题目内容
TEXT B Britain’s east midlands were once the picture of English countryside, alive with flocks, shepherds, skylarks and buttercups the stuff of fairytales. In 1941 George Marsh left school at the age of 14 to work as a herdsman in Nottinghamshire, the East Midlands countryside his parents and grandparents farmed. He recalls skylarks nesting in cereal fields, which when accidentally disturbed would fly singing into the sky. But in his lifetime, Marsh has seen the color and diversity of his native land fade. Farmers used to grow about a ton of wheat per acre; now they grow four tons. Pesticides have killed off the insects upon which skylarks fed, and year-round harvesting has driven the birds from their winter nests. Skylarks are now rare. "Farmers kill anything that affects production," says Marsh. "Agriculture is too efficient." Anecdotal evidence of a looming crisis in biodiversity is now being reinforced by science. In their comprehensive surveys of plants, butterflies and birds over the past 20 to 40 years in Britain, ecologists Jeremy Thomas and Carly Stevens found significant population declines in a third of all native species. Butterflies are the furthest along--71 percent of Britain’s 58 species are shrinking in number, and some, like the large blue and tortoiseshell, are already extinct. In Britain’s grasslands, a key habitat, 20 percent of all animal, plant and insect species are on the path to extinction. There’s hardly a corner of the country’s ecology that isn’t affected by this downward spiral. The problem would be bad enough if it were merely local, but it’s not: because Britain’s temperate ecology is similar to that in so many other parts of the world, it’s the best microcosm scientists have been able to study in detail. Scientists have sounded alarms about species’ extinction in the past, but always specific to a particular animal or place--whales in the 1980s or the Amazonian rain forests in the 1990s. This time, though, the implications are much wider. The Amazon is a "biodiversity hot spot" with a unique ecology. But in Britain, "the main drivers of change are the same processes responsible for species’ declines worldwide," says Thomas. The findings, published in the journal Science, provide the first clear evidence that the world is in the throes of a massive extinction. Thomas and Stevens argue that we are facing a loss of 65 to 95 percent of the world’s species, on the scale of an ice age or the meteorite that may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If so, this would be only the sixth time such devastation had occurred in the past 600 million years. The other five were associated with one-off events like the ice ages, a volcanic eruption or a meteor. This time, ecosystems are dying a thousand deaths--from overfishing and the razing of the rain forests, but also from advances in agriculture. The British study, for instance, finds that one of the biggest problems is nitrogen pollution. Nitrogen is released when fossil fuels burn in cars and power plants--but also when ecologically rich heath lands are plowed and fertilizers are spread. Nitrogen-rich fertilizers fuel the growth of tall grasses, which in turn overshadow and kill off delicate flowers like harebells and eyebrights. Even seemingly innocuous practices are responsible for vast ecological damage. When British farmers stopped feeding horses and cattle with hay and switched to silage, a kind of preserved short grass, they eliminated a favorite nesting spot of corncrakes, birds known for their raspy nightly mating calls; corncrake populations have fallen 76 percent in the past 20 years. The depressing list goes on and on. Many of these practices are being repeated throughout the world, in one form or another, which is why scientists believe that the British study has global implications. Wildlife is getting blander. "We don’t know which species are essential to the web of life so we’re taking a massive risk by eliminating any of them," say’s David Wedin, professor of ecology at the University of Nebraska. Chances are we’ll be seeing the results of this experiment before too long. According to David Wedin, the extinction of many species are caused by human beings’ ______.
