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【篇一】2020年上半年英語四級考試閱讀理解
A pile of wood
一堆木頭
An old material may find a new use in batteries
一種古老的原材料可能會在電池上發(fā)揮它的新用途。
ON A list of cutting-edge materials for high-tech applications, you might not expect to see wood near the top.
在一個應(yīng)用于高科技的尖端材料目錄上，看到木材會名列前茅，你可能不會想到。
But an experiment by Teng Li and Liangbing Hu of the University of Maryland may soon put it there.
但是，由馬里蘭大學(xué)的李騰和胡良冰所做的一個實驗可能會產(chǎn)生這種意外情況。
For Dr Li and Dr Hu, writing in Nano Letters, have just described how wood might be used to make one class of batteries cheaper by permitting the lithium now employed in them to be replaced with sodium.
根據(jù)納米快報的報道，李博士和胡博士已經(jīng)詳細說明了，在得到允許的情況下，用鈉取代現(xiàn)在制造電池的鋰。再用木材制造某一類電池可能會降低成本。
As any high-school chemist knows, lithium and sodium are chemically similar.
任何一個高中的化學(xué)家都知道，鋰和鈉的化學(xué)性質(zhì)很相似。
Sodium ions are, however, five times the size of lithium ions.
然而，鈉離子—在缺少一個電子的前提下，鈉原子帶正電—是鋰離子的五倍大小。
That matters because a battery works by shuttling ions between its anode and its cathode.
這一點很關(guān)鍵，因為電池就是通過穿梭于它的陰極和陽極之間的離子來工作的。
The bigger the ion, the more damage this shuttling causes—and the shorter, in consequence, is the battery's life.
離子越大，它的穿梭難度就越大—因此，電池的工作壽命就越短。
Hitherto, that has ruled sodium out as a plausible ingredient of batteries.
到目前為止，作為電池的合理組成部分，鈉早已被排除在外。
But engineers would still like to devise a commercially viable sodium battery, because sodium is much more abundant than lithium.
但是，從商業(yè)角度來講，鈉資源遠比鋰資源豐富，所以工程師們?nèi)耘f希望能夠發(fā)明一種能夠使用的鈉電池。
Dr Li and Dr Hu wondered if the problem of electrode damage might be ameliorated by using a more pliant material for the frames on which the electrodes are suspended.
李博士和胡博士想弄清楚，如果使用一種構(gòu)成電池框架的，更柔韌的材料—以達到延緩電極的目的，這樣是否可以改善有關(guān)電極損壞方面的問題。
These frames, which also transmit current to and from the electrodes, are normally made of metal, and are therefore rigid.
這些電池的組成框架也起著在電極之間傳輸電流的作用，它們通常是由金屬材料制成，因此硬度很高。
But the two researchers reckoned that suitably treated wood could do the job of conduction equally well while providing more yielding support for an electrode that was continually expanding and contracting as ions moved in and out of it.
但是兩位研究者認為，對木材進行適當(dāng)?shù)奶幚砗螅静囊材芡瑯悠鸬竭@種傳導(dǎo)的作用，同時，當(dāng)離子從電極間穿梭時，還能夠更好地增加電極的柔韌性，使之能夠持續(xù)地擴張收縮。
To test this idea, they used slivers of wood from yellow pines.
為了測試這種想法，他們從黃松樹干上取了些木條子。
First, they coated these with carbon nanotubes, to improve their conductivity.
首先，他們在這些木條子外面包上了碳納米，以提高它們的導(dǎo)電性。
Then they applied a film of tin to each sliver.
然后，在每個木條子上面涂上了薄薄的錫。
This done, they immersed the slivers in an electrolyte containing sodium ions and put the resulting battery through 400 cycles of discharging and recharging.
完成這些后，研究人員把木條浸在一種含有鈉離子的電解液里，對這種特殊的“電池”進行了四百次的循環(huán)充放電。
As a control, they built similar batteries using slivers of copper.
為了便于比較，他們用銅條做成了類似的電池。
The wooden battery was not perfect.
這個木電池并不成功。
It's initial capacity was 339 milliamp hours per gram, but that fell to 145 mAH/g over the course of the 400 cycles.
它的初始容量是339毫安/每小時，但是經(jīng)過400次不停地充放電后，降到了145毫安時/克。
This, however, was not bad for a prototype, and far better than the copper-framed batteries managed.
