Scientific American 60 Second Science听抄（有音频文件）

zhenzhen_163UID: 196150

原帖由 zhenzhen_163 于 2007-6-21 15:55 发表
:)

看了很多朋友认为这个网站的听力材料太难的帖子，让我说几句话。希望这些朋友不要气馁，习惯了难的东西，考托时就会驾轻就熟了。

1．首先得说这些材料很好，属于托福材料的范围。和托福一样，都是学 ...

:cool:   Corrections:

I made a mistake with Fidel; I meant Fido. Even thought both are very common dog names but most Americans would use Fido when they refer to dogs. By the way, both names come from Latin, meaning “faithful”.

Someone mentioned Felix the Cat after my post. That is absolutely correct. Because he was such a popular cartoon cat that people started to call cats Felix. Another person offered “felid”. This would not be possible since this word is rarely used and few people know it. If you doubt this, quiz the Americans you know.
The point I wanted to make was that you need the cultural background to understand these words. It is not a matter of listening attentively to the announcer’s enunciation in order to figure out what the words are, or how they are spelled. If you have the background, you will understand intuitively that he was talking about dogs and cats right away without even thinking. Luckily, we will not be held to such a high standard on TOEFL. We are just doing this for fun here!  :)

[ 本帖最后由 zhenzhen_163 于 2007-6-25 11:13 编辑 ]

imoukanUID: 2341546

听着很舒服，越听越喜欢

forerunnerUID: 2234967

wikipedia  以前不是上不去吗？
现在能上了:)

forerunnerUID: 2234967

很多牛人:handshake :handshake
http://www.earthsky.org/ 不错:)

forerunnerUID: 2234967

背景知识是如何学到的？

你在美国吗？


向你学习:)

forerunnerUID: 2234967

http://www.earthsky.org/




earth and sky 这个节目 以前在 voa special english 中听到过:) :) :)

dream22239UID: 2216256

要向前人学习，有空就开始联系听抄

woodmanUID: 161906

估计zhenzhen是在国外的啦，呵呵，背景知识可能确实很重要，对阅读和听力都有帮助，口语也是越熟悉地道美语的表达分越容易上去。
我们在国内怎么样才能增强背景知识呢？有什么办法吗？我做听抄可能有点不求甚解，每次遇到不熟悉的词，都是依据发音找的单词。然后才会通看全文，弄明白意思。有的生物段子很枯燥，对我这样的文科生来说兴趣不是很大，而且生词狂多，我都是很老土的根据发音查字典找单词，唉，我也是个肤浅的人:funk:

原帖由 forerunner 于 2007-6-22 07:25 发表
背景知识是如何学到的？

你在美国吗？


向你学习:)

kevinliu6883UID: 2338522

The little guy lived more than 70 millions years ago in what’s now Gobi desert. In 1997, its remains were discovered by fossil hunters. And in a paper published in the new issue of journal of Nature, researchers announced they think he is a member of kind of mammal that is the ancestor of us all. I do mean all, all placental mammals, you, me, fetus, felines, manatees, elephants, every placental mammals now living on earth. The tiny inch shrew-like mammal is called Maelestes gobiensis. Researchers analyzed 400 anatomic features of 69 species living and other fossil mammals. Along with recent discovery, the genetic logical tree age they drew put our common ancestor right about the same time that the dinosaur began to dwindle due to gigantic impact event 65 million years ago. So the little shrew offers confirming evidence that disappearance of dinosaurs line that did not go on to become birds, which allow mammal to evolve to multiple forms we see today, and take all advantages of all opportunities that dinosaur left behind.

[ 本帖最后由 kevinliu6883 于 2007-6-22 10:13 编辑 ]

kevinliu6883UID: 2338522

A fossil discovered in the Gobi Desert has unlocked the most emphatic evidence to date that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs helped placental mammals -- of which Homo sapiens is a member -- become masters of the planet.
The fossilised skull of a shrew-like creature was uncovered in Mongolia in 1997 but only now have scientists become aware of its importance, according to a paper published on Thursday by Nature, the weekly British science journal.

A big debate in paleontology is when our mammalian forebears first appeared on the scene.

Some experts, using a "molecular clock" based on the rate of DNA mutation, say placental mammals may have popped up as early as the start of the Cretaceous era, some 145 million years ago.

