中英文对照小短文

Cells and Temperature 细胞与温度 Cells cannot remain alive outside certain limits of temperature and much narrower limits mark the boundaries of effective functioning. Enzyme systems of mammals and birds are most efficient only within a narrow range around 37C;a departure of a few degrees from this value seriously impairs their functioning. Even though cells can survive wider fluctuations the integrated actions of bodily systems are impaired. Other animals have a wider tolerance for changes of bodily temperature. For centuries it has been recognized that mammals and birds differ from other animals in the way they regulate body temperature. Ways of characterizing the difference have become more accurate and meaningful over time, but popular terminology still reflects the old division into “warm-blooded” and “cold-blooded” species; warm-blooded included mammals and birds whereas all other creatures were considered cold-blooded. As more species were studied, it became evident that this classification was inadequate. A fence lizard or a desert iguana—each cold-blooded----usually has a body temperature only a degree or two below that of humans and so is not cold. Therefore the next distinction was made between animals that maintain a constant body temperature, called home0therms, and those whose body temperature varies with their environments, called poikilotherms. But this classification also proved inadequate, because among mammals there are many that vary their body temperatures during hibernation. Furthermore, many invertebrates that live in the depths of the ocean never experience change in the depths of the ocean never experience change in the chill of the deep water, and their body temperatures remain constant. 细胞只能在一定的温度范围内存活，而进一步保证它们有效工作的温度范围就更小了。哺乳动物和鸟类的酶系统只能在37℃左右的很小范围内才能有效工作。与此 相差仅几度的温度都会大大削弱它们的工作效率。尽管温度变化更大时细胞仍能存活，但机体系统的整体运行能力却被削弱了。其它动物对体温的变化有更强的适应 性。 几个世纪以来，人们就认识到哺乳动物和鸟类调节体温的方式与其它动物不同。随着时间的推移，人们对这种差异的描述越来越精确和有意义，但是"暖血动物" 和"冷血动物"这一古老的分类方式至今仍在大众中有所反映。暖血动物包括哺乳动物和鸟类，其它动物统统被视为冷血动物。但是对更多物种进行的研究表明 这种分类显然是不适当的。美洲一种小型蜥蜴和沙漠鬣蜥同属冷血动物，但实际上它们的体温通常只比人类的体温低1～2度，因此并不是真正的冷血。因此又出现 了恒温动物(即保持恒定体温的动物)和变温动物(即体温随外界环境的变化而改变的动物)这一区分方式。但这种分类也不恰当。因为有不少哺乳动物在冬眠期间 会改变体温，而许多生活在深海的无脊椎动物在寒冷的深海水域中体温并不变化，而是恒定的。 Modern American Universities 现代美国大学 Before the 1850’s, the United States had a number of small colleges, most of them dating from colonial days. They were small, church connected institutions whose primary concern was to shape the moral character of their students. Throughout Europe, institutions of higher learning had developed, bearing the ancient name of university. In German university was concerned primarily with creating and spreading knowledge, not morals. Between mid-century and the end of the 1800’s, more than nine thousand young Americans, dissatisfied with their training at home, went to Germany for advanced study. Some of them return to become presidents of venerable colleges-----Harvard, Yale, Columbia---and transform them into modern universities. The new presidents broke all ties with the churches and brought in a new kind of faculty. Professors were hired for their knowledge of a subject, not because they were of the proper faith and had a strong arm for disciplining students. The new principle was that a university was to create knowledge as well as pass it on, and this called for a faculty composed of teacher-scholars. Drilling and learning by rote were replaced by the German method of lecturing, in which the professor’s own research was presented in class. Graduate training leading to the Ph.D., an ancient German degree signifying the highest level of advanced scholarly attainment, was introduced. With the establishment of the seminar system, graduate student learned to question, analyze, and conduct their own research. At the same time, the new university greatly expanded in size and course offerings, breaking completely out of the old, constricted curriculum of mathematics, classics, rhetoric, and music. The president of Harvard pioneered the elective system, by which students were able to choose their own course of study. The notion of major fields of study emerged. The new goal was to make the university relevant to the real pursuits of the world. Paying close heed to the practical needs of society, the new universities trained men and women to work at its tasks, with engineering students being the most characteristic of the new regime. Students were also trained as economists, architects, agriculturalists, social welfare workers, and teachers. 