然而，對于一個電池雛形來說，結(jié)果并不算壞，而且這個結(jié)果遠比那個銅電池好得多。
They had an initial capacity of 50 mAH/g.
銅電池的初始容量是50毫安時/克。
That fell to 22 mAH/g after just 100 cycles.
然而僅僅在100次不停地充放電后，就減小到了22毫安時/克。
Wood, then, seems a plausible candidate for battery frames.
所以，木村似乎是電池架構(gòu)的合理備用材料。
Obviously you are not going to see wooden-framed batteries in your phone or laptop anytime soon.
很明顯，人們要想在自己的手機或筆記本電腦中看到這種木材架構(gòu)的電池，要很久以后了。
But that was never the plan for Dr Li and Dr Hu.
但是，李博士和胡博士的計劃可不是這樣的。
What their work might lead to is giant sodium-ion batteries for the overnight storage of electricity from solar power stations.
他們的研究結(jié)果可能會產(chǎn)生一種巨型鈉電池，用來儲存隔夜的太陽能發(fā)電站的電流。
Cheap storage is the missing part of the solar-energy jigsaw—for solar cells themselves are now cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels, in sunny climes at least.
便宜的太陽能儲存是完善太陽能行業(yè)目前所急需的—因為與化石燃料相比，現(xiàn)在的太陽能電池已經(jīng)很便宜了，至少在陽光明媚的天氣是這樣的。
The search for solutions to the solar-energy problem has concentrated on making man-made materials more and more sophisticated.
解決太陽能能源的研究一直專注于制造越來越復(fù)雜的人工材料。
It would be a delicious irony if the jigsaw was completed not by one of these snazzy new substances but by one of the oldest materials around.
如果太陽能行業(yè)這個拼圖的完美不是來自于這些時尚的新材料，而來源于人們周圍一種最古老的材料，那將會是一個極大的諷刺。
【篇二】2020年上半年英語四級考試閱讀理解
The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun
反對公司管理像學(xué)校改革的運動已經(jīng)開始
THE INTERNSHIP, a film about two middle-aged no-hopers who land work experience at Google, is a dire offering even by the standards of Hollywood summer comedies.
《挨踢實習(xí)生》是一部關(guān)于兩個有工作經(jīng)驗沒有希望轉(zhuǎn)正的中年人在谷歌的故事，即使是按好萊塢夏天喜劇的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，這也是一部作品。
But it does get one thing right: that it is rather absurd for a technology firm to provide slides for staff to play on, and to let them wear silly propeller-hats.
但有一件事情是對的：一家科技公司為員工提供幻燈片演講是相當(dāng)荒謬的，而且讓他們戴上傻螺旋槳一樣的帽子。
Google is not alone in its juvenile tastes.
在對青年人的口味上谷歌不是一家。
Box, a Silicon Valley company, has installed swings in its headquarters.
硅谷的Box公司在其總部安裝秋千。
Red Bull, an energy-drinks firm, has a reception desk in the shape of a giant skateboard in its London office.
能量飲料公司紅牛在其倫敦辦公室內(nèi)有一個巨大的滑板樣的接待桌。
Businesses of all types have moved towards sitting workers in groups in open-plan rooms, just like at nursery school.
各類企業(yè)都在逐漸為員工提供開放式辦公室，就像托兒所。
Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers and chains of command.
企業(yè)在模仿 軍隊的指揮官和指揮鏈。
Now many model themselves on learning-through-play Montessori schools.
現(xiàn)在有很多通過在實踐中學(xué)習(xí)蒙臺梭利學(xué)校的模式。
Montessori management has plenty of supporters in the higher reaches of business.
蒙臺梭利的管理擁有很多公司高層的支持。
The bosses of Google, Amazon and Wikipedia were all educated in Montessori schools.
谷歌，亞馬遜和維基百科的老板都在蒙特梭利學(xué)校接受過教育。
So was Will Wright, a video-game pioneer.
視頻游戲先鋒威爾·賴特也是這樣。
Messrs Page and Brin credit their Montessori education with their enthusiasm for thinking differently.
佩奇和布林把他們對不同思維方式的熱情歸于他們在蒙臺梭利接受的教育。
Mr Bezos thanks it for his enthusiasm for experimentation—for planting seeds and going down blind alleys as he puts it.
