【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障12系列】【12-19】科技

2012Michelle

同学们，周三的作业来啦。

加油哦！

How Do Songbirds Sing? In 3-D!
Jan. 8, 2013
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【Time1】
The question 'How do songbirds sing?' is addressed in a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biology. High-field magnetic resonance imaging and micro-computed tomography have been used to construct stunning high resolution, 3D, images, as well as a data set "morphome" of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) vocal organ, the syrinx.

Like humans, songbirds learn their vocalizations by imitation. Since their songs are used for finding a mate and retaining territories, birdsong is very important for reproductive success.

The syrinx, located at the point where the trachea splits in two to send air to the lungs, is unique to birds and performs the same function as vocal cords in humans. Birds can have such a complete control over the syrinx, with sub-millisecond precision, that in some cases they are even able to mimic human speech.

Despite great inroads in uncovering the neural control of birdsong, the anatomy of the complex physical structures that generate sound have been less well understood.

The multinational team has generated interactive 3D PDF models of the syringeal skeleton, soft tissues, cartilaginous pads, and muscles affecting sound production. These models show in detail the delicate balance between strength, and lightness of bones and cartilage required to support and alter the vibrating membranes of the syrinx at superfast speeds.

Dr Coen Elemans, from the University of Southern Denmark, who led this study, explained, "This study provides the basis to analyze the micromechanics, and exact neural and muscular control of the syrinx. For example, we describe a cartilaginous structure which may allow the zebra finch to precisely control its songs by uncoupling sound frequency and volume." In addition, the researchers found a previously unrecognized Y-shaped structure on the sternum which corresponds to the shape of the syrinx and could help stabilize sound production.
【298】

The Reason We Lose at Games: Some Games Simply Too Complex for the Human Mind to Understand
Jan. 7, 2013
【Time2】
If you have ever wondered why you never seem to win at skill-based games such as poker or chess, there might be a very good reason.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a University of Manchester physicist has discovered that some games are simply impossible to fully learn, or too complex for the human mind to understand.

Dr Tobias Galla from The University of Manchester and Professor Doyne Farmer from Oxford University and the Santa Fe Institute, ran thousands of simulations of two-player games to see how human behaviour affects their decision-making.

In simple games with a small number of moves, such as Noughts and Crosses the optimal strategy is easy to guess, and the game quickly becomes uninteresting.

However, when games became more complex and when there are a lot of moves, such as in chess, the board game Go or complex card games, the academics argue that players' actions become less rational and that it is hard to find optimal strategies.

This research could also have implications for the financial markets. Many economists base financial predictions of the stock market on equilibrium theory -- assuming that traders are infinitely intelligent and rational.

This, the academics argue, is rarely the case and could lead to predictions of how markets react being wildly inaccurate.

Much of traditional game theory, the basis for strategic decision-making, is based on the equilibrium point -- players or workers having a deep and perfect knowledge of what they are doing and of what their opponents are doing.
【256】

【Time3】
Dr Galla, from the School of Physics and Astronomy, said: "Equilibrium is not always the right thing you should look for in a game."
"In many situations, people do not play equilibrium strategies, instead what they do can look like random or chaotic for a variety of reasons, so it is not always appropriate to base predictions on the equilibrium model."
"With trading on the stock market, for example, you can have thousands of different stock to choose from, and people do not always behave rationally in these situations or they do not have sufficient information to act rationally. This can have a profound effect on how the markets react."
"It could be that we need to drop these conventional game theories and instead use new approaches to predict how people might behave."
Together with a Manchester-based PhD student the pair are looking to expand their study to multi-player games and to cases in which the game itself changes with time, which would be a closer analogy of how financial markets operate.
Preliminary results suggest that as the number of players increases, the chances that equilibrium is reached decrease. Thus for complicated games with many players, such as financial markets, equilibrium is even less likely to be the full story.
【210】

Giant Fossil Predator Provides Insights Into the Rise of Modern Marine Ecosystem Structures
Jan. 7, 2013
【Time4】
An international team of scientists has described a fossil marine predator measuring 8.6 meters in length (about 28 feet) recovered from the Nevada desert in 2010 as representing the first top predator in marine food chains feeding on prey similar to its own size.

