【Native Speaker每日综合训练—35系列】【35-17】科技

cherry6891

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

Part I: Speaker

Morning Light Exposure Tied to Lower Weight

Light might make you a lightweight—in a good way. It’s been known that bright light in the morning can reduce appetite and body weight. But that fact did not prove that light has a direct effect on weight. Early morning exposure to light could just be a marker for a regular sleep cycle, which is also associated with a healthy body weight.

The question was thus whether light exposure was associated with weight regardless of sleep patterns.

To find out, researchers had 54 adults record their diet and sleep for a week. The subjects also wore sensors that monitored the timing and intensity of their light exposure.

And independent of sleep habits, the participants' body weight corresponded to when they saw the light—even dim light, with just half the intensity of sunlight on a cloudy day. The study is in the journal PLoS ONE. [Kathryn J. Reid et al, Timing and Intensity of Light Correlate with Body Weight in Adults

So early to bed and early to rise appears to indeed make you healthy. Jury's still out on whether it also makes you wealthy and wise.

Source:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/morning-light-exposure-tied-to-lower-weight1/


【Rephrase 1, 1:22】

cherry6891

Part II: Speed

Article2   The CNN 10: Ideas

　　
Warm up
　　Where do good ideas come from?
　　Some say they're the result of collaboration between people whose collective wisdom is greater than that of any individual. Others believe the best ideas happen when a brilliant mind pursues a singular vision that hasn't been watered down by groupthink.

　　Either way, bold ideas are the currency of our knowledge economy and the lifeblood of our advancement as a culture. We don't always grasp the importance of one when we see it for the first time, but we recognize them in hindsight. (How did we ever carry our bags before someone invented wheeled luggage?)

　　As part of our focus on innovation, CNN is honoring 10 emerging ideas in technology and related fields. These are concepts with big potential to change the world: to make us healthier, to keep us safer on the highways, to protect the coastline during storms, to help our computers think for themselves, to literally reinvent the wheel.

　　Many of these ideas are already gaining traction. Some may never take flight. But all are sparking dialogue among thought leaders in their fields, which is never a bad thing. We believe they're all worth pondering.
　　May we present the CNN 10: Ideas. [200]
　
Time2

Going with the flow

        For centuries, the conventional wisdom about protecting shorelines from storm surges has been to build a seawall. And if that fails, build a bigger wall.

　　But in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which devastated much of the New Jersey-New York coastline in 2012, that rigid line of thinking is being tossed on its ear. Instead of erecting ever-bigger barriers – which when breached can trap floodwater, as in a bathtub -- civic planners are embracing bold new ideas that would redesign shorelines to accommodate some managed flooding and minimize destruction.

　　"The challenge for us over the next several decades is how we learn to live with water and not fight against it," said Samuel Carter, an associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation, which is helping fund a new project to reinvent the coastline of New York and New Jersey.

　　The project, Rebuild by Design, brings together many of the world's top engineers, architects and others to create innovative ways to minimize flooding and protect shorelines. Among their ideas: building a series of protective breakwaters in New York Harbor that slow the force of waves while serving as living reefs to rebuild the dwindling oyster population; designing "hyperabsorbent" streets and sidewalks that would mitigate storm runoff; digging channels along streets to divert stormwater; and creating buildings that are designed to flood without being damaged.

　　Ten of the best ideas have been chosen by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan to be further developed into formal designs. These may be eligible for federal Sandy-relief funding and eventually be implemented across New York and New Jersey while serving as a model for flood-protection efforts in other parts of the world.

　　With sea levels expected to inch higher in coming decades, these kinds of projects will only become more crucial, especially in urban areas.
　　The idea, Rebuild by Design's planners say, is to come up with collaborative, flexible new solutions tailored to each community instead of just rebuilding and inviting history to repeat itself.

　　"It's a normal thing for human beings all around the world: When something (bad) happens, they want to go back to where they were (before). But when it comes to Superstorm Sandy, that would be a total failure," said Henk Ovink, co-chairman of the Rebuild by Design jury and a senior adviser for the federal Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force.

　　"Water can be a threat, but it's also a necessity and a resource," Ovink said. "You can embrace water. Working against nature is not a solution." [417]


Time3

Crowdfunding's showbiz revolution

    Spike Lee has an Emmy and two Academy Award nominations. Zach Braff starred in the sitcom "Scrubs," and his film "Garden State" brought praise from critics as well bringing in more than $35 million.

　　And in 2013, both chose the Internet, instead of Hollywood, to fund their new movies.
　　By fast-twitch Internet standards, online fundraising is nothing new. More than 5 million people have helped fund over 53,000 projects since Kickstarter launched in 2009. (Rival IndieGogo was launched at the Sundance Film Festival several months earlier). Both have helped launch artistic endeavors that may have never happened otherwise

　　But now established entertainers are using the platforms to appeal directly to fans to help fund new projects.
　　In May, Braff scored $3.1 million on Kickstarter for "Wish I Was Here,"which, like "Garden State" he wrote and plans to star in and direct. Lee followed in August, bringing in $1.4 million for "The Sweet Blood of Jesus," known during the campaign only as "The Newest, Hottest Spike Lee Joint."

　　But they were both swamped by a project to make a movie wrapping up the long-since canceled cable series "Veronica Mars." That one earned $5.7 million -- the third-highest total in Kickstarter history -- and may have done as much as any other project to usher in a new phase in crowdfunding.

　　"After I saw how the amazing "Veronica Mars" fans rallied around that project in a mind-blowing way, I couldn't help but think , like so many others, maybe this could be a new paradigm for filmmakers who want to make smaller, personal films without having to sign away any of their artistic freedom," Braff said in a video promoting his campaign.

　　In the end, $5 million isn't exactly blockbuster money. But we wouldn't be surprised if bigger, more expensive, efforts get funded in the next few years.

　　"It takes the ability to decide what you see, what happens, from the privileged few to the crowd," author Neil Gaiman, whose short story "The Price" is set to become a 3D, animated short film thanks to a successful 2010 campaign, told CNN at the time. "I can't wait until the first $50 million movie is funded through Kickstarter." [365]
　　
　　
Time4

Yes, we can turn back time

　　There's a way to end seasonal clock confusion and eliminate jet lag.
　　All it would take is doing away with daylight saving and splitting the continental United States in two time zones: East and West, an hour apart.
　　It's not a radical idea. In fact, changing how we view time is a natural part of progress in society. In the Civil War era, every city in the country had its own local time based on the position of the sun. That was too confusing for train schedules, so the country moved to four time zones in 1883.

　　But we've evolved since then to an even more connected world. Now we all watch the same television channels and trade on the same stock market. Our lives are more integrated, and a more unified time system makes sense.

　　Allison Schrager, an economist and writer in New York, made the case for a change in an essay she published before we turned the clocks back in November. Here's how Schrager's plan would work: Eastern Time jumps onto Central Time, and Pacific Time becomes Mountain Time. That would give east coast states brighter mornings and west coast states sunnier evenings.

　　Schrager told CNN she first thought about it when she commuted to Austin, Texas on a regular basis. She noticed everyone in the Southwest did everything at the same time as New Yorkers, they just called it a different time.

　　"The whole point of keeping time is coordination. The problem is, there's just so much confusion," she said.
　　That's only made more complex by daylight saving time, a practice that the United States adopted from Europe in 1918 to save energy. Clocks are set forward in summer to extend afternoon daylight.

　　However, the vast majority of the world doesn't do it, which makes it hard to coordinate the new, temporarily adjusted times between Asia, Europe and the United States. Plus, there's little proof daylight saving actually reduces energy usage.

　　Eliminating the practice would prevent the jarring feeling we all get in the fall when the clocks reset and it suddenly gets dark at 4:30 p.m.
　　The downside? It'll take some getting used to.
　　But it's less confusing than resetting your watch after a five-hour flight that, on paper, took eight hours one way and three hours the other.[400]
　　
Time5

Touchscreens that fold like maps

　　The mobile revolution has been won, but the smartphones and tablets that launched it have remained pretty much the same throughout. Specs and design details aside, they're rectangles with rigid glass screens.

　　All that's about to change.
　　In 2013, we saw the emergence of flexible display screens as a viable option for personal electronics. And once the technology is perfected, the range of possibilities gets a whole lot broader.

　　"Foldable electronics, origami electronics like those old Transformers toys -- all kinds of ideas," said Nick Colaneri, director of the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University. "I'm not a design guy, but I've always said that once we made this capability available to the design community, who knows where they'll go with it?"

