【Native Speaker每日综合训练—31系列】【31-17】科技

zxppx

Official Weibo: http://weibo.com/u/3476904471

大家好!胖胖翔来了! 祝大家新年快乐~

Part I：Speaker

【Rephrase1】
Article 1
After Hibernation, Rosetta Seeks Its Stone

[Dialog, 3: 20]



Source:
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/21/264575969/after-hibernation-rosetta-seeks-its-stone

zxppx

Part II：Speed

【Time 2】
Article 2
Hungry Polar Bears Turn to Seabird Eggs

Polar bears are known for dining on whatever they want, from human garbage to reindeer to berries. But in the lower latitudes of the Canadian Arctic, they primarily prey on ringed seals (Pusa hispida), hunting them from sea ice platforms. Over the past 3 decades, however, the sea ice in this region has progressively broken up earlier than in the past due to climate change. The bears now face 2 months of ice-free habitat. Without seals to eat, the bears have increasingly turned to terrestrial prey, including the eggs of northern common eiders and thick-billed murres, scientists have discovered. Over three summers, from 2010 to 2012, researchers surveyed the birds’ nesting colonies on 230 islands and along more than 1000 kilometers of coastline in Hudson Strait and Northern Hudson Bay Narrows, looking for signs of predators. On 16 of the islands, they spotted 22 polar bears, and evidence of bears, such as feces containing eggshell, on an additional 63 islands, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They also watched bears eating eggs on numerous occasions (pictured). Overall, they found bears at 34% of the eider colonies, and estimated that the birds lost more eggs to them than to gulls and foxes, their usual nest predators. Murres, which nest on steep and narrow cliff ledges, are not as affected by the bears. The researchers do not yet know how the eiders will fare if the bears continue to feast on their eggs, although they think some colonies may go extinct if the intense predation continues. But their study—and others showing that polar bears are also dining on snow goose eggs and caribou—does support claims that polar bears in areas where the ice breaks up early don’t have enough time to hunt seals and acquire the fat reserves they need to make it through the ice-free season. The vanishing sea ice, the researchers conclude, is causing a cascade of unexpected ecological effects—not just on polar bears but also on seabirds.


Source:
字数[338]
http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2014/02/scienceshot-hungry-polar-bears-turn-seabird-eggs?rss=1


【Time 3】
Article 3
What Did Corn's Ancestor Really Look Like?

How did an ugly grass become one of the world’s most important crops? That’s a question researchers have been asking themselves ever since genetic analysis revealed that the ancestor of corn (right) was a spindly Mexican plant called teosinte (left). The answer is that ancient teosinte grew differently from its modern counterpart, according to a study published in Quaternary International. Researchers made the discovery by growing today’s teosinte in 20.1°C to 22.5°C greenhouses with 40% to 50% less carbon dioxide in the air—conditions more like those 14,000 years ago, when the plant was first domesticated. The plants grew shorter and had the female ears right on the main stem, the way they are in modern corn, instead of on side branches. And most of their seeds matured at once, while modern teosinte seeds mature over several weeks; the scientists kept having to go back to harvest them again and again. If teosinte used to be easier to harvest, domestication starts to make more sense. No sign of a cob, though; that must have come later.


字数[176]
Source:
http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2014/02/scienceshot-what-did-corns-ancestor-really-look


【Time 4】
Article 4
Monkeys born with edited genes
DNA-snipping technique inspired by bacteria shows therapeutic promise

The birth of two monkeys in China provides hope that a new type of gene therapy may one day help correct genetic defects in people.

The two cynomolgus monkeys, also known as crab-eating macaques, are the first primates to have their genes precisely edited using a gene-snipping tool borrowed from bacteria, a team of Chinese scientists reports January 30 in Cell. The work is part of an effort to genetically engineer monkeys to produce mutations like those seen in human diseases, especially ones involving the brain.

Other researchers have inserted foreign genes into primates (SN: 6/20/09, p. 13), but until now, no one has succeeded in altering the animals’ own genes, says Guoping Feng, a neurobiologist at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT who was not involved in the work.

To alter the monkeys’ genes, Jiahao Sha of Nanjing Medical University and his colleagues wielded molecular scissors first discovered in bacteria. The scissors are a DNA-cutting enzyme called Cas9. In bacteria, Cas9 is part of a primitive “immune system” — known as CRISPRs — that defends against viruses by chopping up ones that the bacteria have encountered before and recognize as threats.

