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[阅读小分队] 【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障13系列】【13-13】科技

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发表于 2013-1-22 20:31:58 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
SPEED
time1
“PLURIPOTENT” is a long word that means “able to do many things”. It is the technical term applied to stem cells that can generate many different sorts of bodily tissue, rather than just one sort, which is all that lesser stem cells can manage. But many researchers hope these cells will be pluripotent in other ways, too. Not only might they be used to make replacement tissues and organs for transplantation into those whose existing body parts no longer work properly (an approach known as regenerative medicine), they might also be used to produce pure cultures of cells for the early testing of drugs.The culturing and use of human pluripotent stem cells is controversial because the natural source of such cells is embryos, which are destroyed by the process of extraction. But in 2007 two groups of researchers, one in Japan and the other in America, announced that they had worked out how to make adult skin cells behave like natural pluripotent cells, by adding four activated genes to them. The result is known as an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell.On January 3rd AstraZeneca, a British drug company, said it would buy human heart muscle, blood vessels, nerve cells and liver cells made from iPS cells by Cellular Dynamics, a company founded by James Thomson (pictured). Dr Thomson, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, is the man who led the team that, in 1998, isolated the first human embryonic stem cells and in 2007 published the American version of the iPS work.(253 words)

time2
AstraZeneca has two plans for its purchases. One is to use them to find molecules that encourage non-pluripotent stem cells to turn into mature tissue. Such molecules could act as drugs that coax damaged tissue to heal itself. The second is to use iPS cells to test drugs that have nothing to do with regenerative medicine.Too often, a promising-looking drug fails late on in a clinical trial. Sometimes this is because it does not deliver the promised benefit. Sometimes, however, it works but its side effects prove more dangerous than the disease it is supposed to treat. The cost of failed trials is an important reason why drug research is so expensive. AstraZeneca therefore plans to use Cellular Dynamics’s cells to check the toxicity of potential medicines before they get inside a human being, in order to reduce the number of trials that fail for the second reason.And AstraZeneca is not the only company using iPS cells in new ways. In December GlaxoSmithKline, another British firm, described an experiment in which it assaulted neurons derived from iPS cells with beta-amyloid, a molecule linked to Alzheimer’s disease, and then tested whether the beta-amyloid responded to hundreds of existing drugs. The findings of this experiment will be published in Stem Cell Research in March.Another trick made possible by iPS cells is to derive them from patients with specific ailments—particularly ailments with a genetic component—and then nudge the induced cells into becoming the type of cell afflicted by that ailment. Several groups of researchers have used disease-prone cells created in this way to explore how the disease in question develops, and whether it succumbs to drugs.(275words)

剩余部分
George Daley, of Harvard University, is one of the most enthusiastic explorers of these “disease in a dish” models. In 2008 he created stem-cell lines from people with ten different conditions, including Down’s syndrome, juvenile diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.Such models are hardly foolproof—Dr Daley himself acknowledges that the technology is still in its infancy—but eventually they may bring new drugs. iPierian, a company that Dr Daley helped found, has used iPS cells to develop two antibodies that might be used to attack tau, a protein implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, and also to clear up inflammation linked with Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative conditions. That is a use far removed from the original idea of employing stem cells in regenerative medicine. The plurality of their potency, then, is only just beginning to be explored.




time 3
The humble sweet potato is an immigrant to Oceania. Native to South America, the tuber has proliferated through Polynesia and the surrounding Pacific islands — but no one is sure how it got there. Using genetic evidence from herbarium specimens and modern crops, researchers have now narrowed down the route of the sweet potato, which could provide clues as to the movements of the people who carried it.At least three distinct hypotheses have been set forth to explain the migration of the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). Some archaeologists have taken the similarity between various words for sweet potato — 'kuumala' and its derivatives in Polynesia, and 'kumara', 'cumar' or 'cumal' among Quechua speakers in northwestern South America — as evidence that the tuber proliferated in Polynesia after an early introduction by locals who visited South America, long before Europeans made it there. Another theory is that the sweet potato might have reached Oceania through the natural dispersal of seeds across the Pacific Ocean.A genetic map of the potato's pathway published today in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1 throws support to a third school of thought. In the 'tripartite' hypothesis, developed in the 1970s by the archaeologist Douglas Yen, then at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, the sweet potato arrived in Oceania multiple times2. First, between 1000 and 1100 ad, Polynesian voyagers visited South America and brought the sweet potato back with them, later spreading it around other Pacific islands; Europeans then transported other sweet-potato lineages to the Philippines and the western Pacific in two separate waves from the sixteenth century onwards. From there, genetically distinct sweet-potato lines would have dispersed throughout Oceania.The latest study favours this tripartite scenario. A team led by Caroline Roullier, a botanist at the Centre for International Agricultural Cooperation and Research for Development in Montpellier, France, took genetic samples from modern sweet potatoes and historical specimens kept in herbarium collections.(315 words)




