VOA标准英语2014--类人猿感染埃博拉病毒

 

Ebola Also Strikes Great Apes 类人猿感染埃博拉病毒

While efforts continue to contain the Ebola outbreak among people in West Africa, researchers have a new technique to study Ebola among the Great Apes.  Thousands of the primates² are believed to have died from the disease in recent decades. The research could help predict where Ebola outbreaks might occur among humans.

Researchers have been studying Ebola in the wild for 30-years, but they say there’s still much they do not know. It’s difficult to safely capture wild animals in Africa’s rainforests, let alone take blood and tissue samples from them.

Dr. Kenneth Cameron is a Wildlife Conservation Society field veterinarian, who took part in the research. He spoke³ from the Republic of Congo capital Brazzaville:

“We’ve been doing Ebola ecology studies for a long period of time trying to further determine where Ebola comes from. How it spills over from presumed reservoir species to Great Apes in particular. And what effect it has specifically on those Great Ape populations. We know that it has some pretty devastating⁴ effects on Great Ape populations. We believe well in excess of 80-percent mortality when there is an Ebola epizootic amongst Great Apes.”

An epizootic is an epidemic⁵ among animals.

In the current West Africa Ebola outbreak, fruit bats are the prime suspect for being the source of the virus. Fruit bats are known as a reservoir species. That is, they can carry the Ebola virus and yet not get sick. Cameron said it’s not the same with Great Apes.

“We believe that Ebola virus has killed probably tens of thousands of Great Apes in the past 20 to 30 years in Central Africa. So it’s those populations that we’re concerned about. And what we wanted to find out is what individuals among those species and what populations of gorillas⁶ and chimpanzees have actually been exposed to Ebola virus,” he said.

Researchers believe Great Apes can become infected by being in close quarters with other animals that have similar feeding habits – animals that may carry the virus.

“They’ll be eating out of the same tree at the same time, for example. We typically call those trees magnet trees. Because when a magnet tree starts fruiting – for example, a fichus tree – the figs⁷ that are produced attract all kinds of animals. So many different species, including both the reservoirs and the susceptible⁸ hosts for Ebola virus.  That is to say the fruit bats and gorillas and chimps,” said Cameron

Infected bats may contaminate the tree’s fruit with their saliva⁹ and spread the virus through urine and feces on the ground.

Researchers sid that “understanding Ebola’s distribution in space and time is a matter of great importance to both human health and conservation communities.”

So, what is the new technique to study Ebola among Great Apes? The answer: studying fecal samples – primate¹ droppings.

Cameron said, “What we’re looking for is just feces, fresh feces, that have been dropped by Great Apes. Great Apes move around feeding and what not throughout the day. They obviously drop their feces as they go. We typically send teams out in what we call directed reconnaissance swab surveys. So it’s just a survey where they go and they just wander through the forest in areas where we know there are Great Apes looking for the feces – or they use GPS coordinates¹⁰, compass coordinates, to direct themselves from one point to the next looking for feces as they go.”

Depending how fresh it is – it’s considered fresh if its 12 to 24 hours old – the fecal sample is frozen and sent for testing back in the United States.

“Unfortunately,” Cameron said, “we’re not set up to be running the testing here in country. Our partners in developing this technique at the National Institutes of Health would run them in their laboratory. So, usually from the time of collection to the time of testing to know whether or not they had been exposed is usually weeks. We’re hoping to transfer that technology to our laboratory here in Brazzaville in Republic of Congo where we can do the testing in a much more timely basis.”

Apes are like humans in that they develop antibodies during a viral infection. It’s not known how long those antibodies remain in apes that survive infection or whether they can protect an ape from future outbreaks. But the samples may help predict potential Ebola hot zones.

“A lot of disease projections¹¹ – where diseases may erupt – comes out of mathematical epidemiological models that are conducted. We need more data to feed into these models. If we don’t have good data fit into them the results that we get out are not going to be meaningful. The data that we’re collecting here can feed into those mathematical models. It can help us predict where Ebola may occur next by determining which Great Apes have already been infected. So we know Ebola has been in a given region,” he said.

The Wildlife Conservation Society field veterinarian said typically in Central Africa human Ebola outbreaks follow epizootic outbreaks. Contaminated bushmeat is usually to blame.

Cameron said when researchers found evidence of Ebola among dead Great Apes they educated local communities about the disease – and asked them to report any wildlife carcasses they found so they could be examined for Ebola. Health officials were also notified. Studying fecal samples could create a better early warning system. 

1 primate   

n.灵长类（目）动物，首席主教；adj.首要的

参考例句：

• 14 percent of primate species are highly endangered.14%的灵长类物种处于高度濒危状态。
• The woolly spider monkey is the largest primate in the Americas.绒毛蛛猴是美洲最大的灵长类动物。

2 primates   

primate的复数

参考例句：

• Primates are alert, inquisitive animals. 灵长目动物是机灵、好奇的动物。
• Consciousness or cerebration has been said to have emerged in the evolution of higher primates. 据说意识或思考在较高级灵长类的进化中已出现。

3 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

4 devastating   

adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的

参考例句：

• It is the most devastating storm in 20 years.这是20年来破坏性最大的风暴。
• Affairs do have a devastating effect on marriages.婚外情确实会对婚姻造成毁灭性的影响。

5 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

6 gorillas   

n.大猩猩( gorilla的名词复数 )；暴徒，打手

参考例句：

• the similitude between humans and gorillas 人类和大猩猩的相像
• Each family of gorillas is led by a great silverbacked patriarch. 每个大星星家族都由一个魁梧的、长着银色被毛的族长带领着。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 figs   

figures 数字，图形，外形

参考例句：

• The effect of ring dyeing is shown in Figs 10 and 11. 环形染色的影响如图10和图11所示。
• The results in Figs. 4 and 5 show the excellent agreement between simulation and experiment. 图4和图5的结果都表明模拟和实验是相当吻合的。

8 susceptible   

adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的

参考例句：

• Children are more susceptible than adults.孩子比成人易受感动。
• We are all susceptible to advertising.我们都易受广告的影响。

9 saliva   

n.唾液，口水

参考例句：

• He wiped a dribble of saliva from his chin.他擦掉了下巴上的几滴口水。
• Saliva dribbled from the baby's mouth.唾液从婴儿的嘴里流了出来。

10 coordinates   

n.相配之衣物；坐标( coordinate的名词复数 )；（颜色协调的）配套服装；[复数]女套服；同等重要的人（或物）v.使协调，使调和( coordinate的第三人称单数 )；协调；协同；成为同等

参考例句：

• The town coordinates on this map are 695037. 该镇在这幅地图上的坐标是695037。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 projections   

预测( projection的名词复数 )； 投影； 投掷； 突起物

参考例句：

• Their sales projections are a total thumbsuck. 他们的销售量预测纯属估计。
• The council has revised its projections of funding requirements upwards. 地方议会调高了对资金需求的预测。