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队友们，铁板烧们，周二的科技作业来咯~
今天只得3篇文章，内容都不难。大家认真做作业哦。
铁板们记得挂猴头做练习，队伍排得乖乖的！  
Part I Speed
Article I
NOAA expects an active 2013 Atlantic hurricane season
【Warm up】
On average, the Atlantic hurricane season features 12 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 1-3 major hurricanes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – which among other things warns of dangerous weather and coastal conditions – along with Colorado State, believes that the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season could be extremely active. NOAA released its new hurricane outlook for 2013 on May 22, 2013. NOAA is projecting 13 to 20 named storms, 7 to 11 hurricanes, with possibly 3 to 6 of those hurricanes becoming a Category 3 storm or higher. The hurricane outlooks for each year are not always accurate, but all of the signs that typically make an Atlantic season active are present in 2013.
【114words】
【Time1】
How do hurricanes get their names?
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In its hurricane outlook for this year, NOAA states three main conditions pointing to 2013 as a potentially very active hurricane season:
1) We are in a 30-year cycle of increased Atlantic hurricane activity thanks to a continuation of the current atmospheric climate pattern, which includes a strong west African monsoon.
2) Sea surface temperatures are above average all across the Atlantic, especially in the Caribbean Sea and in the southern portion of the Northern Atlantic ocean.
3) The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, also called the ENSO, is expected to be neutral for this 2013 season. In other words, an El Niño is very unlikely to develop to help limit and slow down tropical activity in the Atlantic Ocean.
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The image above points to reason #2, illustrating the current sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. Temperatures over 27 degrees Celsius or 80 degrees Fahrenheit create the ideal environment for tropical systems to develop and grow.
The next image shows the sea surface temperature anomalies across the Atlantic Ocean. It practically shows regions that are much warmer than they would typically be at this time of the year. The areas that stand out among any other locations is across the U.S. Northeast coast and across the central and eastern Atlantic ocean where temperatures are two to four degrees Celsius above average.
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Personally, I am not a fan of long-term weather projections. Weather can change quickly over time and create weather forecast busts.
Also, do you recall that the 2012 hurricane season was also very active? Could you name more than three storms that formed last year? I would guess many people could not answer these two questions The only name likely to come to mind is Hurricane Sandy. Why? Because people remember the storms that impact land, but have a tendency to ignore storms that stay out in the middle of the ocean, never affecting anyone.
It only takes one storm to make an entire season memorably bad.
【309 words】
【Time2】
According to Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, NOAA acting administrator:
With the devastation of Sandy fresh in our minds, and another active season predicted, everyone at NOAA is committed to providing life-saving forecasts in the face of these storms and ensuring that Americans are prepared and ready ahead of time. As we saw first-hand with Sandy, it’s important to remember that tropical storm and hurricane impacts are not limited to the coastline. Strong winds, torrential rain, flooding, and tornadoes often threaten inland areas far from where the storm first makes landfall.
While the Atlantic hurricane season is forecast to become very active, the eastern Pacific is expected to see below-average hurricane activity, according to NOAA. Other hurricane outlooks also further support NOAA’s idea of an active Atlantic hurricane season, including Colorado State. NOAA will release a new outlook in August 2013, just before the peak of hurricane season, which is typically more accurate than the May forecast.
NOAA soon will have more tools to provide even better forecasts for those who live along coasts. For instance, they will bring online a new supercomputer that will run an upgraded Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) model that allow meteorologists to look at the structure and better forecast the storm intensity and storm surge from that particular storm. Also, Doppler radar will be added to NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter Aircraft. Adding radar will give the meteorologists the opportunity to see the intensity of the rain bands within the system and be able to put that data into their weather models. Once that data is in the model runs, the models will likely become even better at accurately forecasting the track and perhaps intensity of the storm.
【281words】
Article II
Google's quest to get more women in tech
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【Time3】
(CNN) -- Google is a company focused on problem solving. It has untold amounts of computing power at its disposal working away to try and solve big problems. One issue the company is currently addressing requires a more analog approach: upping the number of female computer engineers.
During his keynote address at the Google I/O developers conference this month, co-founder Larry Page said that Google had been focused on recruiting more women "forever" to ensure that the company didn't end up all male.
"The only answer is, we have to start early and make sure we get more women and girls excited in technology," said Page. "There's no question we will double the rate of progress"
The company has a number of year-round initiatives aimed at hiring and educating more women programmers, including scholarships and events. The annual developers' conference offers a rare public, visual example of the industry's gender gap and the company's progress.
In the past, the number of women attendees and speakers has been low in the halls and onstage. Since the conference started in 2008, Google has been working to shift the numbers. According to Google Vice President Megan Smith, this year the percentage of women at this year's Google I/O was in the teens, up from a single digital slice at last year's conference.
Google has worked to shine a spotlight on the astonishing women already in technology, as well as the women who have done important work in the field throughout history. The Women Techmakers Fireside Chat featured some of Google's high-ranking women, and the event was quickly filled to capacity with a mix of men and women.
"Its been a priority from the beginning ... the visibly of technical women is something we really want to work on," said Smith, who works at Google[x], Google's semi-secretive experimental wing that works on futuristic projects and prototypes.
【312 words】
【Time4】
First they made a concerted effort to find talented women in the field from around the world to invite to the conference.
"We felt like there were incredible technical women who should be at I/O, who for whatever reason weren't there," said Smith. "We did a lot of work to just make sure that we were increasing the presence of women leaders ... on the stage and in demos."
They also organized a social event for all the women attendees and offered on-site day care for all parents attending the conference. Kids were also welcome on the floor, and one dad wrote in to say it had been a great father-daughter event.
