万花筒 2009-11-17&11-19 09年最酷与最烂发明

The best inventions of 2009 from a light bulb that may be worth ten million dollars to an electric eye, that sees for you. The list is out; this is it right here, from Time magazine, Time website, Time.com, which is a partner of CNN.com. They say the best invention of the year, is this NASA’s Ares Rocket, we have some video for you.

“Three! Two! One! Ignition, and lift off of Ares I-X, testing concepts for the future of new Rocket design.”

Time calls this the best and smartest and coolest thing built in 2009, it is designed to usher¹ in the next generation of space travel returning astronauts to the moon, and one day bringing people to Mars.

And let’s check out more of the top inventions. We’re gonna zoom² in on the screen behind me. We’re starting off with this, an electric eye. MIT researchers are developing a micro-chip that can help blind people regain³ partial sight. The chip will be implanted into patient’s eye that contains a tiny camera that transmits signals to the brain.

Check out this one, tweeting by thinking. A doctoral student at University of Wisconsin found a way to hook something up basically that monitors brain activity. It’s able to concentrate on a letter and it read them automatically, he’s able to use that effectively to type out a short tweet .

Over here, this is the ten-million-dollar light bulb. This could win a prize being run by the Department of Energy that is automatically worth ten million dollars. It uses less than 10 Watts⁴ and it has as much light as a normal 60-Watt-light bulb, and lasts 25,000 hours. Let’s bank to a couple more over here.
This is called the smart thermostat⁵. This is a thermostat that would tell you how much energy all your appliances are using, and would be able to control them - turn them on or off. 

I’ll end up with this one, take a look at, controller-free gaming. You wouldn’t need to hold anything in your hand to play with video games, you could use body movements and sound.

Now, all these are some of the best inventions of the year. Time also points some of the worst inventions of the year. And we can zoom back in, so I can show you two of what’s been declaring the worst inventions of the year to yet to see. Take a look at here--snuggies for dogs, come on, they are basically saying what are people thinking, and this you really have to see to believe there it is, the gas-mask-bra, a bra that would break apart into two different gas masks.

Now, officially end by time. Yeah, one of the worst inventions of the year. All right, this is kind of awkward charge. Let’s get to the graphics⁶. So you can see, oh you can see the entire list of top 50 best inventions of the year go into Time. It’s the blog in CNN.com/Josh, also Josh also Facebook or Twitter/JoshLevsCNN. Let's know what you think.
And hey, some of these may be on the market and not too long.

 

1 usher   

n.带位员，招待员；vt.引导，护送；vi.做招待，担任引座员

参考例句：

• The usher seated us in the front row.引座员让我们在前排就座。
• They were quickly ushered away.他们被迅速领开。

2 zoom   

n.急速上升；v.突然扩大，急速上升

参考例句：

• The airplane's zoom carried it above the clouds.飞机的陡直上升使它飞到云层之上。
• I live near an airport and the zoom of passing planes can be heard night and day.我住在一个飞机场附近，昼夜都能听到飞机飞过的嗡嗡声。

3 regain   

vt.重新获得，收复，恢复

参考例句：

• He is making a bid to regain his World No.1 ranking.他正为重登世界排名第一位而努力。
• The government is desperate to regain credibility with the public.政府急于重新获取公众的信任。

4 watts   

（电力计量单位）瓦，瓦特( watt的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• My lamp uses 60 watts; my toaster uses 600 watts. 我的灯用60瓦，我的烤面包器用600瓦。
• My lamp uses 40 watts. 我的灯40瓦。

5 thermostat   

n.恒温器

参考例句：

• The thermostat is connected by a link to the carburetor.恒温控制器是由一根连杆与汽化器相连的。
• The temperature is controlled by electronic thermostat with high accuracy.电子恒温器，准确性高。

6 graphics   

n.制图法，制图学；图形显示

参考例句：

• You've leveraged your graphics experience into the video area.你们把图形设计业务的经验运用到录像业务中去。
• Improved graphics took computer games into a new era.经改进的制图技术将电脑游戏带进了一个新时代。