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Home > UC Science Today > The weekly roundup - July 8th
Podcast: UC Science Today
Episode:

The weekly roundup - July 8th
Category: Science & Medicine
Duration: 00:01:38
Publish Date: 2016-07-07 19:00:00
Description: This week on Science Today. The liver is a resilient organ with the magical ability to regenerate itself, but when it’s damaged by liver cirrhosis, it can be pushed past the point of no return. Researcher Milad Rezvani of the University of California, San Francisco says that gene therapy could help restore patches of healthy tissue on a struggling liver. The successful experiments were run on a mouse model. "Right now we have shown that we can turn this one cirrhosis causing cell type into normal liver cells that function." And of course, we’d always prefer to prevent damage to our bodies before its irreparable. That’s why Dr. Cindy Leung of the University of California, San Francisco warns against giving children too much soda. She says that sugary drinks can actually accelerate aging by shortening our telomeres. These are the protective caps on our chromosomes that protect our DNA and if shortened, can lead to a range of maladies. "Drinking less sugary beverages would be one way to either halt or slow down their telomere shortening process. We need to promote other health behaviors that would help to lengthen our telomeres." We also venture into the physics realm this week with chemist Kevin Wilson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He’s been working on predicting the size of cloud droplets. "We were absolutely thrilled to be able to, from a physical chemistry perspective and a surface chemistry perspective, provide some insight into a process that is quite important for understanding cloud droplet formation and climate change in particular." To hear these and other episodes about the latest University of California research, subscribe to UC Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Facebook. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin. More information: Subscribe to Science Today on iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/cirrhosis_lab https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/kids_soda https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/clouds_climate
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