硕博研究生英语综合教程 郭巍 听力材料（上）

硕博研究生英语综合教程 郭巍 听力材料（下）

目录

系列文章目录

文章目录

前言

unit1  How colors affect human behavior and emotion

unit2 Shrödinger’s cat

unit3 How do people become homeless? 

unit4 Solar energy

unit5 Organized cybercrime

总结

最近研究生开课，重上久违的英语课，把磨人的听力原文放在这里供大家参考，或听译或参考其他文件，如有不准确处欢迎指出。

Color can play an important role in conveying information, creating certain moods, and even influencing the decisions people make. While perceptions of color are somewhat subjective, there are some color effects that have universal meanings. Colors in the red area of the color spectrum such as red, orange, and yellow are known as warm colors. These warm colors evoke emotions ranging from feelings of warmth and comfort to feelings of anger and hostility. Colors on the blue side of the spectrum are known as cool colors and include blue, purple, and green. These colors are often described as calm, but can also call to mind feelings of sadness or indifference.

Several ancient cultures, including the Egyptians and Chinese, used colors to heal people. Red was used to stimulate the body and mind and to increase circulation. Yellow was thought to stimulate the nerves and purify the body. Orange was used to heal the lungs and to increase energy levels. Blue was believed to soothe illnesses and treat pain.

Most psychologists view color therapy with skepticism and point out that the supposed effects of color are often grossly exaggerated. However, existing research has found that color can impact people in a variety of surprising ways: One study found that warm-colored placebo pills were reported as more effective than cool-colored placebo pills. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that installing blue-colored streetlights can lead to reduced crime in those areas. More recently, researchers discovered that the color red causes people to react with greater speed and force, something that might prove useful during athletic activities. A study that looked at historical data found that sports teams dressed in mostly black uniforms are more likely to receive penalties and that students were more likely to associate negative qualities with a player wearing a black uniform.

So what’s the bottom line? Experts have found that while color can have an influence on how we feel and act, these effects are subject to personal, cultural, and physical environmental factors. More scientific research is needed to gain a better understanding of color psychology.

Erwin Schrödinger, born in Vienna in 1887 and awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933,is best known for his work regarding quantum theory, particularly about his thought experiment involving a cat in order to explain the flawed interpretation of quantum superposition. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics essentially states that an object in a physical system can simultaneously exist in all possible states, but observing the system forces the object to collapse into just one of those possible states. Schrödinger disagreed with this interpretation.

So what does this have to do with cats? Schrödinger wanted people to imagine that a cat,poison, a Geiger counter, radioactive material, and a hammer were inside of a sealed container. The amount of radioactive material was extremely small, so it only had a 50/50 chance of beingdetected over the course of an hour. If the Geiger counter detected radiation, the hammer would smash the poison, killing the cat. Until someone opened the container and observed the system,it was impossible to predict the cat’s outcome. Thus, until the system collapsed into one state, the cat would exist in some superposition zombie state of being both alive and dead.

Of course, Schrödinger claimed, that was ridiculous. Quantum superposition could not work with large objects such as cats, because it is impossible for an organism to be simultaneously alive and dead. Thus, he reasoned that the Copenhagen Interpretation must be inherently flawed.

Throughout the years, Schrödinger’s cat analogy has been used to illustrate emerging theories of how quantum mechanics works. In the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum law, for example, the cat is both alive and dead. In this interpretation, the observer and the cat simply exist in two realities—one in which the cat is dead, and one in which the cat is alive.

The role of the observer remains an important question in the study of quantum physics and is an endless source of speculation in quantum computing. It is true that modern experiments have revealed that quantum superposition does work for tiny things like electrons, though superposition states for large objects might only exist in pop culture.

It’s hard to imagine how someone can go from having a home one day to being out on the street the next. Many homeless people start out with jobs and stable residences, but then social and economic factors intervene, causing a rapid change in their living situation.

The two biggest factors driving homelessness are poverty and the lack of affordable housing. In 2004, 37 million people, or 12.7 percent of the American population was living in poverty. Many of these people live from paycheck to paycheck with nothing saved in the bank. The loss of a job, an illness, or other catastrophic events can quickly lead to missed rent or mortgage payments and ultimately, to eviction or foreclosure.

Losing a job happens much more readily today than it did a few decades ago. The decline in manufacturing jobs, outsourcing of jobs to other countries, and an increase in temporary and parttime employment has nibbled away at the foundations of what was once a more stable job market.

Jobs today also pay less when considering the rate of inflation. In the late 1960s, a minimum-wage job could sustain a family of three above the poverty line. That isn’t the case today. According to the minimum wage passed in 2007, if someone works 40 hours per week every week for the entire year at the minimum wage per hour, his income will be well below the sum of money needed for a family of three to reach the poverty line. It’s certainly not enough to afford even the smallest apartment in one of America’s biggest cities.

Although the government offers some low-income housing, the numbers of reasonably priced dwellings have been dwindling over the years. Government support for low-income housing fell by half between 1980 and 2003. In the same period of time, more than 2 million lowrent units and one million single room occupancy (SRO) housing units vanished from the market, either demolished or converted into higher-rent apartments. People today can wait an average of three years for housing vouchers. Often, they wait in shelters or on the streets.

Energy sources are either renewable, meaning they can easily be replenished, or nonrenewable, meaning they draw on finite resources. Renewable energy is energy collected from resources that are naturally replenished. These resources include solar, hydropower, wind, biomass, and geothermal heating/cooling.

Solar energy is the cleanest and most abundant renewable energy source available. More energy from the sun falls on the earth in one hour than the world uses in one year. A variety of technologies are developed to convert sunlight to usable energy for buildings. Businesses and industry use solar technologies to diversify their energy sources, improve efficiency, and save money. The most commonly used solar technologies for homes and businesses are solar photovoltaics for electricity, passive solar design for space heating and cooling, and solar water heating. Energy developers use solar photovoltaic and concentrating solar power technologies to produce electricity on a massive scale to power cities and small towns.

Solar cells, also called photovoltaic cells, convert sunlight directly into electricity. Photovoltaics (often shortened as PV) gets its name from the process of converting light (photons) to electricity (voltage), which is called the photovoltaic effect. This phenomenon was first exploited in 1954 by scientists at Bell Laboratories who created a working solar cell made from silicon that generated an electric current when exposed to sunlight. Solar cells were soon being used to power space satellites and smaller items such as calculators and watches. Today, electricity from solar cells has become cost competitive in many regions and photovoltaic systems are being deployed at large scales to help power the electric grid.

Unlike the script kiddies of yesterday, today’s cyber-criminals are sophisticated, organized and out for a profit.

The threat of cybercrime has 40 percent of online shoppers and a third of those who use online banking services questioning whether they need to be more cautious about using these tools.

The threat is getting worse—two years ago, there were about 300 malicious threats emerging a month; today the figure has rocketed to 2,000. This is largely due to a sharp increase in the number of bot nets. These are networks of computers that can be controlled remotely.

There are several types of cybercrimes. These include extortion, reputational damage, fraud, phishing, service disruption, information theft and money laundering.

In the Internet version of extortion, criminals threaten to disrupt a company’s networks or launch a denial of service attack unless they agree to put money into an offshore bank account.

A blow to a company’s reputation can mean thousands or millions can be lost in sales, and such attacks can be carried out either by hackers or a competitor.

Phishing attacks are the cybercrime du jour. For criminals, such crimes are low cost–it costs them virtually nothing to send out hundreds or thousands of e-mails.

Information theft is probably the most profitable type of cybercrime. In one case of industrial espionage, for example, one company in Israel was able to put spyware on its competitor’s networks and gather information.

There are four types of cybercriminals: script kiddies, cyber punks, hackers and crackers, and cyber gangs.

Script kiddies have some scripts or software written by someone else, and they don’t know how they work, but they can use them to accomplish various things. They are usually under the age of 20.

Cyber punks are generally not seeking profit, but notoriety and bragging rights.

Hackers and crackers have extensive knowledge about the computers and networks and try to break into computer systems, especially in order to get secret information.

Cyber gangs are groups of career criminals or hackers who have the technical expertise to move their activities onto the Internet. They are virtual entities and can be based in different countries.

先放五章的在这里，之后有时间继续把剩下的发出来。