Magical Creatures: AN APPRECIATION OF AUTUMN MOTH (蛾)

Moths seem to have a bit of a bad reputation: to some they are ill indications or something scary, to others they are dull in comparison to our well-loved butterflies. But moths are an essential part of a(n)     1    , and important food sources for species like birds and bats. And for me, moths are far from dull.

My first meeting with an Angle Shades moth was nearly a non-encounter. I almost passed by without noticing it, thinking it was a fallen leaf on a fence post. But there was something about it that stopped me in my tracks. Its angular shape perhaps? Or the way it sat,     2    , despite the breeze. Closer     3     revealed cream and buff shell-shaped wings, painted with triangles of light pink and brown. Suddenly, it transformed from a(n)     4     leaf into a living thing before my eyes. I’ve been fascinated ever since.

The Canary-shouldered Thorn, with its hairy buttercup-coloured body and yellow and orange wings, reminds me of a fallen silver birch (白桦树) leaf. A night-flyer, it favours gardens and woodlands, and is often drawn to     5     light, meaning that your torch beam may be attracting moths as well as lighting your way in the dark. It’s also worth double-checking any leaves in farm houses, as these sheltered spots are a favourite hiding place of another overwintering     6    : the Herald moth. This elegant creature’s beautiful wings look as though they’ve been     7     by hand and painted with bronze.

There’s more to these imitators than fallen leaves. The Green-spotted Crescent, which     8     disappears on rough branches, has metallic green spots integrating with the moss (苔藓). Maybe I’ve already     9     crossed paths with one, though. As we dig out our big coats and slip on boots for walks beneath branches, how many moths are we missing? These clever creatures aren’t bad indications, but     10     parts of nature, with a gift for fancy-dress.

Sea-level rise predictions

A team of University of Idaho scientists is studying a fast-moving glacier in Alaska in hopes of developing better predictions on how quickly global sea levels will rise.

Tim Bartholomaus, a professor in the Department of Geography and Geological Sciences, spent several weeks on Turner Glacier in Alaska’s southeastern     1     near Disenchantment Bay. The glacier is unique because, unlike other glaciers, it rises greatly every five to eight years.

A surging glacier is defined,     2    , as one that starts flowing at least 10 times faster than normal. But the how and why of that glacial movement is poorly understood, although recent research suggests that global climate change increases the     3     of glacial surging.

During Turner’s surges, the mass of ice and rock will increase its speed from roughly 3 feet a day to 65 feet per day.

All of that is important because glaciers falling into the ocean are a major contributor to sea level rise, and current climate change models don’t     4     account for these movements. For example, Greenland’s glaciers are one of the leading contributors to global sea-level rise. Since the early 2000s, Greenland     5     from not having any effect on world sea levels, to increasing sea level by about 1 millimeter per year. Half of that yearly increase is due to warmer average temperatures, which leads to more ice melting. The other half, however, is because glaciers in Greenland are, as a whole, moving faster and running into the ocean more frequently.

Glacial movement has something to do with water running underneath the glacier. Glaciers are full of holes, and water runs through those holes. When the water pressure is high underneath a glacier, it starts to move, partly because it’s lifting the mass of ice and rock off the ground and partly because it’s     6     the underside of the glacier.

But how exactly does that water move through the glacier, and how does the movement     7     the glacier’s speed? Those are the questions the scientists hope to answer.

Bartholomaus, some graduate students and researchers from Boise State University,     8     onto the ice in August. They set up a base camp at the toe of the glacier and spent their days flying in on helicopters. They placed roughly 30 instruments, burying them deeply into the glacier and     9     them on rock outcroppings (露岩) alongside the glacier. This summer the team will return to get the instruments and replace batteries. Those instruments will     10     on and around the glacier until the glacier surge stops, providing researchers with before and after data.

5 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A Review on Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the father of the atomic(原子的) bomb”. As a drama about genius, pride and error, it    1    the life of the American theoretical physicist who helped research and develop the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities in Japan, during World War II.

Oppenheimer is a great achievement, partly because it    2    relates that period of history thanks to Nolan’s lifelike filmmaking. Nolan goes deep and long on the    3    of the bomb, but he doesn’t restage the attacks and there are no documentary images of the dead or cities in ashes.

The story tracks Oppenheimer across decades, starting in the 1920s with him as a young adult and continuing until his hair    4    . The film touches on his personal and professional milestones, the controversies that    5    him, and the attacks that nearly ruined him. Besides, the friendships and romances    6    him, yet also troubling, are also described.

