【Native Speaker每日综合训练—30系列】【30-03】科技

zxppx

Official Weibo: http://weibo.com/u/3476904471
大家好!胖胖翔来了! 2013,byebye~ 送上美味的法式薯条一份，来自木星哦！还有用口臭来驱散敌人的毛毛虫！祝大家在新的一年里心想事成！

Part I：Speaker

【Rephrase1】
Article 1
Astronaut Chris Hadfield Brings Lessons From Space Down To Earth

[Dialog, 25: 13]

Source:
http://www.npr.org/2013/12/26/256596501/astronaut-chris-hadfield-brings-lessons-from-space-down-to-earth

zxppx

Part II：Speed

【Time 2】
Article 2
French Fries on Jupiter

Today in questions no one has ever asked: What would french fries taste like if you made them on Jupiter? Luckily, the European Space Agency is on the case. Hoping that studying deep frying in different gravitational conditions will help them improve space food for future astronauts, scientists chopped potatoes into thin sticks and deep fried them in extra-virgin olive oil, one side at a time, in a spinning centrifuge that created conditions of up to nine times Earth’s gravity. Higher gravity levels significantly increased the heat transfer between the hot oil and the potato, shortening frying time and resulting in thick, crispy crusts, the team reports next month in Food Research International. In fact, the scientists may have discovered the ideal gravitational condition for creating crunchy fries: The crust reached its maximum thickness when the potato was fried at three times Earth’s gravity; any further increase in gravity levels did not improve the fry’s crispiness. But before you patent your idea for a hypergravity deep fryer, here’s the bad news: The bottoms of the fries were insulated from the oil by a layer of water vapor rushing out of the potato’s pores, resulting in a soggy-bottomed fry no matter what the gravity level. Perhaps the team’s upcoming experiments with deep frying in microgravity will finally create the perfect space fry.


Source:
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http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2013/12/scienceshot-french-fries-jupiter


【Time 3】
Article 3
Nuts in pregnancy may decrease allergy risk in kids
Result runs counter to past studies

Women who eat plenty of nuts during pregnancy might reduce their children’s chances of developing a nut allergy.
Physician A. Lindsay Frazier of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center in Boston and colleagues analyzed health data on 8,205 people born from 1990 to 1994, 140 of whom developed a nut allergy.
Children of nonallergic women who had consumed five or more servings of nuts per week during pregnancy were 31 percent as likely to be diagnosed with a nut allergy as those born to nonallergic moms who ate less than one serving a week. Kids born to women who consumed one to four servings of nuts a week during gestation were about half as likely to be allergic to nuts as the offspring of moms who had largely avoided them.
Appearing online December 23 in JAMA Pediatrics, the study looked at both peanuts and tree nuts.
The new work runs counter to previous research. The authors acknowledge that the observed effect could be explained by other factors. The women who ate more nuts tended to pursue a healthier diet in general, which might somehow affect allergy risk, and were more likely to introduce nuts into their children’s diets earlier than women who avoided nuts.   


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Source:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nuts-pregnancy-may-decrease-allergy-risk-kids


【Time 4】
Article 4
Caterpillar’s Bad Breath Scares Off Predators

The foul-breathed tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta) may not get many dates, but the odor keeps predators at bay, a new study says.
The key to the hornworm’s halitosis is nicotine, a toxin it ingests while eating its favorite meal of tobacco leaves. New experiments show that the hornworm repurposes the nicotine, moving it from the gut to the hemolymph, the fluid that fills its circulatory system. The hornworm then excretes the excess nicotine in the hemolymph when it exhales. (Learn more about bugs.)
Wolf spiders and other predators that eat the hornworm don’t have its defenses against nicotine and find the breath repulsive—and potentially poisonous, noted study leader Ian Baldwin, an ecologist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany.
Although plenty of animals are known to have bad breath—”ever kissed a camel?” Baldwin quipped—this is the first discovery of halitosis advertising an animal’s potential toxicity, he said.

Dangerous Nicotine
Millions of smokers worldwide know nicotine—the main ingredient of cigarettes—but the chemical’s main role is as a chemical defense in tobacco plants.
Nicotine targets the neuromuscular junction—the place where nerve cells meet muscles—in animals. So when an animal eats a plant containing nicotine, its ability to breathe and move is significantly affected.
“This is why nicotine is such a great defense for plants: it poisons everything that uses muscles to move, and since plants don’t have nerves or muscles, it doesn’t poison the plant,” said Baldwin, whose study was published December 30 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But the tobacco hornworm is a mysterious exception. As its name suggests, the caterpillar regularly dines on nicotine-containing plants, yet doesn’t seem to suffer any ill effects.
Baldwin and colleagues were investigating how the hornworms worked their chemical magic when they stumbled upon the importance of the hornworm’s bad breath.

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【Time 5】

Plant Defenses
When the researchers looked more closely at the hornworms, they found that the expression of a gut gene known as CYP6B46 increased after the worms ate tobacco leaves. This hinted that CYP6B46 was likely involved in the hornworm’s defenses against nicotine. (Also see “Woolly Bear Caterpillars Self-Medicate—A Bug First.”)
The next task for Baldwin and colleagues was to figure out exactly what this gene did. So they grew three sets of nicotine plants to look at the function of CYP6B46. One set was engineered to contain unusually low levels of nicotine. The second contained plants that had been grown to produce a small chemical that would thwart CYP6B46 from working. The third set of plants was a control group.
The researchers then let the tobacco hornworms feed on each set of plants and measured how many insects disappeared each night due to predation. The hornworms feeding on the nicotine-deficient tobacco were eaten more than the hornworms in the control plants and the hornworms in the plants that blocked CYP6B46.
This suggested the gene is key to the insects’ defense, but the scientists still needed to know how it works. More analysis revealed that CYP6B46 transfers ingested nicotine from the insect’s stomach to the hemolymph, where the insect breathes it out.
So, without a functional CYP6B46 gene, the hornworms exhaled less nicotine, making them more vulnerable to predators.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling the overwhelming need to brush my teeth.

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Source:
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/30/caterpillars-bad-breath-scares-off-predators/


【Time 6】
Article 5
Last chance to stream 'Titanic,' 'Top Gun' on Netflix

(CNN) -- If you're planning to stay home New Year's Day and stream classic movies on Netflix, you may be out of luck.
More than 80 movies and a handful of TV shows -- including "Titanic," "Top Gun" and some seasons of "Saturday Night Live" -- will no longer be available for streaming through the site as of Wednesday, according to a post on Reddit.
It was not clear who posted the list, but a search on Netflix for many of the titles reveals that they will indeed expire Wednesday for Netflix's nearly 40 million streaming subscribers. The company's DVD customers -- it has about 7 million in the U.S. -- may still order the discs in the mail.
A spokesperson for Netflix told CNN that the company routinely adds and deletes titles from its streaming service due to licensing contracts.
The list of streaming movies due to expire includes such favorites as "Being John Malkovich," "Braveheart," "Do the Right Thing," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Flashdance," "Roman Holiday," "Platoon" and "War Games."
(It also includes "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo" and "Killer Klowns From Outer Space.")
Among the TV shows being purged from Netflix's streaming menu: the original "Dark Shadows," "Mr Bean" and "The Kids in the Hall."
A number of new titles also will become available for streaming on Netflix at or near the first of the year, including "Jack Reacher," "The Talented Mr. Ripley," "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" and seasons 5-8 of "Dexter," the spokesperson said.

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Source:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/30/tech/web/netflix-streaming-purge/index.html

zxppx

Part III： Obstacle

【Paraphase7】
Article 6
Triple-threat method sparks hope for fusion
The secrets to its success are lasers, magnets and a big pinch.

The Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico discharges the most intense pulses of electrical current on Earth. Millions of amperes can be sent towards a metallic cylinder the size of a pencil eraser, inducing a magnetic field that creates a force — called a Z pinch — that crushes the cylinder in a fraction of a second.
Since 2012, scientists have used the Z pinch to implode cylinders filled with hydrogen isotopes in the hope of achieving the extreme temperatures and pressures needed for energy-generating nuclear fusion. Despite their efforts, they have never succeeded in reaching ignition — the point at which the energy gained from fusion is greater than the energy put in.
But after tacking on two more components, physicists think they are at last on the right path. Researchers working on Sandia’s Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion (MagLIF) experiment added a secondary magnetic field to thermally insulate the hydrogen fuel, and a laser to preheat it (see ‘Feeling the pinch’). In late November, they tested the system for the first time, using 16 million amperes of current, a 10-tesla magnetic field and 2 kilojoules of energy from a green laser.
“We were excited by the results,” says Mark Herrmann, director of the Z machine and the pulsed-power science centre at Sandia. “We look at it as confirmation that it is working like we think it should.”
The experiment yielded about 1010 high-energy neutrons, a measure of the number of fusion reactions achieved. This is a record for MagLIF, although it stillfalls well short of ignition. Nevertheless, the test demonstrates the appeal of such pulsed-power approaches to fusion. “A substantial gain is more likely to be achieved at an early date with pulsed power,” says nuclear physicist David Hammer of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who co-wrote a 2013 US National Research Council assessment of approaches to fusion energy.
With its relatively slim US$5-million annual budget, MagLIF is a David next to two fusion Goliaths: the $3.5-billion National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and the €15-billion (US$20-billion) ITER experiment under construction in France. (Sandia has about $80 million to operate the Z machine each year, but it serves other experiments in addition to MagLIF.) The NIF squashes fuel capsules using nearly 2 megajoules of laser energy, and ITER will use 10,000 tonnes of superconducting magnets in a doughnut-shaped ‘tokamak’ to hold a plasma in place to coax self-sustaining fusion.
Both of the big projects have run into problems. After a concerted two-year effort, NIF fell well short of achieving ignition by a 2012 deadline. Its fusion yields have since increased markedly — nearly 1016 neutrons were created in a recent shot, Herrmann says — but the more than $300-million-a-year programme faces further budget cuts in 2014. Meanwhile, delays and budget overruns have become the norm at ITER. The facility is not expected to begin operations until 2027 — 11 years later than initially planned.
In addition to being cheaper, MagLIF seems to have technical advantages. The laser not only preheats the hydrogen fuel, but also makes it more conductive — and thereby more susceptible to the Z pinch. Furthermore, in a paper published late last year, MagLIF physicists showed evidence suggesting that the applied secondary magnetic field, as well as insulating the fuel, may have the happy side effect of stabilizing the cylinder as it implodes (T. J. Awe et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 235005; 2013). If so, that would cut down on hydrodynamic instabilities, which can disperse the energy and fuel before fusion can get going, says Stephen Slutz, a Sandia physicist who proposed the MagLIF system in 2009.
In the next few years, MagLIF scientists plan to turn up all three dials at their disposal. They can boost the Z machine to up to 27 million amperes; they can ramp up the magnetic field to as high as 30 tesla; and they plan to upgrade the laser to 8 kilojoules. They also aim to switch from fuel made of the hydrogen isotope deuterium to fuel containing both deuterium and another isotope, tritium — which should also lift yields. By 2015, they hope to achieve a yield of 1016 neutrons, or about 100 kilojoules — enough to show that ignition is within reach.
It could be crucial to make progress quickly. The US National Nuclear Security Administration, the division of the Department of Energy that funds the NIF, the Z machine and other laser fusion efforts, plans to deliver an assessment to Congress in 2015 about the future of these technologies. If MagLIF hits its 100-kilo­joule goal, it could bolster an argument for upgrading the Z machine to 60 million amperes or more, which simulations suggest would be sufficient to reach ignition.
“We’re all hoping that they will, in fact, find success with their early shots to justify the construction of a larger machine,” says Hammer.


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Source:
http://www.nature.com/news/triple-threat-method-sparks-hope-for-fusion-1.14445

sherlock1992

thx, PPX~               2013就这样过去了，2014年，期待与大家携手前行。            Oh, Jack and Rose, so sweety~
Speaker:Astronomer Chris Hadfield describes his space life (the space highlights, spacewalk, life condition in space, etc.), how to neutralize emotions and the risks he ever faced.  

Speed:
1'22''
how to cook delicious French fries on Jupiter.
1'27''
2'08''
1'30''
1'16''

Obstacle-5'21''
After adding a secondary magnet and a laser, the Z machine was confirmed on the right path. Although the result still shortly falls the goal, compared with  the other two projects-ITER and NIF, MagLIF has a lower budget and technology advantage. In the next few years, MagLIF scientists plan to further improve the power yield to target it within ignition. But they need to 'run' quickly because the date of assessment delivery is around the corner.

疏离无罪

楼上 的真快  ，大家 新年快乐   希望明年的这时候 还在这


Speaker:Chris Hadfield described his life,feelings and risks in the period when he was in the space station.It's a fantastic experience.

01:10
The crust reached its maximum thickness when the potato was fried at three times Earth’s gravity.And there is a soggy-bottomed fry,which is a bad news.

00:47
Women who eat plenty of nuts during pregnancy may decrease allergy risk in kids.Several explainations were raised to find out the reason.

01:46
The tobacco hornworms use breath with nicotine to protect themselves from predators.Nicotine is a kind of poison that plants use to protect themselves.

01:21
The CYP6B46 gene of tobacco hornworms is the key factor of their defend system.But scientists still don't know how it works.

01:18
Some classic movies will not exist on Netflix any more for licensing contracts.But some new movies will be added.

05:00
Main Idea:The problems faced by NIF
A Z machine creats Z-pinch to achieve ignition.Although the experiment does not get its aimed goal,scientists think that they are on the right path.
Both tow big project (MagLIF and NIF)about this are in trouble.They both do not get to the ignition and have dealys and budget overrun.
But MagLIF seems to be cheaper and has more technical advantages.And MagLIF also has a futher plan in the future.
NIF need to be better,because the assessment is coming.

pennyz

新年快乐！让阅读让我们看到更大更美的世界
1:27s
one good news and one bad news
scientists have maked potato chips in the Jupitor.three times gravition will make the most crisp chips
bad news is vapor at the bottom will vanish the favor and it seems inavoidable right now
that is interesting
1:27s
women eat more nuts during the pregnance will have the offsprings who are less likely to be allergy to nuts
2:14s
1:46s
hornworms feed on the plants contain nicotine
nicotine is found to disable the muscle that help animals to breathe
the ability of hornworms to survive the nicotine owes to the gene
1:36s
the expired subscrubtion of N means customers can no longer get some famous old movies such as Roman Holiday and the Tatnic
but the other new movies will be available soon
5:08s
the experiment on nuclear fusion seem to be at the neck of the bottle before
2 new approaches seem to push the progress ahead
12laser
the other two experiment groups have trouble with their progress and budget
the maglif seems to have technology advantage and be less costly
in the future the maglif will increase the quantity of ingredients they use to accelerate the reaction of neurons

小鱼上树

大家新年快乐！

30-03

Speaker

Chris Hadfield made a video playing guitar and singing inthe space station. His career experience-his feeling in the spaceship andspacewalking-it’s risky-146 days in the space-the sunrise every 92 mins-face withscares

2 221 1min28

deep frying in different gravitational conditions-Highergravity levels, the shorter time it takes to reach crispy-three times Earth’sgravity is the maximum-a soggy-bottom anyway

3 208 1min18

4 311 2min02

Nicotine poisons everything that uses muscles to move, andsince plants don’t have nerves or muscles, it doesn’t poison the plant- thetobacco hornworm is a mysterious exception

5 244 1min30

6 250 1min14

Luckily, We have other resources for these classic movie

dancingwind990

新年快乐！
这是首页吗？哇哦， 第一次哦~~

[tr] [/tr]
[tr] [/tr]

Speaker

Chris Hadfield is a great astronaut. He described the life in  space. The risks in space and what they prepared to slove it. Moreover, he  also described the status of having no gravity as well as the process of  landing

Time 2  1'42"

According to study, gravity level will influence the crispyness  of fried chips, and the three times gravity is thought to the best gratity.  However, a new problem comes that needs to be solved.

Time 3  1'42"

Study has  shown that moms who eat plenty of nuts during pregnancy could reduce their  babys' risk of having nuts allergy.

The  children whose mothers eat a number of nuts during pregnancy are 31% as  likely to be diagnosed with allergy as those whose mothers eat less.

However,  new study runs counter to previous one, as researcher suppose that moms who  eat many nuts provide early to their children with nuts diet.

Time 4  2'31"

Hornworm  feeds on tobacoo leaves and can repurpose nicotine which is toxic to  predators.

Nicotine is  a kind of chemical that will damage the function of muscle; however hornworm  is an exception.

Time 5  2'06"

A kind of  gene help hornworm to defense nicotine.

Time 6  1'22"

Some old  classic films will be moved out from the list in Netflix such as  Titanic,while new films will be added.

The  spokesman said that they change the list routinely.

Obstacle  5'25"

Two  elements are added to fusion, achieving ignition. The new technology not only  is cheaper but also has technical advantages

Scientists  get huge amount of fund from the government for this research and the  government holds a confident prospect for it.

kimwang53

大家新年快乐~                  
1.27
study about how the french fries taste like on Jupiter.
1.27
women who are used to eat nuts could reduce their babies' channce of getting allergy.
it might because those who eat nuts keeps a health diet and somehow affect the allergy.
2.12
1.31
1.27

leeloo_song

新年快乐~

Time 2 1’53’’ The scientist experimented on frying chips under the gravity more than earth’s normal. The chips got were more crisp and tasty except for a small deficit on the bottom. Scientist will go on researching methods to get rid of this deficit, perhaps by conducting experiments under less gravity.
Time 3 1’35’’ New findings disclosed that children born to mom who ate nuts regularly in pregnancy are less likely to be allergic to nuts. But the experts still suspect that immune of allergy to nuts may be caused by other factors.
Time 4 3’04’’ The corn worms expel their predators by exhaling nicotine. The reason why nicotine is toxic to animals is explained. But how this special caterpillar can make use of nicotine while are not poisoned still needs more studies.
Time 5 3’46’’ 实验原理那里看了两遍都没看懂，为什么吃pant nicotine deficient的吃的比CYP6B46和control group的多就证明和gene有关？
Time 6 1’12’’ Some popular movies will be removed from the subscribing list of Netflix, because they are going to expire. Some other movies will be available at the same time.
Time 7 7’28’’ The scientists have been using Z pinch to ignite for nuclear fusion and they got huge development on this technique recently. The progression was made by using electric current, magnetic field and laser. The technique advantages of new method compared with the other two ones. The significance of this development.