VOA标准英语2012--Social Media Tracks Haiti's Cholera Epidemic

Social Media Tracks Haiti's Cholera¹ Epidemic²

Public health systems may be losing their monopoly on data about outbreaks of disease.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Childrens Hospital Boston found that news reports and social media can also collect accurate data, and deliver those results faster than government agencies.
When the cholera epidemic began in Haiti in late 2010, clinics and hospitals began sending reports to the Ministry³ of Public Health, which tracked the spread of the disease.
But at the same time, cholera stories began appearing in news reports, and social media users started talking about cholera in their Internet and mobile phone messages.
Rumi Chunara, who published her research in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene⁴, found that those so-called "informal media" did a good job of tracking the official reports.
"So we found that there were similar patterns, like when the number of cases went up, so did the amount of this informal media, and as well when the number of cases was coming down, this pattern continued in the informal media," she says.
For their study, Chunara and her colleagues looked at news reports and other online information aggregated⁵ on the four-year-old website HealthMap.org, plus Twitter messages that mentioned cholera using the Research.ly search platform.
Chunara says official public health reports and information from informal media both have their uses.
Official statistics are carefully validated⁶ but can take time to be processed and released. In contrast, news and social media reports can be much quicker, "but it doesn't go through a rigorous evaluation⁷ process. So it would be a good kind of indicator⁸ that something's about to happen or maybe a way to calculate epidemiological patterns in real time to just get an assessment⁹ of what's going on and to be able to deploy¹⁰ control measures a lot quicker."
As social media and other new information sources expand, Chunara says, their usefulness in the field of public health is also likely to grow.

1 cholera   

n.霍乱

参考例句：

• The cholera outbreak has been contained.霍乱的发生已被控制住了。
• Cholera spread like wildfire through the camps.霍乱在营地里迅速传播。

2 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

3 ministry   

n.(政府的)部；牧师

参考例句：

• They sent a deputation to the ministry to complain.他们派了一个代表团到部里投诉。
• We probed the Air Ministry statements.我们调查了空军部的记录。

4 hygiene   

n.健康法，卫生学 （a.hygienic）

参考例句：

• Their course of study includes elementary hygiene and medical theory.他们的课程包括基础卫生学和医疗知识。
• He's going to give us a lecture on public hygiene.他要给我们作关于公共卫生方面的报告。

5 aggregated   

a.聚合的，合计的

参考例句：

• He aggregated her to a political party. 他吸收她参加一政党。
• The audiences aggregated a million people. 观众总数达100万人。

6 validated   

v.证实( validate的过去式和过去分词 )；确证；使生效；使有法律效力

参考例句：

• Time validated our suspicion. 时间证实了我们的怀疑。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The decade of history since 1927 had richly validated their thesis. 1927年以来的十年的历史，充分证明了他们的论点。 来自辞典例句

7 evaluation   

n.估价，评价；赋值

参考例句：

• I attempted an honest evaluation of my own life.我试图如实地评价我自己的一生。
• The new scheme is still under evaluation.新方案还在评估阶段。

8 indicator   

n.指标；指示物，指示者；指示器

参考例句：

• Gold prices are often seen as an indicator of inflation.黃金价格常常被看作是通货膨胀的指标。
• His left-hand indicator is flashing.他左手边的转向灯正在闪亮。

9 assessment   

n.评价；评估；对财产的估价，被估定的金额

参考例句：

• This is a very perceptive assessment of the situation.这是一个对该情况的极富洞察力的评价。
• What is your assessment of the situation?你对时局的看法如何？

10 deploy   

v.（军）散开成战斗队形，布置，展开

参考例句：

• The infantry began to deploy at dawn.步兵黎明时开始进入战斗位置。
• The president said he had no intention of deploying ground troops.总统称并不打算部署地面部队。