2010年职称英语理工类新增文章

2010年职称英语等级考试用书（理工类）

新增文章

第四部分阅读理解（共 6 篇）

第3篇Citizen Scientists

Understanding how nature responds to climate change will require monitoring key life cycle1 events-flowering, the appearance of leaves, the first frog calls of the spring - all around the world. But ecologists can't be everywhere so they're turning to non-scientists, sometimes called citizen scientists, for help.

Climate scientists are not present everywhere. Because there are so many places in the world and not enough scientists to observe all of them, they're asking for your help in observing signs of climate change across the world. The citizen scientist movement encourages ordinary people to observe a very specific research interest - birds, trees, flowers budding, etc. - and send their observations to a giant database to be observed by professional scientists. This helps a small number of scientists track a large amount of data that they would never be able to gather on their own. Much like citizen journalists helping large publications cover a hyper-local beat2, citizen scientists are ready for the conditions where they live. All that's needed to become one is a few minutes each day or each week to gather data and send it3 in.

A group of scientists and educators launched an organization last year called the National Pheonology4 Network. "Phenology" is what scientists call the study of the timing of events in nature.

One of the group's first efforts relies on scientists and non-scientists alike to collect data about plant flowering and leafing every year. The program, called Project BudBurst, collects life cycle data on a variety of common plants from across the United States. People participating in the project - which is open to everyone - record their observations on the Project BudBurst website.

"People don't have to be plant experts -they just have to look around and see what's in their neighborhood," says Jennifer Schwartz, an education consultant with the project. "As we collect this data, we'll be able to make an estimate of how plants and eommunities5 of plants and animals will respond as the climate changes."

词汇：

Frog n. 蛙Ecologist n.生态学家Phenology n.物候学Bud v.发芽，萌芽；n.芽，花蕾

Neighbor(u)rhood n.近邻；邻近地区Database n.数据库

Professional adj.专业的，职业的；n.职业选手，专业人员

注释：

1. life cycle：生命周期，即生物发展过程的系列变化。

2. hyper-local beat: beat 在此做名词用，意思是：某类新闻报道，如，a business beat；商业专题报道。这

是近年来出现的新词。Hyper-local beat 即hyper-local news，指的是被传统新闻报道方式所忽略的小型社区或居民居住区里发生的相关信息报道。在美国由此而诞生了hyper-local news website，专门对主流媒体所没有覆盖的地区所发生的事件进行报道，其形式多以网民，即短文中所提及的citizen journalists，上传所在社区发生的事件报道、照片或视频为主。这是网络时代产生的又一新生事物。

3. data 是复数形式，但常用做单数，所以这里的代词是it。另参见最后一段―As we collect this data, ...‖。

这里的data 也用作单数。

4. phenology：物候学或生物气候学，是气候学和生态学的边缘学科，主要研究气候环境对生物的影响。

5. communities：生态学词汇：生物群落，记载比较相似的环境条件下在特定自然区域或环境中生活和互

相影响的一群植物和动物。