(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
Quitting smoking is tough，
so tough that only about 5 percent of smokers who try to quit in a given year actually succeed.
Medications can double those odds—which still leaves a high failure rate.
And a promising vaccine, meant to arouse an immune response to nicotine, could not beat a placebo in clinical trials.
But researchers haven't given up on a vaccine yet.
Instead of revving up the immune system, though, they've come up with a new idea:why not use an enzyme to break down nicotine—before it gives you a buzz?
"For almost 50 years there's been reports of bacteria that can actually use nicotine to thrive on."
Kim Janda, a chemist and immunologist at The Scripps Research Institute.
"The bacteria uses nicotine as its sole source of carbon and nitrogen."
It does the trick with a nicotine-chomping enzyme.
So Janda and his colleagues added the enzyme to mouse serum, doped with a cigarette's worth of nicotine.
The enzyme was stable at human body temperature,and was able to cut the half-life of nicotine from a couple hours to less than 15 minutes that is, it greatly accelerated nicotine's disappearance.
The study is in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
But Janda says the enzyme isn't ready for prime time yet.
It's bacterial—so "you're going to get an immune response, immune surveillance from it."
And right now, the other important half-life, that of the enzyme in serum, is only 3 days.
So it won't stick around long enough to be an effective vaccine. "
A month would be great, a week or two would also be reasonable."
While the researchers work out the kinks, smokers will have to rely on the tried-and-true methods of quitting:counseling, medication or good old cold turkey.
参考译文
戒烟真的是一件难事，
难到实际上每年仅有5%的戒烟者能够成功。
而药物治疗能够让这个数字翻一番—但是失败率依然很高。
而现在一种激发人体对尼古丁免疫力的疫苗有望成功，但却在临床试验中未能战胜安慰剂。
但是研究人员对疫苗的研究仍未放弃。
研发人员没有进行刺激免疫系统的方法，而是提出了新理念:在你沉醉于尼古丁之前，为什么不先下手为强，利用酶来将其分解呢?
“这50年来有关细菌依靠尼古丁而生的报道一直持续不断。”
斯克里普斯研究所的一位化学免疫学家吉姆?简达说道。
“这种细菌会将尼古丁视为唯一的碳及氮的来源。”
它的一种酶能消化尼古丁。
因此简达和他的同事们利用老鼠进行试验，在它们的血清里注射了这种酶，同时还有约一支烟含量的尼古丁。
该种酶在人体体温条件下很稳定，而且能够将尼古丁的寿命从几小时缩减至15分钟内,这就证明尼古丁的分解速率被大大地加快。
这项究已经在《美国化学会》杂志上发表。
但是简达表示目前这种酶投入使用的时机还未成熟。
这种酶是细菌性的—因此首当其冲是获得这种细菌免疫，从中获得免疫监控。”
而且现在最为关键的问题是这种酶在血清中只能活3天时间。
因此它不会坚持很长时间产生出有效的疫苗。
“要是一个月就好了，但是一、两周时间也能接受。”
在研究人员还在努力解决这一难题时，吸烟者们只能依靠一种现阶段靠谱的方法:那就是就医，进行药物治疗或干脆掐断不吸。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
重点讲解
1.mean to 对…来说很重要
例句:I didn't mean to break his nose. I just saw red.
我不是故意要打断他的鼻梁。我只是一时气急。
2.give up 放弃；停止；投降
例句:They'll have to give up completely on certain of their studies.
他们将不得不彻底放弃某些研究。
3.come up with 赶上；提供；想到
例句:Howard Wilkinson has come up with an absolute corker of an idea.
霍华德?威尔金森想出了一个绝佳的主意。
4.enough to 足以；足够
例句:It's enough to make you wet yourself, if you'll pardon the expression.
这足以吓得你尿裤子了，请原谅我这么说。
