【速度】+【越障练习】GMAT得阅读者得天下，大家一起来练阅读吧

进击的智人阿飞

【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

Cynthia_1

楼主一定要记得更新哦 每天都来读耶 你不是一个人！！

ttly

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

进击的智人阿飞

【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.

进击的智人阿飞

【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

进击的智人阿飞

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.

ttly

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？？

进击的智人阿飞

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

进击的智人阿飞

【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.

进击的智人阿飞

【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！