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队友们快来列队阅读咯，周二的科技作业。
速度1，2是一篇文章，3、4一篇，5比较长，大家只计时前面部分就好了。
越障是关于Jolie Angelina的文章，非常勇敢美丽的女士，向她致敬！
Enjoy reading!
Part I Speed
Article I (Check title later)
Actor Johnny Depp Immortalized in Name of Fossilized Creature With 'Scissor Hand' Claws
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【Time1】
A scientist has discovered an ancient extinct creature with 'scissor hand-like' claws in fossil records and has named it in honour of his favourite movie star.
The 505-million-year-old fossil called Kooteninchela deppi (pronounced Koo-ten-ee-che-la depp-eye), which is a distant ancestor of lobsters and scorpions, was named after the actor Johnny Depp for his starring role as Edward Scissorhands -- a movie about an artificial man named Edward, an unfinished creation, who has scissors for hands.
Kooteninchela deppi is helping researchers to piece together more information about life on Earth during the Cambrian period when nearly all modern animal types emerged.
David Legg, who carried out the research as part of his PhD in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, says:
"When I first saw the pair of isolated claws in the fossil records of this species I could not help but think of Edward Scissorhands. Even the genus name, Kootenichela, includes the reference to this film as 'chela' is Latin for claws or scissors. In truth, I am also a bit of a Depp fan and so what better way to honour the man than to immortalise him as an ancient creature that once roamed the sea?"
Kooteninchela deppi lived in very shallow seas, similar to modern coastal environments, off the cost of British Columbia in Canada, which was situated much closer to the equator 500 million years ago. The sea temperature would have been much hotter than it is today and although coral reefs had not yet been established, Kooteninchela deppi would have lived in a similar environment consisting of sponges.
【267 words】
【Time2】
The researcher believes that Kooteninchela deppi would have been a hunter or scavenger. Its large Edward Scissorhands-like claws with their elongated spines may have been used to capture prey, or they could have helped it to probe the sea floor looking for sea creatures hiding in sediment.
Kooteninchela deppi was approximately four centimetres long with an elongated trunk for a body and millipede-like legs, which it used to scuttle along the sea floor with the occasional short swim.
It also had large eyes composed of many lenses like the compound eyes of a fly. They were positioned on top of movable stalks called peduncles to help it more easily search for food and look out for predators.
The researcher discovered that Kooteninchela deppi belongs to a group known as the 'great-appendage' arthropods, or megacheirans, which refers to the enlarged pincer-like frontal claws that they share. The 'great-appendage' arthropods are an early relation of arthropods, which includes spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, insects and crabs.
David Legg adds: "Just imagine it: the prawns covered in mayonnaise in your sandwich, the spider climbing up your wall and even the fly that has been banging into your window and annoyingly flying into your face are all descendants of Kooteninchela deppi. Current estimates indicate that there are more than one million known insects and potentially 10 million more yet to be categorised, which potentially means that Kooteninchela Deppi has a huge family tree."
In the future, David Legg intends to further his research and study fossilised creatures from the Ordovician, the geological period that saw the largest increase in diversity of species on the planet. He hopes to understand why this happened in order to learn more about the current diversity of species on Earth.
【290 words】
Article II (Check title later)
South Africa's New Radio Telescope Reveals Giant Outbursts from Binary Star System
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【Time3】
An international team of astronomers have reported the first scientific results from the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7) in South Africa, the pathfinder radio telescope for the $3 billion global Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.
The results appear in the latest issue of the international astronomical journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).
Using the seven-dish KAT-7 telescope and the 26 m radio telescope at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), astronomers have observed a neutron star system known as Circinus X-1 as it fires energetic matter from its core into the surrounding system in extensive, compact `jets' that flare brightly, details of which are visible only in radio waves.
Circinus X-1 is an X-ray binary (or two-star system) where one of the companion stars is a high-density, compact neutron star (a neutron star is an extremely dense and compact remnant of an exploded star and only 20km in diameter.) The two stars orbit each other every 16.5 days in an elliptical orbit. When the two stars are at their closest the gravity of the dense neutron star pulls material from the companion star. A powerful jet of material then blasts out from the system.
During the time astronomers, including a team from the University of Southampton, observed Circinus X-1 (13 December 2011 to 16 January 2012) the system flared twice at levels among the highest observed in recent years. KAT-7 was able to catch both of these flares and follow them as they progressed. This is the first time that the system has been observed in such detail during the full flare cycle.
