Women hold pictures of victims of violence during a protest to denounce domestic violence against women in Ankara, Turkey on May 11. 女性民眾五月十一日於土耳其安卡拉,在一場抗議對女性家暴的活動中,高舉遇害女子的照片。
Photo: AFP 照片:法新社
About a third of women worldwide have been physically or sexually assaulted by a former or current partner, according to the first major review of violence against women.
In a series of papers released by the World Health Organization and others, experts estimated nearly 40 percent of women killed worldwide were slain by an intimate partner and that being assaulted by a partner was the most common kind of violence experienced by women.
The WHO defined physical violence as being slapped, pushed, punched, choked or being attacked with a weapon. Sexual violence was defined as being physically forced to have sex, having sex because you were afraid of what your partner might do and being compelled to do something sexual that was humiliating or degrading.
The report also examined rates of sexual violence against women by someone other than a partner and found about 7 percent of women worldwide had previously been a victim.
Globally, the WHO review found 30 percent of women are affected by domestic or sexual violence by a partner. The report was based largely on studies from 1983 to 2010. According to the UN, more than 600 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not considered a crime.
(AP)
TODAY’S WORDS 今日單字
1. domestic adj.
家庭的;愛家的 (jia1 ting2 de5; ai4 jia1 de5)
例: His second marriage has made him very domestic.
(他的二度婚姻使他變得非常喜愛家庭生活。)
2. compel v.
強迫;使不得不 (qiang1 po4; shi3 bu4 de2 bu4)
例: She was compelled to take the responsibility for her husband’s wrongdoing.
(她不得不承擔她丈夫惡行的責任。)
3. degrading adj.
有辱人格的;丟臉的 (you3 ru4 ren2 ge2 de5; diu2 lian3 de5)
例: The poor man believed that accepting charity was degrading.
People with severe headaches, whether migraines or not, may be more likely to attempt suicide, according to a US study of more than a thousand people.
A number of studies over the years have found that people with migraines tend to have a higher suicide rate than those without, but it has not been clear if this is related specifically to the “biology of migraines,” said Naomi Breslau of Michigan State University at East Lansing, who led the study.
The study followed nearly 1,200 Detroit, Michigan-area adults. About 500 of them were migraine sufferers, while 151 had severe headaches that were not migraines. The rest were free of serious headaches and served as a control group. In this study, severe non-migraines were defined as intense headaches lasting more than four hours.
Over two years, the migraine and severe-headache groups had similar rates of attempted suicide. Almost nine percent of migraine sufferers said they had tried to kill themselves, as did 10 percent of those with severe non-migraine headaches, compared with a rate of just over one percent in the control group.
A vendor selling watermelons naps as he waits for customers at a market in Taiyuan, in China’s Shanxi Province on July 17. 一位小販七月十七日在中國山西省太原市一處市場等待顧客上門時,小歇片刻。
Photo: Reuters 照片:路透
Getting young children to take an hour-long nap after lunch could help them with their learning by boosting brain power, a small study suggests.
A nap appeared to help three-to-five-year-olds better remember pre-school lessons, US researchers said.
University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers studied 40 youngsters and reported their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The benefit persisted in the afternoon after a nap and into the next day.
The study authors say their results suggest naps are critical for memory consolidation and early learning. When the children were allowed a siesta after lunch they performed significantly better on a visual-spatial tasks in the afternoon and the next day than when they were denied a midday snooze.
(Liberty Times)
TODAY’S WORDS 今日單字
1. nap n.
午睡 (wu3 shui4)
例: Grandpa usually takes a nap after lunch.
(阿公吃過午飯後通常會睡個午覺。)
2. persist v.
持續 (chi2 xu4)
例: The cold weather is set to persist throughout the week.
(這一週都將是寒冷的天氣。)
3. deny n.
拒絕 (ju4 jue2)
例: I was denied the opportunity of learning French at school.
Motorists make their way out of downtown Los Angeles, California on Aug. 30 last year. 駕駛們去年八月三十日在加州洛杉磯驅車駛離市區。
Photo: AFP 照片:法新社
A warming planet is likely to bring more hot days, more sweaty people and more dehydration — a key risk factor for a surge in kidney stones, researchers said on July 10.