Bezos先生感謝蒙臺梭利是因為他對實驗的熱情，正如他所說的播種和減少彎路。
Mr Wright says SimCity comes right out of Montessori.
賴特先生說模擬城市正是出自蒙特梭利。
The nostrums of some management gurus sound remarkably like those of the progressive educationalists of the 1960s.
一些管理大師的秘方聽起來非常像那些20世紀60年代的教育改革者。
For example Gary Hamel, of London Business School, and Jeffrey Pfeffer, of Stanford Business School, praise companies that dismantle hierarchies and encourage experimentation.
例如倫敦商學(xué)院的加里·哈默爾和斯坦福大學(xué)商學(xué)院的杰弗里·普費弗，稱贊公司消除等級和鼓勵試驗。
It is not just rich-world businesses that are buying into this philosophy:
不只是富有的企業(yè)相信這一理念：
HCL Technologies, an Indian software company, invites workers to write assessments of their bosses—and publishes them.
印度軟件公司HCL邀請工人對老板進行評價并進行公開。
But it would be wrong to conclude that the success of Google and Amazon vindicates Montessori management.
但是僅用谷歌和亞馬遜的成功就支持蒙特梭利管理的推斷或許是錯誤的。
Both companies have pragmatically mixed progressive ideas with more traditional ones such as encouraging internal competition and measuring performance.
這兩家公司都追求實用主義，混合了務(wù)實進取的理念，如傳統(tǒng)的鼓勵內(nèi)部競爭和績效量化。
Mr Bezos is also an enthusiastic employer of ex-military personnel.
貝索斯先生也是一位喜歡雇傭前軍事人員的雇主。
As in education, where traditionalists have staged a counter-revolution against the progressives, some academics are now questioning Montessori management's basic assumptions—particularly its faith in free-flowing creativity, endless collaboration and all things open-plan.
在教育界，保守者上演了一場反改革的運動，現(xiàn)在一些學(xué)者質(zhì)疑蒙特梭利管理的基本假設(shè)，特別是其對自由流動的創(chuàng)造力，無限的協(xié)作和完全開放的信念。
For example, Morten Hansen of the University of California, Berkeley studied 182 teams who were trying to win a contract on behalf of a professional-services firm.
例如，加州大學(xué)伯克利分校的莫滕·漢森研究了試圖贏得代表一個專業(yè)服務(wù)公司的合同的182個團隊。
He found that the more time they spent consulting others, the less likely they were to win a deal.
他發(fā)現(xiàn)，他們越是花更多的時間咨詢別人就越不太可能贏得這筆交易。
This shows, he says, that collaboration has costs as well as benefits.
他說這說明合作有效益也有成本。
These need to be weighed against each other, instead of simply assuming that the more teamwork the better.
這些都需要對各方面進行權(quán)衡，而不是簡單地假設(shè)團隊合作越多結(jié)果就越好。
Mark de Rond, a Cambridge academic who once rowed for the university, argues that the most successful teams are marked by internal competition and clashing egos as well as Kum Bay Yah-style togetherness.
曾為劍橋大學(xué)賽艇的學(xué)者馬克·德·ROND認為最成功的球隊是存住內(nèi)部競爭和沖突以及自我風(fēng)格的統(tǒng)一性。
A focus on interpersonal harmony can actually hurt team performance, he suggests.
他說把重點放在人際和諧上會對球隊的表現(xiàn)不利。
Jake Breeden, a management thinker at Duke Corporate Education, worries that too much reliance on teamwork can create a culture of learned helplessness in which managers are terrified to take decisions without yet another round of consultations.
杜克大學(xué)企業(yè)教育管理思想家杰克·布里登擔(dān)心在管理者害怕在征求他人意見之前做出決定的團隊里過于依賴團隊合作會創(chuàng)造一種后天性無助的文化。
Excessive collaboration can lead to the very opposite of creativity:
過多的合作可能會走向創(chuàng)造力的反面：
groupthink, conformity and mediocrity.
群體思維，整合和平庸。
It is especially damaging at the top of an organisation. BlackBerry, a smartphone-maker, believed that having two CEOs with complementary skills would produce the best of both worlds:
這對組織的頂部害處特別大。智能手機制造商黑莓相信兩位具有互補技能的CEOs 會有的產(chǎn)出：
Jim Balsillie was a professional manager and Mike Lazaridis was a technician.