A paper with their description will appear the week of Jan. 7, 2013 in the early electronic issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists who studied the fossil include lead author Dr. Nadia Fröbisch and Prof. Jörg Fröbisch (both at Museum für Naturkunde Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung), Prof. P. Martin Sander (Steinmann Institute of Geology, Mineralogy, and Paleontology, Division of Paleontology, University of Bonn), Prof. Lars Schmitz (W. M. Keck Science Department, Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges, Claremont, California) and Dr. Olivier Rieppel (The Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois).

The 244-million-year-old fossil, named Thalattoarchon saurophagis (lizard-eating sovereign of the sea) is an early representative of the ichthyosaurs, a group of marine reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs and roamed the oceans for 160 million years. It had a massive skull and jaws armed with large teeth with cutting edges used to seize and slice through other marine reptiles in the Triassic seas. Because it was a meta-predator, capable of feeding on animals with bodies similar in size to its own, Thalattoarchon was comparable to modern orca whales.
【228】

【Time5】
Remarkably, only eight million years prior to the appearance of Thalattoarchon, a severe extinction at the end of the Permian period killed as many as 80 to 96 percent of species in the Earth's oceans. The rise of a predator such as Thalattoarchon documents the fast recovery and evolution of a modern ecosystem structure after the extinction.

"Everyday we learn more about the biodiversity of our planet including living and fossil species and their ecosystems" Dr. Fröbisch said. "The new find characterizes the establishment of a new and more advanced level of ecosystem structure. Findings like Thalattoarchon help us to understand the dynamics of our evolving planet and ultimately the impact humans have on today's environment."

"This discovery is a good example of how we study the past in order to illuminate the future," said Dr. Rieppel of The Field Museum.

The ichthyosaur was recovered from what is today a remote mountain range in central Nevada. Most of the animal was preserved, including the skull (except the front of the snout), parts of the fins, and the complete vertebral column up to the tip of the tail. Supported by a grant from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, the team of paleontologists took three weeks to unearth the ichthyosaur and prepare it for its transport by helicopter and truck out of the field.
【226】

【Obstacle】
Galaxy's Gamma-Ray Flares Erupted Far from Its Black Hole
Jan. 7, 2013
In 2011, a months-long blast of energy launched by an enormous black hole almost 11 billion years ago swept past Earth. Using a combination of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), the world's largest radio telescope, astronomers have zeroed in on the source of this ancient outburst.

Theorists expect gamma-ray outbursts occur only in close proximity to a galaxy's central black hole, the powerhouse ultimately responsible for the activity. A few rare observations suggested this is not the case.
The 2011 flares from a galaxy known as 4C +71.07 now give astronomers the clearest and most distant evidence that the theory still needs some work. The gamma-ray emission originated about 70 light-years away from the galaxy's central black hole.

The 4C +71.07 galaxy was discovered as a source of strong radio emission in the 1960s. NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, which operated in the 1990s, detected high-energy flares, but the galaxy was quiet during Fermi's first two and a half years in orbit.

In early November 2011, at the height of the outburst, the galaxy was more than 10,000 times brighter than the combined luminosity of all of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

"This renewed activity came after a long slumber, and that's important because it allows us to explicitly link the gamma-ray flares to the rising emission observed by radio telescopes," said David Thompson, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Located in the constellation Ursa Major, 4C +71.07 is so far away that its light takes 10.6 billion years to reach Earth. Astronomers are seeing this galaxy as it existed when the universe was less than one-fourth of its present age.

At the galaxy's core lies a supersized black hole weighing 2.6 billion times the sun's mass. Some of the matter falling toward the black hole becomes accelerated outward at almost the speed of light, creating dual particle jets blasting in opposite directions. One jet happens to point almost directly toward Earth. This characteristic makes 4C +71.07 a blazar, a classification that includes some of the brightest gamma-ray sources in the sky.
Boston University astronomers Alan Marscher and Svetlana Jorstad routinely monitor 4C +71.07 along with dozens of other blazars using several facilities, including the VLBA.

The instrument's 10 radio telescopes span North America, from Hawaii to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and possess the resolving power of a single radio dish more than 5,300 miles across when their signals are combined. As a result, The VLBA resolves detail about a million times smaller than Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) and 1,000 times smaller than NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

In autumn 2011, the VLBA images revealed a bright knot that appeared to move outward at a speed 20 times faster than light.

