60秒科学:Weak Have Stronger Hearing
If you ever got picked on in the schoolyard, you might have wished for some sort of superpower: like unbeatable speed or maybe just the ability to completely disappear. Now scientists at the College of Wooster in Ohio say that you might have had a skill you didn’t realize: the uncanny ability to hear a bully 1 coming.
An earlier study found that women hear approaching noises sooner than their bigger, brawnier male counterparts. Perhaps, the scientists thought, the same would hold true for scrawny specimens 2 versus 3 the truly buff. So they had 50 volunteers listen to a tone that sounds like it’s moving toward them. The listeners pressed a button when it sounded like the tone arrived. The scientists then assessed each subject’s strength and cardiovascular fitness.
And they found that the 98-pound weaklings banged their buttons quicker than the well-muscled, because they perceived the threatening sound as being closer than it actually was. The finding got a hearing May 21st at the meeting of the Acoustical 4 Society of America in Portland, Oregon.
Such auditory overreacting, the scientists say, could be a survival mechanism 5. So that the meek 6, while waiting to inherit the earth, can avoid getting knocked onto it.
—Karen Hopkin
- A bully is always a coward.暴汉常是懦夫。
- The boy gave the bully a pelt on the back with a pebble.那男孩用石子掷击小流氓的背脊。
- Astronauts have brought back specimens of rock from the moon. 宇航员从月球带回了岩石标本。
- The traveler brought back some specimens of the rocks from the mountains. 那位旅行者从山上带回了一些岩石标本。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
- The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。
- This system can set up acoustical resonances. 这种系统能产生共鸣。
- The relevance of acoustical principles is by no means limited to sound and hearing. 声学原理并不仅仅适用于声音和听觉。
- The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
- The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。