The path of Oppenheimer’s life    7     shifted at Berkeley. He was once only an academic there, but his identity changed after Germany entered Poland by force. By that time, Oppenheimer had become friends with Ernest Lawrence, a physicist who invented the historic particle accelerator (粒子加速器) and played a(n)     8    role in the Manhattan Project. And Oppenheimer also met the project’s military head and was then made director of Los Alamos, where much of his later research on nuclear weapons took place.

François Truffaut once wrote that “war films, even those who support peace, even the best, willingly or not, present wars in a certain    9    way.” That is why Nolan refuses to show the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing millions of souls. In the film, you hear that Oppenheimer’s famous words    10    his own mind as the mushroom cloud rose: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Nolan is actually reminding audience to reconsider the roles they can play in the world.

It happens just about every time I go to a restaurant with my daughter. I open the menu and scan the options. Then I glance at the children’s menu. Oftentimes, the menu is pretty    1    , with the same pasta and tomato sauce. But the items on the children’s menu are usually less expensive, and I’ll think to myself: Wow, good deal.

If I think again for a moment, though, the deal isn’t really a deal. After all, I estimated the cost of the pasta    2    on the adult menu, not on the actual cost of making some bow-tie noodles and serving them with a red sauce.

My faulty    3    is the product of anchoring, a cognitive bias (认知偏差) that can weaken our critical thinking.

According to researchers, anchoring is when people rely on    4    but easily accessible facts to make judgments. Our minds give too much weight to initial impressions or numbers that influence our    5    thoughts. In my case, the prices on the adult menu    6    or anchored my judgment about the value of the items on the children’s menu.

Studies show that anchoring effects    7    no matter how weak the connection between the anchor and the actual decision. One study found that “estimates of an athlete’s performance were influenced by the number on his jersey ( 运 动 衫 ).” In other words, people thought that an athlete with a higher jersey number was better than an athlete with a lower number, all else being equal.

Anchoring affects all kinds of decisions, even those made by experts who should know better. In particular, a recent study shows that anchoring is far more common in the financial world than    8     believed, with substantial anchoring effects influencing performance in the stock market. A study showed that investors valued firms more highly if the firms had higher stock prices. So, if two companies have the same financial    9    except that Company X has fewer shares at a higher price than Company Y, then Company X’s shares will sell better over the long run than Company Y’s. Why? Because the stock price — the anchor — enhances the company’s perceived value.

The phenomenon of anchoring shows that while we think of ourselves as rational and logical beings, unrelated details can have a(n)     10    influence on our reasoning. The best solution is to improve critical thinking skills. Otherwise, you might be a victim of anchoring, dragged down by your bias, whether you notice it or not.

Major companies are already in pursuit of commercial applications of the new biology. They dream of placing enzymes(酶)in the automobile to monitor     1     and send data on pollution to a microprocessor that will then adjust the engine. They speak of what The New York Times calls “Metal-hungry microbes(微生物)that might be used to     2     valuable trace metals from ocean water.” They have already demanded and won the right to patent new life forms.

Nervous     3    , including many scientists, worry that there is corporate, national, international, and inter-scientific competition in the entire biotechnological field. They create images not of oil spills, but of “microbe spills” that could spread disease and destroy entire populations. The creation and     4     release of extremely poisonous microbes, however, is only one cause for alarm. Completely rational and     5     scientists are talking about possibilities that stagger(动摇)the imagination.

Should we breed people with cow-like stomachs so they can digest grass and hay, thereby     6     the food problem by modifying us to eat lower down on the food chain? Should we biologically alter workers to fit the job requirement, for example, creating pilots with faster reaction time or assembly-line workers     7     to do our monotonous work for us? Should we use genetic forecasting to pre-eliminate “unfit” babies? Should we grow reserve organs for ourselves, each of us having, as it were, a “savings bank” full of     8     kidneys, livers or hands?

Wild as these notions may sound, everyone has its     9     (and opposers) in the scientific community as well as its striking commercial application. As two critics of genetic engineering, Jeremy Rifkin and Ted Howard, state in their book Who Should Play God? “Broad scale genetic engineering will probably be introduced to America much the same way as assembly lines, automobiles, vaccines, computers and all the other technologies. As each new genetic advance becomes     10     practical, a new consumer need will be exploited and a market for the new technology will be created.”

