第二回【Among】～1日1英単語TheNewYorkTimes読破への旅～

Bits of Mystery DNA, Far From

‘Junk,’ Play Crucial Role

Among the many mysteries of human biology is why complex diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and psychiatric disorders are so difficult to predict and, often, to treat. An equally perplexing puzzle is why one individual gets a disease like cancer or depression, while an identical twin remains perfectly healthy.

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Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

“It is like opening a wiring closet and seeing a hairball of wires,” Mark Gerstein of Yale University said of the DNA intricacies.

Now scientists have discovered a vital clue to unraveling these riddles. The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as “junk” but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave. The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health because many complex diseases appear to be caused by tiny changes in hundreds of gene switches.

The findings, which are the fruit of an immense federal project involving 440 scientists from 32 laboratories around the world, will have immediate applications for understanding how alterations in the non-gene parts of DNA contribute to human diseases, which may in turn lead to new drugs. They can also help explain how the environment can affect disease risk. In the case of identical twins, small changes in environmental exposure can slightly alter gene switches, with the result that one twin gets a disease and the other does not.

続き

【Among】

【前】

1. 〔場所が〕～に囲まれた、～の間の
2. 〔集団の〕中にいる、〔集団と〕同行する
3. 〔～の間で〕共有して、共通した
4. ～が共同で、～が一緒になって
5. 〔分配するときに〕～の間で、～がそれぞれ
6. 〔三つ以上が〕お互いに、同士で

こんにちは。

Among、昨日に引き続き随分知名度の高い単語ですね。　さてこのAmong、大きく分けると【共通】と【間】系の単語に分かれているように見えますね。この二つを上に上げて見てみると、【一緒にいる、ある】とういうことになりますかね？

なんか適当に見えますがこんなもんです

第一回：【fomer】～1日1英単語TheNewYorkTimes読破への旅～

11:00 P.M. Clinton Extols Cooperation, Chides G.O.P.

Damon Winter/The New York Times
Former president Bill Clinton was greeted with an extended standing ovation.
The man whose wife once directly called out the “vast, right wing conspiracy’’ took his own shot at the conservative caucus of the Republican Party, describing it as the controlling force of his opposition party of yore.

“There’s something I’ve noticed lately you probably have too,” Mr. Clinton said. “Though I often disagree with Republicans I actually never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate our President, and a lot of other Democrats.”

Mr. Clinton, who had some of the biggest partisan fights of the modern times – including impeachment – but cut big deals on items like welfare reform, said, “The politics of constant conflict may be good — but what is good politics does not necessarily work in the real world. What works in the real world is cooperation.”

Mr. Obama tried, he said.

“That didn’t work out so well,” he said. “But it could have been because as the Senate Republican leader said in a remarkable moment of candor two full years before the election that their number one priority was not to put Americans back to work. It was to put the president out of work.”

“I hate to break it to you,” he said, saying “we’re going to keep the president in the job.”

- Jim Rutenberg


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[former]
名《the ～》前者
作成者
〈英〉～年生（の生徒）
・Several sixth formers attended the lecture. : 数名の6年生がその講義に出席しました。
形前の、先の
かつての、元の
レベル2、発音fɔ'ːrmər、カナフォーマー、分節for・mer

こんにちは初めまして。
ここは上記のことを第一の目標とし、それにむけて日々頑張って行こうという趣旨の連載です。
それでは第一回TheNewYorkTmes読破の旅へスタートしましょう。

第一回はformer、 え、こんなものからやっていくのか？と思いましたか？これは上記の引用文の1番最初にある単語です(題名っぽいのは除いていますが)なぜこの単語なのかというと、この連載で紹介していないからです。そうです、この連載では一日一語その日の一面のNewYorkTimesの1番最初にでてくる未知の(ここで未だに紹介していないという意味での)単語をここで解説します。それを続けていくことによりいつの日かここで紹介する単語がなくなる記事が来たらNewYorkTimes読破、となります。長くなりそうですね、旅です。
ちなみに一応、冠詞、助動詞、数字、固有名詞はとばそうと思っています。そうでなきゃ終わりませんからね。

さてまだ長くなりそうなので、ここから先は別の機会へ譲るとしまして、【Fomer】、みなさんはこの単語にどんなイメージを抱いていますか？ 前、ですか？

こんな感じですね。上の方にある辞書引用にもそのような事しか書いてありません。 ただこの単語も日本語と同じように、時間、空間的な両意味での【前】がありますのでご注意ください。

さて第一回はこんな感じで終わりにしますが、formerの意味がずいぶん日本語にとって具体的で捉えやすかったために、ずいぶんあっけなく終わりましたね。 この調子で長らく続けて行こうと思いますので。どうぞよろしくお願いします。

他にもこんな絵が考えられるんじゃない？とかありましたらコメント欄ででも教えてくださいね。