SCIENCE IN THE NEWS - Dogs May Be Just What the Doctor Order

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS - Dogs May Be Just What the Doctor Ordered for Worried Heart Patients
By Caty Weaver¹, George Grow and Jerilyn Watson

Broadcast: Tuesday, December 06, 2005

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VOICE ONE:

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty².

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Pat Bodnar. This week, we bring you news of singing mice ...

VOICE ONE:

Heart-healthy dogs ...

VOICE TWO:

And a partying tortoise.

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VOICE ONE:

A new study finds that the animal known as man's best friend can also be a good friend to the heart. Researchers in California say they have found that even just a short visit with a dog helped ease the worries of heart patients.

 
arttoday dog retriever 150 eng 21nov02.jpg
Kathie Cole led the study. She is a nurse at the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center. The researchers studied seventy-six patients with heart failure.

The study divided the patients into three groups. In one group, a dog and a person visited each patient for twelve minutes. Patients in another group received just a human visitor for twelve minutes. And members of the third group received no visitor, human or canine³.

The dogs would lie on the hospital bed so the heart patients could touch them. Kathie Cole says some patients immediately smiled and talked to the dog and the human visitor. Dogs, in her words, "make people happier, calmer and feel more loved."

VOICE TWO:

The researchers examined the patients before, during and after the visits. They measured stress levels based on blood flow and heart activity. They used a measurement system called hemodynamics to rate the level of anxiety in the patients.

The researchers say they found a twenty-four percent decrease in the group visited by both a dog and a person. They reported a ten percent decrease in the group visited by a person only. There was no change in the patients without any visit. These patients, however, did have an increase in their production of the hormone⁵ epinephrine. The body produces epinephrine during times of stress.

The increase was an average of seven percent. But the study found that patients who spent time with a dog had a seventeen percent drop in their levels of epinephrine. Patients visited by a human but not a dog also had a decrease, but only two percent.

Another finding involved heart pressure. Heart pressure dropped by ten percent among patients visited by both a dog and a human. Patients with a human visitor only, however, had a three percent increase in heart pressure. And the study says there was a five percent increase in patients who received no visit.

VOICE ONE:

Kathie Cole presented the research in Dallas, Texas, last month at the yearly meeting of the American Heart Association. The experiment involved twelve different kinds of dogs. All were specially⁶ trained for what is known as animal-assisted therapy. A non-profit group, the Pet Care Trust Foundation, paid for the study.

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VOICE TWO:

You are listening to SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English, from Washington.

Scientists know that male laboratory mice make unusual noises in the presence of female mice. This fact is not apparent to the human ear; the sound waves move too fast to hear without special equipment. So it has been difficult to carefully study the noises. Recently, however, scientists in the United States have established that these noises are songs.

 
voa leland genetics mouse museum photo 150 12jan02.jpg
Timothy Holy led the study. He is an assistant professor at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, Missouri.

VOICE ONE:

A song can be defined many different ways. But Professor Holy says there are usually two main qualities. A song should have a series of recognizably different musical sounds. And, he says, it should have some sounds that are repeated from time to time.

Other creatures that sing in the presence of the opposite sex include songbirds, whales and some insects.

Professor Holy worked with Zhongsheng Guo, a computer programmer in his laboratory. They were studying how the brain of male mice reacts to pheromones produced by female mice. Pheromones are chemicals that act as signals often linked to mating. Many different creatures, including humans, produce pheromones.

VOICE TWO:

Professor Holy said the mouse songs are unusually difficult to record and examine. The scientists had to use computers to slow the noises down to the point where humans could make sense of them.

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It sounds almost birdlike. The scientists say they were surprised by the complexity⁸ of the songs. They also found that individual male mice sing different songs. Professor Holy wonders if the mice learn to sing from a more experienced mouse, as birds do from other birds.

The findings appear in Public Library of Science Biology. This scientific publication and others can all be read free of charge at the Public Library of Science Web site. The address is p-l-o-s dot o-r-g (plos.org).

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VOICE ONE:

The Australia Zoo has held a birthday party in honor of a Galapagos land tortoise named Harriet. Her keepers believe she is one hundred seventy-five years old. To celebrate, they gave her a birthday cake made of hibiscus flowers.

 
Harriet the tortoise
Harriet weighs about one hundred fifty kilograms. The shell on her back measures about one square meter.

Scientists say she is the oldest living animal known. No one knows exactly when Harriet was born. But genetic⁷ tests suggest that she was born in about eighteen thirty.

A few years later, the British naturalist⁹ Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands, near the coast of Ecuador. Discoveries made during the visit led Darwin to his beliefs about how human beings developed over many centuries.

