Uc Science Today

Studies of alcohol abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, are mostly focused on male soldiers, while female military members are often excluded. Jennifer Mitchell, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco explains why. “So you can imagine that female subjects that have alcohol use disorder and comorbid PTSD are individuals that have experienced rape or other forms of domestic abuse. And those individuals might respond very well to a drug like intranasal oxytocin, but it’s a very hard subject population for us to identify. ” In a recent study, Mitchell used oxytocin to treat military personnel suffering from depression and anxiety. So far the experimental therapy has been successful, but the results were skewed as only male combat members participated. ‘’We’d love to have good access to that population because then we could perhaps study the effects of intranasal oxytocin in a group of female subjects that have alcohol or substance- use disorder and comorbid PTSD.”

In the 1990s, oxytocin, the so called love hormone that reduces stress and anxiety, used to be a popular treatment in America. But this changed a couple of years ago. “Oxytocin used to be FDA approved for use in the United States. It wasn’t removed for any health related, or side effect related reason, it just sort of fell out of favor”. That’s Jennifer Mitchell, neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. She is conducting an oxytocin study to treat active military members suffering from PTSD and alcohol abuse. Mitchell says the hormone is practically side effect-free and should be put back on the market. “That’s an interesting conundrum because the question is what’s the path to reapply through the FDA to make it available for everyone to use. And there are several drug companies now that are also developing intranasal oxytocin for other indications.”

Hey there, in today’s weekly roundup, we find out how a college dining hall makes a dent when it comes to climate change. Jill Horst, the director of residential dining services at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says they stopped using trays in their dining hall. "It just overall was this big, huge impact. The food waste per person, per tray, reduced by 50 percent. That’s a lot! That’s a significant impact to help with not only the food waste, but food cost." Psychology was definitely at play here, as people naturally want to load up a large tray with food, so by removing it, people were carrying their food to the table and their portions adjusted accordingly. Next, as we’re about to hit the triple digits this weekend in parts of the Bay Area, we spoke to Ronnen Levinson, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who has been studying how lighter, more reflective pavements lessen the phenomenon called ‘urban heat islands’, where dark-colored roads and buildings bring a city’s

If you suffer from deficiencies in the bone marrow, a tissue in our body that produces blood cells, your lungs can come to the rescue. That’s according Mark Looney, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “It is curious that when patients get a bone marrow transplant or a stem cell transplant, those cells are given intravenously and the first place that they go is the lung. So it could be that the lung is part of a cycle here that is necessary for the maturation of these cells and their normal function”. In his recent study Looney discovered that about 50 percent of platelets are produced directly in the lungs, inside the cells called megakaryocytes. So how will this finding help patients? “Perhaps we can come up with a strategy where we give them megakaryocytes transfusions, and then we put them back in to the vein and they do their natural thing, they go back to the lung and there they produce platelets.” That could be a new way of treatment for patients with a low lev

One way to fight what’s called ‘urban heat islands’ – a phenomenon in which dark-colored roads and buildings bring cities’ air temperature up – is to change the color of the pavement. That’s according to Ronnen Levinson, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “You can choose a more reflective pavement surface instead of a darker less reflective pavement surface. The more reflective pavement surface will stay cooler in the sun. It also won’t heat the air of the city as much as the darker, hotter pavement will.” But there are trade-offs; Levinson was part of a team that found that the energy spent on manufacturing light-colored pavements can lead to increased carbon emissions. “We found that in many cases switching to a more reflective pavement technology, for example, a light grey cement concrete pavement in place of a black asphalt concrete pavement, requires much more energy and carbon.” So Levinson says city officials need to keep this in mind when they choose pavements.

How can a college dining hall make a difference when it comes to climate change? Get rid of the trays. That’s just what Jill Horst, director of residential dining services at the University of California, Santa Barbara did in an effort to reduce the amount of food waste that the university produced. "It, just overall, was this big huge impact. The food waste per person, per tray, reduced by 50 percent. That’s a lot! That's a significant impact to help with not only the food waste, but food cost." Psychology played a part in this in that people naturally want to load up a large tray with food. "So by removing - the trays, people are managing how to carry their food to the table. And by doing that they're not taking as much. They're taking you know smaller portions to start, and then they could get back up, and go have more food, but it really was about why do we want to reduce food waste, which reduced costs, which helps the environment." To learn more about how the University of California is working

Infertility could be linked to heart problems. That’s according to Nisha Parikh, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In a new study, the researcher is trying to find out how pregnancy loss, which is sometimes related to infertility, is connected to heart disease. “There has been several studies that shown a link between pregnancy loss, including miscarriage and stillbirth with cardiovascular disease in the future. And we are very interested in our laboratory in studying the mechanisms that underlie this association. ” Parikh says, it also might be a good idea for women and their doctors to follow these guidelines during medial check-ups. “When practitioners, and by that I mean your primary care doctor or somebody’s cardiologist has a woman in their office and they are trying to figure out what their risk for developing heart disease and heart failure is, than reproductive factors and pregnancy factors are important to ask”.