The study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found a link between hot days and kidney stones in 60,000 patients whose medical records were studied in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
“We found that as daily temperatures rise, there is a rapid increase in the probability of patients presenting over the next 20 days with kidney stones,” said lead author Gregory Tasian, a pediatric urologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
As average daily temperatures climbed above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, or 10 degrees Celsius, the risk of kidney stone presentation increased in all the cities except Los Angeles.
(Liberty Times)
TODAY’S WORDS
今日單字
1. sweaty adj.
流汗的 (liu2 han4 de5)
例: We spent the evening in a sweaty pub.
(我們晚上都待在熱得讓人冒汗的酒吧裡。)
2. surge n.
驟升 (zou4 sheng1)
例: An unexpected surge in electrical power caused the computer to crash.
(電壓突然遽增導致電腦當機。)
3. probability n.
可能性 (ke3 neng2 xing4)
例: There’s a strong probability that she’ll be here.
Regarding whether parents can truly comprehend what their children are thinking, psychiatrists say that with kids nowadays so enthralled with IT products, there is very little interaction and communication going on between parents and children, causing many things to remain bottled up and left unsaid. Can parents actually gain any insight by observing what video games their kids like to play? Which TV shows they enjoy watching? Which characters they like? If you want to understand a child’s inner world, there is no harm in talking and playing with them while they play with the IT products.
Lam Pok, an attending physician at Miaoli Wei Gong Memorial Hospital’s psychiatry department, says that back before 3C (computer, communications and consumer electronics) products existed, children and parents had more opportunities to talk with each other. Children used to vent their emotions by playing outdoor sports and also talked to their parents more about their feelings. With the proliferation of electronic products, video games have become the main way that children express their feelings. Characters in television dramas have also become objects for children to obtain emotional sustenance, making them less fond of talking to their parents about personal matters.
Lam says the theory of psychological projection explains why adolescents and young people often enjoy playing video games — the opponent that they are fighting is not actually the enemy in the game, but rather more likely to be someone in real life who makes them feel incredible pressure. It could be a classmate, a teacher or possibly parents. The same principle applies to watching the plots on TV or in films. Children who lack true love from their parents will easily be moved to tears when they see an alien savior come on the screen, Lam says.
When parents see their child playing video games or watching TV, it is best to get closer to them to make observations and show more concern for the child. Lam suggests that parents find an appropriate time to ask the following three questions. The first should be about which character they like the most. Liking a particular character is usually because that character has similar personality traits or has suffered in similar ways as the child. The second question should be about which character they wish they could be. This will be the person that possesses something that the child is lacking but aspires to be. The third question asks the child which character they loathe the most, which can represent someone who has probably hurt the child or gives them stress, Lam says.
As of late the public has been fixated on the anti-service trade pact movement. A significant number of people have been seeing doctors for psychological issues caused by anxiety and insomnia triggered by concern for various social factors, including Taiwan’s future and the student movement.
Hung Chi-wei, an attending physician at Chi Mei Hospital’s family medicine department, says that he has recently treated a spate of clinical cases like this. Some of the patients, originally quite fond of exercising, suddenly became sluggish for reasons unknown and only wanted to lounge around the house, never going out anywhere else. Even if some of them have wanted to see a doctor, they did not know which department to make an appointment with.
Hung says that family physicians often come across this type of patient, who consults a family doctor first because they do not know which type of specialist to see, as they have so many symptoms at the same time. There has been a slight rise in the number of patients visiting psychiatry departments in recent years, Hung says, adding that some of them complain about Taiwan’s stagnant economy, rising prices or how hard it is to make a living. The right amount of stress can easily give rise to mental disorders such as generalized anxiety or depression, Hung says.
Most patients with generalized anxiety disorder tend to be unaware that they have the disorder because the symptoms tend to fluctuate. When stress levels increase in everyday life or at work it typically exacerbates the patient’s condition. Common symptoms include muscle tension, an overly excited autonomic nervous system, feeling keyed up and on edge, sometimes having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, and feeling irritable. The symptoms for depression include feeling dejected and losing interest in things.Regardless of whether it is generalized anxiety disorder or depression, Hung says that as soon as you discover possibly having one of the two disorders, you should see a doctor for diagnosis and treatment as soon as possible.
(Liberty Times, Translated by Kyle Jeffcoat)
TODAY’S WORDS
今日單字
1. fixate v.
注視 (zhu4 shi4)
例: Why are you suddenly so fixated on your appearance and body image?