VOICE TWO:

Darwin collected three small, young tortoises from the islands and took them to England. Darwin noted¹⁰ in his writings that one of the creatures was a Santiago tortoise. Harriet fits that description, and some people think she is the one Darwin captured.

But news reports about the birthday party noted that there is no proof. In fact, no one can even be sure of her real birthday. The zoo chose November fifteenth because November is when the tortoise eggs usually hatch.

Back to the story. It is said that a former naval¹¹ officer named John Wickham later took the tortoise with him from England to Australia. Wickham left it in the Brisbane Botanical and Zoological Gardens in eighteen forty-two.

The tortoise was thought to be a male. Darwin had named it Harry¹².

Children took rides on the back of the tortoise. Some people even cut their names into the shell. That must have hurt. The shell has feelings. The top part of it is called a carapace¹³. The carapace is an extension of the rib¹⁴ bones.

VOICE ONE:

In nineteen fifty-two, Harry was moved to a wildlife center on the Gold Coast of Australia. There, an animal expert from Hawaii made a surprising discovery. Harry the land tortoise was really a female. So Harry became Harriet.

After other moves, she has been living at the Australia Zoo since nineteen eighty-eight. Zoo owner Steve Irwin is known for his television program "Crocodile Hunter."

VOICE TWO:

Harriet produces eggs each year. But she has not been near another of her kind for at least one hundred fifty years. They are not easy to find.

Only about fifteen thousand Galapagos giant tortoises live in the islands today. In Darwin's time, there were an estimated two hundred fifty thousand. Hunting, fishing and other animals have decreased a population thought to have lived in the islands for millions of year.

In the eighteen hundreds, sailors often captured the tortoises for food.

VOICE ONE:

At one time, there were fifteen kinds of the Galapagos giant tortoises. Today there are eleven. Experts say the animals are not in immediate⁴ danger, but are threatened. Scientists are doing their part to help the population grow.

Old as she is, Harriet does not hold the record for the longest living creature. The Guinness Book of Records says a tortoise that died forty years ago holds that record. That tortoise was at least one hundred eighty-eight years old.

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VOICE TWO:

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Caty Weaver, George Grow and Jerilyn Watson. Cynthia Kirk was our producer. I'm Pat Bodnar.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Bob Doughty. Our programs are online at www.tingroom.com. To send us e-mail, write to [email protected]. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

1 weaver   

n.织布工；编织者

参考例句：

• She was a fast weaver and the cloth was very good.她织布织得很快，而且布的质量很好。
• The eager weaver did not notice my confusion.热心的纺织工人没有注意到我的狼狈相。

2 doughty   

adj.勇猛的，坚强的

参考例句：

• Most of successful men have the characteristics of contumacy and doughty.绝大多数成功人士都有共同的特质：脾气倔强，性格刚强。
• The doughty old man battled his illness with fierce determination.坚强的老人用巨大毅力与疾病作斗争。

3 canine   

adj.犬的，犬科的

参考例句：

• The fox is a canine animal.狐狸是犬科动物。
• Herbivorous animals have very small canine teeth,or none.食草动物的犬牙很小或者没有。

4 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

5 hormone   

n.荷尔蒙，激素，内分泌

参考例句：

• Hormone implants are used as growth boosters.激素植入物被用作生长辅助剂。
• This hormone interacts closely with other hormones in the body.这种荷尔蒙与体內其他荷尔蒙紧密地相互作用。

6 specially   

adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地

参考例句：

• They are specially packaged so that they stack easily.它们经过特别包装以便于堆放。
• The machine was designed specially for demolishing old buildings.这种机器是专为拆毁旧楼房而设计的。

7 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

8 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。

9 naturalist   

n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者)

参考例句：

• He was a printer by trade and naturalist by avocation.他从事印刷业，同时是个博物学爱好者。
• The naturalist told us many stories about birds.博物学家给我们讲述了许多有关鸟儿的故事。

10 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

11 naval   

adj.海军的，军舰的，船的

参考例句：

• He took part in a great naval battle.他参加了一次大海战。
• The harbour is an important naval base.该港是一个重要的海军基地。

12 harry   

vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼

参考例句：

• Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天，人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
• Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。

13 carapace   

n.（蟹或龟的）甲壳

参考例句：

• The tortoise pulled its head into his carapace.乌龟把头缩进它的壳里。
• He tickled gently at its glossy carapace,but the stubborn beetle would not budge.他轻轻地搔着甲虫光滑的壳，但这只固执的甲虫就是不动。

14 rib   

n.肋骨，肋状物

参考例句：

• He broke a rib when he fell off his horse.他从马上摔下来折断了一根肋骨。
• He has broken a rib and the doctor has strapped it up.他断了一根肋骨，医生已包扎好了。