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新闻聚光灯:伦敦也“蜗居”、海水变食水不是梦(2)

gy biotechnology professor Jongyoon Han.
  Han and his colleagues have developed 7)ion concentration 8)polarization, which improves the efficiency of the filtering process by adding a small electrical charge to the salt and other impurities.
  The chip removed 99% of the salt and other contaminants from samples of undrinkable water.
  Han says the technology might one day be available as a personal water purification appliance or used to bring drinking water to communities by 9)scaling up the technology to create plates containing thousands of chips.
  Han: And then run all of these little devices at the same time to get the flow rate at the levels of perhaps a hundred 10)milliliters per minute. That flow rate is the typical flow rate that you can get from the household water filtration devices.
  Han would like to develop a way to power the devices so they can help bring water 11)in the wake of natural disasters, such as this year’s12)devastating earthquake in Haiti.
  
  美国和韩国的研究人员展示了一种用纳米技术将海水转化成饮用水的方法。目前来说,这项新发明仅能净化少量海水。但科学家们称,该科技为将来耗电少的脱盐设备的面世铺平了道路,届时低电耗设备有望祛除大量海水中的盐分和杂质,从而为广大社区提供饮用水。
  脱盐过程是在一个邮票面积大小的芯片上进行的。电流把带电盐粒子和其他杂质从海水中分离出来,从而把海水转换成饮用水。
  传统工业中使用的脱盐设备采取反渗透的方式,把盐和其他杂质从海水中分离。美国麻省理工学院生物工程学教授韩俊允指出,这些设备价格昂贵,且高能耗,因此并不适用于众多低收入国家。
  韩教授和他的同事开发出离子集中分离技术,为盐和杂质稍微充电,从而提高分离效率。
  试验中,芯片可以祛除海水样本中99%的盐和杂质。
  韩教授称,也许有一天,这项技术能运用到家庭水净化设备中,又或者制造出包含数千个这种芯片的大面板后,社区居民也能喝上经这种设备净化的水。
  韩:所有这些小设备同时运作,一分钟也许能处理100毫升的水,这也是家用水滤化器的标准工作效率。
  韩教授希望能为这些设备找到动力之源,这样它们就能在类似今年的海地大地震那样的重大自然灾害发生之后派上用场。


  
  “试管婴儿”的未来 The Future of "Test Tube" Babies
  
  语音:美式发音 适合讨论
  语速:145词/分钟
  关键词:IVF, similar, mental disorder
  More than 40,000 American children are born each year using assisted reproductive technologies such as 1)IVF. But what becomes of these kids as they grow up? Researchers from the East Virginia Medical School surveyed 173 young adults to find out.
  They found kids 2)conceived through IVF were, overall, quite similar to other people in their early 20s, with typical rates of obesity, birth 3)defects, and cancer. In some ways they were even healthier. Just 14% were current smokers compared to 39% of young people the same age in the general population. But researchers were troubled by an unexpectedly high rate of psychological problems among those conceived via IVF. Nearly one third had been 4)diagnosed with a mental disorder, most commonly 5)ADHD or depression. The depression rate was only slightly higher than normal but the 6)odds of ADHD were more than five times greater. Researchers 7)speculate that 8)fertility issues may cause greater stress on parents, which may result in more 9)behavioral problems among the children.
  在美国,每年有超过四万名婴儿依靠辅助生殖技术——例如试管而诞生。这些婴儿长大以后情况怎样呢?东弗吉尼亚医学院的研究人员调查了173名刚成年的年轻人,希望从这些曾经的“试管婴儿”身上找到答案。
  调查发现,二十出头的通过试管受精的孩子总体上和其他孩子相差无几,具有相似的肥胖率、出生缺陷以及癌症病发率。在某些方面他们甚至要比普通孩子更健康。这些“试管婴儿”中,仅有14%的人是吸烟者,而普通人口中同龄的吸烟的年轻人则有39%。但研究人员同时也发现,通过试管受精的孩子患心理疾病的比率要高得多,将近三分之一的人被诊断患有精神疾病,以多动症以及抑郁症最为常见。“试管婴儿”抑郁症的病发率仅比普通小孩稍高,但多动症的发病几率就要高五倍多。研究人员猜测,不育症父母比一般父母承受更大压力,这也许会导致他们的小孩行为上出现问题。


  
  Comments 观点参考
  ★ Since Louise Brown, the first “test-tube baby,” was born in 1978, IVF has added exponentially to the sum of human happiness.
  ★ By 2006, three million babies had been born worldwide as a result of IVF and other assisted reproduction techniques.
  ★ It’s said that when a 35 or 40-year-old woman delivers her first baby with the help of IVF, she may harm her own baby genetically.

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