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6Car Thieves Could Be Stopped Remotely(远程制止偷车贼)Speeding off in a stolen car, the thief thinks he has got a great catch. But he is in a nasty surprise. The car is fitted with a remote immobilizer, and a radio signal from a control center miles away will ensure that once the thief switches the engine off, he will not be able to start it again.For now, such devices are only available for fleets of trucks and specialist vehicles used on construction sites. But remote immobilization technology could soon start to trickle down to ordinary cars, and should be available to ordinary cars in the UK in two months.The idea goes like this. A control box fitted to the car incorporates a miniature cellphone, a microprocessor and memory, and a GPS satellite positioning receiver. If the car is stolen, a coded cellphone signal will tell the unit to block the vehicles engine management system and prevent the engine being restarted.There are even plans for immobilizers that shut down vehicles on the move, though there are fears over the safety implications of such a system.In the UK, an array of technical fixes is already making life harder for car thieves. “The pattern of vehicles crime has changed,” says Martyn Rand all of Thatcham, a security research organization based in Berkshire that is funded in part by the motor insurance industry.He says it would only take him a few minutes to teach a novice how to steal a car, using a bare minimum of tools. But only if the car is more than 10 years old.Modern cars are a far tougher proposition, as their engine management computer will not allow them to start unless they receive a unique ID code beamed out by the ignition key. In the UK, technologies like this have helped achieve a 31 per cent drop in vehicle-related crime since 1997.But determined criminals are still managing to find other ways to steal cars. Often by getting hold of the owners keys in a burglary. In 2000, 12 per cent of vehicles stolen in the UK were taken by using the owners keys, which doubles the previous years figure.Remote-controlled immobilization system would put a major new obstacle in the criminals way by making such thefts pointless. A group that includes Thatcham, the police, insurance companies and security technology firms have developed standards for a system that could go on the market sooner than the customer expects.7An Intelligent Car(智能汽车)Driving needs sharp eyes, keen ears, quick brain, and coordination between hands and the brain. Many human drivers have all these and can control a fast-moving car. But how does an intelligent car control itself?There is a virtual driver in the smart car. This virtual driver has “eyes”, “brains”, “hands” and “feet”, too. The minicameras on each side of the car are his “eyes”, which observe the road conditions ahead of it. They watch the traffic to the cars left and right. There is also a highly automatic driving system in the car. It is the built-in computer, which is the virtual drivers “brain”. His “brain” calculates the speeds of other moving cars near it and analyzes their positions. Basing on this information, it chooses the right path for the intelligent car, and gives instructions to the “hands” and “feet” to act accordingly. In this way, the virtual driver controls his car.What is the virtual drivers best advantage? He reacts quickly. The minicameras are sending images continuously to the “brain.” It completes the processing of the images within 100 milliseconds. However, the worlds best driver at least needs one second to react. Besides, when he takes action, he needs one more second.The virtual driver is really wonderful. He can reduce the accident rate considerably on expressways. In this case, can we let him have the wheel at any time and in amy place? Experts warn that we cannot do that just yet. His ability to recognize things is still limited . He can now only drive an intelligent car on expressways.8Why India Needs Its Dying Vultures(印度为什么需要濒临灭亡的秃鹰) The vultures in question may look ugly and threatening, but the sudden sharp decline in three species of Indias vultures is producing alarm rather than celebration. and it presents the world with a new kind of environmental problem. The dramatic decline in vulture numbers is causing widespread disruption to people living in the Same areas as the birds. It is also causing serious public health problems across the Indian sub-continentWhile4their reputation and appearance may be unpleasant to many Indians. vultures have long played a very important role in keeping towns and villages all over India clean. It is because they feed on dead cows. In India. cows are sacred animals and are traditionally left in the open when they die in their thousands upon thousands every year. The disappearance of the vultures has led to an explosion in the numbers of wild dogs feeding on the remains of these dead animals. There are fears that rabies may increase as a resultAnd this terrifying disease may ultimately affect humans in the region, since wild dogs are its main carriersRabies could also spread to other animal species, causing an even greater problem in the futureThe need for action is urgent , so an emergency project has been launched to find a solution to this serious vulture problem. Scientists are trying to identify the disease causing the birds deaths and, if possible, develop a cure. Large-scale vulture deaths were first noticed at the end of the 1980s in India. A population survey at that time showed that the three species of vultures had. Declined by over 90 percent. All three species are now listed as“critically endangered”. As most vulture lay only single eggs and take about five years to reach maturity, reversing their population decline will be a long and difficult exercise.9Wonder Webs(奇妙的网)Spider webs are more than homes, and they are ingenious traps. And the worlds best web spinner may be the Golden Orb Weaver spider. The female Orb Weaver spins a web of fibers thin enough to be invisible to insect prey, yet tough enough to snare a flying bird without breaking.The secret of the webs strength? A type of super-resilient silk called dragline. When the female spider is ready to weave the webs spokes and frame, she uses her legs to draw the airy thread out through a hollow nozzle in her belly. Dragline is not sticky, so the spider can race back and forth along it to spin the webs trademark spiral.Unlike some spiders that weave a new web every day, a Golden Orb Weaver reuses her handiwork until it falls apart, sometimes not for two years. The silky thread is five times stronger than steel by weight and absorbs the force of an impact three times better than Kevlar, a high-strength human-made material used in bullet-proof vests. And thanks to its high tensile strength, or the ability to resist breaking under the pulling force called tension, a single strand can stretch up to 40 percent longer than its original length and snap back as well as new. No human-made fiber even comes close.It is no wonder manufacturers are clamoring for spider silk. In the consumer pipeline: high-performance fabrics for athletes and stockings that never run. Think parachute cords and suspension bridge cables. A steady supply of spider silk would be worth billions of dollars but how to produce it? Harvesting silk on spider farms does not work because the territorial arthropods have a tendency to devour their neighbors.Now, scientists at the biotechnology company Nexia are spinning artificial silk modeled after Golden Orb dragline. The first step: extract silk-making genes from the spiders. Next, implant the genes into goat egg cells. The nanny goats that grow from the eggs secrete dragline silk proteins in their milk. “The young goats pass on the silk-making gene without any help from us,” says Nexia president Jeffrey Turner. Nexia is still perfecting the spinning process, but they hope artificial spider silk will soon be snagging customers as fast as the real thing snags bugs.10Chicken Soup for the Soul:Comfort Food Fights Lneliness（心灵鸡汤：爽心食品排解孤独感） Mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, may be bad for your arteries， but according to a study in Psychological Science, theyre good for your heart and emotions The study focuses on “comfort food” and how it makes people feelFor me personally ,food has always played a big role in my family,” says Jordan Troisi, a graduate student at the University of Buffalo, and lead author on the studyThe study came out of the research program of his coauthor Shira GabrielIt has looked at non-human things that may affect human emotionsSome people reduce loneliness by bonding with their favorite TV show, building virtual relationships with a pop song singer or looking at pictures of loved onesTroisi and Gabriel wondered if comfort food could have the same effect by making people think of their nearest and dearest. In one experiment, in order to make participants feel lonely, the researchers had them write for six minutes about a fight with someone close to themOthers were given an emotionally neutral writing assignment. Then, some people in each group wrote about the experience of eating a comfort food and others wrote about eating a new foodFinally ,the researchers had participants complete questions about their levels of loneliness Writing about a fight with a close person made people feel lonelyBut people who were generally secure in their relationships would feel less lonely by writing about a comfort foodWe have found that comfort foods are consistently associated with those close to ussays TroisiThinking about or consuming these foods later then serves as a reminder of those close othersIn their essays on comfort food, many people wrote about the experience of eating food with family and friends. In another experiment, eating chicken soup in the lab made people think more about relationships, but only if they considered chicken soup to be a comfort foodThis was a question they had been asked long before the experiment, along with many other questions, so they wouldnt remember it. Throughout everyones daily lives they experience stress, often associated with our connections with others, Troisi saysComfort food Can be an easy remedy for loneliness
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