英語(yǔ)科普閱讀

1、PAGE PAGE 7存錢與減肥有何相同點(diǎn)？Consumers will pay more when they are given different options to pursue short-term goals, but will pay more for similar options when pursuing long-term goals, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. Many of the benefits of pursuing self-control goals such

2、as being healthy are experienced in the future. Thus, a key component of our success in meeting our goals is the ability to remain motivated. One way for consumers to manage motivation is to strategically choose the options available to them in pursuing their goals, write authors Jordan Etkin and Re

3、becca K. Ratner (both University of Maryland).Consumers often use multiple products to help them achieve their goals. For example, a health-conscious consumer might go shopping for healthy snacks to consume over the next few days. She might purchase many packages of the same healthy snack or a varie

4、ty of healthy snacks. Would she be more motivated to be healthy this week if she plans to consume many different snacks instead of the same snack repeatedly? How about over the next year?In one study, consumers were more motivated to save money in the present when they thought about different approa

5、ches to saving, but more motivated to save money over the next year when thinking of similar approaches to saving. In another study, consumers participated in an auction for a personal training session. When told the session would take place in a week, consumers were willing to pay more when the tra

6、iner emphasized different exercises. However, when the session would take place in a month, consumers were willing to pay more when the trainer emphasized similar exercises.Companies wanting to encourage consumers to focus on being healthy in the present should highlight differences among product as

7、sortments while highlighting similarities when encouraging healthy behavior in the future. Consumers seeking to save money could focus on differences among the ways they are currently saving to keep them motivated in the present, or on similarities between the ways they are saving to keep them motiv

8、ated as they plan for the future, the authors conclude.冒險(xiǎn)類游戲易造成年輕人駕車魯莽Teens who play mature-rated, risk-glorifying video games may be more likely than those who dont to become reckless drivers who experience increases in automobile accidents, police stops and willingness to drink and drive, accordin

9、g to new research published by the American Psychological Association. Most parents would probably be disturbed to learn that we observed that this type of game play was more strongly associated with teen drivers being pulled over by the police than their parenting practices, said study lead author

10、Jay G. Hull, PhD, of Dartmouth College. With motor vehicle accidents the No. 1 cause of adolescent deaths, popular games that increase reckless driving may constitute even more of a public health issue than the widely touted association of video games and aggression.Researchers conducted a longitudi

11、nal study involving more than 5,000 U.S. teenagers who answered a series of questions over four years in four waves of telephone interviews. The findings were published online in APAs journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.Fifty percent of the teens reported in the first interview that their pa

12、rents allowed them to play mature-rated games and among those, 32 percent said they had played Spiderman II, 12 percent had played Manhunt and 58 percent had played Grand Theft Auto III. Playing video games such as Grand Theft Auto III, Manhunt and Spiderman II was associated with increases in sensa

13、tion seeking, rebelliousness and self-reported risky driving, the study said. Higher rankings in sensation seeking and rebelliousness（造反，叛逆性） were directly linked to risky driving habits, automobile accidents, being stopped by police and a willingness to drink and drive, according to the analysis. B

14、etween the second and third interviews, teens who said they had been pulled over by the police increased from 11 percent to 21 percent; those who said they had a car accident went from 8 percent to 14 percent. In the third interview, when the teens were about 16 years old, 25 percent said yes when a

15、sked if they engaged in any unsafe driving habits. In the final interview when the teens were about 18, 90 percent said yes to at least one of the same risky driving habits: 78 percent admitted to speeding; 26 percent to tailgating; 23 percent to failure to yield; 25 percent to weaving in and out of

16、 traffic; 20 percent to running red lights; 19 percent to ignoring stop signs; 13 percent to crossing a double line; 71 percent to speeding through yellow lights; and 27 percent to not using a seatbelt.成人哮喘治療調(diào)整沒(méi)有顯著效果Among adults with asthma controlled with low-dose inhaled corticosteroid（皮質(zhì)類固醇） ther

17、apy, the time to treatment failure was not significantly different among patients who received corticosteroid dose adjustment based on physician assessment, a biomarker, or symptom occurrence, according to a study in the September 12 issue of JAMA. Asthma disease activity varies daily, seasonally, a

18、nd episodically, presumably related to airway inflammation. Accordingly, asthma management requires periodic dose adjustments of controller medications, particularly inhaled corticosteroids. Adjustments have been based on physician assessment of symptoms, activity limitation, rescue albuterol use (a

19、 bronchodilator支氣管擴(kuò)張劑 used for treating asthma), lung function, and exacerbations at usual office or clinic visits, a biomarker of disease activity (e.g., exhaled nitric oxide), or the occurrence of symptoms on a day-to-day basis, according to background information in the article. No consensus exis

20、ts for adjusting inhaled corticosteroid therapy in patients with asthma.William J. Calhoun, M.D., of the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, and colleagues hypothesized that adjustment of inhaled corticosteroids based on symptoms or measurement of exhaled nitric oxide would be superior to

21、 adjustment based on physician assessment. The researchers conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled trial that included 342 adults with mild to moderate asthma controlled by low-dose inhaled corticosteroid therapy (n = 114 assigned to physician assessment-based adjustment 101 completed, n = 115 to

22、 biomarker-based exhaled nitric oxide adjustment 92 completed, and n = 113 to symptom-based adjustment 97 completed). The Best Adjustment Strategy for Asthma in the Long Term (BASALT) trial was conducted by the Asthma Clinical Research Network at 10 academic medical centers in the United States for

23、9 months between June 2007 and July 2010. For physician assessment-based adjustment and biomarker-based adjustment, the dose of inhaled corticosteroids was adjusted every 6 weeks; for symptom-based adjustment, inhaled corticosteroids were taken with each albuterol（沙丁胺醇） rescue use.The researchers fo

24、und that the time to treatment failure, the primary study outcome, did not differ significantly among the 3 treatment strategies. The 9-month Kaplan-Meier failure rates were 22 percent (24 events) for physician assessment-based adjustment (PABA), 20 percent (21 events) for biomarker-based adjustment

25、 (BBA), and 15 percent (16 events) for symptom-based adjustment (SBA).Treatment failure rates were not different among groups when multiple episodes of treatment failure were included. There were not significant differences among the treatment groups for asthma exacerbation（惡化，激怒） (including multipl

26、e episodes) rates; and the average proportion of treatment failures that progressed to exacerbations. The authors also found that measures of lung function and asthma symptoms were not significantly different among the groups.In summary, among adult participants with mild to moderate persistent asth

27、ma, neither the SBA nor the BBA strategy for inhaled corticosteroid therapy was superior to the standard PABA strategy for the outcome of treatment failure.烏鴉應(yīng)對(duì)威脅的反應(yīng)與人類相同Cross a crow（烏鴉） and itll remember you for years. Crows and humans share the ability to recognize faces and associate them with ne

28、gative, as well as positive, feelings. The way the brain activates during that process is something the two species also appear to share, according to new research being published this week.The regions of the crow brain that work together are not unlike those that work together in mammals, including

29、 humans, said John Marzluff, University of Washington professor of environmental and forest sciences. These regions were suspected to work in birds but not documented until now.For example it appears that birds have a region of their brain that is analogous（類似的） to the amygdala（杏仁核） of mammals, he s

30、aid. The amygdala is the region of the vertebrate brain where negative associations are stored as memories. Previous work primarily concerned its function in mammals while our work shows that a similar system is at work in birds. Our approach could be used in other animals - such as lizards and frog

31、s - to see if the process is similar in those vertebrates（脊椎動(dòng)物） as well.Marzluff is the lead author of a paper being published the week of Sept. 10 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Previous research on the neural circuitry of animal behavior has been condu

32、cted using well-studied, often domesticated, species like rats, chickens, zebra finches, pigeons and rhesus macaques - and not wild animals like the 12 adult male crows in this study.The crows were captured by investigators all wearing masks that the researchers referred to as the threatening face.

33、The crows were never treated in a threatening way, but the fact theyd been captured created a negative association with the mask they saw. Then for the four weeks they were in captivity, they were fed by people wearing a mask different from the first, this one called the caring face. The masks were

34、based on actual peoples faces and both bore neutral expressions so the associations made by the crows was based on their treatment.In most previous neurological studies of animals, the work usually starts by sedating the animals, Marzluff said. Instead the approach developed by the UW involved injec

35、ting a glucose fluid commonly used in brain imaging into the bodies of fully alert crows that then went back to moving freely about their cages. The fluid flooded to the parts of the crow brains that were most active as they were exposed for about 15 minutes to someone wearing either the threatening

36、 or caring mask.Then the birds were sedated and scans made of their brains. All the birds were returned to the wild once all the work was completed.教育拖延了女性的結(jié)婚年齡A study by the University of Southampton has shown that women are having children later in life mainly because they are spending longer in e

37、ducation. Research by Professor Mire N Bhrolchin and Dr va Beaujouan of the ESRC Centre for Population Change at the University reveals that finishing full-time education and training at an older average age is the main reason why people are having their first child later in life - both in Britain a

38、nd in France.Professor N Bhrolchin comments, Later childbearing has been a major feature of fertility trends in recent decades, both in Britain and other developed countries. A large number of explanations have been suggested for the trend towards later parenthood, but our study is the first to show

39、 that the major influencing factor is that people have been staying on longer in education and training. The average age of a woman having her first child in 2004 was 27 years-old, three years later than in 1974, when the average age was 24 years old. During the course of these three decades young m

40、en and woman were progressively staying longer at school and also going into further and higher education in greater numbers - with women completing their education or training at an increasingly later age. In the late 1970s, young women were leaving full-time education or training at an average age

41、 of 18 years old, but by 2004 this had risen by two years to an average age of 20 years old.The data we have examined shows that in the past several decades young people have been starting their full adult lives around two years later on average than in the recent past and this has meant family life

42、 starting later too, says Professor N Bhrolchin. The Southampton study focussed particularly on the period between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, during which time the mean age of women having their first birth rose by almost one-and-a-half years. During the same period, the time between women

43、leaving full-time education and a first birth only rose by 0.6 years. This means that about three fifths of the change in age at first birth in Britain is due to more time being spent in education and training (the figure is four fifths in France). So longer education and training is the most import

44、ant explanation for later childbearing, although not the only one - there are other contributory factors.Professor N Bhrolchin comments, If we start the clock when young women leave full-time education or training, the delay to motherhood, compared across the decades, is much less than looking purel

45、y at the differences in their ages at their first birth. To investigate the study, the researchers compiled and analysed data in Britain from the General Household Survey and in France from the Family History Survey.計(jì)算機(jī)唇語(yǔ)識(shí)別程序處于研發(fā)階段A computer is being taught to interpret human emotions based on lip p

46、attern, according to research published in the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing. The system could improve the way we interact with computers and perhaps allow disabled people to use computer-based communications devices, such as voice synthesizers（語(yǔ)音合成器）, more effe

47、ctively and more efficiently. Karthigayan Muthukaruppanof Manipal International University in Selangor, Malaysia, and co-workers have developed a system using a genetic algorithm that gets better and better with each iteration（迭代，反復(fù)） to match irregular ellipse fitting equations to the shape of the h

48、uman mouth displaying different emotions. They have used photos of individuals from South-East Asia and Japan to train a computer to recognize the six commonly accepted human emotions - happiness, sadness, fear, angry, disgust, surprise - and a neutral expression. The upper and lower lip is each ana

49、lyzed as two separate ellipses by the algorithm.In recent years, there has been a growing interest in improving all aspects of interaction between humans and computers especially in the area of human emotion recognition by observing facial expression, the team explains. Earlier researchers have deve

50、loped an understanding that allows emotion to be recreated by manipulating a representation of the human face on a computer screen. Such research is currently informing the development of more realistic animated actors and even the behavior of robots. However, the inverse（相反的） process in which a com

51、puter recognizes the emotion behind a real human face is still a difficult problem to tackle.It is well known that many deeper emotions are betrayed by more than movements of the mouth. A genuine smile for instance involves flexing of muscles around the eyes and eyebrow movements are almost universa

52、lly essential to the subconscious interpretation of a persons feelings. However, the lips remain a crucial part of the outward（外面的） expression of emotion. The teams algorithm can successfully classify the seven emotions and a neutral expression described.The researchers suggest that initial applicat

53、ions of such an emotion detector might be helping disabled patients lacking speech to interact more effectively with computer-based communication devices, for instance.風(fēng)能可以滿足全球能源需求There is enough energy available in winds to meet all of the worlds demand. Atmospheric turbines that convert steadier a

54、nd faster high-altitude winds into energy could generate even more power than ground- and ocean-based units. New research from Carnegies Ken Caldeira examines the limits of the amount of power that could be harvested from winds, as well as the effects high-altitude wind power could have on the clima

55、te as a whole. Their work is published September 9 by Nature Climate Change.Led by Kate Marvel of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who began this research at Carnegie, the team used models to quantify the amount of power that could be generated from both surface and atmospheric winds. Surface

56、 winds were defined as those that can be accessed by turbines supported by towers on land or rising out of the sea. High-altitude winds were defined as those that can be accessed by technology merging turbines and kites. The study looked only at the geophysical limitations of these techniques, not t

57、echnical or economic factors.Turbines create drag, or resistance, which removes momentum from the winds and tends to slow them. As the number of wind turbines increase, the amount of energy that is extracted increases. But at some point, the winds would be slowed so much that adding more turbines wi

58、ll not generate more electricity. This study focused on finding the point at which energy extraction is highest.Using models, the team was able to determine that more than 400 terrawatts of power could be extracted from surface winds and more than 1,800 terrawatts could be generated by winds extract

59、ed throughout the atmosphere.Today, civilization uses about 18 TW of power. Near-surface winds could provide more than 20 times todays global power demand and wind turbines on kites could potentially capture 100 times the current global power demand.At maximum levels of power extraction, there would

60、 be substantial climate effects to wind harvesting. But the study found that the climate effects of extracting wind energy at the level of current global demand would be small, as long as the turbines were spread out and not clustered in just a few regions. At the level of global energy demand, wind