科普類的英文文章閱讀
科普類報刊作為科學技術傳播的一個重要平臺,在科技傳播中起到了非常重要的作用。小編分享科普類的英文文章，希望可以幫助大家!
科普類的英文文章：Astronomers
Using ESO telescopes and other facilities have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a little more massive than the Earth and is the closest exoplanet to us -- and it may also be the closest possible abode for life outside the Solar System. A paper describing this milestone finding will be published in the journal Nature on 25 August 2016. Just over four light-years from the Solar System lies a red dwarf star that has been named Proxima Centauri as it is the closest star to Earth apart from the Sun. This cool star in the constellation of Centaurus is too faint to be seen with the unaided eye and lies near to the much brighter pair of stars known as Alpha Centauri AB.
During the first half of 2016 Proxima Centauri was regularly observed with the HARPSspectrograph on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile and simultaneouslymonitored by other telescopes around the world. This was the Pale Red Dot campaign, in which a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé, from Queen Mary University of London, was looking for the tiny back and forth wobble of the star that would be caused by the gravitational pull of a possible orbiting planet].
As this was a topic with very wide public interest, the progress of the campaign between mid-January and April 2016 was shared publicly as it happened on the Pale Red Dot website and via social media. The reports were accompanied by numerous outreach articles written by specialists around the world.
Guillem Anglada-Escudé explains the background to this unique search: "The first hints of a possible planet were spotted back in 2013, but the detection was not convincing. Since then we have worked hard to get further observations off the ground with help from ESO and others. The recent Pale Red Dot campaign has been about two years in the planning."
科普類的英文文章：如何減少老年人的骨折風險
Lebanon, NH -- ***Aug. 22, 2016*** Fragility fractures -- those that occur at standing height -- are a significant source of sickness and death among the elderly population in the United States. They are also associated with annual direct costs of over $16 billion. As the U.S. population ages, there is an urgent need ***and real opportunity*** to identity individuals at risk for fracture and to find ways to reduce their occurrence. In pursuit of this goal, a team of researchers from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and the Boston University School of Public Health recently looked at whether there was an opportunity to reduce exposure toprescription drugs associated with fracture risk among one high-risk group --older adults who have already experienced a first fragility fracture. Previous research has shown that not only are such patients at a significantly increased risk of experiencing a second fracture, but that the risk is greatest in the first six months after the first fracture.
In the study, published online by JAMA Internal Medicine, the researchers analyzed data from a sample of 168,133 Medicare beneficiaries ***84% of whom were women with an average age of 80*** who experienced a fracture of the hip, shoulder of wrist ***the most common type of fragility fractures***. The researcher team identified 21 drug classes that have been associated with increased fracture risk. After examining them as a single group, they then subdivided them into three groups: those drugs thought to increase fracture risk by increasing the risk of falls, those that decrease bone density, and those in which the mechanism which caused greater fracture risk was unclear. Medicare Part D retail pharmacy claims were used to measure fills for prescriptions associated with increased fracture risk both before and after the fracture occurred. Among their findings after analysis:
More than three-quarters of the patients in the study were exposed to at least one non-opiate drug associated with an increased fracture risk in the four months before their fracture.
About 7 percent of patients discontinued these drugs after their fracture but that decrease wasoffset by new users so the total proportion exposed to high risk drugs did not change.
"The use of drugs that can contribute to elevated fracture risk was common among the group we studied," said lead author Jeffrey Munson, MD, MSCE, assistant professor at The Dartmouth Institute. "To add to that, we did not see a consistent reduction in the use of these drugs after the fracture event. So that allows for the strong possibility we may be able to prevent at least some of these secondary fragility fractures through better management of high-risk drugs around the time of the first fracture."
科普類的英文文章：與家庭成員關係密切的老年人死亡機率小
For older adults, having more or closer family members in one's social network decreases his or her likelihood of death, but having a larger or closer group of friends does not, finds a new study that will be presented at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association ***ASA***. "We found that older individuals who had more family in their network, as well as older people who were closer with their family were less likely to die," said James Iveniuk, the lead author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. "No such associations were observed for number of or closeness to friends."
Titled, "Social Relationships and Mortality in Older Adulthood," the study used nationally representative data from the 2005/2006 and 2010/2011 survey waves of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project ***NSHAP***, to investigate which aspects of social networks are most important for postponing mortality. Mortality of wave one respondents, who were 57 to 85-years old, was assessed at wave two.
In the first wave, these older adults were asked to list up to five of their closest confidants, describe in detail the nature of each relationship, and indicate how close they felt to each person. Excluding spouses, the average number of close confidants named was 2.91, and most older adults perceived high levels of support from their social contacts. Additionally, most respondents were married, in good physical health, and reported not being very lonely.
Iveniuk and co-author L. Philip Schumm, a senior biostatician at the University of Chicago, found that older adults who reported feeling "extremely close" on average to the non-spousal family members they listed as among their closest confidants had about a six percent risk of mortality within the next five years, compared to approximately a 14 percent risk of mortality among those who reported feeling "not very close" to the family members they listed.
Furthermore, the study found that respondents who listed more non-spousal family members in their network -- irrespective of closeness -- had lower odds of death compared to those who listed fewer family members. "Regardless of the emotional content of a connection, simply having a social relationship with another person may have benefits for longevity," Iveniuk said.
Iveniuk said he was surprised that feeling closer to one's family members and having more relatives as confidants decreased the risk of death for older adults, but that the same was not true of relationships with friends.