Others put the key event at 65 million years ago, when some cataclysm brought the curtain down on both the Cretaceous and the long reign of the dinosaurs.

The Mongolian fossil, a well-preserved relic of a species that has been dubbed Maelestes gobiensis, lived in the Late Cretaceous, between 71 and 75 million years ago, when famous dinos such as Velociraptor and Oviraptor strode the Earth.

Researchers led by John Wible, a curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, used the fossil as a benchmark for evolutionary change, comparing shifts in morphology among 69 living and extinct mammals.

Their revamping of the mammalian family tree places the emergence of the placental varieties near the end of the Cretaceous era, when there was an extraordinary "explosion" in the range of these animals.

The dust so shrouded the planet that the global temperature plummeted, killing off the vegetation on which the dinosaurs (herbivores and the carnivores which fed on them) depended.

That left the door open for smaller creatures that, unlike reptiles, were able to regulate their own body temperatures and whose energy needs were less -- the reign of the mammals had begun.

Of the 5,416 species of mammals alive today, 5,080 are placental; the remainder are marsupials, whose babies develop in pouches, and so-called monotremes (mammals that lay eggs), such as the platypus.

[ 本帖最后由 kevinliu6883 于 2007-6-22 09:52 编辑 ]

kevinliu6883UID: 2338522

Cretaceous eutherians and Laurasian origin for placental mammals near the K/T boundary
J. R. Wible1, G. W. Rougier2, M. J. Novacek3 & R. J. Asher4

Estimates of the time of origin for placental mammals from DNA studies span nearly the duration of the Cretaceous period (145 to 65 million years ago), with a maximum of 129 million years ago1 and a minimum of 78 million years ago2. Palaeontologists too are divided on the timing. Some3, 4, 5 support a deep Cretaceous origin by allying certain middle Cretaceous fossils (97–90 million years old) from Uzbekistan with modern placental lineages, whereas others6, 7 support the origin of crown group Placentalia near the close of the Cretaceous. This controversy has yet to be addressed by a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis that includes all well-known Cretaceous fossils and a wide sample of morphology among Tertiary and recent placentals6. Here we report the discovery of a new well-preserved mammal from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia and a broad-scale phylogenetic analysis. Our results exclude Cretaceous fossils from Placentalia, place the origin of Placentalia near the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary in Laurasia rather than much earlier within the Cretaceous in the Southern Hemisphere8, 9, and place afrotherians and xenarthrans in a nested rather than a basal position8, 9 within Placentalia.

linkunkun7UID: 2196646

woodman啊，你们几位前辈不要再妄自菲薄了，你们已经蛮强的了，再这么谦下去，我们这些新手要无地自容了都。。。

刚刚完成了作业，很高兴自己又比前几次稍有进步~

关于前面N页帖子中前辈们的解答，在此特表示感谢~~明白啦，哈哈！

还有，关于说听三遍的理论。。。看的我暴汗。。。这个听三遍完成。。。不太现实吧？还是我实在太弱了？我就单曲循环播放，一遍一遍地然后越写越多，相对以前听一下，停一下，写一下，已经是突破了。结果还是南辕北辙，不会这么惨吧。。。

linkunkun7UID: 2196646

Maelestes gobiensis 这是啥子意思哟。。。:confused:

susanchynUID: 2345136

These are good practice.

But test takers should remember that the speaker is talking FASTER than
the actors do on the real TOEFL iBT test.

AND there is less context (fewer examples), which makes it harder to figure out than in the real test.

AND there are often jokes and instances of English slang-- which are hard
for Chinese to understand. Those jokes and slang expressions would NEVER be used in the real TOEFL iBT.

woodmanUID: 161906

Maelestes gobiensis 取名的由来：
John Wible, curator of mammals at themuseum, gave a name to the 75 million-year-old fossil of a shrew-like creaturefound in Mongoliain the paper titled "The Explosion of Present-day Placental Mammals."He named the fossil Maelestes gobiensis because it was found in the Gobi Desert."Lestes" means robber in Greek, and "MAE" honors theMongolian American Expedition, which found the specimen 10 years ago.

原帖由 linkunkun7 于 2007-6-22 10:38 发表
Maelestes gobiensis 这是啥子意思哟。。。:confused: