【Native Speaker每日综合训练—33系列】【33-05】科技

zxppx

Official Weibo: http://weibo.com/u/3476904471
大家好!胖胖翔来了! 公羊只需靠近母羊就能促进她们排卵，so easy?  澳大利亚保护海洋资源的措施是否有效？我们应该相信media的报道还是专家的观点？尽在今日科技，enjoy~

Part I：Speaker

【Rephrase1】
Article 1
Drugmakers Slash Spending On Doctors' Sales Talks

[Dialog, 4: 48]



Source:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/04/285298999/drugmakers-slash-spending-on-doctors-sales-talks

zxppx

Part II：Speed

【Time 2】
Article 2
Male scent stimulates female goats’ fertility
Single pheromone found to induce ovulation.

The distinctive aroma of goats does more than just make barnyards extra fragrant. Male goats can use their heady scent to make female goats ovulate simply by being near them.

Researchers had ascribed this 'male effect' to chemicals known as primer pheromones — a chemical signal that can cause long-lasting physiological responses in the recipient. Examples of primer pheromones are rare in mammals; the male effect in goats and sheep, and a similar effect in mice and rats, where the presence of males can speed up puberty in females, are the only known cases. But exactly what substances are at work and how has remained a mystery.

Now, reproductive biologist Yukari Takeuchi from the University of Tokyo and her colleagues have identified a single molecule, known as 4-ethyloctanal, in the cocktail of male goat pheromones that activates the neural pathway that regulates reproduction in females. ”It has long been thought that pheromones have pivotal roles in reproductive success in mammals, but the mechanisms are scarcely known,” says Takeuchi.

The researchers found that male goat pheromones are generally synthesized in the animal's head skin, so they designed a hat containing a material that captured their odorous molecules and placed them on the goats for a week to collect the scent. Analysis of the gases collected identified a range of compounds, many of which were unknown and were not present in castrated males. When exposed to a cocktail of 18 of these chemicals, the brains of female goats showed a sudden increase in the activity of the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) pulse generator — the neural regulator of reproduction.


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【Time 3】

Citrus overtones

But one molecule stood out: 4-ethyloctanal, a chemical not previously found in nature and that has an orangy, floral odour. When presented to the female goats on its own, the chemical elicited a similar, albeit weaker, response, and the cocktail showed less of an effect when that ingredient was removed. None of the other chemicals appeared to have a statistically significant effect. The work is published today in Current Biology.

Peter Brennan, a physiologist at the University of Bristol, UK, says that the work will be useful in husbandry in goats and other ruminants, such as sheep, but he is not sure that the whole effect can be ascribed to the pheromones alone. “How much of this effect is innate and how much is learned?” he asks. Takeuchi admits that she cannot be sure, but she thinks it is an innate reaction, because it was seen irrespective of the mating experience of the female goats.

The main benefit of the work, says Takeuchi, is that it could be used to develop new, more-natural technologies that improve the efficiency of breeding and to treat reproductive disorders. “To control reproductive problems, it is important to regulate not only inhibitory factors such as infection or stress, but also accelerative factors such as pheromones,” she says. The group is now looking to find similar pheromones and pathways in other economically important livestock animals, such as sheep and cows.


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Source:
http://www.nature.com/news/male-scent-stimulates-female-goats-fertility-1.14788


【Time 4】
Article 3
Marine reserves planned around commercial interests
Australia's seas tend to be set aside only where mining and fishing are not affected, study warns.

Every year more of the planet is placed under the protection offered by marine parks and reserves, and Australia has been at the forefront of this trend. But a review of the country's conservation policies published this week argues that the areas most in need of protection are being neglected while politicians cordon off only those spaces that commercial interests are happy to forgo.

Australia has been engaged in a long-running and controversial effort to create a network of marine reserves in its national waters, ranging from the world’s most famous collection of corals at the Great Barrier Reef in the east to the whale sharks that gather off Ningaloo in the west.

Now an international team argues that these efforts, most of which have come to fruition only since late 2012, have basically been for naught. Australia’s newly created marine-reserve network makes “almost no difference to ‘business as usual’ for most ocean uses”, the researchers write in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems.

The problem, the authors say, is that the system is mainly ‘residual’ — meaning that many of the areas placed off limits to commercial exploitation are those that will create least argument. The researchers looked at a number of factors in the Australian system of marine protected areas (MPAs), including the extent to which the newly established areas overlap with pre-existing fisheries and with areas exploited for the extraction of oil and gas. The team concludes that Australia’s seas have generally been set aside only where doing so would not get in the way of commercial uses.

