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英语高级视听说下册 Unit7

If the old saying "What's good for America is good for General Motors, and vice versa" is still true, then we are all in a lot of trouble. General Motors is limping along in the breakdown lane, in need of a lot more than a minor tune-up.

With GM's stock trading near an all time low and its bonds rated as junk, the company reported losses of more than $10 billion last year. Unless it stops hemorrhaging money, it will have to be towed into bankruptcy court — a move with consequences that could cascade through the American economy, threatening up to 1 million jobs and changing the dreams of American workers.

Correspondent Steve Kroft reports.

General Motors is not just another company. For almost a century, it was emblematic of American industrial dominance, with a car for every customer and a brand for every strata of society.

Back when Pontiacs were as sexy as Sinatra and Cadillac the synonym for luxury, GM made half the cars in the United States. A job on one of its assembly lines was ticket into the middle class. But that was before the first oil shock, and the Japanese imports. Today, General Motors is losing $24 million a day — and all bets are off.

"This is not a phantom crisis or a fake crisis. This is a real crisis," says David Cole, is chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, a non-profit consulting firm in Ann Arbor Mich.

Cole is widely considered one of the industry's top analysts. He believes that Detroit is now facing what the steel industry and the big airlines have already been through: high labor costs that make it almost impossible to compete.

"Every one of the Big Three faces a problem right now of about $2,000 to $2,500 per vehicle produced cost disadvantage. If that plays out over time, they're all dead," says Cole. "It's change or die. Everything is driven by a profitable business. If you can't be profitable, you can't be in business. That is, I think, recognition that everybody is aware of."

It has certainly not escaped the attention of General Motors chairman Rick Wagoner, who met at the Detroit Auto show. Wagner may have the toughest job in America: running a corporation many analysts believe has become, too big, too bloated and too slow to compete with more nimble foreign competitors.

Asked how General Motors got to the point where it is now, Wagoner told Kroft. "We have a long history, almost 100 years. We have a lot of employees. We have a lot of retirees, a lot of dependents. … Promises were made about benefits to those

people that weren't very expensive when they were made. And it's really given us some financial challenges."

One of them is that most of the people on GM's payroll are no longer making cars. Every month, GM sends out nearly half a million pension checks to former workers, many of whom retired in their 50s after 30 years of service and live in communities where GM plants closed long ago.

Then there is the ever-rising cost of health care. GM has one of the most generous plans in America and provides it to 1.1 million people — retirees, workers and their dependents — at a cost of $6 billion a year. That's more than any other company in America.

Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University, has done the math. "It comes to about $1,400 a car now," he explains. "That's what the health care premiums of the workers who make that car is. OK?"

Chaison says the health care costs are higher than the glass and steel used to make the vehicle. "Much more than any other part. What you're doing when you're buying a car is you're spending a lot of money for the health care benefits of workers who are making that car," he says.

It's a cost most of GM's foreign competitors don't have because their workers are usually covered by some form of government health insurance in their own countries. Wagoner says it's one of the promises GM made to workers made in good times that it can barely afford in bad.

Asked if he thinks those promises could be kept, Wagoner says, "We feel a responsibility to the people that those promises were made to. We also have a responsibility to insure that our business is successful in the future."

That future looks so bleak that the United Auto Workers, the union that represents GM's hourly workers, agreed last year to give back some hard-won concessions, which included a $1 an hour cost-of-living raise for active workers. The concessions also required retirees to pay up to several hundred dollars a year towards medical insurance that had always been free. UAW president Ron Gettelfinger says it was painful but necessary.

Gettelfinger admits getting the retirees to pay money toward something they'd been getting for free was a tough sell. "Sure it was hard to sell. First of all it was hard for us to convince ourselves that we needed to do something. It was not the easy decision to make but it was a right decision to make in the long term. Because our concern is the long-term viability of our membership both active and retired when it comes to their benefits or to their wage levels," he tells Kroft.

