时间:2018-12-24 作者:英语课 分类:2015年Scientific American(六)月


英语课

A common response to seeing an ant in your house is to stamp on it. But if you crush a member of the ant species? , you might catch a hwiff of strange  smell, a smell that reminds some people of blue cheese, rancid butter or rotten coconut 1. In fact the smell is so noticable that the insect's common name is the odorous house ant, and many people call it the coconut ant. In an effort to figure out why people have these reations, researchers enlisted 2 visitors at an event called the North Carolina Bug 3 Fast. One hundred and forty-three volunteers smelled smashed ants and were asked to identify the scent 4 from four choices, blue cheese, rancid butter, rotten coconut or just other. All the websites overwhelmingly call the smell rotten coconut. Almost forty percent of the human judges picked  blue cheese and about twenty-five percent picked rotten  coconut, more than thirty percent went with  the choice of other. The scentists then analysed the chemicals responsible for the ant odor as well as the smelly chemicals in blue cheese, fresh coconut and coconut buried underground for three days. It turns out the chemistry of the ant scent is indeed similar to that of the blue cheese and rotten coconut, but not to fresh coconut. And researchers note that  the  penicillin microbes that turn coconut oil rancid are also involved in the production of blue cheese. The study is in the journal America Entomologist. The researchers also noted 5 that the most common right candidate as a prescription 6 for the ants' aroma 7 was cleaning spray, and one little girl told them that the ants, " smelled exactly like her doctor."



1 coconut
n.椰子
  • The husk of this coconut is particularly strong.椰子的外壳很明显非常坚固。
  • The falling coconut gave him a terrific bang on the head.那只掉下的椰子砰地击中他的脑袋。
2 enlisted
adj.应募入伍的v.(使)入伍, (使)参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 );获得(帮助或支持)
  • enlisted men and women 男兵和女兵
  • He enlisted with the air force to fight against the enemy. 他应募加入空军对敌作战。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
3 bug
n.虫子;故障;窃听器;vt.纠缠;装窃听器
  • There is a bug in the system.系统出了故障。
  • The bird caught a bug on the fly.那鸟在飞行中捉住了一只昆虫。
4 scent
n.气味,香味,香水,线索,嗅觉;v.嗅,发觉
  • The air was filled with the scent of lilac.空气中弥漫着丁香花的芬芳。
  • The flowers give off a heady scent at night.这些花晚上散发出醉人的芳香。
5 noted
adj.著名的,知名的
  • The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
  • Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。
6 prescription
n.处方,开药;指示,规定
  • The physician made a prescription against sea- sickness for him.医生给他开了个治晕船的药方。
  • The drug is available on prescription only.这种药只能凭处方购买。
7 aroma
n.香气,芬芳,芳香
  • The whole house was filled with the aroma of coffee.满屋子都是咖啡的香味。
  • The air was heavy with the aroma of the paddy fields.稻花飘香。
学英语单词
absence of feedback
accuracy table
anoxic pore water
Arguerite alloy
auditor's judgement
auel
automatic gear gauge
automatic send/receiver (asr)
avenothionin
basal thrust plane
batty boy
cable picking and laying machine
carneus
chromatium okenii
churn type cooler with stirrer
concept formation in primate
crush stone
deferred stream
deleterious liquors
divisor of algebraic variety
Doppler flowmeter
edit plot
electric washer
elementary principle
emotivism
epithelioma adenoides cysticum
equid
estimated wage rate
exchange A with B
free source
French caviar
fuchsite (chromian mica)
gasket-sealed relay
giggler
grandetza
gunkanmaki
hand sale
hand-receiver
have an appointment
heat-resisting steel sheets and plate(s)
hemoglobiniferous
Hydronepheline
Icheu
indoor transformer
input/output interrupt identification
isotope anomaly
jurisdiction of the person
keystone resources
life-extensions
limitation to compartmentation
Malayization
material yield strength
mayhaws
methyacrylates
middling yield
mobile video
motorpathy
mountain times
new-products development expense
nitrobenzyl acetate
nitza
nominal list of officers
non-conjugated double bond system
nonlinear income tax
over the counter sales person
pedestrianizing
Phacocypris
PHSP
pind
pork ribs
power, rated
provise
pyrrhula nipalensis
quick-steaming boiler
racetrack microtron
RADDEFLAB
railway operating plan
rapidly progressive periodontitis
Reichel's chondromatosis
reordering
revenue from state enterprise profit
rheumatoid honeycomb-lung
robberly
rosanna
Saucelle, Embalse de
scrap price
secanos
sfwmd
single-disk clutch
skimpy
solanin
sub-saharan africas
target initiated termination
Tempué
tetrachromic acid
tipstocks
Umāgaon
unbulwarked
unconventional warfare forces
unrestricted wrestling
venous capillary
wide-angle perspective