题目内容
Space-Age Archeology
It's a strange partnership, but a very effective one: Satellites and space-shuttle-carried radar are helping archeologists. How？ By "seeing" through sand or through treetops to locate important archeological sites.
The traditional tools of archeologists are shovels and picks. But high technology is making the archeologist's work and time far more productive.
Take, for example, the second 1981 flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger. During that mission, a powerful, experimental radar was pointed at a lifeless stretch of desert in Egypt called the Selima Sand Sheet (part of the Sahara Desert). To everyone's surprise, the radar penetrated through the sand to the harder rock beneath. On the surface, there is a little indication that Africa's Sahara Desert was never anything but a desert. When the archeologists studied the radar images, they saw what seemed to be impossible: there was sand-buried landscape. that was shaped by flowing water; traces of ancient riverbeds appeared to be over nine miles wide, far wider than most sections of the present-day Nile River. Today, the area is one of the hottest, driest desert in the world.
Archeologists dug pits along the old river banks and found clues to the past: stream-rounded pebbles (鹅卵石), Stone-Age axes, broken ostrich (鸵鸟) eggshells, and the shells of land snails. The archeologists were quite pleased with these findings. For years, they'd been finding stone axes scattered through, the-desert, and couldn't understand why. Now we know that early humans were living on the banks of old rivers, and left their beautiful tools behind. Some are so sharp that you could shave with them.
More recently, Landsat 4, a special Earth-mapping satellite, aided in the discovery of ancient Mayan ruins in Mexico. Landsat can, with the help of false-color imagery, "see through" much of the area. Armed with these maps, a five-person expedition took to the air in a helicopter.
By the end of the second day, the team found a stretch of walled fields that expedition members said look like "old New England fences". They just go on, non-stop, for 40 miles. Later in the week, an ancient village was pinpointed, as was the "lost" city of Oxpemul, once found in the early 1930's but quickly reclaimed by the jungle. The findings made them able to map the extent of the Mayan civilization in about five days. Working on foot, it would, have taken at least 100 years.
With the help of the space-shuttle-carried radar, archeologists found
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
A．clauseB．slangC．idiomD．phrase
A．conveyB．acquireC．modifyD．prove
A．eitherB．bothC．neitherD．never
Valuing Childhood
The value of childhood is easily blurred (变得模糊不清) in today's world. Consider some recent developments: The child-murderers in the Jonesboro, Ark. schoolyard shooting case were convicted and sentenced. Two boys, 7 and 8, were charged in the murder of an 11-year-old girl in Chicago.
Children who commit horrible crimes appear to act of their own will. Yet, as legal proceedings in Jonesboro showed, the one boy who was able to address the court couldn't begin to explain his acts, though he tried to apologize. There may have been a motive m youthful jealousy (妒忌) and resentment. But a deeper question remains: Why did these boys and others in similar trouble apparently lack any inner, moral restraint？
That question echoes for the accused in Chicago, young as they are. They wanted the girl's bicycle, a selfish impulse common enough among kids.
Redemption (拯救) is a practical necessity. How can value be restored to young lives distorted by acts of violence？ The boys in Jonesboro and in Chicago will be confined in institutions for a relatively short time. Despite horror at what was done, children are not—cannot be m dealt with as adults, not if a people wants to consider itself civilized. That's why politicians' cries for adult treatment of youthful criminals ultimately miss the point.
But the moral void (真空) that invites violence has many sources. Family instability contributes. So does economic stress. That void, however, can be filled. The work starts with parents, who have to ask themselves whether they're doing enough to give their children a firm sense of right and wrong. Are they really monitoring their activities and their developing processes of thought？
Schools, too, have a role in building character. So do youth organizations. So do law enforcement agencies, which can do more to inform. the young about laws, their meaning, and their observance (遵守).
The goal, ultimately, is to allow all children a normal passage from childhood to adulthood (成年), so that tragic gaps in moral judgement are less likely to occur. The relative few who fill such gaps with acts of violence hint at many others who don't go that far, but who lack the moral foundations childhood should provide—and which progressive human society relies on.
The two boys in Chicago were
微信支付 
支付宝支付