　　How about a T-shirt that plays YouTube videos? Or a 90-inch, high-def TV you can fold up and bring to a friend's house for the big game? All are starting to seem like real possibilities.

　　The breakthrough came as researchers like those at Colaneri's lab figured out how to build display panels onto paper-thin plastic "substrates" -- thin slices of material that act as semiconductors -- instead of glass.

　　"We've always said that flexible displays are sort of the beginning toward truly flexible electronics," he said. "The display in a conventional phone or laptop or tablet is the least flexible thing in there, since it's made out of a piece of rigid glass."

　　The first wave of consumer gadgets using that and similar technologies is under way, with more promised in the near future.
　　Korean gadget giants Samsung and LG have already rolled out phones with curved display screens. Apple has filed for a patent for an "electronic device with a wraparound display."

　　At Google, one of CNN's Thinkers, Mary Lou Jepsen, is a pioneer in the field of display screens. She's in the super-secretive Google X lab, so there's no telling what she and others are actually up to. But it's hard to imagine new displays aren't somewhere on the agenda.

　　"All of the names that you mentioned are certainly sniffing around (the idea)," Colaneri said. "I think all of the names that you've dropped are also among the top-10 list of most paranoid, secretive organizations known to man. They're certainly thinking about it." [378]


Time6

Teaching computers to think

　　

        There are things we humans just seem to know -- the simple bits of knowledge we pick up through observation or judgment. To us, this common sense is second nature.

　　But to a computer, the concept is incredibly tricky. Teaching common sense is one of the biggest challenges facing the development of artificial intelligence.

　　Now a team at Carnegie Mellon University is training a computer program to think for itself, starting with pictures.
　　The Never Ending Image Learner ("NEIL" to its friends) looks at millions of images on the Web, identifying and labeling them. For example, it might recognize a famous building, an animal's eye or a color. It then groups images together in categories, and automatically looks for associations between them, without human supervision.

　　"Images also include a lot of common-sense information about the world. People learn this by themselves and, with NEIL, we hope that computers will do so as well," said Abhinav Gupta, an assistant research professor at Carnegie Mellon.

　　The team decided that images were the best place to start their quest for common sense connections, in part because of the vast selection and variety of images available online.

　　"No one writes common-sense relationships, such as sheep are white or cars have wheels, and therefore it is hard to gather these relationships from sources such as text," Gupta told CNN.

　　Each examined image is another puzzle piece. Since July NEIL has analyzed more than 5 million images and come up with 3,000 relationships – a small percentage, but a start. The program might make connections between an object and a location, deducing for example that Ferris wheels are often found in amusement parks, or that a zebras are found on savannas.

　　The program, funded in part by Google, runs 24/7 on two clusters of computers that include 200 processing cores. Someday soon NEIL may begin analyzing video imagery as well.

　　"People don't always know how or what to teach computers," said Abhinav Shrivastava, a graduate student working on the project. "But humans are good at telling computers when they are wrong." [345]

Source:
http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2013/12/tech/cnn10-ideas/

cherry6891

Part III: Obstacle

Science Explores Our Magical Belief in the Power of Celebrity

In modern times, it's generally assumed that we've left most our of beliefs in magic or superstition behind. At the very least, we don't take them very seriously, we imagine, and certainly wouldn't pay a premium to satisfy our superstition


That makes a new finding by George Newman and Paul Bloom, a pair of Yale University psychologists, rather perplexing. They've found that, at auctions of celebrity memorabilia, people subconsciously weigh a history of physical contact (or lack thereof) between an item and its owner in determining how much they'll pay for it.


Their new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that people at memorabilia auctions were willing to pay much more for items owned by John F. Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe if they thought the beloved celebrities had touched them, but preferred to pay less than the object's value for items owned by widely disliked individuals (such as Bernie Madoff) if they imagined he'd come into contact with them.

It's almost as if, the psychologists argue, these buyers believe in some sort of inexplicable mechanism that carries JFK's and Monroe's magnificent qualities—as well as Madoff's reprehensible ones—into these objects simply through touch. Their word for this nonsensical belief that's as inaccurate as the long-outdated miasma theory of disease? Contagion.

"Contagion is a form of magical thinking in which people believe that a person's immaterial qualities or essence can be transferred to an object through physical contact," they write. Their findings, they add, "suggest that magical thinking may still have effects in contemporary Western societies."

