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Home > UC Science Today > The weekly roundup - December 16
Podcast: UC Science Today
Episode:

The weekly roundup - December 16
Category: Science & Medicine
Duration: 00:01:54
Publish Date: 2016-12-12 18:00:00
Description: 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. 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/deep_space https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/dementia_prevention https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/stroke_recovery
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