【Native Speaker每日综合训练—28系列】【28-09】科技

zxppx

Official Weibo: http://weibo.com/u/3476904471

大家好!胖胖翔来了!上周由于家里不能上网，耽误大家周二的科技文了，sorry! 希望今天大家能享受充满智慧的文章，哈哈！

Part I：Speaker

【Rephrase1】

Article 1

James Cameron: Before Avatar ... a curious boy

[Dialog, 17:08]

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_c ... _a_curious_boy.html

zxppx

Part II：Speed

【Time 2】

Article 2

How the Whale Became the Whale

About 54 million years ago, a semiaquatic deerlike creature headed into the water for good, giving rise to whales and their relatives. The newly sequenced genome of the minke whale, a baleen whale found worldwide, tells the story of how stressful this move to live underwater was. An international team has decoded the genomes of four minke whales, a fin whale, a bottlenose dolphin, and a finless porpoise, comparing these cetaceans’ genes to the equivalent genes in other mammals. It found whale-specific mutations in genes important for the regulation of salt and of blood pressure and for antioxidants that get rid of charged oxygen molecules that can harm cells. These molecules increase in number as the whale uses up its oxygen supply during dives. Whales also had larger numbers of related genes, called gene families, for dealing with sustained dives, the team reports online today in Nature Genetics. Overall, 1156 gene families had expanded, and several increased the number of enzymes that help the whale cope with low-to-no oxygen conditions. A few of those expanded families are also expanded in naked mole rats, which live underground where oxygen is scarce. But the numbers of genes for body hair and for taste and smell had decreased. And of course, there were genes and gene families that help explain why whales look the way they do.

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Source:

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2013/11/scienceshot-how-whale-became-whale

【Time 3】

Article 3

Whooping Cough Vaccine Does Not Stop Spread of Diseasein Lab Animals

The current vaccine for whooping cough, or pertussis, may keep you or your baby healthy, but it may not stop either of you from spreading the disease, a new animal study suggests. Baboons can harbor and spread the disease even after receiving the vaccine, researchers have found. The study adds to growing evidence that the acellular pertussis vaccines, in which only parts of the pertussis bacterium are injected into the bloodstream to elicit a protective immune response, are not as good at controlling the disease a solder, whole-cell vaccines were. However, a vaccine manufacturer argues that it's too early to conclude that a similar effect occurs in humans.

Pertussis starts out like a normal cough but causes severe coughing fits and can be lethal to infants. By the time of diagnosis, it is often untreatable with antibiotics. Historically associated with the slums of pre-World War II Europe and America, the disease has made a powerful resurgence in recent years. The United States alone experienced about 50,000 cases of pertussis last year, with 18 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase could be due in part to more sensitive tools to diagnose pertussis that were widely introduced in 2010, or to pockets of children whose parents oppose vaccination. However, previous research also indicated that immunity in people vaccinated with the acellular vaccines, introduced in the 1990s, is less long-lasting than in users of the older, whole-cell vaccine.

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【Time 4】

The current study goes a step further and suggests that people who get the newer vaccine may still become infected and spread the germ. Tod Merkel, a microbiologist, and colleagues at the Food and Drug Administration in Bethesda, Maryland, examined response to the acellular vaccine in infant baboons, an animal that responds to the bacterium responsible for pertussis similarly to people. The researchers infected four groups of baboons , each group containing three or four babies, by anesthetizing the animals and dripping a pertussis-containing solution into their noses. One group had already received the standard three doses of the acellular vaccine; a second received the whole-cell vaccine. Members of the third group had previously had whooping cough. Those in the fourth group had not had the disease and received no vaccine before being exposed.

As expected, the unvaccinated baboons developed severe whooping cough, while the baboons that had been sick previously remained well, the research team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Both groups of vaccinated animals also remained healthy. However, the germ persisted an average of 35 days in the throats of baboons vaccinated with the acellular shot, though it grew less thickly than it did in the throats of the sick, unvaccinated animals. Baboons vaccinated with the whole-cell shot harbored the germ for 18 days, and it did not grow at all in animals that previously had recovered from pertussis.