"Although this apparent speed was an illusion caused by actual motion almost directly toward us at 99.87 percent the speed of light, this knot was the key to determining the location where the gamma-rays were produced in the black hole's jet," said Marscher, who presented the findings Monday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif.

The knot passed through a bright stationary feature of the jet, which the astronomers refer to as its radio "core," on April 9, 2011. This occurred within days of Fermi's detection of renewed gamma-ray flaring in the blazar. Marscher and Jorstad noted that the blazar brightened at visible wavelengths in step with the higher-energy emission.

During the most intense period of flaring, from October 2011 to January 2012, the scientists found the polarization direction of the blazar's visible light rotated in the same manner as radio emissions from the knot. They concluded the knot was responsible for the visible and the gamma-ray light, which varied in sync.
This association allowed the researchers to pinpoint the location of the gamma-ray outburst to about 70 light-years from the black hole.

The astronomers think that the gamma rays were produced when electrons moving near the speed of light within the jet collided with visible and infrared light originating outside of the jet. Such a collision can kick the light up to much higher energies, a process known as inverse-Compton scattering.

The source of the lower-energy light is unclear at the moment. The researchers speculate the source may be an outer, slow-moving sheath that surrounds the jet. Nicholas MacDonald, a graduate student at Boston University, is investigating how the gamma-ray brightness should change in this scenario to compare with observations.

"The VLBA is the only instrument that can bring us images from so near the edge of a young supermassive black hole, and Fermi's LAT is the only instrument that can see the highest-energy light from the galaxy's jet," said Jorstad.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership. Fermi is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

The VLBA is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
【874】

【附加阅读】伟大科学家Jane Goodall的简单介绍，她被称为walking angel，她的坚持、慈爱广受人们爱戴、喜爱。

Early Days
For more, plz click: http://www.janegoodall.org
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Jane Goodall arrived in Africa, full of dreams. Even as a child, she’d dreamed of living among wild animals and writing about them.Tarzan and Dr. Dolittle were her favorite books, and she knew she’d be a much better jungle companion for Tarzan than that other Jane. African wildlife adventures were an unlikely calling for a little girl in the 1930s and 1940s. But from the beginning, Jane’s mother, Vanne, was encouraging. “You can do whatever you set your mind to,” she said.

When Jane was 22 and working as an assistant in a London film studio, an opportunity arose. Her friend Clo sent a letter, inviting Jane to her family’s new farm in Kenya. Jane wasted no time moving back home, to Bournemouth, so she could earn money as a waitress and save up for the round-trip passage to Africa. Every night after work, she put her earnings under the carpet in the drawing room.
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In 1957, she set sail. The Kenya Castle docked in Mombasa on April 2. Within weeks, Jane met Louis S. B. Leakey, famed archaeologist and paleontologist. He was taken with Jane’s energy, general knowledge and avid interest in animals. He hired her as an assistant and eventually asked Jane to undertake a study of a group of wild chimpanzees living on a lakeshore in Tanzania. He reasoned that knowledge about wild chimpanzees, who were little-understood at the time, could shed light on our evolutionary past.

In July 1960, Jane stepped onto the beach at Gombe. Her mother had traveled with her, to satisfy British authorities who didn’t want a young woman living alone in the jungle (Tanzania was “Tanganyika” at that time -- a British protectorate).

The first weeks at Gombe were frustrating for Jane. The chimpanzees were very shy and fled whenever they saw her. Jane was discouraged, but one day found a good vantage point, high on the highest peak, to observe the chimps’ comings and goings with her binoculars.

Chimps were thought to be vegetarians, but one day from her peak, Jane saw a chimpanzee, David Greybeard, feeding on a baby bush pig, sharing the flesh with a female. She would see chimpanzees hunting monkeys and other small mammals many times at Gombe.
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Within two weeks of that first meat-eating, Jane saw something that excited her even more. She was hiking up to the peak when she saw a chimp through the undergrowth. It was David again, this time at a termite mound. He was using a long flexible probe to fish termites out of their nests. Jane made a rough hide of some palm fronds so she could observe the action the next time chimps came to the termite nests. Sure enough, David came back, this time with a big chimp named Goliath. Jane watched, breathless, as they stripped leaves off the stems to fashion the fishing tools. Into the holes went the probes. Out they came with termites clinging to them–tasty snacks for the two chimps. David and Goliath were making and using tools.

