VOA标准英语2012--Wind Offers Clue to Curbing Malaria

Wind Offers Clue to Curbing¹ Malaria²

A team of scientists studying the patterns of malaria infection in rural Kenyan villages noticed that, despite a gradual reduction of malaria cases in the region, “hotspots” persisted.
The blood-sucking mosquitos that transmit the malaria parasite³ to humans breed in water.
So the researchers decided⁴ to examine the location of those breeding ponds in relation to the most infected villages. Their findings are published this week in Nature Communications.
Co-author David Smith, an epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, says a curious pattern emerged.
“In this study what we did is we looked at the locations of aquatic⁵ habitats and the locations of humans and we were trying to find out if there was some kind of clustering, which there should be and of course there was. But as we looked even closer what we found was that there was an association between the direction of the wind and the location of where people were at risk.”
Smith says while mosquitos aren’t particularly good flyers, their flight pattern is directed by the scent⁶ of a potential human host.
“We had a hypothesis that since scents⁷ travel down wind, that the mosquitos were actually tacking⁸ across the wind until they found one of those odor plumes⁹ and then tacking upwind until they found it. We should expect to find that places with higher risk were upwind of larval habitat.”
Smith and his research team studied 642 children living in Kenyan villages after the rainy season, when malaria peaks.
Janet Midega is a medical entomologist with the Kenya Medical Research Institute and co-author of the study. She says scientists compared the malaria case data with the proximity¹⁰ of stagnant¹¹ water pools. “What we did find was a lot of the pools of water did have immature¹² mosquito stages, and so we sampled these pools of water. We sampled these mosquitos and identified them as the mosquito species that is responsible for malaria transmission in the area.”
The study found that the shorter the distance from those larval incubators, the higher the prevalence of malaria.
Smith says factoring wind into the equation makes it possible to target larval pools downwind from malaria hotspots and so control the disease at its source.
“And the philosophy here is just that knowing it better we might be able to predict the distribution of risk a little bit better, or at least understand what mosquitos are doing so that we can do a better job of distributing nets or interventions¹³.”
Co-author Janet Midega says while plans are already underway to expand the study in Kenya, replicating¹⁴ it elsewhere presents an obvious challenge.
“The applicability of the outcome of these results will be extremely dependent on the local conditions and the mosquitos that are common in that local environment so that control measures are tailored for the local epidemiological situation.”
So, Midega says, prevention strategies will depend on where you live, as some 30 to 40 different mosquito species transmit malaria. Almost half the world’s population - about 3.3 billion people - is at risk. In fact, the mosquito-borne parasitic¹⁵ disease strikes some 250 million people every year, and results in nearly one million deaths, largely in sub-Saharan Africa.

1 curbing   

n.边石，边石的材料v.限制，克制，抑制( curb的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Progress has been made in curbing inflation. 在控制通货膨胀方面已取得了进展。
• A range of policies have been introduced aimed at curbing inflation. 为了抑制通货膨胀实施了一系列的政策。

2 malaria   

n.疟疾

参考例句：

• He had frequent attacks of malaria.他常患疟疾。
• Malaria is a kind of serious malady.疟疾是一种严重的疾病。

3 parasite   

n.寄生虫；寄生菌；食客

参考例句：

• The lazy man was a parasite on his family.那懒汉是家里的寄生虫。
• I don't want to be a parasite.I must earn my own way in life.我不想做寄生虫，我要自己养活自己。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 aquatic   

adj.水生的，水栖的

参考例句：

• Aquatic sports include swimming and rowing.水上运动包括游泳和划船。
• We visited an aquatic city in Italy.我们在意大利访问过一个水上城市。

6 scent   

n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉

参考例句：

• The air was filled with the scent of lilac.空气中弥漫着丁香花的芬芳。
• The flowers give off a heady scent at night.这些花晚上散发出醉人的芳香。

7 scents   

n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉

参考例句：

• The air was fragrant with scents from the sea and the hills. 空气中荡漾着山和海的芬芳气息。
• The winds came down with scents of the grass and wild flowers. 微风送来阵阵青草和野花的香气。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 tacking   

（帆船）抢风行驶，定位焊[铆]紧钉

参考例句：

• He was tacking about on this daily though perilous voyage. 他在进行这种日常的、惊险的航行。
• He spent the afternoon tacking the pictures. 他花了一个下午的时间用图钉固定那些图片。

9 plumes   

羽毛( plume的名词复数 )； 羽毛饰； 羽毛状物； 升上空中的羽状物

参考例句：

• The dancer wore a headdress of pink ostrich plumes. 那位舞蹈演员戴着粉色鸵鸟毛制作的头饰。
• The plumes on her bonnet barely moved as she nodded. 她点点头，那帽子的羽毛在一个劲儿颤动。

10 proximity   

n.接近，邻近

参考例句：

• Marriages in proximity of blood are forbidden by the law.法律规定禁止近亲结婚。
• Their house is in close proximity to ours.他们的房子很接近我们的。

11 stagnant   

adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的

参考例句：

• Due to low investment,industrial output has remained stagnant.由于投资少，工业生产一直停滞不前。
• Their national economy is stagnant.他们的国家经济停滞不前。

12 immature   

adj.未成熟的，发育未全的，未充分发展的

参考例句：

• Tony seemed very shallow and immature.托尼看起来好像很肤浅，不夠成熟。
• The birds were in immature plumage.这些鸟儿羽翅未全。

13 interventions   

n.介入，干涉，干预( intervention的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Economic analysis of government interventions deserves detailed discussion. 政府对经济的干预应该给予充分的论述。 来自辞典例句
• The judge's frequent interventions made a mockery of justice. 法官的屡屡干预是对正义的践踏。 来自互联网

14 replicating   

复制( replicate的现在分词 )； 重复； 再造； 再生

参考例句：

• Applications create these partitions for storing and replicating data. 应用程序创建这些分区用来储存和复制数据。
• The closest real things to these creatures were bits of self-replicating RNA. 最贴近这些造物的实物是能做一点微不足道的自复制的核糖核酸。

15 parasitic   

adj.寄生的

参考例句：

• Will global warming mean the spread of tropical parasitic diseases?全球变暖是否意味着热带寄生虫病会蔓延呢？
• By definition,this way of life is parasitic.从其含义来说，这是种寄生虫的生活方式。