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【Time 5】

In another experiment, two baboons that had received acellular vaccines were exposed to whooping cough germs and then each was put in a cage 2 days later with previously unexposed baboons. In both cases, the vaccinated animals transmitted the germ to their cage mates, who developed pertussis. Follow-up studies showed that animals vaccinated with the acellular shots did not generate sufficient numbers of a particular variety of white blood cell to fight the pertussis infection as well as those receiving the older vaccine.

The researchers conclude that a new vaccine may be needed to provide so-called herd immunity, the ability of a community to stop an infection from spreading, and protect vulnerable babies from pertussis. “There's a difference between protecting individuals from illness and bringing down the incidence of pertussis in the population,” Merkel says. “To do both we may need a different vaccine.”

Sanofi Pasteur of Swiftwater, Pennsylvania, which makes one of the two acellular pertussis vaccines used in the United States, issued a statement cautioning that the study was not designed to evaluate the extent to which vaccination reduced transmission. “It cannot be said with certainty that these findings are directly applicable to humans,” the company said it its statement.

But other scientists applauded the work. “This is a very strong paper, even though it is a small sample,” says James Cherry, a vaccinologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study. Cherryargues that the efficacy of the acellular vaccines in trials held in Europe and Africa in the 1990s appeared high because case definitions did not count people with mild infections. The acellular vaccine was introduced because of public concerns and lawsuits arising from the whole-cell vaccine, which sometimes caused high fever and even seizures.

As for the claim that the new result may not be applicable to people, Merkel notes that, for ethical reasons, it may be difficult to duplicate the study in humans, as that would require purposefully exposing experimental subjects to a 3-month bout of pertussis.

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Source:

http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2013/11/whooping-cough-vaccine-does-not-stop-spread-disease-lab-animals

【Time 6】

Article 4

Fungal fight club

Battles between mushrooms don’t make a sound, but they’re violent. “Good fighters can kill the less-good ones and take over their territories,” says mycologist Lynne Boddy of Cardiff University in Wales. “There are battles royal going on all the time.”

Combat between fungal individuals is a bit like war between heaps of spaghetti. The main bodies of fungi are networks of long, thin strands called hyphae that insinuate themselves into anything they can eat: tree trunks, plant roots, dung and so on. Defending a food source or wresting a few more millimeters of turf away from a rival can prolong life. So fungi don’t let alack of teeth, claws or eyes diminish their ferocity. Boddy studies toadstool-forming basidiomycetes, a group rife with combatants that poison opponents or release enzymes that dissolve their flesh.

“I’m a great fight-goer,” Boddy says. Hundreds of times, she estimates, she has brought fungi in from the wild, set up matches in lab dishes or woodblocks and documented duels lasting weeks. She watches for the hairlike strands to exude chemical droplets, sometimes blood-red. Then she tests the air above the drops for toxic gases wafting toward the enemy. “It’s like gas warfare in the trenches,” she says.

Fungi struggling for territory remind Boddy of a sports league. She has found that bear’s head tooth fungus (Hericium coralloides), which bursts out of tree trunks in delicate, white cascades, usually whips an artist’s conk fungus. But the bear’s head in turn succumbs to a species called hairy parchment. A death match found that the strands of the ferocious sulfur tuft mushroom(inset, upper right) got whomped by Phanerochaete velutina.

Some fungi excel at both offense and defense, others at just one or the other. A few, poor things, are skilled at neither. But as in sports rankings, “sometimes there can be a giant killer from low down,” she says, and a weak competitor beats a favorite.

And as in sports, heat or soggy conditions brings out the greatness in some competitors but dooms others. Boddy’s sports analogy has its limits, though. Climate change can affect who wins fights, she and her colleagues reported this year in Fungal Ecology, but the outcomes depend on more than weather. Shifts in league rank also depend on the extent of nibbling by small woodland arthropods.

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Source:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fungal-fight-club

zxppx

Part III： Obstacle

【Paraphase7】
Article 5

The science ofhappiness

A new six-part BBC series, starting this week, looks at the newest research from around the world to find out what could it be that makes us happy.

We all want to be happy but the problem has always been that you can't measure happiness.

Happiness has always been seen as too vague a concept, as Lord Layard, Professor of Economics at the LSE and author of "Happiness - lessons from a new science" points out.

"There is a problem with the word happiness.

