【每日阅读训练第二期——速度越障2系列】【2-15】【解析已上传】

balapupu

这几天阅读太多政治类文章了~~~今天给大家换换口味哈~~~

速度：
                                                        Great Thinkers: Charles Darwin and Evolution
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STEVE EMBER: Welcome to Explorations, in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember. This week, Barbara Klein and I tell about one of the most influential thinkers in science history.
Charles Darwin developed the theory of how living things develop from simpler organisms over long periods of time. That theory is known as evolution through natural selection.
How do new kinds of life come into existence? For much of recorded history, people have believed that organisms were created. Few people believed that living things changed. What process could make such change possible?
These were some of the questions Charles Darwin asked himself over years of research in botany, zoology and geology. He was not the first person to ask them. His own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, believed that species evolved. And others, like the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamark, had proposed ways this could happen. But it was Darwin who identified and explained the process, natural selection, that causes life to evolve.
BARBARA KLEIN: Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England on February twelfth, eighteen-oh-nine. His father Robert Darwin was a doctor. Charles' mother Susannah Darwin was the daughter of the famous potter, Josiah Wedgwood. She died when Charles was only eight years old.
Young Charles was intensely interested in the natural world from an early age. But his father wanted him to be a doctor.
At age sixteen, Charles was sent to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. But he did not like it. He found medical operations especially horrible. He later went to Cambridge University. His father now hoped that Darwin would become a clergyman. But at Cambridge, Charles continued to follow his own interests. There, he met John Henslow, a plant scientist and clergyman. The two became friends.
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STEVE EMBER: John Henslow suggested that Charles Darwin take the unpaid position of naturalist for a trip on the British ship H.M.S. Beagle. It sailed around the world from eighteen thirty-one to eighteen thirty-six. The main goal was to make maps of the coastline of South America. The British government paid for the voyage. But another purpose of the trip was to collect scientific objects from around the world.
BARBARA KLEIN: The Beagle's first stop was one of the Cape Verde Islands near the coast of Africa. There, Darwin noted that levels of rock extending high above the sea contained the fossil remains of shells. He thought that this was evidence that the bottom of the ocean had been lifted up by powerful geological forces over long periods of time.
The Beagle continued to the coast of South America. In Valdivia, Chile, Darwin experienced an earthquake. He collected examples of plants and animals. He also collected the fossil remains of animals that had disappeared from the Earth.
But it was on the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador that Darwin found creatures that made him wonder about how species develop and change. There, he saw giant tortoises and noted that the reptiles were different on each island.
He collected birds, each with different beaks. Later, after he had returned to England, he would be shocked to find that these very different birds were all finches. Darwin found lizards called iguanas that lived on land and ones that fed in the sea.
Darwin noted that all these species were similar to those found in South America. But, they all had differences, or adaptations, that helped them survive in the environment of the Galapagos Islands.
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STEVE EMBER: Darwin sent much of what he collected back to England on other ships the Beagle met along the way. By the time he returned to England in October of eighteen thirty-six, he was already a well known geologist and naturalist. Within a few years, he would be accepted into scientific organizations like the Geological Society and the Royal Society.
Darwin moved to London to be near other scientists.? He wrote a new version of the book about his travels. He also edited works of others about the things he had collected on his trip. Darwin also agreed to write several books including the "Zoology of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle." But in eighteen thirty-seven, the pressure of the work caused his health to suffer. He developed problems with his heart.
BARBARA KLEIN: Charles Darwin had poor health much of his life. He suffered headaches and problems with his skin and stomach. No one was able to find out what disease he may have had during his lifetime. Recently, some experts have suggested that he might have become infected with a tropical disease. Others suggest Darwin's health problems were caused by conflict in his mind over his theory. Poor health would later force him to leave London and settled at Down House near Kent, England.
arwin began work on a series of secret notebooks containing his thoughts about the evolutionary process. He began to think that animals developed from earlier, simpler organisms. As early as eighteen thirty-seven, he imagined this process as a tree with branches representing new species. Unsuccessful branches ended. But successful evolutionary changes continued to form new branches.
