VOA慢速英语2015 气象卫星研究天气变化可预测疾病

Satellites Study Weather Conditions, Predict Diseases 气象卫星研究天气变化可预测疾病

Meningitis is spreading across West Africa. The brain disease is a threat every year across 21 African countries. Health officials call this area, “the meningitis belt.”

Now, scientists have found they can predict and prepare for this and other diseases. How? They use information from satellites orbiting the Earth.

Every year, dust storms blow across the Sahel area of Africa. And every year, meningitis crosses the Sahel after the storms. Carlos Perez Garcia-Pando is an atmospheric¹ scientist with the American space agency NASA. He spoke² to VOA on Skype.

“Meningitis has been one of the most feared dry season diseases in Africa for a long time.”

The Sahel stretches from the West African nation of Senegal to Ethiopia in the east. Tens of thousands of people across this area get the disease each year. About 10 percent of those infected die from the disease. Another 10 to 20 percent suffer permanent brain or nerve damage.

Mr. Garcia-Pando says scientists have yet to understand why meningitis appears to follow the seasonal³ dust storms in the Sahel. But he says experts do have the technology to study the storms. Satellites can watch these storms develop and examine the conditions that create them.

The NASA scientist says dust storms are his specialty⁴. Yet he admits he had not studied meningitis until the World Health Organization contacted him.

There are not enough vaccines⁵ available to protect everyone in the Sahel from meningitis. But Mr. Perez Garcia-Pando says it would help to know when and where the disease will strike.

So he and other researchers developed a system that studies satellite measurements of dust, wind and humidity levels across the Sahel. The researchers also need to know the number of cases already identified by the end of the year. Using this information, they found they could predict how bad the next meningitis season would be.

This is just one of several ways experts are looking to the skies for help in predicting the spread of disease.

Nita Bharti is with Penn State University. She says she can predict the spread of measles⁶ by watching city lights grow brighter.

“The changes in brightness are telling us something about increasing and decreasing human aggregation⁷, and that’s very likely driving the transmission of measles.”

Ms. Bharti spoke to VOA on Skype. She says the disease measles loves a crowd. In Niger’s capital, Niamey, the population grows in the dry season as farmers arrive from the countryside. They are looking for work in the city.

Brightness from their electric lights and cooking fires can be seen in satellite imagery of the area. Ms. Bharti and her team found they could predict how measles would spread through Niamey by watching parts of the city light up.

“The satellite can become a really powerful public health tool.”

That was Rita Colwell of the University of Maryland. Her group found it could predict cases of the deadly disease cholera⁸ in Bangladesh by using satellite information about conditions in the Bay of Bengal.

Cholera bacteria live on sea creatures that eat very small organisms known as plankton⁹. She and NASA researchers thought they could predict an increase in cholera cases by studying plankton levels in the water.

“I’ll never forget. We were doing the calculations, and ‘bingo’! It just fell right into place. It was very exciting.”

Her group and other researchers hope to use satellites in disease prediction as other scientists use them to predict the weather.

Words in This Story

belt – n. an area or place where a culture, a kind of crop or life forms are found

atmospheric – adj. relating to the atmosphere

humidity – adj. relating to wetness; n. – amount of moisture, wetness, in the atmosphere.

imagery – n. photographs or pictures

1 atmospheric   

adj.大气的，空气的；大气层的；大气所引起的

参考例句：

• Sea surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation are strongly coupled.海洋表面温度与大气环流是密切相关的。
• Clouds return radiant energy to the surface primarily via the atmospheric window.云主要通过大气窗区向地表辐射能量。

2 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。

3 seasonal   

adj.季节的，季节性的

参考例句：

• The town relies on the seasonal tourist industry for jobs.这个城镇依靠季节性旅游业提供就业机会。
• The hors d'oeuvre is seasonal vegetables.餐前小吃是应时蔬菜。

4 specialty   

n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长

参考例句：

• Shell carvings are a specialty of the town.贝雕是该城的特产。
• His specialty is English literature.他的专业是英国文学。

5 vaccines   

疫苗，痘苗( vaccine的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His team are at the forefront of scientific research into vaccines. 他的小组处于疫苗科研的最前沿。
• The vaccines were kept cool in refrigerators. 疫苗放在冰箱中冷藏。

6 measles   

n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子

参考例句：

• The doctor is quite definite about Tom having measles.医生十分肯定汤姆得了麻疹。
• The doctor told her to watch out for symptoms of measles.医生叫她注意麻疹出现的症状。

7 aggregation   

n.聚合，组合；凝聚

参考例句：

• A high polymer is a very large aggregation of units.一个高聚物是许多单元的非常大的组合。
• Moreover,aggregation influences the outcome of chemical disinfection of viruses.此外，聚集作用还会影响化学消毒的效果。

8 cholera   

n.霍乱

参考例句：

• The cholera outbreak has been contained.霍乱的发生已被控制住了。
• Cholera spread like wildfire through the camps.霍乱在营地里迅速传播。

9 plankton   

n.浮游生物

参考例句：

• Plankton is at the bottom of the marine food chain.浮游生物处于海洋食物链的最底层。
• The plankton in the sea feeds many kinds of animals. 海的浮游生物成为很多种动物的食物。