吉姆·貝爾斯利是一名職業(yè)經(jīng)理人，邁克·拉扎里迪斯是技術(shù)員。
The company soon discovered the truth of Napoleon's dictum that one bad general is worth two good ones.
該公司很快就發(fā)現(xiàn)了拿破侖的名言：一個不好的將軍好于兩個好將軍的真理。
According to one survey around 70% of all offices in America have gone open-plan.
據(jù)一項調(diào)查顯示，美國約70%的辦公室已經(jīng)是開放式的。
Yet evidence is mounting that this is a bad idea.
然而越來越多的證據(jù)顯示這是一個壞主意。
Over the past five years Gensler, a design firm, has asked more than 90,000 people in 155 companies in ten industries what they think of this way of working.
設(shè)計公司 Gensler，在過去的五年里調(diào)查十大行業(yè)155家公司的90,000人怎么評價這種工作方式。
It has found an astonishing amount of antipathy.
發(fā)現(xiàn)絕大多數(shù)人對此反感。
Workers say that open-plan offices make it more difficult to concentrate, because the hubbub of human and electronic noise is so distracting.
他們說開放式辦公室使他們更難以集中精神，因為其他人的喧鬧和電子噪音是如此令人分心。
What they really value is the ability to focus on their jobs with as few distractions as possible.
他們看重的是盡可能少分心把注意力放在工作上。
Ironically, going open-plan defeats another of Montessori management's main objectives:
具有諷刺意味的是，開放式的方式擊敗了另一個對蒙特梭利管理的主要目標(biāo)：
workers say it prevents them from collaborating, because they cannot talk without disturbing others or inviting an audience.
工作人員說這會阻礙他們合作，因為他們不邀請別人或者想不打擾別人時就沒法進行討論。
Other studies show that people who work in open-plan offices are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress and airborne infections such as flu.
其他研究表明，在開放式辦公室工作的人更容易患高血壓，壓力更大大，更易被傳染，如流感。
Time for some discipline—and separate offices
是時候進行懲罰了-和單獨的辦公室
It was the unthinking and indiscriminate application of child-centred education techniques, with little attention paid to outcomes, that eventually brought about a backlash.
以兒童為中心的教育技術(shù)沒頭沒腦的和不分青紅皂白的應(yīng)用，而且很少重視結(jié)果，最終帶來了反彈。
The more thoughtful critics did not wish to turn the clock back entirely and return to rote learning and tyrannical teachers; they simply said that structure and order have their place too.
深思熟慮的批評不希望時光完全倒流到死記硬背和教師強橫的時代，他們只是說結(jié)構(gòu)和順序也有自己的位置。
The same seems to be happening now in business.
現(xiàn)在在商業(yè)領(lǐng)域似乎也有同樣的情況。
Mr Breeden argues, sensibly, that managers should treat collaboration and creativity as techniques rather than dogmas.
布里登辯解說，很明顯管理者應(yīng)該把協(xié)作和創(chuàng)造力當(dāng)做技巧而非教條。
Diane Hoskins of Gensler speculates that her company's findings about open-plan offices are so striking that they may mark the beginning of a new era in workplace organisation.
公司Gensler的黛安·霍斯金斯推測，她們公司的開放辦公室表現(xiàn)是如此引人注目，標(biāo)志著辦公室組織方式的一個新時代。
When workers start being moved back into separate booths, and the office slide is replaced with a noticeboard bearing a list of staff instructions, you will know that the counter-revolution is well under way.
當(dāng)工人開始被搬回到單獨的辦公間，辦公室不知不覺替換的一個列著員工說明的布告板，你就會知道，反改革的工作正在順利進行。
【篇三】2020年上半年英語四級考試閱讀理解
Nanotechnology
納米技術(shù)
A fab result
生物工廠
A novel way of making computer memories, using bacteria
制造計算機存儲器的新奇方法：使用細菌
FOR half a century, the essence of progress in the computer industry has been to do more with less.
半個世紀以來，計算機產(chǎn)業(yè)發(fā)展的本質(zhì)就是花錢更少，成事更多。
Moore's law famously observes that the number of transistors which can be crammed into a given space doubles every 18 months.
摩爾定律的論斷是：能夠放入某空間內(nèi)的晶體管數(shù)量每18個月翻一番。
The amount of data that can be stored has grown at a similar rate.