Up until that point, anthropologists saw tool-making as a defining trait of mankind. When Jane wrote Louis Leakey of her discovery, he replied: “Now we must redefine ‘tool,’ redefine ‘man’ or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

The distinction between man and ape was blurring. Leakey was ecstatic. He obtained further funding for Jane’s study and arranged for Jane, who had no degree, to enroll in Cambridge University as a doctoral student.
Personalities, minds and emotions
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Jane worked hard to deepen her knowledge and write up her observations. Her view of the chimps – as individuals with distinct personalities, minds and emotions – did not always mesh with the views of her ethologist colleagues who understood animal behavior in a more impersonal way. But even as Jane’s professors mentored her in formal scientific methodology and helped her to lay a firm foundation for the long-term data collection at Gombe, she insisted on the validity of her observations. She also insisted on giving the chimpanzees names instead of numbers in her writings. This was unheard of at that time.

Jane traveled back and forth to Gombe and began to form a clearer image of chimp society. She saw that, unlike many primates, chimps don’t travel as a troop. They forage alone or in small parties -- a mother with her children, or 2 or 3 friendly males. Often these groups come together where food is plentiful.

Females and their young form the most basic units of chimp society. Males compete vigorously for status and for access to estrus females.

Chimpanzee females in estrus flaunt pink genital swellings, and attract large numbers of males, with whom they mate promiscuously. Males assert themselves with impressive “charging displays”. He who can intimidate all others and win their submissive “pant-grunts” is known as the alpha male.

Through the years Jane would see a succession of alphas – power transfers accompanied by much drama. When Jane began her study, Goliath was alpha male. He was bold, with a fast charging display, and he had an important adult male ally, David Greybeard. But a small, low-ranking chimpanzee named Mike proved to be smarter. Mike’s displays weren’t particularly impressive until the day he incorporated an empty 5-gallon kerosene can into his act. There were always plenty of these empty cans around camp. The loud clanging terrified the other chimps. By the time Mike could kick three cans in front of him as he blasted through a group, he’d become alpha male. Even though the Gombe staff took his cans away, Mike was alpha for six years.

Jane’s observations were published in National Geographic, with captivating photos by filmmaker/photographer Hugo van Lawick, who became Jane’s first husband. As the level of support for the Gombe study increased, Jane and Hugo were able to build a permanent camp with chimp-proof buildings and to hire more researchers. The Gombe Stream Research Center was born.

“Just as awful”
As the Gombe study continued into the 1970s, events revealed the darker side of chimp nature. Jane says, “When I first started at Gombe,” Jane said, “I thought the chimps were nicer than we are. But time has revealed that they are not. They can be just as awful. ”Mike’s six-year reign as alpha male ended when the younger, larger and very aggressive Humphrey charged him and pounded on him. At about the same time, seven of the 16 community males withdrew from the central Kasakela area or the park to the southern part of their range, Kahama.

Conflict between the Kasakela chimps and the splinter group erupted and escalated over time. Figan had defeated Humphrey and won the submission of all the Kasakela males. Now he took them to “war” against Kahama. Their strategy was simple: hunt the enemy down, one at a time, attack them brutally, and leave them to die of their wounds. Within four years, they eliminated all seven Kahama males and at least one of the females.

Violent events were taking place among the Kasakela females as well. Passion, one of the high-ranking females, and her daughter, Pom, developed an abnormal taste for other females’ babies. In a 3-year span, they killed and ate between 5 and 10 newborn infants. While this was extreme, other high-ranking females have also been seen attacking new mothers and taking their infants.

While such brutality is disturbing, Jane is quick to point out that chimpanzees are also capable of altruism. For example, two infants, Mel and Darbee, each about 3 1/2 years old, were orphaned by a pneumonia epidemic. Both orphans were at first adopted by unrelated adolescent males, Spindle and Beethoven, who had themselves lost their mothers. Spindle would even share his night nest and allow Mel to ride clinging to his belly if it was rainy and cold.

Expanding mission
Through the decades, the Gombe Stream Research Center grew. Jane and fellow researchers continued to look at chimpanzee feeding behavior, ecology, infant development, aggression, as well as other primate species. They also were able to document details of chimpanzee “consortships” -- periods in which males take females away from other community males for unchallenged mating time. Jane suggests that chimpanzees thus show a latent capacity to develop more permanent bonds similar to monogamy or serial monogamy.

Jane continued to spend time at Gombe, even as she began to travel widely promoting conservation. But her main priority was to analyze and write up 25 years’ worth of Gombe research. Her book The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior was published in 1986. Its publication was celebrated by a conference in Chicago, “Understanding Chimpanzees”, which brought together many chimp biologists. They were fascinated by one another’s findings, but alarmed to realize how widespread and urgent were the threats facing wild chimps.

The message was clear: We understand chimps much better now. They are more like us than we ever imagined. But now we must help save them. Jane had gone into the conference as a scientist. She left as an activist, determined to save the amazing creatures who she knew so well.
【1500】

2012Michelle

我占个沙发吧，嘿嘿~

attractg

果断先抢个板凳~~

速度：

2’11''(298) How do songbirds sing ? Scientists study this question by using high-field magnetic , 3D-images to analyze this vocal organ. Like human , songbirds's songs are used for finding a mate and retaining territories. Songs are important to reproductive success.

1'35''(256) Scientists have found some games are too complex for human and are impossible to be fully learned. This explain why some people find themselves never win at skill-based games like chess or pocker. When a game becomes complex, human becomes less rational , and it is hard for them to find optimal strategies. This theory can also be used in economic decisons. Many people make decisions based on equilibrium theory. However, this theory assumed that players or workers having deep and perfect knowledge of what they are doing.

1'14''(210) Sometimes people make randomly decisions that does not seem rational. In stock markets, there are thousands of stock to choose. People do not awalys choose a stock based on rational knowledge and sometimes they do not equip sufficient information to make rational decisions. Therefore, we should abandon this conventional theory and seeking for new approach to analyze human behaviors.

1'18''(228) Scientists found a giant marine fossil as representing the top predator in marine food chains in ancient ocean. This creature can compared to the whale in modern ocean.

1’12''(226) Remarkably , only eight million years prior to the appearance of T**, a severe extinciton happened and killed about 80%-96% species in Earth Ocean. The discover of T** revealed the recovery and evolution of a modern ecosystem.

越障：

3'13''(874)  读的太快了，没控制好，好多内容都没记住....

Main Idea: Galaxy G-R flares far from its black whole.
Author's attitude: Neutral
Structure:

In 2011, a months-long blast energy by an enormous black whole was observed by NASA's VLBA, the world largest radio telescope.
Theorists expect the G-R happens only in close proximity to a galaxy central black whole. The 2011 flares comes from a known galaxy named 4C+71.07.

>>In early nov.2011, the galaxy was more than 10,000 times brighter than combined luminosity of all stars in our milky way galaxy.

>> In autumn 2011, the VLBA revealed a bright knot...

The VLBA is the only instrument could bring us images from so near the edge of a young supermassive black whole.


很赞的附加阅读，谢谢大米！！！  前不久还听过Jane 的演讲，很喜欢她，虽然年纪大了，而且穿着极其朴素，但她说话时有一种很强的和平静美的力量~~  很有感染力~

psychy

1，56
2，20
1，31
1，48
1，52

frankiepn

1'48
1'34
1'11
1'12
1'13
obstacle
4'45

铁板神猴

很壮观的样子……

铁板神猴

1'46''
1'46''
1'19''
1'23''
1'21''

5'43''

angel那篇留到明天来拜读吧~

annaliang2008

2'00
1'46
1'14
1'24
1'06
6'28

forazure

2013-01-09

【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障12系列】【12-19】科技

[出勤次数：29(19 of S12) 连续出勤天数：14]

Speed:
1. Word: 298    Time: 2’10”
2. Word: 256   Time: 1’43”
3. Word: 210    Time: 1’30”
4. Word: 228    Time: 1’25”
5. Word: 226    Time: 1’17”

Obstacle:
Word: 874         Time:7’06”

forazure

话说....猴子似乎又出场了