18^th Century Grand Tour of Europe

The Grand Tour began in the 16^th century and gained popularity during the 17 th century. Privileged（有特权的）young European graduates     1     a trend where they traveled across the continent in search of art and cultural experiences upon their graduation. This practice, which grew to be     2     popular, became known as the Grand Tour. Specialty guidebooks, tour guides, and other aspects of the tourist industry were developed during this time to meet the needs of wealthy 20-something male and female travelers as they explored the European continent.

These young, classically - educated Tourists were rich enough to fund multiple years abroad for themselves and they took full advantage of this. They carried letters of     3     and introduction with them as they departed from southern England to communicate with and learn from people they met in other countries. Some Tourists     4     to continue their education and broaden their horizons while abroad, some were just after fun and     5     travels, but most desired a combination of both.

A typical journey through Europe was long and     6     with many stops along the way. London was commonly used as a starting point and the Tour was usually kicked off with a difficult trip across the English Channel. Crossing the wide channel was and is not easy. 17^th – and - 18^th - century Tourists risked sea-sickness, illness, and even shipwreck on this first     7     of travel.

Grand Tourists were     8     interested in visiting cities that were considered centers of culture at the time, so Paris, Rome, and Venice were not to be missed. The average Grand Tourist traveled from city to city, usually spending weeks in smaller cities and months in the three     9     ones.

The vast majority of Tourists took part in similar activities during their exploration with art at the center of it all. Once a Tourist arrived at a destination, he would look for     10     and settle in for anywhere from weeks to months, even years. Though certainly not an overly trying experience for most, the Grand Tour presented a unique set of challenges for travelers to overcome.

What Sociology Can Teach UsAbout Thanksgiving

Sociologists （社会学家） believe that the celebrations practiced within any given culture serve to restate that culture’s most important values and beliefs. This theory dates back to founding sociologist Émile Durkheim and has been proved true by     1     researchers over more than a century’s time. According to sociologists, by examining a celebration, we can come to understand some     2     things about the culture in which it is practiced. In this spirit, let’s take a look at what Thanksgiving reveals about us.

It may not be much of a（n）     3     that coming together to share a meal with loved ones indicates how important relationships with friends and family are in our culture, which is far from a（n）     4     American thing. When we gather together to share in this holiday, we effectively say, “Your     5     and our relationship is important to me,” and in doing so, that relationship is restated and     6    . But there are some less obvious and more interesting things going on too.

In most households across the U. S. women and girls do the work of preparing, serving, and cleaning up after the Thanksgiving meal.     7    , most men and boys are likely to be watching and/or playing football. Of course, neither of these activities are exclusively gendered, but they are generally so. This means that Thanksgiving serves to     8     the distinct roles we believe men and women should play in society, and even what it means to be a man or a woman in our society today.

One of the most interesting sociological research findings is that overeating     9     with Thanksgiving illustrates American materialism and abundance. Sociologists found that the celebrations and how we talk about these experiences     10     that Thanksgiving is really about celebrating “material abundance” — having a lot of stuff, especially food, available for use.

Sense of smell is our most rapid warning system

“The human avoidance response to unpleasant smells associated with danger has long been seen as a    1     perceivable process, but our study shows for the first time that it’s unconscious and extremely rapid,” says the study’s first author Behzad Iravani, researcher at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet.

The organ relating to the sense of smell takes up about five per cent of the human brain and enables us to    2    between many million different smells. A large proportion of these smells are associated with a threat to our health and    3    , such as that of chemicals and rotten food. Smell signals reach the brain within 100 to 150 milliseconds after being breathed in through the nose.

The survival of all living organisms depends on their ability to avoid danger and seek    4    . In humans, the smell sense seems particularly important for detecting and reacting to    5    harmful substance.

It has long been a mystery just which sensory systems are involved in the change of an unpleasant smell into avoidance behavior in humans. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now    6    a method that for the first time has made it possible to measure signals from the human smell organ, which processes smells and in turn can    7    signals to parts of the brain that control movement and avoidance behavior.

Their    8     are based on three experiments in which participants were asked to rate their   experience of six different smells, some positive, some negative, while the electrophysiological activity of the smell organ when    9    to each of the smells was measured.

“It was clear that the organ reacts specifically and    10    to negative smells and sends a direct signal to the outer layer of the organ within about 300 ms,” says the study’s last author Johan Lundström. ” The signal causes the person to unconsciously lean back and away from the source of the smell.”