The technique has been used to edit the genes of human cells growing in laboratory dishes and in rats, mice and other laboratory organisms, but never before in a living primate.

Sha, along with Xingxu Huang of Nanjing University and Weizhi Ji of the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research and Kunming Biomed International, injected mRNA used to produce Cas9 into single-celled monkey embryos. At the same time, the researchers inserted other small RNA molecules that would guide the enzyme to three genes the scientists wanted to disrupt. Once the enzyme reached the genes, it would snip the DNA, leaving the cell to attempt a repair. In some cases, the cell would be unable to repair the break correctly, leading to disruption of the gene’s activity.

字数[319]


【Time 5】


Researchers hope to use the technique to disrupt genes linked to human diseases so they can study how the disease develops and test treatments. For this study, the researchers chose three genes to disrupt: NrOb1, which is involved in keeping embryonic stem cells flexible and for determining sex; Ppar-gamma, which helps regulate metabolism; and Rag1, an immune system gene.

The researchers found that two of the three targeted genes had been simultaneously altered in eight of 15 injected embryos. Those eight embryos were transplanted into surrogate mothers. The researchers delivered the first two female babies, named Mingming and Ningning, from one of the surrogate moms on November 11, 2013. Both infants carry disrupted Ppar-gamma and Rag1 genes. Two of the other surrogates miscarried, and the researchers said in an e-mail that they are awaiting the birth of the remaining baby monkeys.

Only the targeted genes were disrupted, the researchers reported. That fact is encouraging, says Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, Berkeley who is a pioneer of CRISPR techniques. It suggests that CRISPRs could be used to repair some human genes without inadvertently damaging others.

Feng agrees that the work suggests gene editing might one day fix some genetic defects in people by snipping out and replacing mutated DNA. “If you can put a mutation in, this suggests you can take a mutation out,” he said.

There are still problems to solve before the technology could ever be used in people, and even hurdles to using gene-edited monkeys as stand-ins for humans, he said. The technique was not as efficient as the researchers had hoped; they failed to disrupt one of the three targeted genes.

Another pitfall: Even though the researchers injected embryos at the single cell stage, the enzyme didn’t start snipping until the cells had divided, making the monkeys into mishmashes of cells with different mutations, and leaving some cells unaltered. Such mixed-up monkeys would confuse studies of any diseases they might be designed to mimic, so the researchers would need to wait years until the monkeys could breed and produce offspring with just one type of mutation in all their cells.


字数[363]
Source:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/monkeys-born-edited-genes


【Time 6】
Article 5
Drug Company Teaming With Yale to Share Trial Data

Johnson & Johnson announced an unusual partnership today with Yale University, in which it will share raw data from many of its clinical trials. The Yale University Open Data Access Project (aptly nicknamed YODA) will “review requests from investigators and physicians seeking access to anonymized clinical trials data from Janssen, the pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson,” the company wrote in a press release. YODA’s team will then decide which researchers can access the information for their own studies.

The announcement prompted a small explosion of news stories. Forbes wrote that “initially, this will only include products from the drug division, but it will expand to include devices and consumer products.” Janssen’s pharmaceutical products stretch the gamut, including pills for acid reflux, schizophrenia, pain, and birth control, among others. The data to be shared with YODA go well beyond study design and results, and include de-identified information on every volunteer. YODA is led by Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist who has long pressed for more data access in clinical research. (In 2010, Forbes named him “The Most Powerful Doctor You Never Heard Of.”)

Johnson & Johnson, of course, will get to decide what it sends over to New Haven, although it’s pledging broad disclosure. That’s somewhat in contrast with a controversy brewing in Europe, where drug regulators are hoping to release the same kind of raw data submitted to it by pharmaceutical companies. That effort has been met with pushback and lawsuits. But it is part of a broader shift in both the United States and Europe, where researchers and some regulators are increasingly frustrated by the secrecy surrounding many drug trials, and want to get the information out in the open.


