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[阅读小分队] 【Native Speaker每日综合训练—29系列】【29-02】科技

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发表于 2013-12-10 23:16:40 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
Official Weibo: http://weibo.com/u/3476904471
大家好!胖胖翔来了! 今天速度里面有一篇很有趣的文章,用颜色来伪装,虽然在战争期间不顶用,但是动物们是否会青睐呢~



Part I:Speaker


【Rephrase1】
Article 1
Blame Heat Waves on Loss of Arctic Sea Ice


[Dialog, 1: 21]

Transcript
In the summer of 2012, the U.S. baked. From the end of June through July, temperature records were set across the middle of the country. Drought partnered with the heat to cause discomfort for individuals and misery for farmers. And the cause may have been the record-setting meltdown of Arctic sea ice. That's according to a new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The loss of sea ice leads to a weakening of winds high in the atmosphere. The reduced temperature difference between the Arctic and lower latitudes diminishes the jet stream as well. It also moves the jet stream north, letting hot air sit longer.
Such a lessening of the jet stream may have been responsible for Hurricane Sandy turning ashore and wreaking havoc in New York City and New Jersey. And the phenomenon extends beyond North America. Weak jet streams have prolonged heat waves in Russia as well as parked downpours over Europe.
One thing's for sure: increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will continue to warm the Arctic and melt ice and snow. And that could mean much hotter summers across the northern hemisphere.


—David Biello



字数[192]
Source:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=blame-heat-waves-on-loss-of-arctic-13-12-08

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 楼主| 发表于 2013-12-10 23:16:41 | 显示全部楼层
Part II:Speed

【Time 2】
Article 2
Massive 'Cells' Seen on Sun


Large flows of material that circulate heat from the sun’s interior to its surface, theorized since the late 1960s but never seen directly, have finally been spotted. Researchers have long known of smaller flows called granules (which last a few minutes and are typically about 1000 kilometers across) and supergranules (which last about 1 day and are usually about 30,000 km across). The new swirls, which roil the outermost 30% of the sun’s interior, are several hundreds of thousands of kilometers across and persist for several months, the researchers report online today in Science. The team analyzed space-based observations of the sun taken every 45 seconds for several years. After removing the effects of solar rotation and accounting for the angle of view of areas not facing directly toward Earth, the researchers could discern the so-called giant cell flow patterns (material moving east is depicted in red, that moving toward the west in blue), which cause supergranules to slowly drift across the surface of the sun. Flow speeds within the giant cells, akin to the convection that carries hot water from the bottom of a heated pan to the surface, are only a few meters per second, the researchers estimate. But the overall effects of these flows (such as the long, jet stream-like red swath in the sun’s northern hemisphere) are important. Among other things, giant cell circulation helps transport energy from the sun’s polar regions to its equator, where material rotates around the sun about 10 days faster than it does near the poles. The flows also substantially influence the structure and evolution of the sun’s magnetic field, the researchers suspect. Active regions on the solar surface, often the sources of solar flares, may form in areas where flows converge, causing magnetic fields to become concentrated.


字数[297]
Source:
http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2013/12/scienceshot-massive-cells-seen-sun


【Time 3】
Article 3
How to Green Your Firing Range


Firing ranges host some of the planet’s most heavily contaminated soils. Toxic lead and copper from spent bullets can leach into the earth, threatening ground water, killing microbes, and poisoning plants. Cleaning this soil is often too costly for the operators of military and private ranges. Now, Korean scientists have created a natural mixture that sops up nearly all the metals: pulverized oyster shells and fly ash, the sooty particles spewed by combustion. Landfills in Korea accumulate more than 250,000 tons of oyster shells each year, while coal-fired power plants churn out just as much fly ash. Combining the two waste products creates a concoction rich in minerals that shackle metal ions within tight molecular bonds, the team reports this month in Environmental Geochemistry and Health. By mixing different ratios of the ingredients with grossly contaminated firing-range soil—holding nearly seven times the amount of lead deemed dangerous by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—the researchers identified a unique blend that locked up 98% of leachable lead contamination and 96% of the copper. Other soil-scouring techniques exist, but the shells-and-ashes approach is far cheaper and more sustainable, the scientists claim.


字数[190]
Source:
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2013/12/scienceshot-how-green-your-firing-range


【Time 4】
Article 4
Predators May Use a Bit of the Old Razzle Dazzle to Snag Prey


In 1917, British artist Norman Wilkinson experienced a eureka moment while serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Throughout the month of April, German U-boats had been mercilessly torpedoing British ships, sending around eight of those vessels per day into the watery abyss. Hiding a ship traveling on the open ocean from plain sight was impossible, Wilkinson knew, but a bit of artistic trickery may be able to muddle the Germans’ ability to accurately judge the exact location of that ship, he realized.

From that idea, Wilkinson devised a type of camouflage called “razzle dazzle” (its slightly more serious name is dazzle camouflage). The technique consists of squashing together contrasting geometric patterns, shapes and colors to create a pattern of optics that would confuse enemies by distorting the object’s dimensions and boundaries. All in all, more than 2,000 ships received such a makeover, although the scheme’s effectiveness seemed to produce mixed results.

By World War II, razzle dazzle had largely fallen out of favor, but as it turns out, this technique lives on in the natural world. High contrast patterns–nature’s equivalent to dazzle camouflage–are used by animals ranging from snakes to zebra to fish. Like those hidden World War I ships, many creatures seem to use dazzle patterns to conceal themselves from predators. Until now, however, researchers hadn’t considered the flipside of this relationship: could predators use razzle dazzle to sneak up on prey as they mounted an attack?

To investigate this possibility, biologist Roger Santer of Aberystwyth University in the U.K. turned to locusts. These insects are particularly well suited for vision studies due to something called a single lobula giant movement detector neuron, a unique cell that specializes in detecting looming objects (think of a car speeding towards you, or a hand reaching for your face). Researchers think this neuron works by measuring the shape and movement of patterns of light and dark across the eye.  Whatever the mechanism, as looming objects approach a locust, its detector neuron fires away, alerting the insect to imminent potential danger and triggering it to flee.


字数[346]


【Time 5】


To see how the locusts responded to dazzle camouflage, Santer created an array of visual patterns using a graphics software. He situated the locusts just in front of the computer monitor, and then projected a simulated approach of those objects from about 10 meters away to about 0.07 meters from the cowering insects. The objects varied in contrast: black, grey or white on a grey background. Around 20 locusts took part in the experiment, and Santer measured their cellular reactions to the various shapes through copper wires inserted into the locusts’ neck.

The locusts’ neurological responses to the looming objects depended on which patterns they saw, Santer reports in Biology Letters. Squares with both a darker-than-background top and bottom half elicited the strongest panic response, followed by squares with a dark upper half, but a bottom half that was the same color as the background. Squares that had an upper half that was dark but a bottom half that was bright (in other words, the razzle dazzle ones) produced a significantly weaker panic response, as did squares that were brighter than the background. Finally, squares that were the same color as the background produced no response at all.

These results are interesting in that they correlate with similar dazzle tests performed on humans, who also had trouble quickly registering dazzle patterns.  However, at this point, whether or not locust predators actually use dazzle to catch their unsuspecting insect prey remains a matter of speculation. Though lab tests confirm this strategy might work, Santer did not investigate whether or not a dazzle dance of death is carried out in the real world.

Hypothetically speaking, dazzle camouflage, Santer concludes, would help a predator but would not be the most effective way of snagging a locust lunch. Instead, classic camouflage–blending in with the background rather than creating an optical illusion–seems to be the most effective means of tricking would-be prey. However, in the case that other selection pressures favor high-contrast patterns (such as if females of a predator species prefer bold stripes in males), Santer thinks that predators could indeed evolve to give ‘em the old razzle dazzle.


字数[357]
Source:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/12/predators-may-use-a-bit-of-the-old-razzle-dazzle-to-snag-prey/


【Time 6】
Article 5
Mercury shrinking more than thought

Latest views of the planet settle a decades-old argument about its evolution.



