[時事英文] Alzheimer’s Prediction May Be Found in Writing Tests

沒想到英文寫作可以用來預測阿爾茨海默症。

受試者當中應該沒有第二語言學習者吧。

音檔: https://bit.ly/3lcBTxr

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Alzheimer’s Prediction May Be Found in Writing Tests
阿爾茨海默症可以預測嗎？寫作測試也許提供了答案

Is it possible to predict who will develop Alzheimer’s disease simply by looking at writing patterns years before there are symptoms? According to a new study by IBM researchers, the answer is yes. And, they and others say that Alzheimer’s is just the beginning. People with a wide variety of neurological illnesses have distinctive language patterns that, investigators suspect, may serve as early warning signs of their diseases.

• Alzheimer’s disease 阿爾茨海默症
• symptoms 癥狀、症狀
• according to a new study 根據一個新研究
• a wide variety of 多種～的
• neurological illnesses 神經系統疾病
• distinctive language patterns 獨特的語言模式
• an early warning sign of ～的早期預警訊號

有沒有可能在出現癥狀之前的幾年裡，僅僅通過觀察書寫模式來預測誰會患上阿爾茨海默症？ 根據IBM研究人員的一項新研究，答案是肯定的。而且，他們和其他一些研究人員表示，阿爾茨海默症的預測只是開始。研究人員懷疑，患有多種神經系統疾病的人都有著獨特的語言模式，可能是他們疾病的早期預警信號。

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The researchers examined the subjects’ word usage with an artificial intelligence program that looked for subtle differences in language. It identified one group of subjects who were more repetitive in their word usage at that earlier time when all of them were cognitively normal. These subjects also made errors, such as spelling words wrongly or inappropriately capitalizing them, and they used telegraphic language, meaning language that has a simple grammatical structure and is missing subjects and words like “the,” “is” and “are.”

• word usage 詞彙使用情況
• subtle differences 細微差別
• artificial intelligence 人工智慧
• repetitive 重複的
• telegraphic language* 電報式語言
• simple grammatical structure 簡單的語法結構

研究人員利用一個人工智慧程序，檢查受試者的詞彙使用情況，尋找語言上的細微差別。他們鑒定出一組受試者，在早期所有人的認知能力都正常的情況下，他們的用詞重複情況更為嚴重。這些測試對象還會犯一些錯誤，比如拼寫錯誤或者大寫使用不當，而且會使用電報式語言——語法結構簡單，漏掉主語以及「the」、「is」和「are」這樣的詞。

*telegraphic language is speech during the two-word stage of language acquisition in children, which is laconic and efficient but lack of function words, tense and plural endings on nouns.

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The members of that group turned out to be the people who developed Alzheimer’s disease. The A.I. program predicted, with 75 percent accuracy, who would get Alzheimer’s disease, according to results published recently in The Lancet journal EClinicalMedicine. “We had no prior assumption that word usage would show anything,” said Ajay Royyuru, vice president of health care and life sciences research at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., where the A.I. analysis was done.

• develop a disease 患上疾病
• with % accuracy 準確率達～％
• no prior assumption 沒有先想到、先假設到
• usage （詞語或語言的）用法
• A.I. analysis 人工智慧分析

這群人後來都患上了阿爾茨海默症。根據《柳葉刀》(The Lancet)子刊《臨床醫學》(EClinicalMedicine)最近發表的研究結果，該人工智慧能夠預測誰將患上阿爾茨海默症，準確率達75%。「我們之前沒有想到用詞情況還有這個用途，」紐約州約克敦高地的IBM托馬斯·沃森研究中心(IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center)醫療保健和生命科學研究副總裁阿賈伊·羅伊尤魯(Ajay Royyuru)說。人工智慧分析就是在該中心進行的。

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文章來自《紐約時報》: https://nyti.ms/3pXsI5l

圖片來源: http://bit.ly/3qsX3sb

是不是你告密我違規的？
#小人物英文時間
在台灣打籃球的時候，常常聽到球友吹判走步，都烙了一句：walking！帶球走步其實不是walking耶！小人物上籃第269集更新每週在奧蘭多泡泡裡面發生的事情，球員到底是不小心還是故意地violation，violation就是違規的意思，『走步就是traveling violation』。
======
以下幾個都是違規的用法
infringe a patent 侵害專利權
invade privacy 侵犯隱私
======
Doc Rivers jokes about snitching on LeBron James, Gregg Popovich
快艇隊總教練開玩笑說：他已經告密舉報LeBron還有Pop
======
snitch就是『打小報告』、『告密』的意思
He snitched to my boss that I clocked out earlier yesterday!
他向老闆告密，說我昨天上班提早打卡下班！
She thought I'd snitched on her.
她認為是我告了她。
#小人物Patrick
派脆e起唸

【每日國際選讀】
#文末挑戰多益選擇題📝
中國經濟成長大幅放緩
將對各國產生劇烈衝擊？
開啟「接收通知」和「搶先看」每天吸收雙語時事新知
來讀華爾街日報獨家
🔥 Beijing Scraps GDP Target, a Bad Sign for World Reliant on China Growth
北京未設定GDP成長目標：對於仰賴中國的世界經濟，這是個不祥之兆

-scrap 取消、作廢，同discard
-reliant 有賴於、仰賴…的，搭配介系詞為 on

🧐 China broke with more than a quarter-century of tradition by not issuing an economic growth target for 2020, a stark acknowledgment of the challenges facing the world’s second-largest economy as it grapples with uncertainties around.

中國打破持續了近30年的傳統，沒有制定2020年的經濟成長目標，這明顯承認了這個全球第二大經濟體面臨的挑戰，眼下中國仍在努力應對新冠病毒大流行引發的不確定性。

-stark 荒涼的、嚴峻的、完全的、極端的、徹底的
✍常見用法： to be in stark contrast to sth 與某事形成鮮明對比
-acknowledgement 承認
-grapple with sth 努力應對、設法解決，意近struggle with

🚨The unusual move—it’s the first time a formal target has been omitted since the practice began in 1994—suggests Beijing’s leaders aren’t eager to unleash a large-scale stimulus after China’s sharpest contraction in four decades. It foreshadows more economic pain for a world that has become increasingly reliant on China as an engine of growth.
這是中國自1994年開始設定官方經濟成長目標以來，首次沒有提出一個數值目標。這一非同尋常的舉動表明，在中國經歷了40年來最嚴重的經濟萎縮之後，中國政府領導人並不急於推出大規模刺激措施。這預示著越發依賴中國作為成長引擎的全球經濟將面臨更多痛苦。

-omit 省略、刪除
-unleash 發動、展開
-stimulus 刺激（措施、因素），同 incentive
-foreshadow 預示

🔨China reported a 6.1% gain in gross domestic product last year—its slowest pace in nearly three decades, though within the targeted range of between 6.0% and 6.5%. The implicit acknowledgment of sharply slower growth for 2020 marks a climbdown for leader Xi Jinping during a year when he was set to proclaim the end of absolute poverty in the country and double the economy’s size from a decade earlier—political goals meant to burnish his standing ahead of next year’s centennial of the Chinese Communist Party’s founding.

去年中國國內生產總值（GDP）成長6.1%，為近30年來最低水平，但位於政府設定的成長6.0%-6.5%的目標區間內。對2020年經濟增速大幅放緩的含蓄承認，對中國國家主席習近平來說是一種退讓，他原本計畫宣佈中國在2020年消除絕對貧困，經濟規模較10年前成長一倍。這些政治目標的實現有助於在明年中國共產黨成立100週年之前提升他的地位。

gross domestic product (GDP) 國內生產總值
implicit 含蓄的、暗示的
climbdown 退讓、屈服、妥協
burnish 作動詞時有「將…擦亮」之意，同polish、brighten；作名詞時為「光亮、光澤」
centennial 一百週年

未完待續...
疲弱不振的中國經濟
中國政府將如何應對？
加入文末每日國際選讀計畫，解鎖完整語音導讀版

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原文連結請看留言
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❓❓多益模擬題❓:
Economists say the ____ urban jobless rate _____ many rural migrant workers who had flooded into the country’s biggest cities seeking employment but who have since returned to their home villages and thus aren’t counted in the official tally.
經濟學家稱，官方城鎮調查失業率未包括湧入中國大城市找工作而後來返鄉的大量農民工。

🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏼‍♀️
A. official / excludes
B. private / including
C. non-profit / included
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