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标题: 【速度】+【越障练习】GMAT得阅读者得天下，大家一起来练阅读吧 [打印本页]

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-8-28 01:10
标题: 【速度】+【越障练习】GMAT得阅读者得天下，大家一起来练阅读吧
GMAT雪崩的惨痛经历，让我意识到阅读力是多么重要。阅读力不仅包括读懂，还包括逻辑阅读能力。前者由词汇量+难句越障能力构成，后者由信号词敏感度和结构提取能力构成。
所以前者对应了SC（特别是几乎整句划线的SC，这次考试头五道题遇到了三道这种，哭泣TT），后者对应了CR，而两者综合在一起成了RC。
其实阅读贴很多，开这个阅读帖有两个原因，一是练了几年前抓抓开的阅读速度+越障帖，确实有用，但是帖子很早，没人一起交流，很孤独，很难建立一种紧迫感。原帖在这里https://forum.chasedream.com/thread-562296-1-1.html
第二个原因是，坊间经验发现，GMAT阅读的有一些文章竟然来自Economists早年的文章节选

。自己从economists找文章的过程可以看作是模拟GMAC老头出题的过程，我想以此来测验一下，这种寻找的过程是否能让我对出题点有一个进一步的认识。

话不多说，今天开始，现在这里重述一下抓抓提到过的速度和越障的规则，根据我的复习弯路教训，稍有修改

以下引用自抓抓，原帖就是上面那个
——————————————————
简单介绍一下什么是“速度”和“越障”
“从今天起，每天只要一小时时间（难度部分半小时，速度部分十分钟，越障部分二十分钟），你的阅读实力就可以在两个月里发生飞跃
引入一个大家熟识的概念——“CASK EFFECT木桶效应”
速度、难度、越障、深度，哪一条木板短了你的木桶都是不能装满水的
同时，如果你想让自己的桶可以装更多的水，就要同步去增加每条木板的长度
【速度】
——训练规则：
每天我贴出五篇CET级别的阅读
大家来做，需要准备一个计时器
每篇文章只看一分钟，一分钟之后就一定要停下来，读到哪里算哪里，这篇就算过了
如果上一篇没有读完，那么就要提醒自己在下一篇中加速，同时调整自己阅读的节奏感，找到最舒服的方式
【越障】
——训练规则：
每天我贴出1000字左右的一篇从早年经济学人/看过的学术论文中的文章（若发现了其他资源会说明），以舒服的节奏读完之后（不过还是建议计下时），不回视地写出文章结构和大意。
【长难句】
——训练规则：
从每天的越障练习中，我会找下有没有难懂的长难句，和有缘看到这篇帖子的朋友一起讨论，如果没有人，就我自娱自乐了。

练习帖快捷导航

速度练习

【1-1】
https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24251039&fromuid=1329152

【1-2】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24253445&fromuid=1329152

【1-3】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24257729&fromuid=1329152

【1-4】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24259438&fromuid=1329152

【1-5】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24262243&fromuid=1329152

【1-6】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24267663&fromuid=1329152

【1-7】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24268641&fromuid=1329152

越障

【1-1】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24252051&fromuid=1329152

【1-2】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24253462&fromuid=1329152

【越障1-2长难句】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24255249&fromuid=1329152

【1-3】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24256069&fromuid=1329152

【1-4】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24257738&fromuid=1329152

【1-5】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24261625&fromuid=1329152

【1-6】

https://forum.chasedream.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=1327604&pid=24271523&fromuid=1329152

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-8-28 01:26
睡前附在这里，睡醒了起来读

1-1【速度练习】
【速度1】
Dogs Trained to Find Endangered Animals
Many dogs are very hard-working animals.
They have been helping people for thousands of years. Dogs protect our homes. They help people with disabilities. They team up with rescue workers in search-and-rescue operations.
nd now, dogs can add another job to their resumes -- finding endangered animals! The official title for this kind of work is conservation detection dog.
Conservation experts in Australia are training dogs to use their sense of smell. The aim of the job is to find some of the country's most endangered creatures.
Luke Edwards is a dog owner and trainer. He is training two border collies, named Rubble and Uda, to become conservation detection dogs.
He says that border collies are good for this kind of work because they have a great sense of smell. The dogs also have great stamina -- the mental and physical strength to work long hours.
"We know that border collies are really good at both searching and their stamina. That's what we're after for a working dog is their stamina -- both mentally and physically."
Recently, the dogs went on their most difficult job yet -- finding the Baw Baw frog. This is the call of the male Baw Baw frog. This frog is one of Australia's most endangered animals.

The work is difficult mainly because of the search area. Just to get to the place, or site, where the frogs live, the dogs and their trainers must walk far distances through alpine forests.
（251 words）

【速度2】
"Going out to the sites at Mount Baw Baw is probably one of the hardest areas I've had to search in. Just to get out to the site, we're trekking through alpine forest."
It is difficult but important work.
A deadly fungus has killed nearly all of Australia's Baw Baw frogs. In fact, scientists say these creatures could disappear in the next five to 10 years.
Zoos Victoria is a group set up to protect wildlife. Conservation experts there claim that since 1980 the deadly fungus has killed off 98 percent of the Baw Baw frogs.
So, Zoos Victoria is trying to save the frog. Experts there raise them and have them reproduce. They call it their captive breeding program.
Deon Gilbert is a frog expert at Zoos Victoria. He says that detecting the frogs in the wild can be very difficult because they mainly live underground. The females are even more difficult to find. They, unlike the male Baw Baw frogs, do not have a call. He adds that the dogs Rubble and Uda had no trouble in finding the frogs.
"This species is incredibly difficult to detect in the wild. The dogs were able to locate the exact site where the frogs were calling from much, much quicker than we could do just by using ears."

Dogs may find other endangered animals

Zoos Victoria in Australia is now considering using trained dogs to find other endangered species. Chris Harnett is also with the organization. She says finding endangered animals may be the perfect job for dogs – what she calls their "niche."
（263 words)

【速度3】
"Particularly for those cryptic and low-density species, we think detection dogs might have a really important role to play. In fact, that could be their niche."

Luckily, other dogs are also being trained to find endangered species.

Tracy Edwards is another dog trainer. She owns a young border collie named Oakley. She says he is just learning how to obey commands and recalling what he smells.
"He's only a puppy -- or what we call now a 'wuppy', a whopping big puppy! And he is just kind of living life at the moment -- learning the basics, so obedience and recalls."

Tracy says that Oakley will start working as a conservation detection dog later this year. She agrees that border collies make good detection dogs because they work hard. But she points out another quality not mentioned by the other researchers: They are also very loving.
"We just like border collies. We like their work ethic. We like the fact they can go all day, and we also like the fact that they love to cuddle up at night on the couch."
I'm Anna Matteo.
Julie Taboh reported this story for VOANews. Anna Matteo adapted her report for VOA Learning English using additional information from Zoos Victoria. George Grow was the editor.

Scientists Say Hotter Weather Worsens Wildfire in Western US

As temperatures rise in the western part of the United States, wildfires grow in size as well.
The Associated Press has studied information on weather and wildfires from the last 35 years. The media group's findings show that the years in which wildfires burned the highest number of hectares were also years with the hottest weather.
The report said the amount of land burned in wildfires has more than doubled.
（291 words)

【速度4】
Fires need something to cause them to start. They also require oxygen and fuel to keep them going. The report says global warming increases the supply of fuel by drying trees and other plants.
Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist with the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, spoke to the Associated Press.
"Hotter, drier weather means our fuels are drier, so it's easier for fires to start and spread and burn more intensely," Flannigan said.
The period of April to September is fire season in the U.S. The National Interagency Fire Center is the governmental group responsible for organizing the country's efforts to fight wildfires. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, studies weather conditions.
Data from the two agencies demonstrates that higher air temperatures are severely affecting conditions during fire season. Since 1983, the five hottest fire seasons in the western U.S. produced fires that, on average, burned more than 35,000 square kilometers.
That is three times the average for the five coldest fire seasons.
So far this summer, temperatures in the western United States have reached more than 1.7 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average. In July, California recorded its hottest month in 124 years of record-keeping.
The Associated Press examined the federal fire data from the last 35 years. It found that the fire seasons that had the largest fires were in years that temperatures reached several degrees hotter than the 20th century average.
（239 words）
【速度5】
Tim Brown is the western regional climate center director for NOAA. He said the fuel wetness levels in California and Oregon are close to record lows.
Jennifer Balch is a University of Colorado fire scientist. She said that reduced wetness in the air is "the key driver of wildfire spread." She predicted the western U.S. soon will start to see wildfires of over 400,000 hectares.
Long-time Colorado firefighter Mike Sugaski used to consider 4,000 hectare fires big. Now he fights fires 10 times that size and more.
"You kind of keep saying, ‘How can they get much worse?' But they do," Sugaski said.
The number of U.S. wildfires has not changed much over the last few decades, but the size of areas burned has greatly increased.
Randy Eardley is chief spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center. He pointed to the year 2000 as "some kind of turning point," in wildfires.
From 1983 to 1999, the United States had less than 26,000 square kilometers burned each fire season. Since then, there have been 10 years in which more than 26,000 square kilometers have burned. The largest burns took place in 2017, 2015 and 2006. The wildfires in each of those years burned more than 38,000 square kilometers.
Some people who reject climate science point to data that seems to show far more land burned in the 1930s and 1940s. But Eardley said data before 1983 is not dependable.
Nationally, more than 23,050 square kilometers have burned this year. That is already 28 percent more than the 10-year average and fire season continues.
Scientists generally avoid blaming global warming for any given extreme event without extensive research. But fire and weather scientists have done those extensive examinations of wildfires.
（288 words）

作者: gemmarong 时间: 2018-8-28 09:11
你这不就是NS阅读小分队的做法嘛？每天大家都有在坚持啊

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-8-28 11:48

gemmarong 发表于 2018-8-28 09:11
你这不就是NS阅读小分队的做法嘛？每天大家都有在坚持啊

对的，不过这个最早是一个11年的帖子来的哦。我是觉得自己光看帖子积极性不够，所以靠主动产粮鞭策自己，不用管我哈

作者: gemmarong 时间: 2018-8-28 14:53

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-8-28 11:48
对的，不过这个最早是一个11年的帖子来的哦。我是觉得自己光看帖子积极性不够，所以靠主动产粮鞭策自己， ...

厉害厉害！一起加油~~

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-8-29 00:19
1-1 ： 52s， 59s，+3行，43s，+3行

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-8-29 00:31
【越障】1-1Grey-sky thinking  （自然地理）

Without understanding clouds, understanding the climate is hard. And clouds are the least understood part of the atmosphere
“CLOUDY.” As a metaphor, that is not a bad description of the science of climate forecasting. The general trends are clear, but the details are obscure. As it happens, however, the description is not merely metaphorical—for of all the elements that make up the climate, and have to be accounted for in models of it, it is clouds that are the most obscure.
Improving this understanding is the purpose of two new missions by NASA, America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration. One of these missions, a satellite called Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, or AIM, was launched in April to study so-called noctilucent clouds (depicted above), the highest layer of clouds in the atmosphere. These have been getting brighter and more common in recent years, and also seem to be moving to lower altitudes. The other mission, the Tropical Composition, Cloud and Climate Coupling (TC4) project, will begin on July 16th. It will use radar, balloons and aircraft to look at the role of another sort of high-altitude cloud: cirrus clouds, which get spun off the tops of storms. Meanwhile, a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Sylvia Knight of Oxford University and her colleagues has emphasised just how sensitive climate modelling is to assumptions about clouds.
The link Dr Knight is examining, between clouds and what researchers call climate sensitivity (the degree to which a particular input is likely to change the climate), has been apparent for nearly 20 years. But because clouds take different forms at different scales—from microscopic water droplets to weather fronts that span hundreds of kilometres—they are devilishly hard to describe in models that work by manipulating “virtual” chunks of the atmosphere that are 100km (62 miles) across and 100km high.

Shrouded in uncertainty
Only recently have such international undertakings as the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project (CFMIP) and the Cloud System Study of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment begun a systematic comparison of the effects of clouds on dozens of the most important climate models, allowing researchers to start to unravel more precisely the role that clouds play in climate change. In a recent paper in Climate Dynamics, Mark Webb of Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Change and his colleagues reported that clouds account for 66% of the differences between members of one important group of models and for 85% of them in another group.
These findings have now been complemented by Dr Knight's project, which made use of climateprediction.net, a network of personal computers on which processing time is volunteered by members of the public, to compile 57,000 different runs of a global-climate model developed at the Alamy
Hadley Centre. She and her colleagues found that 80% of the variation in the climate sensitivity predicted was due to changes in how clouds were described in the model. The cloud characteristics included differences in the ease with which moist air in the tropics travels into the upper atmosphere, the speed with which raindrops fatten and the level of humidity required for clouds to form. Each aspect had a big impact on the degree of warming predicted.
The reason why clouds matter so much to the climate, and their role is so tricky to determine, is because they play two contradictory roles. At low altitudes they help to cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight away from it. At the high altitudes studied by AIM and TC4, however, they trap radiant heat from below, warming things up.
At the moment, many researchers believe it is low-level clouds that matter most. In its first phase, participants in the CFMIP analysed a subset of the 23 models used to compile the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They concluded that changes in low-level clouds contributed most to differences in the degree of warming those models predicted. And in a paper published two years ago in Geophysical Research Letters, Sandrine Bony and Jean-Louis Dufresne reported that an analysis of 15 climate models suggested that low-level clouds over the oceans contribute most to uncertainty about how tropical clouds affect those models. Low-level clouds are thought to matter more than high-level ones because they are more prevalent and because they are better at reflecting solar heat away from the Earth than they are at trapping it, blanket-like, as high clouds do. However, results from AIM and TC4 may modify this view—which is the main point of deploying them.
Certainly, model-comparison projects alone will not solve the cloud problem. Too much still remains unknown about the physical mechanisms that determine cloud behaviour. That is why new and better observations are needed to improve the fundamental assumptions on which the models are based. The TC4 project will generate new data on the icy cirrus clouds that are formed in the upper atmosphere by heat-driven, or convective, storm systems that coalesce over warm waters in the tropics. By studying these clouds from every angle and at every point in their life cycle, researchers hope to learn more about how these storms, which can drive air more than 13km above the Earth's surface, will contribute to climate change in a warming environment.
In addition to the TC4 campaign and AIM, a string of NASA climate-sensing satellites called the A-train is providing a global survey of the vertical profile of clouds. One of these satellites, CloudSat, has given the first glimpses of the middle layer of clouds in the Earth's atmosphere. Meteorologists were once limited to a top-down or bottom-up look at clouds. Since April 2006, CloudSat's radar has, however, been providing a globe-circling slice of the middle layer, a previously unobserved part of the atmosphere.
Another A-train satellite, the Cloud Aerosol-Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO)—launched simultaneously with CloudSat—will map the location of layers of small particles called aerosols that promote cloud formation. Such particles act as nuclei for the condensation of water vapour into the droplets of which clouds are composed.
Natural aerosols are produced by sea salt, desert dust, volcanic eruptions and smoke from forest fires. Aerosols are also released when cars are driven, chemicals manufactured and fossil fuels burned. Little is currently known about where such particles end up in the atmosphere and what overall effect they have on the climate. CALIPSO will help to correct that. It has already produced pictures of the volcanic plumes created when part of the Soufrière Hill volcano on the island of Montserrat collapsed last year, sending ash clouds high into the atmosphere. Such gritty reality, when combined with the models, should bring some clarity to the problem of clouds. （1126 words）

作者: yifan226 时间: 2018-8-29 09:09
顶楼主！一站阅读惨败，想跟楼主每天一起打卡！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-8-29 09:37

yifan226 发表于 2018-8-29 09:09
顶楼主！一站阅读惨败，想跟楼主每天一起打卡！

欢迎yifan! 一起来收拾阅读这个大魔王

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-8-29 20:56
【1-1】越障
读了10min，果然太久不多根本集中不了注意力。
看了一遍感觉好像在讲：云对于气候模型的构建很重要，但云对于科学家来说一直比较未知。
第二段：NASA的两个项目AIM， TI4都在研究云，但对象不同。 AIM研究的是一种比较亮更轻的云，TI4则是邕radar, balloon等工具研究更高层的云
第三段：发现云和climate sensitivity有关
第四段：底层的云能cool the earth, 但高层的云能reflect the light，warm the earth。科学界普遍认为底层的云更重要。然后好像是一些例举
第五段：对于云在气候模型中的影响还是不确定。除现有的两个项目，NASA还有两个项目，一个是研究云的垂直结构（vertical ?), 一个是small particles ( aero开头的单词）
然后就不记得了TT

作者: 南浦草 时间: 2018-8-29 22:15
和楼主一起加油鸭！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-8-30 13:22
【速度】1-2计时1Asia Argento, a Leader of #MeToo, Accused of Sexual Assault

This is What's Trending Today...

Italian actor Asia Argento is among the leading activists of the#MeToo movement against sexual abuse in Hollywood. She was one of the firstwomen to publicly accuse film producer Harvey Weinstein of abuse.

Now, a young actor and musician says Argento sexually assaulted him.

The New York Times reports that Argento recently reached afinancial settlement with the accuser, Jimmy Bennett.

Bennett, who is 22, reportedly had filed documentsdescribing the claim of assault and his plan to sue Argento.

Bennet says Argento had sex with him in a California hotel in2013. He had just turned 17 years old. Argento was 37 at the time. The age ofsexual consent in California is 18.

The documents say the experience harmed Bennett mentally andhurt his career, the Times reported.

The New York Times says it received court documents thatincluded a picture of Argento and Bennett in bed together. Three people closeto the case said the documents were real, the Times reported.

Argento reportedly agreed to pay Bennett $380,000.

Argento and Bennett co-starred in a 2004film called "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things." In the movie,Argento played a sex worker who was Bennett's mother.

Argento is one of the best-known activists of the #MeToomovement. Last year, she told the New Yorker magazine that Weinstein raped herat the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 when she was 21 years old.

Argento told the magazine that she continued to have arelationship with Weinstein because she was afraid of angering him.

Weinstein has been charged with sex crimes against three women.Argento is not one of them.

And that's What's Trending Today.

I'm Ashley Thompson

The Associated Press reported thisstory. Ashley Thompson adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was theeditor.（313words）

计时2

Ethiopian Olympian Living in Exile in US to Return Home

After winning the silver medal in the men'smarathon event at the 2016 Olympic Games, Ethiopian Feyisa Lilesa went to theUnited States. He has lived in exile there for the last two years. Now, he hasdecided to return home.

Feyisa decided to go back to Ethiopia after two athletics organizationstold him he would be welcomed as a hero when he arrived.

Ashebir Woldegiorgis, the president of the Ethiopian OlympicCommittee, told VOA that the call for Feyisa's return is meant to better thecountry.

"He can teach his exemplary waysto other athletes and teach strength to our youngsters," Ashebir said.

A sign of protest

Feyisa made international news at the Rio de Janeiro games whenhe crossed his arms above his head after finishing the race. The move was asign of support for anti-government protesters in Ethiopia. Feyisa made thesame sign when he received his silver medal at the 2016 summer games.

At the time, Ethiopia was moving towardsdeclaring emergency rule. Violent demonstrations were spreading across theOromia area of Ethiopia. Ethnic Oromos were protesting oppression and otherhuman rights violations.

After the games, Ethiopia's information minister at the time,Getachew Reda, congratulated Feyisa. He also guaranteed the athlete that it wassafe to come home.