The planet closest to the Sun has shrivelled much more over its lifetime than previously thought, scientists have found.

Studies of Mercury show that it has shrunk by about 11 kilometres across since the Solar System's fiery birth 4.5 billion years ago. As the planet cooled and contracted, it became scarred with long curved ridges similar to the wrinkles on a rotting apple.

A new census of these ridges, called lobate scarps, has found more of them, with steeper faces, than ever before. The discovery suggests that Mercury shrank by far more than the previous estimate of 2-3 kilometres, says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC. He presented the results today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California.
The finding helps explain how Mercury's huge metallic core cooled off over time. It may also finally reconcile theoretical scientists, who had predicted a lot of shrinkage, with observers who had not found evidence of that — until now. “We are resolving a four-decades-old conflict here,” Byrne told the meeting.

Planetary scientists have been arguing over Mercury's lobate scarps ever since the Mariner 10 spacecraft flew past the planet three times in 1974-75. Researchers can use measurements of the length and height of the scarps to calculate how much planetary shrinkage they represent.

That shrinkage is a product of Mercury's odd composition — “like a core floating through space with a thin outer blanket,” says Byrne. Most of the planet is made of that large core, and so it would have cooled rapidly as heat rushed toward its surface. Modelling studies have long suggested that the planet should have shrunk by 10-20 kilometres over its lifetime, compared to the 2-3 kilometres estimated from Mariner 10 data1.

The latest estimates come from NASA’s MESSENGER probe, which photographs and measures Mercury's topography. Last year, Italian scientists used MESSENGER data covering one-fifth of the planet to show that its shrinkage was probably greater than the Mariner 10 estimates2.

The latest work, covering the entire planet, revealed many lobate scarps with sharp vertical relief, Byrne said. It also uncovered details on another kind of surface feature that may be related to shrinkage. These ‘wrinkle ridges’ are less pronounced than the lobate scarps but may also have formed during contraction. Combined, the data on the lobate scarps and the wrinkle ridges suggest that Mercury's diameter has shrunk by 11.4 kilometres, Byrne said. Even leaving out the wrinkle ridges gives 10.2 kilometres of contraction.

Those numbers are plausible to at least one planetary scientist who studied Mercury’s shrinkage using Mariner 10 data in the 1970s. Jay Melosh, a planetary geologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, suspects that even more lobate scarps may be lurking out there. “Many of these things may still be hiding,” he says. “As far as I'm concerned, this may be an underestimate of the amount of shrinkage.”


字数[486]
Source:
http://www.nature.com/news/mercury-shrinking-more-than-thought-1.14331


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 楼主| 发表于 2013-12-10 23:16:42 | 显示全部楼层
Part III: Obstacle


【Paraphase7】
Article 6
Yutu or me-too?
China’s probe will add a bit to science and a lot to the country’s swagger


TWO years ago, in December 2011, China published a blueprint outlining its ambitions in outer space. The launch, on December 2nd, of Chang’e-3—a lunar mission named after a Moon goddess—shows that it remains on track.

Things could still go wrong. In matters of space flight, landing is at least as perilous as taking off—and more so when that landing is on another body, rather than back on Earth. This will be China’s first attempt at such a landing. If it succeeds it will make the China National Space Administration (CNSA) only the second, after Russia’s, to put an unmanned rover on the Moon. It may also help pave the way for the agency to match NASA’s greater technical success of landing people there.

China has released only limited information about the mission. Its destination is believed to be Sinus Iridum, an area of the Moon free of loose boulders on the surface, and thus rover-friendly. The rover itself (named Yutu, meaning “Jade Rabbit”, after a pet that belonged to Chang’e) has six wheels and is intended to operate for three months. Reports of its weight have ranged from 100kg to 140kg. CNSA has not revealed the planned date of the landing attempt—though according to the European Space Agency, which is using its network of tracking stations to relay signals from and send commands to Chang’e-3 on behalf of CNSA, it is December 14th.

The probe took off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan. The launch, which was broadcast live on state television, was not without incident. The Xiaoxiang Morning Post reported the following day that nine minutes after lift-off rocket debris landed on two houses in a village more than 1,000km from Xichang, causing damage but no injuries.