"When you use the word happy, it often has the sort of context of balloons floating up into the sky or something frivolous."

Now scientists say they can actually measure happiness.

Neuroscientists are measuring pleasure. They suggest that happiness is more than a vague concept or mood; it is real.

Measuring happiness

Social scientists measure happiness simply by asking people how happy they are.

It is argued that what a person says about their own happiness tends to tally with what friends or even strangers might say about them if asked the same question.

Most people say they are fairly happy.

The leading American psychologist Professor Ed Diener from the University of Illinois, told The Happiness Formula that the science of happiness is based on one straightforward idea:

"It may sound silly but we ask people 'How happy are you 1-7, 1-10?

"And the interesting thing is that produces real answers that are valid, they're not perfect but they're valid and they predict all sorts of real things in their lives."

One type of measurement even tries to record people's levels of happiness throughout the day wherever they are.

Ecological momentary assessment uses hand held computers.

The person being quizzed is bleeped and then taken through a questionnaire.

"The measures are not perfect yet I think they are in many ways as good as the measures economists use," said Professor Diener.

It is a remarkable claim. Simply by asking people, we have a measure of happiness that is as good as the economists' measure of poverty or growth.

And if true, governments could be judged by how happy they make us.

An adviser to the Prime Minister, David Halpern, told us that within the next 10 years the government would be measured against how happy it made everybody.

Power of happiness

Happiness seems to have almost magical properties.

We have not got proof, but the science suggests it leads to long life, health, resilience and good performance.

Scientists work by comparing people's reported happiness and a host of other factors such as age, sex, marital status, religion, health, income, unemployment and so on.

In survey after survey involving huge groups of people, significant correlations between happiness and some other factors are repeated.

At the moment scientists cannot prove causation, whether for example people are healthy because they are happy, or whether people are happy because they are healthy.

However, psychologists have been able to identify some very strong links.

According to Professor Diener the evidence suggests that happy people live longer than depressed people.

"In one study, the difference was nine years between the happiest group and the unhappiest group, so that's a huge effect.

"Cigarette smoking can knock a few years off your life, three years, if you really smoke a lot, six years.

"So nine years for happiness is a huge effect."

Richer but no happier

Happiness researchers have been monitoring people's life satisfaction for decades.

Yet despite all the massive increase in our wealth in the last 50 years our levels of happiness have not increased.

"Standard of living has increased dramatically and happiness has increased not at all, and in some cases has diminished slightly," said Professor Daniel Kahneman of the University of Princeton.

"There is a lot of evidence that being richer... isn't making us happier"

The research suggests that richer countries do tend to be happier than poor ones, but once you have a home, food and clothes, then extra money does not seem to make people much happier.

It seems that that level is after average incomes in a country top about £10,000 a year.

Scientists think they know the reason why we do not feel happier despite all the extra money and material things we can buy.

First, it is thought we adapt to pleasure. We go for things which give us short bursts of pleasure whether it is a chocolate bar or buying a new car.

But it quickly wears off.

Secondly, it is thought that we tend to see our life as judged against other people.

We compare our lot against others. Richer people do get happier when they compare themselves against poorer people, but poorer people are less happy if they compare up.

The good news is that we can choose how much and who we compare ourselves with and about what, and researchers suggest we adapt less quickly to more meaningful things such as friendship and life goals.

What makes ushappy?

According to psychologist Professor Ed Diener there is no one key to happiness but a set of ingredients that are vital.

First, family and friends are crucial - the wider and deeper the relationships with those around you the better.

It is even suggested that friendship can ward off germs. Our brains control many of the mechanisms in our bodies which are responsible for disease.

Just as stress can trigger ill health, it is thought that friendship and happiness can have a protective effect.

According to happiness research, friendship has a much bigger effect on average on happiness than a typical person's income itself.

One economist, Professor Oswald at Warwick University, has a formula to work out how much extra cash we would need to make up for not having friends.

The answer is£50,000.

Marriage also seems to be very important. According to research the effect of marriage adds an average seven years to the life of a man and something like four for a woman.

The second vital ingredient is having meaning in life, a belief in something bigger than yourself - from religion, spirituality or a philosophy of life.

The third element is having goals embedded in your long term values that you're working for, but also that you find enjoyable.

