【每日阅读训练第二期——速度越障6系列】【6-15】

mahaofei001

今天foxxy姐姐有事，我替她发。。。重新归队……三期的队长貌似是我的了……
速度
Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets
计时一
WASHINGTON — Should Israel decide to launcha strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles acrossunfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses,attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes.
Multimedia

That is the assessment of American defenseofficials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say that an Israeliattack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge and highlycomplex operation. They describe it as far different from Israel’s “surgical”strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in1981.

“All the pundits who talk about ‘Oh, yeah, bomb Iran,’ it ain’t goingto be that easy,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who retired last year as theAir Force’s top intelligence official and who planned the American aircampaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Gulf War.

Speculation that Israel might attack Iranhas intensified in recent months as tensions between the countries haveescalated. In a sign of rising American concern, Tom Donilon, the nationalsecurity adviser, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel inJerusalem on Sunday, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. MartinE. Dempsey, warned on CNN that an Israeli strike on Iran right now would be“destabilizing.” Similarly, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, toldthe BBC that attacking Iran would not be “the wise thing” for Israel to do “atthis moment.”

But while an Israeli spokesman inWashington, Lior Weintraub, said the country continued to push for toughersanctions on Iran, he reiterated that Israel, like the United States, “iskeeping all options on the table.”
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计时二
The possible outlines of an Israeli attackhave become a source of debate in Washington, where some analysts questionwhether Israel even has the military capacity to carry it off. One fear is thatthe United States would be sucked into finishing the job — a task that evenwith America’s far larger arsenal of aircraft and munitions could still takemany weeks, defense analysts said. Another fear is of Iranian retaliation.

“I don’t think you’ll find anyone who’ll say, ‘Here’s how it’s goingto be done — handful of planes, over an evening, in and out,’ ” said Andrew R.Hoehn, a former Pentagon official who is now director of the Rand Corporation’sProject Air Force, which does extensive research for the United States AirForce.

Michael V. Hayden, who was the director ofthe Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009, said flatly last month thatairstrikes capable of seriously setting back Iran’s nuclear program were“beyond the capacity” of Israel, in part because of the distance that attackaircraft would have to travel and the scale of the task.

Still, a top defense official cautioned inan interview last week that “we don’t have perfect visibility” into Israel’sarsenal, let alone its military calculations. His views were echoed by AnthonyH. Cordesman, an influential military analyst at the Center for Strategic andInternational Studies in Washington. “There are a lot of unknowns, there are alot of potential risks, but Israel may know that those risks aren’t thatserious,” he said.
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计时三
Given that Israel would want to strikeIran’s four major nuclear sites — the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanzand Fordo, the heavy-water reactor at Arak and the yellowcake-conversion plantat Isfahan — military analysts say the first problem is how to get there. Thereare three potential routes: to the north over Turkey, to the south over SaudiArabia or taking a central route across Jordan and Iraq.

The route over Iraq would be the mostdirect and likely, defense analysts say, because Iraq effectively has no airdefenses and the United States, after its December withdrawal, no longer hasthe obligation to defend Iraqi skies. “That was a concern of the Israelis ayear ago, that we would come up and intercept their aircraft if the Israelischose to take a path across Iraq,” said a former defense official who asked foranonymity to discuss secret intelligence.

Assuming that Jordan tolerates the Israelioverflight, the next problem is distance. Israel has American-built F-15I andF-16I fighter jets that can carry bombs to the targets, but their range —depending on altitude, speed and payload — falls far short of the minimum2,000-mile round trip. That does not include an aircraft’s “loiter time” over atarget plus the potential of having to fight off attacks from Iranian missilesand planes.

In any possibility, Israel would have touse airborne refueling planes, called tankers, but Israel is not thought tohave enough. Scott Johnson, an analyst at the defense consulting firm IHSJane’s and the leader of a team preparing an online seminar on Israeli strikepossibilities on Iran, said that Israel had eight KC-707 American-made tankers,although it is not clear they are all in operation. It is possible, he said,that Israel has reconfigured existing planes into tankers to use in a strike.