Your mental state often affects the way you handle uncomfortable situations. Jennifer Mitchell, neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco has recently tested what she calls stress reactivity of patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and alcohol abuse. “We make people nervous in a social situation. And that induces really robust cortisol response, increase in heart rate, changes in respiration and blood pressure. And we administer either oxytocin or placebo and then we look to see whether oxytocin enables people to be less nervous and less apprehensive in that situation.” The oxytocin therapy reduces stress and anxiety and also helps patients be more resilient to alcohol cravings. “A lot of people who have troubles with alcohol use disorder and PTSD are self medicating. They are anxious, they are stressed, they are fearful and they find that drinking alcohol ameliorates some of those problems.”

The lungs don’t just pump air in and out of our bodies, they also make blood cells. “A lung is quite sophisticated, not just respiring, moving oxygen. About 50 percent of platelets are produced directly in the lungs.” That’s Mark Looney, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He says platelets are components that make our blood clot. Scientists used to think that they get formed only in the bone marrow. So this new finding will have an important clinical implication. “The dogma in the field for patients with low platelets count is that it is a problem with the bone marrow. Now we have a more nuanced understanding that that is not just cells in that location, but lung is a significant contributor to that. Now with the more complete understanding hopefully we will be able to develop approaches that can more effectively treat these patients.”

Hi there – just catching up with the weekly roundup after a bit of a break. The show did go on, so here are some of the stories covered. First, did you know that heart disease is the leading cause of death among American women? Now, researcher Nisha Parikh of UC San Francisco has found that the age a woman is when she reaches menopause affects her risk of developing heart disease. "We found that a longer reproductive period duration was actually associated with less of a risk of heart failure, and that was mostly driven by the age of menopause, so that having an earlier age at menopause was associated with a higher risk of heart failure." But researchers still don’t know what causes it and are working on further studies to find answers. Meanwhile, across the Bay at UC Berkeley, physicist Jeffrey Neaton is looking to Mother Nature to improve energy production skills. In particular, he’s working on making photosynthesis more efficient. "A leaf can convert the energy in sunlight into fuel with a one to two p

Researchers at the University of California, Berkley, are competing with Mother Nature to improve energy production skills. In particular, physicist Jeffrey Neaton is working on making photosynthesis more efficient. “A leaf can convert the energy in sun light into fuel with a one to two percent efficiency. A major Department of Energy program that I’m part of, the joint center for artificial photosynthesis, has recently developed a prototype material that is made of semiconductors that can go from sunlight to fuel at 10 percent efficiency. Much greater efficiency than plants, actually”. Neaton is working on an artificial leaf that could generate fuel and can someday become a new alternative energy source. “Right now the artificial leaf prototypes are not made of materials that are cheap enough or abandoned enough to be saleable to a level where they will impact society yet.” But technology moves forward fast. Take solar panels, for example. In just 10 years, the price of this energy source has fallen b

Oxytocin is most commonly called the “love” hormone, but it has also been referred to as the "mama bear" hormone. Jennifer Mitchel, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, describes why. “I love my baby, I love my baby so much, that if you get anywhere close to my baby, I will rip you to shreds. So when we administer oxytocin to our populations, we are trying to keep these darker behaviors in mind as well." In a new study Mitchell is also testing oxytocin as a therapy for military personnel who suffer from PTSD and alcohol abuse. She says it is an effective way to keep stress and anxiety in check. "Oxytocin can make one feel more pair-bonded, it is important for maternal attachment, for breastfeeding, for child birth, perhaps falling in love or those feelings associated with falling in love, but it also contributes to sort of non-group behavior. Believing there is an enemy or feeling that you have to protect yourself against others." But so far - Mitchell says - she hasn’t seen

Heart disease is the leading cause of death among American women, killing 1 in 3 of them each year. A study by Nisha Parikh, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, showed that the age a woman is when she reaches menopause affects her risk of developing a heart disease. “We found that a longer reproductive period duration was actually associated with less of a risk of heart failure. And that was mostly driven by the age of menopause, so that having an early age at menopause was associated with a higher risk of heart failure”. But researchers still don’t know what causes it and are working on further studies to find the answers. “We need to understand what it is about sort of an increased reproductive period that protects a woman from heart failure. Is it something biologic or is it something related to sociodemographic factors or lifestyle choices. I think all of that will be really interesting to explore in the future.”

