Frozen Skin Cells Could Create A New Future For Endangered Northern White Rhinos And More Local News

December 13, 2019 at 2:42 AM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:18 Speaker 1: 00:24 Speaker 3: 00:46 Speaker 1: 01:35 Speaker 4: 01:50 Speaker 2: 02:04 Speaker 4: 02:15 Speaker 1: 02:39 Speaker 3: 02:52 Speaker 5: 03:00 Speaker 1: 03:35 Speaker 6: 03:52 Speaker 7: 04:19 Speaker 6: 04:25 Speaker 1: 04:43 Speaker 8: 05:00 Speaker 7: 05:28 Speaker 8: 05:32 Speaker 7: 05:44 Speaker 8: 05:49 Speaker 2: 05:58 Speaker 7: 06:03 Speaker 8: 06:15 Speaker 7: 06:37 Speaker 2: 06:50 Speaker 8: 06:56 Speaker 7: 07:07 Speaker 8: 07:19 Speaker 7: 07:33 Speaker 8: 07:42 Speaker 2: 07:55 Speaker 1: 09:21 Speaker 9: 09:37 Speaker 1: 09:43 Speaker 9: 09:47 Speaker 7: 10:14 Speaker 9: 10:25 Speaker 7: 10:42 Speaker 9: 11:02 Speaker 7: 11:12 Speaker 9: 11:32 Speaker 2: 11:42 Speaker 9: 11:59 Speaker 2: 12:13 Speaker 9: 12:22 Speaker 7: 12:32 Speaker 9: 12:45 Speaker 2: 12:56 Speaker 9: 13:10 Speaker 1: 13:11 It's Friday, December 13th I'm Deb Welsh and you're listening to San Diego news matters from KPBS coming up. Frozen skin sales could create a new future for endangered Northern white rhinos and school meals are a lifeline for thousands of students in the County. Even during the holidays. We believe that education is the major vehicle to break the cycle of poverty. Well, childhood education starts with childhood nutrition that more San Diego news stories coming up right after the break. Protecting San Diego against wildfires from the air. A new firefighting helicopter will help city firefighters do just that. KPBS reporter Matt Hoffman, got to check it out. Thursday San Diego fire rescue is rolling out a new Firehawk helicopter. The military style of helicopter can hold up to a thousand gallons of water, which is three times more than older ones in the fleet. It's been in the works for two years and cost about $20 million. San Diego fire rescue, chief of air operations. Chuck McFarlane says the Firehawk is that apartments first new addition to a teller copter fleet. Since 2007 we really felt with the fire seasons, the way they'd been getting worse and worse that we need, you know, a little bigger tool. The Firehawk has a retractable water pump and can fill its thousand gallon tank in just 60 seconds and the benefits go beyond city limits when needed. The helicopter can be used across the County and even up into orange County. The city is looking at getting another one within the next couple of years. Matt Hoffman, KPBS news, the us census Bureau is hiring. It's gearing up to bring on thousands of people in San Diego. KPBS speaks city highs. Reporter Ebony Monet says this is the latest step toward improving participation in a region. Declared hard to count from the person crossing the street to one living outside the 2020 U S census has a campaign to count everyone. We met with the censuses Jeff Barneo near the downtown office to find out what they're looking for. We recruit from every community, local, state, tribal rev reservations to make sure that we have people from those communities helping us count those people from those communities. The positions range from door to door counters to office managers and pay from 19 to $37 an hour. There's added efforts in areas such as city Heights. We're dozens of languages are spoken and there's a transient population. At least 16 community organizations have been tapped to help educate an outreach to immigrant and refugee populations. Ebony Monet, K PBS news, metropolitan transit system leaders, Thursday debated what public trends and improvements should be part of a tax measure that could end up on the 2020 ballot. KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen breaks down the options. MTS is proposing a half cent sales tax expected to generate about $24 billion over 50 years. One big question is whether the ballot measure will fund a new trolley line from Chula Vista to Kearny Mesa or whether it will focus more on improving the existing bus and trolley network. County supervisor and MTS board chairman Nathan Fletcher says the measure can't pay for everything, but our goal is clear in terms of increasing ridership, providing more opportunities, getting the environmental benefits that congestion relief. Um, and so it's just assessing how we put that package together with or without the new trolley line. The wishlist includes new rapid bus routes, more frequent service and free passes for youth. Andrew Bowen KPBS news, a new report from the ACL OU and researchers at San Diego state sheds light on the treatment of migrants in the hours and days after they're caught crossing the border. KPBS reporter max Rivlin Adler says the study finds the border patrol does not comply with its own standards of treatment. Last year, local organizations in San Diego set up a series of shelters to give migrants a place to stay while they figured out their next steps. It also gave researchers from the American civil liberties union and San Diego state university a chance to find out firsthand what asylum seekers had gone through from crossing the border to their time in border patrol custody. Dr Jill has been shade as a coauthor of the resulting report, which highlights mistreatment that migrants faced while in detention. 