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雅思阅读练习:摩肯族孩子水下视力的奥秘

2017-05-23 17:51:49来源:网络 柯林斯词典

  新东方在线雅思网为大家带来了雅思阅读练习:摩肯族孩子水下视力的奥秘。正文都做了贴心的注解,文章包含雅思词汇、例句讲解。希望以下内容能够为同学们的雅思备考提供帮助。新东方在线雅思网将第一时间为大家发布最新、最全、最专业的雅思报名官网消息和雅思考试真题及解析,供大家参考。

  在泰国西海岸,安达曼海群岛上的摩肯族孩子,具有超常的水下视觉能力。科学家对他们进行了跟踪研究,发现了其中的奥秘。

  “When the tide came in, these kids started swimming. But not like I had seen before. They were more underwater than above water, they had their eyes wide open – they were like little dolphins(海豚).”

  Deep in the island archipelagos (群岛)on the Andaman Sea, and along the west coast of Thailand live small tribes(部落) called the Moken people, also known as sea-nomads(流浪者). Their children spend much of their day in the sea, diving for food. They are uniquely adapted to this job – because they can see underwater. And it turns out that with a little practice, their unique vision might be accessible(可以使用的;可以获得的)to any young person.

  In 1999, Anna Gislen at the University of Lund, in Sweden was investigating different aspects of vision, when a colleague suggested that she might be interested in studying the unique characteristics of the Moken tribe. “I’d been sitting in a dark lab for three months, so I thought, ‘yeah, why not go to Asia instead’,” says Gislen.

  Gislen and her six-year old daughter travelled to Thailand and integrated(融入,综合) themselves within the Moken communities, who mostly lived on houses sat upon poles. When the tide came in, the Moken children splashed around in the water, diving down to pick up food that lay metres below what Gislen or her daughter could see. “They had their eyes wide open, fishing for clams, shells and sea cucumbers, with no problem at all,” she says.

  Gislen set up an experiment to test just how good the children’s underwater vision really was. The kids were excited about joining in, says Gislen, “they thought it was just a fun game.”

  The kids had to dive underwater and place their heads onto a panel. From there they could see a card displaying either vertical(垂直的)or horizontal(水平的)lines. Once they had stared at the card, they came back to the surface to report which direction the lines travelled. Each time they dived down, the lines would get thinner, making the task harder. It turned out that the Moken children were able to see twice as well as European children who performed the same experiment at a later date.

  What was going on? To see clearly above land, you need to be able to refract(折射)light that enters the eye onto the retina(视网膜). The retina sits at the back of the eye and contains specialised cells, which convert(转变)the light signals into electrical signals that the brain interprets as images.

  Light is refracted when it enters the human eye because the outer cornea(眼角膜) contains water, which makes it slightly denser than the air outside the eye. An internal lens refracts the light even further.

  When the eye is immersed(沉浸)in water, which has about the same density as the cornea, we lose the refractive power of the cornea, which is why the image becomes severely blurred(使……模糊).(当眼睛浸入水中,水的浓度与眼角膜相当,因而失去眼角膜的折射功能,于是映像就变得非常模糊。)

  Gislen figured that in order for the Moken children to see clearly underwater, they must have either picked up some adaption that fundamentally changed the way their eyes worked, or they had learned to use their eyes differently under water.(Gilsen推想,摩肯族孩子能在水下有清晰的视力,要么因为他们经过某种适应,从根本上改变了眼睛的工作机理,要么因为他们学会了如何在水下以不同的方式使用眼睛。)

  She thought the first theory was unlikely, because a fundamental change to the eye would probably mean the kids wouldn’t be able to see well above water. A simple eye test proved this to be true – the Moken children could see just as well above water as European children of a similar age.

  It had to be some kind of manipulation(操控)of the eye itself, thought Gislen. There are two ways in which you can theoretically improve your vision underwater. You can change the shape of the lens – which is called accommodation – or you can make the pupil(瞳孔) smaller, thereby increasing the depth of field.

  Their pupil size was easy to measure – and revealed that they can constrict their pupils to the maximum known limit of human performance. But this alone couldn’t fully explain the degree to which their sight improved. This led Gislen to believe that accommodation of the lens was also involved.

  “We had to make a mathematical calculation to work out how much the lens was accommodating in order for them to see as far as they could,” says Gislen. This showed that the children had to be able to accommodate to a far greater degree than you would expect to see underwater.

  “Normally when you go underwater, everything is so blurry(模糊的)that the eye doesn’t even try to accommodate, it’s not a normal reflex,” says Gislen. “But the Moken children are able to do both – they can make their pupils smaller and change their lens shape. Seals and dolphins have a similar adaptation.”

  Gislen was able to test a few Moken adults in the same way. They showed no unusual underwater vision or accommodation – perhaps explaining why the adults in the tribe caught most of their food by spear fishing above the surface. “When we age, our lenses become less flexible, so it makes sense that the adults lose the ability to accommodate underwater,” says Gislen.

  Gislen wondered whether the Moken children had a genetic anomaly(异常)to thank for their ability to see underwater or whether it was just down to practice. (Gilsen不知道,摩肯族孩子的水下视力到底是由于基因异常原因,还是练习的原因。)To find out, she asked a group of European children on holiday in Thailand, and a group of children in Sweden to take part in training sessions, in which they dived underwater and tried to work out the direction of lines on a card. After 11 sessions across one month, both groups had attained(获得;达到)the same underwater acuity(敏锐,敏度)as the Moken children.

  “It was different for each child, but at some point their vision would just suddenly improve,” says Gislen. “I asked them whether they were doing anything different and they said, ‘No, I can just see better now’.”

  She did notice, however, that the European kids would experience red eyes, irritated(刺激;惹怒)by the salt in the water, whereas the Moken children appeared to have no such problem. “So perhaps there is some adaptation there that allows them to dive down 30 times without any irritation,” she says.

  Gislen recently returned to Thailand to visit the Moken tribes, but things had changed dramatically. In 2004, a tsunami(海啸)created by a giant earthquake within the Indian Ocean destroyed much of the Moken’s homeland. Since then, the Thai government has worked hard to move them onto the land, building homes that are further inland and employing members of the tribe to work in the National Park. “It’s difficult,” says Gislen. “You want to help keep people safe and give them the best parts of modern culture, but in doing so they lose their own culture.”

  In unpublished work, Gislen tested the same kids that were in her original experiment. The Moken children, now in their late teens, were still able to see clearly underwater. She wasn’t able to test many adults as they were too shy, but she is certain that they would have lost the ability to see underwater as they got older. “The adult eye just isn’t capable of that amount of accommodation,” she says.

  Unfortunately, the children in Gislen’s experiments may be the last of the tribe to possess the ability to see so clearly underwater. “They just don’t spend as much time in the sea anymore,” she says, “so I doubt that any of the children that grow up these days in the tribe have this extraordinary vision.”

  Vocabulary

  dolphin 海豚

  archipelago 群岛

  tribe 部落

  nomad 流浪汉

  accessible 可以使用的,可以获得的

  integrate 集成;融入

  vertical 垂直的

  horizontal 水平的

  refract 折射

  convert 改变

  immerse 浸入;沉浸

  blurry 模糊的

  manipulation 操控

  pupil 瞳孔

  anomaly 异常

  attain 获得;达到

  acuity 敏度

  irritate 使生气;使受刺激

  tsunami 海啸

  读真题,记词汇

  These misconceptions do not remain isolated but become incorporated into a multifaceted, but organized, conceptual framework, making it and the component ideas, some of which are erroneous, more robust but also accessible to modification.(剑4T1P1)

  参考译文:这些错误观点不是孤立存在的,而是被融合到一个多层面、有组织的概念框架内,从而使这个框架以及组成框架的那些观点(其中一些观点是错误的)显得更有依据,但也更容易得到纠正。

  This objective, agreed by the Gothenburg European Council, has to be achieved by integrating environmental considerations into Community policies, and shifting the balance between modes of transport lies at the heart of its strategy. (剑10T1P2)

  参考译文:歌德堡理事会一致通过,此目标的实现需将对环境因素的考虑同国际社会的政策结合起来,并且需要调整交通方式之间的平衡,因为交通方式是此目标的战略核心。

  Another strange feature of the Japanese pagoda is that, because the building tapers, with each successive floor plan being smaller than the one below, none of the vertical pillars that carry the weight of the building is connected to its corresponding pillar above.(剑7T2P1)

  参考译文:日本宝塔另外一个奇怪特征就是没有一根承重立柱能和上层相应的立柱连在一起,这是因为日本宝塔每一层的楼层面都比下一层的要小,宝塔于是从下往上逐渐变细。

  The history of human civilisation is entwined with the history of the ways we have learned to manipulate water resources.(剑7T1P2)

  参考译文:人类文明史与我们学习如何使用水资源的过程息息相关。

  This is the process by which plants use energy from the sun to convert carbon from soil or water into organic material for growth. (剑5T4P3)

  参考译文:在这个过程中,植物利用来自太阳的能量,将土地或是水里的碳转化为植物生长所需的有机物质。


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