SSS 2009-05-04
时间：2019-01-08 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(五)月
This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.
Climate change is the great environmental challenge facing the world today, but maybe we should start calling it “Climates Change”. Because scientists who've looked to glaciers 1 to study the history of climate on earth have found that the Northern and Southern hemispheres have not been moving in sync. As you might imagine, glaciers are sensitive to changes in temperature. So scientists interested in the evolution of earth’s climate use these icy formations to gauge 2 local conditions from the past.
A research team used a newfangled method for measuring rare isotopes 3 to accurately 4 date glaciers in New Zealand. They then compared these numbers to historic records from the Northern hemisphere and they found no correlation 5 in the growth of glaciers above and below the equator over the past 7,000 years. While the vast majority of glaciers are now in retreat, a few down under have been growing and shrinking like a bunch of yo-yo dieters. The discovery, published in the May 1 Issue of Science, suggests that the earth’s climate doesn’t act as a single entity 6, but can vary from region to region, which would make certain glaciers, whether or not they wither 7, better long-term weather bellwethers 8.
Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Karen Hopkin.
Notes:
yo-yo dieter: A yo-yo dieter is someone who has a weight that fluctuates up and down with his or her cyclical pattern of being involved in a fad 9 diet.Yo-yo dieting, also known as weight cycling, is a repeated loss and gain of body weight due to excessive dieting.
down under:The term Down Under is a colloquialism 10 referring to Australia and (less frequently)New Zealand. It locates Australia as "the land down under" because it lies totally within the Southern hemisphere.
- Glaciers gouged out valleys from the hills. 冰川把丘陵地带冲出一条条山谷。
- It has ice and snow glaciers, rainforests and beautiful mountains. 既有冰川，又有雨林和秀丽的山峰。 来自英语晨读30分（高一）
- Can you gauge what her reaction is likely to be?你能揣测她的反应可能是什么吗？
- It's difficult to gauge one's character.要判断一个人的品格是很困难的。
- the many isotopes of carbon 碳的诸多同位素
- Tritium is one of the mildest radioactive isotopes. 氚是最和缓的放射性同位素之一。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- It is hard to hit the ball accurately.准确地击中球很难。
- Now scientists can forecast the weather accurately.现在科学家们能准确地预报天气。
- The second group of measurements had a high correlation with the first.第二组测量数据与第一组高度相关。
- A high correlation exists in America between education and economic position.教育和经济地位在美国有极密切的关系。
- The country is no longer one political entity.这个国家不再是一个统一的政治实体了。
- As a separate legal entity,the corporation must pay taxes.作为一个独立的法律实体，公司必须纳税。
- She grows as a flower does-she will wither without sun.她象鲜花一样成长--没有太阳就会凋谢。
- In autumn the leaves wither and fall off the trees.秋天，树叶枯萎并从树上落下来。
- Two bellwethers- -Apple and Yahoo- -announced their third-quarter earnings after close of trading Tuesday afternoon. 两只领头羊-苹果和雅虎-宣布其第三季度盈馀后，周二下午收盘。 来自互联网
- His interest in photography is only a passing fad.他对摄影的兴趣只是一时的爱好罢了。
- A hot business opportunity is based on a long-term trend not a short-lived fad.一个热门的商机指的是长期的趋势而非一时的流行。
- The writer aerateed his writing with a persuasive colloquialism.作者用一种有说服力的口语体使他的文章显得生动。
- Her speech is informal and filled with colloquialism.她的演讲是非正式的，很口语化。