50% of people said that they suffered some abuse at the hands of border patrol agents directly. The study found that border patrol was not in compliance with its own standards for its treatment of detainees, especially when it came to medical care. A spokesperson for customs and border protection told KPBS that it treats those in our custody with dignity and respect. Max Lynn Adler, K PBS news, San Diego researchers are making progress on a long running plan to revive a nearly extinct rhino species to rhino birth this year. We're important steps and KPBS environment. Reporter Eric Anderson recently checked in on the newest baby at the San Diego zoo. Safari park. Future is a month old baby and already about 200 pounds. During a recent visit, she was far more interested in playing with a plastic tub and the fact that she's playing a role in a critical rhino recovery effort. Futures mom, Amani, and five other females were brought to San Diego in 2015 to be surrogate moms for Northern white rhinos. Only two Northern whites are still alive and neither can breed. This is an animal that will be extinct in our lifetime. Gene Loring is pioneering research that'll play a crucial role in the recovery plan. She's helping turn a dozen Northern white rhino skin cell samples into pluripotent or adult STEM cells, so we have a total of nine. No in the freezer. Those STEM cell lines have the potential to become any adult cell in a rhino's body, something that's only been done before with mice. Loring hopes to eventually create rhino sex cells opening the door to creating a Northern white embryo. We were seeing the first signs of development into sperm and eggs are the precursors discriminate. Those are called primordial germ cells in a small lab at the San Diego zoo, Safari park, Marissa karate is helping draw up the scientific guidebook that'll show researchers the path from skin cells to rhino embryos. A lot of that work is just that work. It's routine culturing of cells. Karate's team adds different things to the cultures to see what pushes the cells down. In particular. We give them the signals that we'll tell them to turn into whatever cell type we want, so it can be giving them growth factors or it can be using specific chemicals that will turn on or turn off different pathways in the cell cycle. Karate was introduced to the project and gene Loring's lab and she was drawn in by the chance to help us VCs that is so close to extinction. This is an active active culture of this STEM cell. You constantly feed it, you keep it active. We feed them every 24 hours, so somebody is here seven days a week if we don't feed them that frequently. That growth factor that makes them maintain their STEM cell state will break down. It's heat sensitive. Those daily chores are occasionally rewarded. Karate pulls up a video that caused quite a stir recently. This collection of STEM cells is pulsing, actually expanding and contracting in a Petri dish. So these are just responding. There's no pacemaker, so there's, they're not in sync as they would be if they were an actual heart, but yes, these are cardiomyocytes from Angela [inaudible], Angelina, who was the last male Northern white to live in San Diego. Developing those fledgling heart cells gives hope that sperm and eggs are not far off. That could mean a Northern white embryo can be implanted in one of the zoos. Six surrogates. Zoo geneticist, Oliver riders says the cloning of Dolly the sheep, and then the subsequent STEM cell advances have opened a door and if we can make rhinos, cells have babies and we can reconstitute a functional breeding population of Northern white rhinos, we can take a species that is functionally extinct and return it to its habitat. Once that's secure, Ryder is standing in the San Diego zoo's frozen zoo. These nitrogen cooled freezers hold genetic material from thousands of animals, some endangered, some not. There's a great need to expand this effort on a global basis through regional centers and centers in different countries. Writer says this seed bank of cells idea is catching on and he thinks it's vital for the future of Northern white rhinos and possibly other species. Technology being developed in San Diego with the rhinos could have applications for other animals. I have a constant sense of the March of time and the grim Reaper of species extinction, but science writer says could be the key to undoing some of the