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【社会科学-交通】 Why HS2 should go ahead: Britain is poised to decide whether to build an expensive new railway （638字 精读 必做篇）
For the country that invented railways, Britain has shown remarkably little interest in them lately. New networks have been built around Europe in the past few decades, but the only significant stretch of track laid in Britain in a century is the 67-mile (107km) hs1 railway that links London to the Channel Tunnel. Indeed, the country has half as much track as it had in 1963. Yet while Britain has an almost American reluctance to invest in railways, its commuting patterns are European: 10% of journeys are by rail, compared with 9% in Germany and less than 1% in America. The result is a lot of angry commuters.
Britain’s big problem is that, because it has built no new high-speed lines, it runs fast intercity trains on the same track as slow commuter ones. Long gaps have to be left between slow and express trains. The need to make way for high-speed trains thus limits the number of commuter services, and vice versa.
Eight years ago, the government decided to rectify this by building a new 345-mile railway from London to the north of England. Though branded as High Speed 2, its principal job was to boost capacity rather than speed. At the time, this newspaper argued against it. Although we supported the idea of investment in train capacity, we believed that there were better projects to spend money on than hs2.
Spooked by the costs—now put at around £100bn, against an original estimate of £42bn—and by the fury of 21 Tory mps whose rural constituencies the track would slice through, the government is considering cancelling the project. A final decision was due as The Economist went to press. We now believe the line should go ahead—not because £8bn has already been spent, but because the circumstances have changed.
Rail is an increasingly important part of the transport mix. Climate change is putting a premium on carbon-efficiency. At the same time, passenger numbers have exceeded forecasts. The government had expected passenger volumes to increase by 17-21% in the decade from 2011; actually, they were up by 24% within just seven years and are expected to go on growing at a similar clip. The costs of other, cheaper ways to boost capacity, such as double-decker carriages and longer trains, have increased, along with the cost of engineering wider tracks and higher tunnels, and of buying more property around stations. Meanwhile interest rates are so low these days that the government can borrow long-term for virtually nothing.
The benefit-to-cost ratio (bcr) calculated for hs2, at around one, is hardly a ringing endorsement. But just as the costs of big transport projects are often underestimated, so are their long-term benefits. The extension to London’s Jubilee tube line, for instance, was approved with a bcr of less than one, but recent analysis suggests that it has been more like 1.75. And that includes only the revenues that go directly to the railway, not the economic consequences of the revival of London’s Docklands area, which the tube line made possible.
The main point of hs2, similarly, is its impact on the cities and towns along its route and beyond. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, is on a mission to boost growth in northern and western areas left behind by the country’s lopsided, London-centred pattern of growth. On its own hs2 won’t make that happen, but doing so without a new railway would be tough. The success of the “Northern Powerhouse” rail scheme, to link the north’s big towns, depends on it.
This is a tricky decision for Mr Johnson. It will be the biggest financial call of his time in office. His party is divided over the issue. hs2 will dog his premiership if it goes wrong. But if he wants his vision of Britain to work, he needs it.
Source: The Economist
【社会科学-科技】 Artificial Intelligence Sniffs Out Unsafe Foods （278字 1分58秒 精听 必做篇）
先做精听再核对原文哦~
The Food and Drug Administration has to recall hundreds of foods every year. Like cookie snack packs with chunks of blue plastic hiding inside, Salmonella-tainted taco seasoning or curry powder laced with lead.
It can take months before a recall is issued. But now researchers have come up with a method that might fast-track that process, leading to early detection and, ultimately, faster recalls. The system relies on the fact that people increasingly buy foods and spices online. And people tend to write reviews of products they buy online—which are like bread crumbs to food-safety officials sniffing out dangerous products.
The researchers linked FDA food recalls from 2012 to 2014 to Amazon reviews of those same products. They then trained machine-learning algorithms to differentiate between reviews for recalled items and reviews for items that had not been flagged.
And the trained algorithms were able to predict FDA recalls three quarters of the time. They also identified another 20,000 reviews for possibly unsafe foods—most of which had never been recalled. The results are in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
The World Health Organization estimates that 600 million people worldwide get sick annually from contaminated food, and more than 400,000 people die from it. “So having tools that allow us to detect this faster and hopefully investigate and do recalls faster will be useful not just in the U.S. but in other countries around the world as well.” Study author Elaine Nsoesie of Boston University.
She did add one caveat: even recalled products can still get five-star reviews. So stars alone don’t tell the whole sickening story. The proof, unfortunately, may still be in the pudding.
Source: Scientific American
【社会科学-疾病】 Coronavirus Patients Rush to Join Studies of Gilead Drug （426字 4分3秒 精听 选做篇）
先做精听再核对原文哦~
The new coronavirus COVID-19 made Dr. Jag Singh a patient at his own hospital.
A lung infection made it difficult for him to breathe. His doctors at Massachusetts General said he needed to make a decision about life support while in intensive care.
Then, they offered him a chance to test remdesivir. The experimental drug has had some good results when used against other coronaviruses. Singh, a heart specialist, said ‘yes' immediately.
COVID-19 patients around the world have been joining remdesivir studies in the past few weeks.
The interest has been so great that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is expanding its study. It has nearly reached its first goal of 440 patients. The California company Gilead Sciences makes the drug. It is increasing its own studies too.
"I would enroll my family immediately", said Dr. Libby Hohmann. She placed Singh and nearly 30 other patients in the NIH study at Massachusetts General.
For most people, COVID-19 causes moderate symptoms. Some patients, however, get a lung infection which requires hospitalization. The risk of death is greater for older people and those with other health problems.
The drug remdesivir has been used in animal testing against two similar coronaviruses, SARS and MERS. The drug helped prevent infection and reduced the symptoms if it was taken early. The testing is farther along than other possible drugs and may lead to government approval for treatment.
The drug-maker Gilead has given remdesivir to more than 1,700 patients. Its chief executive Dan O'Day wrote that many people have asked for the drug but the company is "taking the ethical, responsible approach." He said more people will be helped if studies prove the drug to be safe and effective.
O'Day said his company has drug treatment for more than 140,000 patients. It is providing the drug for free for now. It has set a goal of making treatments for 500,000 patients by October and more than a million by the end of the year.
Gilead also gave remdesivir to China for two studies expected to have results by the end of the month. Other studies have begun in Asia and Europe.
"There's so much anxiety about the disease that the patients are quite interested and no one offered the chance has refused", said Dr. Arun Sanyal. He is the study leader at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
The NIH study, however, is the most rigorous of all the tests. It compares remdesivir to placebos, and neither patients nor doctors know who is getting what until the end of the study.
Source: VOA
【笔记格式要求】
精读笔记格式要求： 1.总结文章中心大意 2.总结分论点或每段段落大意 3.摘抄印象深刻或者觉得优美的句子 4.总结文章中的生词 5.记录阅读时间、总结时间、总时间
精听笔记格式要求： 1.逐句听写整篇文章 2.对照原文修改听写稿，标记出错原因 3.总结文章中心大意 4.总结精听过程中的生词 5.记录听写时间、总结时间、总时间
这里也给大家两点学习小建议哦~ 精读：如遇到读不懂的复杂句，建议找出句子主干，分析句子成分，也可以尝试翻译句子来帮助理解~ 精听：建议每句不要反复纠结听，如果听 5 遍都没听出来，那就跳过，等完成后再回听总结原因，时间宝贵，不要过于执着哦~
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发表于 2020-5-13 22:30:59
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