STEVE EMBER: Charles Darwin's personal life was also expanding. In eighteen thirty-nine, he married Emma Wedgwood, his cousin. He told her his ideas about how species evolve over time -- what he called the transmutation of species.
Emma did not agree with her husband. But the two had a strong and happy marriage. They had ten children together. Seven of them survived.
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BARBARA KLEIN: Charles Darwin read widely and sought ideas from other fields of study. He was influenced by Thomas Malthus' work, "An Essay on the Principle of Population" written in seventeen ninety-eight. Malthus argued that populations are always limited by the food supply.
Darwin would later say that this work caused him to realize the struggle for limited resources was a fact of life. He said small changes took place in individual animals. Changes that helped them survive would continue. But those that did not would be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.
The British philosopher Herbert Spencer described this struggle as "survival of the fittest." But biologists use the term "natural selection" to describe the evolutionary process.
STEVE EMBER: Charles Darwin developed his idea slowly over more than twenty years. He was concerned that he would lose the support of the scientific community if he revealed it. He wrote to his friend, botanist Joseph Hooker, that speaking about evolution "was like confessing a murder."
It was not until eighteen fifty-eight that Darwin was forced to release his theory to the public. Another naturalist, Alfred Russel , had independently written a paper that contained ideas similar to Darwin's concerning evolution. had reached these ideas from his studies on islands in the western Pacific Ocean.
With help from Darwin's friends, the two naturalists presented a joint scientific paper to the Linnean Society of London in July of eighteen fifty-eight. At first there was little reaction.
Then, in November, eighteen fifty-nine, Darwin released the results of all his work on evolution. The book was called "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." It was an immediate success.
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BARBARA KLEIN: The "Origin of Species" was praised by many scientists. But religious leaders denounced it. For them, evolution opposed the explanation of creation found in the book of Genesis in the Bible. Today, almost all scientists accept the theory of evolution. But many non-scientists are unsure about whether humans evolved over millions of years. In the United States, public opinion studies have shown that less than half the population believes in evolution.
STEVE EMBER: Natural selection does not explain everything about why species evolve. Darwin did not know about Gregor Mendel's work on heredity. And the discovery of genetics and D.N.A. molecules took place long after his death. Yet, Darwin theorized in a world much different from the one we know. That is why scientists today wonder at the depth of his knowledge and the strength of his arguments.
Charles Darwin died on April nineteenth, eighteen eighty-two. He was buried at Westminster Abbey, in London, among other heroes of Britain.
(MUSIC)
BARBARA KLEIN: This program was written and produced by Mario Ritter. I'm Barbara Klein.
STEVE EMBER: And I'm Steve Ember. You can find a link to Charles Darwin's writings and research at our Web site, 51voa.com. Join us again next week for Explorations in VOA Special English.
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越障：
                                                   Ensuring Food Security, Tackling Climate Change
A high-level international panel has announced its recommendations for achieving food security while addressing the effects of climate change. The recommendations from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change released Wednesday come in advance of the U.N. climate change conference this month in Durban, South Africa.
The panel includes scientists from 13 countries who are experts in agriculture, climate, economics, trade, nutrition and ecology. It spent the past year analyzing many climate studies – a year that included climbing food prices, humanitarian disasters and political unrest -- all of which, it says, threaten food security. The panel says climate change will only make things worse.
"The current situation is just unacceptable. A large portion of the human population is food insecure and were vulnerable to food insecurity. A billion people or so go hungry and that is genuine poverty. And something on the order of another billion people don't have appropriate nutrition. It's seen and it's arguably ironic that at the same time there [are] about a billion people or so who are suffering from chronic disease due to over consumption," said Professor John Beddington, commission chair and Britain's chief scientific advisor.
Soaring commodity prices, he said, have pushed more people into poverty.
"We've seen in the last two or three years significant price spikes, following on decades of declines in real food prices. And those spikes have really presented real problems, exacerbating poverty. Something of the order of a hundred million people went into poverty following the 2007/8 price spike – another 40 or so million went into poverty after the 2010/11 price spike," he said.
Professor Beddington said the effects of climate change can already be seen but warns there's more to come.
Lasting effects, growing needs
"The greenhouse gases already in our atmosphere will drive climate change for the next two or three decades. We're going to see, and all models, and indeed all analyses, indicate that there's already a trend that we're going to see more extreme events -- high temperatures, droughts, floods -- and actually these are already becoming more frequent. And we can expect these more severe events leading to really difficult social, economic and ecologic consequences," he said
The prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa is given as one example. Droughts in the region have become much more frequent.
The current world population stands at seven billion. It's forecast to increase to nine billion by the year 2050. Commission member Megan Clarke, head of Australia's national science agency, said a lot more food will be needed.
"The challenge that's ahead of us globally is really quite hard even to comprehend because we must increase global food production by 2050 by some 30 to 80 percent and reduce our emissions by half. So to put it another way, as my children grow older over the next 60 years, we'll need to produce as much food [as] has ever been produced in human history. And at the same time, during the period, we'll have to learn how to halve our emission rate from agriculture. So this is a huge challenge," she said.
There are many regions, she said, where the amount of food being produced is well below the amount that could be produced.
"In much of sub-Saharan Africa, we know that we can use really small doses of fertilizer at the base of individual plants and improve productivity. And we could also reduce the amount of fertilizer used. Similar, we know in China that there's evidence that the current levels of high rates of fertilizer use can be reduced. And we can reduce nitrous oxide emissions and maintain our productivity," she said.
Following the recent food supply and price crises, world leaders pledged to invest much more in agriculture, especially smallholder agriculture. While some investments have been made, many experts and agriculture-related agencies say a great deal more is needed.
Commission member Adrian Fernandez, head of Mexico's National Institute of Ecology, said funding is an issue that cannot be ignored.
"This is one of the big topics that will be discussed in Durban. Financing – how can we mobilize much more resources to address the problems of climate change? -- in this case related to such an important issue, which is food security and agricultural production," he said.
What to do?
The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change has released seven recommendations. They include integrating food security and sustainable agriculture into both global and national policies; raising the level of agricultural investment; sustainably increasing agricultural production while reducing the environmental impact; and assisting vulnerable populations to adapt to climate change and food insecurity.
Other recommendations are "reshaping food access and consumption patterns" to ensure basic nutritional needs are met; reducing the amount of food lost or wasted in production; and establishing "comprehensive, shared and integrated information systems" to track changes in land use, food production and climate change.
Most scientists agree that global temperatures are rising and that man-made emissions are a big part of it. But some scientists disagree and say human contribution to climate change is much smaller.
The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban, known as COP 17, will be held from November 29th through December 9th.
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                                                                                            Passage 43 (43/63)
Joseph Glatthaar’s Forged in Battle is not the first excellent study of Black soldiers and their White officers in the Civil War, but it uses more soldiers’ letters and diaries—including rare material from Black soldiers—and concentrates more intensely on Black-White relations in Black regiments than do any of its predecessors. Glatthaar’s title expresses his thesis: loyalty, friendship, and respect among White officers and Black soldiers were fostered by the mutual dangers they faced in combat.
Glatthaar accurately describes the government’s discriminatory treatment of Black soldiers in pay, promotion, medical care, and job assignments, appropriately emphasizing the campaign by Black soldiers and their officers to get the opportunity to fight. That chance remained limited throughout the war by army policies that kept most Black units serving in rear-echelon assignments and working in labor battalions. Thus, while their combat death rate was only one-third that of White units, their mortality rate from disease, a major killer in his war, was twice as great. Despite these obstacles, the courage and effectiveness of several Black units in combat won increasing respect from initially skeptical or hostile White soldiers. As one White officer put it, “they have fought their way into the respect of all the army.”
In trying to demonstrate the magnitude of this attitudinal change, however, Glatthaar seems to exaggerate the prewar racism of the White men who became officers in Black regiments. “Prior to the war,” he writes of these men, “virtually all of them held powerful racial prejudices.” While perhaps true of those officers who joined Black units for promotion or other self-serving motives, this statement misrepresents the attitudes of the many abolitionists who became officers in Black regiments. Having spent years fighting against the race prejudice endemic in American society, they participated eagerly in this military experiment, which they hoped would help African Americans achieve freedom and postwar civil equality. By current standards of racial egalitarianism, these men’s paternalism toward African Americans was racist. But to call their feelings “powerful racial prejudices” is to indulge in generational chauvinism—to judge past eras by present standards.