Psychologists argue that we need to find fulfilment through having goals that are interesting to work on and which use our strengths and abilities.

Unhappiness

However, there are also many things we experience in life that can produce lasting unhappiness.

Professor Ed Diener identifies two key events which can have lasting effects.

After the loss of a spouse it can take several years to regain the previous level of well-being.

The loss of a job can affect a person for years even they are back to work.

So if you are born grumpy are you always going to be grumpy?

The question of whether we can actually use our knowledge of what makes us happy to lift our levels of happiness permanently is hotly debated by psychologists.

According to the positive psychologist Professor Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania it is possible to lift our biological set range of happiness, at least to some extent if we work at it.

"The best you can do with positive emotion is you can get people to live at the top of their set range.

"So I think you've got about 10 to 15% leverage but you can't take a grouch and make him giggle all the time."

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Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4783836.stm

小鱼上树

沙发还是我的么

28-09

Speaker

Curiosity is the most valuable thing we have. We will nottake no as an answer.

2 224 1min27

3 241 1min27

4 237 1min14

5 339 2min15

6 386 2min34

Combat between fungal individuals is like a war. They fightfor food, space, air. They release toxic gas, offend and defend together. Climatechanges who will win the war

Obstacle 1252 4min21

Now scientists can measure happiness, it’s not just aconcept any more- by asking how happy people are, 1-7 or 1-10, the method isnot perfect- happiness can benefit us, 6 more years of life- wealth can’t bringhappiness- what can make us happy: friendship and family, 50000 more for nothaving a good friend, believe in something is bigger than ourselves, an objectto work on- what makes us unhappy and how to deal with them

leilawang

SAVE FOR TMR
1）1‘49
2）2’02
3）1‘47
4）2’37
5）3‘31
6）8’07

sherlock1992

谢谢ppx~  By SH

---

Speaker:
1.childhood: the tie between JC & fiction science->observation & understand to the world in an angle of fictional science.
2.adult: filmmaking, as a film artist->meet the urge to create image & picture & stories.
3.the motivation behind the Abyss & AVATAR & Titanic.<the use of CG><expeditions>
4.the found of expeditons: some animals in harsh environment.
5.interests to the space
6.the journey of discory:
expedition->leadership
no materials but pure task, challenge and the bond with others(create the bond of respect)
lessons:  
>curiosity(the most power thing you own)
>imagination is the force that can actually manifest a reality.
>the respect of the team is more important than all the laurels in the world.
The Advice:
Whatever you're doing, failure is an option, but fear is not.

Speed:T2-1'17''the evolution process of whale.
T3-1'40''
pertussis 百日咳
the vaccine of pertussis cannot prevent u from spreading the disease. And a brief intro. to the vaccine.
T4-1'38''
EX: 4gro, each 3~4babies
       1gro->std 3doses->35d
       2 ->whole->18d
       3->pre. whp cg.->+(no germ)
       4->no3,no vac. ->--
-->ppl with newer vac. may still bcm infected and sprd germ.
T5-2'11''
POSITIVE STATEMENT:
+EX->sprd germ bc of the lack of white blood cells->conclude: new vac. should stop & protect.
NORMATIVE STATEMENT:
SP: cannot directly applicable to humans.
b. sct: applaud
M: limitation of ex. in human.
T6-2'30''
fungals always fight for food, territory. & some're good at both offense and defense. & the influence of environment to fungal's competition.

Obstacle-8'19''
happiness->real concept
>Measure->1. ask questions.2.record levels of happiness regarding the places they are.
>power->some positive correlation between happiness&+conditions.
>richer but no happy->adaptation of happy&different compares.
>what make us happy?
multi-factors:
1.friend&family(wider&deeper->better) esp. marriage
2.meaningful life
3.goals in long term values
>unhappy factor:
loss o fspouse
loss of job

