The weekly roundup - September 9th

UC Science Today

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