儲存的數(shù)據(jù)也有著類似的增長速率，
Yet as components get smaller, making them gets harder and more expensive.
但是隨著部件越來越小，它們的制造難度和成本也逐漸增加。
On May 10th Paul Otellini, the boss of Intel, a big American chipmaker, put the price of a new chip factory at around $10 billion.
5月10日，美國芯片巨頭因特爾總裁兼CEOPaul Otellini宣布將花費上百億美元建設(shè)新工廠。
Happily for those that lack Intel's resources, there may be a cheaper option—namely to mimic Mother Nature, who has been building tiny devices,
對于不像因特爾那么有錢的廠家的好消息是，他們或許可以選擇更便宜的方式—模擬大自然。
in the form of living cells and their components, for billions of years, and has thus got rather good at it.
對于大自然來說，她建造微小設(shè)備已經(jīng)有數(shù)十億年了，所以自然是信手拈來，當(dāng)然，這些設(shè)備都是以活細胞和其組份的形式呈現(xiàn)。
A paper published in Small, a nanotechnology journal, sets out the latest example of the technique.
發(fā)表在納米技術(shù)期刊《微小》的一篇論文描述了這一新技術(shù)的示例，
In it, a group of researchers led by Sarah Staniland at the University of Leeds, in Britain, describe using naturally occurring proteins to make arrays of tiny magnets, similar to those employed to store information in disk drives.
該技術(shù)團隊由英國利茲大學(xué)的Sarah Staniland領(lǐng)導(dǎo)，他們用自然生成的蛋白質(zhì)讓微型磁性材料進行排列，這與磁盤驅(qū)動器上儲存信息的磁性材料排序是類似的。
The researchers took their inspiration from Magnetospirillum magneticum, a bacterium that is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field thanks to the presence within its cells of flecks of magnetite, a form of iron oxide.
研究人員從趨磁細菌上獲得了靈感，由于該細菌內(nèi)部存在磁性顆粒，所以對地球磁場非常敏感。
Previous work has isolated the protein that makes these miniature compasses. Using genetic engineering, the team managed to persuade a different bacterium—Escherichia coli, a ubiquitous critter that is a workhorse of biotechnology—to manufacture this protein in bulk.
他們先要把制造這種微型羅盤的蛋白質(zhì)分離出來，并采用基因工程技術(shù)設(shè)法讓另一種細菌—大腸桿菌來批量生產(chǎn)這種蛋白質(zhì)，而大腸桿菌在生物體內(nèi)普遍存在，是生物工程中的常用苦力。
Next, they imprinted a block of gold with a microscopic chessboard pattern of chemicals.
然后他們用化學(xué)方法繪制微小的棋盤圖案，并把圖案的每一塊染成金黃色，
Half the squares contained anchoring points for the protein.
每塊區(qū)域的一半用該蛋白質(zhì)做固定點，
The other half were left untreated as controls.
另一半不做任何處理作為對照，
They then dipped the gold into a solution containing the protein, allowing it to bind to the treated squares, and dunked the whole lot into a heated solution of iron salts.
再把這些金黃色的棋盤浸入含蛋白質(zhì)的溶液中，并允許溶液中的蛋白質(zhì)與棋盤上的固定蛋白質(zhì)結(jié)合，最后把該棋盤全部浸入加熱的鐵鹽溶液中。
After that, they examined the results with an electron microscope.
他們再用電子顯微鏡觀察實驗結(jié)果，
Sure enough, groups of magnetite grains had materialised on the treated squares, shepherded into place by the bacterial protein.
果然，棋盤上的固定蛋白質(zhì)區(qū)域產(chǎn)生了成群的磁鐵顆粒，并由細菌蛋白質(zhì)控制在相應(yīng)位置。
In principle, each of these magnetic domains could store the one or the zero of a bit of information, according to how it was polarised.
基本上每個磁域都能按極化的方式存儲一個字節(jié)信息的1或0。
Getting from there to a real computer memory would be a long road.
但是要制成真正的計算機存儲器還有很長的路要走，
For a start, the grains of magnetite are not strong enough magnets to make a useful memory, and the size of each domain is huge by modern computing standards.
首先對于可用的存儲器來說，那些磁鐵顆粒的磁性還不夠強大，并且每個區(qū)域的尺寸對現(xiàn)在計算機標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來說太大了。
But Dr Staniland reckons that, with enough tweaking, both of these objections could be dealt with.