1.    The passage as a whole can best be characterized as which of the following?
(A) An evaluation of a scholarly study
(B) A description of an attitudinal change
(C) A discussion of an analytical defect
(D) An analysis of the causes of a phenomenon
(E) An argument in favor of revising a view
2.    According to the author, which of the following is true of Glatthaar’s Forged in Battle compared with previous studies on the same topic?
(A) It is more reliable and presents a more complete picture of the historical events on which it concentrates than do previous studies.
(B) It uses more of a particular kind of source material and focuses more closely on a particular aspect of the topic than do previous studies.
(C) It contains some unsupported generalizations, but it rightly emphasizes a theme ignored by most previous studies.
(D) It surpasses previous studies on the same topic in that it accurately describes conditions often neglected by those studies.
(E) It makes skillful use of supporting evidence to illustrate a subtle trend that previous studies have failed to detect.
3.    The author implies that the title of Glatthaar’s book refers specifically to which of the following?
(A) The sense of pride and accomplishment that Black soldiers increasingly felt as a result of their Civil War experiences
(B) The civil equality that African Americans achieved after the Civil War, partly as a result of their use of organizational skills honed by combat
(C) The changes in discriminatory army policies that were made as a direct result of the performance of Black combat units during the Civil War
(D) The improved interracial relations that were formed by the races’ facing of common dangers and their waging of a common fight during the Civil War
(E) The standards of racial egalitarianism that came to be adopted as a result of White Civil War veterans’ repudiation of the previous racism
4.    The passage mentions which of the following as an important theme that receives special emphasis in Glatthaar’s book?
(A) The attitudes of abolitionist officers in Black units
(B) The struggle of Black units to get combat assignments
(C) The consequences of the poor medical care received by Black soldiers
(D) The motives of officers serving in Black units
(E) The discrimination that Black soldiers faced when trying for promotions
5.    The passage suggests that which of the following was true of Black units’ disease mortality rates in the Civil War?
(A) They were almost as high as the combat mortality rates of White units.
(B) They resulted in part from the relative inexperience of these units when in combat.
(C) They were especially high because of the nature of these units’ usual duty assignments.
(D) They resulted in extremely high overall casualty rates in Black combat units.
(E) They exacerbated the morale problems that were caused by the army’s discriminatory policies.
6.    The author of the passage quotes the White officer in lines 23-24 primarily in order to provide evidence to support the contention that
(A) virtually all White officers initially had hostile attitudes toward Black soldiers
(B) Black soldiers were often forced to defend themselves from physical attacks initiated by soldiers from White units
(C) the combat performance of Black units changed the attitudes of White soldiers toward Black soldiers
(D) White units paid especially careful attention to the performance of Black units in battle
(E) respect in the army as a whole was accorded only to those units, whether Black or White, that performed well in battle
7.    Which of the following best describes the kind of error attributed to Glatthaar in lines 25-28?
(A) Insisting on an unwarranted distinction between two groups of individuals in order to render an argument concerning them internally consistent
(B) Supporting an argument in favor of a given interpretation of a situation with evidence that is not particularly relevant to the situation
(C) Presenting a distorted view of the motives of certain individuals in order to provide grounds for a negative evaluation of their actions
(D) Describing the conditions prevailing before a given event in such a way that the contrast with those prevailing after the event appears more striking than it actually is
(E) Asserting that a given event is caused by another event merely because the other event occurred before the given event occurred
8.    Which of the following actions can best be described as indulging in “generational chauvinism” (lines 40-41) as that practice is defined in the passage?
(A) Condemning a present-day monarch merely because many monarchs have been tyrannical in the past.
(B) Clinging to the formal standards of politeness common in one’s youth to such a degree that any relaxation of those standards is intolerable.
(C) Questioning the accuracy of a report written by an employee merely because of the employee’s gender.
(D) Deriding the superstitions accepted as “science” in past eras without acknowledging the prevalence of irrational beliefs today.
(E) Labeling a nineteenth-century politician as “corrupt” for engaging in once-acceptable practices considered intolerable today.