But, Feyisa used a special-skill visa to go to the U.S. instead.He settled in Flagstaff, Arizona. Six months later his wife, son and daughterjoined him.（240 words）

计时3

Takinga stand

While living in Arizona, Feyisa continued to publicly discussthe human rights situation in Ethiopia. He also continued training.

"There were times when things were happening, and I wrotethings from my inner thoughts, not because I have skills, but [because] peopletake my message and share it," Feyisa told VOA.

"But I am an athlete, and I am not that appealing. But whenI write what I feel and people share, I am happy with it," he added.

Haile Gebrselassie is a retired Ethiopian runner and winner oftwo Olympic gold medals who now serves with the Ethiopian Athletic Federation.He told VOA that the decision to invite Feyisa back was connected to theathlete's willingness to take a stand.

"He was born fearless. I knew him personally, and I wasclose to him. And he questions why people should be oppressed. He stands up forhis people."

Ashebir Woldegiorgis expressed similar praise. He said Feyisaraised his voice at great personal risk.

"I like heroes," Ashebir said. "I respect peoplewho stand up and speak up."

Rebuildingrelationships

Ethiopia has reached out to several other exiled citizens.

Since the state of emergency was lifted in June, the governmenthas removed several groups from its list of terrorist organizations. Adelegation of Oromo Liberation Front members even visited the capital, AddisAbaba, Tuesday. Last week, the group agreed to end hostilities with thegovernment.

Feyisa says he will continue to train in running when he returnsto Ethiopia. Along with that, he said, "I just want to share my gratitude.I would like to thank our citizens who sacrificed their lives ... all of theyoung people and the elders who participated inthe struggle."

（289 words）

计时4

PopeFrancis: 'We Showed No Care for the Little Ones'

Pope Francis released a letter to RomanCatholics around the world Monday condemning sexual abuse by Church officialsand efforts to hide it. He demanded responsibility be taken but he did not sayhow he might punish those involved. He also did not propose a plan to stop suchwrongdoing.

Francis asked forgiveness for the suffering of victims. He saidall Catholics must be involved in the effort to stop abuse and attempts to hideabuse. He denounced the clergy culture that has been blamed for the crisis.Church leaders are accused of being more concerned with their self-image thanthe safety of children.

"With shame and repentance,"Francis wrote, we admit "we were not where we should have been, that wedid not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude andthe gravity of the damage done to so many lives."

He added, "We showed no care for the little ones."

The Vatican released the three-page letter before Francis' tripto Ireland Saturday.

Francis' letter was a reaction to American and Irish pressurethat he takes a strong position on the worldwide abuse crisis. That pressureincreased after he traveled to Chile in January. There he dismissed victims'accusations of abuse as "calumny," meaning lies to hurt someone'simage.

The pope's trip to Ireland was expected todeal with sex abuse in the Church. However, it became an even bigger issuefollowing reports about one of the pope's most trusted Church officials in theU.S.

Several people have accused the retiredarchbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, of sexually abusing young peopleand adults in training to enter the clergy.

（281 words）

计时5

In addition, a Pennsylvania grand jury lastweek reported that at least 1,000 children were victims of about 300 clergymenover the past 70 years. The report said generations of high-level churchofficials repeatedly failed to take measures to protect children or punishsuspects.

Also, investigations into sex abuse continue to grow in Chile.Chilean police have raided Church records to try to learn what it has knownabout its abusive clergy.

In his letter, which was released in seven languages, Francisspoke about the Pennsylvania report. But, Church officials said the message wasmeant for people around the world.

Francis wrote, "No effort must be spared to create aculture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent thepossibility of their being covered up..."

Some supporters of victims said the letter was not enough.

Anne Barrett Doyle is with the research group BishopAccountability. On Monday, the group released information on Irish clergyaccused or found guilty of sex abuse.

"Mere words at this point deepenthe insult and the pain," she said of the pope's letter. She also said,Francis should order the release of names of all priests who have been foundguilty under Church law of abusing young people.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro praised the pope'sletter. He also urged local Church officials to "cease their denialsand deflections'' and accept the grand jury terms. Thoseinclude changing limits on the amount of time people have to bring a legal caseagainst a person or a group.

I'm Caty Weaver.

（259 words）

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-8-30 13:33
【越障】1-2 （商业金融）

America's mortgage giants :Fannie and Freddie ride again

The subprime mess provides anopportunity for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to salvage their reputations

WHERE there is crisis, there isalso opportunity. The turmoil afflicting parts of America's giant residentialmortgage market has already claimed dozens of casualties, including two BearStearns hedge funds that bet the wrong way on structured products backed byloans to subprime borrowers. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thegovernment-chartered siblings that tower over the market, spy gold in therubble—or at least a chance to polish their tarnished reputations.

Founded to promote affordablehousing, Fannie and Freddie make life easier for lenders by buying their homeloans and packaging them as securities, or by guaranteeing third parties'issuance of mortgagebacked bonds. Between them they hold or support assetsworth more than $4 trillion. It was, therefore, no trifling matter when theywere found to have misreported earnings in 2001-04—by a combined $11 billion.Top executives were jettisoned, huge fines imposed, and the pair were hit withportfolio caps and higher capital requirements.

The journey to redemption has beenbackbreaking. They have spent billions of dollars on new systems and controls.At one point, more than 60 “restatement teams” were beavering away at Fannie,trying to make sense of its labyrinthine books. Their work is finally paying off.Fannie said recently that it will return to timely reporting next spring,earlier than expected, while Freddie will do so this year. The surprise liftedFannie's shares, which are up by around 13% this year.

Fannie and Freddie also hope toregain credibility by portraying themselves as buyers of last resort in thesubprime market, as private lenders belatedly tighten standards and investorsrun from toxic mortgagebacked debt. They have pledged to buy tens of billionsof dollars of new subprime mortgages, and are working on products to alleviatethe plight of the worst-hit borrowers. As a result, their market share hasgrown in recent months, though not quite to the level it was at before thescandals. Remarkably, Fannie's portfolio grew at an annual rate of 14% in May.The news this week of problems at another group of hedge funds where subprimebets turned sour, run by United Capital, is likely to send more business theirway.

Some question the motives of theso-called government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), accusing them of using thecrisis to cherry-pick the best subprime customers without taking much extrarisk. “They paint themselves as saviours, but they are essentiallyopportunists,” says Bert Ely, a consultant and long-time critic of the pair.

Satoshi Kambayashi

But with Congress having declaredwar on “predatory” lending, the move is politically smart. Nor can anyone denythat Fannie and Freddie are well placed to take a lead. Sentiment has swungquickly away from exotic adjustable-rate mortgages towards the safer fixed-rateproducts that are their bread and butter. And because they were forced to showrestraint while others grabbed every bit of business going, their portfolioshave plenty of room to grow. James Lockhart, the director of the Office ofFederal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the GSEs' regulator, sees it asan opportunity for them to educate the market in sound underwriting.

This is a time when Fannie andFreddie can prove their worth as market stabilisers, argues Patricia Cook, asenior Freddie Mac executive. And because the lack of liquidity that comes withinstability means higher spreads, they should be able to meet the mission intheir charters (to provide liquidity, stability and affordability) while alsopleasing their shareholders. “Sometimes it's a very elegant model,” she says.Analysts agree: they have been raising the GSEs' price targets.

But not everyone is so sanguine.Though they do not engage in subprime lending, Fannie and Freddie hold largepiles of bonds linked to such mortgages, some of it packaged externally. Asmall but significant share of this “private label” paper is rated below AAA,the top notch. In a recent report, Federal Financial Analytics, a consultancy,noted that a 15-30% writedown of this non-AAA slice—hardly inconceivable giventhe continuing rise in subprime delinquencies—would result in losses of up to$3 billion for Freddie and $3.6 billion for Fannie. That would knock back theirreturn to financial normalcy.

This kind of analysis sets pulsesracing at the Treasury, where officials worry about the threat the GSEs pose tothe broader financial system. The problem is not just their size. The implicitgovernment guarantee they enjoy, thanks to their charters, means they canborrow at rates close to those on risk-free Treasury bonds, whatever theirfinancial state. This encourages them to grow recklessly. Mr Lockhart pointsout that between 1990 and 2005 their portfolios grew tenfold. American GDPdoubled over the same period.

If Fannie or Freddie were to getinto serious trouble, taxpayers would be on the hook for huge amounts. Worse,banks would be severely hurt, since they are allowed to hold as much of the twoinstitutions' debt as they want. Thousands do. Many hold more GSE paper than theydo regulatory capital. This raises the spectre of a broad financial crisis ifeither of the mortgage giants were to collapse.

That seems highly unlikely at themoment. Indeed, as Brian Harris of Moody's points out, even without theirimplicit guarantee Fannie and Freddie would be among the most highly-ratedfinancial institutions. And yet things can change quickly: Fannie, remember,fell into technical insolvency in the 1980s, not long after having been inapparently fine fettle. This is why the Treasury, OFHEO and others are urgingCongress to pass a bill that gives the currently feeble regulator similarpowers to those of bank supervisors.

The GSEs seem unworried by theprospect of more stringent regulation. Deep down they are probably moreconcerned about threats from new forms of competition, such as covered bonds(on-balance-sheet instruments that enjoy a AAA rating because they are wellcollateralised) and home-loan securitisation trusts, which serve groups ofbanks. These innovations, as well as an increasingly liquid secondary marketwhen times are good, could allow commercial banks to muscle in on the GSEs'turf. Fannie and Freddie should enjoy their subprime bounce while it lasts.

（1038 words）

作者: NicoleJHL 时间: 2018-9-1 09:30
楼主加油！9.10之后和你一起打卡！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-1 11:27
速度 1-2
计时1 +3行
计时2 56s
计时3 +3行
计时4 +3行
计时5 50s
有些字直接粘贴过来就粘在一起了，今天发的会排版一下的。
以及发现读的太细反而又慢又记不住文章大意了，快速扫过反而要好些

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-1 12:22
越障1-2 9min 20s
这篇感觉专业词汇好多，而且是不能忽视的那种。提前预警两个单词
Subprime 次级房贷 (of a loan) made to a borrower with a poor credit rating, usually at a high rate of interest
Underwriting 担保： If an institution or company underwrites an activity or underwrites the cost of it, they agree to provide any money that is needed to cover losses or buy special equipment, often for an agreed-upon fee.
这篇讲了Fa 和 Fre两个房贷公司在危机下的表现和一些批评担忧
1. 总起段：虽然处于经济危机，但两个公司是向好的
2. 介绍了下着这种公司的主要事业: 通过买入债券发形式借出钱？
危机：他们 2001-2004的财务报表数据被认为作假，接下来就讲了如何化解的
3. 建立了一个小组去分析，解释这些disparity
4. 把自己塑造成一个次贷危机的接盘侠
5. GSE （国企）对Fa 和Fre的批评：说他们乘人之危，利用危机去赚那些次贷者的钱（但后面有说他们没有直接参与次贷借款，这里有点忘了是咋操作的），实际没有承担风险
6. 解释了Fa 和Fre 向好的一个原因：在国家政策对predatory lending 的反感下，他们是受到支持的。以及他们没有直接涉及次贷，但他们的金融资产涉及（？？？）
7. 有人担忧了一下Fa 和Fre 发生危机可能产生的后果，但作者马上否认了发生这种危机的可能
8. GSE 对competition的concern（忘了为什么写这个）

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-1 12:33
越障1-2 长难句 （from 谷歌翻译）

Founded to promote affordable housing, Fannie and Freddie make life easier for lenders by buying their home loans and packaging them as securities, or by guaranteeing third parties'issuance of mortgage backed bonds.
为了促进经济实惠的住房，房利美和房地美通过购买房屋并将其打包成证券，或通过保证第三方对抵押贷款债券的保证，使贷款人的生活更轻松。

Fannie and Freddie also hope to regain credibility by portraying themselves as buyers of last resort in the subprime market, as private lenders belatedly tighten standards and investors run from toxic mortgage backed debt.
房利美和房地美也希望通过将自己描绘成次级抵押贷款市场的最后购买者来重新获得信誉，因为私人贷款机构姗姗来迟地收紧标准，而投资者则来自有抵押贷款支持债务。

And because the lack of liquidity that comes with instability means higher spreads, they should be able to meet the mission in their charters (to provide liquidity, stability and affordability) while also pleasing their shareholders.
而且由于缺乏流动性带来的不稳定意味着更高的利差，他们应该能够履行其章程中的使命（提供流动性，稳定性和可负担性），同时也让股东满意。

作者: 兔公主最乖 时间: 2018-9-2 11:16
谢谢楼主

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-2 11:19
今天先把越障发了，是从美国海洋局博客摘的，比较短。原链接在这里 https://noaacoastsurvey.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/noaa-surveys-the-unsurveyed-leading-the-way-in-the-u-s-arctic/
【越障1-3】NOAA surveys the unsurveyed, leading the wayin the U.S. Arctic （自然地理）

President Thomas Jefferson, who founded Coast Survey in 1807,commissioned Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery Expedition in 1803, the first American expedition to cross the western portion of the contiguous United States. Today there remains a vast western America territory that is largely unknown and unexplored – the U.S. waters off the coast of Alaska. As a leader in ocean mapping, NOAA Coast Survey launches hydrographic expeditions to discover what lies underneath the water’s surface.

Alaska is one-fifth the size of the contiguous United States, and has more than 33,000 miles of shoreline. In fact, the Alaskan coast comprises 57 percent of the United States’ navigationally significant waters and all of the United States’ Arctic territory. Alaskan and Arctic waters are largely uncharted with modern surveys, and many areas that have soundings were surveyed using early lead line technology from the time of Capt. Cook, before the region was part of the United States. Currently only 4.1percent of the U.S. maritime Arctic has been charted to modern international navigation standards.

In part, Arctic waters are difficult to survey because of the sheets of sea ice persist throughout the majority of the year. Traditionally,thick ice sheets have restricted the number of vessels that travel in the area.But Arctic ice is declining and sea ice melt forecasts indicate the complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean as early as two or three decades from now, meaning year-round commercial vessel traffic is likely to increase.

Given the vast expanse of ocean to be charted in the U.S. Arctic, Coast Survey determined charting priorities and coordinated activities in the U.S. Arctic Nautical Charting Plan, the third issue of which was released in August 2016. The plan proposes 14 new charts and was created following consultations with maritime interests, the public, and federal, state, and local governments.

In July and August, the crew aboard the NOAAShip Fairweather is fulfilling a piece of the U.S. ArcticNautical Charting Plan as they conduct hydrographic surveys in the vicinity of Cape Lisburne and Point Hope, Alaska. Seventy percent of this area has never been surveyed, while the remaining 30 percent has only lesser bottom coverage from single beam surveys conducted in the early 1960s. The data will be used to produce nautical charts that align with Coast Survey’s new rescheming efforts as stated in the National Charting Plan. This is one of seven hydrographic surveys NOAA has planned inAlaska for 2018.

The data Coast Survey collects is the firststep, as exploration is an iterative process and bathymetric data provides a foundation from which to build. The benefits of surveying extend beyond safe navigation. Accurate seafloor depths are important for forecasting weather,tsunami, and storm surge events that affect local communities. Bathymetric data also informs the discovery of seabed minerals, historic wrecks, and naturalresource habitat mapping.

As with any new endeavor, there is a balance between exploration, safety, environmental conservation, and commerce. Lt. BartBuesseler is Coast Survey’s regional navigation manager for Alaska and works directly with Alaskancommunities, mariners, and port authorities to communicate local needs,concerns, and requests. As many Native Alaskan coastal communities still rely on subsistence hunting of marine mammals, these changes in ice and vessel traffic create a direct impact to their way of life. With that in mind, Lt.Buesseler works with communities and maritime users to identify the priorities that will best support the needs of an area while still addressing the concerns of the communities. It is through this collaboration that the balance between exploration, safety, conservation, and commerce can be achieved.

The Lewis and Clark expedition aimed to map anew territory, learn about the environment, and find a practical land route through the continent. By conducting hydrographic surveys to collect depthmeasurements of the ocean – and putting those markings on a nautical chart with other navigation information – Coast Survey leads the way for safe maritimepassage in the U.S. Arctic.

（673 words）

作者: 兔公主最乖 时间: 2018-9-2 11:19
小安阅读81篇，只看到文章，没看到题目啊？

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-2 11:24

兔公主最乖发表于 2018-9-2 11:19
小安阅读81篇，只看到文章，没看到题目啊？

补啦，大意了哈哈

作者: 兔公主最乖 时间: 2018-9-2 19:38

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-2 11:24
补啦，大意了哈哈

哈哈，没想到有这么认真看题的人吧？不过你的回复配合你的头像，好有趣哦

作者: 小橙子Sarah 时间: 2018-9-2 20:10
感谢分享！

作者: GMAT_800 时间: 2018-9-2 22:58
LZ 加油！和你一起练习ING...

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-3 20:41
【越障1-3】 10min....
要死了，今天这篇短的竟然看了十分钟，不过感觉写的还挺清晰的，文章难度跟GMAT比较相近
开头用杰斐逊时期的西进运动做喻，引出NOAA的目标，即探索阿拉斯加西（？）海岸线旁未知的arctic 水域。
第二段讲了这片水域的重要性，组成了美国海域的多少之类
第三段讲了为什么获取arctic水域的数据比较难。就是冰面在减少，到几十年之后夏天完全没有冰川覆盖了，这导致开游艇去调查的成本将会大大提高
第四段（之后的顺序记不到了）不过NOAA在某一个水域数据搜集获得了进展，这为制作最终的autical chart做了贡献，然后有讲这个chart的意义和作用。
第五段讲这个chart对一些与海相关的灾害的防治有作用。
第六段讲需要在探索，灾害防治，经济效益等因素间取得一个平衡，这里引用了一个例子，即在阿拉斯加还有很多人是纯靠海捕为生，而这片水域面临的变化以及越来越频繁的科考将对这些人的收入带来影响。
最后一段，NOAA现在及未来的工作计划总结。

感觉好像总结力有提升，但是肯定还是有很多错，有小伙伴如果也在做越障，可以把内容结构回顾发出来，一起比对一下呀~

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-3 20:57
今天这篇从The Atlantic 摘的，原址

【速度 1-3】
计时1
Why Kids Want Things

Aconversation with a researcher who has studied materialism for almost 30 years

When Marsha Richins started researching materialism inthe early 1990s, it was a subject that had mostly been left to philosophers andreligious thinkers. In the intervening decades, Richins, a professor ofmarketing at the University of Missouri’s Trulaske College of Business, andothers have contributed a good deal of academic research that backs up some ofthe wariness people have, formillennia, expressed about the pursuit of worldly things.

Onefocus of Richins’s research has been how that pursuit begins in childhood, andin particular accelerates in middle school. That’s the time when kids, onaverage, givethe most materialistic responses to the question of what makesthem happy. In apaper published last year, Richins described how the social dynamicsof middle school can lead children to place more importance on owning andhaving things. (Movies, TV, the internet, media, advertising, and parents’ ownhabits, of course, can have similar effects.)

Irecently spoke with Richins about this process, as well as the challenges, forparents, of providingcounter-programming to middle school’s codes of behavior. Theconversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity.

Joe Pinsker: How does a typicalmiddle-schooler learn that materialism can help them navigate everyday life?

