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[阅读小分队] 【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障16系列】【16-12】科技

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发表于 2013-3-26 22:09:52 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
大家好,今天的科技文第三个和第四个计时是一篇文章。 改版了,感觉有点不习惯,呵呵。最重要的是标题都是白色的,在黄色文字的下面,用鼠标拖动一下就可以看到咯!
[Time 1]
Article 1 ( Check the title later )
Making Moonshine Safe to Drink

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND—There's nothing like suddenly going blind to spoil a good happy hour. Alcoholic beverages tainted with poisonous methanol are a scourge of the developing world, causing blindness and even death. The dangerous drinks can come from botched batches of home-distilled liquor, but they often have a more sinister origin; criminal gangs will cut standard alcohols with methanol and sell the resulting concoctions to unassuming customers for inflated profits. Because adding methanol doesn't change the drink's flavor, color, or smell, there's no easy way to tell if the brew you're about to imbibe could poison you—until now. Scientists in Colombia have developed a reusable wireless chip that can analyze a drink's proportion of methanol to ethanol (the good kind of alcohol) and warn consumers of any danger, they reported this week at the meeting here of the American Physical Society. This first generation device (pictured above) costs about $5 and still requires an antenna, but within 2 years they hope to have a commercial product that sends easy-to-interpret results directly to a user's cell phone. Until then, you might want to lay off the hooch.
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[Time 2]
Article 2
The Original Iron Lung
Using stripped-down versions of living cells, researchers have confirmed which proteins allow certain bacteria to breathe iron and other metals when oxygen isn't available. Shewanella oneidensis (pictured) is often found in oxygenated environments but can also thrive without the gas if it must, thanks to energy-generating chemical reactions that transfer electrons from inside its cells to outside minerals that contain metals such as iron. Previous studies identified a particular set of three cell-membrane proteins involved in this electron transfer process, but subsequent research suggested that the protein found on the external side of the cell membrane, dubbed MtrC, transferred electrons too slowly to explain the microorganism's rate of metabolism. In a new series of lab tests, researchers created tiny, cell-sized capsules that lacked a living cell's metabolic machinery but included all three cell-membrane proteins in a simplified outer layer. Measurements showed that rates of electron transfer from substances inside the capsules were more than 1 million times faster than those seen previously in MtrC-only experiments and were more than sufficient to fuel Shewanella in oxygen-poor environments, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Besides shedding light on the iron-breathing bacterium's metabolic tricks, the new findings may help researchers harness Shewanella to make biobatteries known as microbial fuel cells.

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[Time 3]
Article 3
Brain scans predict which criminals are more likely to reoffend

In a twist that evokes the dystopian science fiction of writer Philip K. Dick, neuroscientists have found a way to predict whether convicted felons are likely to commit crimes again from looking at their brain scans. Convicts showing low activity in a brain region associated with decision-making and action are more likely to be arrested again, and sooner.
Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist at the non-profit Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his collaborators studied a group of 96 male prisoners just before their release. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the prisoners’ brains during computer tasks in which subjects had to make quick decisions and inhibit impulsive reactions.
The scans focused on activity in a section of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a small region in the front of the brain involved in motor control and executive functioning. The researchers then followed the ex-convicts for four years to see how they fared.
Among the subjects of the study, men who had lower ACC activity during the quick-decision tasks were more likely to be arrested again after getting out of prison, even after the researchers accounted for other risk factors such as age, drug and alcohol abuse and psychopathic traits. Men who were in the lower half of the ACC activity ranking had a 2.6-fold higher rate of rearrest for all crimes and a 4.3-fold higher rate for nonviolent crimes. The results are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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[Time 4]
There is growing interest in using neuroimaging to predict specific behaviour, says Tor Wager, a neuroscientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He says that studies such as this one, which tie brain imaging to concrete clinical outcomes, “provide a new and so far very promising way” to find patterns of brain activity that have broader implications for society.
But the authors themselves stress that much more work is needed to prove that the technique is reliable and consistent, and that it is likely to flag only the truly high-risk felons and leave the low-risk ones alone. “This isn't ready for prime time,” says Kiehl.
Wager adds that the part of the ACC examined in this study “is one of the most frequently activated areas in the human brain across all kinds of tasks and psychological states”. Low ACC activity could have a variety of causes — impulsivity, caffeine use, vascular health, low motivation or better neural efficiency — and not all of these are necessarily related to criminal behaviour.
Crime prediction was the subject of Dick's 1956 short story “The Minority Report” (adapted for the silver screen by Steven Spielberg in 2002), which highlighted the thorny ethics of arresting people for crimes they had yet to commit.
Brain scans are of course a far cry from the clairvoyants featured in that science-fiction story. But even if the science turns out to be reliable, the legal and social implications remain to be explored, the authors warn. Perhaps the most appropriate use for neurobiological markers would be for helping to make low-stakes decisions, such as which rehabilitation treatment to assign a prisoner, rather than high-stakes ones such as sentencing or releasing on parole.
“A treatment of [these clinical neuroimaging studies] that is either too glibly enthusiastic or over-critical,” Wager says, “will be damaging for this emerging science in the long run.”