They carried out the study by looking at data sets of the prices fetched at auction by 1,297 JFK-related, 288 Monroe-related and 489 Madoff-related items—including furniture, jewelry, books and tableware—in recent years. Auction houses generally don't specify (or know) if an item was actually touched by its owner, so the researchers asked three study participants (who were blind to their hypothesis) to rate how much contact they perceived each of the items would have had with their owners on a scale of one to eight.

The idea is that buyers would likely make a similar judgment on the likelihood of contact: a wall decoration, for instance, would be less likely to have been touched by JFK, whereas a fork would probably have been handled by him frequently.

When Newman and Bloom analyzed the data, they found a significant correlation between higher ratings of expected physical contact and how much the sale price of the item exceeded the auction houses' estimated value of it. But in the case of Madoff, they found the opposite: a slight correlation between degree of contact and how much lower the sale prices were than the projections.


Interestingly, they did find an exception to this trend: extremely expensive objects. For items that sold for prices over $10,000—mostly jewelry—people did not pay any more (or less) based on a celebrity's physical contact. When it comes to truly serious, investment-level purchases, it seems, the magical belief in contagion dries up.

In addition to the real-world auction data, Newman and Bloom conducted an intriguing experiment that supports their argument about the role of physical contact in the price discrepancies. They gathered 435 volunteers and asked them how much they'd bid on a hypothetical sweater, telling some it had belonged to a famous person they admired, and others that it had been a celebrity they despised.

But they also told some of the participants that the sweater had been transformed in one of three ways: It'd been professionally sterilized (thereby, in theory, destroying the "essence" that the celebrity had left on it but not destroying the actual object), it'd been moved to the auction house (which, theoretically, could contaminate this "essence" with the touch of mere goods handlers) or it came with a condition that it could never be sold again (which would eliminate the monetary value from the participants' estimation of its worth, isolating their valuation of the sweater itself).

Compared to untransformed sweaters, the participants were willing to pay 14.5 percent less for a beloved celebrity's sweater (say, Marilyn Monroe's) that had been sterilized, but just 8.9 percent less for one they couldn't resell—indicating that they valued whatever "essence" the celebrity had passed on to the sweater by touching it more than its actual monetary value, and that this "essence" could be destroyed by sterilization. The sweater simply being handled by others in transit, however, barely affected their valuation: It seems that celebrity contact can't be so easily wiped away.

The results for sweaters owned by a despised famous person—say, Madoff—were the exact opposite. Sterilized sweaters were valued 17.2 percent higher than normal ones, and those that had simply been moved were still valued 9.4 percent higher, suggesting that eliminating a despised celebrity's "essence" is much easier, and even more crucial for the object's desirability. Not being able to resell the item affected its price similarly as it did the beloved celebrity's sweater.

Of course, all this is the kind of finding that may not surprise those who work professionally in the memorabilia industry. Last year, a John F. Kennedy-owned bomber jacket sold for $570,000. But without the power of contagion, a jacket is just a jacket—even if it was owned by JFK. [896]

Source:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-explores-our-magical-belief-power-celebrity-180949852/

hysteries

占座啦！！
----------------------------------------------------
【Speaker】
Light Exposure in the morning makes you healthier and gets you a light weight.
So early to bed and early get up can make you healthy and light.

【Speed】
time 6        00:01:27.45       
time 5        00:01:26.21       
time 4        00:01:33.73       
time 3        00:01:15.30       
time 2        00:01:39.61       

【Obstacle】

疏离无罪

占~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaker: Morning light exposure can be helpful to have a light weight.This is more than good sleeping habit.

01:58
A project that will redesign coastline of New York and New Jersy.Not fight againt water but live with water.Digging channels to divert stormwater.

01:45
More film makers are seeking funds from internet crowdfunding to support their project.Although it is a new attempt,some big success have emerged.

02:07
Splitting the continental United States in two time zones: East and West, an hour apart,can be a good way to solve the confusion in timing in the US.

02:00
Flexible display screens and foldable electronics will be the next revolution to all kinds of electronic products.

01:46
Scientists are teaching computers how to think by leting them identifying and labeling images.

