0p7__大学体验英语综合教程3课文原文

1、unit1:passagea:careforourmotherearth(dr. mckinley of awareness magazine interviews a group of experts on environmental issues.) dr. mckinley: what do you think is the biggest threat to the environment today? aman motwane: the biggest threat to our environment today is the way we, as human beings, se

2、e our environment. how we see our environment shapes our whole world. most of us see everything as independent from one another. but the reality is that everything is part of one interconnected, interrelated whole. for example, a tree may appear isolated, but in fact it affects and is affected by ev

3、erything in its environment - sunshine, rain, wind, birds, minerals, other plants and trees, you, me. the tree shapes the wind that blows around it; it is also shaped by that wind. look at the relationship between the tree and its environment and you will see the future of the tree. most of us are b

4、lind to this interconnectedness of everything. this is why we dont see the consequences of our actions. it is time for each of us to open our eyes and see the world as it really is - one complete whole where every cause has an effect. dr. mckinley: hello dr. semkiw. in your research, what environmen

5、tal issues do you find most pressing? walter semkiw: two environmental issues that we find most pressing are deforesting and global warming. mankind has now cut down half of the trees that existed 10,000 years ago. the loss of trees upsets the ecosystem as trees are necessary to build topsoil, maint

6、ain rainfall in dry climates, purify underground water and to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. trees bring water up from the ground, allowing water to evaporate into the atmosphere. the evaporated water then returns as rain, which is vital to areas that are naturally dry. areas downwind of deforest

7、ed lands lose this source of rainfall and transform into deserts. global warming results from the burning of fossil fuels, such as petroleum products, resulting in the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses then resulting in the trap heat, result

8、ing in warming of our atmosphere. dr. mckinley: mr. nacson, thanks for participating all the way from australia! what do you suggest the readers of awareness magazine can do to help the environmental problem? leon nacson: the simplest way to help the environment is not to impact on it. tread as ligh

9、tly as you can, taking as little as possible, and putting back as much as you can. dr. mckinley: what is your specific area of concern regarding the current and future state of the environment? leon nacson: air and water pollution are our number one priorities. it is hard to understand that we are p

10、olluting the air we breathe and the water we drink. these are two elements that are not inexhaustible, and we must realize that once we reach the point of no return, there will be nothing left for future generations. dr. mckinley: mr. desai, what an honor it is to have this opportunity to interview

11、you. can you please share your wisdom with our readers and tell us where you see the environmental crisis heading? amrit desai: we are not separate from the problem. we are the problem. we live divided lives. on one hand, we ask industries to support our greed for more and more conveniences, comfort

12、 and possessions. we have become addicted consumers, which causes industrial waste. at the same time, we ignore our connection between our demands and the exploitation of mother earth. when we are greedy for more than what we need for our well being, we always abuse the resources of our body and the

13、 earth. we are nurtured by the healthy condition of mother earth. in humans, if the mother is ailing, the child suffers. we are the cause of the ailing planet and we are the victims. dr. mckinley: in closing, i thank all of the participants. i have learned a great deal about what i can do as an indi

14、vidual to help the environment. i hope these interviews encourage the readers of awareness magazine to take action and develop your own strategy. too many of us just sit back and say ill let the experts deal with it. meanwhile, we are killing the planet. my aim of this interview is to show how one p

15、erson can make a difference. thanks to all for offering your wisdom. unit1:passageb:frogstorya couple of odd things have happened lately. i have a log cabin in those same woods of northern wisconsin. i built it by hand and also added a greenhouse to the front of it. it is a joy to live in. in fact,

16、i work out of my home doing audio production and environmental work. as a tool of that trade i have a computer and a studio. i also have a tree frog that has taken up residence in my studio. how odd, i thought, last november when i first noticed him sitting atop my sound board over my computer. i fi

17、gured that he (and i say he, though i really dont have a clue if she is a he or vice versa) would be more comfortable in the greenhouse. so i put him in the greenhouse. back he came. and stayed. after a while i got quite used to the fact that as i would check my morning email and on-line news, he wo

18、uld be there with me surveying the world. then, last week, as he was climbing around looking like a small gray/green human, i started to wonder about him. so, there i was, working in my studio and my computer was humming along. i had to stop when tree frog went across my view. he stopped and turned

19、around and just sat there looking at me. well, i sat back and looked at him. for five months now he had been riding there with me and i was suddenly overtaken by an urge to know why he was there and not in the greenhouse, where i figured hed live a happier frog life. why are you here, i found myself

20、 asking him. as i looked at him, dead on, his eyes looked directly at me and i heard a tone. the tone seemed to hit me right in the center of my mind. it sounded very nearly like the same one as my computer. in that tone i could hear him say to me, because i want you to understand. yo. that was weir

21、d. understand what?, my mind jumped in. then, after a moment of feeling this communication, i felt i understood why he was there. i came to understand that frogs simply want to hear other frogs and to communicate. possibly the tone of my computer sounded to him like other tree frogs. interesting. i

22、kept working. i was working on a story about global climate change and had just received a fax from a friend. the fax said that the earth is warming at 1.9 degrees each decade. at that rate i knew that the maple trees that i love to tap each spring for syrup would not survive for my children. my bea

23、utiful wisconsin would become a prairie by the next generation. at that moment tree frog leaped across my foot and sat on the floor in front of my computer. he then reached up his hand to his left ear and cupped it there. he sat before the computer and reached up his right hand to his other ear. he

24、turned his head this way and that listening to that tone. very focused. he then began to turn a very subtle, but brilliant shade of green and leaped full force onto the computer. and then i remembered the story about the frogs that i had heard last year on public radio. it said frogs were dying arou

25、nd the world. it said that because frogs skin is like a lung turned inside out their skin was being affected by pollution and global climate change. it said that frogs were being found whose skin was like paper. all dried up. it said that frogs are an indicator species. that frogs will die first bec

26、ause of the sensitivity. then, i understood. the frogs have a message for us and it is the same message that some sober folks have had for us. there are no more choices. we have reached the time when we must be the adults for the planet, for the sake of the future generations of human and for frogs.

27、 because we are related. then i understood that there are no boundaries, that there is no more time. that we, for the sake of our relatives must act now. and then i understood, not only why the frog was there, but, also why i am here unit2:passagea:einsteinscompassyoung albert was a quiet boy. perha

28、ps too quiet, thought hermann and pauline einstein. he spoke hardly at all until age 3. they might have thought him slow, but there was something else evident. when he did speak, hed say the most unusual things. at age 2, pauline promised him a surprise. albert was excited, thinking she was bringing

29、 him some new fascinating toy. but when his mother presented him with his new baby sister maja, all albert could do is stare with questioning eyes. finally he responded, where are the wheels? when albert was 5 years old and sick in bed, hermann einstein brought albert a device that did stir his inte

30、llect. it was the first time he had seen a compass. he lay there shaking and twisting the odd thing, certain he could fool it into pointing off in a new direction. but try as he might, the compass needle would always find its way back to pointing in the direction of north. a wonder, he thought. the

31、invisible force that guided the compass needle was evidence to albert that there was more to our world that meets the eye. there was something behind things, something deeply hidden. so began albert einsteins journey down a road of exploration that he would follow the rest of his life. i have no spe

32、cial gift, he would say, i am only passionately curious. albert einstein was more than just curious though. he had the patience and determination that kept him at things longer than most others. other children would build houses of card up to 4 stories tall before the cards would lose balance and th

33、e whole structure would come falling down. maja watched in wonder as her brother albert methodically built his card buildings to 14 stories. later he would say, its not that im so smart, its just that i stay with problems longer. one advantage albert einsteins developing mind enjoyed was the opportu

34、nity to communicate with adults in an intellectual way. his uncle, an engineer, would come to the house, and albert would join in the discussions. his thinking was also stimulated by a medical student who came over once a week for dinner and lively chats. at age 12, albert einstein came upon a set o

35、f ideas that impressed him as holy. it was a little book on euclidean plane geometry. the concept that one could prove theorems of angles and lines that were in no way obvious made an indescribable impression on the young student. he adopted mathematics as the tool he would use to pursue his curiosi

36、ty and prove what he would discover about the behavior of the universe. he was convinced that beauty lies in the simplistic. perhaps this insight was the real power of his genius. albert einstein looked for the beauty of simplicity in the apparently complex nature and saw truths that escaped others.

37、 while the expression of his mathematics might be accessible to only a few sharp minds in the science, albert could condense the essence of his thoughts so anyone could understand. for instance, his theories of relativity revolutionized science and unseated the laws of newton that were believed to b

38、e a complete description of nature for hundreds of years. yet when pressed for an example that people could relate to, he came up with this: put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. thats relativity. albert ei

39、nsteins wealth of new ideas peaked while he was still a young man of 26. in 1905 he wrote 3 fundamental papers on the nature of light, a proof of atoms, the special theory of relativity and the famous equation of atomic power: e=mc2. for the next 20 years, the curiosity that was sparked by wanting t

40、o know what controlled the compass needle and his persistence to keep pushing for the simple answers led him to connect space and time and find a new state of matter. what was his ultimate quest? i want to know how god created this world. i want to know his thoughts; the rest are details. unit2:pass

41、ageb:thewake-upcallfromstockholmthe wake-up call from stockholm these are the last 20 minutes of peace in your life, the swedish caller told caltech professor ahmed zewail at 5:40 a.m. on october 12. soon the world would hear of zewails award - the 1999 nobel prize in chemistry - and zewail would he

42、ar from the world. two thousand e-mails would zoom his way within a few days and three phone lines would start ringing with eager requests for interviews from the national and egyptian press and with congratulations from friends and colleagues. but first, the 53-year-old man would share the news wit

43、h his family. he kissed his wife, dema, and young sons, nabeel and hani. his mother, whom zewail reached in his native egypt, cried and cried. his daughters, maha and amani, were going crazy on the phone. i couldnt even speak, said zewail. i was disappointed in nabeels reaction, he added. i told him

44、 i had won the prize. he said, good. but when zewail asked if hed tell the kids at school, the six-year-old said, no. these guys will say so what? but nabeel did ask, are we going to see the king? the royal swedish academy honored zewail for his groundbreaking work in viewing and studying chemical r

45、eactions at the atomic level as they occur. he has shown that it is possible with rapid laser technique to see how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical reaction. zewail had brought the most powerful tools from the field of physics into the chemistry lab to create a revolution, and the field of

46、 femto-chemistry was born. it was a revolution in chemistry and related sciences, the swedes announced, since this type of investigation allows us to understand and predict important reactions, to probe nature at its most fundamental level. zewail is the 27th caltech faculty member or alumnus to rec

47、eive the nobel prize, and the third faculty member to be so honored in this decade. in my experience, said zewail after a tumultuous week, whenever you cross fields or bring in new ideas and tools, you find what you dont expect. you open new windows. zewails path to the forefront of the internationa

48、l science arena has been elegant and swift, like the atoms he observes performing molecular dances. with a wealth of experience in home chemistry projects as a boy in egypt, he sailed to the top of his class at alexandria university. the classical science education he received there prepared him for

49、 a promised tenure-track position in the field of his choice: math, physics, chemistry, or geology, but he decided to get his phd at the university of pennsylvania - to see the molecular world of chemistry. he had heard of caltech, but to this young egyptian, institute sounded less prestigious than

50、university. as it turned out, penn provided the ideal transition from classical science studies to the postdoctoral work he did at uc berkeley. he stayed at berkeley for postdoctoral work for two reasons: to think more about research rather than about getting a phd and the secret reason - i wanted t

51、o buy a big american car to take back to egypt with me. at berkeley, he published three papers immediately and was advised to apply to the top handful of american universities. the most important reason why i decided on caltech was, once the offer was made, i was well received by the staff, administ

52、ration, and faculty. he also felt he could make his own way specializing in dynamics in a department strong on structure. and the mediterranean climate didnt hurt. that was 1976. zewail was off and running, earning tenure in a year and a half, making full professorship by 1982, seated in the pauling

53、 chair by 1990. now with a nobel prize under his belt, whats next? first of all, im not retiring, he said. and im not going to hollywood. in the coming years, zewail looks forward to more breakthroughs. he will remain active in research and in publishing papers, which he considers to be his babies (

54、363 to date ). tracking the progress of two papers within a week of receiving the prize, he reached a surprised editor who said, you on the phone? impossible! i thought youd be out wining and dining. he will continue to push the envelope of what is possible. unit3:passagea:bathtubbattleshipsfromivor

55、ydaleamerican mothers have long believed that when it comes to washing out the mouths of naughty children, nothing beats ivory soap (a registered trademark of the proctor & gamble company). this is because its reputation for being safe, mild, and pure is as solid and spotless as the marble of the li

56、ncoln memorial. it doesnt even taste all that bad. and should you drop it into a tubful of cloudy, child-colored water, not to worry - it floats. ivory soap is an american institution, about as widely recognized as the washington monument and far more well respected than congress. it had already att

57、ained this noble status when theodore roosevelt was still a rough-riding cowboy in north dakota. introduced in 1879 as an inexpensive white soap intended to rival the quality of imported soaps, it was mass marketed by means of one of the first nationwide advertising campaigns. people were told that

58、ivory was so pure that it floats, and the notion took hold. as a result, at least half a dozen generations of americans have gotten themselves clean with ivory. so many hands, faces, and baby bottoms have been washed with ivory that their numbers beat the imagination. not even proctor & gamble knows

59、 how many billions of bars of ivory have been sold. the company keeps a precise count, however, of the billions of dollars it earns. annual sales of ivory soap, ivory snow, crest toothpaste, folgers coffee, and the hundreds of other products now marketed under the proctor & gamble umbrella exceed thirty billion