Week4_20240120PDF.pdf

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1、 周一 Women Must Take Cervical Health Seriously .2 周二 Why our fear of cancer is outdated .5 周三 The Internet Is Being Ruined by Bloated Junk .9 周四 Nanoplastics are dangerous .13 周五 A new book looks at the past and future .16 周六 Cities are not ready for climate change .19 周日 AI-generated content is rais

2、ing the value .22 新英文外刊公众号1 新英文新英文外刊外刊 20240120 每周精选 Week03 Contents 目录 新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 2/24 Women Must Take Cervical Health Seriously In 2024,we can make great strides against cervical cancer.The blueprint is simple.Get tested,get vaccinated,and stay healthy.As millions of Americans follow thro

3、ugh on their New Years resolutions to exercise more and eat better,heres another one:Take cervical health seriously.January marks Cervical Health Awareness Month,an annual reminder that cervical cancer is a very real threat to women around the country.Each year in the U.S.,nearly 12,000 new cases of

4、 cervical cancer are diagnosed and about 4,000 women die from it.While that number isnt in the millions or tens of millions,late-stage cervical cancer is on the rise,with Jan 12,2024|611 words|新英文课堂 扫码听音频 新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 3/24 far too many people missing their screening appointments for one reaso

5、n or another.Cervical cancer is preventable and treatable,if detected early.Cervical cancer develops in a womans cervix,which is the entrance to the uterus from the vagina.Almost all cervical cancer cases(99 percent)are linked to infection with high-risk human papillomaviruses(HPV),an extremely comm

6、on virus transmitted through sexual contact.In fact,HPV is the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract.Most sexually active women(and men)will be infected at some point in their lives,and some may be repeatedly infected.Scary,right?Not necessarily.Pap smears every three years,annual ch

7、eck-ups,and other screenings allow women to detect cervical cancer early.And,the earlier it is detected,the more treatable cervical cancer becomes.In many ways,the well-woman exam is the most important health visit of the year for female patients.Theres no reason to be afraid.Cervical cancer doesnt

8、need to be a deadly disease.Early stages typically dont involve symptoms and can be difficult to detect,but the routine pap smear is key,identifying any abnormal cells,and making treatment possible.The HPV vaccineavailable since 2006is also crucial for prevention.Since the vaccines introduction,rate

9、s of cervical cancer incidence have dropped significantly among vaccinated women.For instance,one study from Sweden found that,between 2006 and 2017,there was a 90 percent reduction in cervical cancer incidence for women who received the vaccine as opposed to those who didnt.HPV vaccination prevents

10、 cervical cancer.In 2024,we can make great strides against cervical cancer.The blueprint is simple.Get tested,get vaccinated,and stay healthy.Pap tests and HPV tests are not only simple and quick,but they are also covered by most 新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 4/24 health insurance providers.As part of North A

11、mericas largest manufacturer of COVID-19 testing swabs,I cant emphasize the importance of testing enoughthere is simply no excuse not to take advantage of the various tests currently available for clinical use.From Qiagens Hybrid Capture II HPV test to others produced by Hologic/Gen-Probe,testing is

12、 fortunately plentiful in todays America.The need for testing doesnt stop at cervical cancer,although it is critical.The likes of chlamydia,gonorrhea,and syphilis affect millions of Americans every year,and they too can be detected earlybefore they cause serious harm.While syphilis is confirmed thro

13、ugh a blood test,both gonorrhea and chlamydia tests can be conducted with swab samples of the genitals,throat,or anus.As we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic,tests and vaccines save lives.We can take that same lesson and apply it to preventable,treatable diseases like cervical cancer,dropping mor

14、tality rates and making womens health a top priority in 2024.Womens health has become a catchy headline.It is a popular buzzword,bandied about by politicians and advertisers alike.But,if we are truly serious about making women healthier in the new year,that resolution begins with cervical health thi

15、s month.Talk aside,it comes down to taking action,so women can take control of their lives.Get vaccinated,get tested,and stay healthy.What are you waiting for?新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 5/24 Why our fear of cancer is outdated and harmful Our dread of the Emperor of All Maladies,learned decades ago,is now o

16、ut of date and doing great harm on its own.We have feared cancer more than any other disease since it became the No.2 cause of death in the United States in the 1920s(after heart disease).Although the promise of“the cure”for cancer remains unfulfilled,we have made great progress.Cancer mortality in

