Group work

Passage 1

刚八岁，我已经学会了去当东西。我知道，若是当不来钱，我们娘儿俩就不要吃晚饭；因为妈妈但凡有点主意，也不肯叫我去。我准知道她每逢交给我个小包，锅里必是连一点粥底儿也看不见了。我们的锅有时干净得像个体面的寡妇。这一天，我拿的是一面镜子。只有这件东西似乎是不必要的，虽然妈妈天天得用它。这是个春天，我们的棉衣都刚脱下来就入了当铺。我拿着这面镜子，我知道怎样小心，小心而且要走得快，当铺是老早就上门的。我怕当铺的那个大红门，那个高长柜台。一看见那个门，我就心跳。可是我必须进去，似乎是爬进去，那个高门槛儿是那么高。我得用尽了力量，递上我的东西，还得喊：“当当！”得了钱和当票，我知道怎样小心地拿着，快快回家，晓得妈妈不放心。可是这一次，当铺不要这面镜子，告诉我再添一号来。我懂得什么叫“一号”。把镜子搂在胸前，我拼命的往家跑。妈妈哭了；她找不到第二件东西。我在那间小屋住惯了，总以为东西不少；及至帮着妈妈一找可当的事物，我的小心才明白过来，我们的东西很少，很少。妈妈不叫我去了。可是，“妈妈咱们吃什么吗？”妈妈哭着递给我她头上的银簪——只有这一件东西是银的。我知道她拔下过来几回，都没肯交给我去当。这是妈妈出门子时，姥姥家给的一件首饰。

（老舍《月牙儿》节选）

Passage 2

Later in the day I went with my mother to the travel agency.

The first thing that struck me about the place was the number of couples waiting to buy tickets. The men were all, almost without exception, Europeans or Americans. They did not look like soldiers. I assumed they were expatriates working in the country on short term contracts. The girls were all Asians.

Being Chinese myself, I paid most attention to the Chinese girls. They all looked alike. They wore their hair long and straight. They wore their blue jeans skin-tight. And they wore their men like badges of honor.

I caught a view of myself in the tinted glass door of the agency and saw a girl looking just like them. I cringed. My God! Is this the impression I make when I am with M ichael? A hanger on? A White Man’s groupie? I could not wait to get out of that place. I wanted to go immediately to a department store to buy some dresses, to a hairdresser to have my hair cut.

But why was I cringing? Why did I assume that their relationships were brutish in nature, that they were strangers to the love and tenderness between Michael and myself? For all I knew, some of them could already be married or engaged, or on their way to relationships which would last from here to eternity. I recalled a poster I had seen, on which were listed all the famous couples who had made history with their flawed but abiding love.

……

Now I asked myself if that was how the world would always regard me if I married Michael. Would it always be assumed that I was just another Chinese “dolly bird”?A brainless, twittering oriental sparrow which had attached herself to a white man because that was where all the good things in life were supposed to have their source?

……

So from the viewpoint of the westerner, was I seen as a Suzy Wong? Or one of those many oriental women in English and American fiction with impossible names like -- I shuddered -- like mine. Ai Lian, Lotus of Love. Devious, sensual, eternally fatal women who knew all the secrets of oriental love and practised them with consummate skill to the detriment of the white man’s character and soul?

God, I thought, how can I possibly marry Michael?

（excerpt from Echoes of Silence）Passage 3

太白国家森林公园

太白国家森林公园位于秦岭主峰——太白山北坡的眉县境内，总面积2949公顷，分为8个景区，有各种景点137个。

太白森林公园，海拔在620-3500米之间，是我国现有森林公园中海拔最高的。由于温差大，气候、土壤、植物等均表现出明显的垂直分布规律……有野生鸟兽260余种，属国家一、二类保护的野生动物有金丝猴、羚羊、云豹、红腹角雉、大鲵等。

太白国家森林公园有多种景观奇特壮丽的自然地貌。园内有低山、中山、高山三个地貌类型，景观各具特色。黄土覆盖的石质低山区。在海拔1300以下，兼有黄土地貌与石质山地地貌特点，分布有许多石洞。奇峰林立的中山区在海拔1300之间，山势陡峭，险峰对峙，沟谷狭窄，怪石嶙峋，飞瀑深潭，景观多变。冰川炮掘的高山区在海拔2600米以上，山势平坦开阔，第四季冰川遗迹清晰可见。角峰巨石，千姿百态，妙趣横生。强烈的冻融分化，大量的块砾形成“石河”景观，地质构造保存完整，岩石种类较多，被誉为“天然地质博物馆。”

太白国家森林公园温泉资源得天独厚，处于森林公园入口处的眉县汤峪温泉由11个泉眼、三口井组成，水质优良，含有20多种对人体有益的矿物质和微量元素。

Passage 4

Color Maps of Vision in the Brain

Cells in the visual cortex – the surface layers at the back of the brain –have two important jobs to do. They have to analyze the depth of objects in the visual world, and they have to detect discontinuities between one object and another. The same cells are involved in both processes – but how are the two overlapping systems organized? Using a new technique, Gary Blasdel and Guy Salama of the University of Pittsburgh in the US have produced pictures of the visual cortex of macaque monkeys that demonstrate the two systems in action.

The method they used was to expose a portion of the monkey’s cortex and flood it with a voltage-sensitive dye. The amount of dye taken up into a cell depends directly on that cell’s activity; the more impulses the cell fires, the more strongly it will be marked by the dye. They then filmed the pattern of the dye in the cortex as the monkey watched stripes of different orientations presented to either eye.

Blasdel and Salama found that it was difficult to see any pattern at all using the image of the cortex actually seen by the camera. But by

subtracting one image from another to cancel out non-specific staining, they produced clear pictures illustrating the phenomena known as “ocular dominance”and “orientation selectivity”, which are thought to underlie perception of depth and edge detection respectively.

Subtracting the image of the activity produced by one eye from that produced by the other gave stripes of light and dark areas, each about half a millimeter wide. These correspond exactly to the “color dominance bands”already described by the Nobel Prize winners David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. Although they each receive inputs from both eyes, cells in one band respond best to the right eye, those in the next band to the left and so on.在大脑中颜色视觉的地图

视觉皮层细胞的表面层次的大脑——有两个重要的工作要做。他们必须分析视觉世界中的对象的深度,和他们必须检测一个对象和另一个之间的不连续。相同的细胞参与两个过程,但这两个重叠的系统是如何组织的?使用一项新技术,加里Blasdel和盖Salama在美国匹兹堡大学的产生了视觉皮层的猕猴的照片证明这两个系统。

他们使用的方法是公开的一部分猴子的皮层和洪水电压特异性染色。染料的量开始进入细胞直接取决于细胞的活动,越冲动细胞火灾,更强烈的染料。然后他们拍摄模式的染料不同取向的皮层当猴子看到条纹呈现给眼睛。

Blasdel Salama发现,很难看到任何模式使用皮质的形象实际上看到的相机。不过通过减去一个图像从另一个取消非特异性染色,他们清晰的图片说明的现象称为“眼优势”和“选择性取向”,这被认为是分别感知的深度和边缘检测的基础。减去活动由一只眼睛的形象,产生的其他给了条纹的光明和黑暗的区域,每个半毫米宽。这些对应准确描述的“颜色主导乐队”已经由诺贝尔奖得主大卫休博尔和Torsten威塞尔。虽然他们每个接收输入来自眼睛,细胞在一个乐队最好应对右眼,那些在未来带左等等。