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 楼主| 发表于 2013-3-26 22:11:45 | 显示全部楼层
[Time 5]
Article 4
Social isolation shortens lifespan

Scientists have long known that both social isolation and feelings of loneliness can increase risk of illness and death in  people. But it has been less clear whether isolation, which can lead to loneliness, undermines health, or whether either factor, acting alone, can harm well-being. Today, researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that limited contact with family, friends and community groups predicts illness and earlier death, regardless of whether it is accompanied by feelings of loneliness1.
The scientists analysed data from 6,500 people aged 52 and older enrolled in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, which monitors the health, social well-being and longevity of people living in England. The researchers evaluated social isolation on the basis of the amount of contact participants reported having with family, friends and civic organizations, and they assessed loneliness using a questionnaire. They tracked sickness and mortality in study participants from 2004 to 2012.
The researchers found that social isolation was correlated with higher mortality — even after adjusting for pre-existing health conditions and socioeconomic factors — but loneliness was not.
“When we think about loneliness and social isolation, we often think of them as two faces of the same coin,” says Andrew Steptoe, a psychologist and epidemiologist at University College London, who led the study. But the findings suggest that a lack of social interaction harms health whether or not a person feels lonely, he says. “When you’re socially isolated, you not only lack companionship in many cases, but you may also lack advice and support from people.”
The findings contradict two recent studies that suggest loneliness is associated with declining health and increased mortality in older people2, 3. “I think it’s kind of a puzzle that we now need to solve,” says John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, and a co-author of one of the earlier studies. He says more work is needed to understand cultural factors that may influence results, such as differences in the way people report loneliness.
Steptoe says that he plans to examine whether social isolation affects treatment and outcomes during illness. That does not mean loneliness should be ignored, he says.
“We should make every effort to try to alleviate the loneliness of older people,” says Steptoe. “But at the same time, we need to attend just to the sheer amount of social contact that people have and make sure that people do maintain their social contacts. That might be just as important.”

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 楼主| 发表于 2013-3-26 22:13:32 | 显示全部楼层
[越障]
Article 5
Sexy, Sexy Scientists
I went to college with one of the world's sexiest scientists. To be specific, he's the world's 28th sexiest scientist. I say that objectively, because last month, Business Insider officially named their top 50 "Sexiest Scientists Alive," and my former classmate John Dabiri was ranked 28th. (I can only assume that I was ranked 51st. No other explanation makes sense.)
Dabiri is currently a professor of aeronautics and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. I've always heard him described as a brilliant scientist, and I recall reading an article about his 2010 MacArthur "genius grant," but until the Business Insider piece, I had never contemplated his sexiness. I swear.
What a weird idea for an article, I thought, as I scrolled through pictures of sexy professors, sexy postdocs, sexy grad students, sexy TED-talkers, and sexy founders of sexy tech startups. But it evidently struck a chord with the clicking public because the page has been viewed more than 3 million times in less than a month. Either the world likes to see pictures of sexy scientists, or a small number of people about whom we should worry like to see pictures of sexy scientists repeatedly. (This is, granted, an improvement over the pre-Internet days, when you'd have to stash issues of Scientific American under your mattress and then lamely explain to your mother that you only read it for the articles.)
As you may have noticed, I used the word "sexy" twice in my article title, guaranteeing 6 million page views. To improve beyond that, I'd have to call it, "Sexy, Sexy Scientists Doing the Harlem Shake With CUTE PUPPIES OMG While Distributing Freeware."
I asked Dabiri what he thought about being the 28th sexiest scientist alive. (And thank goodness "alive" was one of the criteria, because no one wants to compete against sexy Enrico Fermi—or any sexy dead organism, such as the various genera of sexy Oligocene Megalonychidae.) "I was flattered, of course," Dabiri said, "but since I'm not a regular reader of Business Insider, I figured that would be the last I'd hear about it. I was wrong about that!"
As the article grew in popularity, Dabiri's friends teased him about his ranking, and random passersby would congratulate him on campus. He laughed it off, but he started to feel uneasy on behalf of some of his fellow awardees. "I do think it would be more difficult if I was more junior (i.e., untenured) and/or female," he said. "I think the authors probably didn't realize that they'd strike a nerve among academics, but given the well-known gender equity issues in most fields, the article was probably not a good idea."
If the online comments are any indication, the article actually struck two similar but strangely incompatible nerves—first, implying that sexiness is not a quality typically associated with scientists, and second, diminishing the 50 scientists' research by giving them 3-million-click fame for their sexiness and not their intellect.
Science is hardly the first profession to include a sexy subset. Sexy firefighters pose for calendars, sexy librarians dance on card catalogs, sexy teachers keep you after school, sexy nurses give sponge baths, sexy construction workers sweat, and sexy proctologists are brought before displeased boards of ethics. (Some professions seem to be inherently immune to sexiness, which is why you never hear about sexy opticians, sexy decoupage instructors, or sexy grief counselors.)
I've had the darnedest time figuring out how to feel about the Business Insider article. Showing sexy scientists humanizes us in an important way—it says, hey, we're just like you firefighters; we just happen to know the name of every erogenous nerve with which we get our groove. But it also highlights the wrong aspect of our careers. "Ultimately," Dabiri agrees, "I think any scientist would prefer to be on a list of the smartest or most creative scientists than the sexiest."
So how do you make your research sexier? Glad you asked! Cosmo-style, here are seven simple ways to sex up your science:
Wear a lab coat, latex gloves, safety goggles, and closed-toe shoes. And nothing else.
Hide unsightly grad students in cabinets.
Rewrite "x³" in all mathematical equations as "xxx."
Turn on some Barry White music. Lower the lights in the laboratory. Then have a lot of sex there. Ideally, a second person would be involved as well.
Replace model organisms … with supermodel organisms!
Arrange implausible pornographic situations in the lab: "This is my friend Kimberly. She just came over to use the chemical safety shower. Oh, look, the repairman is here to fix the differential scanning calorimeter."
Offer sexual favors in exchange for grant money. (That's basically what science funding has come to at this point anyway.)
Many scientists would probably like to see the Business Insider article buried in the dustbin of online history, where it would join pets.com, ASCII porn, and Internet Explorer. But we can't dismiss the notion of sexy science so easily, perhaps because we do strive for sexiness, albeit in a more broadly defined way. We talk about sexy papers, sexy grant proposals, and sexy experiments. In this context, "sexy" means "appealing by virtue of uniting popular or unlikely research strategies," but the effect is the same. As the adage says, sex sells. (Or, if used to vend half a dozen unhealthy gametocytes, sex sells six sick sex cells. See, this is what happens when you try to write after reading Fox in Socks repeatedly to a 2-year-old for a week straight.)
We do sexy things all the time. We make slick seminar presentations, rope in far-flung collaborators for the sake of sounding exciting, get all zippy and glitzy with graphics, and assign our savviest undergrad the task of modernizing the lab Web page. ("Hey, Brayden, put some more HTMLs up there.") We want to work on something so fascinating or important, even by nonscientific standards, that it crosses the barrier into Sexyland.
We do these things, in many cases, against our intuition that the beauty lies in the science itself, not in the sexy presentation. When the sexiness becomes the focus—and when 3 million people click on the sexiness, but our latest article in the Journal of NoOneCares will probably be read five times over the next decade—we curse the absurdity, the necessity, and the absurdity of the necessity to make our science sexy.
And that, I think, is why Dabiri and his 49 sexy co-awardees need not worry about this accolade destroying their careers. In a sense, they've accomplished what we all hope to accomplish: They've investigated some fascinating science while happening to appear physically attractive. Whether or not the article was ultimately detrimental, millions of people have now read brief descriptions of their fascinating work while "sex sex sex" pounded in their brains. That has to help.
Remember that the next time a scantily clad Swede knocks on your door and says, "Congratulations! I'm from the Nobel Prize Committee. And I hear you've been very naughty."

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发表于 2013-3-26 22:32:49 | 显示全部楼层
time 2那个图片好……undirectlookable……

1 - 01:04
Methanol is poisonous. It can cause blindness and even death. Some illegal beverage manufaturer add methanol instead of alcohol in beer. But methanol has no smell, and thus makes it hard for the buyers to tell if the drink contains the substance. Researchers are now finding ways (as easy as possible) to help people distinguish beverages that contain methanol from those that do not.