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
How to Present a Seminar Paper University students often attend many seminars for various subjects, therefore it is useful for them to know how to present a seminar paper.Ⅰ. (1) Stage (1) ______. 1. research 2. write up (2) (2) ______.Ⅱ. Presentation Stage--Present the Paper to (3) (3) ______. 1. circulate copies of the paper (4) to all the participants (4) ______. 2. read aloud to the group 1) introduce your paper 2 reasons: -- the participants may have read the paper but forgotten some of(5) (5) ______. -- some participants may not have time to read the paper 2) not simply read the (6) aloud (6) ______. 3 reasons: -- if the paper is long, there may not be enough time (7) (7) ______. -- there may be lack of comprehension or understanding, when listening -- it can be very (8) listening to something being read aloud (8) ______. 3) follow the 7 points of introducing your paper -- decide on (9) for your talk (9) ______. -- write out your spoken presentation -- concentrate on the main points -- make your spoken presentation (10) (10) ______. -- reduce what your are going to say to outline notes -- look at your audience while your are speaking -- make a strong ending
TEXT C Our public debates often fly off into the wild blue yonder of fantasy. So it’s been with the Federal Communications Commission’s new media-ownership rules. We’re told that, unless the FCC’s decision is reversed, it will worsen the menacing concentration of media power and that this will--to exaggerate only slightly--imperil free speech, the diversity of opinion and perhaps democracy itself. All this is more than overwrought; it completely misrepresents reality. In the past 30 years, media power has splintered dramatically; people have more choices than ever. Travel back to 1970. There were only three major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC); now, there’s a fourth (Fox). Then, there was virtually no cable TV; now, 68 percent of households have it. Then, FM radio was a backwater; now there are 5,892 FM stations, up from 2,196 in 1970. Then, there was only one national newspaper (The Wall Street Journal); now, there are two more (USA Today and The New York Times ). The idea that "big media" has dangerously increased its control over our choices is absurd. Yet much of the public, including journalists and politicians, believe religiously in this myth. They confuse size with power. It’s true that some gigantic media companies are getting even bigger at the expense of other media companies. But it’s not true that their power is increasing at the public’s expense. Popular hostility toward big media stems partly from the growing competition, which creates winners and losers and losers complain. Liberals don’t like the conservative talk shows, but younger viewers do. A June poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that viewers from the ages of 18 to 29 approved of "hosts with strong opinions" by a 58 percent to 32 percent margin. Social conservatives despise what one recently called "the raw sewage, ultra violence, graphic sex and raunchy language" of TV. But many viewers love it. Journalists detest the cost and profit pressures that result from stiff com petition with other news and entertainment outlets. It’s the tyranny of the market: a triumph of popular tastes. Big media companies try to anticipate, shape and profit from these tastes. But media diversity frustrates any one company from imposing its views and values on an unwilling audience. People just click to another channel or cancel their subscription. The paradox is this: the explosion of choices means that almost everyone may be offended by something. A lot of this free-floating hostility has attached itself to the FCC ownership rules. The backlash is easily exaggerated. In the Pew poll, 51 percent of respondents knew "nothing" of the rules; an additional 36 percent knew only "a little". The rules would permit any company to own television stations in areas with 45 percent of U. S. households, up from 35 percent now. The networks could buy more of their affiliate stations a step that, critics say, would jeopardize "local’ control and content. At best, that’s questionable. Network programs already fill most of affiliates’ hours. To keep local audiences, any owner must satisfy local demands, especially for news and weather programming. But the symbolic backlash against the FCC and big media does pose one hidden danger. For some U.S. house holds, over-the-air broadcasting is the only TV available, and its long-term survival is hardly ensured. Both cable and the Internet are eroding its audience. In 2002 cable programming had more primetime viewers than broadcast programming for 1he first time (48 percent vs. 46 percent). Streaming video, now primitive, will improve; sooner or later certainly in the next 10 or 15 years--many Web sites will be TV channels. If over-the-air broadcasting declines or disappears, the big losers will be the poor. Broadcast TV will survive and flourish only if the networks remain profitable enough to bid for and provide competitive entertainment, sports and news programming. The industry’s structure must give them a long-term stake in over-the-air broadcasting. Owning more TV stations is one possibility. If Congress prevents that, it may perversely hurt the very diversity and the people that it’s trying to protect. According to the passage, the wide spread of cable and Internet will be detrimental to ______.
TEXT B Britain’s east midlands were once the picture of English countryside, alive with flocks, shepherds, skylarks and buttercups the stuff of fairytales. In 1941 George Marsh left school at the age of 14 to work as a herdsman in Nottinghamshire, the East Midlands countryside his parents and grandparents farmed. He recalls skylarks nesting in cereal fields, which when accidentally disturbed would fly singing into the sky. But in his lifetime, Marsh has seen the color and diversity of his native land fade. Farmers used to grow about a ton of wheat per acre; now they grow four tons. Pesticides have killed off the insects upon which skylarks fed, and year-round harvesting has driven the birds from their winter nests. Skylarks are now rare. "Farmers kill anything that affects production," says Marsh. "Agriculture is too efficient." Anecdotal evidence of a looming crisis in biodiversity is now being reinforced by science. In their comprehensive surveys of plants, butterflies and birds over the past 20 to 40 years in Britain, ecologists Jeremy Thomas and Carly Stevens found significant population declines in a third of all native species. Butterflies are the furthest along--71 percent of Britain’s 58 species are shrinking in number, and some, like the large blue and tortoiseshell, are already extinct. In