full transcript

From the Ted Talk by David Agus: A new strategy in the war on cancer

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So, one of the fundamental problems we have in cancer is that, right now, we describe it by a number of aivetcdjes, symptoms: "I'm tired, I'm bloated, I have pain, etc." You then have some aimntoac descriptions, you get that CT scan: "There's a three centimeter mass in the liver." You then have some body part descriptions: "It's in the liver, in the breast, in the prostate." And that's about it. So, our dnticoiray for describing cancer is very, very poor. It's basically symptoms. It's mioatitnaenfss of a dsiesae.

What's exciting is that over the last two or three yreas, the government has spent 400 million dollars, and they've allocated another billion dollars, to what we call the Cancer Genome atals Project. So, it is the idea of sequencing all of the genes in the cancer, and giving us a new lexicon, a new dictionary to describe it. You know, in the mid-1850's in France, they started to describe cancer by body part. That hasn't chenagd in over 150 years. It is absolutely arhicac that we call cancer by prostate, by breast, by muscle. It makes no sense, if you think about it.

Open Cloze


So, one of the fundamental problems we have in cancer is that, right now, we describe it by a number of __________, symptoms: "I'm tired, I'm bloated, I have pain, etc." You then have some ________ descriptions, you get that CT scan: "There's a three centimeter mass in the liver." You then have some body part descriptions: "It's in the liver, in the breast, in the prostate." And that's about it. So, our __________ for describing cancer is very, very poor. It's basically symptoms. It's ______________ of a _______.

What's exciting is that over the last two or three _____, the government has spent 400 million dollars, and they've allocated another billion dollars, to what we call the Cancer Genome _____ Project. So, it is the idea of sequencing all of the genes in the cancer, and giving us a new lexicon, a new dictionary to describe it. You know, in the mid-1850's in France, they started to describe cancer by body part. That hasn't _______ in over 150 years. It is absolutely _______ that we call cancer by prostate, by breast, by muscle. It makes no sense, if you think about it.

Solution


  1. changed
  2. manifestations
  3. years
  4. dictionary
  5. adjectives
  6. atlas
  7. anatomic
  8. archaic
  9. disease

Original Text


So, one of the fundamental problems we have in cancer is that, right now, we describe it by a number of adjectives, symptoms: "I'm tired, I'm bloated, I have pain, etc." You then have some anatomic descriptions, you get that CT scan: "There's a three centimeter mass in the liver." You then have some body part descriptions: "It's in the liver, in the breast, in the prostate." And that's about it. So, our dictionary for describing cancer is very, very poor. It's basically symptoms. It's manifestations of a disease.

What's exciting is that over the last two or three years, the government has spent 400 million dollars, and they've allocated another billion dollars, to what we call the Cancer Genome Atlas Project. So, it is the idea of sequencing all of the genes in the cancer, and giving us a new lexicon, a new dictionary to describe it. You know, in the mid-1850's in France, they started to describe cancer by body part. That hasn't changed in over 150 years. It is absolutely archaic that we call cancer by prostate, by breast, by muscle. It makes no sense, if you think about it.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
clinical trial 4
breast cancer 4
lung cancer 3
national cancer 3
cancer institute 3
ct scan 3
danny hillis 3
cancer cell 2
fundamental problems 2
centimeter mass 2
body part 2
cancer genome 2
genome atlas 2
genetic disease 2
understand cancer 2
fundamental problem 2
complex system 2
fundamental clinical 2
drug called 2
individual neutron 2
ultimate goal 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
national cancer institute 3
cancer genome atlas 2

Important Words


  1. absolutely
  2. adjectives
  3. allocated
  4. anatomic
  5. archaic
  6. atlas
  7. basically
  8. billion
  9. bloated
  10. body
  11. breast
  12. call
  13. cancer
  14. centimeter
  15. changed
  16. ct
  17. describe
  18. describing
  19. descriptions
  20. dictionary
  21. disease
  22. dollars
  23. exciting
  24. france
  25. fundamental
  26. genes
  27. genome
  28. giving
  29. government
  30. idea
  31. lexicon
  32. liver
  33. manifestations
  34. mass
  35. million
  36. muscle
  37. number
  38. pain
  39. part
  40. poor
  41. problems
  42. project
  43. prostate
  44. sense
  45. sequencing
  46. spent
  47. started
  48. symptoms
  49. tired
  50. years