GRE写作科技类

1No.1 孙远的工具箱（科技类）科技类1 计算机和教育Computers enhance a student ’s learning experience in many ways. First of all, the computer has the ability to accommodate individual difference in learning speed because the user (the student) is the one who controls the pace of the lessons. In addition, the learner does not have to be afraid of reprisal or humiliation when making errors. A third advantage of computer assisted instruction is that a computer can give a student immediate feed back .Computer can make the teacher ’s job easier. One advantage lies in the preparation of instructional materials . In addition, the computer offers numerous advantages to teachers in managing their classrooms . Finally, computer can help teachers keep student records and chart student progress , thereby cutting down on time-consuming paperwork .2. 计算机与工作环境In an atmosphere of computer monitoring, inept workstations, inflexible pacing, and nerve-wracking anxiety, workman’s com pensation claims based on job stress have more than doubled since 1980, and now account for approximately 15 percent of all occupational disease claims . According to estimates by the OTA, stress-related illness costs business, between $50 and 75$ billion per year.3. 太阳能What’s making solar energy so hot? For one thing, the technology is getting better and cheaper . The price of the photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight to electricity has fallen sharply from $500 a watt in the 1960s to about $4 today. Companies are now rushing to break the $2 barrier. Texas Instruments and Southern California Edison have joined forces to produce flexible solar panels from inexpensive low-grade silicon. The innovative technology will allow the panels to be integrated into car and building design and, even more important; will crash the price to $2.50 a watt.4. 微型机器In the past, one of the biggest disadvantages of machines has been their inability to work on a micro (or tiny) scale. For example, doctors did not have devices allowing them to go inside the human body to identify health problems to perform delicate surgery . Repair crew did not have a way of identifying broken pipes located deep within ahigh-rise apartment building. However, that’s about to change. Advances in c omputers and biophysics have started a micro miniature revolution that’s allowing scientists to envision and in some cases actually build microscopic machines. These devices promise to radically change the way we live and work.5. 环境压力New technologies often cause new forms of pollution and environmental stress. Pollution may be defined as the addition to the environment of agents that are potentially damaging to the welfare of humans or other organisms. Environmental stress is a more general term that refers to effects of society on the natural environment. Pollution is the most common form of environmental stress, but it is not the only one.2One example of environmental stress resulting from technology is the surprising finding that winter fish killed in Wisconsin lakes were caused by snowmobiles. Heavy snowmobiles on lakes compact the snow, thereby reducing the amount of sunlight filtering through the ice and interfering with photosynthesis by aquatic plants . As the plant life dies, its decomposition further reduces the amount of oxygen in the water . The fish then die of asphyxiation. In sum, although scientific discoveries and technological advances have produced tremendous improvements in the quality of human life, they have often had negative consequences as well. The risk of cancer caused by the inhalation of asbestos particles, the possibility of large-scale industrial accidents, the ethical issues raised by the use of life-prolong technologies, and the ever-present danger of nuclear holocaust are as much a part of the modern era as space travel, miracle drugs, and computers that can operate whole factories. Although technology is not “out of control’, there is clearly a need for improved procedures for anticipating and preventing the negative consequences of new technologies.6. 高科技和就业The term high technology is associated with computers, advanced electronics, genetic engineering, and other frontiers of technological change. The term high technology implies:An extensive degree of technological sophistication embodied in a productA rapid rate of employment growth associated with an innovative product. A large research and development effort associated with production.One implication of this definition is that it includes job-creating process like research and development as well as technologies like computers, which also have created new growth in employment.Early machine technologies tended to replace human labor power, but high technology tends to reduce the need for human brainpower. Employment in occupations like drafting and industrial drawing in engineering and architecture, for example, is threatened by the accelerating use of computer design and graphics programs.7. 科技的影响It should be noted that the effects of new technologies are not always positive. The phrase technological dualism is sometimes used to refer to the fact that technological changes often have both positive and negative effects. The introduction of diesel locomotives , for example, greatly increase the efficiency of railroad operations, but it is also led to decline and eventual abandonment of railroad towns whose economies were based on the servicing of steam locomotives. Another example is the automation of industrial production . Automation has greatly improved manufacturing process in many industries. It has increased the safety of certain production tasks and led toimproved product quality in many cases. But it has also replaced thousands of manual workers with machines, and significant numbers of those workers find themselves unemployed and lacking the skills required by the high-tech occupations of postindustrial society.Technology is dangerous to the real world. (In movie and science fiction) Events like the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear-power plant in 1979; the toxic gas leak that killed more than 2,000 people in Bhopal, India , in 1984; and the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant in the Soviet Union in 1986 seem to indicate human beings cannot control technologies they have created.The result of our dependence on the benefits of complex technologies is an increasingly complex set oforganizations and procedures for putting those technologies to work. This requires more human effort and skill,3and the chances of error and breakdown are greater. The point is not that technology is out of control but that often there is lag between the introductions of new technologies and the mature control over them .8. 科技和社会变化Inventions affect the size of populations, which in turn influences the course of history. Some inventions affect population directly: Improvements in sanitation , the development of cured for fatal illnesses , and more effective contraceptive techniques are examples. Some inventions can also have indirect effects on population: techniques that improve crop yields or permit long-term storage of food surpluses make it possible to support a largerpopulation with a given amount of farmland. And improvements in military technology have had dramatic effects on the conduct of war and hence on population size.9．