19世纪50年代以前美国有一些小的学院，大多数成立于殖民时期。它们是与教会挂钩的小机构，主要目的是培养学生的道德品行。 当时在欧洲各地，高等教育机构已经发展起来，用的是一个古老的名称--大学。德国已经发展出一种不同类型的大学。德国大学关心的主要是创造知识和传播知 识，而不是道德教育。从世纪中叶到世纪末，有9000多名美国青年因不满国内所受的教育而赴德深造。他们中的一些人回国后成为一些知名学府--哈佛、耶 鲁、哥伦比亚的校长并且把这些学府转变成了现代意义的大学。新校长们断绝了和教会的关系，聘请了新型的教职员，聘用教授根据的是他们在学科方面的知识，而 不是正确的信仰和约束学生的强硬手段。新的原则是大学既要传播知识也要创造知识。这就需要由学者型老师组成教工队伍。靠死记硬背和做练习来学习的方法变为 德国式的讲解方法。德国式的讲解就是由教授讲授自己的研究课题。通过研究生性质的学习可以获得表明最高学术造诣的古老的德国学位--博士学位。随着讨论课 制度的建立，研究生们学会了提问、分析以及开展他们自己的研究。 同时，新式大学学校规模和课程设置完全突破了过去那种只有数学、经典著作、美学和音乐的狭窄课程表。哈佛大学的校长率先推出选课制度，这样学生们就能选择 自己的专业。主修领域的概念也出现了。新的目标是使大学对实际社会更有用。密切关注着社会上的实际需求，新的大学着意培养学生解决问题的能力。工程系学生 成为新式教育体制下最典型的学生。学生们还被培训成为经济学家、建筑师、农学家、社会工作人员以及教师。 细菌 Bacteria are extremely small living things. While we measure our own sizes in inches or centimeters, bacterial size is measured in microns. One micron is a thousandth of a millimeter: a pinhead is about a millimeter across. Rod-shaped bacteria are usually from two to four microns long, while rounded ones are generally one micron in diameter. Thus if you enlarged a rounded bacterium a thousand times, it would be just about the size of a pinhead. An adult human magnified by the same amount would be over a mile(1.6 kilometer) tall. Even with an ordinary microscope, you must look closely to see bacteria. Using a magnification of 100 times, one finds that bacteria are barely visible as tiny rods or dots. One cannot make out anything of their structure. Using special stains, one can see that some bacteria have attached to them wavy-looking “hairs” called flagella. Others have only one flagellum. The flagella rotate, pushing the bacteria through the water. Many bacteria lack flagella and cannot move about by their own power, while others can glide along over surfaces by some little-understood mechanism. From the bacteria point of view, the world is a very different place from what it is to humans. To a bacterium water is as thick as molasses is to us. Bacteria are so small that they are influenced by the movements of the chemical molecules around them. Bacteria under the microscope, even those with no flagella, often bounce about in the water. This is because they collide with the watery molecules and are pushed this way and that. Molecules move so rapidly that within a tenth of a second the molecules around a bacteria have all been replaced by new ones; even bacteria without flagella are thus constantly exposed to a changing environment. 细菌是极其微小的生物体。我们用英寸或厘米来测量自己的大小，而测量细菌却要用微米。一微米等于千分之一毫米。针头直径大约一毫米。 棒状细菌通常有2～4微米长，而圆形细菌的直径一般只有1微米。因此，即使你把一个圆形细菌放大1000倍，它也不过一个针头那么大。 可是如果把一个成年人放大1000倍，就会变成1英里(或1.6公里)多高。 用一般的显微镜观察细菌时，你必须仔细观察才能看见它们。使用100倍的显微镜时，你会发现细菌不过是隐约可见的小细棒或小点点，而它们的结构你却根本看不出来。使 用特殊的着色剂后，你会发现有的细菌上长着不少波状的"毛发"即鞭毛，而有的细菌只有一根鞭毛。鞭毛的旋转可以推动细菌在水中行进。不少细菌没有鞭毛，因而不能自己行进。还有些细菌却能通过某些鲜为人知的机制沿物体表面滑动。 我们所熟知的世界在细菌眼中完全是另一个样子。对于细菌来说，水就同糖浆之于人类一样稠密。细菌是如此的微小，周围化学分子的一举一动都会对它们产生影 响。在显微镜下，细菌，甚至包括那些没有鞭毛的细菌，经常在水中跳来跳去。这是因为它们与水分子相撞后，被弹向各个方向。分子移动很迅速，仅0.1秒之 隔，一个细菌周围的分子就会完全更新。因此，即使是没有鞭毛的细菌也暴露在一个不断变化的环境中。 人类的视觉 Human vision like that of other primates has evolved in an arboreal environment. In the dense complex world of a tropical forest, it is more important to see well than to develop an acute sense of smell. In the course of evolution members of the primate line have acquired large eyes while the snout has shrunk to give the eye an unimpeded view. Of mammals only humans and some primates enjoy color vision. The red flag is black to the bull. Horses live in a monochrome world .light visible to human eyes however occupies only a very narrow band in the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Ultraviolet rays are invisible to humans though ants and honeybees are sensitive to them. Humans though ants and honeybees are sensitive to them. Humans have no direct perception of infrared rays unlike the rattlesnake which has receptors tuned into wavelengths longer than 0.7 micron. The world would look eerily different if human eyes were sensitive to infrared radiation. Then instead of the darkness of night, we would be able to move easily in a strange shadowless world where objects glowed with varying degrees of intensity. But human eyes excel in other ways. They are in fact remarkably discerning in color gradation. The color sensitivity of normal human vision is rarely surpassed even by sophisticated technical devices. 