Will genetic sequencing become standard procedure for diagnosing disease? by University of California

Obsessive thoughts, nightmares and alcohol addiction are often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. In a quest to ease these symptoms, neuroscientist Jennifer Mitchell, of the University of California, San Francisco, is testing the power of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone”. This could be a new therapy for combat veterans and active military personnel. “We are interested in general in developing novel therapeutics for alcohol use disorder and co-morbid PTSD, because it is a population that is very difficult to treat and there are not a lot of treatments currently prescribed for. One of the therapeutics that we are looking at is oxytocin.” This 'love hormone', also called the “moral molecule” and the “cuddle chemical” - makes people feel bonded. It helps us manage stress and anxiety, be more social, trusting and empathetic. “Perhaps the oxytocin could ameliorate some of the signs and symptoms of the alcohol use disorder, the craving and some of the emotional reactivity and the si

Solar panels have become a popular and efficient way to make electricity, but they are not as good when it comes to storing it. Now, physicist Jeffrey Neaton of the University of California, Berkeley has found a better way to preserve energy. Neaton: “What we are doing here is thinking about harnessing that energy and not turning it into electricity, but into fuel, much like gasoline. Fuel is a very compact, energy-dense way of storing of energy” Neaton and his colleagues consider photosynthesis as a model to generate fuel and are working on building an artificial leaf that could become a new alternative energy source. “This artificial leaf is a set of inorganic materials that one combined does what a leaf does, which is take sunlight and carbon dioxide and generate a fuel, chemical fuel, and oxygen.” Neaton says it’s still a long way before the artificial leaf become a technology like solar panels, but step-by-step, the idea is turning into reality.

A 3D mammogram could be more effective for women with dense breasts than a regular mammography test. That’s because a three-dimensional scan is easier to detect abnormalities in dense tissue. This according to breast cancer researcher Karla Kerlikowske of University of California, San Francisco. But the technology has not been widely used yet. While the FDA approved the devises 5 years ago, only 30 percent of clinics across the country purchased them. Kerlikowske says more studies are needed to prove how reliable 3D scanners are. “The technology often, in particular for devices - not for drugs, for drugs there is always randomized trials - they don’t say you can use this drug for such and such until the FDA approves it. But when it comes to devices, they often get released before there is evidence to show that they are really better than what exists.” But Kerlikowske hopes she will soon have the data. “That’s actually grants we are working on now to try and figure that out who benefits the most fro

When it comes to the future of medicine, think digital! That’s what researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, along with tech giants like Google and Intel - are doing. UCSF pediatric surgeon Hanmin Lee is converting troves of medical records into digital format and storing them in a unified online database. “We do have collaborations through our digital center for health innovation. When we are able to get a power of what I would argue at UCSF, the singular world’s leading research medical institution, and as an aggregate the UC system, really the world’s leading system of academic medical centers, partnering up with the leading companies that make processors that can do machine learning and can do deep learning like Intel, have companies like Cisco and GE that are interface between devices and data, I think it is such a powerful combination, I think that’s exactly where medicine is heading.” Lee says the digital era of medicine will open new doors for experimental studies and the quality

The human brain has been studied for several centuries, but there is still a lot we don’t understand about it. And according to radiologist Pratik Mukherjee of the University of California, San Francisco, this includes how concussions affect the brain. “There is a controversy with soldiers that were repeatedly exposed to blasts in the battlefield, about whether they may get dementia in earlier ages and it’s been actively investigated.” Mukherjee says new technology, like higher quality images from MRI scanners, might be an answer that doctors, researchers and injured patients have long been looking for. "The brain is harder than other organs, even other important organs like the heart and so while it’s been recognized that this is a big problem for centuries and even if you look at prior wars, where they talk about shell shock in WWI where they had a lot of artillery explosion for the first time. They are basically describing these repetitive blast injuries, their concussions, but they just didn’t have

When it comes to spending on research and innovation, adult patients get way more benefits then children. That’s according to pediatric surgeon Hanmin Lee of the University of California, San Francisco. “The market for most drugs and devices is significantly better, bigger and more robust in the adult world.” For health and medical corporations it’s simply a matter of profit and numbers. They can get more clients from the adult population and there are currently more adults on this planet than children. But Lee thinks this approach can be changed. “I think we just need to be staunch advocates for children. In the Bay Area with the immense amount of intellectual capacity and financial capacity, we have to energize the Bay area to invest in the health of our children going forward, because I firmly believe that the best investment that you can make is in the health of our children.” Lee says one way to achieve that is to get pediatrics grants to provide more devices and therapeutics for children.