六级快速阅读 常设题处(2)
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六级阅读——快速阅读
Lecture 2 读时留意常设题处
学会在略读时识别常设题处,以此来提高阅读效果,明确做题时应该重点留意何处。
如何在略读的过程中既了解文章的结构和主题,同时又能对常设题处进行重点留意,由此达到一举两得、一箭双雕的目的?要想回答这个问题,考生就需要了解并熟知快速阅读文章中哪些内容常被作为设题处。
一、人名、地名、组织机构等其他专有名词处
略读时需特别注意第一次出现的人名、地名、组织机构等专有名词处。
这些地方一般被作者用来证明或论述其主题,与主题息息相关,故受到出题人的青睐。
【真题示例1】(10-12)
【原文】By 1994 the World Bank had noticed that something big was happening. In a report entitled “Averting the Old Age Crisis”, it argued that pension arrangements in most countries were unsustainable.
【题目】
1. In its 1994 report, the World Bank argued that the current pension system in most countries could .
[A]not be sustained in the long term
[B]further accelerate the ageing process
[C]hardly halt the growth of population
[D]help tide over the current ageing crisis
【解析】选[A]。
就专有名词处设题。
根据题干中的report,the World Bank argued that,in most countries将本题出处定位到第1段末句。
题干中的the World Bank argued …countries 对应该句的it argued …countries(it指代上句提到的the World Bank),could not be sustained in the long term(从长远来看无法维持)是对该句unsustainable(不可持续的)的同义转述,故答案为[A]。
【真题示例2】(07-12)
【原文】On Jan.10, the European Union unveiled a plan to cut energy use across the continent by 20 percent by2020.
【题目】2. What does the European Union plan to do?
[A]Diversify energy supply.
[B]Cut energy consumption.
[C]Reduce carbon emissions.
[D]Raise production efficiency.
【解析】选[B]。
本题在第一次出现的机构名称处设题。
原文与答案之间只进行了简单的同义转述,即use同义转述成consumption。
二、并列、递进、转折处
并列、递进、转折处往往是作者想表达的重要内容。
考生在略读文章时,应重点留意出现and,or,but,however,even,not only…but also,not…but,on the other hand等表示并列、递进或转折关系的标志性词语的地方。
【真题示例】(10-06)
【原文】“But there had always been these things in the back of my mind questioning whether I really can be who I want. It was like a shadow, following me around saying you can only go so
far.”
【题目】
2. Before the election, Erin White had been haunted by the question of whether .
[A]she could obtain her MBA degree
[B]she could go as far as she wanted in life
[C]she was overshadowed by her white peers
[D]she was really an achiever as a student
【解析】选[B]。
就转折处设题。
根据题干中的question of whether将本题出处定位到第二段第二句。
题干中的Eric White had been haunted by(Eric White一直被…所困扰)对应该句的there had always been these things in the back of my mind(我的脑海里一直在想这些事情)。
[B]是对I really can be who I want的同义转述,故为答案。
三、条件、因果、比较等逻辑关系处
分析近几年的真题可以发现,条件、因果、比较等逻辑关系处经常设题。
故而在略读原文时要留意各种逻辑关系词。
表示明显逻辑关系的词或短语有:because, because of, for, since, as, thus, so, therefore, due to, owing to, as a result, result from, result in, cause, reason, result, consequence, consequently, in consequence, in order that, so…that, if, unless, as if (though), although等。
表示不太明显的逻辑关系的词或短语有:originate from, lead to, attribute to, derive from, base, basis, have sth to do with/have a bearing on(与…有关)等。
但需要注意的是,题干或选项可能会对原文中逻辑关系进行转换,因此在做题时要多方面考虑。
【真题示例1】(09-06)
【原文】As if keeping kids under lock and key and cell phone and careful watch is the right way torear kids. It s not. It s debilita ting (使虚弱)—for us and for them.