人类的视觉，和其它灵长目动物的一样，是在丛林环境中进化出来的。在稠密、复杂的热带丛林里，好的视觉比灵敏的嗅觉更加重要。在进化过程中，灵长目动物的 眼睛变大，同时鼻子变小以使视野不受阻碍。在哺乳类动物中，只有人和一些灵长目动物能够分辨颜色。红旗在公牛看来是黑色的，马则生活在一个单色的世界里。 然而，人眼可见的光在整个光谱中只占一个非常狭窄的频段。人是看不到紫外线的，尽管蚂蚁和蜜蜂可以感觉到。与响尾蛇不同，人也不能直接感受到红外线。响尾 蛇的感觉器可以感受波长超过0.7微米的光线。如果人能感受到红外线的话，这世界看上去将十分不同，而且恐怖。到那时，将与夜的黑暗相反，我们能轻易地在 一个奇异的没有阴影的世界里走动。任何物体都强弱不等地闪着光。然而，人眼在其它方面有优越之处。事实上，人眼对颜色梯度具有非凡的分辨能力。普通人类的 视觉感受色彩的灵敏程度，甚至连精密的技术装备都很难超越。 民间文化 A folk culture is a small isolated, cohesive, conservative, nearly self-sufficient group that is homogeneous in custom and race with a strong family or clan structure and highly developed rituals. Order is maintained through sanctions based in the religion or family and interpersonal relationships are strong. Tradition is paramount, and change comes infrequently and slowly. There is relatively little division of labor into specialized duties. Rather, each person is expected to perform a great variety of tasks, though duties may differ between the sexes. Most goods are handmade and subsistence economy prevails. Individualism is weakly developed in folk cultures as are social classes. Unaltered folk cultures no longer exist in industrialized countries such as the United States and Canada. Perhaps the nearest modern equivalent in Anglo America is the Amish, a German American farming sect that largely renounces the products and labor saving devices of the industrial age. In Amish areas, horse drawn buggies still serve as a local transportation device and the faithful are not permitted to own automobiles. The Amish’s central religious concept of Demut “humility”, clearly reflects the weakness of individualism and social class so typical of folk cultures and there is a corresponding strength of Amish group identity. Rarely do the Amish marry outside their sect. The religion, a variety of the Mennonite faith, provides the principal mechanism for maintaining order. By contrast a popular culture is a large heterogeneous group often highly individualistic and a pronounced many specialized professions. Secular institutions of control such as the police and army take the place of religion and family in maintaining order, and a money-based economy prevails. Because of these contrasts, “popular” may be viewed as clearly different from “folk”. The popular is replacing the folk in industrialized countries and in many developing nations. Folk-made objects give way to their popular equivalent, usually because the popular item is more quickly or cheaply produced, is easier or time saving to use or leads more prestige to the owner. 民间文化是小型的、孤立的、紧密的、保守的、近乎自给自足的群体，具有同样的习俗、同样的人种和强有力的家庭或部族结构以及高度发展的宗教仪式。 秩序由宗教或家庭的约束来维持，成员间的关系非常紧密，传统至高无上，很少有变动且变动缓慢。劳动专业分工相对较少。每个人都要做各类活计，尽管男女两性 分工不同。绝大多数物品是手工制造的，经济一般为自给自足型。个人主义和社会阶层在民间文化群体中的发展十分薄弱。在象美国和加拿大这样的工业化国家里， 一成不变的民间文化群体已不复存在了。在当代美洲的英语区，与民间文化最相似的群体也许算是Amish。Amish是美国的德裔农耕部落，他们基本上拒绝 接受工业时代的大多数产品和节省劳力的设施。在Amish地区，轻便马车仍是当地的交通工具，信徒们不允许拥有汽车。Amish宗教中的核心观念 Demut即谦卑典型地反映了在民间文化群中个人主义和阶级的不发达。而与此同时，Amish对群体的认同性却十分强。Amish人很少和他们宗派以外的 人通婚。其宗教，作为Mennonite信仰的一种，提供了维护秩序的主要机制。相反，大众文化是包含不同种族的大群体，通常高度个性化而且不断在变化。 人际关系冷漠，劳动分工明确，由此产生了许多专门的职业。世俗的控制机构，比如警察和军队，取代了宗教和家庭来维持秩序，而且实行的是货币经济。 由于存在着这些差异，"大众的"与"民间的"可谓大相径庭。在工业化国家以及许多发展中国家里，大众文化正在取代民间文化。 民间制造的物品正让位于大众化产品，这通常是因为大众化的物品制造起来更快、更便宜，用起来更容易、更方便或者是能给其所有者带来更多的威望。 