2014年职称英语完形填空字典版理工类

第一篇Captain Cook Arrow Legend(库克船长弓箭的传说)

It was a great legend while it lasted, but DNA testing has ended a two-century-old story of the Hawaiian arrow carved from the bone of British explorer Captain James Cook died in the Sandwich Islands in 1779.

―There is Cook in the Australian Museum,‖ museum collection manager Jude Philip said not long ago in announcing the DNA evidence that the arrow was not made of Cook’s bone. But that will not stop the museum from continuing to display the arrow in its ―Uncovered: Treasures of the Australian Museum,‖ which feather cape presented to Cook by Hawaiian King Kalani’opu’u in 1778.

Cook was one of Britain’s great explorers and is credited with the ―Great South Land,‖ Australia, in 1770. He was clubbed to death in the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii.

The legend of Cook’s arrow began in 1824 Hawaiian King Kamehameha on his deathbed gave the arrow to William Adams, a London

surgeon and relative of Cook’s wife, saying it was made of Cook’s bone after the fatal islanders.

In the 1890s the arrow was given to the

Australian Museum and the legend continued it came face-to-face with science.

DNA testing by laboratories in Australia and New Zealand revealed the arrow was not made of Cook’s bone but was more bone, said Philp.

However, Cook’s fans that one Cook legend will prove true and that part of his remains will still be uncovered, as they say there is evidence not all of Cook’s body was at sea in 1779. ―On this occasion technology has won,‖ said Cliff Thornton, president of the Captain Cook Society, in a from Britain. ―But I am that one of these days …one of the Cook legends will prove to be true and it will happen one day.‖

Avalanche and Its Safety(雪崩和安全问题)

An avalanche is a sudden and rapid flow of snow, often mixed with air and water, down a mountainside. Avalanches are the biggest

dangers in the mountains for both life and property.

All avalanches are caused by an over-burden of material, typically snowpack, that is too massive and unstable for the slope Determining the critical load, the amount of

over-burden which is numberof factors.

Terrain slopes flatter than 25 degrees or steeper than 60 degrees typically have a low of

avalanche. Snow does not steep slopes; also, snow does not easily on flat slopes. Human-triggered avalanches have the

greatest incidence when the snow’s angle of rest is angle at which the human incidence of avalanches is greatest, is 38 degrees. The rule of thumb is : A slope that is enough to hold snow but steep enough to ski has the potential to generate an avalanche, regardless of the angle. Additionally, avalanche risk increases with a slope is disturbed by skiers, thd more likely it is that an avalanche will occur.

Due to the complexity of the subject, winter travelling in the backcountry is never 100% safe. Good avalanche safety is a continuous including route selection and examination of the snowpack, weather , and human factors. Several well-known good habits can also the risk. If local authorities issue avalanche risk reports, they should be considered and all warnings should be paid tracks of others without your own evaluations;

snow conditions are almost certain to have changed since they were made. Observe the terrain and note obvious avalanche paths where plants are or damaged. Avoid traveling below others who might trigger an avalanche. Giant Structures(巨型建筑)

It is an impossible task to select the most

amazing wonders of the modern world since every year more constructions appear.Here are three giant structures which are worthy of our although they may have been surpassed by some more recent wonders.

The Petronas Twin Tower

The petronas Towers were the tallest buildings in the world when they were completed in

1999.With a owers,like two thin pencils,dominate the city of Kuala Lumpur.At the 41 flool,the towers are linked by a bridge,symbolizing a gateway to the city.The American the skyscrapers.

Constructed of high-strength concrete,the building provides around 1800 square metres of office space every floor.And it has a shopping centre and a concert hall at the base.Other of this impressive building include double-deckder lifts, and glass and steel sunshades.

The Millau Bridge

The Millau Bridge was opened in 2004 in the Tarn Valley, in southern France. built, it was the world’s highest bridge, over 340m at the highest point. The bridge is described as one of the most amazingly beautiful bridge in the world. It was built to Millau’s congestion problems. The congestion was then caused by traffic passing from Paris to Barcelona in Spain. The bridge was built to withstand the Besides, it is guaranteed for 120 years!

