墨尔本PTE素材库—World Parkinson’s Day Puts Spotlight on Condition

World Parkinson’s Day Puts Spotlight on Condition

中文批注

本段音频的主题是关于世界上第二大常见病症——帕金森病。虽然这是一篇医学类的文章，但是专业的医学词汇并不多，所以并不会造成大家对于该段音频的理解困难。

小编发现，有不少同学一听到是和医学相关的内容， 心里就不由自主的紧张，潜意识的觉得一定很难。其实不尽然。有些医学相关的内容用词并非含有大量的专业词汇，大多数时候还是会使用一些比较通俗易懂的语言来表达中心思想。所以大家并不用过于紧张哦！就好比这篇文章，vocabulary list也不是很长，也并非都是很难理解的医学词汇，大都是一些大家都听说过或者都知道的词汇，例如，neuroscientist，拆开理解成neuro-scientist，就非常容易理解啦！

AIL（澳大利亚语言学院）会定期整理一些不同话题类型的音频/视频，给大家练习听力以及阅读~ 都说PTE的备考资料不多，那么咱们就从基础抓起，提升词汇量，增强语感，也可以扩充自己的知识量！

[Key Vocabulary]

Neurodegenerative: adj. 神经变性的

Neuroscientist: n. 神经系统科学家

Slowness: n. 缓慢，迟钝

Tremor: n.【医】震颤，颤动

Rigidity: n.【物】硬度；【力】刚性；严格，刻板

Predominant: adj. 主要的，卓越的，有影响的

Cure: n. 治疗，治愈；Vt. 治疗，治愈；

Transformative: adj. 变化的，变形的，有改革能力的

Full Transcript

Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research CEO Todd Sherer, a neuroscientist, talks about the state of Parkinson’s Disease and research.

“Parkinson’s is the second most common neurodegenerative disease.”

Neuroscientist Todd Sherer, CEO of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Fox, of course, is the actor who has become the public face of Parkinson’s.

“And mostly its symptoms are characterized by motor symptoms. So patients or people who have Parkinson’s will have a slowness of movement, they could have a tremor in their arms, a lot of trouble walking and they can also have rigidity, so it’s hard to really bend and flex their muscles and limbs. That’s the predominant symptoms that people have.”

April 11th is World Parkinson’s Day. So designated because it’s the birthday of Dr. James Parkinson, who described the condition 200 years ago, in 1817. I spoke to Sherer April 10th.

“I think one of the things that has changed a lot about, in Parkinson’s Disease in the last decade and I do think a lot of this is because of the work of Michael J. Fox, is really raising awareness about this disease. Parkinson’s disease is something that people live with. It’s part of their life, but they are able to live with this and be productive and make great contributions to the world and also the contributions that they can make towards the search for a cure. So I think by raising awareness it can help people who have the disease today and their families deal with the disease, get the right information and the right treatments, and then also draw more attention on the need that we have for research and funds to support research, and the direction that we’re moving in that research.”

SM: And how many people in America and/or worldwide, what’s a best guest estimate?

“The best guess is that there’s about a million people in the United States with Parkinson’s and probably about 4 to 5 million worldwide…the greatest risk factor for getting Parkinson’s is being 60 years of age…so I think it’s also important to shine a lot on these age-related neurological diseases because we do have an aging population and now is the time to really invest in the research to try to get out in front of that challenge and develop new treatments, particularly transformative therapies.”

The full conversation with Sherer will appear as a Science Talk podcast in the coming days. And look for an essay by Sherer on the Scientific American website scheduled for publication at noon on April 12th, as well as the April 10th article on the site titled Cell Therapy 2.0: Reprogramming the Brain’s Own Cells for Parkinson’s Treatment.

—Steve Mirsky

(Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/world-parkinsons-day-puts-spotlight-on-condition/)