The source of Energy 能量的来源 A summary of the physical and chemical nature of life must begin, not on the Earth, but in the Sun; in fact, at the Sun’s very center. It is here that is to be found the source of the energy that the Sun constantly pours out into space as light and heat. This energy is librated at the center of the Sun as billions upon billions of nuclei of hydrogen atoms collide with each other and fuse together to form nuclei of helium, and in doing so, release some of the energy that is stored in the nuclei of atoms. The output of light and heat of the Sun requires that some 600 million tons of hydrogen be converted into helium in the Sun every second. This the Sun has been doing for several thousands of millions of year. The nuclear energy is released at the Sun’s center as high-energy gamma radiation, a form of electromagnetic radiation like light and radio waves, only of very much shorter wavelength. This gamma radiation is absorbed by atoms inside the Sun to be reemitted at slightly longer wavelengths. This radiation , in its turn is absorbed and reemitted. As the energy filters through the layers of the solar interior, it passes through the X-ray part of the spectrum eventually becoming light. At this stage, it has reached what we call the solar surface, and can escape into space without being absorbed further by solar atoms. A very small fraction of the Sun’s light and heat is emitted in such directions that after passing unhindered through interplanetary space, it hits the Earth. 说生命的物理和化学特性必须始于太阳--确切地说，是太阳的核心，而非地球。能量来自太阳的核心。在这里，太阳不停地以光和热的形式向空间倾泻出能量。数 十亿计的氢原子核在太阳的核心碰撞并且聚变生成氦。在此过程中一部分原本储存于原子核中的能量被释放出来。太阳所产生的光和热需要每秒将六亿吨氢转化为 氦。这样的转化在太阳中 已经持续几十亿年了。 核能在太阳的核心被释放为高能的伽马射线。这是一种电磁射线，就象光波和无线电波一样，只是波长要短得多。这种伽玛射线被太阳内的原子所吸收，然后重新释 放为波长稍长一些的光波。这新的射线再次被吸收，而后释放。在能量由太阳内部一层层渗透出来的过程中，它经过了光谱中X射线部分，最后变成了光。在此阶 段，能量到达我们所称的太阳表层，并且离散到空间而不再被太阳原子所吸收。只有很小一部分太阳的光和热由此方向释放出来，并且未被阻挡，穿越星空，来到地 球。 Sleep Sleep is part of a person’s daily activity cycle. There are several different stages of sleep, and they too occur in cycles. If you are an average sleeper, your sleep cycle is as follows. When you first drift off into slumber, your eyes will roll about a bit, you temperature will drop slightly, your muscles will relax, and your breathing will slow and become quite regular. Your brain waves slow and become quite regular. Your brain waves slow down a bit too, with the alpha rhythm of rather fast waves for a few minutes. This is called stage 1 sleep.. For the next half hour or so, as you relax more and more, you will drift down through stage 2 and stage 3 sleep. The lower your stage of sleep. slower your brain waves will be. Then about 40 to 60 minutes after you lose consciousness you will have reached the deepest sleep of all. Your brain will show the large slow waves that are known as the delta rhythm. This is stage 4 sleep. You do not remain at this deep fourth stage all night long, but instead about 80 minutes after you fall into slumber, your brain activity level will increase again slightly. The delta rhythm will disappear, to be replaced by the activity pattern of brain waves. Your eyes will begin to dart around under your closed eyelids as if you were looking at something occurring in front of you. This period of rapid eye movement lasts for some 8 to 15 minutes and is called REM sleep. It is during REM sleep period, your body will soon relax again, your breathing will grow slow and regular once more. Your breathing will slip gently back from stage 1 to stage 4 sleep----only to rise once again to the surface of near consciousness some 80 minutes later. 睡眠是人每天日常活动循环的一部分。人的睡眠分几个阶段，而这些阶段也是循环发生的。如果你是一个正常的睡眠者，你的睡眠循环会这样进行。 在你开始昏昏入睡时，你的眼睛会滚动几下，体温略有下降，肌肉放松，呼吸变得缓慢而有节奏。除了开始几分钟比较快的α节奏外，脑电波也稍有减缓。 这被称为第一阶段睡眠。在随后约半小时内，你进一步放松，进入第二和第三阶段睡眠。睡眠越深入，脑电波就越缓慢。大约在开始睡眠后的40到 60分钟，你将进入沉睡状态。这时的脑电波表现为巨大的缓波，被称为δ节奏。这就是第四阶段睡眠。 但你并不是整夜都保持这种沉睡状态。入睡后约80分钟左右，你的大脑运动水平会再度略有提高。δ节奏消失，并被脑电波的运动图形取代。你的眼睛会 在 闭着的眼睑下迅速转动，就好象你在看着眼前发生的什么事情。这种迅速的眼球运动持续约8～15分钟，这一阶段睡眠被称之为快速眼动(REM)睡眠。在 REM睡眠阶段，你的肢体会很快再度放松，呼吸也再次放慢并变得有节奏，你会轻松地从第一阶段滑入第四阶段睡眠-直到大约80分钟后重新接近清醒状态。 Movie Music 电影插曲 Accustomed though we are to speaking of the films made before 1927 as “silent”, the film has never been, in the full sense of the word, silent. From the very beginning, music was regarded as an indispensable accompaniment; when the Lumiere films were shown at the first public film exhibition in the United States in February 1896, they were accompanied by piano improvisations on popular tunes. At first, the music played bore no special relationship to the films; an accompaniment of any kind was sufficient. Within a very short time, however, the incongruity of playing lively music to a solemn film became apparent, and film pianists began to take some care in matching