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Science
Friday > Archives
> 1999
> May
> May 28, 1999:
Hour One: Staph Vaccine / Cosmology Update
Staphylococcus -- staph for short -- is very common. Each year, an estimated 500,000 patients in American hospitals contract staph infections. It can cause problems as minor as skin infections, or as dangerous as meningitis and pneumonia. And even more troubling, there are more and more cases of staph infections that can't be treated with standard antibiotics because the bacteria are becoming resistant.
A report this week in the journal Science may provide a ray of hope, however. It discusses a possible way to create a vaccine against staph bacteria. We'll talk about the research, and its potential effect on medicine. We're also going to take you to the outer reaches of the universe, and you won't even need to stand in line or get popcorn all over the floor. | Long ago .... say around 1929 ... Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. Ever since then, astronomers and astrophysicists have tried to pin down exactly how fast that expansion is taking place, because the answer has a lot to do with big, big questions -- like how old the universe is and what's going to happen to it in the distant future.
This week, a team of astronomers working on the Key Project of the Hubble Space Telescope announced that after eight years they have the best estimate for that number to date. We'll talk about it on this hour of Science Friday. | 
Stars called Cepheids in this galaxy
helped determine the Hubble Constant to within 10%.
(image Jeffrey Newman, UC Berkeley, and NASA) |
Guests:
Gerald Pier
Professor in the Channing Laboratory
Department of Medicine
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts
Wendy Freedman
Team Leader, Hubble Key Project
Astronomer
Carnegie Observatories
Pasadena, California
Neta Bahcall
Professor of Astronomy
Princeton University Observatory
Princeton, New Jersey
Books/Articles Discussed:
Related Links:
NASA
Hubble Space Telescope
NIH
CDC
This segment produced by:
Charles Bergquist
Web producer:
Charles Bergquist
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