The Itaipu Dam

The Itaipu hydroelectric power plant is one of the largest constructions of its kind in the world. It consists of a series of dams across the River Parana, Brazil and Paraguay. Started in 1975 and taking 16 years to complete, the construction was carried out as a joint project between the two. The dam is well-known for both its electricity output and its size. In 1995 it produced 78% of

Paraguay’s and 25% of Brazil’s needs. In its construction, the of iron and steel used was equivalent to over 300 Eiffel Towers. It is a Animal’s “Sixth Sense”(动物的”第六感”)

A tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean in December, 2004. It killed tens of thousands of people in Asia and East Africa. Wild animals, terrible tsunami. This phenomenon adds weight to notions that they possess a ―sixth sense‖ for Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24000 people along the Indian Ocean island’s coast clearly beasts, with no dead animals found.

―No elephants are dead, not I think animals can sixth sense. They know when things are

happening,‖ H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka’s Wildlife Department, said about one month after the tsunami attack. The washed

floodwaters up to 2 miles inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka’s biggest wildlife and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.

―There has been a lot of evidence about dogs barking or birds migrating before volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. But it has not been proven,‖ said Matthew van lierop, an animal behavior ―There have been no you can’t really test it in a lab or field setting,‖ he told Reuters. Other authorities concurred with this .

―Wildlife seem to be able to pick up certain reports of birds detecting impending disasters,‖ said Clive Walker, who has written several books on African wildlife.

Animals rely on the known senses such as smell or hearing to avoid danger such as predators.

The notion of an animal ―sixth sense‖ – or other mythical power – is an enduring one which the evidence on Sri Lanka’s ravaged coast is likely to add to.

The Romans saw owls disaster and many ancient cultures viewed

elephants as sacred animals endowed with special powers or attributes.

Singing Alarms Could Save the Blind(警报器救盲人)

If you cannot see, you may not be able to find your way out of a burning building – and that could be fatal. A company in Leeds could change all that you to the exit.

Sound Alert, a company the University of Leeds, is installing the alarms in a residential home for centre for the blind in Cumbria.

produce a wide range of frequencies that enable the brain to determine where the Deborah Withington of Sound Alert says that the alarms use most of the frequencies that can be by humans. ―It is a burst of white noise people say sounds like static on the radio,‖ she says. ―Its life-saving potential is great.‖

She conducted an experiment in which people were filmed by thermal-imaging cameras trying to find their way out of a large room. It them nearly four minutes to find the door a sound alarm, but only 15 seconds with one.

Withington studies how the brain sounds at the university. She says that the a wide band of frequencies can be pinpointed more easily than the source of a narrow band. Alarms installed on emergency vehicles.

The alarms will also include rising or falling frequencies to indicate whether people should go up of a large grant from British Nuclear Fuels.

Car Thieves Could Be Stopped Remotely(远程制止偷车贼)

Speeding off in a stolen car, the thief thinks he has got a great catch. But he is in a nasty surprise. The car is fitted with a remote immobilizer, and a radio signal from a control center miles away will ensure that once the thief switches the engine , he will not be able to start it again.

For now, such devices only available for fleets of trucks and specialist vehicles used on construction sites. But remote immobilization technology could soon start to trickle down to ordinary cars, and be available to ordinary cars in the UK The idea goes like this. A control box fitted to the car incorporatesmicroprocessor and memory, and a GPS satellite positioning receiver. the car is stolen, a coded cellphone signal will tell the unit to block the vehicle’s engine management system and prevent the engine There are even plans for immobilizers shut down vehicles on the move, though there are fears over the safety implications of such a system.

In the UK, an array of technical fixes is already making harder for car thieves. ―The pattern of vehicles crime has changed,‖ says Martyn Rand all of Thatcham, a security research organization based in Berkshire that is funded in part the motor insurance industry.

He says it would only take him a few minutes to a novice how to steal a car, using a bare minimum of tools. But only if the car is more than 10 years old.

Modern cars are a far tougher proposition, as their engine management computer will not them to start unless they receive a unique ID code beamed out by the ignition key. In the UK,

technologies like this cent drop in vehicle-related crime since 1997.

But determined criminals are still managing to find other ways to steal cars. Often by getting hold of the owner’s keys in a burglary. In 2000, 12 per cent of vehicles stolen in the UK were taken by using the owner’s keys, which doubles the previous year’s figure.

Remote-controlled immobilization system would a major new obstacle in the criminal’s way by making such thefts pointless. A group that includes Thatcham, the police, insurance companies and security technology firms have developed standards for a system that could go on the market sooner than the expects.