their pieces to the mood of the film. As movie theaters grew in number and importance, a violinist, and perhaps a cellist, would be added to the pianist in certain cases, and in the larger movie theaters small orchestras were formed. For a number of years the selection of music for each film program rested entirely in the hands of the conductor or leader of the orchestra, and very often the principal qualification for holding such a position was not skill or taste so much as the ownership of a large personal library of musical pieces. Since the conductor seldom saw the films until the night before they were to be shown(if indeed, the conductor was lucky enough to see them then), the musical arrangement was normally improvised in the greatest hurry. To help meet this difficulty, film distributing companies started the practice of publishing suggestions for musical accompaniments. In 1909, for example, the Edison Company began issuing with their films such indications of mood as “ pleasant”, “sad”, “lively”. The suggestions became more explicit, and so emerged the musical cue sheet containing indications of mood, the titles of suitable pieces of music, and precise directions to show where one piece led into the next. Certain films had music especially composed for them. The most famous of these early special scores was that composed and arranged for D.W Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, which was released in 1915. 尽管我们习惯于将1927年以前的电影称为"无声电影"，但是就无声这个词完整的意义上来说，电影从未真正的无声过，从最初开始音乐就被视为必不可少的伴 奏。当卢米埃尔的电影在1896年2月美国首届影片公映展览上放映的时候，影片便用当时的流行曲临场钢琴伴奏。最初，这些音乐伴奏与电影没有什么特别的关 系，用什么曲子伴奏都行。但在很 短的时间内，为一部庄重的影片演奏快活的音乐所产生的不协调感变得显而易见，因此钢琴家们开始注意将自己的作品与影片的情调结合起来。 随着影剧院在数量上与重要性上的不断增长，在一些场合，除了钢琴师外，还要加上小提琴师，或许还有一位大提琴师。较大的影剧院里还组成了小型的管弦乐队。 在很长的时间内，为各部影片选择配乐完全掌握在乐队指挥或队长手中，而通常把持这种职位的资格不是技巧或鉴赏品味，而是拥有一个大的音乐作品的个人收藏。 因为直到电影上映的前一天晚上乐队指挥才能看到影片(如果这个指挥真正有幸能够看到影片的话)，音乐安排通常是在非常匆忙的情况下临场进行的。 为了解决以上的困难，电影发行公司开办了为音乐伴奏印制提示单的业务。例如1909年爱迪生公司开始将一些诸如"喜悦的"、"悲伤的"、"活泼的"之类表 明影片情调特征的提示与影片一起发行。这些提示逐渐变得更加具体，并且出现了包括影片情调、适用乐曲名称和乐曲转换点等内容的配乐说明单。某些影片拥 有专门为其创作的音乐。 这些早期特创乐谱中最著名的便是为D.W.格雷夫斯1915年上映的影片《一个国家的诞生》所创作的音乐 Statistics 统计学 There were two widely divergent influences on the early development of statistical methods. Statistics had a mother who was dedicated to keeping orderly records of government units (states and statistics come from the same Latin root status) and a gentlemanly gambling father who relied on mathematics to increase his skill at playing the odds in games of chance. The influence of the mother on the offspring, statistics, is represented by counting, measuring, describing, tabulating, ordering, and the taking of censuses—all of which led to modern descriptive statistics. From the influence of the father came modern inferential statistics, which is based squarely on theories of probability. Describing collections involves tabulating, depicting and describing collections of data. These data may be quantitative such as measures of height, intelligence or grade level------variables that are characterized by an underlying continuum---or the data may represent qualitative variables, such as sex, college major or personality type. Large masses of data must generally undergo a process of summarization or reduction before they are comprehensible. Descriptive statistics is a tool for describing or summarizing or reducing to comprehensible form the properties of an otherwise unwieldy mass of data. Inferential statistics is a formalized body of methods for solving another class of problems that present great of problems characteristically involves attempts to make predictions using a sample of observations. For example, a school superintendent wishes to determine the proportion of children in a large school system who come to school without breakfast, have been vaccinated for flu, or whatever. Having a little knowledge of statistics, the superintendent would know that it is unnecessary and inefficient to question each child: the proportion for the sample of as few as 100 children. Thus , the purpose of inferential statistics is to predict or estimate characteristics of a population from a knowledge of the characteristics of only a sample of the population. 统计方法的早期发展受到两种截然不同的影响。统计学有一个"母亲"，她致力于井井有条地记录政府机构的文件(国家和统计学这两个词源于同一个拉丁语词 根，status)，还有一个有绅士般的赌博"父亲"，他依靠数学来提高赌技，以便在几率的游戏中取胜。"母亲"对其子女统计学的影响表现在计数、测量、 描述、制表、归类和人口普查。所有这些导致了现代描述统计学的诞生。由于"父亲"的影响则产生了完全基于概率论原理的现代推理统计学。 描述统计学涉及对所收集数据的制表、制图和描述。这些数据可以是数量性的数据，如高度、智商、或者是层级性的数据--具有连续性的变量--或数据也可以代 表性质变量，如性别、大学专业或性格类型等等。数量庞大的数据通常必须经过概括或删减的程序才能为人所理解。描述统计学就是这样一个工具，它对极其庞杂的 数据进行描述、概括或删减，使其变成能为人理解的东西。 推理统计学是一套已定形了的方法体系，它解决的是光凭人脑极难解决的另一类问题。这类问题的显著特点是试图通过取样调查来作出预测。例如，有一位教育督察 想知道在一个庞大的学校系统中，不吃早饭就上学的学生、已经做过防感冒免疫的学生，或其它任何类型的学生占多大比例。若具备一些统计学的知识，这位督察应 明白，询问每个孩子是没有必要而且没有效率的，只要用100个孩子为样本，他就可以相当精确地得出这些孩子占整个学区的比例了。因此，推理统计学的目的就 是通过了解一个群体中一些样本的特性，从而对整个群体的特性进行推测和估算。 Obtaining Fresh water from icebergs 从冰山中获取淡水 The concept of obtaining fresh water from icebergs that are towed to populated areas and arid regions of the world was once treated as a joke more appropriate to cartoons than real life. But now it is being considered quite seriously by many nations, especially since scientists have warned that the human race will outgrow its fresh water supply faster than it runs out of food. Glaciers are a possible source of fresh water that has been overlooked until recently. Three-quarters of the Earth’s fresh water supply is still tied up in glacial ice, a reservoir of untapped fresh water so immense that it could sustain all the rivers of the world for 1,000 years. Floating on the oceans every year are 7,659 trillion metric tons of ice encased in 10000 icebergs that break away from the polar ice caps, more than ninety percent of them from Antarctica. Huge glaciers that stretch over the shallow continental shelf give birth to icebergs throughout the year. Icebergs are not like sea ice, which is formed when the sea itself freezes, rather, they are formed entirely on land, breaking off when glaciers spread over the sea. As they drift away from the polar region, icebergs sometimes move mysteriously in a direction opposite to the wind, pulled by subsurface currents. Because they melt more slowly than smaller pieces of ice, icebergs have been known to drift as far north as 35 degrees south of the equator in the Atlantic Ocean. To corral them and steer them to parts of the world where they are needed would not be too difficult. The difficulty arises in other technical matters, such as the prevention of rapid melting in warmer climates and the funneling of fresh water to shore in great volume. But even if the icebergs lost half of their volume in towing, the water they could provide would be far cheaper than that produced by desalinization, or removing salt from water. 把冰山拖到世界上人口稠密的地区和干旱地带，再从中获取淡水，这个想法曾一度被认为是一个笑话，更适合于卡通画，而非现实生活。然而现在，许多国家正相当认真地考虑这件事情，特别是在科学家们发出警告之后。科学家们认为人类将在耗尽粮食之前首先耗尽淡水资源。 冰川是一个直到最近以前一直被忽视的可能的淡水源。全球四分之三的淡水还锁在冰川的冰块中。冰川就是一个蓄水池，其中未开发的淡水量是如此巨大，足够支持 全世界的江河1000年。每年有7，659万亿公吨冰漂流在海洋中。它们包含在10，000座从极地冰帽中断裂出来的冰山中。这些冰山的90%以上来自南 极。 一年四季里，覆盖在浅层大陆架上的巨大冰川生成了众多冰山。冰山和海水的冰不同，后者是海水自身结冰形成的，而冰山则完全是在陆地上形成的。当冰川伸展到 海水中时，冰山就断裂下来。当漂离极地地区时，冰山有时会在底层洋流的推动下颇为神秘地逆风移动。由于冰山比小块的冰融化要慢，因此有的冰山在大西洋中向 北飘到了赤道以南35°的地方。把冰山蓄拦起来并拖到世界上需要它们的地方将不会太困难。 有困难的是其它的技术事宜。比如，如何防止冰山在较暖的气候中迅速融化以及如何把大量的淡水收集到岸上去。但是，即便在拖的过程中冰山失去了一半体积，这样做也远比从海水中脱盐取得淡水便宜。 《暮色》有声名著第一章01（中英对照） My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt — sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead.It was to Forks that I now exiled myself— an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks.I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city."Bella," my mom said to me — the last of a thousand times — before I got on the plane. "You don't have to do this." My mom looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines. I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost, but still…"I want to go," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now. "Tell Charlie I said hi.""I will.""I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want —I'll come right back as soon as you need me."But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise."Don't worry about me," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom."She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I got on the plane, and she was gone.It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks.Flying doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I