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Home > UC Science Today > The weekly roundup - Nov 12th
Podcast: UC Science Today
Episode:

The weekly roundup - Nov 12th
Category: Science & Medicine
Duration: 00:01:56
Publish Date: 2016-11-04 19:00:00
Description: This week on Science Today. Studies show that about 10 percent of Americans are diagnosed with asthma each year. We spoke to a gastroenterologist Susan Lynch of UC San Francisco and learned that they’ve been studying the microbiome to hone in on why asthma and allergies are so widespread in Western nations. She says some of the risk factors include a lack of a mother’s exposure to livestock or furred pets while pregnant. "And so those risk factors suggest that these factors may influence the microbes and the communities of microbes that exist in humans and particularly in very early life." This understanding could lead to focusing more on changing a child’s microbiological development very early in life. While at UCSF, we also chatted with Stanton Glantz a professor of medicine. Now that California has joined other states in the legalization of the recreational use of marijuana, Glantz suggests that public health experts be cautious about the negative effects of cannabis. "Kids think marijuana is harmless and even good for you. They start with marijuana and then move on to tobacco, so the marijuana and tobacco epidemics are really inextricably tied to each other." And finally, we reflect on the value of doing research within a university system – it’s something we hear about time and time again while interviewing researchers. Biomedical scientist Gabriela Loots of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says her team has greatly benefited from having students and interdisciplinary faculty at their fingertips. "It’s been working out great. With the UC Davis Cancer Center, we have started interacting with some of the scientists there because of my interest in prostate cancer and now we’re growing to other types of cancer research and so we just started communicating with some of these scientists and we started collaborating." Find out what other researchers are up to with the University of California system. Tune in to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud - you’re bound to learn a lot. 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/microbes_asthma https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/marijuana_legalization https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/campus_research
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