Previous Chang’e missions, in 2007 and 2010, successfully orbited the Moon. The first was then deliberately crashed onto the lunar surface, while the second was launched out of lunar orbit and into orbit around the sun, the first Chinese-made object to be so dispatched to deep space.

It has been decades since the American and Soviet landings on the Moon. Chang’e-3 will be the first craft to arrive there since Luna-24, a Soviet mission, in 1976. Even so, critics doubt China will find much new of scientific value on the lunar surface, and suspect the mission has more to do with boosting the country’s prestige and preparing for the even greater prestige-boost of a manned lunar landing.

That cynicism has been enhanced by some overblown claims. CNSA is bragging, for example, that by placing an optical telescope on the Moon, Chang’e-3 will have achieved something “that so far hasn’t been done by other countries”. NASA’s Apollo 16 mission in 1972 did, however, deploy an ultraviolet telescope. Its crew recovered the film, but the now-inactive instrument remains on the Moon.

This does not mean that Chang’e-3, and Yutu in particular, have no scientific merit. The rover, for instance, sports a ground-penetrating radar for the study of rock and regolith (the crushed rock that passes for soil on the Moon). According to a report in Nature, this can scan as much as 100 metres below the surface. That may produce more interesting results than Yutu’s X-ray spectrometer, designed for regolith analysis, since many lunar samples retrieved by American and Soviet missions are already available for study on Earth.

According to CNSA’s blueprint, it too will bring Moon rocks back to Earth. The agency plans re-entry tests with an experimental craft by 2015. In 2020 Chang’e-5 will, if all goes well, return with samples.

That is not all CNSA has planned. In June it conducted its fifth manned mission, during which Shenzhou-10 docked with the first phase of the country’s putative space station. In 2015 it aims to launch Tiangong-2, the station’s second phase.

China’s first manned flight took place in 2003 when a single crewman, Yang Liwei, made 14 orbits. Its longest manned mission lasted 15 days, but officials say they are preparing astronauts for the rigours of “medium- and long-term space missions”.

Since the end of the Space Shuttle programme, NASA has been unable to launch manned missions of its own, and Americans are concerned about falling behind China. In a report issued in May, the country’s defence department worried publicly about China’s development of a “multidimensional programme to improve its capabilities to limit or prevent the use of space-based assets by adversaries during times of crisis or conflict”.

But America need not be too jittery. China is busy re-living the past for much the same reasons that America and the Soviet Union lived it the first time round. The future lies elsewhere. On December 3rd, also for the first time, a privately financed and built rocket put a private commercial satellite into orbit. The satellite was European. The rocket, from Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX, was American.


字数[828]
Source:
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21591160-chinas-probe-will-add-bit-science-and-lot-countrys-swagger-yutu-or

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发表于 2013-12-10 23:17:05 | 显示全部楼层
Speaker

Drought&Heat discomfortIndivi&famers  ∵ meltdown ASI

Jet scream↓--->HS ( NYC&NJ) and heat waves(Russian&Euro)
Concentration of Green house gases----------> melt ice -----> hotter in north hemisphere

The raising concentration of greenhouse gases will cause bad effects on northern hemisphere by melting the Sea Ice in Arctic.


Speed


2 2:09.50
Large amount of material which circulate heatfrom the internal sun to external sun.
3  1:12.63
Korean scientistcreated new bullet which makes by mixing sea shell and fly ash and It can avoidlead and copper pollution.
4  2:14.87
Razzle dazzle can camouflage the ships andin the world war and puzzle the enemies in the World War first, but thiscamouflage was been abandoned in World War second .
Animals may know how to conceal themselvesby using razzle dazzle.
Scientists came up with a question thatpredator can snag the prey through using razzle dazzle or not.
5 2:44.56
Scientists find different color and shapewill cause different response from locust.
6 2:53.76
Scientists have found the planet cloest toSun has shrivelled.
发表于 2013-12-10 23:35:28 | 显示全部楼层
DDDDDDDDDD
每天苦思essay常难下笔,还不如多看看没准来灵感
在首页呢,应该能督促到我了吧
-----------------------------------------
掌管 3        00:02:00.43        00:05:33.00
掌管 2        00:01:35.97        00:03:32.57
掌管 1        00:01:56.59        00:01:56.59

发表于 2013-12-11 01:10:19 | 显示全部楼层
2:2'05:297
Large amount of materials circulates heat from interior of sun to the surface of the sun.

