时间:2018-12-24 作者:英语课 分类:Scientific American(七)月


英语课

This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Karen Hopkin. This will take just a minute.


What’s in a neck? Well, it’s a good place to hang a pendant or a tie. Or to rest your head. Now scientists say that by separating our heads from our bodies, the neck gave our brains a leg up in evolution. Their findings appear in the online journal Nature Communications.


Not all animals have necks. A fish's head is pretty much continuous with its body. And a fish gets around just fine. Nerves based in the fish’s brain instruct its fins 1 to move, and off it goes.


But something happened when our aquatic 2 ancestors first slithered onto the land. The source of the nerve cells that power the animals’ forelimbs shifted, from the brain down to the spinal 3 cord. That move allowed the body to grow more distant from the head, taking the arms with it. And so the neck was born.


That neck, say the scientists, was more than just a way to keep the head off the shoulders. The anatomical relocation improved dexterity 4 by leaving the arms free to move in new ways. And the resulting flexibility 5 helped shape the evolution of our heads and our hands, and how we can use them together to do all sorts of nifty things—like tie a perfect Windsor knot.


Thanks for the minute for Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Karen Hopkin



1 fins
[医]散热片;鱼鳍;飞边;鸭掌
  • The level of TNF-α positively correlated with BMI,FPG,HbA1C,TG,FINS and IRI,but not with SBP and DBP. TNF-α水平与BMI、FPG、HbA1C、TG、FINS和IRI呈显著正相关,与SBP、DBP无相关。 来自互联网
  • Fins are a feature specific to fish. 鱼鳍是鱼类特有的特征。 来自辞典例句
2 aquatic
adj.水生的,水栖的
  • Aquatic sports include swimming and rowing.水上运动包括游泳和划船。
  • We visited an aquatic city in Italy.我们在意大利访问过一个水上城市。
3 spinal
adj.针的,尖刺的,尖刺状突起的;adj.脊骨的,脊髓的
  • After three days in Japan,the spinal column becomes extraordinarily flexible.在日本三天,就已经使脊椎骨变得富有弹性了。
  • Your spinal column is made up of 24 movable vertebrae.你的脊柱由24个活动的脊椎骨构成。
4 dexterity
n.(手的)灵巧,灵活
  • You need manual dexterity to be good at video games.玩好电子游戏手要灵巧。
  • I'm your inferior in manual dexterity.论手巧,我不如你。
5 flexibility
n.柔韧性,弹性,(光的)折射性,灵活性
  • Her great strength lies in her flexibility.她的优势在于她灵活变通。
  • The flexibility of a man's muscles will lessen as he becomes old.人老了肌肉的柔韧性将降低。
标签: SSS 托福听力
学英语单词
admissible deviation domain
air and vacuum valve
all night long
anarchise
arranged total loss
assignation
aukwardly
band steel
Barth Seamount
Bence-Jones'protein
bennun
Billroth's cords
Bjarnarhöfn
call to quarters
certificate and list of measurement and weight
circulatory shock physiology
co-official
coincidence equipment
competent river
computer model for network analysis
custitome
customer relation
dinoplatypus flectus
double blade mixer
emerge the victor
entrusted to
faecalis
falling-away
fat-fingering
feed per revolution
fibrous joint
foot mark
fracture fixing apparatus
free electron model
Graphiem
harmoniac
hoofprint
huller roll box
hyperosculated
hypocentrum
hysteroid convulsion
image-baseds
inner dead-centre
insulation resistance test
isolating non-return valve
key-to-tape input
known error record
last will
light activated thyristor
Liongoda
lower-frequency
mapped conversation
multi-track
multiplicative Abelian group
nervous nelly
neural lamella
NFC Forum
nit)
nitai
non-thermal oxygen atoms
one-storeys
outbakes
overpicture
pahrump
pepinnier
perfect hashing
personal ownership
petticoat pipe base bracket
polymorpha
porelliportulae
premasticated
pruning-knife
raimundo
rectal columns
regularist
scratch strength
sickered
Simmersfeld
sleepas
slide valve face
sodium trioxofluorophosphate
somniloquism
sphingolipid
spurious cholelithiasis
struggling on
substractor
Taghit
task timer
thermostat blade
think hardly of
through-mortise
tomato gall
tun-moot
two-pen recording thermometer
underground operation
vamidothion
vena basaliss
W.R.A.F
Wachusett Res.
wbh
wilks' empty cell test
x-knee