The consensus is that the union may have to give up a lot more, either before or during next year's contract negotiations, if General Motors is to avoid bankruptcy —an outcome that could allow the company to scrap its labor agreements, slash wages and pass off its pension obligations to the federal government.

"If you or I were given a choice between gold and silver, we'll take the gold every time. Gold is no longer an option. The choice that they're facing, literally, is between lead and silver. If they don't do the right things, they're gonna get lead," says Cole. "Silver is still terrific. I think that's where we're headed. The industry can afford silver, but they can no longer afford gold."

General Motors is still the largest automobile manufacturer in the world, and most experts will tell you it has never made better cars and trucks. But its market share has fallen to 24 percent, and it has too many plants and too many people for the number of cars it's selling. GM wants to shut down all or part of a dozen facilities and get rid of 30,000 workers by the end of 2008, but it's hamstrung by its contract with the UAW, which says it would still have to pay these workers under something called the "jobs bank."

"The job bank, that is people are paid to essentially full salary and aren't working —can't work. You can't afford literally hundreds of millions of dollars in wages to people that aren't working," says Cole. "So the way to deal with that is to buy 'em out of their job. And that's gonna be a big part of what's happening in just the next few months."

The process has already begun. The week before last, General Motors served up one of the biggest buyout packages in corporate history, offering 113,000 hourly employees anywhere $35,000 to $140,000 to walk away from their jobs or take early retirement. The buyout could cost GM up to $2 billion, so last week it sold off a chunk of one of its most profitable business, GMAC's commercial mortgage division, to help pay for it. But the ultimate cost could be much greater for communities all over the Midwest.

Several generations of American workers put food on the table and kids through college working at GM factories like the one in Janesville, Wis., where a union job with General Motors was as close as you could get to guaranteed lifetime security.

It is hard work with lots of overtime —but in a good year they can make $100,000, with up to five weeks vacation. It's a great job; problem is, it can be done in Mexico now for $3 an hour, and people here are nervous. Almost everyone in Janesville either works for GM or has a relative or family member that does.

"Everybody knows General Motors is the horse that pulls our cart," says Steve Flood.

It's the favorite subject at the Eagle Inn, just down the street from the union hall, where Kroft shared a cup of coffee with retirees Flood and Claude Eakins and current UAW workers Ron Splan and Matt Symons, who make SUVs at the Janesville plant.

What would happen to Janesville if GM went into bankruptcy?

"We've all got our opinions. But it certainly wouldn't be a pretty picture," says Splan. "There's probably 20 industries in Janesville here that supply directly to the Janesville General Motors plants. So it would be devastating. I mean, there's no doubt what it'd do to Janesville: I mean, it'd be terrible."

Asked if he was willing to make more concessions, Flood said, "Sure, you bet. We're gonna make sure GM survives. What we do, I'm not sure. But I'm sure we'll be looking at it that, ya know, before we make any changes. But it's gotta be a shared, ya know."

"They know that we're all in the same boat," Splan added. "I mean, if it's got a hole in it, we're all, we're all sinkin'."

There are some who have actually suggested bankruptcy might be good for General Motors in the long run —that it would allow the company to reposition itself competitively in the global market. Wagoner isn't one of them.

"Our view is that's a very bad idea," he says. "First of all, we don't think it's going to happen. We don't think it's a good strategy. And we think a lot of people would lose if we did that, ranging from shareholders to employees to dealers to suppliers. And it's my view that all this talk about bankruptcy is way over selling the risk side of the business."

But a lot of things could go wrong. A potential strike at Delphi Corp., GM's major parts supplier, could shut down General Motors assembly lines and create a liquidity crisis. Corporate raider Kirk Kerkorian, whose intentions are unknown, is now GM's largest individual stockholder —and making his presence felt. But most of all, GM needs to begin selling more cars.

It needs to revive Buick and Pontiac the same way it resurrected Cadillac, with bold new designs and their own distinct identities.

Those cars, which will save GM, or not, are still in blue shrouds at the company's super-secret design center in Warren, Mich., under the watchful eye of 74-year-old vice chairman Bob Lutz, a legendary Detroit design guru, who once ran Chrysler. "Unfortunately this is a car that I'd like to be able to show you, but for competitive reasons we can't show it all. I'll just show you some of the, some of the advanced

work that we're doing on grills —that this is obviously a Cadillac, no concealing that," Lutz said, giving Kroft a peek.

"Would you have to kill me if I just took this thing and ripped it right out?" Kroft asked.

"I would not be pleased with you," Lutz replied.

Lutz acknowledges that GM became complacent, produced too many anonymous cars with uninspired designs and delegated the design process too low in the corporate structure.

"During the period of GM's greatness in the 50s and 60s, design ruled. And the finance people ran behind to try to reestablish order and pick up the pieces," says Lutz. "We just lost the focus on design."

There is no detail too small to merit Lutz's attention, from sheet metal fits to upgrading interiors, and getting rid of what he calls that "nasty rat fur" upholstery.

"I mean, the answer is product, product, product, product, product," says Lutz. "And I'm happy to say that my experiences, that automobile companies always do their best products when they're in dire straits, because all the second guessers get out of the way."

Lutz says the company has turned the corner on reliability, and J.D. Power quality surveys bear him out. Another encouraging sign came at the Detroit Auto Show when Lutz unveiled the new sleek new Camaro concept car, which debuted to unanimous acclaim and was selected as best car in show. It is exactly what GM needs right now — but in its showrooms, not at an auto show.

"We're enthused about it and everybody wants to know, 'So, are you gonna build it?'" says Wagoner.

The answer to that question, Wagoner says, is a firm maybe. "We'd like to do it. … We haven't made the call. We've introduced it as a concept. Sometimes we do that to see how people react to it."

"The best car in the show," Kroft remarked.

"Yeah, well I just got that information," Wagoner says. "I think that does suggest that if we didn't try to build this, we might be brain dead. Stay tuned."

By Frank Devine

英语高级视听说-下册-unit-2

Not Your Average Teen Lots of teenage girls dream of becoming rich and famous. But it's not a fantasy for Michelle Wie. Just before her 16th birthday last fall, she became the highest-paid woman golfer in history simply by turning professional and lending her name to commercial endorsements that will pay her between $10 million and $12 million a year, most of which will go into a trust fund until she becomes an adult. Wie has been a celebrity since she was 13, when people began predicting she would become the Tiger Woods of women' sgolf. But, as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, that has never been enough for Wie. She wants to become the first woman ever to successfully compete with men in a professional sport. She has tried a couple of times on the PGA Tour without embarrassing herself. As you will see, she has changed a lot since we first talked to her way back in 2004, when she was 14. At the time, Wie told Kroft her ultimate goal was to play in the Masters. "I think it'd be pretty neat walking down the Masters fairways," she said. It was a neat dream for a 14-year-old kid. Nothing has happened in the last two years to change Wie's mind or shake her confidence. She is stronger now, more mature and glamorous. She has already demonstrated that she can play herself into the middle of the pack against the best men on the PGA Tour and has come within a shot of winning her first two starts on the LPGA Tour this year as a part-time professional. The day before 60 Minutes interviewed her at the Fields Open in Honolulu, she shot a final round of 66, coming from six strokes off the lead to just miss a playoff. "You won your first check yesterday," Kroft says. "Uh-huh," Wie says. "It was, it was really cool. I mean, I was like looking at how much I won. I was like 'Oh my God.' " Wie says she won around $72,000. Asked whether she gets to keep that money, Wie said she didn't know. "I'm trying to negotiate with my dad how much I can spend of that, and stuff like that. We're still working it out. But, you know, I'm definitely gonna go shopping today," she says, laughing. Half of her life is spent in the adult world, competing with men and women twice her age for paychecks they may need to make expenses and dealing with the media, sponsors and marketing executives. The rest of the time she is a junior at Punahou High School in Honolulu, where she is an A student and claims to lead the life of a typical 16-year-old.

上外版英语高级视听说(上册)听力原文

Unit 1 Pirates of the Internet It’s no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry as millions of people stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. Now the hign-tech thieves are coming after Hollywood. Illegal downloading of full-length feature films is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s becoming easier and easier to do. The people running America’s movie studios know that if they don’t do something----and fast---they could be in the same boat as the record companies. Correspodent: “What’s really at stake for the movie industry with all this privacy?” Chernin: “Well, I think, you know, ultimately, our absolute features.” Peter Chernin runs 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. He knows the pirates of the Internet are gaining on him. Correspont: “Do you know how many movies are being downloaded today, in one day, in the United States?” Chernin: “I think it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Correspondent: “And it’s only going to grow.” Chernin: “It’s only going to grow. √Somebody can put a perfect digital copy up on the internet. A perfect digital copy, all right. And with the click of mouse, send out a million copies all over the world, in an instant.”

《英语高级视听说》

《英语高级视听说》教学大纲课程编码：3011104 课程性质：专业教育必修课教学时数：96学时学分数：6学分开课学期：第五、六、七学期授课单位：英语系视听说教研室授课对象：英语专业本科学生一、课程概述 1.性质与地位英语高级视听说课程是为英语专业本科学生在专业学习提高阶段开设的专业教育必修课程。该课程以外语教学理论为指导，广泛应用多媒体教学，融课堂教学与自主学习为一体，以真实语境下的常速语料为基本教学材料，紧扣时代脉搏，是全面提升学生听说能力、使学生的目标语听力理解能力与口语产出能力满足高层次语言应用要求的重要课程。 2.基本理念英语高级视听说课程以素质教育、创新教育思想为理论指导，以双主模式及Anderson的“听前－听时－听后”理论为理论支撑，着力发展学生的目标语高级实时应用能力。课程在实施过程中，一方面坚持以人为本，关注学生的情感，另一方面注重营造自主学习的气氛，创造自主学习的条件和环境，培养学生的可持续自我发展能力。本课程摒弃接受式、填鸭式的学习方式和教学方式，坚持以学生为中心，以方法为主导，强调启发式、引导式教学，同时利用该课程材料均以多媒体形式呈现于课堂、内容时效性强等独特优势，激发学生的学习兴趣与积极性，培养和增强学生探索知识的能力和欲望。利用校园网、互联网等信息渠道，开展多媒体课堂教学与课后自主学习，着力提高教学效率与教学质量，同时努力提升听与说在认知学习中的地位，贯彻“听为学”、“说为学”的理念，使学生认识到视听是与阅读同等重要的语言输入途径，也是同样有效的认知途径。 3.设计思路

本课程教学以解放军外国语学院生长干部学历教育本科人才培养方案（英语）为依据，参照《高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲》（以下简称《大纲》）的要求实施。教学安排在3个学期内完成，第八学期举行3次有关英语区域变体的讲座，第五、六、七学期每学期32学时，第八学期6学时，总时数为102学时。教学实施分为课堂教学与自主学习，教学内容分为音频和视频两部分：音频教材方面主要包括《英语专业三年级听力教程》、《英语中级听力》、《英语专业四年级听力教程》，以及带前方记者报道的最新VOA、BBC、NPR新闻等；视频教材包括《高级英语视听说教程》、《英语高级视听说》、片长10分钟左右的多主题短片，BBC/CNN 视频新闻以及部分精选的记录片、影视剧片段等。授课教师在教材既定的总体框架下，可根据学生的实际水平和国际国内形势的发展情况，灵活组合、添加部分最新音、视频材料用于课堂教学，以保证教学内容时时更新，反映最新形势。英语区域变体讲座内容涉及澳大利亚英语、新西兰英语、南亚英语、东南亚英语的特点，重点解决学生在听辨这些英语变体时所遇到的苦难。二、课程目标 1.总体目标系统讲授听力理解过程中各环节所需的语言知识和理解判断要素；利用新闻、对话、讲座、电影等语料训练学生对声像信息的辨读能力；通过“视”、“听”、“说”的结合，综合多种训练手段，提高学生的听力理解和口头表达能力，加深其对英语国家政治、军事、经济、社会、文化等方面的认识和了解，全面提升真实语境下的实时语言运用能力，并使之具备较强的自主学习能力。 2.分类目标（1）通过本课程的学习，学生应具备独立解决辨音难点的能力，掌握运用字典等工具书逆向查词、独立解决疑难问题的能力。（2）通过本课程的学习，学生应掌握政治、军事、经济、科技、文化等方面的听力理解词汇及口语产出词汇，并最终达到《大纲》八级水平。（3）通过本课程的学习，学生应充分理解“听为学”、“说为学”的理念，并积极通过这两种渠道进行目标语认知。（4）通过本课程的学习，学生应充分理解自主学习的重要性，充分利用教师提供的自主学习资源或自主开发新资源，养成良好的自主学习习惯，开展有效的自主学习。（5）通过视频材料的广泛使用，使学生有效掌握大量非语言性对象国知识。（6）通过讲座，使学生了解英语区域变体的语音、语法特点，并能够准确把握视、音频材料的大意及细节内容。三、内容标准 1.授课内容第五、六学期，教学内容主要为《英语专业三年级听力教程》、《英语中级听力》、《英语高级视听说》（上）中的材料，辅以带有前方记者报道的VOA、BBC、NPR新

英语高级视听说下册 unit 10

Burning Rage This story originally aired on Nov. 13, 2005. When they first emerged in the mid-1990s, the environmental extremists calling themselves the "Earth Liberation Front" announced they were "the burning rage of a dying planet." Ever since, the ELF, along with its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front, has been burning everything from SUV dealerships to research labs to housing developments. In the last decade, these so-called "Eco-terrorists" have been responsible for more than $100 million in damages. And their tactics are beginning to escalate. Some splinter groups have set off homemade bombs and threatened to kill people. As correspondent Ed Bradley first reported last November, things have gotten so bad, the FBI now considers them the country's biggest domestic terrorist threat. 错误! The biggest act of eco-terrorism in U.S. history was a fire, deliberately set on the night of August 1, 2003, that destroyed a nearly-completed $23 million apartment complex just outside San Diego. The fire was set to protest urban sprawl. "It was the biggest fire I have ever responded to as a firefighter," remembers Jeff Carle, a division chief for the San Diego Fire Department. "That fire was not stoppable. At the stage that the fire was in when we arrived, there were problems in the adjacent occupied apartment complexes. Pine trees were starting to catch fire. Items on patios were starting to light up and catch fire. And we had to direct our activity towards saving life before we could do anything about the property." Hundreds were roused from their beds and evacuated. Luckily, nobody –including firefighters – was injured. By the time the fire burned itself out the next morning, all that remained was a 12-foot-long banner that read: "If you build it, we will burn it." Also on the banner was the acronym: E-L-F. When Carle saw the banner, he says he knew he had a problem. A problem, because he knew what ELF stood for: the Earth Liberation Front, the most radical fringe of the environmental movement. It's the same group that set nine simultaneous fires across the Vail Mountain ski resort in 1998 to protest its expansion, causing $12 million in damage. And it is the same group that has left SUV dealerships across America looking like scenes from Iraq's Sunni triangle, their way of protesting the gas-guzzling habits of American car buyers. The ELF is a spin-off of another group called the ALF, or Animal Liberation Front, whose masked members have been known to videotape themselves breaking into research labs, where they destroy years of painstaking work and free captive animals. In recent years,

英语高级视听说下册 unit 2

Not Y our A verage Teen Lots of teenage girls dream of becoming rich and famous. But it's not a fantasy for Michelle Wie. Just before her 16th birthday last fall, she became the highest-paid woman golfer in history simply by turning professional and lending her name to commercial endorsements that will pay her between $10 million and $12 million a year, most of which will go into a trust fund until she becomes an adult. Wie has been a celebrity since she was 13, when people began predicting she would become the Tiger Woods of women’s golf. But, as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, that has never been enough for Wie. She wants to become the first woman ever to successfully compete with men in a professional sport. She has tried a couple of times on the PGA Tour without embarrassing herself. As you will see, she has changed a lot since we first talked to her way back in 2004, when she was 14. At the time, Wie told Kroft her ultimate goal was to play in the Masters. "I think it'd be pretty neat walking down the Masters fairways," she said. It was a neat dream for a 14-year-old kid. Nothing has happened in the last two years to change Wie's mind or shake her confidence. She is stronger now, more mature and glamorous. She has already demonstrated that she c an play herself into the middle of the pack against the best men on the PGA Tour and has come within a shot of winning her first two starts on the LPGA Tour this year as a part-time professional. The day before 60 Minutes interviewed her at the Fields Open in Honolulu, she shot a final round of 66, coming from six strokes off the lead to just miss a playoff. "Y ou won your first check yesterday," Kroft says. "Uh-huh," Wie says. "It was, it was really cool. I mean, I was like looking at how much I won. I was like 'Oh my God.' " Wie says she won around $72,000. Asked whether she gets to keep that money, Wie said she didn't know. "I'm trying to negotiate with my dad how much I can spend of that, and stuff like that. We're still working it out. But, you know, I'm definitely gonna go shopping today," she says, laughing. Half of her life is spent in the adult world, competing with men and women twice her age for paychecks they may need to make expenses and dealing with the media, sponsors and marketing executives. The rest of the time she is a junior at Punahou High School in Honolulu, where she is

英语高级视听说unit-4

Unit 4 Brain Man Almost 25 years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie "Rain Man." George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited. Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called "Brain Man" in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain. ________________________________________ Back in 1983, George Finn, blessed or obsessed with calendar calculation, could give you the day if you gave him the date. "What day of the week was August 13th, 1911?" Safer quizzed Finn. "A Sunday," Finn replied. "What day of the week was May 20th, 1921?" Safer asked. "Friday," Finn answered. George Finn is a savant. In more politically incorrect times he would have been called an "idiot savant" - a mentally handicapped or autistic person whose brain somehow possesses an island of brilliance. Asked if he knew how he does it, Finn told Safer, "I don't know, but it's just that, that's fantastic I can do that." If this all seems familiar, there?s a reason: five years after the 60 Minutes broadcast, Dustin Hoffman immortalized savants like George in the movie "Rain Man." Which brings us to that other savant we mentioned: Daniel Tammet. He is an Englishman, who is a 27-year-old math and memory wizard. "I was born November 8th, 1931," Safer remarks. "Uh-huh. That's a prime number. 1931. And you were born on a Sunday. And this year, your birthday will be on a Wednesday. And you'll be 75," Tammet tells Safer. It is estimated there are only 50 true savants living in the world today, and yet none are like Daniel. He is articulate, self-sufficient, blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability. Take his math skill, for example.

(完整版)高级英语视听说2参考答案(1)

Chapter 1 The Population I 2 populous 3 race 4 origin 5 geographical distPrelistening B 1 census ribution 6 made up of 7 comprises 8 relatively progressively 9 Metropolitan densely 10 decreased death rate 11 birth rate increasing 12 life expectancy D 1 a 18.5 mill b 80% c 1/2 d 13.4 mill e 2: 10 f 4% g 1990 h 40% i 3/4 j 33.1% 2 a 3 b 1 c 2 d 5 e 4 II First Listening ST1 population by race and origin ST2 geographical distribution ST3 age and sex III Postlistening A 1. People’s Republic of China, India 2. 281 mill

3. Hispanics(12.5%) 4. Texas 5. the South and the West 6. 20% 7. by more than 5 million 8. about 6 years 9. 2.2 years 10. a decreasing birth rate and an increasing life expectancy Chapter 2: Immigration: Past and Present PRELISTENING B. Vocabulary and Key Concepts immigrated natural disasters/ droughts/ famines persecution settlers/ colonists stages widespread unemployment scarcity expanding/ citizens failure decrease

英语高级视听说unit 8

1 Unit8 Chasing The Flu If this year of tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes has taught us anything, it's that worst case scenarios do sometimes happen. Now with winter upon us, the latest thing to worry about is the avian flu -- a particularly deadly bird virus that is ravaging the poultry industry in Asia, and has, on rare occasions, infected humans, killing half of its victims. Fewer than 100 people have died worldwide, yet the World Health Organization calls it the most serious health threat facing the planet, greater than AIDS or tuberculosis. Because humans have no immunity to the virus, and there are no proven drugs or vaccines to stop it, it has the potential to cause an influenza pandemic similar to the one that killed 50 million people in 1918. It may no t happen, but billions of dollars are being spent to sequence its genes, track its movement, and sl ow its progress in what many people believe could be a race against time. 60 Minutes set out for Europe and Asia chasing the flu. Correspondent Steve Kroft reports. It's called the H5N1 virus, a primitive piece of genetic material so small it can barely be seen unde r the most powerful microscopes. Like all flu viruses, it is constantly evolving and every day scient ists record the latest changes as it moves silently around the globe in the bellies of birds. The virus has infected the waterfowl now migrating the flyways over Southeast Asia. This is the fr ont line in the battle against avian flu, where the most cases have been identified and the most p eople have died. Ducks and geese have passed it along to domestic poultry, and humans have gotten it from sick bi rds. So far, the virus can't pass easily from human to human, but a single deadly mutation could c hange that and trigger the deaths of tens of millions of people. "Time is the essence," says Dr. Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization's chief of Pandemic Influenza in Geneva. She calls it a warning signal from nature. "For the first time in history we are seeing a pandemic unfolding in front of our eyes," says Dr. Ch an. No one has more experience with H5N1 than Dr. Chan. She was director of health in Hong Ko ng when the first outbreak occurred there in 1997. This is a virus that affects mostly birds and has killed fewer than 100 people. Why does Dr. Chan s ee it as such a serious health threat? "We are seeing very worrying signs, the geographical spread of this virus, and it has extended bey ond the usual sort of poultry sector. It is infecting cats. It's causing death in tigers, and so on and s o forth. Now we are getting all these signals, and we are tracking the changes of the virus," she ex plains. "If you look at the disease it causes in human being, [it] is very severe, with a very high fat ality rate. More than about half of the people infected die. We have not seen anything quite like i t," says Dr. Chan. "And also, this virus causes unprecedented spread in the animal sector. And we have never seen this in the entire history of mankind." The best minds in health, science and veterinary medicine have been mobilized to try and stop th e bird flu before it can become highly contagious in humans. Nearly 200 million chickens exposed to the virus have already been destroyed, yet, in the last few months the H5N1 virus has spread from Asia into Europe. Every morning at the World Health Organization's Strategic Health Operations Center, scientists a nd public health officials gather to go over the latest information and monitor every suspected hu

英语高级视听说复习

The Sea Gypsies 1.The term tsunami comes from the Japanese language meaning what? Harbor and wave 2.Why do the Mokens want very little? A. Because belongings ties them down. 3.F Thanks to unique lung structure, the Mokens can stay underwater twice as long as the rest of us. 4.Ivanoff, who is a French anthropologist of the ship the Moken Queen and is one of the world's foremost authorities on the Moken. What did they call the captain of his ship and where were they from? "Long Ear" Bremese 5.Give me one quality of the Mokens? They have no notion and no desire for wealth. Not Y our Average T een 1.Which agency represents Michelle Wie? Willian Morris Agency 2.What is the most stressful experience for Michelle this year? C. Barely passing her driver's test. 3.T At the age of 14, Michelle's dream was to play in the Master's. https://www.wendangku.net/doc/f73358636.html, three language that she speaks? Korean Japanese English

英语高级视听说 下册 Unit7