2014年12月英语六级听力冲刺练习8
英语六级听力部分算是同学们考试时的难点吧。听力这部分不能急于求成，需要时间来练习。对于这部分同学们平时在积累词汇的基础上多加练习就可以，听的多了就能掌握技巧，距离12月份的四六级考试还有一段时间，同学每天练习一点听力，考试时听力就能取得高分了。听力音频点击下载.mp3
听力材料：
Complications from preterm births now outrank allother causes of death for young children. Of themore than 6.3 million deaths of kids under age five in2013, more than one million resulted from pretermproblems.
The new study was released November 17, World Prematurity Day, and appears in The Lancetmedical journal. It’s a collaborative effort by researchers from the Johns Hopkins BloombergSchool of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the WorldHealth Organization.
The vast majority the deaths from direct complications of preterm births occurred within thefirst 28 days of life – with an additional 125,000 deaths occurring between one month and fiveyears.
Dr. Andres de Francisco, interim executive director of the Geneva-based Partnership forMaternal Newborn and Child Health, said, “Over the last few years the proportion of deathsdue to preterm births has been increasing. The reason for this is that we do not really havemajor interventions in place to avoid premature births -- and second, to manage them inmost communities where they occur.”
He said preterm birth complications are a worldwide problem.
“We have countries in Africa, for example – Nigeria – or in Asia -- India and Pakistan -- thathave extremely high numbers of kids that are dying related to preterm births. But this is notonly a problem in developing countries," de Francisco said. "This is also a problem that affectsdeveloped countries, as well.”
India actually tops the list, followed by Nigeria, Pakistan, the DRC, China, Bangladesh,Indonesia, Ethiopia, Angola and Kenya. Researchers warn the Ebola outbreak in West Africaraises the risk of preterm complications in the affected countries.
The rise in deaths from preterm birth complications actually coincides with a dramatic declinein the worldwide mortality rate of children under five.
“Mortality has been reducing by about 3.9 percent per year, which is a very impressivereduction of mortality -- and is due to a lot of interventions that we have in stock, includingdecreasing the mortality due to infectious diseases, such as pneumonia and diarrhea, malaria,among others,” de Francisco said.
Some of the interventions credited for the mortality rate decline include vaccines, bed nets,antibiotics, anti-malarial and HIV treatments.
But de Francisco said the mortality rate for premature babies has decreased by a muchsmaller rate of 2 percent a year. A big part of the reason, he says, is a lack of adequateinterventions. And, right now, it’s not clear what the best interventions are, aside fromaddressing obesity and high blood pressure or hypertension.
The study said for the most part it’s not fully known what triggers pre-term labor – and abouthalf of pre-term births occur spontaneously.
“This cause of mortality needs to be studied much more specifically and in a much morefocused way. Because if we don’t have the causes – if we don’t have the factors – pregnancyis going to end in a premature birth. And this needs to be the focus of intensive research,” deFrancisco said.
Some $250 million worth of intensive research is getting underway through four majorinitiatives: the Global Coalition to Advance Preterm Birth Research; the March of Dimes; theUniversity of California at San Francisco’s Preterm Birth Initiative; and the Global Alliance toPrevent Prematurity and Stillbirth.
“If we are able to support these research programs, within the next five years or so, we will beable to have interventions that are going to contribute to the reduction of mortality in thesevery small babies,” he said.
Researchers also will study poverty, nutrition, pollution and stress. And they’ll try to solve amystery: why do Somali women living in the United States have “very low rates of prematurebirths, while most black women in the U.S. have very high rates.”
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