"One way of explaining what is happening is that the compact neutron star gobbles up parts of its companion star and then fires much of this matter back out again," explains Dr Richard Armstrong, an SKA SA Fellow at the University of Cape Town and lead author of the paper. "The dramatic radio flares happen when the matter Circinus X-1 has violently ejected slows down as it smashes into the surrounding medium."
【337 words】
【Time4】
Professor Rob Fender, Head of the Astronomy Research Group at the University of Southampton, says: "Circinus X-1 continues to reveal new aspects of its behaviour, and is arguably the best laboratory for relativistic jet astrophysics in the southern hemisphere. It is furthermore an excellent control to the large population of jets associated with accreting black holes."
Dr Armstrong adds: "These types of observations are crucial for understanding the processes of both accretion of matter onto extremely dense systems, such as neutron stars and black holes of both about the sun's mass, and also the so-called supermassive variety we now know to be at the centre of most galaxies."
KAT-7 is the world's first radio telescope array consisting of composite antenna structures. It is the test array for MeerKAT, a much larger radio array, which is itself in turn a precursor for the dish-based component of the SKA.
The MNRAS study was carried out as part of the development for the ThunderKAT project on MeerKAT, which will find many more of these types of systems in the galaxy and search for new types of radio systems that change rapidly with time.
Professor Fender, who is co-leader of the MeerKAT project, adds: "This project will test the extremes of physics, density, temperature, pressure, velocity, gravitational and magnetic fields, and are beyond anything achievable in any laboratory on Earth. It provides a unique glimpse of the laws of physics operating in extraordinary regimes. Nearly all such events are associated with transient radio emission. By studying radio bursts from these phenomena, we can pinpoint the sources of explosive events, probe relativistic accretion and understand the budget of kinetic feedback by such events in the ambient medium."
【282 words】
Article III (Check title later)
Agriculture in China Predates Domesticated Rice: Discovery of Ancient Diet Shatters Conventional Ideas of How Agriculture Emerged
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【Time5】
Archaeologists have made a discovery in southern subtropical China which could revolutionise thinking about how ancient humans lived in the region. They have uncovered evidence for the first time that people living in Xincun 5,000 years ago may have practised agriculture -- before the arrival of domesticated rice in the region.
Current archaeological thinking is that it was the advent of rice cultivation along the Lower Yangtze River that marked the beginning of agriculture in southern China. Poor organic preservation in the study region, as in many others, means that traditional archaeobotany techniques are not possible.
Now, thanks to a new method of analysis on ancient grinding stones, the archaeologists have uncovered evidence that agriculture could predate the advent of rice in the region.
The research was the result of a two-year collaboration between Dr Huw Barton, from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, and Dr Xiaoyan Yang, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing.
Funded by a Royal Society UK-China NSFC International Joint Project, and other grants held by Yang in China, the research is published in PLOS ONE.
Dr Barton, Senior Lecturer in Bioarchaeology at the University of Leicester, described the find as 'hitting the jackpot': "Our discovery is totally unexpected and very exciting.
"We have used a relatively new method known as ancient starch analysis to analyse ancient human diet. This technique can tell us things about human diet in the past that no other method can.
【253 words】
【The Rest】
"From a sample of grinding stones we extracted very small quantities of adhering sediment trapped in pits and cracks on the tool surface. From this material, preserved starch granules were extracted with our Chinese colleagues in the starch laboratory in Beijing. These samples were analysed in China and also here at Leicester in the Starch and Residue Laboratory, School of Archaeology and Ancient History.
"Our research shows us that there was something much more interesting going on in the subtropical south of China 5,000 years ago than we had first thought. The survival of organic material is really dependent on the particular chemical properties of the soil, so you never know what you will get until you sample. At Xincun we really hit the jackpot. Starch was well-preserved and there was plenty of it. While some of the starch granules we found were species we might expect to find on grinding and pounding stones, ie. some seeds and tuberous plants such as freshwater chestnuts, lotus root and the fern root, the addition of starch from palms was totally unexpected and very exciting."
Several types of tropical palms store prodigious quantities of starch. This starch can be literally bashed and washed out of the trunk pith, dried as flour, and of course eaten. It is non-toxic, not particularly tasty, but it is reliable and can be processed all year round. Many communities in the tropics today, particularly in Borneo and Indonesia, but also in eastern India, still rely on flour derived from palms.
Dr Barton said: "The presence of at least two, possibly three species of starch producing palms, bananas, and various roots, raises the intriguing possibility that these plants may have been planted nearby the settlement.
