【Native Speaker每日综合训练—33系列】【33-04】科技

疏离无罪

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

大家有没有觉得好久没听SSS了，感谢@捉妖 让SSS再次回到小分队。

Part I: Speaker

Your Memory May Be Edited
[Rephrase 1]



[Dialog,01:33]

Resource:scientificamerican

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/edited-memories/

疏离无罪

Part II: Speed

Article 2:

Human ancestors at West Asian site deemed two species

Disputed fossil study splits a pivotal early Homo species in two

BY BRUCE BOWER

[Time 2]
A controversial fossil and soil analysis concludes that a key West Asian site hosted not one but two Homo species, one living around 1.8 million years ago and another several hundred thousand years later.

A team that excavated partial skeletons at Dmanisi, in the nation of Georgia, categorized the finds as part of one species, Homo erectus, that lived in Africa and West Asia 1.8 million years ago (SN: 11/16/13, p. 6). But disparities in several skeletal features that emerge early in life distinguish a large Dmanisi lower jaw from two smaller ones, signaling the presence of separate species, asserts a team led by paleoanthropologist José María Bermúdez de Castro of the National Research Center on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. The small jaws come from a population that was closely related to early African Homo populations,the scientists conclude February 20 in PLOS ONE. The team suggests the larger jaw belonged to Homo georgicus, a poorly understood species.

Excavation director David Lordkipanidze of the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi disagrees. Shape similarities among Dmanisi skulls that fit the lower jaws indicate that only one Homo species occupied the site. Geologic studies show that the Dmanisi fossils are no younger than 1.76 million years old, he adds.
【206】

Resource:science news
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/human-ancestors-west-asian-site-deemed-two-species

Article 3:

How Earth might have looked: How a failed Saharan Atlantic Ocean rift zone sculped Africa's margin



[Time 3]
Break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana about 130 Million years ago could have lead to a completely different shape of the African and South American continent with an ocean south of today's Sahara desert, as geoscientists from the University of Sydney and the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences have shown through the use of sophisticated plate tectonic and three-dimensional numerical modelling.

The study highlights the importance of rift orientation relative to extension direction as key factor deciding whether an ocean basin opens or an aborted rift basin forms in the continental interior.

For hundreds of millions of years, the southern continents of South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and India were united in the supercontinent Gondwana. While the causes for Gondwana's fragmentation are still debated, it is clear that the supercontinent first split along along the East African coast in a western and eastern part before separation of South America from Africa took place. Today's continental margins along the South Atlantic ocean and the subsurface graben structure of the West African Rift system in the African continent, extending from Nigeria northwards to Libya, provide key insights on the processes that shaped present-day Africa and South America.

Christian Heine (University of Sydney) and Sascha Brune (GFZ) investigated why the South Atlantic part of this giant rift system evolved into an ocean basin, whereas its northern part along the West African Rift became stuck.

"Extension along the so-called South Atlantic and West African rift systems was about to split the African-South American part of Gondwana North-South into nearly equal halves, generating a South Atlantic and a Saharan Atlantic Ocean," geoscientist Sascha Brune explains. "In a dramatic plate tectonic twist, however, a competing rift along the present-day Equatorial Atlantic margins, won over the West African rift, causing it to become extinct, avoiding the break-up of the African continent and the formation of a Saharan Atlantic ocean."

The complex numerical models provide a strikingly simple explanation: the larger the angle between rift trend and extensional direction, the more force is required to maintain a rift system. The West African rift featured a nearly orthogonal orientation with respect to westward extension which required distinctly more force than its ultimately successful Equatorial Atlantic opponent.
【367】

Resource: sciencedaily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140228210545.htm

Article 4:

Talking Neanderthals challenge the origins of speech

[Time 4]

We humans like to think of ourselves as unique for many reasons, not least of which being our ability to communicate with words. But ground-breaking research by an expert from the University of New England shows that our 'misunderstood cousins,' the Neanderthals, may well have spoken in languages not dissimilar to the ones we use today.

