VOA慢速英语2011--Scientist Working to Save Bees Is Winner

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS - Scientist Working to Save Bees Is Winner of Environmental Prize

BOB DOUGHTY¹: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I’m Bob Doughty.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: And I’m Shirley Griffith. This week, we tell about the latest winner of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. We tell about some effects of the earthquake and tsunami² in northeastern Japan. And we tell about an albatross thought to be America’s oldest free-flying bird.
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BOB DOUGHTY: Bees are important for agriculture. Farmers need bees to pollinate plant crops. The insects also provide a natural sweetener, honey. But many bees have mysteriously disappeared in recent years. This year, an American researcher was the winner of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois is searching for solutions to the bee crisis.
For thousands of years, people have had a love–hate relationship with bees because they sting. Many people have experienced bee stings themselves or know of others who were hurt.
MAY BERENBAUM: “But on the other hand, people all over the world have developed a dependency on the honeybee because it is really the world’s premier³ managed pollinator. And here in the US, for example, over ninety crops depend on honeybees for pollination⁴ services.”
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: May Berenbaum says farmers depend on bees to pollinate nuts, melons and other crops. Bees are directly responsible for pollinating nineteen billion dollars worth of crops each year in the United States alone.
However, many bees have disappeared in what scientists call colony collapse⁵. The worker bees suddenly disappear, and the colony dies. This has been a problem in North America, especially in the past five years.
Scientists do not fully⁶ understand the problem. May Berenbaum says there are many likely reasons for the collapse. One is the long-distance transport of bees for pollination and the spread of bee diseases from one area to another. She says the effect of disease is made worse by the buildup of insect-killing⁷ pesticides⁸ in bee colonies.
May Berenbaum and other scientists are studying the problem. She suggests one way that people can help.
MAY BERENBAUM: “You can buy local honey. Local honey is available at stores only because there is a local beekeeper who went to the trouble of harvesting it, so the more beekeepers there are, the more honey there is. We [have], over the last twenty-five years, seen an alarming decline in the number of beekeepers. The interest is resurging, which is the best news for American bees, actually, more beekeepers!”
BOB DOUGHTY: May Berenbaum says people also can help the honeybee by planting more flowers and showing less hostility⁹ toward weeds. Some unwanted plants provide food for pollinators like bees.
Recently, Ms. Berenbaum was in Los Angeles to accept the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. Earlier prize winners include the biologist Edward O. Wilson, the primatologist Jane Goodall and conservation biologist Paul Ehrlich.
May Berenbaum says these and other winners are among her scientific heroes. She received two hundred thousand dollars with the award. She says the money will help expand a project of hers involving citizen-scientists.
MAY BERENBAUM: “We have one project called bee-spotters, which is now restricted to Illinois, where we ask people to go out with a digital camera, even a cell phone, and photograph either bumblebees or honeybees.”
BOB DOUGHTY: She says that project is already leading to information.
MAY BERENBAUM:“A citizen scientist outside Peoria actually sent in a photograph of a species of bumblebee, the rusty¹⁰ patched bumblebee, bombus affinis, that was thought to have gone extinct in that area, and was recovered by a private citizen with a digital camera.”
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: May Berenbaum collected directions for preparing meals involving honey in a book. It is called, “Honey, I’m Homemade: Sweet Treats from the Beehive, Across the Centuries and Around the World.” And she says the honeybee, in addition to its important work as a pollinator, makes our lives a little sweeter.
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BOB DOUGHTY: The earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan in March continue to have far-reaching effects.
Radiation has been leaking from the Fukushima power station since March eleventh. The earthquake and tsunami damaged cooling systems at all six nuclear reactors¹¹ there. High levels of radiation have been found in the soil, sea water, fish and agricultural products for kilometers around the power plant. Tens of thousands of people have left the area.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: American researchers are predicting that floating wreckage¹² from the disaster could reach the Hawaiian Islands within two years. Jan Hafner is a scientific computer programmer with the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii. He says that an island of wreckage has already moved a few hundred kilometers away from Japan.
The wreckage includes cars, trees and homes that were washed away from Japan. Strong ocean currents are now carrying this trash across the Pacific Ocean toward the western United States.
Jan Hafner says that by the time the trash arrives, it will turn into what he is calling “the North Pacific garbage patch.” He expects more wreckage to continue floating toward Hawaii for about five more years.
BOB DOUGHTY: The predictions are based on a diagnostic model. Scientists developed the model by using realistic information about objects floating over the ocean surface.
The projections¹³ are not good news for Hawaiian coastal¹⁴ communities. The usual trash that washes up on the islands represents an environmental danger. But large pieces of wreckage also represent a possible threat for ships sailing across the Pacific Ocean. The United States Navy’s Seventh Fleet has said the largest trash field is more than one hundred kilometers long.
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SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: America’s oldest free-flying bird is said to be doing well a few weeks after a tsunami wave hit the island where she lives. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service discovered in March that a Laysan albatross named Wisdom had survived.
An agency employee observed the bird and her chick about a week after a one and one-half meter high wave washed over Wisdom’s home. The bird lives on Sand Island in the Pacific Ocean. Sand Island belongs to the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.
The wave hit the island after the earthquake struck Japan on March eleventh.
Wisdom is at least sixty-five years old. The chick is thought to be her thirty-fifth baby. Their survival was unusual. The tsunami killed an estimated two thousand adult albatrosses and about one hundred ten thousand chicks from Wisdom’s nesting area.
BOB DOUGHTY: About one million Laysan albatross live in the wildlife refuge. But the tsunami decreased the baby-bird population by twenty percent.
Wisdom is the oldest wild albatross known to a research program supervised by American and Canadian scientists. The program has operated for ninety years. Wisdom first had a metal identification band placed on her in nineteen fifty six. At the time, she was at least five years old. Biologists estimate that she has traveled almost five million flying kilometers since then.
An albatross is one of twenty-one kinds of large sea birds that reproduce in Hawaii. They get their food from off North America’s West Coast, including the Gulf¹⁵ of Alaska.
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SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Finally, an American study has attempted to confirm the idea that cats are deadly enemies of birds. The study found that, if you hold that belief, you are correct. At least that is true near Washington, DC. The Journal of Ornithology¹⁶ reported the findings.
The report says the common housecat is the number-one killer¹⁷ of fledgling gray catbirds near America’s capital. It says predators¹⁸ were responsible for almost eighty percent of the deaths of the baby birds in the study. Predators seize and kill others. Cats killed almost all of the fledglings that died.
Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution and Towson University in Maryland led the study. It took place in three capital-area communities. Death rates were especially high where many cats live.
BOB DOUGHTY: The researchers placed electronic equipment on the birds so they could follow them. They learned that in some places, the killing of baby birds is decreasing the gray catbird population.
Killings¹⁹ by animals are the second largest cause of bird death in the United States. The American Bird Conservancy reports that cats kill hundreds of millions of birds nationwide each year. The group says half the cats responsible for bird death have human owners. The other half are said to be feral, or homeless, cats.
But the top cause of bird deaths is crashes into windows, buildings and other structures. The Fish and Wildlife Service says wind turbines kill four hundred forty thousand birds yearly. That number, however, is expected to rise above one million by twenty-thirty, as more wind farms are built.
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SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Brianna Blake and Jerilyn Watson. I’m Shirley Griffith.
BOB DOUGHTY: And I’m Bob Doughty. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

