are struggling to find the best ways to protect this technology from hackers. “One thing we are looking at how we can use AI and deep learning techniques to develop stronger security capabilities to enable us to build better defenses. One of our recent works uses advanced deep learning techniques to try to identify software vulnerabilities in IOT devises.” Deep learning techniques are advanced algorithms, which allow researchers to process massive amounts of data. “The advantage of deep learning is that it can enable us to build very large data sets. And now we have very good computation framework and hardware to perform a variety of tasks.” But as machines becomes smarter, so do viruses that attack them, so scientists are challenged to stay one step ahead of hackers.

When you accept your own negative emotions – you will likely have a more positive outlook on mood swings than people around you have. That’s according to Iris Mauss, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you have an accepting attitude for other people’s emotions that tend to make those other people feel better and it helps you respond to their distress in a more constructive way.” Mauss says this mindset is invaluable for parents who often deal with their little ones’ tantrums. “Small children have difficulty regulating their emotions because, they are - children." But if their moms and dads are responsive and understanding – “We believe that over time that might actually help children develop better emotion-regulatory skills. ” And not only that. Mauss says if you learn how to accept your negative emotions, you’ll become a better role model for your kids.

Sleep disorders during pregnancy can lead to a preterm birth. To improve sleeping patterns of mothers-to-be, Jennifer Felder, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, is running an intervention research. “So we are doing a research on expecting moms and it is a digital intervention for sleep during pregnancies, so we are able to recruit women across the nation and in Canada. So we are hoping to have a really broad reach with that." Besides pre-term birth outcomes, Insomnia is linked to other problems in pregnant women. “Poor sleep during pregnancy may also increase risk of perinatal depression and there are some data that suggests that it might increase risk of suicidal ideation, gestational diabetes, cesarean section births. So it does appear to have really broad consequences both psychologically and physically." Treating sleep disorders might help reduce the rate of pre-term births, which affect 1 in 10 women in the United States.

Virtual Reality becomes a reality in medical research. Derek Harmon, a professor of anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco, is working with software companies to develop 3D brain scan visualization tools. “With your two hand-held controllers of the virtual space you can slice with one axes and then the other and see a view of a head CT scan. In real time you can see all these different angles and again, build on special arrangement of the body, which I don’t know where else you can even do something like that.” Harmon has just started a pilot curriculum that offers virtual reality anatomy classes to medical students, so a 360-degree view of a digital human body using Google glasses. Harmon says lessons like these will help students become better physicians in the future. “If you have a company that built the software for you, you have pre-selected layers of tissue, organs and whatever you want to learn from, which does a lot of legwork for you and because of that people can start experimenting with it. I think it is so early on in the technology, but there is a lot of promise on things that you really can’t do on another type of medium."

A couple of decades ago flame retardants – or PBDEs - were widely used in furniture because of the fire safety standards. But that policy has since changed in many states, including California. “Because of concern about increasing exposures as well as the facts that people were concerned about in terms of how they may be affecting neurodevelopment, PBDE were phased out for use.” That’s Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. She has run a study measuring pregnant women’s exposure to PBDEs that can affect children’s neurodevelopment and lower IQ. Woodruff found that despite a series of bans, these chemicals are still ubiquitous in our homes. “So we see decline in some of the exposures, but we see that we still going to have exposures for a while because they are still hanging around, they probably still in a lot of furniture." Woodruff urges policymakers not to weaken environmental health laws.

Medical students at the University of California, San Francisco, are learning about human anatomy not only on cadavers, but also in virtual reality. This is part of a new pilot curriculum led by anatomy professor Derek Harmon. "The students, as soon as they learn the material on actual cadavers, on skeletons, or in the lab itself, they could go into the space where we had virtual reality set up and they could do the exact same type of lesson, but they could take it piece-by-piece off of the model in the virtual space, which means they could physically walk around the virtual model getting this kind of 360 degree view that they could not get in the lab." This way, even though students can’t feel the virtual body, they can explore its every little detail. "You can really quickly see that it helped more with the depth level and by that I mean from the superficial skin level down to the deepest part in the body, because they can take every piece layer-by-layer off." Harmon says in just a couple of years VR's popularity will likely skyrocket among medical doctors.