Pinpointing the origin and evolution of speech and human language is one of the longest running and most hotly debated topics in the scientific world. It has long been believed that other beings, including the Neanderthals with whom our ancestors shared Earth for thousands of years, simply lacked the necessary cognitive capacity and vocal hardware for speech.

Associate Professor Stephen Wroe, a zoologist and palaeontologist from UNE, along with an international team of scientists and the use of 3D x-ray imaging technology, made the revolutionary discovery challenging this notion based on a 60,000 year-old Neanderthal hyoid bone discovered in Israel in 1989.

"To many, the Neanderthal hyoid discovered was surprising because its shape was very different to that of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzee and the bonobo. However, it was virtually indistinguishable from that of our own species. This led to some people arguing that this Neanderthal could speak," A/Professor Wroe said.

"The obvious counterargument to this assertion was that the fact that hyoids of Neanderthals were the same shape as modern humans doesn't necessarily mean that they were used in the same way. With the technology of the time, it was hard to verify the argument one way or the other."

However advances in 3D imaging and computer modelling allowed A/Professor Wroe's team to revisit the question.

"By analysing the mechanical behaviour of the fossilised bone with micro x-ray imaging, we were able to build models of the hyoid that included the intricate internal structure of the bone. We then compared them to models of modern humans. Our comparisons showed that in terms of mechanical behaviour, the Neanderthal hyoid was basically indistinguishable from our own, strongly suggesting that this key part of the vocal tract was used in the same way.

"From this research, we can conclude that it's likely that the origins of speech and language are far, far older than once thought."

【372】

Resource: sciencedaily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140302185241.htm

Article 5:

App Listens for Danger When You’re Not Paying Attention
An app called Audio Aware lets the hard of hearing and the distracted know when danger approaches.
[Time 5]
A startup is developing machine-learning technology that mimics the way the ear works, which it believes will make it easier for smartphones and wearable devices to constantly listen for sounds of danger.

One Llama will show some of its capabilities in an app called Audio Aware, which is meant to alert hard-of-hearing smartphone users and “distracted walkers” (an issue previously explored in“Safe Texting While Walking? Soon There May be an App for That”). The app, planned for release in March, will run in the background on an Android smartphone, detecting sounds like screeching tires and wailing sirens and alerting you to them by interrupting the music you’re listening to, for instance. The app will arrive with knowledge of a number of perilous sounds, and users will be able to add their own sounds to the app and share them with other people.

One Llama hopes Audio Aware will pique interest among makers of wearable gadgets, who could bake the technology into smart glasses, smart watches, and fitness trackers. In those devices, Audio Aware could do more than just be alert to dangers: it could monitor health conditions, workouts, or even locations by paying attention to the sounds you make and the noises around you. Bird watchers might want to use it to home in on the differences between, say, a male chipping sparrow and a dark-eyed junco.

The crux of One Llama’s technology is what the company calls its “artificial ear.” When sound enters your ear, it travels through the spiral-shaped cochlea, which is lined with tiny hair cells that vibrate like tuning forks when hit by certain frequencies. One Llama’s artificial ear is a software version of this—essentially, a bank of digital tuning forks that measure sounds. It’s based on work that cofounder David Tcheng and others conducted at the University of Illinois, where he is a research scientist.

The company claims this method can be speedier and more flexible than other common methods for analyzing the different frequencies of the vibrations that we hear as sounds.
【356】

[Time 6]
In the case of Audio Aware, it will work by listening through your smartphone’s microphone, Tcheng says, constantly comparing what it hears to stored templates of alert sounds it needs to recognize. When a sufficient match, such as a car horn, is detected, it will cancel any audio you’re hearing and pipe in an amplified version of the sound it’s picking up, or perhaps a cartoon-like version of that sound that is easier to recognize.

Audio Aware will be able to work without access to a wireless network, but it will have to stream audio to a remote server when it learns new sounds—in a new country, for example, where sirens sound different than at home.