An Intelligent Car(智能汽车)

Driving needs sharp eyes, keen ears, quick brain, and coordination between hands and the brain. Many human drivers have all control a fast-moving car. But how does an intelligent car control itself?

There is a virtual driver in the smart car. This virtual driver has ―eyes‖, ―brains‖, ―hands‖ and ―feet‖, too. The minicameras each side of the car are his ―eyes‖, which observe the road conditions ahead of it. They watch the to the car’s left and right. There is also a highly driving system in the car. It is the built-in computer, which is the virtual driver’s ―brain‖. His ―brain‖ calculates the speeds of analyzes their positions. Basing on this information, it chooses the right for the intelligent car, and gives to the ―hands‖ and ―feet‖ to act accordingly. In this way, the virtual driver controls

his car.

What is the virtual driver’s best advantage? He reacts images continuously to the ―brain.‖ It the processing of the images within 100

milliseconds. However, the world’s best driver , when he takes action, he needs one more second.

The virtual driver is really wonderful. He can reduce the accident considerably on

expressways. In this case, can we let him have the wheel at any time and in amy place? Experts that we cannot do that just yet. His ability to

recognize things is still drive an intelligent car on expressways.

Why India Needs Its Dying Vultures(印度为什么需要濒临灭亡的秃鹰)

The vultures in question may look ugly and

threatening, but the sudden sharp species of India’s vultures is producing alarm rather than celebration. and it presents the world with a new kind of environmental . The dramatic decline in vulture numbers is causing widespread disruption to people living in the Same areas as the . It is also causing serious public health problems the Indian sub-continent．

While4their reputation and appearance may be unpleasant to many Indians. vultures have played a very important role in keeping towns and villages all over India clean. It is on dead cows. In India. cows are sacred animals and are left in the open when they die in their thousands upon thousands every year.

The disappearance of the vultures has an explosion in the numbers of wild dogs feeding on the remains of these dead animals. There are fears that rabies may ．And this terrifying disease may ultimately affect humans in the region, since wild dogs are its main

carriers．Rabies could also spread to other animal species, causing an even greater problem in the

The need for action is , so an emergency project has been launched to solution to this serious vulture problem. Scientists are trying to identify the disease causing the birds deaths and, if possible, develop a cure.

Large-scale vulture were first noticed at the end of the 1980s in India. A

population survey at that time showed that the three species of vultures had. Declined percent. All three species are now listed

as―critically endangered‖. As most vulture lay only single eggs and maturity, reversing their population decline will be a long and difficult exercise. Wonder Webs(奇妙的网)

Spider webs are more than homes, and they are ingenious traps. And the world’s best web spinner may be the Golden Orb Weaver spider. The female Orb Weaver spins a web of fibers thin enough to be invisible to insect prey, yet enough to snare a flying bird without breaking.

The secret of the web’s strength? A type of super-resilient female spider is ready to the web’s spokes and frame, she uses her legs to draw the airy thread out through a hollow nozzle in her belly. Dragline is not sticky, so the spider can race back and forth along to spin the web’s trademark spiral.

Unlike some spiders that weave a new web every day, a Golden Orb Weaver handiwork until it falls apart, sometimes not for two years. The silky thread is five times stronger than steel by weight and absorbs the force of an impact three times better than Kevlar, a high-strength human-made And thanks to its high tensile strength, or the ability to resist breaking under the pulling force called tension, a single strand can stretch up to 40 percent longer than its original well as new. No human-made fiber even comes .

It is no manufacturers are clamoring for spider silk. In the consumer pipeline:

high-performance fabrics for athletes and stockings that never run. Think parachute cords and

suspension bridge cables. A steady silk would be worth billions of dollars – but how to produce it? Harvesting silk on spider farms does not tendency to devour their neighbors.

Now, scientists at the biotechnology company Nexia are spinning artificial silk modeled after Golden Orb dragline. The silk-making genes from the spiders. Next, implant

the genes into goat egg cells. The nanny goats that grow from the eggs secrete dragline silk proteins in their young goats pass on the

silk-making gene without help from us,‖ says Nexia president Jeffrey Turner. Nexia is still perfecting the spinning process, but they hope artificial spider silk will soon be snagging customers Chicken Soup for the Soul:Comfort Food Fights Lneliness（心灵鸡汤：爽心食品排解孤独感） Mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, may be bad for your arteries， Psychological Science, they’re good for your heart and ．The study focuses on ―comfort food‖ and how it makes people feel．

graduate student at the University of Buffalo, and lead author on the study．The study came out of the research program of his co—author Shira

Gabriel．It has may affect human emotions．Some people reduce loneliness by bonding with their building virtual relationships with a pop song singer or looking at pictures of loved ones．Troisi and Gabriel wondered if comfort food could have the same effect making people think of their nearest and dearest.

In one experiment, in order to make feel lonely, the researchers had them write for six minutes about a fight with someone close to them．Others were given an emotionally neutral writing assignment. Then, some people in each wrote about the experience of eating a comfort food and others wrote about eating a new food． ． Writing about a fight with a close person made

people feel lonely．But people who were generally in their relationships would feel less

lonely by writing about a comfort food．

Climate Change Poses Major Risks for

Unprepared Cities （气候变化给不备城市带来重大风险）

A new examination of urban policies has been recently by Patricia Romero

Lankao．She is a sociologist specializing in climate change and development．She warns that many of the world’s fast-growing urban areas，especially in developing countries．will likely suffer from the impacts of changing climate．Her work also concludes that most cities are failing to emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse ．These gases are known to affect the atmosphere．‖Climate change is a deeply local issue and poses profound threats to the growing cities of the world,‖ says Romero Lankao. ‖But too few cities are developing effective strategies to their residents.

Cities are sources of greenhouse gases．And urban populations are likely to be among those most severely affected by future

climate change. Lankao’s findings highlight ways in which city-residents are particularly vulnerable, and suggest policy interventions that could offer immediate and longer-term

The locations and dense construction patterns of cities often place their populations at greater risk for natural disasters. Potential associated with climate include storm surges and prolonged hot weather. Storm surges can flood coastal areas and prolonged hot weather can heat paved cities more than surrounding areas．The impacts of such natural events can be more serious in an urban environment．For example，a prolonged heat wave can increase existing levels of air pollution，causing widespread health problems．Poorer neighborhoods that may water or a dependable network of roads，are

especially vulnerable to natural disasters．Many residents in poorer countries live in substandard housing access to reliable drinking water，roads and basic services.

Local governments, ,should take measures to protect their residents.‖Unfortunately，they tend to move towards rhetoric meaningful responses, Romero Lankao writes, ‖ They don’t impose construction standards that could reduce heating and air conditioning needs. They don't emphasize mass transit and reduce

governments are taking a hands—off approach.‖ Thus, she urges them to change their policies and to take strong steps to prevent the harmful effects of climate change on cities..

Free Statins With Fast Food Could Neutralize Heart Risk (快餐加免费降胆固醇药物可以降低罹患心脏病的风险)

Fast food outlets could provide statin drugs free of heart disease dangers of fatty food, researchers at Imperial College London in a new study．

Statins reduce the unhealthy ‖LDL‖ cholesterol in the blood. A wealth of trial data has proven them to be highly effective at lowering a person’s heart attack .

In a paper published in the American Journal of Cardiology，Dr Darrel Francis and colleagues calculate that the reduction in heart attack risk offered by a statin is to offset the increase in heart attack risk from drinking a milkshake．

Dr Francis，from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London，who is the senior author of the study, said:‖Statins don’t cut out a11 of the effects of cheeseburgers and French fries．It’s better to avoid fatty food altogether．But we’ve worked out that in terms of your statin can reduce your risk to more or less the same as a fast food meal increases it.‖ ―It’s ironic that people are free to take as many

unhealthv condiments in fast food outlets as they have to be prescribed. It makes sense to make risk-reducing statins available just as easily as the unhealthy condiments that are charge．It would cost less than 5 pence per 一not much different to a sachet of sugar.‖ Dr Francis said．

When people engage in risky behaviours like driving or smoking, they’re encouraged to take seatbelt or choosing cigarettes with filters. Taking a statin is a rational way of risks of eating a fatty meal．

Better Solar Energy Systems: More Heat, More Light （更有效的太阳能系统：更多热量，更强灯光）

Solar photovoltaic thermal energy systems, or PVTs, generate both heat and electricity, but now they haven’t been very good at the

heat-generating part compared to a stand-alone solar thermal collector. That’s because they operate at low temperatures to cool crystalline silicon solar cells, which lets the silicon generate more

but isn’t a very efficient way to gather heat.

That’s a problem of . Good solar hot-water systems can harvest much more energy than a solar-electric system at a substantially lower . And it’s also a space problem: photovoltaic cells can take up all the space on the roof, leaving little room for thermal applications.

In a pair of studies, Joshua Pearce, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, has devised a made with a different kind of silicon. His research collaborators are Kunal Girotra from Thin Silicon in California and Michael Pathak and Stephen Harrison from Queen’s University, Canada.

Most solar panels are made with crystalline silicon, but you can also make solar cells out of amorphous silicon, silicon. They don’t create as much electricity, but they are lighter, flexible, and cheaper. And, because they much less silicon, they have a greener footprint. Unfortunately, thin-film silicon solar cells are form of the Staebler-Wronski effect.

―That means that their efficiency when you expose them to light—pretty much the worst possible effect for a solar cell,‖ Pearce explains, which is one of the make up only a small fraction of the market.

However, Pearce and his team found a way to engineer around the Staebler-Wronski effect by incorporating thin-film silicon in a new PVT. You don’t have to cool down thin-film silicon to make it work. In fact, Pearce’s group discovered that by heating it to solar-thermal operating

temperatures, near the boiling could make thicker cells that largely the Staebler-Wronski effect. When they applied the thin-film silicon directly to a solar thermal energy once a day, they the solar cell’s electrical efficiency by over 10 percent.

Sharks Perform a Service for Earth's Waters（鲨鱼有益于地球水系）

It is hard to get people to think of sharks as

anything but a deadly enemy1. They are thought topeople frequently. But these fish2 perform a service for earth's waters and for human beings. Yet business and sport fishing3 are threatening their Some sharks are at risk of disappearing from Warm weather may influence both fish and shark activity. Many fish swim near coastal areas

their warm waters. Experts say sharks may follow the fish into the same areas, people also swim. In fact, most sharks do not purposely charge at or bite humans. They are thought to mistake a person a sea animal, such as a seal or sea lion. That is why people should not swim in the ocean when the sun goes down or comes up. Those are the times when sharks are looking for food. Experts also say that bright colors and shiny jewelry may cause sharks to attack.

A shark has an extremely good sense of smell4' It can find small amounts of substances in water, such as blood, body liquids and chemicals produced by animals. These powerful help sharks fred their food. Sharks eat fish, any sharks, and plants that live in the ocean.

Medical researchers want to learn more about the shark's body defense, and immune against disease. Researchers know that sharks quickly from injuries. They study the shark in hopes of finding a way to fight human disease.

Sharks are important for the world's They eat injured and diseased fish. Their hunting activities mean that the numbers of other fish in ocean waters do not become too This protects the plants and other forms of life that exist in the oceans.

“Liquefaction” Key to Much of Japanese Earthquake Damage （“液化”是日本地震破坏的关键）

The massive subduction zone1 earthquake in Japan caused a significant level of soil

pipelines6, crippling the utilities and infrastructure these communities need to places that sank as much as four feet.

Some degree of soil liquefaction7 is common in almost any major earthquake. It's a phenomenon in which soils soaked with water, particularly recent sediments or sand, can lose much of their and flow during an earthquake. This can allow structures to shift or sink or .

But most earthquakes are much the recent event in Japan, Ashford said. The length of the Japanese earthquake, as much as five minutes, may force researchers to reconsider the extent of liquefaction damage possibly occurring in situations such as this.

The data provided by analyzing the Japanese earthquake, researchers said, should make it

possible to improve the understanding of this soil Ashford said it was critical for the team to collect the information quickly, damage was

removed in the recovery efforts.

liquefaction, such as better compaction to make soils dense, or use of reinforcing stone columns.

Ashford pointed out that northern California have younger soils vulnerable to liquefaction ---on the coast, near river deposits or in areas with filled ground. The

describes much of downtown Portland, the Portland International Airport and other cities.

Anything a river and old flood plains is a suspect12, and the Oregon Department of

Transportation has already concluded that 1,100 bridges in the state are at risk from an earthquake. Fewer than 15 percent of them have been reinforced to collapse. Japan has suffered tremendous losses in the March 11 earthquake, but Japanese construction buildings from collapse ---even as they tilted and sank into the ground.