（221 words）

计时2

MarshaRichins: I think of seventh grade asbeing the worst age of a person’s life. It’s really a fraught time, and there’sall this insecurity that kids have about, “Who am I? Do people like me? Whatkind of person am I?” So, how do we navigate that? Well, our appearance is oneof the things we navigate with. So, what does a kid see when they see anotherkid? They see the expression on their face, they see the body language, theposture, and the clothes they’re wearing. And so a kid who’s not veryself-confident in navigating this is going to maybe feel a little moreself-confident if they’re wearing the right kind of clothes rather than thewrong kind of clothes. Here we’re learning, right off the bat, that havingthings can help us define who we are.

Pinsker: Can you talk a bit about what the alternative is to dwellingon physical stuff—the “intangible resources” that kids have for makingconversation, like who they are and things they’re good at?

Richins: I have this hypothesis, which I’ve not really been able totest. It seems to me that if a child has certain intangible resources—maybethey play a musical instrument and they’re in the band—they would maybe developsome friendships based around that shared experience. Maybe their parents aresaying, “Wow, I’m so proud of you for sticking with band and you’re practicingyour trumpet.” This can give a child a sense of who they are beyond justpossessions, but that’s an intangible thing. So if kids have more things likeathletic skills or activities that they can talk about or form connections withfriends over those things, they can feel good about themselves through manydifferent kinds of things. And if you’re lacking other kinds of things—ifyou’re lacking intangible resources—you might want to fall back on tangibleresources.

（320 words）

计时3

Pinsker: You’ve been talking about the middle-school phase, but kidsinternalize materialist messages at younger ages too, right?

Richins: Yes, they do. One of my co-authors, Lan Chaplin, has done someof the definitive work with children and materialism, and she finds bigdifferences over time—it gets more pronounced right around middle-school age.For instance, she haskids make collages. She gives them words on paper and asks, “Howimportant are these things to you?” And then they put the most important thingson their collage. As the kids get to middle-school age, more and more tangiblethings get on there and a larger percent of them are actual things, as opposedto activities or other people.

Pinsker: Based on your research, are there any interventions parentscan stage as their children start to put sometimes too much value on materialthings?

Richins: We don’t really know becausewe haven’t really studied interventions, but I do a lot of surveys with peoplebetween the ages of 20 and 40, and I ask them to describe who they are now andto reflect on their childhood. Now, we have to be very clear that this is avery imperfect method of getting data about people’s childhoods, because thereare all kinds of memory biases. But one of the most consistent findings is theassociation between the person’s current level of materialism and how theyperceived their parents using things when they were growing up.

（244 words）

计时4

So in other words, parents who act in ways that value things,parents who make a lot of sacrifices to get a lot of things, parents who get alot of joy from buying things, parents who talk a lot about things—they tend tohave adult children who act the same way. Now, part of this is probably somebias as people recall their childhoods, but I don’t think that’s all of it. Thehelpful thing for parents here—and also the harmful—is yes, peers are reallyimportant, but our kids are watching us. Our kids are learning from us. A lotof what kids take to be normal comes from what they see us doing. Kids aregoing to learn what their relationship with products should be by looking atour relationship with products. So we can’t entirely override peers, but wecertainly can have influence in that way.

Pinsker: Andfrom what I understand, that connects to the research you’ve done on whenparents offer physical things as rewards.

Richins: Rewardsand punishments, yes. And those can be earned or unearned rewards. So that’sanother reasonablystrong association: Children who recall that their parents justbought them stuff when they wanted it, or who paid them money or bought themthings when they got good grades, there’s a very consistent association thatwhen these things happen in childhood, when that person is an adult, they’remore likely to be materialistic.

（242 words）

计时5

And I’m looking now at what parents do when their kid’s unhappy,or upset, or they have a big disappointment—how do parents deal with that? Andmy preliminary evidence suggests that it’s something that’s learned inchildhood. The parents might say, “Oh, you didn’t make it on to the team—let’sgo out and have something to eat,” or, “Let’s go out and get you a new videogame—that’ll take your mind off it.” Well, if the parents do that with theirkids, we find that as adults, people are more likely to deal with distress inthe same way, by giving themselves a little gift.

Pinsker: Hasdoing this research changed the way you parent?

Richins: Iremember I started this research when my daughter was in seventh grade,actually. [Laughs] So I didn’t have the results ofthe research. But would I have done anything differently? Probably not. I neverthought it was a good idea to reward children tangibly for the things that theydo, because I don’t think life works that way—there are a lot of things youhave to do and you don’t get any reward for them. Your reward is, you get tostay alive or you get to keep your job.

Idid do material punishments quite a bit, though—taking stuff away, like, “Thistoy has to go away because you were disrespectful.” That was really the onlything that worked with my daughter, who has a pretty good mind of her own.

Pinsker: Andwhen you did that, and she complained, did you get to respond that it wasbacked up by the research?

Richins: No.[Laughs] I didn’t have any research then,and plus, you know, a seventh grader is not impressed by that. I played theresearch card with my daughter all the time—not necessarily with my research,but as in, “Research shows that blah blah blah.”She just got tired of hearing that. It carried no weight whatsoever.

（334 words）

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-3 21:07
先把越障发了（原址https://phys.org/news/2018-08-earth-oxygen-gradual-big.html），明天晚上来补速度

【越障1-4】
Earth's oxygen increased in gradual steps rather than big bursts （自然地理）A carbon cycle anomaly discovered in carbonate rocks of the Neoproterozoic Hüttenberg Formation of north-eastern Namibia follows a pattern similar to that found right after the Great Oxygenation Event, hinting at new evidence for how Earth's atmosphere became fully oxygenated.

By using the Hüttenberg Formation, which formed between a billion and half a billion years ago, to study the time between Earth's change from an anoxic environment (i.e. one lacking oxygen) to a more hospitable environment that heralded the animal kingdom, a team of researchers led by Dr. Huan Cui of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison discovered a sustained, high level of carbon. This influx of carbon, coupled with changes in other elements, indicates how changing levels of oceanic oxygen may have lent a helping hand to early animal evolution.
The study, published in the journal Precambrian Research,paired new oxygen, sulfur, and strontium isotope data, with carbon isotope data published in 2009, obtained from drill core samples from the Hüttenberg Formation. Together, the data provides further evidence that Earth's oxygen increased in a stepwise fashion, as opposed to being constrained to two major events capping the Proterozoic (a geological epoch that lasted between 2.5 billion and 541 million years ago). The resulting pattern of changing redox reactions (i.e. reactions involving oxygenation and reduction via the exchange of electrons) was named the Hüttenberg Anomaly, after the rock formation in which it was found.
The University of Maryland's Dr. Alan J. Kaufman, who is the second author of the study and the lead author of the 2009 carbon isotope study, says that the paired data "suggest that the rise of oxygen was oscillatory through this 50- to 75-million year intervalassociated with the Hüttenberg Anomaly and the Neoproterozoic Oxidation Event or NOE at the end of the Proterozoic."

The anomaly shows how the carbon isotope ratios (13C/12C) experienced a sustained 12 to 14 parts per thousand increase in abundance for roughly 15 million years before returning to prior low levels. As oxygen levels in the ocean increased, sulfides were converted to sulfates, which some microbes use in their metabolism to digest and recycle organic carbon on the seafloor. The isotopes of oxygen, carbon, and sulfur moved in tandem during the Hüttenberg Anomaly, convincing the scientists that what they were seeing wasn't just a coincidence.

Wild fluctuations
Although it has long been accepted that high levels of atmospheric oxygen paved the way for animals to populate the Earth, global carbon and oxygen cycles fluctuated wildly during the Proterozoic, between the time when oxygen first accumulated in the atmosphere during the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) around 2.4 billion years ago, and the time in which they stabilized near to modern levels once animals took the world stage following the NOE, around 500 million years ago.

During the time between those two events, pulses of unicellular life and variable levels of oxygen in the oceans are thought to have stimulated the evolution of more complex life. These ancient oxygen swings were crucial to the evolution of multicellular life at the Precambrian–Cambrian boundary (541 million years ago; the Cambrian is a geological period that marked the origin and diversification complex animal life on Earth). As pools of oxygenated water grew in the ocean, life was given the opportunity to develop towards a future when oxygen would be at stable and high levels. The Hüttenberg Anomaly represents one such window of opportunity for life.

Kaufman compares the jump in oxygen to another oxygen oasis in time, the Lomagundi event right after the GOE. The Lomagundi event has been described as a false start, when oxygen concentrations rose to levels that could support some life, before decreasing again. It wouldn't be until the NOE that oxygen would rise to modern-day levels.

"Here's an isotope anomaly in the Neoproterozoic that is associated broadly in time with the NOE, but which has a rise and fall structure that looks very similar to the GOE," Kaufman tells Astrobiology Magazine. "At both ends of the Proterozoic Eon there was continental rifting, glaciations, and profound carbon fluctuations; just as the GOE was likely responsible for the evolution of simple eukaryotes, the NOE was involved in the evolution of multicellularity."

So the GOE ushered in eukaryotes, which are microbes with cells containing a nucleus wrapped by a membrane, and the NOE ushered in even more complex animals. These exceptional events in Earth's history each harbored an evolutionary test pool that fostered new lifeforms. How exactly the Hüttenberg Anomaly fits into these events or exactly what evolutionary consequence it had still remains to be seen.
（775 words）

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-4 20:24
【速度1-3】
58s, +5行， +1行， 55s， +5行

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-4 20:58
【越障1-4】
这篇文章主要证明地球含氧量上升的猜想，以及介绍了这个使含氧量上升的机理。
第一段，一个evidence, 即Numbia 东北部的一个Hutternburg（？）碳酸盐的形成与几百万年前氧气产生留下的痕迹一样，所以氧气在慢慢增加。
第二段，介绍了这个Hutternburg过程可以测出地球从一个无氧环境到一个有氧环境经过的时间。
第三段，介绍了两个研究，从两个方面证明氧气含量如何增高。
第四段，提到C的同位素的原子质量（？），水中微生物的形成代谢会形成含C化物，然后C，O的同位素质量都有了相关联的变化，绝非巧合
第五段好像说氧气一开始含量少，只有水中的微生物生存，后来经过几百万年才慢慢到了现在稳定的水平。
第六段最开始只有单细胞生物，然后这种单细胞生物如何通过含氧量增加的帮助，变成了多细胞。

其他不记得了

作者: 不要等待验证 时间: 2018-9-5 08:49
快考试了！和楼主一起练练！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-5 11:05

不要等待验证发表于 2018-9-5 08:49
快考试了！和楼主一起练练！

一起加油吧！！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-5 11:34
今天回去重温了一下神猴的帖子，发现速度训练确实存在打完卡就走然而不知所云的嫌疑，所以我决定还是在读完速度帖后写一个简单总结。
以及越障回忆之后会遵循这样一个结构：全文目的+文章怎样表现这个目的，每段大意

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-5 11:53
【速度1-4】从本次开始，速度练习写大意总结计时1 306 words

Law & Order: Hate Crimes Is a Thing That Is Happening

Dick Wolf is back at it again. NBC has ordered yet another spinoff from the Law & Order creator, this one a 13-episode series called, and I swear I am not making this up, Law & Order: Hate Crimes. According to Variety, the show is based on New York’s real Hate Crimes Task Force and will be introduced in the upcoming 20th season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The new show was co-created by SVU showrunner Warren Leight.

Last year, the Law & Order franchise introduced a true-crime spinoff that dedicated an entire season to the case of the Menendez brothers. Now, even as Wolf works his way through every department in the NYPD to wring new shows out of them, Law & Order: Hate Crimes stillsounds like an SNL parody of Law & Order under the Trump administration, really leaning into the show’s reputation for ripped-from-the-headlines plots.

“20 years ago when SVU began, very few people felt comfortable coming forward and reporting these crimes,” Wolf said in a statement. “But when you bring the stories into people’s living rooms—with characters as empathetic as Olivia Benson—a real dialogue can begin. That’s what I hope we can do with this new show in a world where hate crimes have reached an egregious level.”

Look, maybe Wolf really does have the best of intentions, but creating a procedural about violence inflicted on marginalized groups, especially one where the police are the heroes, at a time like this? The entire concept seems designed to provoke. Think about it: Are we really ready for a hypothetical, thinly veiled analogue to Unite the Right with special guest star Jesse Plemons wearing khakis and holding a tiki torch? I’m exhausted just imagining the resulting Twitter arguments .

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This Fancy 4-Ingredient Party Starter Is Secretly Cheaper ThanMaking Onion Dip

The very best dinner party starters aren’t just there to buy youtime to get the rest of dinner buttoned up (or, conversely, to absorb thedrinks while the rest of dinner remains un-buttoned).

No, the very best ones act as ice-breakers in themselves—a littlesurprise to kick-start the conversation, some hands-on fun to set people atease. And better still if they require about four ingredients and zero time,but look casually cookbook-cover gorgeous, all the same. (Also if they—despitesome fancy-sounding components—cost less than making DIY onion dip, simply because ofthe modest number and sheer power of the ingredients.)

I was lucky to come across one of these specimens at a dinnerparty recently, when Farideh Sadeghin, culinarydirector of Munchies,set out a plate of tiny radishes pulled from their rooftop garden, alongside abowl of vanilla butter and a smaller one of crunchy salt. The idea was sonovel, the vanilla butter so hauntingly delicious that once the radishes weregone, we dipped ruffled potato chips in the butter instead. This all gave us a lot totalk about.

arideh told me that she’d learned thisvanilla-butter-as-party-starter trick from chef AlexRaij, who had stopped by the Munchies test kitchen to bust out a roof garden-inspireddinner. But when I reached out to Raij about the recipe, I learned therewas much more behind her thinking (and vanilla butter’s allure) than a simplecombination of good ingredients.

计时3 311 words

Raij was initially inspired by a snack at delicatessen in Romecalled Roscioli thatcombined salty Spanish anchovies with curls of cold vanilla butter. “I was soenchanted with it, I came home and put it on everything now,” Raij said. Hertake on Roscioli’s dish, a deliberately plain cracker with a thin tube ofvanilla butter and a very good-quality Spanish anchovy, has been on the menu ather NYC restaurant El Quinto Pino ever since,and she riffs on it often for parties, big and small.

Her connection to this dish isn’t an accident. For one thing,raised in an Argentine family, she grew up on compound butters (at steakhouses,it was common to be served butters mixed with anchovy and hard boiled egg orRoquefort along with grilled meats).

The next part of her story took me by surprise. “What’s important is thetemperature of the butter,” she told me. “It should be plastic and cold.” Thissounds nothing like what I’d expect to hear from a chef or others who spendtheir time fixating on ideal states of food—which, for butter, I thought, wascreamy-soft and spreadable. What else explains the booming butter keeper industry onFood52? And yet: “I have this thing about it being chilled,” she said. “I’mobsessed with it.”

This, too, stems from her childhood, when butter was always keptin the fridge, never left out to soften. “My cinnamon toast was always torn,with chunks of solid butter,” Raij explained. “Like crystallized honey, overtime that came to be the way I liked it.” And I finally understood. I likethose that way, too. I too aim for the unmelted spots of heavily butteredtoast, before they disappear. But I’ve never talked about it with other people,let alone read validating instructions in a cookbook: Servethe butter cold and plastic.

计时4 256 words

Even if you grew up, like some of Raij’s childhood friends, in asoft-butter household, there are other good reasons to keep the butter cold here.When confronted with a bite of sharp radish and a concentrated hit of salt, thebutter cools them both, letting the 170 or so aromatic compoundsin vanilla release as the butter melts on your tongue.

Here, out of all the ways Raij described using vanilla butter inour conversation,* we have two almost-equally simple ways to serve it at aparty: one rustically beautiful with a pot of butter and whole radishes piledon a board, à la Farideh; one fancied up a little, with slices of butter andradish on crackers, à la Raij. Both served cold.

Why I’m Swapping Chia for Basil Seeds (at Least Sometimes)What exactly are basilseeds?

The seeds are, as their name suggests, from the Thaibasil plant (not the holybasil plant). They’re similar in size to chia seeds, and also becomegelatinous when wet—though they still retain their crunchy interior.

Also called sabja in Indianculture the seeds have a mild floral flavor and are typically used as athickening agent for beverages. One especially popular drink featuring basilseeds is faluda,a dessert beverage from India which is a combination of soaked basil seeds,rose syrup, vermicelli noodles, and milk. Sometimes it’s even topped off withice cream. The drink is consumed during hot months in India, as basil seeds are believed to have cooling and soothingproperties.

计时5 265 words

“I’vebeen enjoying faluda for as long as I can remember, though I particularlyassociate it with Saturdays,” shares Associate Editor Nikkitha Bakshani.“It was something my family and I would drink after an afternoon movie, say, orin lieu of the usual tea and biscuits at home. Basil seeds are my favorite partof faluda—yes, even more than the rose milk—because it gives the whole drink agelatinous, en-route-to-panna-cotta texture that drives my entire family wild.Seriously; my mom is known to spontaneously break into a demand for faluda.”

Are there health benefits?

Basil and its seeds have been used in Chinese and ayurvedic medicine practices for centuries.They’re most well-known for being a digestive aid andsoothing upset stomachs.

According to the ladies of C&J Nutrition, our health knowledge gurus,some preliminary research in mice shows thatthere may be a connection between basil seed extract and reduced complicationsof type 2 diabetes (though the connection to humans remains unclear). They’realso rumored to help relieve constipation, most likely becausethey contain dietary fiber. Not exactly the sexiest of properties, but hey—it’suseful.

Basil leaves are high in Vitamin K, which reduces risk ofblood clotting. We can hazard a guess that these benefits will extend to basilseeds as well, though it’s not 100% clear.

On the whole, very little scientific research has beendone on basil seeds to date, perhaps due to the fact that they’re still apretty niche product in the U.S. But regardless, they’re delicious and a funingredient to incorporate into your summer repertoire.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-6 11:35
【速度1-4】
计时：+1行，+2行， +3行， 1min， +4行
第一个： NBC 的一个节目，内容是真实hate crimes。必要性：之前关于这方面的报道比较克制，希望之后能够实时报道这些hate crimes
第二个：关于一道洋葱相关的菜和背后的故事。菜谱，做这个菜很厉害的大厨，然后提到这个菜的秘诀在于一个vanilla Butter, 他从一个女士学到的。然后就讲这个女士与vanilla butter 的故事
第三个：科普一种泡水喝的东西，叫basil seeds。先讲了是啥：泡在饮料里，增加咀嚼口感。采访了一个人，讲饮料好啊我超爱喝。最后讲seeds的好处，中药材，能帮助消化，减少心血管疾病，vitamin K等等

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-7 11:51
【越障1-5】（830 words）
Backward ran sentences…
To the relief of physicists, time really does have a preferred direction （科技）
TIME seems to flow inexorably in one direction. Superficially, that is because things deteriorate with age—and this, in turn, is because there are innumerably fewer ways to arrange particles in an orderly fashion than in a jumbled mess. Any change in an existing arrangement is therefore likely to increase its disorder.

Dig a little deeper, though, and time’s arrow becomes mysterious. A particle cannot, by itself, become disordered, so when you examine its behaviour in isolation the past and the future are hard to distinguish. If you film its movement and then give the film to someone else, he will not be able to work out just from the particle’s behaviour which way to run the film through the projector. Essentially, the two ways of doing so are symmetrical. Or so physicists used to think until hints to
the contrary emerged in the 1960s. Now a group of researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, near Stanford University in California, have found the first physical evidence that backs those indications up.

