(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin.
If you've ever checked out the restaurant reviews on Yelp, you know that these little missives can tell you whether a bistro is overpriced or understaffed or just nothing to write home about. But they may also be able to tell the local health department whether an establishment has been serving up Salmonella.
Researchers at Columbia University in New York City were looking into an outbreak of food poisoning at a local restaurant a few years ago when they got the idea of using social media to track gastrointestinal disturbances.
"During the investigation, the Department of Health noted that patrons had reported their illnesses on yelp in the reviews but hadn't reported them via 311, the city's official reporting service."
Computer scientist Thomas Effland, who led the study.
Previous investigations had shown that monitoring social media for keywords associated with illness was a good way of rapidly identifying outbreaks of infectious diseases...such as the flu. So Effland and his team built a similar system for stomach symptoms. The Department of Health started using it in 2012.
"The tool works by sifting through the recent Yelp reviews for New York City restaurants each day to identify potential reports of foodborne illness."
Yelp reviews get scanned for telltale terms such as "vomit", "diarrhea", "food poisoning", and "sick". Flagged entries then then get passed along to epidemiologists for a closer look.
The system has produced some false positives, for example, from reviews that stated things like, the food "had a weird chunky consistency...hopefully we won't get sick tonight". And it missed a few posts, like when the writer misspelled "diarrhea" (a challenging word to write down even when you don't have it).
But overall, the results are nothing to sneeze at. Or in this case, barf at.
"We found that using Yelp data has helped the Health Department identify approximately 1500 complaints of foodborne illness in New York City each year. In total the system has found 8523 complaints since July 2012, resulting in the identification of 10 outbreaks."
The study is in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
The researchers plan to extend their analysis to Twitter. After all, many people use Twitter to let everyone know that they're not well.
Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin.
参考译文
这里是科学美国人——60秒科学。我是凯伦·霍普金。
如果你曾经看过Yelp点评网站上的餐厅评论，你就知道这些短评可以告诉你一家小酒馆是否价格过高、人手不足或是平淡无奇。但这些评论也可以告诉当地卫生部门，一家餐厅供应的食物里是否含有沙门氏菌。
几年前，纽约哥伦比亚大学的研究人员在调查当地一家餐厅发生的食物中毒事件时，想出了用社交媒体追踪胃肠道紊乱的方法。
“卫生部门在调查中注意到，顾客在Yelp网站的评论中提到了他们的疾病，但却没有通过该市官方报告机构热线311报告疾病。”
计算机科学家托马斯·伊夫兰德领导了这项研究。
此前的调查显示，监测社交媒体中与疾病有关的关键词，是快速识别流感等传染病爆发的好方法。所以伊夫兰德和团队为胃病建立了一个类似系统。卫生部门于2012年开始使用这一系统。
“该系统通过每天筛选Yelp网站上纽约餐厅的最新评论来辨别潜在的食源性疾病报告。”
系统会搜索Yelp评论中诸如“呕吐”、 “腹泻”、“食物中毒”、“恶心”等指示词。然后将标记的条目传给流行病学家进行仔细研究。
该系统产生过一些误报，比如有评论将食物描述为“粘稠得有些诡异，希望我们今晚不会生病”。系统也会漏掉一些评论，比如有评论者拼错了“腹泻”这个词（即使你没有腹泻，要写下这个词也很有挑战性)。
但总的来说，系统得出的结果不容忽视。或者在这种情况下，应该说不能吐出来。
“我们发现，使用Yelp网站的数据每年能帮助卫生部门识别约1500起食源性疾病的投诉。自2012年7月以来，该系统一共发现了8523宗投诉，其中10宗病症爆发。”
这项研究结果发表在《美国医学信息学协会》期刊上。
研究人员计划将他们的分析扩展到推特上。毕竟，有很多人用推特来让其他人知道他们不舒服。
谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是凯伦·霍普金。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
重点讲解
重点讲解：
1. nothing to write home about 平平常常；没有什么特别有趣的地方；
例句：So a dreary Monday afternoon in Walthamstow is nothing to write home about, right?
这么说，在沃尔瑟姆斯托度过的一个沉闷的周一下午没什么值得大书特书的，是吗？
2. sift through 细查；详审；
例句：It took all week to sift through the job applications.
仔细审查完工作申请整整用了一个星期。
3. result in 导致；引起；造成；
例句：If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.
如果有两种选择，其中一种将导致灾难，则必定有人会作出这种选择。
4. after all 毕竟；终究；
例句：None of this is to say that people must immediately bin all vitamin-containing substances; vitamins are, after all, essential nutrients.
这一切都不意味着人们应该立马将所有含维生素的物质弃之如敝屣。毕竟维生素是基本营养品。