Rodolphe Devillers, a geographer at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St John’s, Canada, who led the study, says that it demonstrates that the areas that are being placed under protection appear to be chosen with the aim of “minimizing conflict between stakeholders that would be politically inacceptable”. “The fact that MPAs were residual was expected, but the extent to which they actually are was surprising, if not scary, mostly for the new Australian reserve system.”


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【Time 5】


Robert Pressey, a marine scientist at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and a co-author of the study, says that no protected area can be considered pointless, as “something is always protected”. But, he says, “residual reservation is also a problem because, to many, it gives the mistaken appearance of conservation progress.”

Callum Roberts, a biologist who studies MPAs at the University of York, UK, says that he agrees in part with the study’s conclusions. “They are very right that we have done a really bad job up to now of protecting places in the thick of the biggest threats to biodiversity,” he says.

However, Roberts says that although a number of “big and remote” MPAs have been established in areas under little commercial pressure, many smaller MPAs — including some valuable ones — were hard won. “There are hard efforts underway to protect intensively used coastal areas too, resulting in many new MPAs every year. The Pressey paper glosses over them too easily,” he says.

“We need both approaches to run in parallel, but we especially need to get better at setting up MPAs in areas of intensive use, and giving them a high level of protection,” Roberts adds.

Australia’s marine-reserve plans have already been criticized as inadequate in some other studies, but have also attracted support for their ambition and the cohesive network of protection around the entire island that they stand to produce.

The current Australian government, which inherited the reserve system when it came to power in 2013, has pledged to look again at the network. Although some conservationists fear that this is a prelude to reducing the protection offered in favour of fishing and other commercial interests, Pressey says: “If the present federal government interprets our analyses correctly — and that would not be very difficult — then the obvious way to improve the MPA system is to increase, not reduce, the protection given to ecosystems and species.”


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Source:
http://www.nature.com/news/marine-reserves-planned-around-commercial-interests-1.14780


【Time 6】
Article 4
What's the Deepest a Fish Can Swim?

Ocean-going fish can’t live any deeper than 8200 meters, according to a new study. All fish have their limits—you’ll never find sharks below 4 kilometers, for example—but why there aren’t any fish at all below 8 kilometers remains a mystery. Now, a team of biologists say the threshold is set by two competing effects of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), a chemical in fish cells that prevents proteins from collapsing under high pressure. While fish should need more and more TMAO to survive ever greater depths, higher concentrations of the compound also draw in more and more seawater through osmosis, the process by which cells regulate their water content. In the deepest waters, high TMAO levels reverse osmosis pressure, swelling brain cells to the point that they stop working and, in principle, bursting red blood cells open. (The team says they’re still working on how other marine creatures like anemones and bacteria avoid such gruesome fates at the most extreme depths, but they suspect those organisms produce more efficient protein boosters than fish can.) To test that claim, the team looked 7000 meters down in the Kermadec Trench north of New Zealand. There, they captured five Notoliparis kermadecensis snailfish (pictured above alongside a brittle star, Ophiura loveni), whose record TMAO levels and osmosis pressures matched projections the researchers made based on shallower dwelling fish. Extrapolating the new results just a bit further, they find osmosis should reverse itself at a depth of 8200 meters—right about where fish no longer swim the sea.


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Source:
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/03/scienceshot-whats-deepest-fish-can-swim?rss=1

zxppx

Part III： Obstacle

【Paraphase7】
Article 5
Scientist-versus-activist debates mislead the public
The UK floods show the need to address the risks of climate change, but news teams still insist on pitching experts against sceptics, says Simon L. Lewis.


The British are famous for conversations about the weather, and this winter there has been much to talk about. The United Kingdom’s December–February rainfall was the highest since records began in 1910. Tracts of southern England have been flooded for weeks. The army has been deployed to build flood defences. Once again, climate change has floated to the top of the UK political agenda.

Extreme weather tends to do that — a similar dynamic has been seen across the world. After Hurricane Sandy hit the United States in 2012, climate change became a presidential election issue. In Australia, floods, droughts and heatwaves have pushed the topic in a way that reports from climate scientists could not.

As a scientist who has been on the wrong end of climate change misreporting (see Nature 468, 7; 2010), this surge of interest begs the question: has the often dysfunctional relationship between science and the media improved this time around?

Certainly, the question posed by journalists in response to an extreme weather event — “Is this caused by climate change?” — is sensible and good news. Such questioning implicitly accepts the basic science that the climate is changing and that human activity has a central role. It moves the discussion on to the severity of the impacts, rather than the existence of a problem.

It is a promising question, but too often we hear that no single weather event can be attributed to climate change. Although that used to be the case, research has moved on. Last September, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published analyses from 18 research groups examining 12 extreme weather events from 2012 (hurricanes, droughts, severe cold, floods and heatwaves) and concluded that anthropogenic climate change was a contributing factor to half of the extremes examined. The answer to “Is it caused by climate change?” is now: “I’ll tell you after the analyses are complete and the results have been published.”

Yet the people directly affected — the public — have a different question for scientists: “Will this happen to me again?” In other words, is the current event in line with what we expect to be happening? Will this type of event occur with increased frequency or magnitude in the future? For the UK floods, the answer is an uncontroversial “yes”. A 2004 report by the then government chief scientist David King identified flooding as a serious impact of climate change for the United Kingdom.

By approaching questions about extreme weather and climate change in this way, scientists can avoid a common trap set by ‘climate sceptics’ and the media: drawing us into a refusal to say definitively whether a given event is caused by climate change. Furthermore, this approach separates scientists from such sceptics because focusing on past predictions and model projections — even if uncertain — highlights that climate contrarians have not produced alternative predictive models, and therefore have little to contribute.

Some things have not improved this time around, however. The reporting on the UK floods again shows that scientists must be more vocal if the public are to receive more-accurate information from the media. Extreme events that are consistent with climate-change projections should open public debate about risk and societal responses. Images of flooded homes illustrate the danger to long-term investments that really matter to people. The demand is there for a valuable discussion, first on the science — the past projections and the results of attribution studies — and then on the possible political responses. Instead, the United Kingdom was again treated to a series of scientist-versus-climate-contrarian debates that conflate the two.

Most controversially, BBC Radio 4’s news programme Today broadcast a debate between leading climatologist Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London and Britain’s most influential climate contrarian, and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson. Unsurprisingly, Lawson mangled the science, incorrectly stating that there had been no recent global increase in air temperature and that measurements of ocean temperature were “pure speculation”. BBC editorial guidelines state: “The BBC must not knowingly and materially mislead its audiences. We should not distort known facts.” Clearly, the BBC failed.

Why does this happen? In short, producers do not want an inbox of complaints, and climate sceptics complain if they are not represented. And executives might feel they need to ‘be fair’ by bringing in sceptics. Of course, accuracy is in conflict with this notion of balance. So scientists should debate science with other scientists — there is enough disagreement about the details of climate change to give the BBC their desired conflict. If Lawson is to be wheeled out to debate climate change, then let him argue on policy responses with another activist who promotes a different plan of action. Lawson leads a policy-advocate organization, so put him up against the head of Greenpeace. It would be a lively debate. Separating the science from the policy response in this way is crucial to avoid mismatching interviewees as the BBC has done, with inevitably misleading consequences.

When this separation does not happen, scientists of all stripes should kick up a fuss. As a starting point, here is Lawson’s BBC interview transcript: go.nature.com/nvrhar. And here is the complaint form: go.nature.com/boofqk.


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Source:
http://www.nature.com/news/scientist-versus-activist-debates-mislead-the-public-1.14761

jenniferlyy125

Day 29

--speaker

The conversation talks that the payments given to doctors and other professionals for promoting products are slashing, and the investigation of the speaker was introduced. First, the background of the payments in medicine industry was introduced, and companies have long worked with physicians for promoting sales of their products.

This phenomenon has been controversial in recent years since huge amount of money has been putting to settle corresponding lawsuits, and major universities prohibit giving talks, indicating less favorable attitudes to the products. In addition, big companies, such as Lily, cut almost half of the spending on payments, since big blogbusters lost their patterns and face competitions. The drugs will not be prescribed any more and patients will look their physicians.

At last, the next step for the companies is to shift funding to those practitioners who do not have to be disclosed.

---speed

1.      1’26

One pheromone of male goats can promote the ovulation of females. And researchers have found that a single molecule, 4E, and other unknown elements in compounds are able to activate the neural regulations of female reproduction.

2.      1’18

The 4E showed strongest effect on ovulation and physiologist peter thinks it is a natural reaction of the female. The finding of this phenomenon can be used to develop techs that can help improve reproduction of similar animals.

3.      1’50

An international team argues against the efforts of Australian marine reserves, which ignored the most required protection areas, while only protect those areas where commercial interests should be banned. The real reason behind is to minimize conflicts between shareholders.

4.      1’25

Although the Australian marine reserves network was widely criticized, there were still supporters on its ambition and orientation. The current government is trying to reevaluate the network, and more MPAs and protection are expected to maintain in the future.

5.      1’13

Biologists hypothesized that the level a fish can live is depended on two competing effects of TMAO. Then, researchers looked down 7000 meters to test its claim. The results show even further---the deepest level fish can swim is 8200 meters.

----obstacle

4’30

Climate change issue has been on the top of UK political agenda, and extreme weathers are sweeping around the world.

Climate change is attributed to human activities, and certainly more climate events will occur according to recent climate trends.

The debate and discussion between science and politics are undergoing, and politics, as usual, would use media and political power to disguise the real climate prediction and situation.

awayawei

抢个小板凳！！！拖后腿了，把坑补上~~~

Speaker
Drug makers slash payment of promoting products on doctors.Some pharmaceutical companies have paid kickbacks to physicians if the doctorers prescribe their products.
The reason of the decline may be: 1. Some products lost patten those companies do not need to maintain. 2. Patients are more likely to check doctors' financial relationship with the pharmaceutical companies.
Sunshine Act will cause more effect of physicians. But money from drup companies may shift to other ways this Act doesn't require to disclose.

Speed
Time2 00:02:07.7 270words
It's found that the sent of male goat can stimulate female reproduction.
This primer pheromones has happened in rare cases of mammals, such as goats and rats.
Reseachers have designed a test to study the mechanism. And they found that the sent triggers a regulator of reproduction in the brains of female goats.

Time3 00:01:41.35 236words
A special chemical is found to have significant effect yet it has not been learned a lot by now.
But this finding of work will benefit breeding and treatment of reproductive disorders.

Time4 00:02:07.09 335words
It's reported that Australia protects marine areas only with least commercial conflict.
Almost the whole new reserve system is residual.

Time5 00:01:53.92 320words
Although some big areas have been protected, some small valuable sites are hard to protect.
Australia goverment should increase the protection not reduce them.

Time6 00:01:59.91 253words
Two competing effects of a chemical TMAO impact how deep a fish can swim.Fish need more TMAO to survive in deep sea and high TMAO levels reverse osmosis pressure.  

sherlock1992

Thx, PPX~       落下好多，明天早起补上。
------------------------------------------------------------------
Speaker:
*generic competition: 非专利的竞争，即某些专利技术时效已过，成本大幅度降低，从而引起的激烈竞争。

drugmakers slash spending on doctors' sales talks

Pharmaceutical companies gradually cut the payments on doctors' promotion talks. There are two reasons: the first one is that the validity of some medicines, which are even in dominant position in certain markets, is going to expire and then, these dominant drugmakers will face generic competition. Thus, they choose to slash the spending on docs's sales talks to decrease the cost. The second reason lies in the requirement of Affordable Care Act. This act forces drugmakers to disclose the payments pharmaceutical companies paid to physicians. Rather, it does not means the cooperation door between drugmakers and physicians has shut down, there still has some other ways like research funds that the two can work together.

xiaofan0205

我来晚了，谢谢胖胖翔！

Speaker:
This conversation talks about the payment spending on Doctor's sales talk. First, the host ask the guest talk about the background of the payment they used to pay doctors to improve the sales, then they indicate that it's the lawsuit why more and more medical companies cut this payment, for example, Lily cut almost in half of this payment, finally, they discuss what the medical companies will do in the future to promoting their drugs after they slash the payment, other methods such as research funding will be used.

Time2: 2'21"
Male goats can use their heady scent to make female goats ovulate simply by being near them, a single molecule maybe the reason.

Time3: 1'42"
The study of this pheromones could be used to develop technologies that improve the efficiency of breeding and to treat reproductive disorders.

Time4: 2'39"
A study finds that the areas that being placed under protection appear to be chosen with the aim of minimizing conflict between stakehoulders that would be politically inacceptable.

Time5: 2'12"
Some experts don't agree with the conclusion of the study, they think the way to improve the MPA systerm is to increase the protection given to ecosystems and species.

Time6: 2'15"
Scientists claim that fish need more TMAO to survive ever greater depths, and they test this claim by study the snailfish that found under the 7000 meters sea.

Obstacle: 5'44"

The British are famous for conversation about the whether, but the dysfunctional relationship between science and the media has not improved. The reporting on the UK floods shows that scientist must be more vocal if the public are to receive more-accurate information from the media, and scientists should debate science with other scientists so that the debate will not mislead the audiences.

疏离无罪

占~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaker:Many large pharmaceutical companies in the US are slashing spendings on doctors' sale talks.Several reasons were mentioned in the talk.One of the reasons may be that the new law will require pharmaceutical companies to report their payments to doctore to the public.And another reason may be that the money spent on educational program may be more expensive than launching a new medicine.More companies choose to put the money in the research now.

01:17
Male goats can stimulate female goats' fertility by 4-ethyloctanal which is released from the head skin from male goats.

00:56
This finding can be useful in husbandary in goats.But how much of this effect is affected by this molecule.But this can be used to develop a new tech.

01:35
Australia's action of building ocean protection zone is helpless to protect the ocean enviornment since these places are chosen with the aim of minimizing conflict between stakeholders.

01:30
MPAs which are under big commercial pressure are hard to protect the biodiversity and the enviornment.Those area which are in intense use should be protected most.

00:57
All fish have their limits on the depth they swim.It depends on TMAO.

05:24
Main Idea:the media mislead audience in climate change
Extreme weather happened everywhere in the world in the past few years.And scientists thought that the climate change is the main reason.And study shows that more than half of the extreme weathers happened from 2012 are caused by climate change.And extreme weather may occur again in the future after the research.
But the media does not attribute these extreme weather to climate change,and raised several debate which mislead audience.Many medias do this because they do not want to receive complaints from climate sceptics.
Science should be separated from policy response,and scientists should have a debate with scientists.This will not mislead audience any more.And scientists should be more vocal to give public more accurate information.

cherry6891

占位~~~~

Obstacle 6:30 British is famous for conversations about the weather--big rainfall lead to flood for weeks,and similar dynamic happened across the world--beg a question(dysfunctional relationship between science and media improve this ?)--it is caused by the climate change and human activity--the public question(will this happen again)--the research of past predictions and model projections highlights that climate contrarians has not produced alternative predictive models--in a debate,L mangled the science and put forward the measurement of ocean temperature as pure speculation

Article2 1:30

--the head scent of male makes female goats ovulate,however what substances are at work and how has remained a mystery

3 1:23 finally Japan scientist found the chemical really works-4..,but still unsure that the whole effect can be ascribe to the pheromones alone

Article 3 4 5 4;25

Australia engaged in a  long-running and controversial effort to create a network of marine reserves in its national water. But newly created marine-reserve network make business as usual,which have been set aside only where doing so would not get in the way of commercial use.Hopefully,the government increase the protection given to the ecosystems

Article4 6

The chemical TMAO can help fish to live in the deep sea by preventing protein from collapsing under high pressure. Then they find fish below 7000 meters to test that claim

AceJ

紧跟Cherry

Drugmakers Slash Spending On Doctors' Sales Talks
Study led by Charles found that drug makers spent a lot of money on doctor to promote their products
Some doctors can earn hundreds of thousands dollars a year for speaking engagements
In terms of cut of payment, here is thing, one, big busters; two, a wave of transparency
What are these makers going to do next? Research funds …

Male scent stimulates female goats’ fertility
Time2: 1'36" what substances are at work to "male effect" and how has remained a mystery
Time3: 1'24" a single molecule, known as 4-ethyloctanal has been identified in 'male effect', but How much of this effect is innate and how much is learned still remain unknown

Marine reserves planned around commercial interests
Time4: 2'35" Efforts that establish marine parks and protection reserve have basically been for naught. The problem is that the system is mainly "residual"
Time5: 2'27" Roberts agrees in part with conclusions by Pressey because he thinks There are hard efforts underway to protect intensively used coastal areas too.

What's the Deepest a Fish Can Swim?
Time6: 1'52" why ocean-going fish can't live deeper than 8200m? The myth is two competing effects of trimethylamine N-oxide and osmosis

Scientist-versus-activist debates mislead the public
Time7: 7'46"
Extreme weather tends to do that — a similar dynamic has been seen across the world
has the often dysfunctional relationship between science and the media improved this time around? Some things have not improved this time around, however