2010年医学博士外语真题试卷

Experts say about 1% of young women in the United States are almost starving themselves today. They are suffering from a sickness called anorexia.

These young women have an abnormal fear of getting fat. They【C1】______starve themselves so they weigh at 15% less than their normal weight.

The National Institute of Mental Health says one【C2】___ten cases of anorexia leads to serious medical problems. These patients can die from heart failure or the disease can lead young women to【C3】___themselves. For example, former gymnast Christy Henrich died at age 22. She weighed only 61 pounds.

A person with anorexia first develops joint and muscle problems. There is a lack of iron in the blood.【C4】___the sickness progresses, a young woman’s breathing, heartbeat, and blood pressure rates slow down. The important substance calcium is【C5】from the bones, something causing bones to break. Sometimes the brain gets smaller, causing changes in【C6】a person thinks and acts. Scientists say many patients have further mental and emotional problems. They have【C7】opinions about themselves. They feel helpless. Their attempts to become extremely thin may【C8】efforts to take control of their lives. They may become dependent on illegal drugs. Some people also feel the need to continually repeat a(n) 【C9】___. For example, they may repeatedly wash their hands although their hands are clean.

Anorexia is a serious eating【C10】______. If it is not treated on time, it can be fatal.

Children should avoid using mobile phones for all but essential calls because of possible health effects on young brains. This is one of the expected conclusions of an official government report to be published this week. The report is expected to call for the mobile phone industry to refrain from promoting phone use by children, and to start labeling phones with data on the amount of radiation they emit.

The Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones, chaired by former government chief scientist William Stewart, has spent eight months reviewing existing scientific evidence on all aspects of the health effects of using mobile phones. Its report is believed to conclude that because we don’t fully understand the nonthermal effects of radiation on human tissue, the government should adopt a precautionary approach, particularly in relation to children.

There is currently no evidence that mobile phones harm users or people living near transmitter masts. But some studies show that cell-phones operating at radiation levels within current safety limits do have some sort of biological effect on the brain.

John Tattersall, a researcher on the health effects of radiation at the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency’s site at Porton Down, agrees that it might be wise to limit phone use by children. “If you have a developing nervous system, it’s known to be more susceptible to environmental insults,” he says, “So if phones did prove to be hazardous — which they haven’t yet—it would be sensible.”

In 1998, Tattersall showed that radiation levels similar to those emitted by mobile phones could alter signals from brain cells in slices of rat brain, “What we’ve found is an effect, but we don’t know if it’s hazardous,” he says.

Alan Preece of the University of Bristol, who found last year that microwaves increase reaction times in test subjects, agreed that children’s exposure would be greater. “There’s a lot less tissue in the way, and the skill is thinner, so children’s heads are considerably closer,” he says.

Stewart’s report is likely to recommend that the current British safety standards on energy emissions from cell-phones should be cut to the level recommended by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, which is one-fifth of the current British limit. “The extra safety factor of five is somewhat arbitrary,” says Michael Clark of the National Radiological Protection Board. “But we accept that it’s difficult for the UK to have different standards from an international body.”

Advances in cosmetic dentistry and plastic surgery have made it possible to correct facial birth defects, repair damaged teeth and tissue, and prevent or greatly delay the onset of tooth decay and gum disease. As a result, more people smile more often and more openly today than ever in the past, and we can expect more smiles in the future.

Evidence of the smile’s ascent may be seen in famous paintings in museums and galleries throughout the world. The vast majority of prosperous bigwigs(要人), voluptuous nudes, or middle-class family members in formal portraits and domestic scenes appear to have their mouths firmly closed. Soldiers in battle, children at play, beggars, old people, and especially villains may have their mouths open; but their smiles are seldom attractive, and more often suggest strain or violence than joy.

Smiles convey a wide range of meanings in different eras and cultures, says art historian Angus Trumble, currently curator(馆长)of Yale University’s Center for British Art, in his book A Brief History of the Smile. Compare, for instance, the varying impressions made by the shy dimples(酒窝)of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa; the rosy-cheeked, mustachioed Laughing Cavalier of Frans Hals; and the “Smiley Face” logo perfected(though not invented)in 1963 by American graphic artist Harvey R.Ball.

In some non-Western cultures, Trumble notes, even a warm, open smile does not necessarily indicate pleasure or agreement. It can simply be a polite mask to cover emotions considered too rude or shocking to be openly displayed.