字数[281]
Source:
http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/01/drug-company-teaming-yale-share-trial-data

zxppx

Part III： Obstacle

【Paraphase7】
Article 6
Scientists Solve Mystery of 'Chinese Pompeii'

All cracked up. A distinctive pattern of cracking in 120-million to 130-million-year-old fossils from China (including a small dinosaur, left, and birds, center and right), as well as surface damage (arrows, inset) in the bones, strongly suggest the creatures were killed in a hot cloud of volcanic ash.


Scientists have long marveled at the immaculately preserved fossils unearthed from ancient lake sediments in northeastern China. The former creatures—including fish, birds, small dinosaurs, and mammals—still sport the outlines of muscles, skin, and feathers thanks to the fine-grained volcanic ash that blanketed the carcasses and then hardened into rock. Now, new analyses of the remains show that the material that entombed the animals also killed them, overwhelming them in a hot cloud of ash akin to the one that destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii nearly 2000 years ago.

The so-called Jehol fossils, named after a mythical land of Chinese folklore, date to between 120 million and 130 million years ago and are noteworthy in a number of ways. Besides their remarkable preservation, which even saved traces of delicate structures like air bladders in fish, researchers have often found an unexpected juxtaposition of creatures in the same layer of ancient lake sediment. Small dinosaurs such as Psittacosaurus and birds such as Confuciusornis lie next to fish, for example. Scientists have long speculated that this odd mix was a sign of mass catastrophe, says Baoyu Jiang, a sedimentologist at Nanjing University in China, but they weren’t sure how it could have occurred. Also a mystery, he notes, is how the relatively undamaged carcasses of land animals—especially those of birds, whose remains typically float and are fragile due to their light bones—ended up intact at the bottom of a lake.

Now, Jiang and his colleagues have taken a closer look at the Jehol fossils—literally. Researchers have long noted that the remains of soft tissues were often sheathed in a thin, dark carbon-rich layer. But the team found that under the microscope, cells in the tissues of fossils from several sites had been blown open, and they had a charcoal-like appearance. In addition, the surfaces of bones often showed a distinct sort of cracking typically seen only when a living or freshly dead creature is exposed to intense heat, Jiang says. The postures of the Jehol fossils, with muscles and tendons contracted, is also a clue that the carcasses were exposed to extreme heat. But the fossils of fish don’t appear to show this heat-related damage.

Altogether, the evidence suggests that the land animals entombed in the ancient Chinese lakes were killed by a hot cloud of volcanic ash that then swept them into the lake, the researchers report today in Nature Communications. What is now northeastern China was rife with volcanic activity at the time, Jiang says. Although it’s possible that flying birds could have been overcome by poisonous volcanic gases and fallen directly into the ancient lakes, that doesn’t explain how the other nonaquatic animals got there, he says. It’s not likely that the carcasses were carried into the lakes by streams, Jiang explains, because that would have damaged the remains. Also, he notes, the fossils would have been surrounded by silt or mud rather than fine-grained volcanic ash. Although scientists had previously noted the Jehol fossils were surrounded by tiny bits of volcanic rock, they hadn’t linked the ash to the death of the creatures; they’d only suggested that the fine-grained material coincidentally rained down to blanket a normal lake-bottom accumulation of dead creatures, Jiang says.

The evidence uncovered by Jiang and his colleagues “is very convincing,” says Janet Monge, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology who has studied the human remains unearthed at Pompeii. The Chinese fossils “have a very particular type of fracture pattern, a classic example of bone failure associated with extreme heat,” she notes. “I’ve never seen anything like it outside of Pompeii.”

Previous studies have suggested the volcanic ash cloud that smothered the Roman city of Pompeii in 79 C.E. was probably about 400°C. But the heat damage to the bones in the Chinese fossils is superficial compared with that seen in the human remains unearthed at Pompeii, says Antoine Pierre-Olivier, a paleontologist at the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences of Montpellier in France. Therefore, he suggests, the ash cloud that doomed the Jehol biota was probably considerably cooler, maybe between 200°C and 300°C.

The remarkable preservation of the Jehol fossils stems from “a perfect combination of factors,” Pierre-Olivier says—possibly because the lakes where the carcasses ended up were relatively far from the ancient, region-smothering eruptions. Because the ash cloud was relatively cool, it would not have incinerated the land animals caught in its path, and its reasonably slow speed would have allowed the carcasses to be transported and preserved intact. An extremely hot, turbulent cloud of ash near an eruption, on the other hand, would have left few, if any, fossils behind.