The main hint that nature violates the time-reversal (T) symmetry implied by the thought experiment with the film—and thus that there really is an arrow of time—came from seemingly disparate discoveries about matter and antimatter. Mathematically, particles and their anti-versions differ in two ways: they have opposite electrical charges and they are each other’s mirror reflections. But in 1964 some particles called kaons were shown not to respect this charge-conjugation/parity (CP) symmetry, as it is known. Matter and antimatter are not, in other words, quite equal and opposite. However, according to another law, C, P and T symmetries, when lumped together into a single, overarching CPT symmetry, must be conserved. This means that if CP is violated, then T must be too, in order to even things out.

…until reeled the mind

The obvious place to look for this T violation is where C and P are already known to misbehave. Between 1999 and 2008 a laboratory in California was set up to do just that. The old linear accelerator at Stanford was repurposed, turning it from the machine that co-discovered a particle known as the charm quark (thus winning its operators a Nobel prize) into a factory for making particles called B mesons. These are interesting because they and their antiparticles exhibit CP-violating tendencies. They are thus a promising place to look for T violations, too.

Which is what the scientists of SLAC’s BaBar experiment have been doing. Though the B-meson factory itself has been silent for four years (the accelerator is now in its third incarnation, as the world’s most powerful X-ray camera), its data live on, and the collaborators have been ploughing through them. They are looking in particular at how long it takes a B-meson to change its nature, focusing on one particular member of the extended B-meson family, the electrically neutral B0.

As with many things quantum, B0 can exist in a number of forms. These are known as B, B-bar, B-plus and B-minus. Like a subatomic werewolf, a B0 constantly shifts between them. If time truly has an arrow, though, some of these shifts will occur at a different rate when going in one direction rather than the other. In particular, CP-violation theory predicts that B-bar will turn into B-minus faster than B-minus turns into B-bar. All that remains is to measure the difference.

Unfortunately, that is not as easy as it sounds. A particle’s final state can be known by looking at what other sorts of particle it decays into. What cannot easily be known is what it was beforehand, and for how long.

In the wacky world of quantum physics, however, it is not always impossible to work out what a particle once was but no longer is. That is because B-mesons are sometimes born as quantum-mechanically conjoined twins. One twin gives away the initial state of the other and how long it lasted in that state—and all is revealed.

That revelation, which has been submitted for publication to Physical Review Letters, leaves no room for doubt: B-bars turn into B-minuses far faster than B-minuses turn into B-bars. As many as five B-minuses are produced for every B-bar. The chance of this result being a fluke is a nugatory one in 1043. Going forwards is thus not the same as going backwards, and time’s arrow really does exist.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-7 15:01
【越障1-5】 7 min 42s
这篇是在实习夹缝中读的，有点昏昏沉沉，但是感觉结构其实蛮清楚的，中后几段在讲科学原理，似乎有点脱节，但是看到最后有顿悟的感觉。
主旨：起初人们认为一个小粒子是无法反映整体的，仅从一个片段我们也无法判断时间流动是否有方向。但是最近科学家实验发现一种粒子B，B- bar变成B-Minus的速度快于后者变成B-bar的速度，由此推出时间是有方向的。
结构：总介绍一个disputed topic和矛盾点 ; 分：实验涉及的物理理论，实验过程，实验结果；结论
每段大意：
一二段：时间方向很难找到，因为认为一个片段是无法判断整体流动方向的。此处用了很多例子。
三四段：SLAC例粒子加速实验找出了问题的答案。先铺垫了一个物理常识，即粒子主要有三种对称方式： T， C， P。当粒子有异于这三种对称方式的时候，就证明time arrow（逻辑链我没有很懂）
五六段：介绍了一下这个SLAC干啥子的，即是想研究B这种粒子变成B -Bar, 和M - minus的时间长短和维持状态时间；然后讲了一下这个实验的可能性。
结尾段：结论，就是我之前说的那个。

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-7 15:04
超小声的问一句，有人一起练吗？可以一起把测时结果和回忆发上来哈，十分希望和大家一起讨论阅读的心路历程。
现在有点那个啥，一个人的喜马拉雅？一个人的奥林匹克？马拉松？（那部电影是啥来着，忘辽）的感觉

作者: Wilma_dc 时间: 2018-9-7 19:39

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-7 15:04
超小声的问一句，有人一起练吗？可以一起把测时结果和回忆发上来哈，十分希望和大家一起讨论阅读的心路历程 ...

有啊，感谢楼主的分享。我这个月要第五战，哇哇哇～估计没什么人像我这么惨的。找了gmat的复习机构，砸了两万大洋进去，机构后来看我的考试战线拉得太长了就不管了，承诺的考到满意分数为止也不算数了，问题都不搭理了，极其不负责任。现在只好自己复习，我最近也在攻阅读，估计阅读上去了，我想考的分数也就到了。已经跟你的帖子练习三天了，速度貌似有提高，但是越障文章一场，就分心，找不到文章脉络了……

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-7 23:05

Wilma_dc 发表于 2018-9-7 19:39
有啊，感谢楼主的分享。我这个月要第五战，哇哇哇～估计没什么人像我这么惨的。找了gmat的复习机构，砸了 ...

加油啊，我下个月也要再考~
越障的文章我选的是比较难的原文，没有缩减过，所以我自己有时候读完了也记不到开头了哈哈哈
我的感觉是这样，读的时候勉强都是有印象的，读完了之后啥都不确定，心里也很慌，只能往死里回忆结构，最开始简直漏的很多，最近好些了，所以发现强迫记忆，逼自己不回视还是有用的。
BTW， Wilma有试过小安阅读法吗，过几天我准备开始小安阅读暴力突破一下

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-8 00:07
【速度 1-5】
计时1 （292 words)
FallingCurrencies Lead to Fear of Contagion

Fear is growing in financial markets aroundthe world. First, it was Argentina. Then came Turkey, South Africa andIndonesia.

Investors and policy-making officials are worried about the falling value of currencies of several emerging markets. Most of these developing countries have borrowed a lot of money, oftenin United States dollars. As the value of their national currency falls against the dollar, the amount they have to repay grows larger. This has caused fears of a repeat of the 1997 Asian financial crisis or of Mexico's financial crisis in 1994.

Why? One word: contagion.

Contagion means that economic concerns move from one country toanother, bringing down currency values and stock markets. Contagion could affect every country in the world. The value of Argentina's money, the peso,fell 29 percent against the U.S. dollar in August. Next, Turkey's currency lost 25 percent of its value. South Africa's rand had an almost 10 percent drop. The Indonesian rupiah fell to its lowest level since 1997. India's currency alsofell.

Now September has arrived, and those currencies are still down.The Turkish lira is now down 40 percent against the dollar. Turkey's privatebanks and businesses have large debts in dollars and there is concern they might not have the money to repay those debts.

Foreign exchange markets are nervous. Traders are worried morecountries may be added to the list. They are looking at African nations like Angola, Ghana, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

Another example is Iran. The Iranian currency has fallen morethan 140 percent since the United States withdrew from the 2015 nuclear dealfour months ago. Oil companies and other industries have been forced to leaveIran and the economy is in trouble.

计时2 （301 words）

Even some of the world's more developed economies may be affected. Financial experts are closely watching Chile, Polandand Hungary. They say those three countries have foreign currency debts above50 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Private, non-government, debt in emerging and developing countries is larger than it was during the 2008 financial crisis.The bigger thedebt, the harder the fall.

"The risk is increasing in those countries," warns Bertrand Delgado, director of international markets forSociete Generale in New York.

Among investors and policy makers, there is agreement about why emerging marketsare in trouble. They largely blame three developments:

1. – Investors are worried about U.S. President Donald Trump'strade war with China and other countries.

2. - Rising U.S. interest rates have made investors pull their money from emerging markets and put it into dollar investments.

3. – After the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserveand the European Central Bank increased the supply of money to help with the economic recovery. Now they have begun to tighten the money supply. There is less money to borrow, and it costs more to borrow it.

A financial crash?

Marcus Ashworth of Bloomberg said last week that theemerging-markets situation looks like contagion.

"The difficulties for emerging markets have entered anew phase," he said, adding that contagion is moving to other countries.

Other market watchers are less worried. They believe each country with falling currencies have their own problems that are causing thesituation. But they agree that another interest rate rise by the U.S. FederalReserve could change everything.

Recently, the Singapore-based financial services group DBS senta note to investors. It warned that Argentina and Turkey are struggling to paytheir loans back in dollars. It added that "trade tensions" couldcause financial "instability" in thesecountries.

计时3 （246 words）

Britain's The Economist saysthe weakness in emerging-market currencies does not have to be contagious. Itcould be contained, and does not have to threaten the solvency oflarge Western Banks.

Others agree. They point to the many strong emerging-market economies.

At the end of June, India's GDP was growing at an 8 percent rate. Mexico's peso is calm. Mexico seems to have ended its trade talks withthe Trump White House agreeably. That makes investors happy.

Some experts say the fear of contagion comes from theinternational media and is not real. They point out that when the FederalReserve first raised rates in 2013, currency values in most of these countriesfell. Then they recovered.

The great unknown in understanding contagion is investor emotion. Investors could panic and pull out all theirmoney from these countries. If that happened too suddenly, contagion would bevery possible.

I'm Susan Shand.

S.Korea Says Korean Leaders to Meet on Denuclearization

A South Korean official says North Korea'sleader commented that he is committed to denuclearization of the KoreanPeninsula.

National security advisor Chung Eui-yong also said that theleaders of North and South Korea are to meet in the capital of North Korea,Pyongyang, from September 18th to the 20th. Chung made the announcementThursday in Seoul.

One day earlier, Chung led a delegation to the North Koreancapital to confirm details of the planned meeting. He also met with NorthKorean leader Kim Jong Un.

计时4 （253 words）

Kimsaid to be frustrated

Thursday, Chung told reporters about his talks with Kim. He saidKim confirmed his commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The official added that Kim also promised to cooperate with bothSouth Korea and the United States.

Chung said that Kim's faith in U.S. President Donald Trump isunchanged since their summit in Singapore on June 12.

News of the comment brought a statement of thanks from Trump onTwitter.

Chung noted that Kim said he wishes for North Korea and the U.S.to end their hostilities by the end of Trump's first term in office in 2021.

The Associated Press reports that Chung said Kim expressed frustration overthe international community's reaction to measures taken by the North.

Several measures were meant to show the North's willingness toend its banned weapons programs. These include disabling part of the Sohaemissile launch area and destruction of tunnels used to test nuclear weapons.Last month, North Korea also returned 55 sets of human remains to the United States. They are believed to be those of American soldiers who died in theKorean War.

Kim said he would take "more active" measures toward denuclearization if his moves were met with similar measures, Chung said.

The South Korean delegation came to Pyongyang as U.S.-North Korean diplomatic efforts appeared to have cooled. Last month, Trump cancelleda planned trip by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang. He said notenough progress had been made toward denuclearization.

计时5（274 words）

Critics of the most recent negotiationefforts say North Korea has, in the past, said it would end its nuclearprogram. They say the North has often sought to gain economic aid and thenfailed to keep its promises.

China'spart in negotiations

The most recent developments come as North Korea prepares tomark its 70th anniversary on September 9. Representatives ofNorth Korea's close ally, China, are expected to be at the special ceremony.

Chinese parliamentary chief Li Zhanshu is set to attend, not President Xi Jinping. Li is the third ranking member in China's CommunistParty.

Stephen Noerper is a senior director at the Korea Society in NewYork City.

He said, while China has listened to North Korea's concerns, thecountry has reduced trade with its neighbor and placed pressure on it. NorthKorea continues to face strong United Nations restrictions because of itsbanned nuclear and missile program.

President Trump has called on China to do more to get North Korea to take part in talks on denuclearization.

Noerper said South Korea is acting as a moderator between theU.S. and the North. He said this position is risky for South Korean PresidentMoon Jae-in. Moon's popularity at home has fallen since his earlier meetingswith Kim and the Trump-Kim summit.

Moon spoke to his aides Thursday about the next meeting withKim. He said the talks will speed up negotiations between the U.S. and NorthKorea on the issue of denuclearization.

The newly announced summit between the Korean leaders would comejust before the yearly gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in NewYork.

I'm Mario Ritter.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-8 11:01
【越障1-5 长难句】 (from 谷歌翻译）
Superficially, that is because things deteriorate with age—and this, in turn, is because there are innumerably fewer ways to arrange particles in an orderly fashion than in a jumbled mess.
从表面上看，这是因为随着年龄的增长情况会恶化 - 而这反过来又是因为有无数种方式可以有序地排列粒子，而不是乱七八糟的混乱。

The main hint that nature violates the time-reversal (T) symmetry implied by the thought experiment with the film—and thus that there really is an arrow of time—came from seemingly disparate discoveries about matter and antimatter.
自然违反时间逆转（T）对称性的主要暗示是电影的思想实验所暗示的 - 因此确实存在时间之箭 - 来自看似完全不同的关于物质和反物质的发现。

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-9 11:51
【速度1-5】+7行， +5行， 57s， +1行， +4行
我疯了吧。。。。
article one: the fears of contagion.
Many countries hold a declining currency value to US dollars. This case is said to have a serious influence on the Business market all over the world and countries GDP. several examples are drawn: turkey, Iran and many countries in which the debt occupies over the half of the GDP. The article also lists three reasons for contagion. But many experts doubt its existence, for there are many countries with a growing GDP despite a dropping currency value. They say the media has exaggerated and there is no such thing called contagion.

Article 2: the agreements on the denucleurization on Korea pennisula
South and north korea have a meeting. the latter show willingness to end nuclear weapons and hostility on 朝鲜半岛. they also show interest in cooperating with US.
But many people concern that North Korea do this only for Economic profit and would break the promise at the end.
China , as a ally of North korea, is asked to take part in persuading the latter to give up nuclearization

作者: Wilma_dc 时间: 2018-9-10 15:08

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-7 23:05
加油啊，我下个月也要再考~
越障的文章我选的是比较难的原文，没有缩减过，所以我自己有时候读完了也记不 ...

小安阅读的文章有从你的帖子上下载下来，但是为啥只有文章，木有问题呢？

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-10 15:18

Wilma_dc 发表于 2018-9-10 15:08
小安阅读的文章有从你的帖子上下载下来，但是为啥只有文章，木有问题呢？ ...

问题有补哦，最后一个文件你看一下

作者: Wilma_dc 时间: 2018-9-11 11:53

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-10 15:18
问题有补哦，最后一个文件你看一下

谢谢楼主！为啥不更贴了？提速练习和越障？

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-11 19:43

Wilma_dc 发表于 2018-9-11 11:53
谢谢楼主！为啥不更贴了？提速练习和越障？

大后天考雅突击中，完了会跟上的

作者: Wilma_dc 时间: 2018-9-12 11:38

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-11 19:43
大后天考雅突击中，完了会跟上的

一样的征程：烤鸡杀鸭（考g杀雅），加油加油！祝杀鸭顺利！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-12 20:03
【速度 1-6】来源https://medium.com/personal-growth/why-boredom-is-powerful-but-being-bored-is-not-9f22e5daf4c

计时1 （267 words ）
Why BoredomIs So Powerful in Your LifeEmbrace the pain of your unusedpotentialThe differencebetween the two can determine your life satisfaction.Boredom is not lack ofstimulation. Ironically, the more distractions and external stimuli we pursue,the more bored we get.

Boredom is a cleanslate. Being bored is escapism — it’s a mental state that we choose to avoidself-reflection.We feel bored because, deep inside ourselves, we know we cangive more. Boredom is the pain of unused potential; it’s a disconnection toeverything we can offer the world and vice versa.

Boredom is a powerfultool that invites you to rethink your relationship with the world.

Boredom is an acquired taste

“I am never bored; to be bored is an insult to one’s self.”
― Jules Renard

Some psychologists believe boredom is a trait. The ‘Boredom PronenessScale’ measures our propensity to feel bored. By contrast, the‘Multidimensional State Boredom Scale’ measures a person’s feelings of boredomin a given situation — our “stateboredom” isdynamic, not fixed.

Boredom is not external; it’s how you engage with theworld.

John Eastwood, director of the Boredom Lab at YorkUniversity believes that boredom is a ‘crisis of meaning.’ It invites us toreflect on how we engage with the world.

Eastwood debunked themisconception that “only boring people get bored.” The Canadian professor found two distinct types of personality that suffer from boredom,and neither is particularly dull.

The first type ofpeople have an impulsive mindset and are continually looking for newexperiences. The world isn’t enough of a rollercoaster — it’s chronicallyunder-stimulating.

计时2（241 words)

The second kind hasthe opposite problem: the world is a fearful place. They try not to stepoutside their comfort zone. Their high-sensitivity to pain makes them withdraw.However, they don’t feel satisfied with being comfortable, and chronic boredomtakes over.

The origin of boredom

We live in an overly entertained society, yet we’venever suffered from boredom as we do now.

Boredom is a social disease.

Ages ago, when people were busy trying to survive,boredom wasn’t a choice. They spent all their time securing food or shelter;they didn’t have time to get bored.

We are now overstimulated — easy access to infinite entertainment options is feedingboredom rather than discouraging it.

As Dr. Sandi Mann, the author of The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredomis Good, explains: “The more entertained we are, the moreentertainment we need to feel satisfied. The more we fill our world withfast-moving, high-intensity, ever-changing stimulation, the more we get used tothat and the less tolerant we become of lower levels.”

We crave for more time. However, when we have free time,we don’t know what to do with it. Nothing seems exciting enough to deserve ourvaluable time. We end doing nothing and get bored.

Friedrich Nietzsche said: “is life not a thousand timestoo short for us to bore ourselves?”

Our ideas about how things should be are our mostsignificant distraction. We get bored with our repetitive thought pattern.

计时3（277 words)

Avoidingboredom can be more damaging that ennui itself.

Research has shown that, in response to a monotonous labsituation, participants voluntarily self-administered electric shocks. Theshocks served to disrupt feeling bored — it was the only available external source ofstimulation.

In everyday life, we default to less-intrusive antidotesto boredom: company. We associate being in the company of others with havingfun. For most people, being alone and not being bored sounds counterintuitive.

We have a hard time having funin our own company.

That’s why people embrace busyness — you don’t realize you arebored when you are running from one place to another. Being busy is a trickyform of entertainment — we don’t feel the boredom, but it isn’t fun either.

That’s the danger of not facing our boredom: it cancause more damage if it gets out of our mind.

Face this subtle enemy

“He who fortifies himself completely against boredom fortifies himselfagainst himself too. He will never drink the most powerful elixir from his owninnermost spring.”—Friedrich Nietzsche

Being bored is a damaging state of mind.

By trying to escape from it, you get caught in subtletraps. Once you realized the side effects, it’s too late — tiny behaviors have turned into a habit.

When you feel bored, you lose focus. Chronic attentionproblems such as attention deficit or hyperactivity disorders are connected tomonotony.

Chronic boredom, continually feelingbored, has a direct relationship with compulsive behaviors.

Research shows boredom to be responsible for increased risk ofovereating, gambling, alcohol, and drug abuse, among others. Individuals withhigh boredom-proneness scored significantly more prone to suffer from anxiety,obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression.

计时4 （253 words)

Boredom can drive toprocrastination. When people get bored in a meeting, conference or analyzing areport, their performance drops dramatically. Chronic boredom is one of theleading causes of depression in the workplace too.

Not addressing boredom is dangerous — it keeps you away from seeing yourself clearly, as I wrote here.

Your mind creates boring thoughts

Boredom is neutral — it’s up to you turn intosomething positive or negative.