17、the United States is down 33 percent in just the past three decades.As many as two-thirds of all cancers can now be treated as chronic conditions or cured outright.Yet our deep fear of the disease stubbornly persists.And no wonder.Progress notwithstanding,a diagnosis of cancer is still thought to be

18、 a death sentence.When a January 8,2024|834 words|新英文课堂 扫码听音频 新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 6/24 national survey asked people for the first word that came to mind when they heard the word“cancer,”more than half replied“death.”And,indeed,this family of more than 200 types of disease continues to be a cruel kil

19、ler,of roughly 600,000 Americans a year.People we know.People we care for.But for all that harm,consider the cost of our cancerphobia,a fear that in some ways no longer matches the facts.We now know that tens of thousands of common breast,prostate and thyroid cancers that are detected early never go

20、 on to do any harm.People“overdiagnosed”with these types of cancer are understandably frightened and usually choose more aggressive treatment than their clinical conditions require.Such“fear-ectomies”cause great harm,leading to side effects that range from moderate to severe and include death itself

21、.We spend an estimated$5.2 billion a year on such clinically unnecessary treatment,3 percent of the total spent on all cancer care annually.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in 2017,nearly 16 million people were screened for cancer even though they were younger or older th

22、an those for whom screening is recommended,based on who is more likely to be helped or harmed(by false positives,the side effects from follow-up diagnostic tests,and aggressive treatment for clinically non-threatening disease discovered in screening).We spend a minimum of$9.2 billion per year on thi

23、s overscreening.A majority of people believe that most cancer is caused by environmental carcinogens.Yet we now know that cancer is principally a natural disease of aging,which allows DNA mutations that cause uncontrolled cell growth to accumulate.More than half of those diagnosed with cancer in the

24、 United States are at least 65 years old,while 87 percent of those who die of it are 50 or older.新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 7/24 Yet governments spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year to reduce the risk from environmental carcinogens,vastly more than on any other environmental health threat,includ

25、ing fine-particulate air pollution,which kills more than 100,000 people a year.We spend billions on organic foods,vitamins and supplements,as well as many other products that promise to reduce our risk of cancer but dont.The public has voted against fluoridating the drinking water in public supply s

26、ystems serving 30 percent of Americans,despite a lack of evidence to support the fear that fluoridation is a cancer risk.Fear of ionizing(nuclear)radiation,a vastly smaller cancer risk than commonly believed,has driven the cost of building nuclear power plants so high that this source of non-greenho

27、use-gas-emitting energy struggles to compete in the energy marketplace.Heart disease kills roughly 15 percent more people than cancer each year.Yet the National Cancer Institute budget is$7.3 billion,while the National Heart,Lung,and Blood Institute spends only about$2 billion researching and workin

28、g on prevention of heart disease.There is no“war on heart disease,”no“heart disease moonshot”to compare to the calls for a“cancer moonshot,”a metaphor evoked since the Nixon administration and currently an initiative of the Biden administration.Our fear of cancer resists change,in part,because of it

29、s psychological nature.We are instinctively more afraid of threats that are personified by victims we know,that cause great pain and suffering,and over which we have no control which is why screening is so appealing,because it at least gives us something we can do to protect ourselves.Cancer fear al

30、so resists change because our beliefs still rest on what we learned long ago.The public is mostly unaware of the quiet,incremental progress that has made so many cancers treatable or curable.Very few know that many common cancers never kill.Our deep faith in screening belies the evidence that it has

31、 only modest benefit and does great damage,something people dont realize because screening advocates have vastly oversold the benefits and practically never mention the harm.新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 8/24 We cannot absolutely cure cancer,nor will we ever entirely erase our cancerphobia.The disease is an i

32、ntrinsic product of our biology.The fear is driven by ancient psychological instincts.But in the interest of both our individual and public health,we need to promote awareness of the progress weve made fighting cancer.We need to understand and battle both the disease and our fear,because both are do

33、ing terrible harm.新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 9/24 The Internet Is Being Ruined by Bloated Junk Sites such as YouTube,TikTok,and Twitter used to be defined by short content.Not anymore.We live in the age of the short attention span.And yet:Finding a recipe in a blog post requires first scrolling past a nove