"Today groups that rely on palms growing in the wild are highly mobile, moving from one palm stand to another as they exhaust the clump. Sedentary groups that utilise palms for their starch today, plant suckers nearby the village, thus maintaining continuous supply. If they were planted at Xincun, this implies that 'agriculture' did not arrive here with the arrival of domesticated rice, as archaeologists currently think, but that an indigenous system of plant cultivation may have been in place by the mid Holocene.
"The adoption of domesticated rice was slow and gradual in this region; it was not a rapid transformation as in other places. Our findings may indicate why this was the case. People may have been busy with other types of cultivation, ignoring rice, which may have been in the landscape, but as a minor plant for a long time before it too became a food staple.
"Future work will focus on grinding stones from nearby sites to see if this pattern is repeated along the coast."
【456 words】
Part II Obstacle
Article IV
Angelina Jolie Proves Medical Care Saves Lives -- If You Can Get It
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【Time6】
Angelina Jolie’s recent decision to have a prophylactic double mastectomy has helped reduce her risk of getting breast cancer from 87% to 5%. Her courage to speak openly about the treatment has raised awareness and may save many other women as well. For her heroism, we should be grateful – and we should also look, as Ms. Jolie herself has, beyond America and the developed world.
“We cannot close ourselves off to information and ignore the fact that millions of people are out there suffering,” she has said. Few women have access to BRCA1 gene testing or advanced surgical care, and many women in developing countries don’t even have access to basic medical care, sanitation, or clean water and suffer deadly consequences as a result.
Every year, more than a quarter of a million women die during childbirth and almost 7 million children under five die as well. Why? Because, even though we have the medical solutions that people around the world need, we just can’t get it to them. They are dying not because we can’t solve a medical problem, but because we can’t solve a distribution problem. Saving these lives does not need to be costly, and it can be done now.
This does not require new research in health or science. All it requires is better application of existing management knowledge, practices and existing infrastructures, and scaling up smart and successful practices that are already working. It requires more entrepreneurship so health products and services can more easily reach the urban and rural poor in Africa, Asia, and South America. And that entrepreneurship can also generate profits and improve the standard of living of millions of poor by improving their health and reducing poverty.
The good news is there are many examples of how these sound management and business strategies – now applied to health in developing countries—are already beginning to bring health care to those who need it most.
Living Goods in Uganda trains women entrepreneurs to go door-to-door selling health care products like “Avon ladies.” With about 1000 agents, they reach over 400,000 women each year selling health care products to prevent or treat the most common infectious disease and provide other supplies that people need for cough and cold, wound care as well as other things that people want and need like phone chargers, water filters, solar lamps and clean burning cooking stoves. The sales agents track and support pregnant women in their area and promote antenatal care and delivery in a skilled and equipped facility.
Child and Family Wellness, a franchised network of 88 private clinics in Kenya and Rwanda, helps entrepreneurs start small clinics to treat the major causes of illness among children within local communities. Patients pay a small amount for quality care. In Rwanda CFW even accepts government-backed health insurance. In each of these cases, the women improve their lives, make a living, and save lives. This is not aid—the women use business approaches to improve the lives of themselves and their neighbors.
Rwanda, a poor country in the heart of Africa, has cut maternal deaths by 60% since 2000. A key feature of its success has been the use of 45,000 volunteer community health workers trained to provide basic education and care and to link pregnant moms to prenatal, delivery, and postnatal care. The community health workers and expectant mothers can also receive text message reminders of clinic appointments and delivery dates.
Similar programs delivered by a variety of different providers, including volunteers, salaried workers, and entrepreneurs, have found similar success from Brazil to Nepal and have helped to reduce maternal deaths worldwide by 30% and child deaths by 40% over the past two decades.
These innovative and entrepreneurial programs are succeeding by increasing access and reducing costs by shifting care from more expensive hospitals and clinics and doctors and nurses to facilities in smaller towns and villages. Community workers who live in these communities provide the care and perform those critical services locally. This improves the willingness of women to use these services, it educates women of their value in culturally sensitive and appropriate ways, and it treats women as customers. Like any successful business, these entrepreneurs are creating ambitious targets of patients to be served, incentives to meet or exceed, and partnerships with others who can help create efficiencies. And, as importantly, they are closely monitoring their financial bottom line so they can be financially sustainable over time.
Medical care can save lives, but only if the patient can get it. Using sound business and management techniques, we can help save the lives of millions of people; strong courageous people like Angelina Jolie who are doing their part to care for others and make a difference in the world. We do not need new science or health research to save millions of lives. We need to apply good business practices that we already know and use institutions that already exist.
【824 words】
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发表于 2013-5-20 21:48:17
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