Sakyong Mipham, the author of Turning the mind into an ally, identifiesthree kinds of boredom.

The first type has anundercurrent of anxiety. We are not comfortable with ourselves. Weare so used to being amused by external stimuli — fun means doing something with someone else. We believe that theantidote to boredom should be external. We need Netflix, a device, company oran object to rescue us from boredom.

The second type of boredom is rooted in fear.We are afraid of being alone with ourselves because we can’t relax our mind.Confronting ourselves in solitude forces us to pay attention to who we are.Loneliness is an honest mirror — itreflects both our good and wrong sides.

The previous two types are driven by our desire forthings to be different from how they are.

The third type is the realization that what really makes us feel bored is our thoughts,not reality itself. We start accepting that boredom is part of the landscape.We realize that it’s not that the world is predictable, our thoughts about itare repetitive.

计时5（281 words)

Boredom is a state ofmind; getting bored is when we can’t deal with our repetitive thought pattern.

Turning the idle mind into an ally

When we feel bored, we crave for more entertainment anddistractions. However, that will create more frustration and disappointment.

To defeat boredom, you needless, not more, stimulation and novelty.

Friedrich Nietzsche referred to boredom as the “unpleasantcalm that precedes creative acts.”

Embrace boredom as a positive force. It seemsparadoxical, but feeling bored now will make you less bored in the future — it’s a pause to makemagic happen.

You are in charge.

People with higher self-awareness and self-control areless prone to feeling bored. Meditation is a powerful tool to let yourrepetitive thought pattern free. Once you stop resisting boredom, it’s nolonger threatening. As Sakyong Mipham says: “Boredom is no longer needy; it’sspacious, comfortable, and soothing. My father called it ‘cool boredom.’”

You need a pause. Enjoy it.

Silent is the think tank of the soul. Boredom, like silence, is not just theabsence of noise — it invitesthe presence of focus. Noise keeps you busy. Remove distractions and startlistening. What is boredom trying to tell you?

Boredom feeds creativity.

Your brain likes to escape from the feeling of boredom;instead of providing external stimulation, let it feed on internal elements.Mind wandering invites creativity; rather than trying to focus on externalstimuli, let it find its own way shifting from one idea to another.

Avoid technology when you feel bored.

Entertainment snacks will make you crave for more;rather than controlling your boredom, your need for distraction will never besatisfied. Technology is anything but a boredom cure.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-12 20:31
【速度1-6】
+3行， +1行， 6行， 1min， +5行
几日不练，智商下线
这篇文章来源于雅思一篇阅读的话题： Boredom，然后在心理学网站上找到了相关文章，原来无聊也是一种病。
The basic introduction of how people feel when get boredom.
the definition of boredom.
some misunderstanding about boredom: people get bored from external world;not boring people get bored
the origin of boredom: the more you are entertained; the more entertainment you need to feel satisfied.
When people tr to escape from boredom, e.g. through working, they get even worse.
Three categories of boredom
Some tips for people to cope with boredom

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-13 09:57
一站遇到了两篇5.6段长的文章，直接导致我心态崩溃。。。10月二战准备主要突击阅读，跟楼主一起加油

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-13 09:59
想问下楼主，除了每天练习一个小时这个，平时做练习题，还是以prep之类的吗？还是暂时没做习题了

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-13 11:47

wpx 发表于 2018-9-13 09:59
想问下楼主，除了每天练习一个小时这个，平时做练习题，还是以prep之类的吗？还是暂时没做习题了 ...

我觉得要看每个人的练习阶段欸，OG和prep肯定是要做的，我现在是在考雅思，所以可能没时间做题啥的，我每天除了阅读练习，还会重温一下曼哈顿的那本SC

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-13 15:13

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-13 11:47
我觉得要看每个人的练习阶段欸，OG和prep肯定是要做的，我现在是在考雅思，所以可能没时间做题啥的，我每 ...

好的好的，我是OG做完了，PREP模考做了一部分，一站的时候感觉GWD的模考把我带偏了。还是要以OG和PREP为主，。。一起加油啦，我会每天做这个阅读练习的，一起打卡吧

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-13 16:04
DAY1:
越障：
文章逻辑：
1、至少要研究了云才能知道天气变动的模式。但是云的一些细节研究是模糊的，不好确认的。
2、提高这个对云的研究的可确认性是nasa的两个任务的目标。其中一个是用卫星怎么怎么样，另一个是用火箭探测什么什么。最近还有一个牛津的教授和他的同事做了一个paper。
3、云和climate model之间是有关系的，sensitivity，
4、DK这个人研究这两者之间的关系研究了将近20年。最近的research也有关于这个的研究，之后讲了两个人的研究结果，表明云的确是对climate model，敏感性很有关系，一个研究表明了云对80%的那个Model和啥啥有关，另一个研究表明了xxx.
5、为什么cloude对climate model很重要，是因为云扮演了两个对立的角色：下层的云是反射光线，让变cold，高的上层的云则是讲辐射等反射地面，warming things up。但是下层的云对climate的影响更重要。
6、接着讲了最近的nasa的两个对底层云lower cloud的研究，一个是研究了低层云的啥啥，另一个是研究了有一种对低层云有影响的particles，这个物质是组成低层云的。
7、最后一段讲了有几种物质可以进入到大气中，形成那种particles，然后变成低层云，比如排放的气体之类的?

其实还是对文章整体的逻辑把握更重要，我觉得自己回忆的逻辑并不是很清晰。。。
读完忘记看时间，就开始写文章回忆了，我估计我至少也用了10分钟多，希望下次能读快一点

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-13 16:27

wpx 发表于 2018-9-13 16:04
DAY1:
越障：
文章逻辑：

一起加油！我练了一段时间也发现了这个问题，所以改了一下回忆的策略，变成了下面这样，希望效果能好一点https://forum.chasedream.com/for ... amp;fromuid=1329152

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-13 16:36

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-13 16:27
一起加油！我练了一段时间也发现了这个问题，所以改了一下回忆的策略，变成了下面这样，希望效果能好一点 ...

赞！那个结构就是gmat考试需要掌握的，之后就按照楼主那个写~

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-13 16:56
【速度1-7】之前越障老是发在速度前面。。。这次终于改过来了

计时1 （300words）

StudyingWhite Roofs as a Way to Reduce Urban Heat

BOB DOUGHTY: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS,in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty.

FAITH LAPIDUS: And I'm Faith Lapidus. This week, we will tell about the medical condition known as atrial fibrillation. We also will tell about two studies of sea birds, and how a change of color could help fight rising temperatures. And, we will tell what officials in California have doneto protect historic objects on the moon.

(MUSIC)

BOB DOUGHTY: Atrial fibrillation produces an abnormal heartbeat.People feel their heart race and they lose their breath. The problem may last afew seconds, but it can get worse and worse with age, leading to a heart attack or stroke.

Doctors generally treat atrial fibrillation with drugs. But arecent study shows that another treatment may have better results for patients who were not helped by drugs. The treatment is called catheter ablation.Doctors place a long thin tube called a catheter into the heart. Then they useradio frequency energy to heat the tissue around the catheter. The heat burnsoff a small amount of heart muscle. The goal is to block abnormal electrical activity in the heart.

FAITH LAPIDUS: Researchers studied more than one hundred fifty patients whose condition had failed to improve after taking at least one drug.In the study, about one hundred of the patients had catheter ablation. The others were treated with more drugs. There was a nine-month follow-up period to compare the effectiveness.

David Wilber of Loyola University Medical Center in Illinois wasthe lead writer of a report about the study. He says catheter ablation worked in sixty to seventy percent of the patients. By comparison, abnormal heartbeats returned in eighty to ninety percent of those treated with drugs.

计时2（285 words）

Doctor Wilber says catheter ablation is notmeant to be the first treatment choice for atrial fibrillation. He suggests itonly when drug therapy fails to work. The report appeared in the Journal of theAmerican Medical Association.

(MUSIC)

BOB DOUGHTY: A report in the journal Current Biology says fishand other food thrown from boats can influence the movement of birds. A team of scientists used satellite information about a fishing area near the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Satellite images followed the travels of twokinds of seabirds: the Cory's shearwaters and the Balearic shearwaters. The team learned that the birds traveled one way on days when fishing was permitted, and another way when it was not.

The scientists kept detailed records of the birds' travel over anumber of flights. The trips lasted an average of about two days. Some birdsflew ten kilometers during that time. But others traveled up to one thousand kilometers. The birds traveled longer distances when they did not see fishingboats. The birds spread out from one another to do this, and they spread with increasing speed.

FAITH LAPIDUS: The lead scientist was Frederic Bartumeus of the Center for Advanced Studies of Blanes in Spain. He calls the actions of the seabirds, a superdiffusive process. The process let them look effectively for small hake and other fish that move often and unpredictably. But when the birds sawfishing boats, they looked for food near the boats. That reduced their spreading action and slowed their speed.

Professor Bartemeus says the study shows how human activities inthe natural environment can change the travels of other organisms. The scientists say their findings may help the study of invasive species.

计时3 （269 words）

BOB DOUGHTY: In another study, some brown pelicans on the west coast of the United States have been acting mysteriously.About twenty thousand brown pelicans fly south from the American state of Oregon each winter. Experts say the birds usually have flown to southern California or Mexico by this time of year. But, during the past three years,some have failed to fly south. Uncounted numbers of pelicans have remained in Oregon.

Many are thought to have died of cold or hunger or in severe storms. Wildlife rescuers in Oregon say some of the birds have been seen around restaurants and cafes. Even when people are present, the birds reportedly eat food that has been thrown away. And, people have been seen feeding them.

Experts say pelicans usually fear human beings. They urge peopleto leave the birds alone.

(MUSIC)

FAITH LAPIDUS: Large cities are known to have higher temperatures than rural areas in summer months. This extra heat can raise temperatures incities by about one to three degrees Celsius compared to rural areas.

Scientists say there are many reasons for this. One reason is that heat from the sun can go through many of the building materials commonly found in cities. One such material is asphalt, a substance often placed on topof buildings and used to cover road surfaces.

BOB DOUGHTY: Recently, American researchers studied ways toreduce the heat in developed areas. Scientists with the National Center forAtmospheric Research led the study. They found that painting the tops of buildings white could possibly help to cool cities and slow the effects of climate change.

计时4 （298 words）

The researchers used a computer model that predicted the effects of the sun's heat. They compared the effects of black surfaces on rooftops with white roofs. They found that a city with only white rooftops could reduce the urban heat effect by thirty-three percent.

FAITH LAPIDUS: However, white roofs could have the opposite effect in winter. That is because they have a cooling effect within buildings.Cooler building temperatures in the winter could require more energy to heatthe buildings.

The researchers found that some cities would be helped more than others from white roofs. This would depend on the total surface area of roofsin a city. It would also depend on the building materials used since some materials are less resistant to heat than others. The researchers say whiteroofs would work best in areas with warm climates and strong sunlight all year.

The team's findings were published in the Geophysical Research Letters. America's National Science Foundation paid for the study.

BOB DOUGHTY: Scientists say more information is needed beforethey can be sure that painting roofs white would help battle risingtemperatures. Keith Oleson was the lead writer of the report. He says the studyshows that, in theory, white roofs could be effective in reducing urban heat.However, he says, it remains to be seen if it is possible for cities to painttheir roofs white.

(MUSIC)

FAITH LAPIDUS: Finally, the state of California is far away fromthe moon. But California officials recently registered objects left by thefirst men to land on the moon's surface. The state's historical resources agency recognized the more than one hundred objects as historicallyprotected.

California has a deep interest in the objects. Many state-based companies helped develop machines and equipment that made the moon landingpossible.

计时5（ 284 words）

BOB DOUGHTY: Americans Neil Armstrong andEdwin "Buzz" Aldrin landed on the moon on July twentieth,nineteen-sixty-nine. The two astronauts explored an area that they called"Tranquility Base." Lack of space in their lunar spacecraft, the Eagle, forced them to leave equipment on the surface.

The lower half of the spacecraft, or landing vehicle, still lies there today. So do empty food containers, space boots, life support systems andan American flag. They were just a few of the things the astronauts leftbehind. The total weight of equipment remaining on the lunar surface is about two thousand two hundred sixty eight kilograms.

FAITH LAPIDUS: Some scientists support the idea of historical protection for the remaining objects. They hope that someday Tranquility Basewill be named a United Nations World Heritage Site. But the current California action registers only the objects, not Tranquility Base. International law barsany nation or state from claiming lunar surfaces.

Beth O'Leary is a professor at New Mexico State University. MizO'Leary is a supporter of honoring space heritage. She expresses concern thatpeople traveling in space might someday damage the spaceflight objects.

At the moment, however, that threat does not seem immediate. Abudget proposal by President Obama cancels the American space agency's plansfor manned space flights to a lunar station. At least for awhile, historic objects on the moon remain far away and safe from human hands.

(MUSIC)

BOB DOUGHTY: This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Jerilyn Watson, Caty Weaver and Brianna Blake, who was also our producer. I'm Bob Doughty.

FAITH LAPIDUS: And I'm Faith Lapidus. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

作者: Wilma_dc 时间: 2018-9-14 12:26
这几天做小安阅读，难度跟真题非常贴近。是练阅读的好材料

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-14 13:53

练习速度，一分钟完全读不完怎么办。。大概扫过一遍的话就不太懂这个部分讲的啥..所以速度练习是相当于练习略读？

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-14 14:32
DAY2:10min
主旨：房丽美和房地美（美国的两个政府性质的住房抵押贷款公司）在危机下的措施，但有人提出质疑和担忧
每段大意：11段
真的记不住每段，大概思路就是：
次级贷款对房丽美和房地美来说是危机也是机遇，他们可以挽回reputation
之后讲了两个措施，主要都是作为buyers打包购买市场上的次级贷款人的贷款啊之类的
后面讲的是有人质疑他们的动机和做法，认为他们这种做法会由于一点小的失败导致整个金融市场体系的波动，他们也只是在投机？
但是有其他方并不这么认为，总体还是反驳了前面的。
我大概是失忆了，读着后面的忘了前面的？

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-14 15:02

wpx 发表于 2018-9-14 13:53
练习速度，一分钟完全读不完怎么办。。大概扫过一遍的话就不太懂这个部分讲的啥..所以速度练习是相当于 ...

因为GMAT要求的速度是150-200 words每分钟嘛，所以速度部分比这个快就行了，然后争取扫过每个词，对整体意思有个把握就行

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-14 19:11

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-14 15:02
因为GMAT要求的速度是150-200 words每分钟嘛，所以速度部分比这个快就行了，然后争取扫过每个词，对整体 ...

好的好的！

作者: Cynthia_1 时间: 2018-9-14 22:24
10月10要一站gmat了但是感觉阅读根本找不到感觉。。感觉根本做不完的样子。。。好慌。。想和楼主一起打卡请问不回视写文章大意的话，是需要读的时候做笔记么？？还是说只单独凭印象来呢？

作者: Wilma_dc 时间: 2018-9-15 17:04

wpx 发表于 2018-9-14 13:53
练习速度，一分钟完全读不完怎么办。。大概扫过一遍的话就不太懂这个部分讲的啥..所以速度练习是相当于 ...

其实扫读快速的略读法，反而更容易看清文章的结构和脉络，而不要纠结于文章的细枝末节。你试试看，我做这个一分钟练习的感悟

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-15 19:50

Cynthia_1 发表于 2018-9-14 22:24
10月10要一站gmat了但是感觉阅读根本找不到感觉。。感觉根本做不完的样子。。。好慌。。想和楼主一起打卡 ...

我的建议是最好不要写笔记吧，因为考试的时候没有时间做笔记，这个越障也是培养一下短期记忆能力。别慌别慌我也是10月要考一次，第三战了哈哈

作者: 怒考756GMAT无敌 时间: 2018-9-15 20:40
考试真的要1分钟200词吗。。。

作者: Cynthia_1 时间: 2018-9-15 23:44

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-15 19:50
我的建议是最好不要写笔记吧，因为考试的时候没有时间做笔记，这个越障也是培养一下短期记忆能力。别慌别 ...

哎想哭哭

总是看着看着就忘了前面讲的啥了。。楼主加油！一起加油！！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-16 00:11
考完雅思了，终于可以和GMAT相亲相爱了，有种小别胜新婚的欣喜（我是个变态

1分钟200词是我自己的目标哈，因为我是那种读懂文章也可能做不对题的人，所以做每道题的时候会看比较久。但每个人的阅读策略其实是不一样的嘛，大家还是要根据自己的pace来
以供参考： GMAT长文章一般400词左右，短文章300词+

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-16 00:15

Wilma_dc 发表于 2018-9-15 17:04
其实扫读快速的略读法，反而更容易看清文章的结构和脉络，而不要纠结于文章的细枝末节。你试试看，我做这 ...

对的对的，感觉就是这样，知道哪部分信息在哪可以找到就行

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-16 11:38
【越障1-6】 from: The Economist (1089 words)

Global express-package companies （商业金融）
And then there were three?
Plans to merge two of the world’s big four express-package firms have raised competition worries

UPS’s bid for TNT could be dynamite

THEY work while we sleep, unloading planes and lorries, feeding packages and letters into huge sorting machines, and reloading them for rapid delivery to the four corners of the earth. Each itemis coded and tracked on its dizzying journey through many hands. Four companies dominate this express-package business: FedEx and UPS, based in America, andDHL and TNT Express in Europe. They own and run airlines, and fleets of lorries and vans; they operate hubs at airports where the sorting is done.

TNT is the outsider in the group, being smaller and more competitive on price. It is the market leader in two big European countries,Britain and Italy, reckons Transport Intelligence, a research firm. FedEx and UPS are a near-duopoly in the United States. DHL has 32% of the German market,around 40% in Asia and over 50% in central Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

That may already appear a worrying level of concentration, with a risk of tacit collusion or at least “soft competition” on price. So reducing the number of “global integrators”—as they are called in the trade—from four to three might seem a step in the wrong direction. But UPS, eager to beef up its presencein Europe, made a bid for TNT in February; a month later they agreed on a priceof €5.2 billion ($6.8 billion). If allowed to proceed without any disposals,the planned combination would have more than a quarter of the market in Britainand Italy, and nearly a quarter in France.

The European Commission (EC) is investigating these sorts ofconcerns. A decision is expected by the end of the year. The commission is nota soft touch: in March it meted out fines totalling €169m to 14 freight-forwarding companies, a different part of the logistics business,including some UPS subsidiaries, for price collusion. (DHL escaped a fine only because it was a whistle-blower.)

Package deal

Antitrust regulators worry especially about the effects oncompetition and innovation when it is a mave rick, like the price-cutting TNT,that is being eliminated. Andreas Schwab and Jean-Paul Gauzès, both members ofthe European Parliament, wrote to Joaquín Almunia, the EC’s commissioner for competition, in June, expressing worries. They noted that the deal would leave only one European integrator, DHL, competing in Europe against the Americanduo, whereas there is no substantial European presence in the United States market. DHL withdrew from the American domestic market in 2009, and also pulled out of the British, Chinese and French markets, because the margins were too low. (It still runs international services to destinations in these countries.)

The EC will have to examine not only the nature of the international express-package market today, but also how it is changing. Allfour firms are adapting to diminished traffic in letters and important documents because of e-mail, and the growing demand for parcel delivery to end-consumers generated by e-commerce sites such as Amazon. The average size of parcels sent from business to business is also growing, as global firms increasingly depend on speedy supply, and guaranteed delivery times, of partsand supplies. That has blurred the line between express services and airfreight, and led to increasing use by integrators of spare hold capacity on passenger planes.