Another continuing part of Google's approach is community building for women already in the field so that they feel less isolated. It held a Women Techmakers social for female I/O attendees at Google San Francisco before the conference. Women were invited to meet their peers, enjoy some wine and food from the Google kitchen, and then break off into teams up to create unique projects using littleBits and arts and crafts supplies.
Developer Rony Rozen was at the event and came all the way from Israel to attend the conference after Google invited her. Rozen is the founder of poccaDot, an iOS and Android app development company in Tel Aviv. She started the company after serving as a programmer with the Israeli Air Force, and she is a mentor for mobile development at Google's Israel campus.
【248words】
【Time5】
"I think Google can (and should) expand their efforts to be more visible to the general public and not just to the people who are already in the industry," said Rozen. "Incorporate more women into their commercials, make sure to advertise women tech-makers events throughout the year and eventually also expand the relevant age groups to focus on younger girls."
Smith is influenced by the success of the Harvey Mudd school in southern California, headed up by president Maria Klawe. Its computer science department is now 44% women, thanks to efforts by the school to figure out why more women weren't joining in the first place.
What it found was partially a PR problem. Some women didn't think the field sounded interested due to a lack of understanding of what the work entailed. They also didn't think they'd be good at it and there were also stereotypes about the kind of people who worked in the field.
"Young women are very interested in having an impact on the world," said Smith. "We haven't connected the dots for them" that coding can have a direct impact on issues that are important to them.
It's not just a matter of reaching out to young people. Women are getting into computer science later in life as returning professionals. And going back to college isn't the only way to learn programming, according to Smith. Anyone can take classes on sites like Khan Academy, Codecademy and Coursera.
Female programmers are also spreading the word on their own. Rozen is doing her part by teaching her young nieces how to program.
"We as a society need to make sure that more young boys and girls are exposed to this kind of education as early in possible in life, and I think that Google plays a major role in our achieving that goal."
【306words】
Part II Obstacle
Article III
Cosmic Swirly Straws: Galaxies Fed by Funnels of Fuel
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【Time 6】
Computer simulations of galaxies growing over billions of years have revealed a likely scenario for how they feed: a cosmic version of swirly straws.
The results show that cold gas -- fuel for stars -- spirals into the cores of galaxies along filaments, rapidly making its way to their "guts." Once there, the gas is converted into new stars, and the galaxies bulk up in mass.
"Galaxy formation is really chaotic," said Kyle Stewart, lead author of the new study appearing in the May 20th issue of the Astrophysical Journal. "It took us several hundred computer processors, over months of time, to simulate and learn more about how this process works." Stewart, who is now at the California Baptist University in Riverside, Calif., completed the majority of this work while at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
In the early universe, galaxies formed out of clumps of matter, connected by filaments in a giant cosmic web. Within the galaxies, nuggets of gas cooled and condensed, becoming dense enough to trigger the birth of stars. Our Milky Way spiral galaxy and its billions of stars took shape in this way.
The previous, standard model of galaxy formation held that hot gas sank into the centers of burgeoning galaxies from all directions. Gas clouds were thought to collide into each other, sending out shock waves, which then heated up the gas. The process is similar to jets creating sonic booms, only in the case of galaxies, the in-falling gas travels faster than the speed of sound, piling up into waves. Eventually, the gas cools and sinks to the galactic center. This process was theorized to be slow, taking up to 8 billion years.
Recent research has contradicted this scenario in smaller galaxies, showing that the gas is not heated. An alternate "cold-mode" theory of galaxy formation was proposed instead, suggesting the cold gas might funnel along filaments into galaxy centers. Stewart and his colleagues set out to test this theory and address the mysteries about how the cold gas gets into galaxies, as well as the rate at which it spirals in.
Since it would take billions of years to watch a galaxy grow, the team simulated the process using supercomputers at JPL; NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.; and the University of California, Irvine. They ran four different simulations of the formation of a galaxy like our Milky Way, starting from just 57 million years after the big bang until present day.
The simulations began with the starting ingredients for galaxies -- hydrogen, helium and dark matter -- and then let the laws of physics take over to create their galactic masterpieces. Supercomputers are needed due to the enormous number of interactions.
"The simulations are like a gigantic game of chess," said Alyson Brooks, a co-author of the paper and expert in galaxy simulations at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "For each point in time, we have to figure out how a given particle -- our chess piece -- should move based on the positions of all of the other particles. There are tens of millions of particles in the simulation, so figuring out how the gravitational forces affect each particle is time-consuming."
When the galaxy concoctions were ready, the researchers inspected the data, finding new clues about how cold gas sinks into the galaxy centers. The new results confirm that cold gas flows along filaments and show, for the first time, that the gas is spinning around faster than previously believed. The simulations also revealed that the gas is making its way down to the centers of galaxies more quickly than what occurs in the "hot-mode" of galaxy formation, in about 1 billion years.
"We have found that the filamentary structures that galaxies are built on are key to how they build up over time, by threading gas into them efficiently," said Leonidas Moustakas, a co-author at JPL.
The researchers looked at dark matter too -- an invisible substance making up about 85 percent of matter in the universe. Galaxies form out of lumps of regular matter, so-called baryonic matter that is composed of atoms, and dark matter. The simulations showed that dark matter is also spinning at a faster rate along the filaments, spiraling into the galaxy centers.
The results help answer a riddle in astronomy about galaxies with large extended disks of material spinning around them, far from their centers. Researchers didn't understand how the outer material could be spinning so fast. The cold-mode allows for this rapid spinning, fitting another jigsaw piece into the puzzle of how galaxies grow.
"The goal of simulating galaxies is to compare them to what telescopes observe and see if we really understand how to build a galaxy," said Stewart. "It helps us makes sense of the real universe."
【799 words】
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发表于 2013-5-27 13:22:56
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