3:1'24:190
-bullets are very environmental unfriendly. They contain massive lead and copper.
-Korean scientists discovered using sea shell and fly ash to make "green" bullet.
-It locked up more than 90% of lead and copper.

4:2'31:346
-During war between British and German, German's ships were massively destroyed by British.
-It was because British lady created something call dazzle camouflager to confuse enemies' vision.
-Dazzle camouflager was not that favorably used in WWII.
-Scientists realized many animals in nature have the same camouflager to protect themselves.
-Scientists questioned whether predator can use dazzle camouflager technique to get preys.
-
5:2'35:357
Scientists conducted experiment and found the answer

6:3'20:486
-Mercury shrink!
-various scientists argued how much mercury shrink and why it shrinks etc.
发表于 2013-12-11 01:19:30 | 显示全部楼层
你是真的小胖么
29-02
Speaker
2012 summer high temperature-cause: sea ice melt-what doessea ice’s function-future: hotter and hotter

2 297 1min31
New found about how the flow transports the heat from interiorto surface-old founds-new swirls-how to find it-it has important influence
3 190 1min27
Military operation harm to the environment-new method ofblending two wasted material to purify the soil-there are other ways to dothis, but this way has some advantages.
发表于 2013-12-11 07:02:29 | 显示全部楼层
早起有首页拿啊
【尝试一种新的回忆方法】
Obstacle 5:47
main idea
describe China's plan to launch Chang'e 3 on the moon
structure
P1 China's blueprint
P2 the meaning of the will-be success
P3 limited information about the mission
P4 the probe's took up
P5 previous missions
P6,P7,P8: whether the mission has scientific merit
P9,P10: CNSA's plan
P11: China's first manned flight
P12,P13: Ameica's worry---but the future lies elsewhere
发表于 2013-12-11 07:22:31 | 显示全部楼层
顶~~~~~~~~~~耳目一新的话题
Speaker:drought and heat influence the individuals and farmers .The cause of this maybe the meltdown of the Atlantic sea ice .
Melt of sea ice-move the jet streams-maybe responsible for Hurricane and wreaking havoc
7 6:37 china has a blueprint outlining its ambitions in outer space
Lunar-24--change’s 3(achieve some new mission which Apolo 16 mission )--privately sponsored private satellite (12/3)--change’s 5 (re-entry tests with an experimental craft returning with samples in
2015)--tiangong2(2015)
Change 3 has more mission :sport a ground-penetrating radar for study
2 2:40  large flows of material that circulate heat from the interior to surface was known as granules
--the flows influence the structure and evolution of sun’s magnetic field ;giant cell circulation helps transport energy from the sun’s polar region to its equator
3 1:40 korea scientist use new material to make bullet which will tun to fly ash to avoid copper and lead polluted  caused by the military
4 2:40 w devised a type of camouflage called razzle dazzle to confuse enemies
Now the technique lives on in the natural world from snakes to locusts
5 226 in the lab this strategy works while in the real world whether dazzle work is still need to be seen
6 238 Mercury shrunk by about 11 kilometres .now it become scarred with long curved ridges  
发表于 2013-12-11 07:45:33 | 显示全部楼层
mei首页了,对了,我的目标就是二环〜

Speaker:*jet stream: 急流; 高速气流
the loss of Arctic sea ice leads to heat waves baking U.S., which also causes disasters in the world.

Speed:
2'00''
1'27''
2'23''
2'46''
3'23''

Obstacle-5'30''
This article mainly introduces China's moon-landed program, i.e. Chang'e-3, and meanwhile, has a retrospect of China's past space program.

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