但Staniland認為，只要做些足夠的調(diào)整，那些困難都將不是問題。
The advantage of this approach is that it might not be so capital-intensive as building a fab.
這種方法的好處就是不用像因特爾那樣如此資源密集地去建造新工廠，在制造不斷發(fā)展的產(chǎn)品時也不需要同樣多的設(shè)備，
Growing things does not need as much kit as making them. If the tweaking could be done, therefore, the result might give the word biotechnology a whole new meaning.
所以，如果這種調(diào)整可以成功的話，生物技術(shù)將會有一個全新的定義。
【篇一】2020年上半年英語四級考試閱讀理解
A pile of wood
一堆木頭
An old material may find a new use in batteries
一種古老的原材料可能會在電池上發(fā)揮它的新用途。
ON A list of cutting-edge materials for high-tech applications, you might not expect to see wood near the top.
在一個應(yīng)用于高科技的尖端材料目錄上，看到木材會名列前茅，你可能不會想到。
But an experiment by Teng Li and Liangbing Hu of the University of Maryland may soon put it there.
但是，由馬里蘭大學(xué)的李騰和胡良冰所做的一個實驗可能會產(chǎn)生這種意外情況。
For Dr Li and Dr Hu, writing in Nano Letters, have just described how wood might be used to make one class of batteries cheaper by permitting the lithium now employed in them to be replaced with sodium.
根據(jù)納米快報的報道，李博士和胡博士已經(jīng)詳細說明了，在得到允許的情況下，用鈉取代現(xiàn)在制造電池的鋰。再用木材制造某一類電池可能會降低成本。
As any high-school chemist knows, lithium and sodium are chemically similar.
任何一個高中的化學(xué)家都知道，鋰和鈉的化學(xué)性質(zhì)很相似。
Sodium ions are, however, five times the size of lithium ions.
然而，鈉離子—在缺少一個電子的前提下，鈉原子帶正電—是鋰離子的五倍大小。
That matters because a battery works by shuttling ions between its anode and its cathode.
這一點很關(guān)鍵，因為電池就是通過穿梭于它的陰極和陽極之間的離子來工作的。
The bigger the ion, the more damage this shuttling causes—and the shorter, in consequence, is the battery's life.
離子越大，它的穿梭難度就越大—因此，電池的工作壽命就越短。
Hitherto, that has ruled sodium out as a plausible ingredient of batteries.
到目前為止，作為電池的合理組成部分，鈉早已被排除在外。
But engineers would still like to devise a commercially viable sodium battery, because sodium is much more abundant than lithium.
但是，從商業(yè)角度來講，鈉資源遠比鋰資源豐富，所以工程師們?nèi)耘f希望能夠發(fā)明一種能夠使用的鈉電池。
Dr Li and Dr Hu wondered if the problem of electrode damage might be ameliorated by using a more pliant material for the frames on which the electrodes are suspended.
李博士和胡博士想弄清楚，如果使用一種構(gòu)成電池框架的，更柔韌的材料—以達到延緩電極的目的，這樣是否可以改善有關(guān)電極損壞方面的問題。
These frames, which also transmit current to and from the electrodes, are normally made of metal, and are therefore rigid.
這些電池的組成框架也起著在電極之間傳輸電流的作用，它們通常是由金屬材料制成，因此硬度很高。
But the two researchers reckoned that suitably treated wood could do the job of conduction equally well while providing more yielding support for an electrode that was continually expanding and contracting as ions moved in and out of it.
但是兩位研究者認為，對木材進行適當(dāng)?shù)奶幚砗螅静囊材芡瑯悠鸬竭@種傳導(dǎo)的作用，同時，當(dāng)離子從電極間穿梭時，還能夠更好地增加電極的柔韌性，使之能夠持續(xù)地擴張收縮。
To test this idea, they used slivers of wood from yellow pines.
為了測試這種想法，他們從黃松樹干上取了些木條子。
First, they coated these with carbon nanotubes, to improve their conductivity.
首先，他們在這些木條子外面包上了碳納米，以提高它們的導(dǎo)電性。
Then they applied a film of tin to each sliver.
然后，在每個木條子上面涂上了薄薄的錫。
This done, they immersed the slivers in an electrolyte containing sodium ions and put the resulting battery through 400 cycles of discharging and recharging.
完成這些后，研究人員把木條浸在一種含有鈉離子的電解液里，對這種特殊的“電池”進行了四百次的循環(huán)充放電。
As a control, they built similar batteries using slivers of copper.
為了便于比較，他們用銅條做成了類似的電池。
The wooden battery was not perfect.
這個木電池并不成功。
It's initial capacity was 339 milliamp hours per gram, but that fell to 145 mAH/g over the course of the 400 cycles.
它的初始容量是339毫安/每小時，但是經(jīng)過400次不停地充放電后，降到了145毫安時/克。
This, however, was not bad for a prototype, and far better than the copper-framed batteries managed.
然而，對于一個電池雛形來說，結(jié)果并不算壞，而且這個結(jié)果遠比那個銅電池好得多。
They had an initial capacity of 50 mAH/g.
銅電池的初始容量是50毫安時/克。
That fell to 22 mAH/g after just 100 cycles.
然而僅僅在100次不停地充放電后，就減小到了22毫安時/克。
Wood, then, seems a plausible candidate for battery frames.
所以，木村似乎是電池架構(gòu)的合理備用材料。
Obviously you are not going to see wooden-framed batteries in your phone or laptop anytime soon.
很明顯，人們要想在自己的手機或筆記本電腦中看到這種木材架構(gòu)的電池，要很久以后了。
But that was never the plan for Dr Li and Dr Hu.
但是，李博士和胡博士的計劃可不是這樣的。
What their work might lead to is giant sodium-ion batteries for the overnight storage of electricity from solar power stations.
他們的研究結(jié)果可能會產(chǎn)生一種巨型鈉電池，用來儲存隔夜的太陽能發(fā)電站的電流。
Cheap storage is the missing part of the solar-energy jigsaw—for solar cells themselves are now cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels, in sunny climes at least.
便宜的太陽能儲存是完善太陽能行業(yè)目前所急需的—因為與化石燃料相比，現(xiàn)在的太陽能電池已經(jīng)很便宜了，至少在陽光明媚的天氣是這樣的。
The search for solutions to the solar-energy problem has concentrated on making man-made materials more and more sophisticated.
解決太陽能能源的研究一直專注于制造越來越復(fù)雜的人工材料。
It would be a delicious irony if the jigsaw was completed not by one of these snazzy new substances but by one of the oldest materials around.
如果太陽能行業(yè)這個拼圖的完美不是來自于這些時尚的新材料，而來源于人們周圍一種最古老的材料，那將會是一個極大的諷刺。
【篇二】2020年上半年英語四級考試閱讀理解
The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun
反對公司管理像學(xué)校改革的運動已經(jīng)開始
THE INTERNSHIP, a film about two middle-aged no-hopers who land work experience at Google, is a dire offering even by the standards of Hollywood summer comedies.
《挨踢實習(xí)生》是一部關(guān)于兩個有工作經(jīng)驗沒有希望轉(zhuǎn)正的中年人在谷歌的故事，即使是按好萊塢夏天喜劇的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，這也是一部作品。
But it does get one thing right: that it is rather absurd for a technology firm to provide slides for staff to play on, and to let them wear silly propeller-hats.
但有一件事情是對的：一家科技公司為員工提供幻燈片演講是相當(dāng)荒謬的，而且讓他們戴上傻螺旋槳一樣的帽子。
Google is not alone in its juvenile tastes.
在對青年人的口味上谷歌不是一家。
Box, a Silicon Valley company, has installed swings in its headquarters.
硅谷的Box公司在其總部安裝秋千。
Red Bull, an energy-drinks firm, has a reception desk in the shape of a giant skateboard in its London office.
能量飲料公司紅牛在其倫敦辦公室內(nèi)有一個巨大的滑板樣的接待桌。
Businesses of all types have moved towards sitting workers in groups in open-plan rooms, just like at nursery school.
各類企業(yè)都在逐漸為員工提供開放式辦公室，就像托兒所。
Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers and chains of command.
企業(yè)在模仿 軍隊的指揮官和指揮鏈。
Now many model themselves on learning-through-play Montessori schools.
現(xiàn)在有很多通過在實踐中學(xué)習(xí)蒙臺梭利學(xué)校的模式。
Montessori management has plenty of supporters in the higher reaches of business.
蒙臺梭利的管理擁有很多公司高層的支持。
The bosses of Google, