时间:2019-01-13 作者:英语课 分类:VOA标准英语2009年(九月)


英语课

By Sabina Castelfranco
Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
23 September 2009
 
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology officials address invited guests and members of the media during a press conference in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, 23 Sep 2009
A new international research university is being opened by King Abdullah, Wednesday in Saudi Arabia. The king has said his vision for the high-tech 1 institute, named after him, is for it to be a center of learning aimed at bridging cultures. However, there is opposition 2 by hard-liners to the new university.


The new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology was constructed in just three years. Where there was once only sea and sand, today stands a high-tech, modern campus. It has been built at Thuwal, facing the Red Sea.


Wednesday is Saudi Arabia's National Day and thousands of guests have been invited to attend the university's opening ceremony. Security is tight, with policemen carrying out checks on all roads leading to the university.


Billions of dollars have been thrown into the new university. Professor Choon Fong Shih - an engineer from Singapore - is the first foreign president of an academic institution in Saudi Arabia. He says nothing has been spared to create an impressive campus.


"We have recruited the very best minds from around the world. We have students from more than 60 countries," he said. "This is truly the beginning of a very exciting academic enterprise.


But this is a country where social rules are very tight. Women are not free to dress as they please and they are taught separately from men.


Siraj Waham, of the English-language Daily Arab News says the idea of a co-educational, liberal campus, where both sexes are able to mingle 3 freely, is not accepted by many conservatives, who want to keep the strict interpretation 4 of Islam.


"There is a lobby, there is a section [of Saudi society] which thinks that by allowing this university, and by allowing co-educational set-up on this university, it will not be good for Saudi society, it will not be good for the country," said Waham.


Many of the women students and staff still choose to wear the abaja, the kingdom's traditional long black dress that covers them from head to toe. But they insist that, on this campus, they are free to dress as they please.


Basma Parker is a librarian at KAUST - King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.


"It's a campus," said Parker. "You can do whatever you want in here. And, it's been told before that it's a campus. Ladies can drive. They can work. They can do whatever they want. It's their choice if they want to come here.


Three-hundred-50 students - 15 percent of them women - have begun their classes this September. The plan is to reach a student body of 2,000, in the next decade. Reformists hope that KAUST will not remain an oasis 5 of freedom and that, in time, the culture of fewer restrictions 6 will spill outside the campus gates and into Saudi cities.


 



adj.高科技的
  • The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展,这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
  • The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。
n.反对,敌对
  • The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
  • The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。
vt.使混合,使相混;vi.混合起来;相交往
  • If we mingle with the crowd,we should not be noticed.如果我们混在人群中,就不会被注意到。
  • Oil will not mingle with water.油和水不相融。
n.解释,说明,描述;艺术处理
  • His statement admits of one interpretation only.他的话只有一种解释。
  • Analysis and interpretation is a very personal thing.分析与说明是个很主观的事情。
n.(沙漠中的)绿洲,宜人的地方
  • They stopped for the night at an oasis.他们在沙漠中的绿洲停下来过夜。
  • The town was an oasis of prosperity in a desert of poverty.该镇是贫穷荒漠中的一块繁荣的“绿洲”。
约束( restriction的名词复数 ); 管制; 制约因素; 带限制性的条件(或规则)
  • I found the restrictions irksome. 我对那些限制感到很烦。
  • a snaggle of restrictions 杂乱无章的种种限制
学英语单词
AC-B
Ache and Pain
aerial pingpong
Aladdin's ring
aurous bromaurate
autonomous jurisdiction
back at the farm
backspace mechanism
bad endings
bird species
bit intervals
Burki
calibration time
cambells
cefriti
Cephalaspida
cheeped
cidariplura nigrisigna
clevis joint
critical point
double ribbon agitator
encumbering
enormous great
experimental model school
federal discount window
first saloon passenger
focusing conditions
fuel cycle costs
geared traction machine
gravitics
gravity anchor
half-cell reaction
hardened and tempered
helical waveguide
hereditary hydrocephalus
heterocercal
hidden city
high temperature materials
homedebtor
hook-shaped
image-
inartificial
indoor ventilation
jarringly
lactalase
lateralling
lead-base white metal linings
lesdar
line-printing
local focal length
monochaetia desmaytia sacc.
mordaciids
Mr. Right
multi finality
Nachalovo
natroxalate
nylon tube
oriented real hypersphere
paper technology
partan method
pension insurance
petrol-pump
phenylamine acetosalicylate
phoma glumarum ellis et tracy
piping flow sheet
placcntal barrier
ploes of the heaven
polarde
Polyphaga Sp.
power system element
principal axis of strain
Puccinia lysimachiae
pulse radar
put one's right hand to something
recorded-music
regular closed subset
reguli falsi
reinforceable
reverse osmosis desaltinating
rocket belts
run-time storage organization
scabicides
scintillation coincidence spectrometer
searching AND/OR graph
semaphore casting
semen bank
sequential similarity detection algorithm
setling
shoe-in
situatedness
sleaziness
so that
soulfully
stemmatological
tell it to the judge
three-eyed
train rear end air pressure feedback
udad
vogueish
waivure
workest
Xiphisteridae