1 doughty   

adj.勇猛的，坚强的

参考例句：

• Most of successful men have the characteristics of contumacy and doughty.绝大多数成功人士都有共同的特质：脾气倔强，性格刚强。
• The doughty old man battled his illness with fierce determination.坚强的老人用巨大毅力与疾病作斗争。

2 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

3 premier   

adj.首要的；n.总理，首相

参考例句：

• The Irish Premier is paying an official visit to Britain.爱尔兰总理正在对英国进行正式访问。
• He requested that the premier grant him an internview.他要求那位总理接见他一次。

4 pollination   

n.授粉

参考例句：

• The flowers get pollination by insects.这些花通过昆虫授粉。
• Without sufficient pollination,the growth of the corn is stunted.没有得到充足的授粉，谷物的长势就会受阻。

5 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

6 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

7 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

8 pesticides   

n.杀虫剂( pesticide的名词复数 )；除害药物

参考例句：

• vegetables grown without the use of pesticides 未用杀虫剂种植的蔬菜
• There is a lot of concern over the amount of herbicides and pesticides used in farming. 人们对农业上灭草剂和杀虫剂的用量非常担忧。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 hostility   

n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争

参考例句：

• There is open hostility between the two leaders.两位领导人表现出公开的敌意。
• His hostility to your plan is well known.他对你的计划所持的敌意是众所周知的。

10 rusty   

adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的

参考例句：

• The lock on the door is rusty and won't open.门上的锁锈住了。
• I haven't practiced my French for months and it's getting rusty.几个月不用，我的法语又荒疏了。

11 reactors   

起反应的人( reactor的名词复数 )； 反应装置； 原子炉； 核反应堆

参考例句：

• The TMI nuclear facility has two reactors. 三哩岛核设施有两个反应堆。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• The earliest production reactors necessarily used normal uranium as fuel. 最早为生产用的反应堆，必须使用普通铀作为燃料。

12 wreckage   

n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏

参考例句：

• They hauled him clear of the wreckage.他们把他从形骸中拖出来。
• New states were born out of the wreckage of old colonial empires.新生国家从老殖民帝国的废墟中诞生。

13 projections   

预测( projection的名词复数 )； 投影； 投掷； 突起物

参考例句：

• Their sales projections are a total thumbsuck. 他们的销售量预测纯属估计。
• The council has revised its projections of funding requirements upwards. 地方议会调高了对资金需求的预测。

14 coastal   

adj.海岸的，沿海的，沿岸的

参考例句：

• The ocean waves are slowly eating away the coastal rocks.大海的波浪慢慢地侵蚀着岸边的岩石。
• This country will fortify the coastal areas.该国将加强沿海地区的防御。

15 gulf   

n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂

参考例句：

• The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
• There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。

16 ornithology   

n.鸟类学

参考例句：

• He found his vocation in ornithology.他发现自己适于专攻鸟类学。
• His main interests are botany and ornithology.他主要对植物学和鸟类学感兴趣。

17 killer   

n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者

参考例句：

• Heart attacks have become Britain's No.1 killer disease.心脏病已成为英国的头号致命疾病。
• The bulk of the evidence points to him as her killer.大量证据证明是他杀死她的。

18 predators   

n.食肉动物( predator的名词复数 )；奴役他人者（尤指在财务或性关系方面）

参考例句：

• birds and their earthbound predators 鸟和地面上捕食它们的动物
• The eyes of predators are highly sensitive to the slightest movement. 捕食性动物的眼睛能感觉到最细小的动静。 来自《简明英汉词典》

19 killings   

谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发

参考例句：

• His statement was seen as an allusion to the recent drug-related killings. 他的声明被视为暗指最近与毒品有关的多起凶杀案。
• The government issued a statement condemning the killings. 政府发表声明谴责这些凶杀事件。