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1、4Dutch Experiment Grows Vegetables in Sea WaterClimate change has caused a rise in sea levels. This has increased the amount of salt in fresh water used on coastal farms. As a result, farmers are increasingly unable to use fields close to the sea.Scientists call this process salinization. The term c

2、omes from the word saline - which means a mixture of salt and water. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says salinization is reducing the worlds irrigated lands by 1 to 2 percent every year. Irrigation is the process of supplying land with fresh water from other areas.But a farmer

3、in the Netherlands is now using a mixture of sea and fresh water to grow healthy and tasty vegetables. Marc Van Rijsselberghe started with an experiment. He put several kinds of plants in saline.We put in a lot of plants in the fields and then we put in, put them in fresh water and in sea water and

4、all the varieties between it, and then we see which variety is surviving and which variety is dying.Mr. Van Rijsselberghe worked on the project with scientists from the Free University of Amsterdam. He divided a farm into eight irrigated areas. Separate pipes pumped fresh and sea water, and a comput

5、er program created water with eight levels of salinity.And then computer says go and then it goes to the fields and dripping irrigation starts to work and we are going to kill plants. Thats it.Computerized measuring devices called sensors controlled the water levels and the levels of salinity. Mr. V

6、an Rijsselberghe says he was able to harvest vegetables from most of the eight test areas. He says the vegetables were smaller than those grown in fresh water. But he says they also have more sugar and salt, so they taste better.Its a miracle. I mean, it shouldnt be a carrot, it should be dying if w

7、e look at the datum that are available in the world at the moment.The farmer grew carrots, cabbage, onions and beetroot. But he found that potatoes grew better than the other vegetables in the combination of sea and fresh water. Mr. Van Rijsselberghe says four kinds of these potatoes were recently s

8、ent to Pakistan, where thousands of hectares of land have been damaged by salinization. Farmers in Pakistan will test the Dutch potatoes to see if they can be grown in those fields.读后感觉：文章易懂，单词都是学生平时积累的高考词汇，有个别派生词（如：salinization）学生通过构词法可以推断出意思，生词（如：beetroot）不影响学生理解文章。5.Scientists Create New Maps of

9、Ocean Floor We know more about the surface of the planet Mars than we know about what is at the bottom of Earths oceans.Until recently, scientists had mapped only about 20 percent of the sea floor. But our knowledge of the deep seas is changing because of information from satellites. Scientists have

10、 produced a new map that provides a detailed picture of the oceans. The map is expected to help oceanographers, industry and governments.The new map is two times as detailed as the map made 20 years ago. David Sandwell is a geophysics professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the Unive

11、rsity of California. He and other scientists worked on the mapping project. He says they turned to space to look deeper into the ocean. He spoke to VOA on SKYPE.The way were doing that is to use a satellite altimeter（高度计）, a radar to map the topography（地貌：physical features ） of the ocean surface. No

12、w that seems sort of strange that youd map the topography of the ocean surface when you really want to get at the sea floor. But, the ocean surface topography has these bumps （凸起）and dips（倾斜） due to gravitational effects that mimic（或替换成imitate） whats on the sea floor.The scientists collected and stu

13、died information from two satellites. Some of the data came from the European Space Agencys Cryo-2 satellite. It was placed in Earths orbit to watch sea ice. The other satellite is the American space agencys Jason-1. It is studying the surface of the oceans. Scientists combined the satellite data wi

14、th images gathered by sonar equipment on ships. Sonar works by sending sound waves through the water. When the sound waves hit an object, its presence is confirmed.That enables us to look at smaller-scale features and also features that are buried by sediments（沉积物） in the ocean basins. The new map s

15、hows the sea floor as it has never been seen before. It shows thousands of underwater mountains and places where continents pulled apart. It shows where earthquakes were active many years ago. They all are buried deep underneath the ocean floor.In one place, three mountain ridges join at the same ar

16、ea. Huge tectonic plates（板块） can be seen clearly there.Its called the Indian Ocean Triple Junction. Its one of my favorite spots in the ocean because it really displays the theoretical aspects of plate tectonics perfectly. You have three plates - the African plate, and the Indo-Australian plate and

17、the Antarctic plate - all connected at this one point in the center of the Indian Ocean.David Sandwell says the map is a powerful tool for fisheries, those interested in protecting the environment and for oil exploration.(The) petroleum exploration industry is interested in how to reconnect the cont

18、inents, bring them back together tectonically so you can map the basins (on) one continental margin - say, Africa - and use that to establish where the similar basin would be on the other continental margin in South America.If scientists know that information, they may be able to find oil fields.The

19、 new data also will help scientists improve their estimates of ocean depths. This information can help ships travel safely and improve military operations and scientific projects worldwide. This new gravity map really provides a reconnaissance（勘测） tool for planning shipboard surveys. You dont have t

20、o go out with your ship and start looking for something new - we can target that with the gravity and then go out with the ship and do the high resolution survey to really understand these features.Mr. Sandwell thinks scientists will make many more discoveries as they examine the new map and the inf

21、ormation it provides.The work is described in the journal Science.读后感觉：这篇文章比上篇里面的故事结构要稍微复杂点，难度和平时考试的难度相等。里面的专业术语稍微多一些，有些给个释义有些不用给，不会影响学生理解。 6Western Diet Bad for Human Health, EnvironmentThe spread of Western eating habits around the world is bad for human health and for the environment. Those findi

22、ngs come from a new report in the journal Nature.There are ways to solve this diet-health-environment problem. But they will require a change in eating habits. And what we eat can be a product of culture, personal taste, price and ease.A Chinese man takes a photo with Ronald McDonald at a McDonalds

23、fast food restaurant in Chinas northern Liaoning province. (2011 File Photo) David Tilman is a professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota. In the study, he examined information from 100 countries to identify what people ate and how diet affected health.Mr. Tilman noted a movement beginning

24、in the 1960s. He found that as nations industrialized, population increased and earnings rose. More people began to adopt what has been called the Western diet.The Western diet is high in refined, or processed, sugar, fat, oil and meat. By eating these foods, people began to get fatter - and sicker.

25、Too many calories and not enough exercise is not a healthy combination.The excess, let us say, in the 15 richest nations of the world, right now is on the order of about 400 or 500 extra calories a day that are eaten beyond what people need, and that leads people to gain weight.David Tillman says ov

26、erweight people are at greater risk for non-infectious diseases like diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.Diabetes is shooting to very high rates in the United States and across Europe. Heart disease is a major cause of mortality（可换成death） in the Western countries. Unfortunately when people beco

27、me industrialized, if they adopt this Western diet, they are going to have these same health impacts, and in some cases if you are Asian, you have them more severely than even happens in the West.China, he says, is an example where the number of diabetes cases has jumped. from less than one percent to 10 percent of the population having diabetes as they began to industrialize over a 20-year period. And that has not leveled off yet. That is still going up. And that is happening all across the world, in Mexico, in Nigeria and so on, just nation after nation.And, a diet bad for human beings,