Can the app do all that it needs to do in time to warn you before you step in front of an oncoming car? Tcheng acknowledges that challenge but believes the software extracts audio features quickly enough to actually help users in real time. But One Llama’s technology is not foolproof. Tcheng gave me a demonstration of how One Llama’s technology could pick out several sounds—including breaking glass, a ringing doorbell, and a honking horn—over the din of a radio playing and cat meowing in his home. Although the software correctly identified sounds such as glass breaking, it also incorrectly identified a doorbell ringing. Over time, presumably, the system would learn the difference.

Richard Stern, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who researches speech recognition, says sound-processing methods based on the workings of the cochlea have become increasingly common in part because computer processing power has become so much cheaper over time.

Paying attention to how the auditory system processes signals can be helpful for recognizing sounds in noisy environments in particular, he says. But the complexity of sounds we encounter every day means sound-recognition systems are constantly trying to home in on one signal among many, and it’s virtually impossible to predict in advance how these signals will combine. Humans are still far ahead of computers in that respect.
【354】

Resource:MIT technology review
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/524971/app-listens-for-danger-when-youre-not-paying-attention/

疏离无罪

Part III: Obstacle

Article 6:

10,000 years on the Bering Land Bridge: Ancestors of Native Americans paused en route from Asia

[Paraphrase 7]
Genetic and environmental evidence indicates that after the ancestors of Native Americans left Asia, they spent 10,000 years in shrubby lowlands on a broad land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska. Archaeological evidence is lacking because it drowned beneath the Bering Sea when sea levels rose.

University of Utah anthropologist Dennis O'Rourke and two colleagues make that argument in the Friday, Feb. 28, issue of the journal Science. They seek to reconcile existing genetic and paleoenvironmental evidence for human habitation on the Bering land bridge -- also called Beringia -- with an absence of archaeological evidence.

O'Rourke says cumulative evidence indicates the ancestors of Native Americans lived on the Bering land bridge "in the neighborhood of 10,000 years," from roughly 25,000 years ago until they began moving into the Americas about 15,000 years ago once glacial ice sheets melted and opened migration routes.

O'Rourke co-authored the Science Perspective column -- titled "Out of Beringia?" -- with archaeologist John Hoffecker of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Scott Elias, a paleoecologist at the University of London. Perspective columns in Sciencedon't feature research by the authors, but instead are meant to highlight and provide context for exciting new research in a field or across fields.

"Nobody disputes that the ancestors of Native American peoples came from Asia over the coast and interior of the land bridge" during an ice age called the "last glacial maximum," which lasted from 28,000 to at least 18,000 years ago, O'Rourke says, The ice sheets extended south into the Pacific Northwest, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Ohio. Large expanses of Siberia and Beringia were cold but lacked glaciers.

The absence of archaeological sites and the inhospitable nature of open, treeless landscape known as tundra steppe mean that "archaeologists have not given much credence to the idea there was a population that lived on the Bering land bridge for thousands of years," he adds.

O'Rourke and colleagues say that in recent years, paleoecologists -- scientists who study ancient environments -- drilled sediment cores from the Bering Sea and Alaskan bogs. Those sediments contain pollen, plant and insect fossils, suggesting the Bering land bridge wasn't just barren, grassy tundra steppe but was dotted by "refugia" or refuges where there were brushy shrubs and even trees such as spruce, birch, willow and alder.

"We're putting it together with the archaeology and genetics that speak to American origins and saying, look, there was an environment with trees and shrubs that was very different than the open, grassy steppe. It was an area where people could have had resources, lived and persisted through the last glacial maximum in Beringia," O'Rourke says. "That may have been critical for the people to subsist because they would have had wood for construction and for fires. Otherwise, they would have had to use bone, which is difficult to burn."

A Frozen, Isolated Dawn for the Earliest Americans
During the last glacial maximum, thick glacial ice sheets extended south into what now is the northern United States, sea levels dropped some 400 feet, O'Rourke says. As the glaciers melted, sea levels began to rise, reaching current levels 6,000 years ago.

During the long glacial period, Siberia and Alaska were linked by the Bering land bridge, which contrary to the name's implication, really was a huge swath of land north, between and south of Siberia and Alaska, at the present sites of the Chukchi Sea, the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea, respectively.

At its largest extent, Beringia measured as much as 1,000 miles from north to south and as much as 3,000 miles from Siberia's Verkoyansk Range east to the Mackenzie River in in Canada.

The theory that humans inhabited the Bering land bridge for some 10,000 years "helps explain how a Native American genome (genetic blueprint) became separate from its Asian ancestor," O'Rourke says.

"At some point, the genetic blueprint that defines Native American populations had to become distinct from that Asian ancestry," he explains. "The only way to do that was for the population to be isolated. Most of us don't believe that isolation took place in Siberia because we don't see a place where a population could be sufficiently isolated. It would always have been in contact with other Asian groups on its periphery."

"But if there were these shrub-tundra refugia in central Beringia, that provided a place where isolation could occur" due to distance from Siberia, O'Rourke says.

Genetic and Paleoenvironmental Evidence
O'Rourke and colleagues point to a study of mitochondrial DNA -- genetic information passed by mothers -- sampled from Native Americans throughout the Americas. The study found that the unique genome or genetic blueprint of Native Americans arose sometime before 25,000 years ago but didn't spread through the Americas until about 15,000 years ago.

"This result indicated that a substantial population existed somewhere, in isolation from the rest of Asia, while its genome differentiated from the parental Asian genome," O'Rourke says. "The researchers suggested Beringia as the location for this isolated population, and suggested it existed there for several thousand years before members of the population migrated southward into the rest of North and, ultimately, South America as retreating glaciers provided routes for southern migration."

"Several other genetic-genomic analyses of Native American populations have resulted in similar conclusions," he adds.

"For a long time, many of us thought the land bridge was a uniform tundra-steppe environment" -- a broad windswept grassland devoid of shrubs and trees, O'Rourke says. But in recent years, sediment cores drilled in the Bering Sea and along the Alaskan coast -- the now-submerged lowlands of Beringia -- found pollens of trees and shrubs.

That "suggests Beringia was not a uniform tundra-steppe environment, but a patchwork of environments, including substantial areas of lowland shrub tundra," O'Rourke says. "These shrub-tundra areas were likely refugia for a population that would be invisible archaeologically, since the former Beringian lowlands are now submerged."

"Large herd animals like bison or mammoths likely lived on the highland steppe tundra because they graze. Many smaller animals, birds, elk and moose (which browse shrubs instead of grazing on grass) would have been in the shrub tundra," he adds.

Other research indicates "that much of Beringia -- particularly the lowlands -- appears to have had average summer temperatures nearly identical (or only slightly cooler in some regions) to those in the region today," O'Rourke says. "The local environments likely were not as daunting as many have assumed for years. They probably hunkered down pretty good in the winter though. It would have been cold."

The idea that rising sea levels covered evidence of human migration to the Americas has long been cited by researchers studying how early Native Americans moved south along the Pacific coast as the glaciers receded and sea levels rose. O'Rourke says the idea hasn't been used before to explain the scarcity of archaeological sites in Alaska and Siberia, which were highlands when the land bridge was exposed.

But O'Rourke and his colleagues say archaeological sites must be found in Beringia if the long human layover there is to be confirmed. Although most such sites are underwater, some evidence of human habitation in shrub tundra might remain above sea level in low-lying portions of Alaska and eastern Chukotka (in Russia)."
【1206】

Resource:Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140227141854.htm

疏离无罪

现在的沙发好难抢，只能坐坐自己的了

Speaker:Our memory is more inaccurate than we believe.Recent and easily retrievable information can be edited by our mind.

01:07
The excavation and analysis of fossils find out that human ancestors at west asia have two homo species.

02:11
The reason why the South Atlantic part becomes an ocean basin and  West African Rift do not become an ocean is that the bigger the rift system is,the more force is required to maintain it.And obviously West African Rift need more force,so the rift brokeee at South Atlantic area.

01:53
The 3D imaging and computer modelling of Neanderthal shows that they also have language and the origins of speech and language is far older than we thought.

01:26
A new starup developed a machine-learning technology that can mimics the way that ears work.And this company also develop an artifical ear under this technology.

01:19
Through this technology,app can listen the sound aroud you and alert you if there are some dangerous situation by analyzing the sound.But this technology is still far from mature.

05:42
Main Idea:the ancestors of native american live on the bering land bridge for 1000 years
Genetic and environmental evidence indicates that the ancestors of native american live on the bering land bridge for 1000 years.But the archaeological evidence is lacking.
All people admit that the ancestors of native american peoples came from Asia and move to the America during ice age.But no archaeological evidence exist because of the area were so desolate.
But recent enviornment study on that area shows that it may not be open, grassy steppe but an environment with trees and shrubs.This shows that it is possible for the ancestors of native american to live there.
And if this is true,it can explain the enge separation between native americans and asians.And the DNA analysis also support this idea.
But to make this theory more accetable,archaeological sites must be found in Beringia.

鸢尾yuanwei

板凳？？？？吼吼吼～～～来的巧～～～～
谢谢疏离～～～

Speed
1‘40
3’06
2‘53
2’49
1‘54

Obstacle
8’30

xiaofan0205

哈哈哈，地板！

Speaker:
Our memories are inaccurate, more than we'd like to believe, and now study demonstrates one reason, we apparently add current experiences onto our memorise.

Time2: 1'41"
A team that excavated partial skeletons at Dmanisi states that it hosted not one but two Homo species, but the excavation of director disagree.

Time3: 3'15"
The West African rift featured a nearly orthogonal orientation with respect to westward extension which required distinctly more force than its ultimately successful Equatorial Atlantic opponent.

Time4: 2'48"
Research shows that it's likely that origins of speech and language are far, far older than once though.

Time5: 2'35"
An APP called Audio Aware, which planned for release in March, is meant to detect sounds and to alert you when you are not paying attention.

Time6: 2'33"
The App can identify different kind of sounds in different environment, but it can't handle the complexity sounds we encount every day. Humans are still far ahead of computers in that respect.

Obstacle: 9'28"
Genetic and environmental evidence indicates that the ancestors of native american live on the bering land bridge for 10000 years.But the archaeological evidence is lacking.But recent enviornment study on that area shows that it may not be open, grassy steppe but an environment with trees and shrubs.

cherry6891

火速站队~~~~

Obstacle:10:00

genetic and environment evidence indicates that the ancestors of Native Americans lived in Asia 10000 years ago. But there is no archaeological evident

--paleoecologists drilled sediment cores from Bering sea and found sediments containing pollen,plants.

--the theory that humans inhabited the Bering for 10000 years helped explain hoa Native American genome became separate from its Asian ancestor

Article2 1:40

A fossil and soil analysis concludes that West Asian site hosted two Homo species, while excavation director D disagree because his studies show the D fossils are older than 1.76 million years old

Article 3 3:17

--Break-up of Gondwana long time ago could have lead to a completely different sharp of African and South American

--the rift orientation is kay factor deciding whether an ocean basin opens or an aborted rift basin forms in the continental interior

Article 4 2:20

The neanderthals spoken in languages not dissimilar to the ones we use today

Vocal tract in the same way

TaoRs92

首页~明天来补~~


time:1:09.61
Scientists find that there were two homo species in West Asian.
The skeletal features they found belong to two different speicies.
Disagreement:shapes indicate that only one specie occupied the site.
_______________
time:2:13.45
Scientists use plate tetonic and 3D model to form an explanation--rift system that leads to an ocean basin or aborted rift basin.
The development and history of supercontinent G's seperation.Its formation is debated.But the timeline is clear.
Question:the formal--ocean basin.now--stuck.no sahara atlantic ocean.
Explanation:the larger the angle,the more forces it need.
_______________
time:1:53.97
Scientists find that N can also speak.
Once we thought they lack the capacity to speech.
But scientists use 3D x-ray to examine the bone of N.Give us a different idea--the bone and its structure is distinguishable from our ancesters,but indistinguishable from our own.So N may can speak at that time.
_______________
time:1:58.68
A new app will work in the background on a phone and "hear" different vioces,give people warning and alert.
How will it work.
Other function:even for home holders to watch their birds.
Use C,partly mimic the structure of human ears to hear sounds.
May notice more vibration than people take as voices.
______________
time:2:08.02
How will this app warn people--cut off any audio that is being playing,make recognize sounds.
The system is smart,it can learn differences between different sounds.
The opinion:positive.but it is difficult to recognize sounds becase they are messed up.Humans are still far ahead of the related tech.
_____________
time:6:59.21
Old view:Native Americans left Asia,lived in the brige--B for 10000 years.
This claim is lack of archaeological evidence,because the places are under water now.
New research:Seek where exactly Native Amercians lived in the bridge,the evidence.
1 last glacial maximum
B and S were very cold,but lack of glacials.B was barren.
2 fossil in some plcaes
Some parts of B were not barren(different from the open steppe).There were trees and shrubs.Native Americans might live there during the last glacial maximum.
3 genome isolation
If Native Americans once lived in these parts,it can explain the genome isolation between Amercians and their Asian ancesters.(distance)
4 genetic and environmental evidence
Study genes from mothers,indicates that there was population living isolated from Asia.
B was not a uniform tundra steppe.There were many parts that had trees and shrubs.The temperatures there were also similar with today's temperature.
So Native Americans might live in B.There were evidences.But to confirm this claim,scientists should find the sites in B(under water).

sherlock1992

M.                  
----------------
Speaker:
Our memories are easily inaccurate and one of the reasons is that we always unconsciously add our current experiences on to our memories.

jenniferlyy125

Day 28

--speaker

Memories are inaccurate, and the reason is that human always add current experiences onto previous memories. And the speaker cited an experiment in nuroun science. Subjects are asked to place objects on the original locations after changing the backgrounds. However, instead of choosing the correct original location, subjects always chose the locations they remembered and chosed in the precious tasks. Researchers note that recent experiences can overrun the previous memories.

---speed

1.      1’03

Fossils found in west Asian showed that the site hosted two species instead of one species since the lower jaw is evolved form two small ones. However the excavation director disagreed with the discovery.

2.      2’02

If there were enough large force to break up the supercontinent G 130 m years ago, a new ocean-sahara atlantic ocean--south of sahara desert would born and current Africa would be separated into sahara continent and south African continent. (point—means—illustration--reason)

3.      2’27

Human beings are once believed to be the oldest creature who can speak, however a bone that is the same as human was discovered, and researchers found the structure and usage was exactly same as human, which demonstrated that N might be the oldest creature to speak.(point-old-new-detail-con)

4.      1’48

Researchers designed a app that can hear danger voices when the people is distracted, and this tech can be applied to wider ranger of sounds. The app is based on an artificial ear and easier than conventional tech.

5.      2’35

Audio aware is able to identify dangerous sounds recorded beforehand but cannot identify combined sounds sometimes. The computerized auditory system is developing, however it is impossible for a software to identify every and combined sounds in our life. Computer systems still lag behind the our human capabilities.

---obstacle

Researchers argue that native American might lived in the bearing land bridge after migrating from Asia and before reaching north America. Even though archaeological evidence lack, researchers reconciled the genetic and eco evidence with habitation of the land.

1) The ice sheet in north America and sediments drawn under bearing sea strengthen the hypothesis.

2) this hypothesis can help to explain why native American genes are separated from their Asian ancestors.

3) Besides, genetic and eco evidence indicate that the area is not tundra steppe but shrubby with warm climate and hospital environment.

However, archeological evidence need to be found in order to prove the hypothesis.

(point—illustration 123--con)