answer keys：ABDBC CDE

xeyyxzty

1'04''1'05''
1'17''
1'07''
43''

4'06''
food insecurity is a problem.
some饥饿人口~some营养不良
because of the rise in prices of food, there are more people 缺粮
because of greenhouse gases, there will be more and more extreme climates worldwide.~climate change
   -->less food will be produced-->prices will be higher
for example, the drought in the Horn of Africa
the world's population is increasing~we have to produce more
so, leaders think 我们需要在提高粮食产量的同时减少温室气体排放~
e.g. China~less fertilizers
however, some scientists don not agree that there is a link between the emission of carbon dioxide and the climate change.

zz42050524

1'37
1'29
2'03
1'40
1.06

5'05
障碍讲了一个一个来自各个相关行业的组织对气候改变对于食物的影响。
刚开始说这个组织发布了什么，然后开始讲组织的起始。
下面引用一些人的话，具体都没记住。
再后面是说为满足人口增长需要提高食物的产量，减少污染排放，讨论了具体了方法。
最后说一个人意见或者理论，最后说好多人并不同意。

zz42050524

OYEH ，今天是第一个做题的哎~~~~~~~

bananazoo

1'11
1'21
1'30
1'21
55'

Jane412

速度1’21
1’11
59’’
1’1048’’  

越障
----一些研究人员认为，环境问题是威胁foodsecurity最严重的问题
Examples：很多人营养水平低于平均水平，很多人事物来源短缺等等
----环境问题如果不尽快解决，会危害好几代人lastingeffect
    Example：温室气体导致的全球变暖对于环境和食品安全的危害很严重
----method
  提出funds很重要
  科学家们提出七种解决方案：一方面是增加农业方面，可持续；
                            另一方便是改变农业pattern
----但一些科学家提出人类对于环境的破坏力其实很小  

gray0505

1'24''
1'07''
1'25''
1'12''
49''

fox0923

1'15"
1'06"
1'48"
1'35"
41"

187167055

What happened? Still follow the fox~
How to balance comprehension and speed....that is a problem...
DONE!

The first summary
Climate change effects secure of food.
-Scientists announced that climate undermines food security.
-Hungary and over-consumption are problems.
-The raising food price leads to more poverty.
-Greenhouse gases cause increasingly flood.
-People should produce more food because of raise of population
-We could keep the production stable by using less Nitrous. ex, China
-In order to settle this problem, governments are suggested to raise input.
-Whereas, funding is difficult through Financing patters.
-According to these obstacles, some individuals claim that reshape is a proper method.
-However, a part of scientists illustrate that human beings does not seriously effect climate change.

fox0923

Current Situation
- A high level international panel discussed a topic of food security in the next few decades.
- People are suffering Chronic disease from over consumption. The soaring food prices will cause an even severe poverty in the world, and by then, many people will stay hunger without provision of food.
The effect will last longer
- The environmental problems such as Global warming, flood, drought and increase temperature will effect the world's agriculture. And these problems will surely effect the production of agriculture. Actually, they have already affected our current life. The world's economy and other problematic issues will happen if such situation continues.
- The World population will raise to 9 Billion in the next two decades, in order to let everyone stay alive without hunger, there will be 30%-80% food increase needed.
- The use of land can be regulated in order to improve its production. For instance, China and some other countries with more fertilized lands should be implemented more effective uses of lands. Since for some regions such as Sahara, where is hard to use its land effectively to plant corps.
- Scientists claimed that human need to reduce the carbon emission and use the fertilized lands more effectively to satisfy our future need.
- Some people believe that human's behavior will change the climate, but some scientists don't believe so.