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1、2006年10月8日although dinosaurs are traditionally believed to be cold-blooded reptiles, such as crocodiles, lizards and sea turtles, evidences recently discovered have implied a picture on quite the opposite side. scientists today are more readily to believe that there is a good chance for dinosaurs to

2、 be warm-blooded animals, like todays mammals and birds.first, as demonstrated by a stony heart recently found in south dakota in 1993 by a private fossil collector, dinosaurs could have evolved a heart adapted to warm-blood circulation. although the fact that soft tissues usually decomposed before

3、they could fossilize had left scientists searching in darkness for centuries, fossil organs could still be preserved under extreme circumstances such as rapid sediment on the seabed. because today four-chambered heart is only found in warm-blooded animals, this fossil heart indicates the close relat

4、ionship between dinosaurs and mammals.second, because cold-blooded animals such as reptiles couldnt maintain their body temperature constantly, they have to rely on the surrounding environment to adjust the body heat. thus, if dinosaurs are cold-blooded, their huge body size would make it impossible

5、 to shift between basking and burrowing as often as todays lizards.third, for huge body animals to maximize their energy usage, they must maintain a constant body temperature. this is because metabolism is in fact a chemical process occurring in the body, which burns food in-take and releases energy

6、 supporting growth. for this chemical reaction to function optimally, keeping organs working at certain temperature is a necessity. male professoryou all heard about that.warm-blooded dinosaurs theory. it sounds like a science fiction, doesnt it? i must be honest to admit that i am not going to acce

7、pt this warm-blooded theory, although quite some of my colleagues do. to me and many other researchers, dinosaurs are doubtlessly close relatives of cold-blooded reptiles, only much bigger.first, it is said that a four-chambered stony dinosaur heart had been discovered, but how could we identify tha

8、t the heart belongs to an extinct dinosaur, rather than from an ancient mammal? we all know that more than often, different animal skeletons are discovered blended together at one single fossil site.second, i dont think dinosaurs had to rely on the environment to adjust their body temperature as muc

9、h as lizards and snakes do today. dont forget, when dinosaurs dominated this planet, the climate was much milder than it is today. air temperatures shifting between high and low extremes were rarely recorded.third, yes, it is true that large animals must keep a constant body temperature to maximize

10、the energy released from food in-take. but a stable body temperature isnt necessarily proof of warm-bloodedness, since even some cold-blooded animals like giant sea turtles could keep body temperature constantly. this is because their ratio of surface area to volume is relatively low, minimizing hea

11、t exchange with the environment.the ratio of his salary to his wealth is very low.200610.15in united states, any drug has to pass a series of investigations before it can be put into real application. these examinations are called drug testing. although drug testing is generally believed necessary i

12、n reducing potential medical risks, there are different opinions as well.first, the right moment of new drugs promotion is often delayed, as a result of series of very complex and prolonged drug testing measures. each year, plenty of patients are suffering from lacking of new drugs, while it often t

13、akes months even years to pass government drug testing procedures.second, drug testing can be very costly sometimes. eventually, all these expenditures spent on drug testing will have to be swallowed by patients. however, with the money saved from drug testing, new drugs could have been developed an

14、d patients dying for lacking of affordable new medicines will be less likely to be observed.third, the biggest advantage boasted by the current drug testing system is medicine safety. however, with the development of medwatch system, medicine safety can be easily achieved without the extended and ve

15、ry luxurious drug testing procedure. this is because medwatch system requires that doctors must fill out information such as the side effects of a certain medicine on patients after each treatment. all these data will be collected and eventually the government can easily find out the negative aspect

16、s of each new drug and therefore decide whether this new drug is suitable for further application.male professoryou all hear about the criticizing remarks on drug testing, right? what would you say? actually, these remarks have underestimated drug testing, because they fail to consider some very imp

17、ortant factors.first, yes, new drug testing does involve a very long procedure, but waiting is certainly worthwhile, because patients safety should always be the no.1 concern. we cannot forget that, for example, a few years ago, after passing drug testing only on adults, a new medicine was brought t

18、o market. later, however, when this new drug was widely applied on children, certain side effects appeared. because of these totally unexpected side effects, some children lost their lives. therefore, this medical tragedy repeatedly reminds us that we can never be too cautious in dealing with drug t

19、esting.second, erit is complained that drug testing is too expensive. well, this point is even more unreasonable. please remember this: if we allow new drugs to be broadly applied without passing any drug testing procedures, we will probably end up with spending much more money. this is because the

20、problems caused by side effects could have been more expensive to individuals or to society as a whole. in addition, we all know that part of the money spent on drug testing is actually going into research. in fact, with the enormous data collected, the drug testing itself can be valuable research a

21、nd is definitely worth the money we put in.third, the medwatch mentioned in the passage is of course a good thing. but, it is far from enough to accumulate first-hand details. because, you know, the medwatch system is not mandatory. i mean, it is completely based on voluntary information feedback of

22、 doctors. and sometimes, those doctors can be too overworked or too overbooked to write down concrete and specific records we need.2006年11月19日while many animals regularly move from place to placeincluding certain butterflies, bats, sea turtles, fish, and, whalesbirds seem to catch most of our intere