wasa little worried about. Charlie had really been fairly nice genuinely pleased that I was coming with any degree of permanence. He'd school and was going to help me get about the whole thing. He seemed to live with him for the first time already gotten me registered for high a car. But it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless. I knew he was more than a little confused by my decision — like my mother before me, I hadn't made a secret of my distaste for Forks.When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen— just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun.Charlie was waiting for me with the cruiser. This I was expecting, too.Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop. Charlie gave me an awkward, one-armed hug when I stumbled my way off the plane."It's good to see you, Bells," he said, smiling as he automatically caught and steadied me. "You haven't changed much. How's Renée?""Mom's fine. It's good to see you, too, Dad." I wasn't allowed to call him Charlie to his face.I had only a few bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for Washington. My mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser. "I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were strapped in."What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he said "good car for you" as opposed to just "good car." "Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy." "Where did you find it?" "Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast. "No." "He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted. That would explain why I didn't remember him. I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory. "He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when I didn't respond, "so he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap." "What year is it?" I could see from his change of expression that this was the question he was hoping I wouldn't ask. "Well, Billy's done a lot of work on the engine — it's only a few years old, really." I hoped he didn't think so little of me as to believe I would give up that easily. "When did he buy it?" "He bought it in 1984, I think." "Did he buy it new?" "Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties — or late fifties at the earliest," he admitted sheepishly. "Ch — Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to fix it if anything went wrong, and I couldn't afford a mechanic…" "Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore." The thing, I thought to myself… it had possibilities — as a nickname, at the very least. "How cheap is cheap?" After all, that was the part I couldn't compromise on. "Well, honey, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift." Charlie peeked sideways at me with a hopeful expression.Wow. Free. "You didn't need to do that, Dad. I was going to buy myself a car." "I don't mind. I want you to be happy here." He was looking ahead at the road when he said this. Charlie wasn't comfortable with expressing his emotions out loud. I inherited that from him. So I was looking straight ahead as I responded. "That's really nice, Dad. Thanks. I really appreciate it." No need to add that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility. He didn't need to suffer along with me. And I never looked a free truck in the mouth — or engine. "Well, now, you're welcome," he mumbled, embarrassed by my thanks.We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for Conversation. We stared out the windows in silence. It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green:the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves. It was too green — an alien planet. Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the small,two-bedroom house that he'd bought with my mother in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had — the early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was my new — well, new to me — truck. It was a faded red color,with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I loved it. I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself in it. Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged —the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched,surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed. "Wow, Dad, I love it! Thanks!" Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just that much less dreadful. I wouldn't be faced with the choice of either walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the Chief's cruiser. "I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.It took only one trip to get all my stuff upstairs. I got the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had been belonged to me since I was born. The wooden floor, the light blue walls, the peaked ceiling, the yellowed lace curtains around the window —these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes Charlie had ever made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew. The desk now held a secondhand computer, with the phone line for the modem stapled along the floor to the nearest phone jack. This was a stipulation from my mother, so that we could stay in touch easily. The rocking chair from my baby days was still in the corner.There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would have to share with Charlie. I was trying not to dwell too much on that fact. 1. 初见 我母亲开车载我去机场，车窗开着。七十五华氏度，凤凰城，天空是澄澈的，不带一丝云影的湛蓝。我穿着我最喜欢的衬衫——无袖，带着白色的网眼蕾丝。我穿着它，作为一种告别的仪式。我随身携带的物品只是一件皮夹克。   在华盛顿州西北部的奥林匹亚山脉，有个永远笼罩在阴霾里的名叫福克斯的小镇。这里的雨水多得不可思议，比美利坚合众国的其他任何地方都要多。就是从这个小镇，我母亲带着我逃出来，逃离那里充斥着的压抑的阴霾，那时我才几个月大。就在这个小镇，每个夏天我都被逼着去那里过上一个月，直到我十四岁那年。那年我终于坚定表明了我并不想去。而后的几个夏天，我的父亲，查理，只好带我去加利福尼亚度过两周的假期作为替代。   现在，我把自己放逐到了福克斯——这是一个我自认为十分崇高的举动。我讨厌福克斯。   我热爱凤凰城。我热爱这里的阳光和热浪。我热爱这个生气勃勃，不断扩张着的城市。   “贝拉，”在我上飞机前，我母亲第一千遍地对我说，“你真的不必这样做。”   我母亲和我长得很像，除了短短的头发和笑纹。当我注视着她大大的，孩童般的双眼时，我感到一阵突如其来的痉挛。我怎能离开我挚爱的、稳定性极差的、粗心大意的母亲，让她自己照顾自己呢？当然现在她有菲尔，账单有人付，冰箱有人补充食物，车有人加油，当她迷路时也有可打电话求助的人，但是……   “我真的想去。”我撒谎道。我通常是个蹩脚的说谎者，但我如此频繁地重复这个谎言，以至于它现在听起来很有说服力。   “替我向查理问好。”   “我会的。”   “我很快就会来看你的，”她强调。“不管任何时候，只要你想回家，你就只管回来——只要你需要，我会立刻赶过来。”   但我能从她的双眼里看出她会为此作出的牺牲。   “不用担心我，”我竭力劝说。“一切都会顺利的。我爱你，妈妈。”   她紧紧地拥抱了我一分钟，然后我上飞机，她离去。   从凤凰城飞到西雅图要四个小时，然后转到一架小飞机飞一个小时到天使港，最后还要开一个小时车才能到达福克斯。飞行对我没什么影响，但我却有些害怕和查理待在一辆车里的那一个小时。   查理对整件事相当的接受。他真的很高兴，因为这是我第一次，也几乎是永久性的搬来和他住在一起。他甚至为我办好了高中入学手续，还打算帮我弄辆车。   但和查理相处仍毫无疑问地是件尴尬事。我们都不擅长谈话，我也不知道有什么事情可以让我们毫无顾忌地谈论。我知道他对我的决定仍有些困惑，就像我母亲在我面前表现的那样，因为我从未掩饰过我对福克斯的厌恶。   当我抵达天使港时，天下着雨。我不打算把这视为某种征兆——这只是不可避免的现实。我已经和阳光作别了。   查理在一辆巡逻车旁等着我，这也是我预料之中的事。查理是福克斯镇的良好市民的史温警长。我虽然囊中羞涩也要买辆车的主要动机，就是不想坐着顶上有红蓝色灯的车在镇里乱晃。警察可是造成交通堵塞的万恶之首。   我跌跌绊绊地从飞机上下来以后，查理只伸出一只手有些尴尬地拥抱了我一下。   “很高兴见到你，贝拉。”他微笑着说，不假思索地抓住我让我稳住。“你没多大变化。蕾妮好吗？”   “妈妈很好。我也很高兴见到你，爸爸。”他们不让我当面叫他查理。   我只带了几袋行李，我在亚利桑那州的大部分衣物对华盛顿州的气候来说都太薄了。我母亲和我把钱凑起来给我添置了一些冬装，但这仍远远不够。这几袋行李很容易就塞进了巡逻车的后备箱。   “我弄了辆适合你的好车，相当便宜。”当我们系上安全带时，他宣布道。   “什么样的车？”我对他放着简简单单的“好车”不说，却故意说是“适合你的好车”这点很是怀疑。   “嗯，确切地说是辆卡车，一辆雪佛兰。”   “你在哪儿弄到的？”   “你还记得拉普什的黑仔比利吧？”拉普什是在海岸线上的一个小小的印第安人保留区。   “不记得。”   “夏天时他曾经跟我们一起去钓鱼。”查理提示我。   这解释了我为什么不记得他。把那些充满痛苦的，不必要的回忆抹去是我的拿手好戏。   “他现在坐轮椅了，”我不作声，查理只得继续说道：“所以他再也不能开车了，他主动把他的卡车便宜卖我了。”   “哪年的车？”我可以从他骤变的神色看出，这是一个他不希望我提起的问题。   “嗯，比利在引擎上下了不少力气——才几年的车，真的。”   我希望他不要这样小看我，认为我会轻易放弃。“他哪年买的？”   “我想，他是在1984年买的。”   “他买的时候是辆新车吗？”   “嗯，不，我想它是六十年代早期的车——最早也是五十年代的。”他爽快地承认了。   “查——爸爸，我对汽车一无所知。如果它坏了我没办法自己去修理它，我也没有钱请个修理工……”   “真的，贝拉。这家伙跑得棒极了。他们再也没有生产过像这样的好车。”   这家伙，我暗自思索着……这可能是——是个昵称，极有可能。   “好了，宝贝，作为欢迎你回家的礼物，我几乎已经算是买下来了。”查理满怀希望地偷看着我。   哈，免费。   “你不必这样做的，爸爸。我打算自己买辆车的。”   “我不介意。我只想让你在这里过得快乐。”他说这些时直视着前方的路面。查理不擅长坦白地表达自己的感受。在这方面我受他的遗传。于是作为回应我也直直地向前看着。   “真的太棒了，爸爸。谢谢。我真的很感激。”不必补充我在福克斯感到快乐是个不可能事件。他本不必忍受与我相处的漫长时光。更何况，馈赠之马不看牙——或者引擎。   “嗯，现在，欢迎回来。”他喃喃道，对我的感谢尴尬不已。   我们交换了一点对天气的看法，包括今天是否有些潮湿。在没有更多的话题可供讨论以后，我们都沉默地看着窗外。   当然，这里很美。我不能否认这一点。一切都是绿色的：那些树，树干上长满了苔藓，枝干上挂着的绿叶宛如穹庐，地面覆盖着蕨科植物。就连空气都像被叶子过滤了一样弥漫着绿意。   这里太绿了——对我来说像外星球一样。   最终我们抵达了查理的房子。他依然住在那栋小小的、只有两个卧室的房子里。那是他和我母亲新婚燕尔时他买下来的房子。他们的婚姻也只持续了那些日子——较早的那些。在那儿，停靠在房子前的街道上的，确凿无疑，是我的新——嗯，对我来说是新的——卡车。它是辆褪色的红色卡车，有着巨大的圆形的挡泥板，还有一个灯泡状的驾驶室。让我十分吃惊的是，我喜欢这辆车。我不知道它还能不能动，但我从它身上看到了我自己。它是那种永远也撞不坏坚硬的铁家伙——就是那种你在事故现场看到的车，漆都没蹭掉半块，周围全是它毁坏的外国汽车的碎片。   “哇，爸爸。我喜欢它！谢谢！”现在我恐怖的明天将不会那么吓人了。我不必再面对是在雨中步行两英里去学校还是坐着警长开的巡逻车去学校的两难选择了。   “我很高兴你喜欢它，”查理生硬地，带点窘迫地说着。   只一趟我的全部行李就被全部搬上了楼。我住在西面正对着前院的卧室。这个卧室对我来说毫不陌生，从我出生时起它就属于我了。原木地板，淡蓝色的壁纸，尖尖的天花板，窗上淡黄色的蕾丝窗帘——这些都是我童年的一部分。唯一的变化是随着我天天长大查理把摇篮换成了床铺还添了一个写字桌。写字桌上现在摆着一台二手电脑，连着长长的拖过地板的电话线接着调制解调器到最近的电话接口。这是与我母亲的约定，这样我们就可以更方便地联系了。我孩提时的摇椅依然放在角落里。   楼梯顶上只有一个小浴室，我只好跟查理共用了。我尽量让自己别老惦记着这事。