How much stress can you take? Maybe you’re OK with a small bump in the road, like a parking ticket or a spat with your neighbor. But what about more serious troubles? “Things like going through a divorce, financial troubles, unemployment. Those are pretty big stressors.” That’s Irene Mauss, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In her recent study, she discovered that you will be much better off if you accept your negative emotions, no matter how bad they are. “We found the same positive effect of emotional acceptance. I don’t know at this point where the upper boundary is, but from other research we can speculate that actually there is no upper boundary in terms of the intensity of stressors." But Mauss says accepting your negative emotions doesn’t mean accepting negative reality. You should still work on making positive changes in your life if things took a wrong turn.

What really makes you happy or sad? According to Psychologist Iris Mauss of the University of California, Berkeley it is not so much about what’s happening to you, but how you perceive the situations you are in. "How you relate to your own emotions, transforms the experiences that you have in some way." Mauss says the right way of thinking is the best way to protect yourself from moodiness, depression and anxiety. "If you accept your negative emotions as just a natural response, you are going to pay less attention to them and so while they exist and happen, they blow over pretty quickly. Another idea is if you accept the negative emotions you have, you basically don’t punish yourself for feeling them and you avoid piling negativity upon negativity." Or if you simply don’t chalk up your misfortunes to “bad luck,” this alone might cheer you up.

If your home has furniture that contains flame retardant materials, you may want to consider getting rid of it. A study by Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, has shown that exposure to flame retardant chemicals, or PBDEs, may affect your health. "The thing about the flame retardants use in a polyurethane foam is that they are not bound to the polyurethane, so they can get out and they can get into dust, and then they can migrate through dust, and people can get exposed through the dust, and they can also get into food. Another thing about PBDEs is that their chemical structure is such that it makes them persistent: once they get out they don’t break down, they hang around in the environment." According to Woodruff, pregnant women and children are especially vulnerable. PBDEs may slow down children’s neurodevelopment, lower their IQ and possibly increase the risk of ADHD. "Children may be more highly exposed to PBDEs, as it gets out in dust, because they are lower to the ground, they crawl around, they put their hands in their mouth." So, not having furniture with these chemicals is the safest bet.

About a quarter of all the global climate change problems we’re seeing today can be attributed back to our food system and the dietary choices we’re making on a daily basis. "This is greater than all of the cars on the planet; in fact it’s about twice as much global warming pollution as the cars." That’s Benjamin Houlton, director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis. He studies the connection between climate and diet. For instance, just switching from a meat-heavy American diet to a Mediterranean diet, which has less meat, more fish and lots of vegetables is not only good for your health, it’s good for the planet’s health, too. "If we all switch to a diet like the Mediterranean diet – that is equivalent to taking somewhere around a billion cars off of the streets in terms of vehicle emissions each year. So, it’s a huge number that has a tremendous amount. In terms of percentages, it could solve up to 15 percent of global warming pollution by 2050. We thing these are really important things to understand; our dietary choice does matter and it’s something we can do every day."

How do you handle stress? Psychologist Iris Mauss of the University of California, Berkeley wanted to learn how people deal with stressors, so she ran an experiment that involved exposing study participants to uncomfortable situations. “We stressed everybody out by having them giving an impromptu speech that we said would be videotaped and later scrutinized by judges. It’s an experience that people find very unpleasant. ” But the way one reacts to a stressful situation like this changes the outcome. “We found that people who tend to be more accepting of their negative emotions actually responded with less stress to that experience.” According to Mauss, their study refutes previous notions that fewer bad things happen to happier people. It’s just that these people often see their negative experiences in a positive light.

Exposure to flame retardant chemicals or PBDEs during pregnancy can affect children’s neurodevelopment. That’s according to Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. “There’s been studies in multiple locations including the United States and in other countries around the world and what was found was that women with higher exposures to PBDEs during pregnancies, their children had lower IQ scores.” Woodruff says they measured IQ scores of 5 to 7-year-old exposed to these chemicals in infancy. “For about 10-fold increase in PBDEs there was a drop of IQ score of about 4 IQ points." But how did women get exposed to the chemicals? Turns out, through furnishings at home. “PBDE flame retardants are the class of chemicals that were used primarily in upholstered furniture, so polyurethane foam. They were put in as a requirement to flammability standards. They are also used sometimes in electronics."

Can pregnant women be cured of insomnia? Jennifer Felder, a clinical phycologist at the University of California, San Francisco, is testing out a therapy called cognitive behavioral treatment, which could help expecting mothers fight sleep disorders. “There is not currently much research on how best to treat insomnia during pregnancy. We know that cognitive behavioral treatment is effective for insomnia generally, but we don’t yet know if it is effective during pregnancy. “ Felder’s study shows that insomnia during pregnancy put women at a higher risk for delivering before 34 weeks of gestation. But according to Felder, doctors don’t always see lack of sleep as a problem. “Insomnia is often going undetected. It maybe dismissed as part of the normal process of pregnancy.” Yet, In the United States one in 10 women deliver their babies preterm, so Felder hopes the insomnia therapy could reduce the rate of preterm birth.

Can parents protect their children from developing asthma and eczema? Michael Cabana, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, believes it could be possible if parents follow these recommendations very early in their children’s lives, starting from birth. “Longer duration of breastfeeding might be helpful, avoiding the use of antibiotics is also important and it seems to be a beneficial effect of vaginal delivery." Cabana’s recent study also showed that positive health effects of probiotics might be overstated, despite a widely accepted belief that they help prevent eczema or asthma in kids. Cabana says researchers need to take a closer look at children’s microbiota. “I think as we develop better tools to understand microbiota and how that microbiota evolves and what is a normal microbiota in a normally developing child I think that is the type of background information we still need to continue and develop."

Do you feel bad when you’re moody, upset or depressed? Well, don’t be. Negative emotions are not so bad. So says Iris Mauss, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “We found that some people regard their negative emotions with some suspicion. But some people actually have what we call emotionally excepting stance. They regard their negative emotions as something very natural, part of life that doesn’t need to be avoided or altered or pushed away.” Turns out, this type of thinking may work in your favor. "Paradoxically, people who actually accept their own negative emotions more, tend to have less negative emotions when they face stressful events, and then overtime sort of like a healthy diet this decreased experience of negative emotions adds up to better psychological health, more well-being, satisfaction with life and also less depression.”

When we think about our food system, we need to factor in that about 33 percent of the land area is now used for animals for food. And according to Ben Houlton, director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis, that has a huge influence on the global climate cycle. "We have to think about the methane that’s being released from animals and rice patties and areas where we’re growing food. And we have to consider this nitrous oxide gas that’s being produced from the fertilizers we’re feeding to the microbes that live in the soil." Nitrous oxide, or N2O, is the third largest contributor to global warming. Houlton and his colleagues identified nitrogen ‘fingerprints’ in soil samples to trace its journey and model how it moves through ecosystems and escapes into the air or water. Without adding the nitrogen cycle, Houlton says previous climate models were underestimated. "Our discovery helped improve that understanding greatly so that we can now put this into our global models and help policymakers make better informed decisions."

Why do pregnant women tend to suffer from sleep disorders? Financial status of the future mothers could be one of the reasons leading to insomnia. That’s according to Jennifer Felder, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco. “Women of color and women from more economically disadvantaged background are disproportionately affected by poor sleep during pregnancy so it is possible that this may explain part of the reason we have such big disparities in the preterm birth rate.” Lack of resources brings along other inequality factors affecting pregnant women’s sleep. "Stress and psychological problems, noisy neighborhoods, discrimination and racism, not feeling safe.” Felder says researchers studying different disciplines – be it psychology, environmental science or public health - need to combine their efforts in helping low income pregnant women improve sleeping patterns.

Are yogurt, kefir and other probiotics really good for you? Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, believe the benefits of these products may be overstated. Michael Cabana, a professor of pediatrics, came to this conclusion while trying to figure out if a probiotic strain called LGG helps prevent the development of eczema or asthma in kids predisposed to these diseases. “At two years of age we found that there is no difference in eczema levels between the kids. Despite the fact that previous studies have shown this probiotic strain helps prevent eczema in other countries, in the San Francisco area we didn’t find the same results.” The UCSF findings further fuel the ongoing debate about the benefits of friendly bacteria in dietary supplements. “We still learned a lot from this study and we still continue following these kids. It is probably more complicated than just giving a probiotic supplement.” Genetic factors and other types of baby food, including breast milk, also affect a child’s microbiota. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Environmental pollutants can damage our health, but how much do we know about their harmful effects? As part of a prenatal patients’ study, Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco has surveyed OBGYNs. The goal was to find out if doctors inform their patients about environmental health as part of their prenatal care. “We actually surveyed doctors, obstetricians to ask them do you talk to your patients about environmental health, what do they say to you, do you think it is an important issue to ask them. And doctors by and large, at least obstetricians said we think this issue is really Important, but we don’t talk to our patients because we don’t have the kind of information we need to give to them.” Woodruff and her team are now filling in the gap integrating environmental health into clinical care. “One thing we have been doing is working with their professional societies to provide this foundational information so it is easier for a physician to give a patient information about environmental exposure they are concerned about.”

How technological advances are factored in climate change models by University of California

Private space tourism is no longer a faraway dream. In fact, Thomas Lang, an imaging scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, is trying to predict what tourists’ lives would be like in space. Researchers, for example, already have plans for designing commercial space habitats. “What happens when you have private space stations? And those stations are geared for commercial activities. You would have people doing manufacturing or research or some other activity in space.” The most pressing question for researchers is how to provide space tourists with an adequate training so they could stay in good health. “Does it have to be NASA-like training program? Will they cut these health requirements down? What’s going to be the right trade off?” Lang says, aging happens very quickly in space and can severely affect astronauts’ bones with lifetime bone structure being lost in just six months. But according to Lang, this could probably be prevented.

How important is it for pregnant women to get enough sleep? Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have recently conducted a study linking the lack of a good night’s rest to complications at delivery. “Our study was the first to examine insomnia diagnosed during pregnancy and the risk of preterm birth. And our findings suggested that women with an insomnia diagnoses during pregnancy are at nearly two times higher risk for delivering before 34 weeks of gestation”. That’s UCSF clinical psychologist Jennifer Felder. She urges mothers to pay extra attention to sleeping patterns in order to protect their babies. “And this is really important because In the United States one in 10 women deliver their babies preterm. And it is now the leading cause of death before the age of 5 globally.” Scientists hope that by treating sleep disorders they could reduce the rate of preterm births. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Every year, more than 25 thousand pounds of chemicals are imported or manufactured in the United States, but scientists have very little data on many of those chemicals’ heath effects. Tracy Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, explains. "We do know a lot about some environmental chemicals, so air pollution, cigarette smoke, some carcinogens and chemicals that cause effects other than cancer. There is still a lot of scientific knowledge to be gained about any of the industrial chemicals that we are using currently in the market place and we are exposed to.” Woodruff says the effect of chemicals on humans is often underestimated, because most studies involve lab animals. “But that doesn’t really reflect somebody who lives in a neighborhood that has a lot of crime or they are low income and so they have a lot of other stressers in their lives.” Woodruff says measuring the combined health effects of people’s social and environmental hardships could give researchers a more complete picture.

Every year, almost 2 million Americans suffer from traumatic brain injury, which often lead to severe memory loss and learning disabilities. Peter Walter, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, has recently discovered a drug that can completely reverse these impairments in mice. “The mice learned better. They have a better ability of taking short term memory and storing it in long term memory. It is a drug that enhances synaptic plasticity that allow memory to form.” Scientists need to conduct more studies to learn if the same improvements can be achieved in humans. “Whether we can extrapolate it to humans is still an open question. Mice’ brains are very different from human brains.” But since traumatic brain injury is a serious problem with no approved therapies available for patients, these studies may offer researchers new insight. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

This week on Science Today, we learned something that many of you probably already know – and that’s how curiosity is often the main ingredient in scientific discovery. So many of the researchers we interview every week, often make breakthroughs by simply wondering about the world around them or asking different questions. In the case of nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic at UC Davis, in her case it was a picture that prompted her to a discovery that the composition of sugars coating HDL particles in body may be a biomarker for disease. "It was an electron micrograph of the inside of an arterial wall and it was hairy looking, right? And it’s because the endothelial cells that line the inside of your arteries are actually covered with these sugars. They’re kind of like these structures that help make sure certain things get through and certain things don’t get through from the bloodstream. And when I saw that picture I realized, well if your cells that these HDL particles have to kind of interact with are covered with sugars, then the HDL must be covered with sugars, too." And at UCSF, environmental health scientist Tracey Woodruff wanted to understand how chemicals in the environment intersect with health disparities. "For example, African American women have higher rates of adverse birth outcomes like preterm birth and low birthweight. Is it because one of the reasons of this health disparity is because there is some type of environmental factors that are also combining with the factors that are due to their circumstances, that put their pregnancy more at risk?" And additional stressors like discrimination or domestic violence are exacerbated by environmental factors like air pollution or cigarette smoke. So by asking this question and digging further, Woodruff hopes their findings may lead to the implementation of better environmental policies, especially in impoverished areas that often get exposed to chemicals. And these are just two University of California researchers who are trying to make a difference in the world. Subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud to hear about others. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/curiosity_research

Sometimes, breakthroughs in science really do come down to simple curiosity. That was definitely the case when a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis decided to look more closely at the composition of HDL particles in the body. One of HDL's jobs is to transport cholesterol out of cells. Nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic says it was a picture that prompted her to question if HDL may be covered in glycans, or sugars, and how that may impact the body. "It was an electron micrograph of the inside of an arterial wall and it was hairy looking, right? And it’s because the endothelial cells that line the inside of your arteries are actually covered with these sugars. They’re kind of like these structures that help make sure certain things get through and certain things don’t get through from the bloodstream. And when I saw that picture I realized, well if your cells that these HDL particles have to kind of interact with are covered with sugars, then the HJDL must be covered with sugars, too." Their ultimate finding that these sugars do influence anti-inflammatory proteins in the body could lead to biomarkers for disease. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Everything that humans are used to on Earth changes in space and that’s what astronauts should be prepared for during long space trips. “You are now in microgravity, which means that you don’t have these loads on not just your skeleton, but your skeletal muscle, your heart, your sense of balance.” That's imaging scientist Thomas Lang, of the University of California, San Francisco. He explains that astronauts are exposed to a dangerous level of radiation, which increases the risk of cancer and brain damage. “To some extent in lower Earth orbit we are protected by Earth’s magnetic field, but once we go to, as proposed to these NASA missions, back to the Moon or to deep space habitats in cislunar orbit, there we are going to be exposed to solar, wind, as well as galactic heavy ion- radiation.” Add to that isolation and the absence of daylight, and space travel might not seem so appealing. But researchers like Lang are working on strategies to make space trips a healthier experience.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have discovered that a specific virus called cytomegalovirus, or CMV, could trigger childhood leukemia - a type of cancer that strikes about 15,000 American children each year. “We found evidence of this virus at birth and it was found more frequently in children that went on to get leukemia. This virus was found years before diagnosis.” That’s study leader Adam de Smith, who says CMV could also lead to other diseases. “Children born with CMV may have developmental defects and particularly hearing los affected with CMV virus. So it is a pretty big public health issue and one thing that may come out of this research is a potential for a vaccine against CMV virus.” While the development of this vaccine has been a priority for American health officials, the process is complicated. So De Smith says a lot more research needs to be done before a vaccine is available.

Virtual reality may help people with a visual condition called amblyopia, in which there is reduced vision in one eye. Neuroscientist Adrian Chopin of the University of California, Berkeley, says they’re treating patients with this visual defect by having them play 3D computer games that, he says, could restore their eyesight. “Virtual reality is really developing tremendously right now. We are trying to develop a new game. That is something in between a video game industry and treatment.” Chopin hopes this new 3D computer game treatment will overwrite the old dogma that adult patients’ amblyopia cannot be cured. “Now we have all these optometrists and ophthalmologists out there telling the patients very often that there is nothing that can be done for them because they are too old and they needed to be treated when they were children. And we realize it is not true. I mean, it is difficult to change it, but it is not that it is impossible." Chopin says the virtual reality study is already showing signs of success with some patients’ eyesight significantly improving.

Pregnant women exposed to social stress and environmental chemicals, have a higher risk of prenatal developmental problems and low-birth-weight babies. Study leader Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, says the key here is the combined effect of the risk factors. “Our study was evaluating the literature to understand what the combined effects were of being exposed to environmental chemicals and stresses that people may experience during life. Stresses that are due to things like living in poor living circumstances, issue that might be due to discrimination like racism, etc. or poverty." Babies born to mothers exposed to these hardships are at higher risk of developing multiple diseases in childhood and having cardiovascular problems and diabetes in adulthood. “We have to do a better job of figuring out how do these varies factors that influence somebody’s health work together rather than just studying them separately, because they might be in combination more important.”

Space missions are exciting, but they’re risky for astronauts’ health. The lack of gravity in space may seriously damage their musculoskeletal systems, especially the spine and hip. Thomas Lang, an imaging scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, has recently discovered crucial details about bone loss in space. “What we did in our study is to look at how this corresponded to architectural changes in the hips. We used a 3-dimentional approach called quantitative computed tomography and in particular in the hip we found the trabecular bone – the spongy bone in the center of the medullary canal in the hip - was lost at about up to 3 percent per month.” That’s similar to the bone structure that 70 or 80-year old women might lose in a year. “The driving factor is disuse. Very similar to what happens when somebody has a spinal cord injury and they sit down in a wheel chair.” One solution is to ensure that astronauts get strenuous workouts in space.

Hi there – I’m Larissa Branin, host of Science Today and it’s that time of the week again where we go over some of the stories covered this past week. First, we learned that by the end of the century climate change will likely cause a decline in wheat and barley yields by up to 33 percent. This statistical model was developed by a team of researchers led by UC Davis. Graduate student Matthew Gammans, who worked on the study, told us it was based on 65 years of weather records and data from wheat and barley yields in France.  “So we started by looking at the relationship between weather and yields and then using some climate change projections, we forecasted that relationship into the future to see what we can expect to happen to these yields.” Their work is one of the first flexible statistical models applied to these cereal crops, which means that every potential temperature was included in the analysis. We then chatted with public health professor Kristine Madsen of UC Berkeley about soda consumption in the U.S. falling to a 31-year low last year. Instead, consumers seem to be reaching for lower-calorie produces, including bottled water. Madsen had found similar findings in Berkeley, California after the city passed the nation’s first soda tax back in 2014. “Even in the comparison cities of Oakland and San Francisco, there was an overall increase of 20 percent in water consumption. But it was 63 percent in Berkeley. So, it looks like people were switching from sugar-sweetened beverages to really what I would say is the healthiest alternative.” Speaking of healthy alternatives, there’s even more reason to never start smoking. We learned that even if parents quit before conception, their prior smoking habit may still put their child’s health at risk. UC San Francisco researcher Adam de Smith studied dust in homes where children were diagnosed with leukemia and found an increased level of tobacco particles in the carpeting. “If a family is smoking relatively heavily, they might not even be smoking in the house, they might be smoking outside, but when they come into the home, particles drop onto the carpet. If they have children several years later, we have found that those particles can remain there several years later. So it is possible if a child is playing around on the carpet, he may still be exposed to toxic particles that could perhaps increase the leukemia risk.” And even frequently vacuuming does not eliminate all the dust. So again – all the more reason to never pick up the habit. Well, that’s all for now. If you want to keep on top of all the latest science and health news coming from the University of California system, you’ll find UC Science Today on iTunes. Please subscribe and thanks for listening. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/cereal_yields https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/soda_consumption https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/smoking_parents

Parents who used to smoke, but quit before conceiving, may still put their child’s heath at risk. Researchers of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco, have studied dust in homes where children were diagnosed with leukemia and found an increased level of tobacco particles in the carpeting. UCSF Associate Researcher Adam de Smith explains the connection. “If a family is smoking relatively heavily, they might not even be smoking in the house, they might be smoking outside, but when they come into the home, particles drop onto the carpet. If they have children several years later, we have found that those particles can remain there several years later. So it is possible if a child is playing around on the carpet, he may still be exposed to toxic particles that could perhaps increase the leukemia risk." Studies show that even if you don’t smoke inside the house and frequently vacuum, only about 10 percent of dust gets removed. So de Smith says, best way to protect your children from tobacco-contaminated dust exposure is to never start smoking.

What’s the best way to treat people suffering from substance abuse? Jennifer Mitchell, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, has been studying the hormone oxytocin as a possible cure for addictions, due to its ability to reduce stress, anxiety and social discomfort. “By enabling people to make better social connections and by attenuating the craving for that other substance or act, or giving them a better set of tools with which to embark on this road to recovery, and it is not that it is to say that it is like a panacea: you are going to take a little intranasal oxytocin and everything is going to be perfect, but perhaps it could be one of many tools that people use to get better and get back into a healthy life style.” Mitchell says oxytocin could be a substitute for those self-medicating with alcohol, opioids or even gambling. “Whether or not it is related to depression or stress or anxiety or PTSD, the bottom line is they are experiencing the state of despair.” Mitchell hopes doctors will start offering oxytocin as a therapy.

Soda consumption in the United States fell to a 31-year low last year. This, according to the trade publication, Beverage-Digest. Instead, consumers seem to be reaching for lower-calorie products, including bottled water. This is something public health professor Kristine Madsen found in a University of California, Berkeley study, which was conducted after the City of Berkeley passed the nation’s first soda tax in 2014. "Even in the comparison cities of Oakland and San Francisco, there was an overall increase of 20 percent in water consumption. But it was 63 percent in Berkeley. So, it looks like people were switching from sugar-sweetened beverages to really what I would say is the healthiest alternative." Madsen agrees that many consumers are becoming more health conscious. But even trends could have a role in the decline of sugary drinks – like all of the eco-friendly water bottles being carried around these days. "So, that ‘cool factor’ is really important and could absolutely be an important driver moving people to healthier choices, you now, in beverages and in diets in general."

By the end of the century, climate change will likely cause a decline of wheat and barley yields by 17 to 33 percent. Those were the findings of a new statistical model by the University of California, Davis. Matthew Gammans, a graduate student who worked on the study, says it was based on 65 years of weather records and data from wheat and barley yields in France. "So we started by looking at the relationship between weather and yields and then using some climate change projections, we forecasted that relationship into the future to see what we can expect to happen to these yields." Their work is one of the first flexible statistical models applied to wheat and other cereal crops. "When I say “flexible”, I mean not just kind of the average temperature or the max temperature, but kind of looking at exposure to every temperature bin, so every potential temperature is included in the analysis and it’s the first to apply that to Europe and it’s also the first to use that kind of flexible methodology to look at both fall and winter and summer seasons – so really trying to understand what’s driving these yield changes."

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."