字数[829]
Source:
http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/02/scientists-solve-mystery-chinese-pompeii

TaoRs92

不会吧我能当第一个！！
thx~~!


time:1:52.55
The enviornment for some polar bears has changes.So they turned to seabird eggs to feed on.
The details of this change.The impact in ecological effects.
__________
time:0:59.05
The corn's ancestor--T.
The profile and sight of T.
The experiment.
___________
time:1:51.39
Chinese scientists have successfully mutate some genes in the two monkeys.This is the firt time in living primates.
How did they achieve?
The gene sissors--enzyme C in bacteria.
They put this enzyme into the moneky's embryos,as well as mRNA to lead the enzyme to cut off the DNA.
____________
time:2:11.78
Three targeted genes.Some of the infants were born.They are still waiting the others.
Only targeted genes were disrupted.This meas this technology can help modify and change targeted genes without damaging others.
The pitfall:
1 not efficient as hoped.failed disrupt every targeted genes
2 should wait until the modified money give birth to see the result
___________
time:1:29.29
A medical seller coorporates with Yale to provide raw data.Yale will decide the researchers who can have the access to these data for their own studies.
The same issue in Europe.The discussion.
__________
time:5:02.51
New finding:the Jehol fossils in northeastern China has new explanation.
The details of Jehol fossils.Strange mix-up:many creatures mixed with fishes in the fossil.Birds--which had light bones were reserved perfectly at the bottom of the lake.
carbon-rich layer.charcoal-like appreance--exposed to extreme heat
Conclusion:they were killed by a cloud of volcanic ash.these creatures were swept into the lake.their ture death reason is the ash--before no one had linked these factors.
Opinions from others:
1 very convincing
2 modifying the temperature.not that extreme hot.

疏离无罪

占~~~~~~~

Speaker:Rosetta went to hibernation for the long distance far away from the sun.Most of its instruments were shut off to save energy,and some instruments are still working to keep it warm enough to avoid forzen.But now it is back and refire its rocket engine.The time to wait the signal is tough to scientists.

01:50
Polar bears turn to eat seabird since the climate change makes the sea ice break much earlier,which lead to the lack of seals for them.This hunting change may lead the extinct of seabirds.Climate change is causing unexpected ecological effects

00:55
Scientists succeed to grow a ancestor of today's corn.

01:34
Two monkey borned with edited gene show a new therapy for genetic diseases.The scientists use molecular scissors discovered in bacteria to alther gene.

01:32
In one experiment,two of three gene can be alterd to cure disease.This kind of therapy seems to be workable,but it still has some problems.

01:21
A drug company is cooperate with Yale University to provide raw data about its drugs to researchers.

06:06
Main Idea:Scientistss solve the myth of Chinese Pompeii
An event like Pompeii happened in northeastern China about 120 million years ago.Sceientist have studies for a long time to know the cause of these death.After new analysis,they think that a hot cloud of volcanic ash may be the main reason.
But there is not much ash around the lake and some animals are not aroud the lake when they were alive and the fossil does not show much heat damage.
Possible explaination is that the ash is much cooler than it in Pompeii,it may be 200 °C.And the lakes where the carcasses ended up were relatively far from the ancient, region-smothering eruptions,and then the fossils were transported together to there by the cooler ash.

MAGGIEHE1993

占到咯~~谢谢楼主！！！
Speaker: The European spacecraft Rosetta is working again after 31-month of hibernation. According to experts, because the
         Rosetta is too far away from the sun and cannot get enough solar energy to keep the system active. The staff are
         in great relief that Rosetta starts to send signals back to earth again.

time2: 2min 18"
       The vanishing sea ice has caused polar bears to prey on eggs of sea birds.

time3: 1min 12"
       Scientists studied the ancestor of corn and cultivated it in the environment similar to its ancient living condition.

time4: 2min 15"
       Chinese scientists try to edit genes of living primates.

time5: 2min 46"
       The result of the study showed that it is possible to edit certain genes but there are still some problem with the method.

time6: 2min 04"
       Johnson&Johnson and Yale University will share data from many of Johnson's clinicl trials.

Obstacle: 6min 20"
          New analysis showed that the ancient animal fossils found the northern China was killed and entombed by a hot cloud of
          ash.
          The so-called Jehol fossils are noteworthy in a number of ways. Small dinosaurs and land animals are found in the fossils,
          which suggest that a big catastrophy once happened.
          A closer study of the fossils showed that land animals were exposed to extreme heat when died.
          The evidence suggests that the land animals entombed in the ancient Chinese lakes were killed by a hot cloud of volcanic
          ash that then swept them into the lake.
          An anthropologist at a university thought the evidence uncovered by Chinese scientists is very convincing and similar to
          that of Ponpeii.
          A paleontologist suggests the ash cloud that doomed the Jehol biota was probably cooler than the ash of Pompeii.
          The remarkable preservation of the Jehol fossils stems from "a perfect combination of factors".

leeloo_song

zxppx 发表于 2014-2-5 12:03
Part III： Obstacle

【Paraphase7】

Time 2 2’58’’ As the sea ice melt, the Polar bear start to eat eggs of sea birds, changing the ecology in polar area.
Tme 3 3’38’’ 没看懂，还是没明白原来的长什么样，现在的长什么样。
Time 4 2’42’’ Scientists in China first modify two money’s genes successfully.
Time 5 2’58’’ The mechanism of the experiment. The significance and short-comings of the experiments.
Time 6 2’24’’
Obstacle 8’41’’

bluewind48

头一次首页，哈哈

speaking: how to tackle the rocket problem about long distance, time and heat...

【Time 2】02"06evidence, reason and result. sea ice disappear cause the bear to invade onland to eat seabird`s egg, and such movement results in fewer seabird. Thus seabird and bear will be both affected by the
【Time 3】 01"25 what the ancestor of grass like.and why it became domestic like  grass staturs quo
【Time 4】 02"45experiment found that attacting immune system could help to correct gene defects in monkeys. how does it work and C9 plays key role in the process.
【Time 5】02"40 an exciting found about the succeed of gene defects in monkeys. however, at leat two problem stop this finding to use on human. 1. fail to disrupt the targeted genes 2.more time are needed to see the multiple cell alters
【Time 6】 01"47drug companies cooperate with Yale to explore big data. Even pharmacy drug s are included. laws inhabite the research in EU, but these regulations are facing conflict of more and more lawsuit.

【Paraphase7】05"10 what`s the real reason of Chinese Pumpii. evidences from fossils unearthed in China.
key evidence: all fossils of animals except fish were found to have the same feature with the ones in Pumpii
old opinion: all animals were swarped in by volcano desaster
new opinion: if so, all the fossils will be disapear. Thus the Chinese Pumpii might result from the vocanic ash as the one in Pumpii.

guagua13

木有首页了

Speaker
Hibernation 冬眠
rosetta was shut off to save energy
it went to sleep in june 2011 and came back two and half years later.
light from sun --> electric energy
the sun is not very bright, don't have enough energy to keep all systems active
rosetta needs to fire its rocket engine and change course slightly.

Speed
time2: 2:07:41 338
Polar bears have increasingly turned to terrestrial prey, including seabirds, because they now face two month ice-free habitat due to climate change.
time3: 1:11:02 176
The ancestor of corn was a Mexican plant called teosinte, which grew differently from its modern counterpart.
time4: 1:44:71 319
The two cynomolgus monkeys are the first living primates to have their genes edited using a gene-snipping tool borrowed from bacteria. This may help correct genetic defects in people.
time5: 2:03:50 363
Researchers chose three genes to disrupt in order to study how the disease develops and test treatments. The researchers failed to disrupt one of the three targeted genes. The enzyme did not start snipping until the cells had divided, leaving some cells unaltered and making monkeys into mishmashes of cells with different mutations.  
time6: 1:31:49 281
Johnson & Johnson developed a partnership with Yale and share clinical trial data with it.

Obstacle: 4:38:49 829
Evidence suggests that the land animals entombed in the ancient Chinese lakes were killed by a hot cloud of volcanic ash. The ash cloud was probably considerably cooler than the volcanic ash cloud that smothered the Roman city of Pompeii. The reasonably slow speed have allowed the carcasses to be transported and preserved intact.

fionlinlin

很类似托福阅读哦 满科普的