啦啦噜啦啦

哎哟~谢谢ppx
===========================
[1:59] A research shows that how a semi aquatic deer like creature adopted to become a whale.
[2:10]
=>Current vaccine is not as effective as old vaccine for pertussis when it is tested on baboons.
-> However, some people argue that it is too early to draw the conclusion on human.
=> Pertuss is a disease that can not be cured after getting it.
-> It was severe during the pre-war world II
-> there is a recovery these years. This phenomenon can be explained by the development of machine or the unwillingness of parents' attritute towards give their chirldren vaccine.
=> previous research do find that new vaccine can not last as long as the old.
[2:37] => researchs conducted to teast the effectiveness of the vaccine.
-> the result turns that the whole-cell vaccine is more effective than the acellular vaccine.
[2:40] => Another researchs shows that baboon that are vaccined with the acellular vaccine can spread the disease to the unvaccined baboon. While the whole-cell vaccine won't.
-> Some reaserchers argue that it is premature to say this will happen to human.
-> Some researchers affirm the result of the research.
-> Cherry argues that there is a reason for not using the whole-cell vaccines and that it is not ethical to use people to test the vaccine.
[3:06]
Fungal can fight with each other for territories. They even use gases to kill others.
Boddy growed fungal in her lab and found that the fight between them is like a sports league.
The author cirticize the imconpleteness of Boddy's analogy.
这篇看的好无力啊。。。
[8:19]
It is said that happiness is so vague that cannot be tested, however scientists say that they can measure happiness.
=> Scientists test happiness by simply asking how happy they are. They can get the satistics as valid as the economists' measure of poverty or growth.
=> The effect of happiness.
-> Some effects are not sure but happiness does prolone people's live as long as nine years.
=> the richer does not mean the happier
-> Richer countries are happier than poorer countries
-> once people reach to some levels, they won't be happier. Two reasons to explain. One is that happiness doesn't lost long. The other is that they tend to compare with others.
=> the causes of happiness
-> Deeper relationship with friends and family
-> a belif in something bigger than you
-> Something meanful to pursue
=> the cause of unhappiness
-> the lost of a spouse
-> the lost of a job
=> it is possible to lift our biological set range of happiness

cherry6891

首页哦 嘿嘿
Speaker:
-he likes biology and doodle when he was still in school and he wants to discover the uncharted territory  
-what he saw under water inspire the director James Cameron to create the imagine in the movie
-three tips :never lose curiosity to the world. It is the power of moving forward
Imagination ,respect others,Failure is an option,but fear is not.
7 7:05 new method can measure happiness, more money can not make us happier,
What makes us happy--deep relationship with friends and family,lead a meaningful life,a belief in something bigger than ourself(from religion ,spirituality and a philosophy of life )
2 1:50 the whale adopt the high pressure ,low-to-no oxygen condition by gene mutation
3 1:40 compare two vaccines : control disease : acellular vaccines is not as good as whole-cell vaccine
Long lasting :acellular is better than whole-cell vaccine
4 5 3:35 the baby got vaccine before will not be infectious which they can transmit the disease to the people who did not get vaccine
6 2:45 the fight in fungal does not make a sound without teeth claws but release enzymes

kimwang53

大家都占得好快~~谢谢ppx 谢谢小鱼姐~~

1.14
Whales's gene help them become the way they are.
1.41
1.11
2.05
2.16
the battles between mushrooms are violent.

lilacrabbit

辛苦ppx！
掌管 6 00:07:08.31 00:16:39.15
掌管 5 00:02:23.98 00:09:30.84
掌管 4 00:01:46.25 00:07:06.86
掌管 3 00:01:46.81 00:05:20.61
掌管 2 00:01:51.32 00:03:33.79
掌管 1 00:01:42.46 00:01:42.46
TIME2
By researching whale's gene that was genome of the minke whale, scientists can learn why whales as a mammal can live in deep ocean.
TIME3
Current vaccine may keep people health but may not stop spreading diseases. According to 50,000 cases experiments, research indicted that acellular vaccines is less long-lasting than whole-cell vaccines.
TIME4
By comparative trial of four group baboons, scientists can conclude that baboons who non vaccinated will be spreaded. Contrast, baboons who have vaccineted remained healthy. Besides, the baboons who have whole-cell vaccinated have a short sick time than those of who have acellular and the baboons who previous had recovered from pertussis will not be spreaded again.
TIME5
After another experiment, scientists conclude that new vaccine needs new abilities, but form current experiment, the vaccine may not total applicable to humans. While, tests in humans needs time and legal permit.
TIME6
Between fungi also have battle too, but the condition's change can affect who wins fight.