Even so, any number of tankers would needto be protected by ever more fighter planes. “So the numbers you need justskyrocket,” Mr. Johnson said. Israel has about 125 F-15Is and F-16Is. One possibility,Mr. Johnson said, would be to fly the tankers as high as 50,000 feet, makingthem hard for air defenses to hit, and then have them drop down to a loweraltitude to meet up with the fighter jets to refuel.
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计时四
Israel would still need to use its electronicwarfare planes to penetrate Iran’s air defenses and jam its radar systems tocreate a corridor for an attack. Iran’s antiaircraft defenses may be ageneration old — in 2010, Russia refused to sell Iran its more advanced S-300missile system — but they are hardly negligible, military analysts say.

Iranian missiles could force Israeliwarplanes to maneuver and dump their munitions before they even reached theirtargets. Iran could also strike back with missiles that could hit Israel,opening a new war in the Middle East, though some Israeli officials have arguedthat the consequences would be worse if Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon.

Another major hurdle is Israel’s inventoryof bombs capable of penetrating the Natanz facility, believed to be buriedunder 30 feet of reinforced concrete, and the Fordo site, which is built into amountain.

Assuming it does not use a nuclear device,Israel has American-made GBU-28 5,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs that coulddamage such hardened targets, although it is unclear how far down they can go.

Earlier this month, a Bipartisan PolicyCenter report by Charles S. Robb, the former Democratic senator from Virginia,and Charles F. Wald, a retired Air Force general, recommended that the Obamaadministration sell Israel 200 enhanced GBU-31 “bunker busters” as well asthree advanced refueling planes.

The two said that they were not advocatingan Israeli attack, but that the munitions and aircraft were needed to improveIsrael’s credibility as it threatens a strike.

Should the United States get involved — ordecide to strike on its own — military analysts said that the Pentagon had theability to launch big strikes with bombers, stealth aircraft and cruisemissiles, followed up by drones that could carry out damage assessments to helpdirect further strikes. Unlike Israel, the United States has plenty ofrefueling capability. Bombers could fly from Al Udeid air base in Qatar, DiegoGarcia in the Indian Ocean or bases in Britain and the United States.
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自由阅读
Nonetheless, defense officials say it wouldstill be tough to penetrate Iran’s deepest facilities with existing Americanbombs and so are enhancing an existing 30,000-pound “Massive OrdnancePenetrator” that was specifically designed for Iran and North Korea.

“There’s only one superpower in the world that can carry this off,”General Deptula said. “Israel’s great on a selective strike here and there.”



计时五——开始搞托福了……奉上SSS
Air pollution is bad for our health, butscientists say we don't know much about the long-term effects. So researchersin Canada and the Netherlands decided to gather genetic information in an urbanindustrial environment by looking at mouse sperm. They published the study inthe Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists placedcages of mature male mice near two steel mills and a major highway in the cityof Hamilton, in Ontario, Canada. Some of the mice breathed in ambient,particulate-filled air. The control mice breathed pure, filtered air. After tenweeks, researchers checked the two groups. The mice exposed to the polluted airhad a 60 percent higher rate of sperm mutation. It occurred in a piece of DNAparticularly susceptible to mutation. Researchers say these specific mutationsare known to affect gene expression and genome stability and could lead tochanges in genetic composition and disease. They say they can't yet extrapolatefrom these findings to the long-term health effects in humans, but they say theresults definitely warrant a more detailed look at pollution's effects on ourgenes.
——————————————下面是另一篇———————————————————
Hitting your mid-forties? Chances are youare feeling down but don't hang your head. You are just at the bottom of life'sU shaped path of happiness. You might not see it from here but things arelooking up. A study in the journal Social Science and Medicine says midlifemalaise is part of being human. Offering proof that misery lovescompany,researchers found that millions of people from 74 different countriesfollowed similar life path. They moved from youthful happiness toward mid-lifedepressions, then back to happiness in their golden years. Earlier studiessuggested psychological well-being was consistent throughout life. But thisreport says from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, there is no getting around thatmid-life crisis. Regardless of cultural differences, financial success ormarital status, a period of depression settles over our forties. But by ourlate fifties, we cheer back up. Researchers speculate that as we get older,unrealistic expectations are tempered by reality, in other words , we learn toexpect less from life but they say a happier possibility is that we just getbetter at counting our blessings
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越障
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals ofthe clade and superorder Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassicperiod, approximately 230 million years ago, and became the dominantterrestrial vertebrates for 135 million years, from the beginning of theJurassic (about 200 million years ago) until the end of the Cretaceous (65.5million years ago), when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to theextinction of most dinosaur groups at the close of the Mesozoic era. The fossilrecord indicates that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic,and consequently they are considered a type of dinosaur in modernclassification systems.[2][3] Some birds survived the extinction event thatoccurred 65 million years ago, and continue the dinosaur lineage to the presentday.

Dinosaurs are a varied group of animalsfrom taxonomic, morphological and ecological standpoints. Birds, at over 9,000living species, are the most diverse group of vertebrates besides perciformfish.[4] Using fossil evidence, paleontologists have identified over 500 distinctgenera[5] and more than 1,000 different species of non-avian dinosaurs.[6]Dinosaurs are represented on every continent by both extant species and fossilremains.[7] Some are herbivorous, others carnivorous. Most dinosaurs have beenbipedal, though many extinct groups included quadrupedal species, and some wereable to shift between these body postures. Many species possess elaboratedisplay structures such as horns or crests, and some prehistoric groupsdeveloped skeletal modifications such as bony armor and spines. Birds have beenthe planet's dominant flying vertebrate since the extinction of the pterosaurs,and evidence suggests that egg laying and nest building is a trait shared byall dinosaurs. Many prehistoric dinosaurs were large animals--the largestsauropods could reach lengths of almost 60 meters (200 feet) and were severalstories tall--and while many extinct theropods were quite large, a majorityevolved very small sizes, especially among birds and other advanced groups.

Although the word dinosaur means"terrible lizard," the name is somewhat misleading, as dinosaurs arenot lizards. Rather, they represent a separate group of reptiles with adistinct upright posture not found in lizards. Through the first half of the20th century, before birds were recognized to be dinosaurs, most of thescientific community believed dinosaurs were sluggish and cold-blooded. Mostresearch conducted since the 1970s, however, has indicated that ancientdinosaurs, particularly the carnivorous groups, were active animals withelevated metabolisms and numerous adaptations for social interaction.

Since the first dinosaur fossils wererecognized in the early 19th century, mounted fossil dinosaur skeletons orreplicas have been major attractions at museums around the world, and dinosaurshave become a part of world culture. Their diversity, the large sizes of somegroups, and their seemingly monstrous and fantastic nature have captured theinterest and imagination of the general public for over a century. They have beenfeatured in best-selling books and films such as Jurassic Park, and newdiscoveries are regularly covered by the media.

Under phylogenetic taxonomy, dinosaurs areusually defined as the group consisting of "Triceratops, Neornithes[modern birds], their most recent common ancestor, and alldescendants".[11] It has also been suggested that Dinosauria be defined withrespect to the most recent common ancestor of Megalosaurus and Iguanodon,because these were two of the three genera cited by Richard Owen when herecognized the Dinosauria.[12] Both definitions result in the same set ofanimals being defined as dinosaurs: "Dinosauria = Ornithischia +Saurischia", encompassing theropods (mostly bipedal carnivores and birds),ankylosaurians (armored herbivorous quadrupeds), stegosaurians (platedherbivorous quadrupeds), ceratopsians (herbivorous quadrupeds with horns andfrills), ornithopods (bipedal or quadrupedal herbivores including"duck-bills"), and, perhaps, sauropodomorphs (mostly largeherbivorous quadrupeds with long necks and tails).
small bird with pale belly and breast andpatterned wing and head stands on concrete
The common House Sparrow (Passerdomesticus) is often used to represent modern birds in definitions of the groupDinosauria

Many paleontologists note that the point atwhich sauropodomorphs and theropods diverged may omit sauropodomorphs from thedefinition for both saurischians and dinosaurs. To avoid instability,Dinosauria can be more conservatively defined with respect to four anchoringnodes: Triceratops horridus, Saltasaurus loricatus, and Passer domesticus,their most recent common ancestor, and all descendants. This "safer"definition can be expressed as "Dinosauria = Ornithischia +Sauropodomorpha + Theropoda".[13]

There is a wide consensus amongpaleontologists that birds are the descendants of theropod dinosaurs. Using thestrict phylogenetic nomenclatural definition that all descendants of a singlecommon ancestor must be included in a group for that group to be natural, birdscan thus be considered to be dinosaurs and dinosaurs are, therefore, notextinct. Birds are classified by most paleontologists as belonging to thesubgroup Maniraptora, which are coelurosaurs, which are theropods, which aresaurischians, which are dinosaurs.[14] From the point of view of cladistics,therefore, birds are dinosaurs, despite the fact that in ordinary speech theword "dinosaur" is not generally understood to include birds.
General description

Using one of the above definitions,dinosaurs can be generally described as archosaurs with limbs held erectbeneath the body.[15] Many prehistoric animal groups are popularly conceived ofas dinosaurs, such as ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, andDimetrodon, but are not classified scientifically as dinosaurs, and none hadthe erect limb posture characteristic of true dinosaurs.[16] Dinosaurs were thedominant terrestrial vertebrates of the Mesozoic, especially the Jurassic andCretaceous periods. Other groups of animals were restricted in size and niches;mammals, for example, rarely exceeded the size of a cat, and were generallyrodent-sized carnivores of small prey.[17] One notable exception is Repenomamusgiganticus, a triconodont weighing between 12 kilograms (26 lb) and 14kilograms (31 lb) that is known to have eaten small dinosaurs like youngPsittacosaurus.[18]
Stegosaurus stenops skeleton, Field Museum

Dinosaurs have always been an extremelyvaried group of animals; according to a 2006 study, over 500 non-avialandinosaur genera have been identified with certainty so far, and the totalnumber of genera preserved in the fossil record has been estimated at around1850, nearly 75% of which remain to be discovered.[5] An earlier studypredicted that about 3400 dinosaur genera existed, including many which wouldnot have been preserved in the fossil record.[19] By September 17, 2008, 1047different species of dinosaurs had been named.[6] Some are herbivorous, otherscarnivorous. While most dinosaurs have been bipeds, some prehistoric specieswere quadrupeds, and others, such as Ammosaurus and Iguanodon, could walk justas easily on two or four legs. Cranial modifications like horns and crests arecommon among dinosaurs, and some extinct species had bony armor. Although knownfor large size, many Mesozoic dinosaurs were human-sized or smaller, and modernbirds are generally very small in size. Dinosaurs today inhabit everycontinents, and fossils show that they had achieved global distribution by atleast the early Jurassic period.[7] Modern birds inhabit most availablehabitats, from terrestrial to marine, and there is evidence that somenon-avialan dinosaurs (such as Microraptor) could fly or at least glide, andothers, such as spinosaurids, had semi-aquatic habits.[20]

h14zpsn

霸占一楼~

daisyの小夢想

1:29
1:27
1:40
1:54
1:01

发现每天都有楼上的童鞋抢了沙发~~~~真欢乐~~

wjd0315

2：35
1：52
2：58
2：38
1：25
虽然第一次做，但没想到阅读速度这么慢。。。尤其跟楼上一比，daisy好厉害~~
而且好多地方看的快了还没有读懂。。。哎，这样12号考是送钱去了么。。。

h14zpsn

速度：
1:27:0
1:31:4
1:46:7
1:43:8
1:39:6
越障:
dinosaurs played an dominant role in the  world millions of years ago. They were vertebrata. A extinctions led most part of dinosaurs to be extincted on the earth. However, the left evolved to the present day. Many birds are considered as the descendants of such dinosaurs. Many paleontologists formerly believed that the dinosaurs were all cold-blood. However, with the recent  evidences, some dinosaurs had metabolism.
Then the author talked about the categorization of dinosaur and the relationship between dinosaurs and birds.

今天不在状态，只能大概记那么多了~~惭愧···

h14zpsn

1:29
1:27
1:40
1:54
1:01

发现每天都有楼上的童鞋抢了沙发~~~~真欢乐~~

-- by 会员 daisyの小夢想 (2012/2/21 0:02:42)

哈哈，说明我对小分队的任务异外关注啊~~~

phoebe0624

好吧，没有沙发，有首页也行！！
速度
1:20
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1:45
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1:35

doublena

LZ俺不太懂规则，越障是略读然后写summarize吗？

doublena

第二天做

02:12
02:04
03:16
02:51
03:28
10:27

aprilzhanghj

2'01
1'47
2'52
2'30
3'06

Many military analysts and experts believe the war would not be easy if Isreal want to take action agaisnt Iran. First, not enough tanker, flights and other military equipment. Second, the distance between targets and the Isreal make the route even harder. Although US stand is not clear, the Isreal push even severe sanction against Iran.

The definition of dinosaur and classification of different subgroup of the birds.