2 - 01:20
Researchers have recently found out the reason why some bacteria that have some chemical reactions with iron and other metals can live both with and without oxygen.
(2nd time: the researchers find a better explaination concerning the way that electron transfer from inside the cell to the outside. And the result shed light on the development of biobatteries.)

3 - 01:26
A recent study shows that lower activity in the ACC (an area of human's brain) can lead to higher chances of being rearrested. Scientists used the method of fMRI and studied nearly 100 prisoners before their release. Scientists have already ruled out factors that may affect the result such as age, psychological traits and so on.

4 - 01:44
Using scanning to analyze hunman behaviour is becoming increasingly popular these days. But scientists themselves are aware that the reliability of this technique is still in question, and that the technique had better be applied in making low-risk decisions (else this technique will be abused).
(eg. ACC is active in nature, and several factors can affect the activeness of this part. Thus ACC cannot be directedly related to criminal inclinations.)

5 - 02:09
Loneliness is often related to higher risk of illness and earlier death for the elderly. But a recent study shows that social isolation, disregard of whether people actually feel lonely, also lead to bad health. Social isolation also makes people lack of advice and support when in need. The researchers examined hundreds of people in England and gave that result. The researchers then suggests that the public should care more about the elderly and involve the elderly more in social connections.

Obstacle - 06:53
Business Insider recently released a list of "the top 50 sexy scientists". But the scientists are upset about this because they want to be appraised more on intellegence rather than these naughty characteristics.

今天的文章都好有趣!
while reading while分析文章结构的能力还要加强!……越障除了main idea以外好无力(eg.行文逻辑什么的)TT
发表于 2013-3-26 23:10:04 | 显示全部楼层
占座、、、看来要一次交5分作业了。。刚要交那四分又刷出新的来了。。


补作业5


1-187-58

2-215-55

3-249-1'11        scientist scan the criminal's brain and found something

4-309-1'21       

5-413-1'59

6-1167-7'17`    sexy....sexy...that is the only thing i can remember


(I haven't done xiaofendui for four days, just like a fish out of water, that made me feel a bit of confused. I feel so sorry about my absence. Hope not happen again.)


发表于 2013-3-26 23:15:24 | 显示全部楼层
第一天报到。弱爆了啊,只能在100+的速度。
1:18
2:29
2:25
3:04
3:08

10:16
这就是一个吐槽文啊
BI杂志的sexiest scientist->这样的文章竟然得到了很多关注->讽刺地手法写如果让实验室变得sexy->sexy对于科学家来说是没有意义的应该关注 smartness , creativity神马的
发表于 2013-3-27 06:37:10 | 显示全部楼层
谢谢分享~~

1‘04
1’18
1‘17
1’39
2‘18

6’05
发表于 2013-3-27 08:36:27 | 显示全部楼层
1‘17
1’27
1‘27
1’34
2‘00

4’10
新手,晚点再算速度。。很多单词不会,括号里的直接略过。。读完只有零碎的记忆%>_<%
发表于 2013-3-27 10:45:13 | 显示全部楼层
If the alcoholic with methanol, it might precious for us. A new device is developing to detect he situation.

A new found about how the bacteria transfer the iron even without oxygen. This unveil the iron-breathing metabolic tricks; it also help researchers to build microbial fuel cell.

A special area in the B
But this theory is not going to be used in social and legal area with out more research.

Isolation, whether the person fell loneliness, may be the reason of unhealth and thus affect the lifespan. So we should keep old people communicate with relatives.
rain can affect the activity offensive activities.
发表于 2013-3-27 11:31:52 | 显示全部楼层
1-187-1:06
Methanol which is poisonous for drinkers are usually contained in beverages.
A device is developed to analyze the propotion of methanol in drinks.
2-215-1:26
Proteins provide energy to bacteria in oxygen-poor enviroment.
3-249-1:30
Scientist predict recommit behavior by scan the activity of ACC, finding that the lower ACC, the more likely to be arrested again.
4-309-2:10
Though it is possible to predict crime behaviour by using neuroimaging, there is still a lot problem before puting the method into reality application,such as reliability, consistence, legal and social implication.
5-413-2:22
The illness and death are more linked to the isolation of social than loneliness.
obstacle-1167-6:30
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