【题目】
2. Lenore Skenazy believes that keeping kids under careful watch .
[A]hinders their healthy growth
[B]adds too much to parents expenses
[C]shows traditional parental caution
[D]bucks the latest parenting trend
【解析】选[A]。
就as if句及特殊标点符号(破折号)处设题。
如果略读时能重点留意该处,那么可节约解题时间。
题干意为:好像只有严密地监管孩子,把他们时刻置于我们的电话和看护之下才是养育孩子的正确方法。
其实不然。
这是在耗费我们的精力,不利于孩子的健康成长。
[A]中的hinders…healthy growth(阻碍…的健康成长)是对文中debilitating 的同义转述,故为答案。
【真题示例2】(07-12)
【原文】The most advanced insulation follows the law of increasing returns: if you add enough, you can scale down or even eliminate heat ing and air conditioning equipment, lowering costs even before you start saving on utility bills.
【题目】
3. If you add enough insulation to your house, you may be able to .
[A]improve your work environment
[B]cut your utility bills by half
[C]get rid of air conditioners
[D]enjoy much better health
【解析】选[C]。
就条件句处设题。
略读时重点留意if句。
原文提到“如果你采取足够的保温措施,你就能减少或取消暖气和空调设备的使用,从而降低成本”,其中的eliminate 同义转述为[C]项中的get rid of,故答案为[C]。
四、举例或例举处
作者经常会使用举例或列举的方法来论证观点或说明事实,所以在略读时,要留意原文中出现as, such as, like, including, for example, for instance, take…as an example, First(ly)…, Second(ly)…, Third(ly)…, Finally…, On the one hand…, on the other hand…等表示举例或列举的标志性词语的地方。
【真题示例】(09-06)
【原文】Not exactly. New YorkCity, for instance, is safer than it s ever been; it s rank ed 136th in crime among all American cities.
【题目】
5. According to the author, New York City .
[A]ranks high in road accidents
[B]is much safer than before
[C]ranks low in child mortality rates
[D]is less dangerous than small cities
【解析】选[B]。
就举例处设题。
文中提到:纽约市比以往更安全。
much safer than before 是对文中safer than it s ever been的同义转述,故答案为[B]。
五、特殊标点符号处
文章中经常会对某人或某事物进行解释或补充说明,有时是通过破折号、冒号等特殊标点引出,有时是通过定语从句或同位语从句引出,因此在略读原文时要重点留意这些地方,答案往往就在特殊标点之后,或在定位从句或同位语从句中。
【真题示例】(10-12)
【原文】Governments in rich countries now accept that their pension and health care promises will soon become unaffordable, and many of them have embarked on reforms, but so far only timidly. That is not surprising: politicians with an eye on the next election will hardly rush to introduce unpopular measures that may not bear fruit for years, perhaps decades.
【题目】
3. One reason why pension and health care reforms are slow in coming is that .
[A]nobody is willing to sacrifice their own interests to tackle the problem
[B]most people are against measures that will not bear fruit immediately
[C]the proposed reforms will affect too many people s interests
[D]politicians are afraid of losing votes in the next election
【解析】选[D]。
就解释说明处设题。
根据题干中的pension and health care reforms将本题出处定位到第四段第二句。
该句and后提到,很多政府已经开始了改革,但目前为止仍过于谨慎,题干中的pension…coming与此对应。
下句提到这(即上句所说的养老和医疗改革过于谨慎)并不令人惊讶,冒号后解释原因:关注下一届选举的政治家们几乎不会迅速地实施几年甚至是十几年可能都看不到结果的不受欢迎的措施,[D]“政治家们担心下次选举时失去选票”是对该原因的同义转述,故为答案。
六、数字信息处
通过对历年真题的研究可以看出,时间、比例、人数、价格等数字信息处是快速阅读多项选择题最常见的设题处之一,答案一般都是原文中数字的再现或需要进行简单运算得出,其
干扰项多为文中出现的数字。
所以考生在略读的过程中要注意在数字信息处多停留几秒,以把握重点信息。
【真题示例】(07-12)
【原文】Forty percent of that powers old fashioned incandescent light bulbs—a 19th Century technology that wastes most of the power it consumes on unwanted heat.