time 4
Old potatoes

The herbarium specimens included plants collected during Captain James Cook’s 1769 visits to New Zealand and the Society Islands. Roullier and her team targeted historical specimens in particular, because they reflect how different sweet-potato varieties spread through Oceania before exchanges and cultivation overwrote their genetic signatures. The story of how the sweet potato crossed the sea, in turn, records ancient contact between Polynesia and South America.Using short DNA sequences from the plants' cell nuclei and chloroplasts, Roullier and her co-authors found that the vegetables not only carry the genetic heritage of their South American origin, but exist in different types in Polynesia and the western Pacific. The sweet potatoes in Polynesia were part of a distinct lineage that was already present in the area when European voyagers introduced different lines elsewhere. Each lineage may even have been introduced several times, further complicating the pattern of dispersal and exchange. “The present sample of herbarium accessions does not allow us to rule out multiple prehistoric introductions,” Roullier says.

“I’m delighted to see the [tripartite] hypothesis now further confirmed by these recent results,” says Patrick Kirch, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Such studies of how humans moved plants and animals, Kirch says, show what the late pioneering ethnobotanist Edgar Anderson called “man’s transported landscapes.”Historical specimens will be crucial to elucidating these patterns. The sweet potatoes collected by Captain Cook’s voyage, for example, “provided time-controlled data” that show “the importance of continuing to curate such specimens in the world’s museums”.

time 5

A question of judgment(今年考研题)
A NEVER-ENDING flow of information is the lot of most professionals. Whether it comes in the form of lawyers' cases, doctors' patients or even journalists' stories, this information naturally gets broken up into pieces that can be tackled one at a time during the course of a given day. In theory, a decision made when handling one of these pieces should not have much, if any, impact on similar but unrelated subsequent decisions. Yet Uri Simonsohn of the University of Pennsylvania and Francesca Gino at Harvard report in Psychological Science that this is not how things work out in practice.


Dr Simonsohn and Dr Gino knew from studies done in other laboratories that people are, on the whole, poor at considering background information when making individual decisions. At first glance this might seem like a strength that grants the ability to make judgments which are unbiased by external factors. But in a world of quotas and limits—in other words, the world in which most professional people operate—the two researchers suspected that it was actually a weakness. They speculated that an inability to consider the big picture was leading decision-makers to be biased by the daily samples of information they were working with. For example, they theorised that a judge fearful of appearing too soft on crime might be more likely to send someone to prison if he had already sentenced five or six other defendants only to probation on that day.To test this idea, they turned their attention to the university-admissions process. Admissions officers interview hundreds of applicants every year, at a rate of 4½ a day, and can offer entry to about 40% of them. In theory, the success of an applicant should not depend on the few others chosen randomly for interview during the same day, but Dr Simonsohn and Dr Gino suspected the truth was otherwise.(311)




剩余部分
They studied the results of 9,323 MBA interviews conducted by 31 admissions officers. The interviewers had rated applicants on a scale of one to five. This scale took numerous factors, including communication skills, personal drive, team-working ability and personal accomplishments, into consideration. The scores from this rating were then used in conjunction with an applicant's score on the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, a standardised exam which is marked out of 800 points, to make a decision on whether to accept him or her.

Dr Simonsohn and Dr Gino discovered that their hunch was right. If the score of the previous candidate in a daily series of interviewees was 0.75 points or more higher than that of the one before that, then the score for the next applicant would drop by an average of 0.075 points. This might sound small, but to undo the effects of such a decrease a candidate would need 30 more GMAT points than would otherwise have been necessary.

As for why people behave this way, Dr Simonsohn proposes that after accepting a number of strong candidates, interviewers might form the illogical expectation that a weaker candidate “is due”. Alternatively, he suggests that interviewers may be engaging in mental accounting that simplifies the task of maintaining a given long-term acceptance rate, by trying to apply this rate to each daily group of candidates. Regardless of the reason, if this sort of thinking proves to have a similar effect on the judgments of those in other fields, such as law and medicine, it could be responsible for far worse things than the rejection of qualified business-school candidates.




越障练习
http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=seeking-antarcticas-huddeled
在乱翻的时候看见的照片 特别好 大家没事可以点进去看看 高清的
THE International Space Station (ISS) is mankind’s holiday house in the sky. Like all such houses, it is a luxury item (costing $150 billion and rising). And like many similar projects on Earth, the owners cannot resist tinkering with it. It was in this spirit that, on January 16th,NASA announced that the ISS is to get an extension. This will not, as might have been the case on Earth, be a conservatory or loft conversion. Instead, it will be a BEAM, or Bigelow Expandable Activity Module.  


  Robert Bigelow, an American hotel entrepreneur and space enthusiast, has for years been pushing the idea that space stations should be made not of metal but of fabric. That would mean they could be folded up for launch and inflated in orbit.


 An inflatable space station may sound like the proverbial chocolate teapot, but if you are going to have space stations at all, then inflation isnot a bad way of making them. There have been many proposals in the past. Wernher von Braun, the patriotically flexible developer of the V2 military rocket (for Germany) and the Saturn V moon rocket (for America), sketched plans in the 1950s. The Goodyear Aircraft Corporation produced mockups in the early 1960s. In the 1980s the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory came up with a detailedspace exploration plan which relied on inflatable craft, thus quickly attracting the nickname “brilliant condoms”. And in the 1990s NASA proposed sending astronauts to Mars in an inflatable craft called TransHab.


 Despite the branding possibilities offered by the Livermore version of the idea, Mr Bigelow and NASA prefer the less evocative term “expandable module” in their literature. Regardless of the name, however, making spacecraft and space stations out of fabric offers severaladvantages over the tin-can approach.


 The most important is weight. Inflatable space stations are lighter than metal ones, and even small savings in weight make a big differenceto launch costs.


Expandable modules may be safer, too. Ground tests by Bigelow Aerospace, Mr Bigelow’s vehicle for his orbital ambitions, suggest that the module’s walls—thick sandwiches of exotic fabrics such as Vectran (used in sailcloth and high-strength rope) and Nomex (from which fire-resistant suits are made)—offer better protection than metal ones against impacts from micrometeors and the increasing amount of artificial debris that is in orbit around Earth. They are also less likely than metals to generate dangerous secondary radiation when bombarded with things like cosmic rays.
That is one reason why NASA was interested in using inflatable craft for the months-long journey to Mars.


Nor is the idea untested. In 2006 and 2007 Bigelow launched two unmanned versions,Genesis1 and Genesis2. BEAM,which will be bolted onto the space station in 2015, if all goes well, will be the last test of the technology before the launch of the firm’s intended commercial product, the BA330. This will offer 330 cubic metres of internal space. At the moment the ISS has a volume of 916 cubic metres. The firm plans to launch two BA330s in 2016, link them together in orbit, and thus create a station with 70% of the pressurised volume of the ISS for a fraction of the cost.


This first station, dubbed the Alpha Station, will be equipped with laboratory equipment, workbenches and the like. Bigelow hopes to offer 60 days aboard it for around $26m, assuming that its guests make the trip into orbit on one of the cheap rockets provided by SpaceX, another private space company.


Bigelow hopes in particular to win business from governments without big space programmes of their own. To that end it has memoranda of understanding with several, including those of Britain, Japan and the Netherlands. It is also wooing the private sector, though that mayprove tricky. There has long been talk of the advantages of “zero gravity” (actually, the continuous free fall of orbit, rather than the total absence of a gravitational field) for manufacturing specialised materials whose components are of very different densities, and for growing specialised protein crystals for examination by pharmaceutical companies. This was, indeed, one of the sales pitches for the ISS. Unfortunately, the private sector stayed away in droves, and the scientific output of the ISS has been pitiful.


If renting the Alpha Station out as a laboratory does not work, there is always the option of turning it into a holiday house. Given Mr Bigelow’s background, it is often assumed that this is the plan anyway. The firm insists that it is not, at least for now. But who will really be interested in paying $26m to go into orbit remains to be seen. Inflated space stations are fine, as long as they
do not lead to inflated expectations.




(787)
发表于 2013-1-22 21:00:21 | 显示全部楼层
(1) 2'22''
Stem cells would not only used to replace tissues and organs but also used to produce pure cultures of cells. And a team worked out this problem.
(2) 2'39''
A purchased IPS has two plans. One is XXX (忘了); the other is to test the drugs. Also, many other firms used IPS to test the drugs.
(3) 1'15''
G said this technique is only in infancy and need to explore.


(4) 3'00''
Three hypothesises of potatoes which from south Africa immigrated to Oceania.
(5) 1'53''
The hypothesis that these potatoes were exchanged from European voyagers, and now further conformed by these recent results.


(6)第三篇速度的看不懂...
发表于 2013-1-22 21:20:58 | 显示全部楼层
占位!!!
发表于 2013-1-23 06:51:59 | 显示全部楼层
1:32. Scientists in US and Japan claims they successfully turn human skin cells into P, which is something that can both reproduce body tissues and organs and pure culture of cells. AZ company intends to buy it?

1:25. It introduces two plans AZ company will do to the purchase. 没看剩余部分

1:50. In talks about the research of sweet potato's origin and how it get there.

1:02.

1:43+1:30 People are often poor in considering background information when they make decisions. It is a disadvantage because it makes our decisions biased. Ex: people work in the admission office. If a candidate is ranked higher than average, the next candidate will likely to rank below average.

3:14 It talks about the hypothesis of building space stations in fabric? It goes on listing the advantage (lighter-->less launch cost). 后面几段怎么有点读不通的感觉=。=...Inflated space stations are fine, as long as it wont lead to inflated expectations.

额。。。为毛这篇帖子上有好多紫色的线=。=。。。是我眼花么=。=...今天阅读没什么感觉。。。嗯哼
发表于 2013-1-23 09:12:06 | 显示全部楼层
1‘36   what is the P, how can it work and people's attitude toward it.
2'08   稍感难度。。
2’18   some ways the sweet potato immigrant to the O
1'37
1'55
2'50
发表于 2013-1-23 09:51:29 | 显示全部楼层
1`42被老妈打断= =
1’40
50''
1'47''
58''
1'29''


4'45''
p1.raise the idea that inflated space station is much better than metal ones.show some experiments supporting this idea.

p2.the benefits of inflated station and some suceessful eg.:lighter,safer

p3.the private sector stay away from driving ISS, but it may change in the future
发表于 2013-1-23 11:00:50 | 显示全部楼层
【速度】
1'45
The passage describes the function of pluripotent stem cells. The application of the pluripotent stem cells may be controversial because of the process of extraction. However, two groups of researchers have worked out methods to solve these problems. And AstraZeneca, a drug company, is going to buy the products made from iPS cells, which are known as the result of the researches.
2'25
The passage indicates the application of the iPS cells. Firstly, it states two plans of AstraZeneca for the purchases of the products. And it also illustrates the reasons why using iPS cells to test drugs are so important. Secondly, GlaxoSmithKline also conducted an experiment about iPS cells. Thirdly, iPS cells can be derived from patients with specific ailments.
剩餘部份
1'30
The passage illustrates that the iPS technology is still in its infancy. Firstly, GD created stem-lines with different conditions. Secondly, iPierian developed two kinds of antibodies with this technology.
2'37
The passage describes the three hypotheses of the migration of the humble sweet potato. And the three hypotheses are about people's visits, natural dispersal of seeds, and the multiple times of transportation among voyagers from South America and Europe.
2'10
The passage confirms the possibility of the story of how the sweet potato crossed the sea--tripartite hypothesis. And an archaeologist reiterates the importance of the hypothesis.
2'04
Two doctors hold the idea that ignoring the background information is the weakness for the decision-making process. And they tested the idea in the case of university admission.
剩餘部份
2'16
The paragraph points out the factors considered by the admissions officers during the interviews.
The paragraph indicates the discovery of the study in the admissions of MBA students.
The paragraph states that the situation gets worse when the discovery applies to other areas.
【越障】
6'25
The passage describes the idea of an inflatable space station by Robert Bigelow.
-->B suggests the space stations should be made of fabric. And many other similar proposals have been came up with in the past few years.
-->The inflatable space stations, made of fabric, have many advantages.
#weight-->the stations will be lighter so that the cost will be decreased.
#safety-->prevent the secondary radiation in the process of bombarding.
-->the idea of ISS has been tested several times
-->B describes the prospect of ISS. He wants to attract the support of the private sector but fails.
-->the plan of turning ISS into a holiday house is assumed to be possible.

終於交作業啦XDD~~
it seems that structure is very important in the last reading..!!
RC wanna us tell him the main point of each paragraph rather than details..?
发表于 2013-1-23 11:54:33 | 显示全部楼层
1'23''
1'58''
1'29''
1'51''
1'26''
1'52''
1'45''

4'58''
发表于 2013-1-23 14:51:57 | 显示全部楼层
辛苦星星了,速度的文章很有意思啊,特别是那篇考研的。没想到考研的文章是这样的。

越障也好玩,科技改变生活咩~

交作业

【13-13】
Time1-1'33"
Time2-1'43"
Rest-52"
Time3-1'52"
Time4-1'29"
Time5-1'52"
Rest-1'24"

Obstacle-4'02"
 楼主| 发表于 2013-1-23 15:44:44 | 显示全部楼层
是啊是啊~~~嘿嘿嘿 就是格式乱点
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