DHL has seen these types of business flourish even as recession bites in Europe. It is enjoying increased traffic in high-value technology items and in health-care products (an area in which all four firms are developing specialist divisions). One of TNT’s attractions for UPS is its customer base in the health-care and fashion industries. Another is the dense road network across the 39 European countries it covers.

Last year TNT was reeling: its operations lost money in Asia andthe Americas and its share price lagged those of its rivals. The first half of2012 saw the start of a turn around, with profits in Asia and lower losses inthe Americas. From looking like a company which needed a rich partner and araison d’être, TNT could now credibly stay independent, if the regulators sorule.

TNT’s business model, like that of DHL, relies on partnerships with other services, such as airlines and haulage companies. Around half of its operating expenses are incurred with subcontractors. TNT has made acquisitionsin Brazil, Chile and China, but its strategy, before the merger was announced,was to extend its coverage through partnerships. UPS and FedEx operate morecentrally from their headquarters in Atlanta and Memphis, though they do useagents in far-flung countries.

Staying faithful to Liège

DHL would benefit from a UPS-TNT merger in at least two ways.First, there would be one less competitor in Europe (though a stronger UPS,too). Second, UPS would be kept busy integrating TNT. UPS might also be hampered by “remedies” demanded by the EC to satisfy competition concerns. Fora start, under European Union law, UPS will have to ensure that TNT’s airline, TNT Airways, remains majority EU-owned. UPS has already undertaken to “seek to continue” using TNT’shub at Liège airport in Belgium: the temptation would be to divert business toits own hub in Cologne. It also promises to maintain a “centre of excellence”for sales, marketing and operations in the Netherlands.

These are not promises that can easily be kept. Liège is already suffering a relative decline in business, partly because of a decision by TNT to shift more of its European traffic on to roads. Maintaining a big Dutch headquarters as well as UPS’s bases in Brussels and Cologne may prove costly.

The needs of the market change constantly, and the integrator shave to be flexible and innovative to keep up. But it is harder to imagine suchtraits in a merged Leviathan than in a maverick. And barriers to entry arehigh. The integrators own airlines and lorry fleets and operate expensive hubs.They have built relationships with customs authorities that let them save timeby clearing items while they are still airborne. Such a company would be difficult to replicate quickly. So far, nobody has tried, although S.F.Express, a Chinese firm founded in Shenzhen three years ago, is growing fast.In express services and time-sensitive delivery “other integrators would be theonly significant competitive constraint” on the merged entity, noted the EC atthe start of its investigation. Finding fitting remedies will be hard.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-16 12:19
【越障1-6】 9min 56s
主旨： UPS和TNT快递公司的合并对未来相关市场的影响，以及对这次merger的评价
结构：四方鼎立背景，对此的financial concern， financial concern 的后果， merger 的原因，市场变化带来的四个公司的变化，对此态度和持此态度原因
大意：四巨头： UPS， FEd-ex， DBS（？），TNT割据快递行业，前两者美国，DBS美国亚洲， TNT欧洲寡头，因为TNT独霸欧洲市场，所以其实并没有直接和其他三个有竞争关系；
但四个公司一旦两个合并，变成了三个，鼎立平衡就被打破了；且UPS对TNT的收购就破坏了TNT局外人的优势： UPS进入了欧洲市场，但TNT并没有进入美国市场，觉得UPS想占便宜
EC针对这个担忧展开了调查，好像对UPS的很多航空线罚了很多款
UPS看重TNT的原因有：欧洲市场占比，用户信赖……（忘了？），UPS是因为公司有了危机（在亚洲，美国市场的退出和失败？0，必须要寻求合作伙伴，总之相互选择
因为人们消费和市场全球化的影响，现在人的快递越来越大，涉及种类多，常常需要很多航空公司的相互合作和配合，而每个快递公司虽然有自己的飞机，货车，但是也越来越趋向合作。UPS和TNT合并，保留了TNT在荷兰的分业务线，和一些优待，尽管这条线一直是亏本的（有种补偿的感觉？）
作者认为未来快递公司是趋于合并的，他们的竞争对手也会从其他公司，变成了其他integrators，但是有一系列因素导致这种合并不会轻松：一个是公司在本地建立的用户Loyalty被破坏了（不确定），一个是EC这样的组织为了回应民众的concern而对Integrator的惩罚措施，还有一个举了中国顺丰的例子，估计是integrator和当地寡头竞争也不容易？

原来是DHL不是DBS，我连人家名字都记不住，全部回忆更是查无此人。。。真的一点都没有印象

作者: Cynthia_1 时间: 2018-9-16 20:27
楼主一定要记得更新哦每天都来读耶你不是一个人！！

作者: ttly 时间: 2018-9-17 09:36
ups 收购tnt后，欧洲主要的公司是 dhl， dhl在美国没有市场，但是ups在欧洲有市场。
这篇越障其实我没怎么看明白 EC 的态度到底是啥，第一个小标题的最后一段没看懂，感觉好像是说罚款了？？
还有最后一个小标题，stay faithful 和最后一部分的内容有啥关系呀，感觉不是在说那家航空公司快不行了吗？
谁有时间请帮我看看，没时间就算啦

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-17 09:45
【越障1-7】

来源：https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/spinoff/Martian_Garden_Recreates_Red_Planets_Surface

（783words）

TheMartian Garden Recreates Red Planet’s Surface （天文）

If you were stranded on Mars, could you pull a Mark Watney from the book and movie "The Martian" and grow your food? Thanks to a new garden kit that mimics the soil conditions on the Red Planet, you can find out.

But the kit isn’t just for fun — it’s based on research NASA has been doing for more than 30 years, both to determine just what makes up the dirt onEarth’s next-door neighbor and to find equivalents here on the ground.

For a space agency designing robots and vehicles that can operate there,it is crucial to understand what conditions on the surface are like, to ensurethat the machines won’t get mired in mud, stuck in a sand pit or otherwise rendered inoperable.

One-Way Ticket

Despitethe fact that NASA operates multiple missions on and around Mars, so far, nonehave ever come back, which means we’ve never brought back any soil samples. So,to figure out just what’s on the ground, orbiters have used remote sensing torecord surface compositions across the entire planet, and robotic explorers analyze samples with a variety of tools and techniques.

Those studies have helped researchers learn that a major ingredient of much of the Martian surface is basalt, an iron-rich rock typically associated withvolcanoes on Earth. Starting in the 1990s, NASA engineers developingterrestrial Mars probes tested them using a mixture known as JSC Mars-1,consisting of particles ejected from Pu'u Nene volcano in Hawaii. But theparticles are naturally round and tended to attract moisture, which led them tobecome clay-like, so in the mid-2000s, NASA started looking elsewhere.

In 2006, Greg Peters of JPL’s Extraterrestrial Materials Simulation Laboratory found what he was looking for on a mountain in the Mojave Desert of California.Saddleback Mountain is home to a basalt quarry, dug into flows about 20 million years old. “I actually grew up in that area, so I knew about that deposit,”Peters says.

Samples were brought back to JPL and examined. “Mineral ogically and chemically, itlooked like a pretty good match,” Peters says.

Mars Mojave Simulant was born, and by 2008, JPL had stored up 10 tons of crushed Saddleback Mountain basalt.

But itwasn’t available to the public’s gardening efforts for another eight years,when a pair of Austin park rangers and “passionate space enthusiasts” decidedto go into business together.

‘As Dead as We Can Make It’

Theylaunched a Kickstarter campaign in 2016, selling 50 Martian Garden kits stocked with Mars Mojave Simulant complete with a desktop greenhouse, seeds and fertilizer — a necessity because the company bakes the soil in an autoclave “soit’s as dead as we can make it,” to better mimic Mars dirt, explains co-founderMark Cusimano.

TheAustin-based company continues to sell its kits, primarily to educators and researchers — but it has found that the Mars-like dirt is an even biggerseller, with customers ordering it in shipments of up to 200 pounds. “Peoplehave been very enthusiastic about the bulk material,” Cusimano says.

The company continues to develop its soil mixture to better imitate the chemical composition on Mars’ surface, and today The Martian Garden is the solecommercial provider of Mars simulant. That means NASA may one day end up as acustomer, though it’s not yet: the agency continues to look for more accurate Mars soil analogs.

JPL’sPeters says he was pleasantly surprised to learn about The Martian Garden. “Themore people who buy it, they’re either learning about Mars by doing experiments, or you’re getting somebody interested.”

NASAhas a long history of transferring technology to the private sector. Each year,the agency’s Spinoff publication profiles about 50 NASA technologies that have transformed into commercial products and services, demonstrating the wider benefits of America’s investment in its space program. Spinoff is a publicationof the Technology Transfer Program in NASA’s Space TechnologyMission Directorate.

Tolearn more about this NASA spinoff, read the original article from Spinoff 2018.

Formore information on how NASA is bringing its technology down to Earth, visit:

That exact scenario played out in 2009, when the Spirit rover wasnavigating near Mars’ equator and got stuck in a deposit of soft iron sulfate hidden under a layer of normal-looking Martian soil, putting an end to morethan five years of roaming.

A year earlier, the Phoenix lander tried to take an icy soil sample fromthe northern polar region of Mars, only to find it was too sticky to deliver from the probe’s scoop to one of its instruments. That line of research had tobe abandoned, and researchers were limited to analyzing dry samples.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-17 15:17
【速度1-7】
计时：+3行，+2行，58s, +2行， +1行
第一个： a kind of sea bird can change its color so as to cope with the body heat. Some researchers are inspired by this finding to find out more medical processes used on people, who has heart problem due to the failure to stand the uprising body temperature.
第二个： many sea birds died on their way of migration, and the scientists try to explore the reason. They find that seabird's action is influenced by the track of fish as well as the activities of fishing boat.
第三个： The scientist create a machine to capture the data of city heat（？）.They find that due to sun's heat is increasing due to the materials used for roofs. They lately suggest a cooling method namely using the white roof. But this might be a bad idea in winter. They also say that this suggestion and concern still lacks further check.
第四个：In califonia, people launch a rocket to lunar. The american want to leave some objects to infer that this place is found by them. But, the scientists don't think so , for this might broke the original environment of the planet

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-17 15:40
总是会两个词黏在一起。。。。每次只能手动分开
【速度1-8】
计时1 （294 words）
We present the first of three parts of the short story "Benito Cereno." It was written by Herman Melville. Here is Shep O'Neal with the story.
Captain Benito Cereno hurried aboard his ship. It was ready to sail. A bright sun and a soft breeze promised good weather ahead. The ship's anchor was raised. And the San Dominick -- old but still sea worthy - moved slowly out of the harbor of Valparaiso, on the west coast of Chile. It was carrying valuable products and slaves up the Pacific coast to Callao, another Spanish colonial port near Lima, Peru.
The slaves, both male and female, slept on deck. They were not chained, because their owner, Don Alexandro, said they were peaceful.
The San Dominick moved steadily forward under a clear sky. The weather showed no sign of change. Day after day, the soft breeze kept the ship on course toward Peru.
Slave traffic between Spain's colonial ports in this year of seventeen ninety-nine had been steady. But there were few outbreaks of violence. What happened, therefore, on board the San Dominick could not have been expected.
On the seventh day out, before daybreak, the slaves rose up in rebellion. They swept through the ship with handspikes and hatchets moving with the fury of desperate men. The attack was a complete surprise. Few of the crew were awake. All hands, except the two officers on the watch, lay in a deep untroubled sleep. The rebels sprang upon the two officers and left them half dead. Then, one by one, they killed eighteen of the sleeping crew. They threw some overboard, alive. A few hid and escaped death. The rebels tied up seven others, but left them alive to navigate the ship.

计时2 （272 words）

As the day began to break, Captain Cerenocame slowly, carefully up the steps toward the chief rebel leader, Babo, andbegged for mercy. He promised to follow Babo's commands if he would only put anend to the killings. But this had no effect. Babo had three men brought up ondeck and tied. Then, the three Spaniards were thrown overboard. Babo did thisto show his power and authority -- that he was incommand. Babo, however, promised not to murder Captain Cereno. But everythinghe said carried a threat. He asked the captain if in these seas there were anyNegro countries.*

"None," Cereno answered.

"Then, take us to Senegal or the neighboring islands ofSaint Nicholas."

Captain Cereno was shaken. "That is impossible!" hesaid. "It would mean going around Cape Horn. And this ship is in no condition for such a voyage. And we do not have enough supplies, or sails orwater."

"Take us there, anyway," Babo answered sharply,showing little interest in such details. "If you refuse, we will killevery white man on board."

Captain Cereno knew he had no choice. He told the rebel leader that the most serious problem in making such a long voyage was water. Babo said they should sail to the island of Santa Maria near the southern end of Chile.He knew that no one lived on the island. But water and supplies could be foundthere.

He forced Captain Cereno to keep away from any port. Hethreatened to kill him the moment he saw him start to move toward any city,town or settlement on shore.

计时3 （239 words)

Cereno had to agree to sail to the islandof Santa Maria. He still hoped that he might meet along the way, or at theisland itself, a ship that could help him. Perhaps -- who knows -- he mightfind a boat on the island and be able to escape to the nearby coast of Arruco.Hope was all he had left. And that was getting smaller each day.

Captain Cereno steered south for Santa Maria. The voyage would take weeks.

Eight days after the ship turned south, Babo told Captain Cereno that he was going to kill Don Alexandro, owner of the slaves on board. He saidit had to be done. Otherwise, he and the other slaves could never be sure oftheir freedom. He refused to listen to the captain's appeals, and ordered twomen to pull Don Alexandro up from below and kill him on deck. It was done asordered. Three other Spaniards were also brought up and thrown overboard. Babowarned Cereno and the other Spaniards that each one of them would go the sameway if any of them gave the smallest cause for suspicion.

Cereno decided to do everything possible to save the lives ofthose remaining. He agreed to carry the rebels safely to Senegal if they promised peace and no further bloodshed. And he signed a document that gave therebels ownership of the ship and its cargo.

计时4 （272 words）

Later, as they sailed down the long coastof Chile, the wind suddenly dropped. The ship drifted into a deep calm. Fordays, it lay still in the water. The heat was fierce; the suffering intense.There was little water. That made matters worse. Some of those on board weredriven mad. A few died. The pressure and tension made many violent. And theykilled a Spanish officer.

After a time, a breeze came up and set the ship free again. Andit continued south. The voyage seemed endless. The ship sailed for weeks withlittle water on board. It moved through days of good weather and periods of badweather. There were times when it sailed under heavy skies, and times when thewind dropped and the ship lay be-calmed in lifeless air. The crew seemed halfdead.

At last, one evening in the month of August, the San Dominick reached the lonely island of Santa Maria. It moved slowly toward one of theisland's bays to drop anchor. Not far off lay an American ship. And, the sightof the ship caught the rebels by surprise.

The slaves became tense and fearful. They wanted to sail away,quickly. But their leader, Babo, opposed such a move. Where could they go?Their water and food were low. He succeeded in bringing them under control andin quieting their fears. He told them they had nothing to fear. And theybelieved him.

Then, he ordered everyone to go to work, to clean the decks andput the ship in proper and good condition, so that no visitor would suspectanything was wrong.

计时5 （265 words）

Later, he spoke to Captain Cereno, warninghim that he would kill him if he did not do as he was told. He explained indetail what Cereno was to do and say if any stranger came on board. He held adagger in his hand, saying it would always be ready for any emergency.

The American vessel was a large tradeship and seal hunter,commanded by Captain Amasa Delano. He had stopped at Santa Maria for water.

On the American ship, shortly after sunrise, an officer woke Captain Delano, and told him a strange sail was coming into the bay. Thecaptain quickly got up, dressed and went up on deck. Captain Delano raised hisspy glass and looked closely at the strange ship coming slowly in. He wassurprised that there was no flag. A ship usually showed its flag when enteringa harbor where another ship lay at anchor.

As the ship got closer, Captain Delano saw it was damaged. Manyof its sails were ripped and torn. A mast was broken. And the deck was in disorder.Clearly the ship was in trouble.

The American captain decided to go to the strange vessel andoffer help. He ordered his whale boat put into the water, and had his men bringup some supplies and put them in the boat. Then they set out toward the mysteryship.

As they approached, Captain Delano was shocked at the poorcondition of the ship. He wondered what could have happened. . . And what he would find. That will be our story next week.

作者: ttly 时间: 2018-9-17 16:32
感谢楼主更新～～
第三部分第三段最后一句话没有看懂～～That means NASA may one day end up as a customer, though it’s not yet: the agency continues to look for more accurate Mars soil analogs. 这段话是NASA也在继续寻找更接近火星的土吗，一旦找到就不会在向现在的挖土公司购买土了？？然后隔了一段突然开始说NASA将技术卖给私人产业，这是什么结构？？

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-17 17:04

ttly 发表于 2018-9-17 16:32
感谢楼主更新～～
第三部分第三段最后一句话没有看懂～～That means NASA may one day end up as a custome ...

等我看看这篇哈

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-18 15:57
【越障1-8】
（1125 words）

Catholics and the campaign for women's suffrage inEngland

Narratives about women and religion in Victorian and Edwardian society seldom addressed the world of the Catholic laity, leaving the impression that Catholics were unimportant in English history. (1) Pushed into anonymity, they were easily misunderstood because of their religious sensibilities and loyalty to a church governed not fromLondon but Rome. This was a church long subject to various forms of disabilityin England and with a membership of roughly 5 percent of the population around1900. (2) By then, objections to the Catholic Church as a foreign institutionhad lessened, but critics still labeled Catholics "a people apart,"viewing them as too disinterested in their neighbors' welfare to play a vitalpart in public life. (3) So commonplace was this particular point of view thatit obscured Catholic participation in social causes such as the hard fought campaign for women's suffrage. As often as journalists, suffragists, and members of Parliament debated enfranchisement in the years before and after theFirst World War, very little is known today about the roleCatholics played in the struggle for women's rights.

There are studies of politically active Quakers, Anglicans, and Unitarians, but few comparable studies of the Catholicsthey knew as friends, confidantes, and workers in the suffragist cause. (4)Although-women as notable as Charlotte Despard and Alice Meynell were thesubjects of biography and memoir, their influence on Catholic feminism remains largely unexplored. (5)Somewhat better known is the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society, which began itsorganizational work in 1911. (6) Drawing supporters from London and variousprovincial towns, the founding members understood that the cause they espousedhad a Catholic history extending beyond their own concerns to include theclerical and lay opinion of an earlier age.

By the 1880s this opinion had broughtinto focus the politically divisive attitudes that complicated Catholic debate about women's suffrage, a debate that was joined after the turn of the centuryby a growing number of Catholic suffragists. Theirs was a detailed andpurposeful agenda. Reduced to its simplest terms, it presented women's suffrageas a matter of "elementary justice" and insisted that "thedifficult and arduous work of the women reformers is essentially andfundamentally a moral work" based on the "moral principle of true sexequality." (7) Although the vote was critically important, it was a meansand not an end for these reformers. They believed there was an equally pressingneed for the active participation of Catholic women in all that concerned women's work and women's emancipation. Collective efforts to make the suffrage campaign a significant "mission" for women clearly mattered toCatholic activists as did the struggle to make the public culture moreinclusive.

The record of this struggle is long and fairly detailed. In its detail it points to a past more reflective of theagency of Catholics than historians have supposed and calls attention to theprocess by which reforming women challenged the notion that Catholicism and feminism were incompatible. That it was unnecessary to choose between the two was theposition of a number of strong-minded women. Among them were Elisabeth Christitch, Alice Meynell, Virginia Crawford, Leonora de Alberti,Christopher St. John, and Alice Abadam. (8) All belonged to a generation ofreformers who were born and came of age during the Victorian era. All were accomplished workers in their chosen fields. Each created for herself anidentity as a feminist and a Catholic. At issue, then, is not simply their support for the parliamentary franchise, but whether this support can beunderstood in broader terms. If Catholics were "a people apart," ifthey occupied a separate world--at least in an institutional sense--wereCatholic suffragists able to effect change in the larger society; or was it thecase that their efforts had relevance for Catholic opinion alone?

I. 1850-1896

For the better part of the nineteenth century, public opinion in the small world of England's Catholics was the opinion of laymen and priests. Their voices dominated the Catholic press andinfluenced the discussion of political issues in newspapers, pamphlets, andmonthly journals. As this literature accumulated, it reminded readers thatCatholic spokesmen were, when it came to women's rights, men of their time. Ifthey took notice of women's status, their response was more often a terse commentary on the politics of the day than a brief for giving women a place inpublic affairs. This certainly was true in the 1850s when the Roman Catholichierarchy was reestablished in England, and Nicholas Wiseman became Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. In 1852, Wiseman wrote about "ladytheologians" in the Dublin Review, a Catholic quarterly that endorsed, asdid he, a traditional view of "woman's mission." This mission, heexplained, "is a mission of quiet, silent work; ... its sphere is thesmall, unpretending one of women's duty--in the school, in the cottage, in thegarret, in the hospital--but mainly at home," (9) Should women step out oftheir "appropriate sphere," Wiseman added, they would forfeit"rights" and lose "the respect of those who like to see everylady in her own place." (10)

Not only Cardinal Wiseman but many Protestant clerics and statesmen shared the opinion that a woman's mission,while important, lay in "another direction than the House of Commons." (11) When pro-suffrage voices sounded in the 1860s, harsh words colored the commentary and editorials of the Catholic press. The Dublin Review,the Tablet, and the Month deplored the "clamour" of suffragists anddenounced "female emancipation" as the "ridiculous" andfanciful theory of "shallow philosophers." (12) To talk of women'srights, claimed the Dublin Review, was "nonsense"; the Tablet, aCatholic weekly, concurred. (13) So did the Month, a Jesuit periodical that used its columns in 1869 to criticize John Stuart Mill, saying that his"rather feminine attack upon man as a tyrannical usurper of power overwomen is so little likely to have any practical influence that it is not necessary to be here at any pains to refute him." (14) The Archbishop ofWestminster, Henry Edward Manning, was just as dismissive of the "womanquestion," particularly in a lecture he delivered in London during Lent 1871. To a large audience assembled at Moorfields, Manning said among otherthings: "I trust that the woman hood of England ... will resist by a sternmoral refusal, the immodesty which would thrust women from their private lifeof dignity and supremacy into the public conflicts of men." (15) Eventhough he was an advocate of social reform, Manning chose not to support thesuffragist cause. Equality between the sexes, he believed, would not"elevate" but "degrade" a woman by involving her in thedirt and strife of political life.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-18 20:04
【越障1-7】 6min 34s
主旨：本文讲科学家如如何在未知挑战下重现火星表面土壤成分的故事
结构：介绍科学家（NASA）目的，局限性和挑战，第一个尝试，第二个尝试，一个公司如何通过这个获得成功的，其他相关的研究和进展
科学家想人工制造出火星表面的土壤成分，但是目前NASA派出的所有探索火星的仪器都没有回收，所以没有直接成分可以复制，但有一个办法是获取火星外圈的物质，探索成分构造，然后就发现这是一种富含铁（还有一个成分，忘了）的物质，与地球上火山爆发后留下的物质类似，于是就去取了一些某火山的土。但是这个土颗粒是圆的，天生吸水，所以获得的最后永远都是稀泥，不能模拟火星表层。那么就有了第二个尝试，即某个desert的土，发现也与之前火星边物质的成分类似。这个是一个曾经在此沙漠旁住过的人发现的。
直到2016年，这个项目才真正落地，与一些土，植物，肥料一起，重造了火星土，一个公司（martial garden 把这个土配合自己的kit（工具？）一起卖，深受普通市民和研究者的欢迎。一个人提到这种商业模式：即民众为科学买单，公司赚得的钱又进一步拿去研究。这种模式很好。
不过这个公司开始寻找NASA以外的新合作对象，而NASA也开始寻找新的火星土来源。
NASA目前进行的项目都在准备或是已经商业化，以获得资金进行进一步研究。
又提到了两个关于火星探索的项目，第一个忘了TT，第二个是研究人员想要从火星两极采集一些冰回来，但失败了，目前正在寻求新的办法

感觉自己阅读集中度好了很多，速度也变快了，信息也记得比较多了。难道是因为文章不够难吗？？？？不会的，一定是我有了进步！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-19 11:27
【速度1-8】
+4行， +2行， +1行， +2行， 1min
It tells s story that on a cargo ship on the way to its desitination, Peru, the slaves rose up for rebellion , killed the Spanish at sleep on the ship and torn others down. They threatened the captain to turn the orientation and drove the ship to a remote island called S. M. regardless of the water and food supply. During the journey , they killed their owners to ensure their own freedom. The weather was extreme and many people on the ship died from the heat.
They managed to arrive the S.M. only to find that there was another American Vessel. They asked the Captain to leave again but were refused. The Captain asked them to pretend to work in case American suspect. The captain signed contract with the slaves, giving them the command of the ship and all the cargoes. But at last, the American was attracted by the ship and wanted to offer for help.

作者: ttly 时间: 2018-9-19 20:59

进击的智人阿飞发表于 2018-9-18 20:04
【越障1-7】 6min 34s
主旨：本文讲科学家如如何在未知挑战下重现火星表面土壤成分的故事
结构：介绍科学 ...

看了楼主的感觉明白了呢，我之前看的时候感觉文章主题再讲那个公司，原来一直在讲NASA

作者: summer爱炸鸡呀 时间: 2018-9-20 10:25
Mark一下！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-20 11:20
【速度 1-9】

计时1 （280words ）

UN: Half ofYoung Teenagers Face Violence or Bullying in School

A UnitedNations report says about half of students aged 13 to 15 worldwide haveexperienced some form of violence in school.

This number represents about 150 million students from aroundthe world. The report was released by the U.N. children's agency, knownas UNICEF.

Included in the 13-15 age group were students who reported beingin a physical fight within the past year. Also included were students who saidthey had been bullied in the last month.

"For millions of students around the world, the schoolenvironment is not a safe space to study and grow," the report said."It is a danger zone where they learn infear."

Some information in the study was collected by UNICEF.Information on some countries came from governments or other organizations.

The report identifies bullying as one of the biggest problemsfacing schools. About one in three students reported they had experiencedbullying at school. In industrialized nations, 17 million students aged 13through 19 admitted to bullying others at school.

UNICEF said certain youth groups are more likely to be victimsof bullying. These include ethnic minorities, children with disabilities andmembers of the LGBT community. In Britain, onestudy found that 30 to 50 percent of young school students who identifiedas gay had experienced bullying.

Thereport said studies have shown that boys are generally more likely toexperience bullying that includes physical violence or threats. Girls are morelikely to be victims of "psychological or relational" forms ofbullying. This can involve spreading false information about people or shuttingthem out of social groups, the report said.

计时2 （273 words）

Cyberbullyingis also an increasing problem for students, UNICEF said. This form of bullingis described as "willful and repeated harm" caused through the use ofcomputers, mobile phones and other electronic devices.

Cyberbullying can result in victims developing alcohol and drugproblems or having difficulties with schoolwork. In severe cases it can resultin suicide, the report said.

The study found about one-third of students aged 13 to 15reported being involved in physical fights. Data from 25 countries showed that20 percent of girls and 50 percent of boys reported physical attacks by otherstudents at least once during the past year.

The report said that violence can also happen as a form ofpunishment in some schools. In some classrooms, teachers and other schoolofficials are "far too often the source offearful learning environments."

UNICEF said about half of all school-age children live incountries where corporal punishment is not fullybanned by law in schools. The organization estimates there are about 720million children who are not protected from this form of violence.

Armed conflict is another form of violence. The report estimatesthat about 158 million young people live in conflict-affected areas. For thesestudents, classrooms can be no safer than the communities they live in.

The U.N. said itidentified more than 500 direct attacks in 2017 on schools in some countries.Among them, nearly 400 happened in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. InSouth Sudan, 26 attacks were identified, while 67 were reported in the SyrianArab Republic. At least 20 school attacks happened in Yemen. UNICEF said manyof these attacks were deadly.

计时3 （279 words ）

Thereport said school shootings have also become a major form of violence in manyareas. Between November 1991 and May 2018, 70 school shootings were reported in14 countries. Each shooting involved two or more victims, with at least onedeath.

In addition to the harmful physical and mental effects ofviolence in schools, the problem can also have great economic costs. The reportestimates the worldwide costs of violence against children are as high as $7trillion.

UNICEF is calling on governments to develop and enforce laws andpolicies aimed at keeping students safe in schools, as well as in their online experiences.

The organization has also launched an internet campaign,called #ENDviolence, in an effort to raise awarenessand increase public support for the fight against violence and bullying inschools.

I'm Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOALearning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.

SpaceXAnnounces First Private Passenger for Moon Trip

TheAmerican space-travel company SpaceX has announced that its first privatepassenger to the moon will be a Japanese businessman. Yusaku Maezawa is thecreator and chief executive of the online clothing store Zozo.

Maezawa wants to take a trip around the moon using the plannedBig Falcon Rocket in 2023. He also announced that he plans to invite six toeight artists, architects, designers and othercreative people to join him. He said he wants to "inspire thedreamer in all of us."

Maezawa said he does not want to have the experience by himself.Instead, he wants his crew, "to see the moon up close, and the Earth infull view, and create work to reflect their experience."

计时4 （267 words）

Maezawaadded that he often wondered what artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat or AndyWarhol might have created if they had traveled to space.

A former musician, Maezawa, is one of Japan's most colorfulbusiness leaders. He is regularly covered by Japanese media for his collectionof foreign and Japanese art and fast cars. Maezawa also is known for havingpaid a record $110 million for an untitled 1982 painting by Jean-MichelBasquiat.

Not 100 percent certain

Maezawa's identity was announced at an event on Monday eveningat SpaceX's headquarters and rocket factorynear Los Angeles.

At the event, Musk gave additional information about the BigFalcon Rocket, or BFR, a reusable 118-meter rocket. He wants the rocket to sendpassengers to the moon and, later, Mars. Musk said that the BFR is still indevelopment and will make several unmanned test launches before carryingpassengers.

Musk also added that the BFR could be taking its first orbitalflights in about two to three years. Earlier, he had said he wanted the rocketto be ready for an unmanned trip to Mars by 2022 and a crewed flight in 2024.

However,in the past, Musk has not always been able to meet planned target dates."It's not 100 percent certain we can bring this to flight," Musk saidof the lunar mission.

Musk said the development of the BFR is expected to cost about$5 billion. He did not say how much Maezawa is paying for the lunar trip. Buthe said that the Japanese businessman will make a significant pre-paymentthat will help the cost of development.

计时5 （295 words）

Space Tourism

Space tourism began in 2001 when businessman Dennis Tito paidfor a trip on a Russian rocket to the International Space Station. The trip wasorganized by the Virginia-based company Space Adventures. The company has sentseveral more paying customers on spaceflights since then.

SpaceX is competing with two other companies for space tourismmoney. They are Blue Origin of Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos and VirginGalactic of entrepreneur Richard Branson.

NASA is planning its own orbital trip to the moon with a crew in2023. The U.S. space agency aims to build a manned space station near the moonduring the 2020s.

The distance from Earth to the moon is about 382,500 kilometers.Astronauts last visited Earth's only natural satellite during NASA's Apolloprogram. Twenty-four men flew to the moon from 1968 through 1972, about half ofthem were able to reach the lunar surface.

I'm Phil Dierking

Reuters reported this story. PhilDierking adapted it for Learning English, using additional materials. MarioRitter was the editor.

Study:Not Enough Exercise Leads to Sickness

About1.4 billion people around the world do not get enough physical exercise. Thatrepresents about one-fourth of the world's adult population.

Those numbers come from the United Nations' World HealthOrganization (WHO). A new WHO report warns that a lack of exercise greatlyincreases the risk of cardiovascular disease and other health problems. Theseproblems include type 2 diabetes, dementia and even some cancers.

The WHO says the new study is the first to estimate physicalactivity trends around the world over time. A report on thestudy was published earlier this month in The Lancet.

Researchers looked at 358 population-based studies between 2001and 2016. Those studies involved nearly 2 million people in 168 countries.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-20 11:24
【越障1-9】

Healthy Competition toSupport Healthy Eating? An Investigation of Fruit and Vegetable Pricing inUK Supermarkets. （社会学，CR：同名paper）

（1078 words）

There is growing public health concern that consumers, especially from poorer families, are being dissuaded fromeating healthy fresh fruit and vegetables, as prices have been rising fasterfor these healthy fresh foods than for processed foods (ODI, [ 22] ).[ 1] This can have major consequences on the health of peopleand increase the burden of health costs for treating illnesses linked with poordiets and unhealthy eating.[ 2] While governments seek to counter this by promoting healthyeating, like the UK's ‘5‐a‐day’ campaign, high prices for fresh fruits and vegetables can bea major obstacle to achieving improved diets.[ 3]

Of particular concern is whether increasing concentration in grocery retailing might lead retailers to avoid intense price competition over relatively undifferentiated commodity products such as fruit and vegetables. In this context, the UK food retail sector has become increasingly concentrated over time and is now characterised as arelatively tight oligopoly with a small number of nationally competing supermarket chains.The sector has been subject to a number of investigations by the competition authorities over recent years but the popular perception is one of the industry fighting regular price wars and competition being fierce. As such, strong price competition could be expected in fresh fruits and vegetables, largely unbrandedand supplied without noticeable producer power, where retail competition shouldbe intense for perishable, and thus frequent purchases.

Media reports, however, suggest that fruit and vegetables are sold in the UK with high mark‐upsand indicate ineffective price competition in the sector.[ 4] More substantive investigation and analyses highlight the incentives and potential for exercising market power against consumers’interests in the food retail sector (Competition Commission, [ 7] , [ 8] ; Smith, [ 28] , [ 29] ). Focusing on particular products,Lloyd ([ 18] ), Revoredo‐Gihaand Renwick ([ 24] ) and Seaton and Waterson ([ 26] ) provide empirical evidence that price leadership and potential retail price coordination exists for UK beef,fresh produce and packaged groceries, respectively.

However, in these pricing studies either the range of products or number of retailers covered tend to be limited andthey span different time periods. In contrast, we focus on fruit and vegetable prices and examine these across all seven main national supermarket chainsin the UK for a period spanning 2007–2013. Importantly, this is a time period which covered economic austerity and a deep recession, which might be expected to strengthen competitive retail pricing pressures. We draw on weekly retail prices for these seven retailers and additionally utilise matching wholesaleprices from the major UK fruit and vegetable wholesale markets to provide anindication of the retail supply costs. We examine the movements of wholesale and retail prices to provide an indication of pass‐throughrates, where high (low) pass‐through rates should be indicative of more (less) competitive conditions, ceteris paribus. Furthermore, we examinethe character and intensity of price interactions across retailers to assess the degree of product‐level price competition.

The paper is organised as follows. Thenext section reviews the market and the related literature. Section summarises the dataset of retail and wholesale prices. Section reports onthe pass‐through analysis at the product level. Section reports on the analysis of price interaction across retailers to identify the patterns of competition at itemlevel. Section discusses the results and draws conclusions on the extent and character ofprice competition in the market.

Conclusion

Against a background of consisten tconcerns expressed about inflated prices for fruit and vegetables in the UK, we examine the pattern of price competition across the seven leading UK supermarkets fora set of 26 different fruits and vegetables. We investigate the extent of price competition by examining wholesale‐to‐retail pass‐throughrates and retail price interactions amongst the set of leading UK supermarket chains.

The product‐level results highlight that there are differences in the way that individual products are treated. Wholesale‐to‐retail price transmission competition appears more direct on a quarter of the products (notably cauliflower,cucumber, iceberg lettuce, pears and parsnips), while being distinctly weakerfor the other three‐quarters of the products in the sample. Equally, retail priceinteraction analysis indicates more vigorous competition amongst a similar setof products (consisting of broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, cucumber and pears),suggesting some consistency in the findings across the two sets of analyses. Noticeably, one inconsistency relates to broccoli where there is little correspondence in wholesale‐retail pass‐through but retail pricing behaviour suggests keen competition and also the wholesale‐retail margin appears very low or even negative. Its pricing pattern looks more akinto a loss leader item (if not necessarily to the extreme to which bananas areused as a loss leader – e.g. The Guardian,[ 32] ).

In addition to different degrees of competition at the product‐level, we also find that there are significant differences in the extent to which different retailers appear to compete and interact in setting retail prices. The prices set by the smaller retail chains (M&S, Waitrose and Co‐operative) are consistently higher andless responsive to competitors than those by the Big 4 retailers (Tesco, Asda,Sainsbury's and Morrisons), but there is also a hierarchy within the Big 4(where Asda tends to have lower prices than the other three but with somevariation). The retail price structures we observe may be a characteristic of vertical quality differentiation amongst the retailers, where the higher prices reflect superior retail service or superior product quality. However, it could also be symptomatic of retailers understanding and adhering to a hierarchy of prices and avoiding intense price competition.

For consumers, there is clear merit inshopping around to obtain the lowest prices given that persistent and wideprice dispersion is evident for most of the items studied here. No retailer universally has the lowest prices on all products, but equally there are retailers which on average have lower prices than the others and seem to be responding more competitively than some of their rivals. Reassuringly, pricesdo appear relatively fluid and indicative of keen competition on the bigger selling products, but less for so for the slower selling products where shopping around can perhaps pay consumers the greatest dividends.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-20 14:59
【越障 1-8】 9min 51s
这篇文章比较GMAT风，文笔也是，长难句比较多，但结构还满清晰的。不过真长啊，我可能要再扫一遍才能做回忆
主要讲：天主教在维多利亚和爱德华时期为女性的投票权所做的贡献和遇到的反对
结构：天主教为女权的贡献收到忽视的原因，一系列忽视的或没有忽视的努力，天主教关于女性投票权的主要观点以及自身的一些矛盾点，这个观点的发展，19世纪一些反对的声音维多利亚时期的英国，天主教在支持女权上有很多贡献，但在历史被忽视了，有几个原因： 1. 天主教的根基在罗马而非英国 2. 天主教一直被认为是高冷而与个人生活比较割裂的。天主教有很多教徒都是历史有名的女权运动者，但这个大多数人不知情；比较为人熟知的是天主教女性投票权后援会（编的23333)。天主教女权论者最开始仅是把女性投票权看作一个政治问题，而忽视了为女性争取在公共事务上发言的权利；而且天主教的的教义与他们的女权观不能分离，这也是初期观念的限制。这个时期女性投票权的主要敌人是约束在女性身上的宗教相关道德枷锁。后来很多天主教有名的女权论者涌现出来，她们同时也是在自己的领域十分出色的女性，有了他们，人们开始将女权观从政治问题转向更广泛的领域。
但在19世纪，天主教为女性争取投票权是受到教会内外多方反对的，因为那时的教会的主体是牧师和教父，他们的观点被广泛印发到报纸/书籍/小册子上，代表着天主教在世人眼中的形象。来源于他们还有外界反对声音主要有三类：
1. women's misson：从社会分工来谈，认为女性应该专注于医院，学校，家庭等更私人的领域，一些大场合应该由男性出面
2. 认为女性对男性反抗的力量十分小，不足以造成改变
3. 认为女性到外面抛头露面只会让一些不尊重女性的男性开心（因为他们可以看到更多女性了），女性反而会丧失她们在更小，更封闭的环境中的尊严和幸福。

作者: bluechacha79 时间: 2018-9-20 18:36

发表于 2018-08-27 13:26:46
睡前附在这里，睡醒了起来读

1-1【速度练习】
【速度1】
Dogs Trained to...

Mark一下

作者: 我叫嚯哈哈 时间: 2018-9-20 19:33
感谢分享！

作者: Clemence4ever 时间: 2018-9-21 09:36
马一下，第二天·

作者: Wilma_dc 时间: 2018-9-21 20:00
Mark一下！

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-21 20:13
应该是DAY3吧~越障
主旨：讲的一个针对某个美国海洋领域的调查的原因（背景），困难性，发展过程，及目的。
段落：
1、先介绍了开展这个调查的背景，调查的地域的介绍，是一个未知的领土，想要知道水下有什么，所以开展了一个调查；
2、后面两端介绍了ALASKA,是美国1/5的领土，是Arctic的重要领域？
3、介绍调查Arctic的困难性，因为冰层persist的问题？一般是thick ice会限制船的行驶。但是A的冰是因为xx原因，是逐渐减少的，允许船的行驶的。
4、随着A领域的扩张，于是开始制定新的plan，然后介绍了plan的内容？
5、完成了plan的一部分，收集了数据以及数据的重要性，数据是基础，可以帮助调查，可以了解XXX.
6、要寻找经济，安全，环境等之间的平衡。因为那里的人都以捕捉海洋生物为生存，所以要保证当地的需求，但也要处理好其他的问题。
7、最后一段讲的就是整个plan的目的吧，了解了海洋地下的结构等，就可以寻找最合适的安全的生物通行的路。

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-21 20:26
今天有点不舒服没有更新，不过找到了beattheGmat论坛上的一个连词逻辑词整理，放在一楼附件了，感觉可以和小安一起用

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-22 10:56
【速度1-9】
计时+1行， +3行， +3行， +3行， 54s中间为了兼顾意思有点慢，还是要快点读，记结构哇。今天有空把昨天的越障也补上
first part: according to a UICEF's report that in USA ,among the age group of 13 to 15, the school bllying is still the most important problem in school. Every one in three students have experienced bullying and half of (?) those over 16 have once bullied others. The group most prone to school bullying are the ethnic, disabled and LGBT. A large proportion of children who admit to be gay have been bullied. The boys are subject to physical bullying and the girls, psychological and relational bullying.
Apart from this common kind, there are two other kinds of bullying. The first is cyber bullying. They are more ubiquitous due to the Internet and push many people to commit a suicide. The second is armed fight. Many young children lived in place full of armed fights and they are prone to being killed by shots at school. Even though this is the truth, the school is still the safest place to stay. UNICEF call on government to take active measures to curb all kinds of bullying especially cyber and armed ones.

second part: A business man M. from Japan is arranged to the first one to go on a space trip. This news was published on Space X websits. The man is a director of online cloth shop company and he is used to be a musician. He thinks people should do everything to realise dreams and he plans to invite some artists to go with him . This trip is said to be done in 2023. But Musk is always causious about Space X spacecrafts capability . He never said they were prepared 100% and once said this trip might be postponed to 2024. There are two more companies contributing to space trip, the advantage of SPace X over them is the capital —— the customer is asked to prepay some of the service . NASA is also arranging its first spacetrip.

Third part: the lack in excercise now comes the first threat to our health according to WHO. It might result in 心血管疾病， cancer.etc.

作者: 寒夜听雪 时间: 2018-9-22 13:23
楼主，我感觉找到你这帖子有点晚了已经，今天一战一败涂地，泪目中。

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-22 19:02

寒夜听雪发表于 2018-9-22 13:23
楼主，我感觉找到你这帖子有点晚了已经，今天一战一败涂地，泪目中。

不晚不晚，一起加油哦！我下个月三战

作者: wpx 时间: 2018-9-22 20:56
day4 10min
主旨：
地球上的氧气是逐渐增加的，不是一次大爆炸导致的，主要讲的就是最新发现的关于这个的evidence,之后讲了最新的对这个evidence的观点及未来还要研究的方向。
段落：
1.二氧化碳循环模式的发现和GOE事件之后的很像，这为地球氧气是逐渐增加的提供了证据。
2.有一个nasa的团队研究了关于这个的，发现了二氧化碳的相关变化，表明了地球上氧气含量的变动是和生物进化有关的。
3.study包含的氧气，硫，二氧化碳相关的数据，数据表明氧气量的变动模式，和之前认为的两个大事件的发展是相反的。
4.一个学家关于study和evidence的看法
5.通过二氧化碳同位素等的变化，以及同时的氧气，硫等的变化，科学家得出这些变化并不是偶然，是有关系的。
6.WILD 波动
7.尽管科学家长期认为氧气波动是跟随生物进化的，但是氧气和二氧化碳的cycle是随意波动的？
8.K提出的观点，关于goe 和Noe 的，goe时期是进化的简单的开始，Noe是复杂的进化时期？
9.未来还要研究的方向

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-23 17:04
【越障1-9】计时： 11min 15s主旨：英国超市的竞争标价情况及影响。
结构：引入政策背景，研究话题及对象、范围选择，前人的类似研究和结论,limitation，结构，结论
大意：英国政府号召健康饮食，然而健康的核心：蔬菜和水果近几年涨价很凶，很多人的摄入量因此受影响。很多涨价是因为竞争标价引起的。之前有过的研究是让超市不再卖很多东西，而是集中地卖几样东西，看是否能减少这种竞争标价；其他的则是发现标价越高的产品竞争标价行为越少，此外还有一些研究。
但这些研究共同的限制是，时间范围很短，样本范围也很有限。本文克服了限制，研究从2003-2007英国七家食品连锁超市的情况。选择这个时间与经济危机有关。本文希望研究：1. 竞争标价是否集中出现在一些固定的品类中 2. 以批发和零售价格为对照，看看竞争标价情况是否会被pass-through rates(消费者溢价）影响 3. 看零售商间的交流会不会减少竞争标价 4. 是否会出现一个地区一个标价标准的情况
结构：文献综述，数据罗列，实验，结论
结论：（只记得两个2333）批发价的竞争标价集中出现在一些特定品类（包括花菜，生菜），零售的则是出现在另一些（包括胡萝卜）；pass-through rate被发现与竞争标价的关系不大不同的零售商对竞争标价的反应也不同：小连锁如 M& S对于竞争对手的标价不怎么关心；大连锁则是标价受对手影响明显，例举了一个大超市普遍标价低但是波动大
不过作者认为消费者不用很担心这种情况，一是一个商场有可能某个商品高某个商品比别个价格低，二是消费者非常容易看出哪个商场普遍价格比较低，三是高的商品价格普遍与商品质量成正比。

看到后面完全忘了第二和第三段的内容TT，看完回去扫了一眼发现其实就是和结论一一对应的呀！！！active reading随时强调对应和前后联系！！

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-23 17:14
【速度1-10】计时1 （272 words）

Report: Long Writing Assignments Now Less Common at USColleges

Higher education can testa person's academic abilitiesin many ways. Most study programs require research, class discussions,presentations and group projects, to name a few.

Yetif you asked almost any professor or student, they would likely tell you thatwriting is one of the skills most often examined at colleges and universities.In the United States, writing long essays aboutcomplex subjects has been, in many cases, a major part of higher education foryears.

However,a new study suggests that many current college students have never experiencedthe challenge ofwriting very long papers. And some experts argue this may not be as necessary arequirement for their success overall.

The higher educationresearch company Primary Research Group published the findings of its study inlate July. It includes data gathered from 1,140 students at four-year collegesand universities in the U.S.

Thestudents were asked about the kinds of long-form writing they had done and theamount of writing training they had received. Nearly one third of them hadnever been required to write an essay of ten pages or more inlength.

JamesMoses is the president of Primary Research Group. He says, ten pages might seemlike an unnecessarily large amount of writing, especially for students infields like math or science. In fact, he argues, many students avoid longerpapers by choosing subjects in which they are less likely to be required.

Mosessays students are likely attracted tothose fields because they see many of today's highest paying jobs are at bigtechnology companies.

计时2 （305 words）

But he says that manyyoung people fail to understand that there is still great demand for skilledwriters in the job market. And long form writing assignments domore than measure how much or for how long a person can write about any giventhing.

"Morethan anything else, a long paper teaches you planning and organization, to amuch greater extent thanmost other exercises that I can think of in higher education," he toldVOA.

Universityof California, Davis writing teacher Dan Melzer agrees. He says long formwriting assignments can teach skills that are useful even in fields that maynot seem to be related to writing.

Forexample, engineers often have to write long, detailed proposals for buildingprojects. Businesses require well-written business plans to get bank loans ormoney from private investors.

BothMelzer and Moses agree that there is a deep lack of writing instruction, at alllevels of education. The Primary Research Group study found that about 40percent of college students were not receiving any writing training.

Thisis not surprising to Melzer, He says it is common for colleges and universitiesfacing financial difficulties to make cuts in such programs. And he saysprofessors often expect students to be well trained in long form writing, fromtheir high school studies or earlier.

ButMelzer says that is not fair to students, especially those whose educationalexperiences were centered on skills other than writing. So, he says, professorsof subjects that are not heavy in writing should find ways to include the skillin instruction.

"Ifyour teachers are only giving you exams and you're cramming for theexam and kind of spittingout real short answers...you're not really doing in-depththinking or critical thinking," he said. "You're not really usingyour mind to the fullest."

计时3 （309 words）

Elaine Maimon is thepresident of Governors State University in University Park, Illinois. She alsohelped establish the Writing Across the Curriculum movement in the 1970s. Thiswas an effort to get professors in fields like science, technology, engineeringand mathematics to make greater use of writing in their classes.

Supportersof the movement seek to train such professors in writing instruction. They alsohelp professors share successful writing assignments with each other and showthem how best to criticize students' written work.

Maimonshares the opinions of Melzer and Moses that writing instruction is highlyimportant. Still, she is not as concerned about the lack of longer assignments.She agrees that in some cases, these long assignments can challenge students ina helpful way. But length is not the only quality that is important, she says.

"Countingpages,...that's not the way to assess whetherstudents are learning to be writers," said Maimon. "If you say, ‘Wehave a great program and the students have to write five ten-page papers,' whatyou're going to get is a lot of filler. So students aren't going to be learninghow to write, rewrite, rethink. And when should something be brief instead oflong? We want to make sure students understand that, too."

YemenisStarving as Aid System Fails

In a rural area innorthern Yemen, many families with starving children have nothing to eat butthe leaves ofa local plant. They cook the leaves in water, creating a bitter, sharp-tastinggreen substance.

Internationalaid agencies have been surprised by the level of starvation in northern Yemen,as parents and children die.

Manythin children stopped by the main health center in Aslam during a recent visitby the Associated Press. Babies with all the signs of malnutrition were eachweighed. Their papery skin was stretched tight over arms and legs.

计时4 （297 words）

At least 20 children areknown to have died of starvation in the province this year, more than threeyears into Yemen's civil war. The real number is likely higher, since fewfamilies report it when their children die at home, officials say.

Ina nearby village, a seven-month-old girl, Zahra, cries for her mother to feedher. Her mother is starving herself and is often unable to breastfeed thechild.

"Sincethe day she was born, I have not had the money to buy her milk or buy hermedicine," the mother said.

Zahrawas recently treated at the heath clinic. At home, she is losing weight again.Her parents do not have the money to pay for transportation back to thedoctors.

Ifthey don't, Zahra will die, said Mekkiya Mahdi, the head of the clinic.

"Weare in the 21st century, but this is what the war did to us," she said.Mahdi added that after she visits nearby villages and sees people eating thegreen, leafy paste, "I go home and I can't put food in my mouth."

Thehunger in Aslam is a sign of problems in an international aid system that isalready low on supplies and under pressure from local officials.

Yetforeign aid is the only thing stopping widespread death from starvation inYemen.

Theconditions in Aslam may also show that the aid agencies' warnings are comingtrue: In an unending war, the spread of starvation is greater than the effortsto keep people alive.

Whenthe Associated Press (AP) asked United Nations agencies about the situation inAslam, they expressed surprise. To find out the reason why food was not gettingto the needy families, aid groups launched an investigation, a top aid officialtold the AP.

计时5（ 292 words）

In order to helpimmediately, the official said, aid agencies are sending over 10,000 foodcontainers to the area. The official did not give his name because of thedanger of working in the middle of a war.

UNICEFResident Representative Meritxell Relano said the organization is increasingits mobile teamsfrom three to four and transporting people to the health clinics.

Inthe first six months of 2018, Hajjah province, including Aslam village, had17,000 cases of extreme malnutrition. That number is higher than any otheryear, said Walid al-Shamshan, head of nutrition at the province's HealthMinistry.

Malnourishedchildren who are treated often go back to villages with no food and bad water.Then they return to clinics in worse condition or they die.

Deathshappens in these villages, where people can't reach healthcare teams,al-Shamshan said.

Thecivil war in Yemen has wrecked the country's ability to feed its people.

Thewar is between Shiite Muslim rebels known as Houthis, who hold the north, and aSaudi-led coalition, armed and helped by the United States. The coalition hastried to bomb the rebels into submission withan air campaign in support of Yemeni government forces.

Around2.9 million women and children are acutely malnourished.Another 400,000 children with extreme malnourishment are fighting for theirlives.

Nearly8.4 million of Yemen's 29 million people would starve without food aid,one-fourth more than last year, the U.N. estimates.

Thatnumber is likely to rise by another 3.5 million because of the falling value ofYemen's money, which leaves people unable to buy food, the U.N. warned.

Todate, the U.N. and its partners have only received about 65 percent of the $3billion they requested for a humanitarian campaign in 2018.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-23 17:22
【越障1-10】（经济+历史）
The mighty coinThe dominance of merchant values is the reason for today's financial crisis, argues David Priestland
（936 words）

A VIEW of history as a perpetual tussle between competing classes and interest groups is not exactly new. Max Weber and Karl Marx, the founders of historical sociology, spawned an army of disciples. David Priestland, an Oxford don and the author of a wide-ranging history of communism, is happy to acknowledge his intellectual debt. Yet he argues that this view of history underestimates the importance of the way people in power think, behave and persuade others of the supremacy of their values.

Mr Priestland’s thesis in this lively, opinionated but ultimately disappointing “essay” (his term) is that throughout most of history three “castes”—the soldier, the merchant and the sage—have struggled for predominance over a fourth, the worker. When one of these castes achieves unchallenged control over the others, he writes, the result is war, revolution or economic disaster. The aim of this book is to use the lessons of history to understand the current financial crisis. Mr Priestland argues that the West is now paying the price for succumbing to the values of merchants, who believe in the justice of the market, prize the pursuit of short-term profit and worship credit and risk.

Most societies are based on an informal alliance between two of these three castes, writes Mr Priestland. Early agrarian empires were often led by aristocrats with warrior and landowner values (soldiers) in close alliance with priests (sages), who provided a spiritual justification for their rule. The merchant was tolerated for bringing wealth through trade, but also resented for being cleverer and often richer than traditional elites.

Merchant power waxed and waned throughout most of the pre-modern period, always dependent on protection from the warrior caste. It was not until the late 17th century that merchants first emerged as a dominant caste in England and Holland. Mr Priestland sets out to show how merchant ideals and the reaction to them, often in the form of a warrior resurgence, have shaped (and largely misshaped) the modern world.

The 19th century saw the seemingly inexorable rise of what Mr Priestland describes as “soft merchant” values, when Britain used its growing empire as a force for promoting free-trade and globalisation, ostensibly in the interests of all. Britain’s competitors, however, regarded this imperial project as less benign. As Mr Priestland puts it, by the mid-19th century, “the world of cosmopolitan merchants was becoming one of competing business cartels, increasingly backed by the might of nation states.” No country adopted the values of the “warrior-hard merchant” with more vigour than Bismarckian Germany, where repression at home and brutal zero-sum commercial competition with other rising industrial powers became the order of the day. Mr Priestland sees the first world war as both the consequence and the graveyard of that system.

After the war, America emerged as the wealthiest nation and dominant exporter of capital. This led to the spread of a new form of merchant power across much of the developed world in the form of debt-fuelled consumer capitalism. Yet the massive financial and trade imbalances that resulted ended up bringing this “first merchant age” to a shuddering halt with the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The years of fiscal austerity and social turmoil that followed, writes Mr Priestland, contributed to the militarisation of Germany and Japan.

The bloodletting of the second world war ultimately inspired a new alliance of “sagely technocrats” and “soft merchants”. Determined to learn the lessons of the past, this partnership worked to create a new world order, writes Mr Priestland. The early fruit was the Bretton Woods monetary system, which established the rules governing commercial relations between the big industrial nations. The result, the author contends, was the post-war golden age of prosperity and social harmony.

But with the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971, due to fiscal incontinence, rising inflation and union militancy, came what Mr Priestland sees as the tragic demise of sagely technocrats and a renaissance of hard merchant power. Led by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, this period marked the rise of “Davos man” and the so-called Washington consensus. It launched the second merchant age which persists today, albeit in a rather broken state.

Mr Priestland regards the banking and sovereign-debt crisis of the past five years as the entirely “predictable” consequence of allowing merchant values to dictate the ethos of Western policymakers. He laments that these leaders are still in thrall to financial markets and international business, and he is appalled by what he sees as a collective instinct to try to repair a failing system rather than change it.

Unfortunately the author seems to have little idea of how this change might come about. Because today’s politicians came of age when the sagely consensus of the 1970s was under attack, he suspects the lessons of this crisis will be understood only by a new generation, who will forge a caste balance that puts the merchant in his proper subservient place and restores the technocratic sage to his.

As a foundation for this new world order, Mr Priestland is hoping for a new Bretton Woods-style agreement—one that would regulate international capital movements and thus tame the power of the bond markets. But he has no idea how such a pact might be created, or why it would not succumb to the same strains. Mr Priestland has some interesting things to say about why power relationships shift and what happens when they do, but his call for a return to a better yesterday is too glib to be convincing.

作者: 进击的智人阿飞 时间: 2018-9-24 16:48
【速度1-10】
计时 +2行， +3行， +6行， +2行， 56s
the first : A research finds that less and less students write long essays at university now. The first reason is that the students , especially those majored in science avoid choosing course involving writing and also many professors doesn't see the necessity to give students' training only to expect them to use their high school writing skills. The professors think writing will not infuence their success and students think they will work in high-tech company where there is less need in writing. However they are wrong. Many employers require employees to write long paper and see writing skill as important one. A project aiming to cope with this is started by a woman professor. She gives training to students about writing and teach them to rewrite and rethink.
The second: Due to the war in yemen ,many people is starving in Yemen. A specific case is cited. The current condition in yemen is that its food supply is mainly dependent on international aid but aid is absent in many area. A investigation raised by a non-governmental organization finds that because of war and pressure from government, many food aid is disrupted halfway.

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