full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Paul Ewald: Can we domesticate germs?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So, you get this vicious cycle. The goal is to turn this around. If you could cause an evolutionary decrease in virulence by cleaning up the water supply, you should be able to get an evolutionary decrease in antibiotic resistance. So, we can go to the same countries and look and see. Did Chile avoid the problem of atiinbitoc resistance, whereas did Ecuador actually have the beginnings of the problem? If we look in the beginning of the 1990s, we see, again, a lot of variation. In this case, on the Y-axis, we've just got a mausere of antibiotic sivisnetity — and I won't go into that. But we've got a lot of variation in antibiotic sensitivity in Chile, Peru and Ecuador, and no trend across the years. But if we look at the end of the 1990s, just half a decade later, we see that in Ecuador they sarettd having a resistance problem. Antibiotic sensitivity was going down. And in cilhe, you still had antibiotic sensitivity.

Open Cloze


So, you get this vicious cycle. The goal is to turn this around. If you could cause an evolutionary decrease in virulence by cleaning up the water supply, you should be able to get an evolutionary decrease in antibiotic resistance. So, we can go to the same countries and look and see. Did Chile avoid the problem of __________ resistance, whereas did Ecuador actually have the beginnings of the problem? If we look in the beginning of the 1990s, we see, again, a lot of variation. In this case, on the Y-axis, we've just got a _______ of antibiotic ___________ — and I won't go into that. But we've got a lot of variation in antibiotic sensitivity in Chile, Peru and Ecuador, and no trend across the years. But if we look at the end of the 1990s, just half a decade later, we see that in Ecuador they _______ having a resistance problem. Antibiotic sensitivity was going down. And in _____, you still had antibiotic sensitivity.

Solution


  1. antibiotic
  2. measure
  3. started
  4. chile
  5. sensitivity

Original Text


So, you get this vicious cycle. The goal is to turn this around. If you could cause an evolutionary decrease in virulence by cleaning up the water supply, you should be able to get an evolutionary decrease in antibiotic resistance. So, we can go to the same countries and look and see. Did Chile avoid the problem of antibiotic resistance, whereas did Ecuador actually have the beginnings of the problem? If we look in the beginning of the 1990s, we see, again, a lot of variation. In this case, on the Y-axis, we've just got a measure of antibiotic sensitivity — and I won't go into that. But we've got a lot of variation in antibiotic sensitivity in Chile, Peru and Ecuador, and no trend across the years. But if we look at the end of the 1990s, just half a decade later, we see that in Ecuador they started having a resistance problem. Antibiotic sensitivity was going down. And in Chile, you still had antibiotic sensitivity.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
disease organisms 10
natural selection 4
antibiotic resistance 4
antibiotic sensitivity 4
northern alabama 4
diarrheal disease 3
evolutionary biologists 2
theory tells 2
main point 2
organisms evolve 2
toxin production 2
organisms evolved 2
harmful strains 2
mild strains 2
high proportion 2
increased antibiotic 2
evolutionary decrease 2
mosquito proof 2
tennessee valley 2
valley authority 2
mosquito proofing 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
diarrheal disease organisms 3
tennessee valley authority 2

Important Words


  1. antibiotic
  2. avoid
  3. beginning
  4. beginnings
  5. case
  6. chile
  7. cleaning
  8. countries
  9. cycle
  10. decade
  11. decrease
  12. ecuador
  13. evolutionary
  14. goal
  15. lot
  16. measure
  17. peru
  18. problem
  19. resistance
  20. sensitivity
  21. started
  22. supply
  23. trend
  24. turn
  25. variation
  26. vicious
  27. virulence
  28. water
  29. years