This week on Science Today. Have some researchers underestimated the amount of methane emitted into the atmosphere? According to physicist Marc Fisher of the Berkeley Lab, they may have, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area.
"We found that emissions are roughly one and a half to two times the emissions expected based on inventory estimates, counting how many landfills, how many cows, how many wastewater treatment plants, how many different things that might emit methane."
Because methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, Fisher says their finding calls for better management of pollutant sources like landfills to reduce its contribution. And at UC Davis, we learned how sometimes in medicine, there are compounds that are found to be good for one thing, but not so great for another. Like in the case of NSAIDs, a class of anti-inflammatory drugs, including ibuprofen. Aldrin Gomes explains how NSAIDs are known to be linked to an increased risk of heart disease and stroke, but he and his colleagues have found they seem to be beneficial in cancer.
"NSAIDs have been known to kill cancer cells and it’s killing cancer cells by a similar mechanism as it’s killing the healthy cells, so it’s actually too good at doing a job, so it’s ironic."
Gomes and his team found that NSAIDs can harm heart tissue because it can reduce the heart cells’ ability to produce energy and it’s a similar mechanism that some papers have shown NSAIDs can be used to treat cancer. One tip from Gomes – to prevent cardiac cell death – take vitamin C before ingesting an NSAID. They found it had preventative properties. That’s all for now – to hear these and other stories about the latest University of California research, subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Facebook. I’m Larissa Branin.
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Stories mentioned in this roundup:
https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/methane_atmosphere
https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/nsaids_cancer