manmade harm that's driving plants and animals to the edge. Eric Anderson KPBS news. When kids are out of school for the holidays, it can mean some students don't know where their next meal will come from. KPBS education reporter Joe Hong looked into the safety nets available for students struggling with food insecurity during this time of year. It's lunchtime at Edison elementary school in city Heights and kindergarten. Aiden Arroyo is peering across the salad bar. Same food is broccoli for a lot of kids in San Diego County. Breakfast and lunch from the school cafeteria or a lifeline, one out of six students in the County face food insecurity at Edison elementary, 97% of students qualify for free or reduced price meals every Friday at Edison elementary counselor Vanessa Mendez makes a call out to the 60 students participating in the food for kids program. The students trickle into her office with their backpacks and Mendez fills them with cereal, food bars, and canned soup. It's important because a lot of times they're, they don't have the access or the means to healthy nutritious food on the weekends, and this is some support to help them. Edison elementary is one of 58 elementary schools in the County participating in the food for kids backpack program every week. The backpacks of nearly 2,800 students from across the County are filled with food Mendez. She and other staff look for a variety of signs of hunger when selecting students for the program. I think the initial obvious one is them verbally saying I'm hungry. It didn't get enough to eat last night. Um, those kinds of mentionings also their home life situations, whether they're just loss of job, um, living with other people, homeless grandparents, raising children as the holidays approach. Some of these students won't have their backpacks filled for as long as a month. Thankfully there's hundreds of food distribution centers throughout the County to make up for the loss. So unfortunately the is closed during our long break for winter. And so instead what we do is we also connect them to what the district offers. And it's great because the district provides us with a list of community agencies and places that offer a meal support throughout the break. The San Diego food bank, which runs the backpack program. County wide is one of those agencies for CEO Jim fluoros feeding students is at the core of the food bank's mission. We believe that education is the major vehicle to break the cycle of poverty. Will childhood education starts with childhood nutrition, so we partner with the schools, especially in the backpack program or which really goes to their core mission, making sure we have healthy kids, they can get a good education, get a good job, and be able to support their own families. But the cycle of poverty doesn't take a holiday and neither does the food bank. And while the holidays are often a time for indulging in unhealthy foods, fluoro says the food bank made sure their 500 distribution centers are providing nutritious meals for students and their families during the holidays. We've really evolved away from being a food bank and really consider ourselves a nutrition bank and so we're making sure that we're providing the healthiest food possible. When Edison elementary students return in January, Mendez is hoping they're healthy and ready to learn for Mendez. The difference between a hungry student and a wealth ed student is clear. Well, I noticed they're able to focus more. They're not thinking about their empty stomachs. They're able to concentrate and pay attention and get the necessary information to further their academic success. While it's been more than a decade since the backpack program started, food insecurity among students persists. Fluoro says eliminating hunger for good will take more than feeding hungry students during the holidays. Really, you need to get to the root causes of poverty, and why are people hungry in the first place? That's how you cure hunger, not just creating a better bandaid. And it's complicated. It's housing, it's education, it's so many different things, but that's a cure for hunger. Joe Hong K PBS news. Thanks for listening to San Diego. News matters. Do as a favor, and if you appreciate the podcast rate or review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you.

By KPBS Public Media

Ways To Subscribe

San Diego researchers are working to revive the northern white rhino before it goes extinct. An answer is possible, if efforts in the lab pay off. Plus, school meals are a lifeline for thousands of students in the county. Find out how local schools and charities are making sure students stay fed during the holidays. And, the U.S. Census Bureau is hiring. It's gearing up to bring on thousands of people in San Diego. This is the latest step toward improving participation in a region declared hard to count.