万物简史 第500期:多灾多难的生命进程(20)

Some animals absolutely prospered including, a little surprisingly, the turtles once again. 有的动物再次一片兴旺的景象包括鳖，真有点儿令人感到意外。 As Flannery notes, the period immediately after the dinosaur extinction c

万物简史 第505期:丰富多彩的生命(1)

23 The Richness of Being 第二十三章 丰富多彩的生命 Here and there in the Natural History Museum in London, 在伦敦自然史博物馆的很多地方， built into recesses along the underlit corridors or standing between glass cases of m

万物简史 第469期:生命在前进(11)

What was most surprising, however, was that there were so many body designs that had failed to make the cut, so to speak, and left no descendants. 然而，最令人吃惊的是，如此之多的体形，打个比方说，却缺少深度、没有留下

万物简史 第459期:生命在前进(1)

21 Life Goes On 第二十一章 生命在前进 It isn't easy to become a fossil. 要变成化石可不容易。 The fate of nearly all living organismsover 99.9 percent of themis to compost down to nothingness. 几乎所有的生物其中的99.9%以上

万物简史 第455期:小生物的世界(26)

Between the autumn of 1918 and spring of the following year, 548,452 people died of the flu in America. 1918年秋天到次年春天，美国有54842人死于流感。 The toll in Britain was 220,000, with similar numbers dead in France and Germany. 英

万物简史 第441期:小生物的世界(12)

In the early days, this was an exceedingly painstaking process. 早年，这是个极费力气的过程。 Work on a single bacterium could easily consume a year. 研究一个细菌就可能一下子花掉一年时间。 At that time, according to Wo

万物简史 第445期:小生物的世界(16)

It is a natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, 人们自然会不由自主地想到，进化是个不断完善的漫长过程， of a never-ending advance toward largeness and complexityin a word, toward us. 一个

万物简史 第447期:小生物的世界(18)

Any HIV the mosquito sucks up on its travels is dissolved by the mosquito's own metabolism. 蚊子在叮咬过程中吸入的人体免疫缺陷病毒被蚊子自身的代谢作用分解了。 When the day comes that the virus mutates its way around t

万物简史 第450期:小生物的世界(21)

Precisely the same thing happens with meningitis. 脑膜炎的情况完全一样。 At least 10 percent of young adults, and perhaps 30 percent of teenagers, carry the deadly meningococcal bacterium, 至少有10%的年轻人和也许30%的少年携带着

万物简史 第451期:小生物的世界(22)

Soon one of these new strains, called Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, began to show up in hospitals. 过不多久，一种名叫抗甲氧苯青霉素葡萄球菌的新品种葡萄球菌开始在医院里出现。 Only one type of antibio

万物简史 第453期:小生物的世界(24)

Viruses prosper by hijacking the genetic material of a living cell and using it to produce more virus. 病毒掠夺活细胞的基因材料，用来制造更多的病毒，从而大量生长。 They reproduce in a fanatical manner, then burst out in

万物简史 第448期:小生物的世界(19)

Anyway, getting sick is a sensible response to infection. 生病正是对感染的一种能感觉到的反应。 Sick people retire to their beds and thus are less of a threat to the wider community. 病人躺在病床上，因此减少了对更多人的

万物简史 第433期:小生物的世界(4)

With this ability to evolve rapidly goes another, even scarier advantage. 有了这种能力，另一种更加吓人的优势会很快产生。 Bacteria share information. Any bacterium can take pieces of genetic coding from any other. 细菌能共享信

万物简史 第438期:小生物的世界(9)

Many organisms in the visible world were also poorly served by the traditional division. 传统的分类法也不大适用于可见世界里的许多微生物。 Fungi, the group that includes mushrooms, molds, mildews, yeasts, and puffballs, were ne

万物简史 第436期:小生物的世界(7)

In 1997 scientists successfully activated some anthrax spores that had lain dormant for eighty years in a museum display in Trondheim, Norway. 1997年，科学家们成功地激活了已经在挪威特隆赫姆博物馆休眠了80年之久的一些炭疽

万物简史 第429期:生命的起源(23)

Compared with the new eukaryotes the old prokaryotes were little more than bags of chemicals, in the words of the geologist Stephen Drury. 地球已经朝着真正有意思的行星迈出了第一步。与新的真核细胞相比，旧的原核细胞借

万物简史 第427期:生命的起源(21)

It has been suggested that the cyanobacteria at Shark Bay are perhaps the slowest-evolving organisms on Earth, and certainly now they are among the rarest. 据认为，沙克湾里的叠层石也许是地球上进化最慢的生物，也肯定是现在

万物简史 第426期:生命的起源(20)

This was most unexpectedso unexpected, in fact, that it was some years before scientists realized quite what they had found. 这完全是出乎意料的事太出乎意料了，因此科学家们实际上过了几年才充分意识到自己的发现。

万物简史 第410期:生命的起源(4)

Yet we are talking about several hundred thousand types of protein, perhaps a million, 然而，我们在讨论的蛋白质有几十万种，也许是100万种， each unique and each, as far as we know, vital to the maintenance of a sound and happy

万物简史 第421期:生命的起源(15)

Bob told me that it takes about seventeen minutes to read one zircon and it is necessary to read dozens from each rock to make the data reliable. 鲍勃对我说，识读一块锆石的数据大约要花17分钟；这了取得可靠的数据，每块锆