加州科学家想办法对付蚊子.docVIP

From VOA Learning English, this is the Health Report. 这里是美国之音慢速英语健康报道。 The sound of a mosquito can mean trouble in many parts of the world. The bite of the mosquito can be deadly. 在全世界很多地方，蚊子的声音都意味着麻烦。被蚊子叮咬可能会致命， The insects carry serious diseases like malaria. 这种虫子携带疟疾等严重疾病。 The World Health Organization estimates that almost 630,000 people died from malaria and malaria-related causes in 2012, 世卫组织估计2012年有近63万人死于疟疾和疟疾相关疾病， most of these cases were in African countries south of the Saharan desert. 大多数是在撒哈拉南部非洲国家。 In the United States, scientists are seeking new ways to fight malaria. 在美国，科学家在寻找对付疟疾的新方法。 A group of California scientists is working to develop a more effective and less costly substances to protect people from mosquito. 加州的一批科学家努力开发有效和低成本的物质来保护人们免受蚊子叮咬。 The researchers work at the University of California Riverside. They are investigating the sense of smell in mosquitoes. 研究者们就职于加州大学河滨分校，他们在研究蚊子的嗅觉， They found the insects use the same receptor for identifying carbon dioxide in human breath as they do for the smell of our skin. 他们发现蚊子使用相同的感受器来识别人呼吸的气味和皮肤的气味。 Anandasankar Ray is leading the investigation. Anandasankar Ray是这项调查的负责人， He says scientists tested more than a million chemical compounds until they found a substance called Ethyl pyruvate. 他说科学家化验了100多种化合物，然后发现名为丙酮酸乙酯的物质， He says Ethyl pyruvate makes the mosquitoes receptor inactive. 他说丙酮酸乙酯使得蚊子的感受器不敏感。 When we apply Ethyl pyruvate to a human arm and offer it to hungry mosquitoes in a cage, “当我们把丙酮酸乙酯涂到人的胳膊上，放在关在笼子里的蚊子前面， then very few of the mosquitoes are attracted to the human arm because only a few of them are able to smell it out, said Ray. 很少有蚊子能被吸引过来，只有少数蚊子能闻出来。” Genevieve Tauxe is a member of the UC Riverside research team. 吉纳维夫·托克斯是加州大学河滨分校研究团队成员， She says it was not easy to find the neurons of noble cells that recognise both the smell of human breath and skin. 她说能同时找到识别人类呼吸和皮肤的神经元并不容易， She describes a device the researchers are using to examine mosquitoes. 她描述了研究者用来研究蚊子的一种仪器。 With this ap