Britain’s grasslands, a key habitat, 20 percent of all animal, plant and insect species are on the path to extinction. There’s hardly a corner of the country’s ecology that isn’t affected by this downward spiral. The problem would be bad enough if it were merely local, but it’s not: because Britain’s temperate ecology is similar to that in so many other parts of the world, it’s the best microcosm scientists have been able to study in detail. Scientists have sounded alarms about species’ extinction in the past, but always specific to a particular animal or place--whales in the 1980s or the Amazonian rain forests in the 1990s. This time, though, the implications are much wider. The Amazon is a "biodiversity hot spot" with a unique ecology. But in Britain, "the main drivers of change are the same processes responsible for species’ declines worldwide," says Thomas. The findings, published in the journal Science, provide the first clear evidence that the world is in the throes of a massive extinction. Thomas and Stevens argue that we are facing a loss of 65 to 95 percent of the world’s species, on the scale of an ice age or the meteorite that may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If so, this would be only the sixth time such devastation had occurred in the past 600 million years. The other five were associated with one-off events like the ice ages, a volcanic eruption or a meteor. This time, ecosystems are dying a thousand deaths--from overfishing and the razing of the rain forests, but also from advances in agriculture. The British study, for instance, finds that one of the biggest problems is nitrogen pollution. Nitrogen is released when fossil fuels burn in cars and power plants--but also when ecologically rich heath lands are plowed and fertilizers are spread. Nitrogen-rich fertilizers fuel the growth of tall grasses, which in turn overshadow and kill off delicate flowers like harebells and eyebrights. Even seemingly innocuous practices are responsible for vast ecological damage. When British farmers stopped feeding horses and cattle with hay and switched to silage, a kind of preserved short grass, they eliminated a favorite nesting spot of corncrakes, birds known for their raspy nightly mating calls; corncrake populations have fallen 76 percent in the past 20 years. The depressing list goes on and on. Many of these practices are being repeated throughout the world, in one form or another, which is why scientists believe that the British study has global implications. Wildlife is getting blander. "We don’t know which species are essential to the web of life so we’re taking a massive risk by eliminating any of them," say’s David Wedin, professor of ecology at the University of Nebraska. Chances are we’ll be seeing the results of this experiment before too long. What is the difference between today’s ecological change and the five changes in ancient times
TEXT D There are two ways in which we can think of literary translation: as reproduction and as recreation. If we think of translation as reproduction, it is a safe and harmless enough business: the translator is a literature processor into which the text to be translated is inserted and out of which it ought to emerge identical, but in another language. But unfortunately the human mind is an imperfect machine, and the goal of precise interlinguistic message-transference is never-achieved; so the translator offers humble apologies for being capable of producing only a pale shadow of the original. Since all he is doing is copying another’s meanings from one language to another, he removes himself from sight so that the writer’s genius can shine as brightly as may be. To do this, he uses a neutral, conventionally literary language which ensures that the result will indeed be a pale shadow, in which it is impossible for anybody’s genius to shine. Readers also regard the translator as a neutral meaning-conveyor, then attribute the mediocrity of the translation to the original author. Martin Amis, for example, declares that Don Quixote is unreadable, without stopping to think about the consequences of the fact that what he has read or not read is what a translator wrote, not what Cervantes wrote. If we regard literary translation like this, as message-transference, we have to conclude that before very long it will be carried out perfectly well by computers. There are many pressures encouraging translators to accept this description of their work, apart from the fact that it is a scientific description and therefore must be right. Tradition is one such additional encouragement, because meaning-transference has been the dominant philosophy and manner of literary translation into English for at least three hundred years. The large publishing houses provide further encouragement, since they also expect the translator to be a literature-processor, who not only’ copies texts but simplifies them as well, eliminating troublesome complexities and manufacturing a readily consumable product for the marketplace. But there is another way in which we can think of literary translation. We can regard the translator not as a passive reproducer of meanings but as an active reader first, and then a creative rewriter of what be has read. This description has the advantages of being more interesting and of corresponding more closely to reality, because a pile of sheets of paper with little squiggly lines on them, glued together along one side, only becomes a work of literature when somebody reads it, and reading is not just a logical process but one involving the whole being: the feelings and the intuitions and the memory and the creative imagination and the whole life experience of the reader. Computers cannot read, they can only scan. And since the combination of all those human components is unique in each person, there are as many Don Quixotes as there are readers of Don Quixote, as Jorge Luis Borges once declared. Any translation of this novel is the translator’s account of his reading of it, rather than some inevitably pale shadow of what Cervantes wrote. It will only be a pale shadow if the translator is a dull reader, per haps as a result of accepting the preconditioning that goes with the role of literature processor. You may object that what I am advocating is extreme chaotic subjectivism, leading to the conclusion that anything goes, in reading and therefore in translation; but it is not, because reading is guided by its own conventions, the interpersonal roles of the literary game that we internalize as we acquire literary experience. By reference to these, we can agree, by reasoned argument, that some readings are more appropriate than others, and therefore that some translations are better than others. According to the author, the quality of translation depends on ______.
微信支付 
支付宝支付