Subtle differences in muscle movement can convey enormous differences in emotion, from the tranquility of bronze Buddhas, to the erotic bliss of couples entwined in stone on Hindu temples, to the fierce smirk(假笑)of a guardian demon at the entrance to a Chinese tomb.

Trumble expects the impact of Western medicine and mass media to further increase the pressure on people to grin broadly and laugh openly in public. “Faint smiles are increasingly thought of in scientific and psychological circles as something that falls short of the true smile,” and therefore suggest insincerity or lack of enthusiasm, he says.

With tattooing, body piercing, and permanent cosmetics already well established as fashion trends, one can imagine tomorrow’s beauty shops adding plastic surgeons and dentists to their staffs. These corner-store cosmeticians would offer style makeovers to reshape our lips, teeth, and jawlines to mimic the signature smile of one’s favorite celebrity.

What can you say to that except “Have a nice day?”

Adolf Hitler survived an assassination attempt in 1944 with the lamp of penicillin made by the Allies, a microbiologist in the UK claims. If the Nazi leader had died from bacterial infection of his many wounds, the Second World War might have been over a year earlier, saving millions of lives, says Milton Wainwright of the University of Sheffield, a noted historian of microbiology.

In a paper to be published soon in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Wainwright reveals first-hand evidence that Hitler was treated with penicillin by his personal doctor, Theo Morrell, following an assassination attempt in which a bomb in a suitcase exploded next to Hitler’s desk. Hitler was badly hurt, fleeing the scene with his hair and trousers on fire, a badly bleeding arm and countless wooden splinter wounds from the oak table that probably saved his life.

Wainwright found confirmation that Morrell gave Hitler antibiotics as a precaution in a recent translation of Morrell’s own diary. “I happened to be reading it for interest when the word penicillin jumped out at me,” he says. He then set about trying to establish where Morrell might have got the drug.

At the time, penicillin was available only to the Allies. German and Czechoslovakian teams had tried without much success to make it, Wainwright says, but the small quantities that were available were weak and impure. “It’s generally accepted that it was no good,” says Wainwright.

He reasons that Morrell would only have risked giving Hitler penicillin to prevent infections if he were confident that the antibiotic would cure, not kill the German premier. “My research shows that Morrell, in a very dodgy(危险的)position as Hitler’s doctor, would only have used pure stuff.” And the only reliable penicillin was that made by the Allies. So where did Morrell get it?

Wainwright’s investigations revealed that Allied airmen carried penicillin, so the Germans may have confiscated some from prisoners of war. The other more likely source is from neutral countries such Spain, which received penicillin from Allied countries for humanitarian purposes, perhaps for treating sick children.

“I have proof the Allies were sending it to these countries,” says Wainwright. “I’m saying this would have got through in diplomatic bags, reaching Hitler’s doctor and the higher echelons(阶层)of the Nazi party. So this was almost certainly pure, Allied penicillin.”

“We can never be certain it saved Hitler’s life,” says Wainwright. But he notes that one of Hitler’s henchmen(死党), Reinhard Heydrich, died from blood poisoning after surviving a car-bomb assassination attempt. “Hair from his seat went into his wounds and gave him septicemia,” says Wainwright. Morrell may have been anxious to ensure that Hitler avoided the same fate.

Get ready for a new kind of machine at your local gym: one that doesn’t involve huffing and puffing as you burn off calories. Instead, all you have to do is stand still for 30 seconds while the machine measures your body fat. It could then tell you exactly where you could do with losing a few pounds and even advise you on exercises for your problem areas. If the body fat scanner turns out to be accurate enough, its makers hope it could one day help doctors spot disease.

The scanner works by simultaneously building up an accurate 3D image of the body, while measuring the body’s effect on an electromagnetic field. Combining the two measurements allows the researchers to work out the distribution of fat and water within. Neither method is new on its own, says Henri Tapp, at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich in the UK. “The smart thing is that we’ve put them in one machine.”

And it’s not just for gym users. The body fat scanner could be used to study fat deposition as children develop, while patients recover from injury, or during pregnancy. And since it uses radio waves rather than X-rays, Tapp’s device is safe to use repeatedly.

Body shape is known to be a risk indicator for heart disease and diabetes. So accurately quantifying fat distribution could help doctors suggest preventive measures to patients before problems arise. At the moment, doctors estimate fat content from knowing body volume and water content. To a good approximation, says Tapp, anything that isn’t fat is water. The amount of water in the body is often measured by giving the subject a drink of water that contains a radioactive tracer. The level of tracer in the patient’s urine after three hours reveals the total water volume.

To find out a body’s volume, subjects are weighed while totally submerged in water, and this is subtracted from their normal weight to give the weight of water displaced, and hence the subject’s volume. But it is scarcely practical for seriously ill people.

There are other ways to directly measure body fat, such as passing a minuscule current between the wrists and feet. The overall fat content can then be estimated from the body’s resistance. But this method doesn’t take body shape into account—so a subject with particularly skinny legs might register a higher fat content than the true value. That’s because skinny legs — with a lower cross-sectional area — will present higher resistance to current. So the machine thinks the water content of the body is lower—rating the subject as fatter. Also, the system can only give an overall measurement of fat.

Tapp’s method uses similar calculations, but is more sophisticated because it tells you where you are piling on the pounds.

There is currently abroad a new wave of appreciation for breadth of knowledge. Curricula at universalities and colleges and programs in federal agencies extol(赞扬)the virtues of a broad education. For scientists who work in specialized jobs, it is a pleasure to escape in our spare time to read broadly in fields distant from our own. Some of us have made interdisciplinary study in our occupation, which is no surprise, because much of the intellectual action in our society today lies at the interfaces between traditional disciplines. Environmental science is a good example, because it frequently requires us to be conversant in several different sciences and even some unscientific fields.

Experiencing this breadth of knowledge is stimulating, but so is delving deeply into a subject. Both are wonderful experiences that are complementary practical and aesthetic(美学的)ways. They are like viewing the marvelous sculpture of knowledge in two different ways. Look at the sculpture from one perspective and you see the piece in its entirety, how its components connect to give it form, balance, and symmetry. From another viewpoint you see its detail, depth, and mass. There is no need to choose between these two perspectives in art. To do so would subtract from the totality of the figure.

So it is with science. Sometimes we gaze through a subject and are reluctant to stop for too much detail. As chemists, we are fascinated by computer sciences or molecular genetics, but not enough to become an expert. Or we may be interested in an analytical technique but not enough to stay at its cutting edge. At other times, we become immersed in the detail of a subject and see its beauty in an entirely different way than when we browse. It is as if we penetrate the surface of the sculpture and pass through the crystal structure to the molecular level where the code for the entire structure is revealed.

Unfortunately, in our zeal for breadth or depth, we often feel that it is necessary to diminish the value of the other. Specialists are sometimes ridiculed with names such as “nerd” or “technocrats”, generalists are often criticized for being too “soft” or knowing too little about any one thing. Both are ludicrous(可笑的)accusations that deny a part of the reality of environmental science. Let us not be divided by our passion for depth or breadth. The beauty that awaits us on either route is too precious to stifle, too wonderful to diminish by bickering(争吵).

That shabby unknown bundle of neglect and despair that was dropped off by the police six weeks ago— later to be identified by his mother, who turns up occasionally—is now a driving force on the infants’ ward. Once he was bathed a few times and his rashes were treated, he turned out to be a 14-month-old boy named Vergil, still recovering from premature birth — birth weight,²¹⁄₂pounds. It came obvious he had never received any real attention, and practically no solid food, and it was never very clear who assumed responsibility for him in his family, if anyone. Miraculously he survived, with almost no outside help.

At first he just lay there, withdrawn, sucking on an empty bottle as he had been used to doing at home. After a few days it became clear he was ravenously hungry and he downed bottle after bottle of milk. Slowly he began to respond to the ward staff around him who hung over the side of his crib, tempting him back to life.

He started by cautiously “chewing” on people, sniffing and tasting them warily like a little wild creature. Gradually he climbed to a standing position, pulling himself up on the bars of his crib. Then he began to discover noise — that came from himself. When he learned that it was acceptable, in this place, to scream when enraged, he filled his corner of the room with garbled speech-like sounds, and loud baby-bellows of demand. If nobody responded he would fix each passerby with a coy look that evolved into a seductive grin, revealing four widely space little teeth. Someone always stopped, grinning back at this adorable creature, then picking him up and cuddling him. We on the staff took personal pride and delight in his steady progress.

During the day we moved his crib from the infants’ ward to the playroom where there are people coming and going. He loved it, standing and cruising in his crib, commenting happily on the scene, crowing and babbling. One afternoon, when his crib was moved adjacent to the wall, he became unusually quiet, deep in concentration. With the stealth of a cat, using his little fingers like tiny screwdrivers, he had taken apart the wall oxygen unit. Our delight in his progress turned to real respect. Perhaps we could steer him toward the right path before it was too late.

Vergil definitely had a future.