对能量的要求Throughout human history a central aspect of technological change has been the quest for new sources of energy to meet the needs of growing populations. That quest has given rise to a succession of energy technologies, each more sophisticated than the last. (Animal power---steam-driven machines---internal-combustion engine---nuclear energy---fusion reaction, in which hydrogen atoms are fused into helium.)Many people believe that societies can meet their growing energy needs by continually investing in more sophisticated technologies. This approach has led to the development of huge nuclear-power plants to replace oil-fueled generators, and it is widely hoped that investment in fusion, an even more complex technology, will eliminate the dangers posed by nuclear power.The trend toward greater use of nuclear power to generate electricity has become a major social and political issue. Underlying the conflict over the safety of nuclear-power plants is the issue of control.10. 日常生活中的科技The place of technology in modern societies is a subject of continuing controversy. Key issues include not only the impact of technology on daily life but also the need to control the development and uses of technological innovations so that they benefit all sectors of society.11. 科技和社会: 医学科技Throughout most of human history, limitations on food production, together with lack of medical knowledge, have placed limits on the size of populations. Dreadful diseases like the bubonic plague have actually reducedpopulations. In England the plague, known as the Black Death , was responsible for a drastic drop in the population in 1348 and for the lack of population growth in the seventeenth century. In 1625 more than 35,000 residents of London died of the plague. Smallpox and dysentery have had similar, though less dramatic, effects.As medical science progressed toward greater understanding of the nature of disease and its prevention, new public-health and maternal-care practices contributed to rapid population growth. In the second half of the nineteenth century, such discoveries as antiseptics and anesthesia made possible other life-prolonging medical treatments.12. 科技的影响The case of medical technology illustrates once again that technology can be both a blessing and a curse. In recent decades we have become increasingly aware that the problems of human life cannot always be solved bytechnological means. The “technological fix” can have adverse consequences. In the case of medical technology,4vital ethical issues must be addresses. Other technologies, such as nuclear power and chemical plants, can directly threaten human life. As Charles Perrow writes, “Human -made catastrophes appear to have increased withindustrialization as we built devices that could not crash, sink, and burn or explode.” Perrow also points out that the increasing complexity of modern technology has led to a new kind of catastrophe: the failure of whole systems (i.e., activities and organizational networks as well as apparatus), as in the case of the Three Mile Island accident and the Challenger disaster .13 学院The work of scientists must be paid for, and the more their research is “pure” (in that it has no apparent uses that generate profits), the more it must be supported by other institutions like government or industry. This dependence of science on other institutions continually subjects scientists to pressure to make their work relevant to the needs of business or military.14. 科学的标准Universalism. One of the basic norms of scientific institutions universalism: The truth of scientific knowledge must be determined by the impersonal criteria of the scientific method, not by criteria related to race, nationality, religion, social class, or political ideology.Consider the case of the Russian geneticist Trofim D. Lysenko, who on the basis of some extremely unscientific research on plant genetics, claimed that acquired characteristics of plants could be inherited by the next generation. This claim seems to offer hope for improvement of the Soviet Union’s faltering agricultural production. It also fit well with Soviet ideology, which held that better human beings could be created through adherence to revolution. To Stalin and his advisers, science seemed to have proved the value of the Soviet culture and social system. Lysenko was granted a virtual dictatorship over biological research in the Soviet Union, and hundreds of Geneticists lost their jobs. Lysenko was deposed during the Khrushchev era, but the damage done to Soviet agriculture and biological research in the name of ideology lasted many years longer.Common ownership. Another norm of science is common ownership of scientific findings. Those findings are a result of collaboration and hence are not the property of any individual , although in some cases they may bear the name of the person who first published th em, as in “Darwin’s theory of evolution” or “Einstein’s theory of relativity”. Secrecy is out of place in science.Disinterestedness. A further norm of scientific institutions is disinterestedness. The scientist does not allow the desire for personal gain to influence the reporting and evaluation of results; fraud and irresponsible claims are outlawed. In fact, more than most other activities, scientific research is subject to the scrutiny of others. This is part of the nature of that research, which involves the search for results that can be verified; in other words, science is, in a sense, self-policing. The norm of disinterestedness does not imply that scientists cannot hope to profit from their findings, and there are many instances in which scientists have held lucrative patents for their discoveries. But it does imply that related norms of scientific research, such as unbiased observation and thoroughness inreporting findings, must take precedence over any selfish motives. (It appeared that a new era of------- might be on the horizon)15. 现代社会中的科技We noted earlier that a significant aspect of modern science is its contribution to the rapid pace of technological change. The technologies produced by scientific research are applied to all aspects human life and hence are a major force in shaping and changing other institutions in addition to scientific institutions themselves. An exampleis the impact of technological change on the institutions of mass communication. The advent of radio and thentelevision dramatically changed the ways in which social and cultural values are transmitted to various groups insociety.The industrial revolution completely changed the organization of economic institutions and also had significanteffects on other institutions, such as the family. Likewise, the internal-combustion engine, which made possible the development of the automobile, has completely transformed the ecology of North America. On the other hand,some technological changes are limited to modifications in the apparatus or technical skills needed for a particulartask (the surgical stapler is an example) and do not affect large numbers of people or have major social impacts.16 伽利略和宗教审判The first person to use a telescope to study the skies was Galileo Galilee, an Italian mathematician who lived from1564 to 1642. His observations convinced him that the earth revolved around the sun. Up to that time it had beentaken for granted that the earth was the center of the universe, and this belief was strongly entrenched in thedoctrines of the Catholic Church Galileo’s view were so radical that he was tried by the Institution, ordered todeny what he knew to be the truth, and forced to spend the last eight years of his life under house arrested.Today scientists are studying subatomic particles called quarks. They have proposed that dinosaurs had feathers rather than scales, and they have suggested that the universe began with abig bang and that stars eventually become black holes. They have discovered the process by whichthe continents were formed and the structure of human genes in none of these cases have thefindings been challenged by “the authorities,” religious or others. Rather, they have been judgedby the standards of scientific investigation, one of the functions of the institution that we call science.5。