【题目】
4. How much of the power consumed by incandescent bulbs is converted into light?
[A] A small of portion.[B]Some 40 percent.
[C]Almost half. [D]75 to 80 percent.
【解析】选[A]。
就数字信息处设题。
本题是问incandescent bulbs(白炽灯泡)消耗的电力中有多少被转化成光能。
文中说incandescent light bulbs所使用的技术将大部分电力都浪费在产生无用的热能上,由此可推知它所消耗的电力中只有a small of portion转化成光能。
七、段落主题处
在略读原文时,要特别留意那些在段首或段尾能概括或总结一段或几段的句子或句群。
由于该句或句群具有高度概括性,故受到出题人的青睐。
【真题示例】(07-12)
【原文】Forget the old idea that conserving energy is a form of self denial —riding bicycles, dimming the lights, and taking fewer showers. These days conser vation is all about efficiency: getting the same —or better —results from just a fraction of the energy.
【题目】
1. What is said to be the best way to conserve energy nowadays?
[A]Raising efficiency.
[B]Cutting unnecessary costs.
[C]Finding alternative resources.
[D]Sacrificing some personal comforts.
【解析】选[A]。
就段落主题处设题。
本题是问目前保护能源最好的方式是什么。
本段第二句为主题句:现在保护能源都与效率有关,结合冒号后面对其的解释可知,目前保护能源最好的方式是raising efficiency(提高效率)。
45分钟练习
Passage 1
题材词数做题时间教育改革1334词15分钟Beating the Bubble Test Here are some of the things kids at Garfield/Franklin elementary in Muscatine, Iowa, no longer do: eagle watch on the Mississippi River, go on field trips to the University of Iowa s Museum of Natural History and have two daily recesses. A sensible bargain has been struck: literacy first, canoe trips later. But there are more substantive losses too. Creative writing, social studies and computer work have all become occasional indulgences. Now that the standardized fill in the bubble test is the foundation upon which public schools rest—now that a federal law called No Child Left Behind mandates that kids as young as 9 meet benchmarks in reading and math or jeopardize their schoolsreputation—there is little time for anything else.Franklin is one of the new law s success stories. After landing on the Dreaded Schools in Need of Improvement list two years ago, the students and staff clawed their way off it. The percentage of fourth graders who passed the reading test rose from 58% to 74%; in math, proficiency went from 58% to 86%. Last year Franklin was removed from “the bad list,”as one child calls it. Through rote drills, one on one test talks and rigorous analysis of students weaknesses, Franklin has become a reluctant
model for the rest of the nation. It has also become a very different place. The kids are better readers, mathematicians and test takers. But while Democratic presidential candidates have been lambasting(痛骂) the law s funding levels, Franklin s teachers talk of other things. They bemoan a loss of spontaneity, breadth and play—problems money won t fix. The trade off may be worth it, but it is important to acknowledge the costs. This is the story of an elementary school—once an uneven patchwork of lessons and projects—that has been rationalized. Franklin began reforming itself before President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind in January 2002. The school, two 1950s era brick buildings in this old Mississippi River town on the eastern edge of Iowa, had been on a lower profile statewide watch list because of below average scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Then it was grandfathered onto the list of schools that failed under the new federal criteria. That public branding, along with the threat of new sanctions, layered on the anxiety. “When Franklin was listed in the Des Moines (Iowa) Register as a failed school, it became a slap in the face,”says fourth grade teacher Randy Naber. A whole string of embarrassments followed. The school, which runs from pre K through fifth grade, had to tell parents that their children had the right to transfer elsewhere. Without improvement, Franklin would have had to offer free tutoring and bring in outside experts. After that, it could have been taken over by the state and the entire staff replaced.Teachers in Muscatine had become accustomed to low scores. About 40% of Franklin s students are from Hispanic families in which English is often not the main language spoken at home, and 66% of the school qualifies for free or subsidized lunches. Franklin is in the South End, a worn section of Muscatine where the smell wafts over from a factory that makes Heinz purple, green and “mystery”ketchup. Most of the parents work in local factories or service jobs. “We had a long term problem here,”says Jane Evans, curriculum director for the district. “The school s culture was, ‘Our kids are different. They can t do it. ”But partly out of fear and mostly out of pride, the teachers and students haltingly remodeled their school for the era of testing. Franklin came under a sort of efficiency audit more common to FORTUNE 500 companies. Reading in particular became a science. Teachers read much more nonfiction to kids, since that is a major focus of the test. Students began using computerized reading programs that administered regular quizzes. Just before February testing, kids on the borderline were pulled aside for daily test taking strategy sessions. All children were assigned adult mentors(导师), drawing on everyone from the principal to a custodian (who turned out to be among the best mentors at the school) to offer yearlong support, including test prep talks. Teachers asked kids as young as 7 to sign forms to accept the challenge of raising their scores and reminded them to drink juice instead of soda to keep their stamina(精力) up on test mornings. Teachers, meanwhile, added three to four hours to their workweeks, including two additional hours of training. The curriculum was standardized and shaped around the testing schedule. “We were amazed when we aligned our math curriculum—amazed at the things we weren t teaching prior to the test,”says Jan Collinson, Franklin s principal since 2002. She also went after the no show students. After three absences, parents began receiving letters. For kids with perfect attendance, there were parties every six weeks, featuring praise, cookies and the occasional magician.Watching his fourth graders take the test last year, Naber paced the aisles like a nervous parent. “When a wrong answer was put down, I just felt this tightening in my body, and I d just walk away and think, ‘Oh, no! ”he remembers. A few weeks later, the test results came in, and the teachers happily swarmed Collinson s office to see the improved scores. But the triumph was
complicated. “There are parts of No Child Left Behind that are positive and good,”says Naber, “but there s a huge portion that s horrible.”The casualties include social studies, creative writing and teacher autonomy. “They re not learning civics, history, geography—a lot of essential skills that they re going to need to be good democratic citizens,”says fifth grade teacher Shane Williams. The fourth grade used to spend a year on states history, geography and capitals. They now cover the topic in six weeks. And while Williams used to ask his class to do 20 minutes of creative or expository writing a day, he now holds off until after February. “Their writing skills have certainly deteriorated,”he says.At lunch one day in January, five fourth grade girls merrily bantered in the language of testing. They rattled off their old scores and the percentiles they need to reach next time. “A lot of people feel stress,”says Molli Lippelgoes, 9, “but if you just put your mind to it, it s not that hard. If we can do our best, we can put our school up a lot higher.”In what some educators see as a hopeful sign of flexibility, the U.S. Department of Education announced last week that the scores of immigrant kids in their first year at a U.S. school no longer must be counted. The No Child law also allows some of Franklin s learning disabled kids to take the test with special accommodations like extra time. But it permits only 1% of the district s kids to take an alternate test even though 14% are special ed. Children at the upper margin may also suffer. Activities for the gifted and talented have not been cut, but high achieving kids aren t grouped in accelerated clusters in regular classes anymore. They are spread out so they can help the lower scoring students.Like all schools, Franklin must hit 100% proficiency by the 2013 14 school year. And each mandated improvement in between is based on comparing different classes, not on watching how the same students develop over time. “Our biggest fear is, how do we sustain the growth? Can we jump up to the next level?
I m not sure,”says Muscatine superintendent Tom Williams.
1. What happened in Franklin elementary according to the first two paragraphs?
[A]It turned teaching focus to preparing for tests.
[B]The kids there were punished for studying bad.
[C]The No Child Left Behind law helped it off “the bad list”.
[D]The teachers reformed the curriculum.
2. What do Franklin s teachers think of the law called No Child Left Behind?
[A]It s great to improve all the students scores.
[B]It needs more funding to work well.
[C]It brings great loss to students.
[D]It s the savior of Franklin elementary.
3. After Franklin was listed in the Des Moines Register as a failed school, .
[A]its students were informed to be able to change school
[B]it had to offer free tutoring and bring in experts
[C]the entire staff were replaced by the state
[D]its budget was cut a lot ever since
4. Franklin s students low average scores attributed to .
[A]the loose disciplines
[B]the low teaching quality
[C]the special students
[D]the unreasonable curriculum
5. During the process of remodeling Franklin, .
[A]kids did reading limited to science
[B]kids used computers to make programs
[C]all kids joined test taking strategy sessions
[D]all kids were under the help of mentors
6. Why was Franklin s triumph complicated according to Naber?
[A]The triumph won t last long.
[B]No Child Left Behind didn t work.
[C]The cost of the triumph was huge.
[D]It was hard for teachers and kids.
7. How is the improvement measured according to the last paragraph?
[A]It s based on how much the same students develop over time.
[B]It s based on the comparison among different classes.
[C]It s based on whether the average score of a school increases.
[D]It s based on how many high achieving kids a school adds
8. Mainly out of pride, teachers and students of Franklin began to reform on their school .
9. According to Shane Williams, many required for a qualified citizen are ignored by the new law.
10. The No Child Left Behind law allows 1% of the district s kids which Franklin is in to take tests with .
8. 注意reform是对原文的同义转述。
9. 根据人名快速定位。
10. 根据数字快速定位。
Passage 2
题材词数做题时间媒体现象1127词15分钟Children s TV Programs“Broaden their minds,”says a new advertisement for BSkyB, a satellite TV company in Britain, which hopes that appealing to parents this Christmas will help sell its packages of over 200 channels, 21 of which are devoted to children. There has never been so much television for kids. Part of the reason is that serving the very young is an especially beneficial and fast growing business for Disney, Viacom and Time Warner, three big media companies. Equally, children s TV has never been so controversial. Parents increasingly fear that, far from broadening their darlings horizons, watching television may lead to attention deficit disorder and obesity.The great thing about children s TV from a money making point of view is that it generates three kinds of income. Like adult programming, there is advertising revenue, and pay television operators pay fees. But children s TV offers the extra possibility of riches from merchandizing. Thanks to “SpongeBob SquarePants”, for instance, a show about a sponge at the bottom of the ocean, Nickelodeon, a division of Viacom, finds itself in the enviable position of earning a fortune from a TV show and now a movie which are themselves in effect advertisements for a hugely profitable range of consumer st year Nickelodeon s consumer products division brought in sales of $3 billion, up by one fifth from 2002 —by far the fastest growing bit of Viacom, which also has a movie studio, a broadcast network and a radio business. This summer, analysts at a presentation by Time Warner, the world s biggest media firm, were surprised to discover that its Cartoon Network had made more money in 2003 than CNN, its cable news business. Eyeing their success, this month the BBC said that it is thinking launching new international pay TV channels for children.Children in developed countries have more access to money than ever before.
Children used to be (supposedly) seen, but not heard. Parents have become less strict and children have become part of their lifestyle image, meaning they are more likely to spend money on them, says Ynon Kreiz, former boss of Fox Kids Europe (now owned by Disney). Advertisers know that children are a way to reach adults, too. “You d be amazed how much influence a 10 or 11 year old boy has on buying the family car,”says Jason Maltby of MindShare, WPP s media buying unit.Strategically, too, children s TV has advantages over the adult sort. While grown up TV is increasingly having to compete for attention with video games, the Internet and mobile phones, children aged eight and under are still a fairly captive audience for television. And making children s programs is an excellent way to exploit international markets. Animation and simple plots travel far better than adult programs, and localizing it with voice overs is cheap. Hollywood made adult shows have become less popular in Europe and elsewhere, because viewers want local programs. No such shift has occurred in the international market for children s programming. Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network will continue to dominate.A headache for the business, on the other hand, is “age compression”: kids are growing up faster than they used to. When “Sesame Street”started 35 years ago it was watched by five and six year olds. Now three and four year olds make up most of its audience. Older children increasingly prefer grownup reality television, MTV (a music channel also owned by Viacom), and video games.The response from programmers, says Michael wolf, head of McKinsey s global media and entertainment practice, has been to follow children as they grow up faster, with fashionable programs that children “get”but their parents don t necessarily. Nickelodeon, for instance, regards children, not their parents, as the customer. Its programming is often mildly subversive (颠覆性的), says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television (really) at Syracuse University. Disney, on the other hand, continues to make children s shows that embrace the whole family, not just for kids as independent agents. “It s a big brand difference between us and Nickelodeon,”says Rich Ross, head of the Disney Channel Worldwide, “you can empower kids without disempowering families.” That approach is a big advantage, he says, as the Disney Channel expands overseas — this month it will launch in India. Children in America and Britain think of themselves as independent, but in Latin America, continental Europe and Asia, says Mr.Ross, families expect to be more involved in their lives.Another response to age compression has been to label children s TV more precisely. That way, a six year old, say, gets programming designed specifically for a six year old and does not have to make do with stuff that four year olds like too. People in the children s TV business expect the market to fragment still further.As older children move on sooner from kids television, programmers are aiming still younger. Babies, apparently, are currently badly underserved by the media industry. An American mother spotted the gap in the market: Julie Clark, a new ageish high school art and English teacher from the suburbs of Denver, started making videos set to classic for the new baby. First, all her friends wanted them too. Then she made a deal with a toy store to sell her “Baby Einstein”products. Finally, Disney spotted her success, bought her company and expanded its turnover from $25m to $165m this year. Mr. Kreiz, the former Fox Kids executive, is considering launching another suite of media products for babies and preschoolers next year. He may begin with a series of DVDs and videos, and later, perhaps, start a new TV channel for babies. His aim is to make shows that are more educational than Baby Einstein.As the quantity of children s TV has grown, so have parental worries about it, especially in America and Britain. Baby Einstein is jokingly referred to as “baby crack”: it
entertains babies and stops them crying, but is it safe at such a formative stage? An article this year in Pediatrics, a journal, said that watching TV increases the risk of attention problems. Food adverts on TV are also being blamed for obesity. In Britain, says one TV executive, the government is leaning towards banning food ads at certain times of the day.That would hurt revenues, so programmers are taking the threat seriously. In America, Nickelodeon pulled itself off the air for three hours in October as a way to get its viewers to go outside and play. All three big firms are now making shows that promote physical activity. But the rapid growth of programming for children is likely to continue. However much parents worry about its effects, they depend on TV to give them a break from managing their kids. And at least SpnogeBob SquarePants, Phil Diffy from Disney s “Phil of the Future”and Cartoon Network s Atomic Betty are more innocent companions for their children than the sexy, violent characters that adults are addicted to.
1. BSkyB wants to use an advertisement to.
[A]attract parents to buy its packages
[B]broaden the children s minds
[C]make the children s life more colorful
[D]make it known by more people
2. In terms of money making, children s TV is different from adult programming in the aspect that .
[A]it gets most of its revenue from advertising
[B]it may get extra income from merchandising
[C]it can get fees form the pay television operators
[D]it can get huge profits form the pay TV channels
3. The sales of the consumer products department of Nickelodeon in 2002 were .
[A]$2.5 billion[B]$0.6 billion
[C]$3.6 billion[D]$2.4 billion
4. What is one advantage of making children s programs?
[A]It doesn t need to compete with other media.
[B]It has a stable international market.
[C]It has a large faithful audience.
[D]The costs of localizing it are low to some extent.
5. What s the big problem of children s programming business?
[A]Lack of attraction. [B]Severe competition.
[C]Great controversy.[D]Age compression.
6. What feature do the children s shows made by Disney have?
[A]They regard children as their target customers.
[B]They are divided precisely according to children s age.
[C]They take the whole family as their target customers.
[D]They are mainly the educational programs.
7. What can we know about the “Baby Einstein”?
[A]It is a kind of toys for babies.
[B]It was invented originally by Disney.
[C]It once was popular with teachers.
[D]It is a kind of videos for new babies.
8. Mr. Kreiz aims to launch more educational programes for .
9. Parents worry that watching TV may cause children to suffer .长句的分析。
4. 线索词迅速定位。
5. 注意同义转述。
7. 引号内容迅速定位。
8. 人名快速定位。
9. 注意答案要全面。
多看几行。
10. Programming for children is likely to because parents need it to babysit their kids for some time.10. 原文主语与题干不同,注意答案别照搬原文。
Passage 3
题材词数做题时间自然资源1232词15分钟Who will own deep sea life?Ever since human s early ancestors first peeled shellfish along the southern coast of France 300,000 years ago, food has been the measure of the bounty (物产) of the sea. These days, however, the notion of that bounty is expanding. Increasingly, it includes genetic building blocks contained in unique deep sea creatures that thrive under conditions once thought impossible for sustaining life.But as biotech companies begin to eye these organisms as a potential source of raw material for medicines and other products, calls are emerging for rules of the road to help ensure that the benefits of deep sea gene prospecting are shared globally. Admittedly, most biotech and pharmaceutical companies are not yet rushing to hydrothermal (热液的) vents, sea mounts, and other unique habitats to dig up organisms and figure out if they can be useful. The vast majority of marine bio prospecting these days is done in shallower waters within a country s 200 mile limit, notes Sam Johnston, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies of United Nations University, based in Japan.Yet as marine scientists learn more about deep sea habitats and the variety of organisms that live there, commercial interest is likely to grow. Moving now on some sort of regulatory scheme is a chance to get ahead of the curve, he says. And it would provide an antidote (解毒剂) to regulatory uncertainty, which is preventing some companies and research groups from pursuing deep sea bio prospecting more vigorously. “We have a window of opportunity,”says Dr. Johnston, who coauthored a UN report on the issue that was released last week. “The issues are much easier to deal with before com mercial interests become heavily vested (既得的) in the hunt for deep sea genetic material.”The issue carries echoes of debates over mining minerals, such as manganese (a kind of mineral), in the deep ocean, which formed part of the background for the international Law of the Sea Treaty in 1982.
Costly ventureYet today, manganese remains on the seafloor. In the push to negotiate the treaty “people forgot the economics of it. It s unbelievably expensive to do deep sea mining,”says Andy Solow, director of the Marine Policy Center at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass. “That is also true of bio prospecting in the deep ocean —it s expensive.”He also says, “The real prospects for bio prospecting in the deep oceans, especially in the near and medium term, are fairly low”.But it differs from mining in significant ways. If the targets are deep sea bacteria, for example, they can be cultured and preserved once they ve been hauled to the surface. Exploiting the genetic information they contain doesn t require a continuous presence on the seafloor.Oceans cover 70 percent of the planet s surface at an average depth of slightly more than two miles. Little wonder that the oceans contain the majority of Earth s biodiversity. Thus the appeal of the deep can be powerful, even for scientists whose main interest is in understanding how these creatures and their ecosystems work. Their efforts can yield insights into the difficulties associated with bio prospecting on the seafloor.Doug Bartlett, for example, focuses his work on bacteria from ocean。