34、lla detailing the chefs personal experience with the dish.Streaming shows run long,dragging into feature-film territory.Episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast are sometimes longer than Avatar.Even platforms once known for short-form media are stretching the limits:Gone are the days of the 280-

35、character tweet;on X,a user can now pay extra to post up to 25,000 characters(this article,for comparison,is under 6,000).YouTube videos once had a hard cap at 10 minutes long;now they can(and 916 words|January 15,2024|Technology 新英文课堂 扫码听音频 新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 10/24 do)reach 12 hours.Even TikTok is

36、 going long,reportedly testing a new limit of up to 15 minutes for some creators.Surely some of this is born of genuine audience interest.Length,after all,is sometimes associated with quality.Reading all 1,000-odd pages of Infinite Jest,or watching all three hours of Oppenheimer,is considered a wort

37、hwhile accomplishment in a way that watching a 60-second TikTok dissection of shower grout is not.Sometimes,storytelling merits a prodigious length.Other times,it does not.Online media are frequently padded not because the subject demands it but because creators are attempting to game algorithms or

38、make more money.On TikTok,people filibuster,delaying their ultimate point,or divide their videos into needless“parts”strategies to hook viewers and drive up valuable engagement numbers.All of this behavior is a side effect of our algorithmically powered reality.These systems,on the most basic level,

39、are supposed to recommend videos,text,and whatever else people post online(sorting through everything would be impossible without them).Yet in the process,they end up creating incentives for people to generate a lot of junkand bloated junk,at that.Anything shorter than a minute isnt even eligible to

40、 be monetized on TikTok.Some of these apps seem to realize what theyve done.TikTok and YouTube give users the ability to speed things up,watching videos at double speed if they so choose.But the solution only underscores the problem:Everything is too long.Much of this stems from all those ads that r

41、un before videos or between paragraphsfor laundry detergent,jewelry,tax software,whatever.Any extra real estate for these ads,be it space on a page or time on a podcast,is a chance for platforms to make more money.Longer articles and videos have more room to seed in advertisements while avoiding the

42、 feeling of overwhelm that might come from stuffing them into shorter material.Back in 2019,one YouTuber found that videos upwards of 10 minutes long brought her triple the revenue than shorter ones,according to The Verge.“Its a lot easier to monetize content when its longer-form,”Scott Kessler,the

43、technology-sector lead at Third Bridge,a 新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 11/24 market-research group,told CNN last month.A spokesperson for TikTok told me that,in 2023,creators who made longer-form content more than doubled their revenue year over year.(Google,which owns YouTube,did not respond to a request for

44、 comment.)Algorithms promise to do one basic job:pluck the supposedly best content possible from the deluge of the internet and surface it to users.Some algorithms may in fact prioritize length metrics(such as time spent watching)as an indicator of quality.But its hard to say for sure,because tech c

45、ompanies tend not to give many details about their inner workings.Longer videos,like all other content,are recommended based on the preferences and interests of viewers,the TikTok spokesperson said.In some ways,whether an algorithm is actually hard-coded to prefer longer-form videos matters less tha

46、n whether creators think an algorithm prefers longer-form videos.Folk theories of algorithms end up influencing what kinds of content get made.If people start believing that longer videos or podcast episodes do“better,”theyll make more of them.Content creators are doing their best with limited data.

47、From December 2020 to July 2022,Ashley Mears,the chair of cultural sociology and new media at the University of Amsterdam,conducted research while embedded with a company that made videos specifically designed to please Facebook.“At one point,it was three-minute videos,”she told me.“That was the min

48、imum amount of time that a video needed to be in order to make money.”The company would script its content accordingly,adding in cliff-hangers or delaying resolution into the second minute to keep people watching.Sometimes platforms fight back against this so-called engagement bait,penalizing those

49、who do it.“Content creators are really savvy,especially if theyre professionals,”Mears told me.“They study the numbers and the metrics.And they really will give platforms whatever it is that platforms want.”But what platforms want can change,leaving creators scrambling.People are afraid that generat

50、ive AI will pollute the internet.But more basic forms of the technologysocial-media and search algorithmshave been doing that for years.“In a way,新英文外刊公众号 2024-01-20 12/24 what were already getting is people who are making culture in response to machines and these machine-learning codes,”Mears expla