23、st. several theories have been raised trying to explain birds navigation, that is, how do birds find their way?the first theory holds that birds are guided by the sun in daytime and stars at night. many of us have succeeded in locating the way back home through the guidance of the sun and stars when

24、 lost in the wild field. as a matter of fact, using heavenly bodies as indicators for direction was once the most widely applied surviving tact for our ancestors.the second theory is called “sighting theory”, which believes the fact that birds can always find the correct way is due to a special memo

25、ry field in their brain. when traveling long distance from one place to another, birds memorize major terrain features such as rivers, coastlines and mountain ranges and then rely on these memories to find the way back home.the third theory believes that birds are rather sensitive to the earths magn

26、etic fields. in addition, researchers have succeeded in locating tiny magnetic mineral grains called “magnetite” in the very deep part of birds head, which further assists birds to rely on magnetic fields to navigate.2006年10月22日it used to be the case that at most universities only a few students rec

27、eived the highest grades. but professors today routinely give a majority of their students grade that looks far beyond their real performance. this is sometimes known as “grade inflation”. although this practice has its critics, it seems virtually irreversible. actually, grade inflation has become a

28、 brick in the building of general social expectations and it can no more be changed at this point for quite a few reasons.first, since most students today are getting accustomed to receiving higher grades, they have taken the fact of receiving big scores as granted. therefore, once professors start

29、to grade strictly, some students may be frustrated by the scores lower than expected and then lose interest in their further academic pursuits.second, professors have the concern that once they stop granting inflated scores to less qualified students, there is a good chance that they may also receiv

30、e lower evaluations from those students as a result. usually, students evaluation matters a lot in determining if a professor will get a promotion or simply keep his position in the future.third, high marks help students sell in the job market, because employers generally believe that good scores st

31、and for high qualities of the students. therefore, students receiving inflated grades have apparent advantages over those who are graded strictly in school.2006年12月1日mars is long considered one of the planets that appear unfriendly to most life forms, partly due to its extremely cold surface tempera

32、tures. however, recent studies toward this alien land invariably refer to quite the opposite: mars could be the first planet where we find signs of life existing out of the earth.first, the martian atmosphere has been confirmed to consist of plenty of methane. on the earth, atmospheric methane comes

33、 primarily from methanogen, bacteria-life that produce methane as their daily metabolic by-product. since methane breakdowns into other gases quickly after it has been produced, for this gas to continue existing in the martian atmosphere, live methanogen is a necessity.second, a meteorite stone was

34、recently found in siberia, russia. proved by thorough studies, this stone is believed coming from mars around 300 thousand years ago. whats interesting about it is that the stone is covered by a type of green crystal, which could only be produced with the help of bacteria. again, this clearly demons

35、trates the signs of martian lives.third, a large amount of hydrogen is detected in martian atmosphere, which further implies the existence of water. this is because gas hydrogen in atmosphere is more than often gained by disintegrating water. also, as we all know, liquid water serves most as the cra

36、dle for primary lives. thus, researchers firmly believe that somewhere on the surface of this deep red planet, lives exist.2006年10月21日recent studies have exhibited a picture across american job market that quite many former job hunters have determined to convert to self-employed entrepreneurs. worki

37、ng for oneself has become a trend popular among modern americans, which seems unstoppable for some reasons.first, some former employees working in big corporations become sick and tired of dealing with bureaucracies from multi-level management, which is almost an inevitable phenomenon especially in

38、business with huge executive personnel. young employees naturally feel distressed and then determine to quit the job, once they realize that their priceless creativity and enthusiasm could have brought no difference to the huge bureaucratic machine, no matter how hard they are devoted.second, fewer

39、young people are attracted to working in big businesses than before also because positions in those companies are less secure than they were generations ago. employees today must count in the risk of facing unemployment every now and then, when they sketch their life-long career plans. therefore, se

40、lf-employment looks like a safer choice for many of them.third, one of the most often applied measures by companies to minimize their cost is to cut off welfare of employees. as many people have noticed, quite many american companies today are intentionally lowering their pensions and raising the ra

41、tio of medical insurance undertaken by the employees. accompanied by the dive of extra salary benefit, many workers continue losing interest on keeping their current jobs.2006年10月29日閱讀部分：recent studies show that chimpanzees have similar abilities of human beings in learning languages. it is nothing

42、surprising for researchers to finally conclude that after years of rigid training, chimpanzees can manage to master a language to the extent of 2-3 years old human child. this beyond-belief language learning talent of chimps can be traced back to three dimensions consisting of a real language.first,

43、 chimps gain knowledge of many yerkish vocabularies after two years, proper instructing. yerkish is a researcher-made, geometric language system. in this system, a word is symbolized by a meaningful picture or object. with the help of yerkish language, it has been demonstrated that chimps are capabl

44、e of expressing themselves to researchers through simple words like apple, eating and washing.second, it is very encouraging for researchers to notice that chimps even show hints of being able to master some basic grammars. for example, when a ring has been brought to a chimp, it uses two yerkish wo

45、rds “finger” and “bracelet” to express what this ring means to it. as we all know, employing a rhetoric noun “finger” to limit the denotation of another noun “bracelet” is one of the basic grammars applied in many modern languages.third, under appropriate direction, chimps can carry out a simple but genuine conversation