墨尔本PTE素材库——Quasar Winds Clock In at a Fifth of Light Speed
2016/08/17墨尔本PTE素材库——This Shark Is the Vertebrate Methuselah
2016/08/17
墨尔本PTE素材库——Suicide Differences by Region Related to Gun Availability
中文批注
这段podcast是一段很好的社会科学类素材，主要解释了哈佛大学的一位教授认为枪支的获取与美国不同州之间自杀率的差异存在的关系。文章内容不算长，是一段很好的Summarize spoken/written text素材。当然用来练习Write from dictation也是很好的。
澳大利亚语言学院整理的PTE素材库，旨在用最贴近PTE Official Question Criteria的材料，最适合PTE难度和话题的素材，给大家提供一系列不同话题的PTE练习素材！让大家可以在平时练习听力、阅读、口语、写作，不至于陷入“题荒”的境地！
【Key Vocabulary】
likelihood n. 可能性
suicide n. 自杀
intimate adj. 亲密的，私人的
approximately adv. 大约，近似的
overwhelming adj. 压倒性的
ecological adj. 生态的，生态学的
psychiatrist n. 精神病学家
ideation n. 构思能力，思维能力
attempt v. 企图
Full Transcript
The presence of a gun increases the likelihood that someone in the home will die a violent death, particularly by suicide.
“One of the things we know for sure in the United States is that a gun in the home increases the likelihood that someone in the home will die a violent death—from gun accidents, from a woman being murdered by a man in an intimate partner violence situation and particularly by suicide.”
David Hemenway. He’s the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He’s also a professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. The gun violence discussion often seems to give short shrift to suicide, even though more than 60 percent of the approximately 32,000 annual U.S. firearms deaths are suicides. Hemenway spoke January 26th at a Harvard School of Public Health forum on gun violence as a public health issue.
“The evidence is overwhelming, from case control studies and ecological studies. For example, why do we have very different suicide rates across cities, across states, across regions in the United States. To explain the differences in suicide rates across states, turns out it’s not well explained at all by differences in mental health, it’s not well explained at all by differences in the number of psychiatrists, it’s not even explained by differences in suicide ideation among the population or even suicide attempts. What really explains the difference in the United States across the populations is the number of guns. Because it’s gun suicide which is so different.”
And someone who commits suicide with a gun very likely would not have either attempted or succeeded if the gun were not available. For example, a 2013 Swiss study tracked men after the size of the army was cut in half, effectively removing guns from half that group. The overall suicide rate went down, and the researchers estimated that only 22 percent of all the men who would have killed themselves with a gun if it had been available wound up committing the act by other means. The presence of the gun just makes it significantly easier to take your own life impulsively.
The entire hour-long forum featuring Hemenway and other researchers discussing gun violence as a public health issue is archived on line. Just google “Harvard public health forum”.
—Steve Mirsky