06:20
Main Idea:the power of celebrity can affect the auction
People subconsciously weigh a history of physical contact between an item and its owner in determining how much they'll pay for it.These buyers think that some sort of inexplicable mechanism from the owner are in these boject.This is called contagion.
People are willing to pay more on these kind of things.Only one exceptionn:extremely expensive object.
An experiment has been made to show this celebrity contact.It seems that celebrity contact can't be so easily wiped away.

zmh_0617

Time 2   2min2s
We can live with flood instead of thinking ways to against it. Previously, we continually rebuild seawalls to cope with the increasing high waves. Now we can think of innovative ways to live harmoniously with it.
Time 3    1min23s
Fund money through online platform instead of Halewood or other ways
Time4     2min11s
Eliminate jet lag. Reset the watch.
Time5     1min36s
New mobilephone revolution, screen on clothes,……
Time6
It is about teaching computers to think. A university have already funded to analyze data through it.

菜农人民

Time2 3:03
Time3 2:42
Time4 3:29
Time5 3:37
Time6 3:22

cherry6891

占个首页

Obstacle: 7’48’’

why the stuff touched by celebrity can sell a high price? Tht power of contigion

Contagion is a magical thinking that a person’s immaterial qualities or essence can be transferred to an object through physical contact

Then researcher found that for items that sold for prices very high like jewery, people did not pay more based on the a touch of celebrity

Also different way to treat the celebrity owner will make price discrepancies

Time2 4’08’’

In the wake of Sandy, peple learn how to live with warter and not fight aganist water

New solutionas to protect building and people from storm is :building protective breakwaters,digging channels along street to divert water

Time3 1’58’’

Crowdfunding,getting money from fans on line, is becoming a new way to invest films

Time4 2’50’’

Splitting the continental US in two time zone is a way to avoid clock confusion and eliminate jet lag since we are in a more connected world

Time5 2’30’’

Flexible display screen will make the electronics of any shape

Time6 1’15’’

Teach the computer with common-sense and the relationships by indentifying and labeling pics

ieveline

一下子就二环了。。。。
预计明天可以全部赶上！
谢谢楼主！
Speaker
Bright light in the morning can reduce appetite and boday weight.
the connection btw light and weight is not for sure.
Light is a marker for regular sleep cycle, which is connected to healthy body weight.
Whether light connected to weight directly without sleep patern?
Speed
1--02:44
The normal water to resistent storm is building coastline.
When one coaterline failed, we build higher ones.
After superstorm sandy, we found building higher coastline is not solution.
People begin to think about new ways to protect themselves from storm.
New solutions should be use in other coasts.
Fighting back nature is not the solution.
A threat could be a resource
2--02:09
Films got founder from kickstarter, showing a way to rasie founds.
3--02:13
Two time zone on US.
One thinks it is not necessary to keep that way.
People ready do things in the same time even they are in different time zone.
And little proof to say it is energy saving.
So daylight saving only bring confusion.
4--02:02
Flexiable electronic device is on the way.
Scientists are researching on it.
High-tech companies are also paying attention on it.
5--02:03
Teach computer to think begin with images.
It is not easy to teach common sense in text.
Now scientist are working on teach computers to think by looking at images to find out the connection.
Obstacle--05:28
A research about how people vaule the things touched by famous people.
People believe some nonmaterial things from famous people is contagous, so touch the things famouse people touched, could get the essence from that person.
So when comes to the things from celerities people loves, the price will rise when the touch frequency rise; for the celebrities people dislike, the price will fall when the touch frequency rise.
Even the things are touched the by other people, essence from celebrity will not wiped away.

wangweiyi5332

二环~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Warm up 1:07
What great idea is and How it came out.CNN will introduce 10 great ideas for us.
Timer2 2:14
fighting against flood is not the best solution ,and we should learn to live with water .A big project has been funded to research how to build city or our roads or building to  resist the flood.
Timer3 :1:40
in the showier a revolution that film makers raised money from internet happened  . many successful examples are there.people are expecting that  this revolution can add more favor to the life.
Timer4 2:35
splitting the continent of US into two major time zones can avoid the clock confusion and make us use time more easy.
Timer5 2:28
the emergence of flexible screens as a viable option of personal electronics .the range of possibilities can be bigger.
Timer6 1:50
a research team want to teach the computer have human thoughts .they do this attempt from  the picture which have the computer selected .
Obstale 7:50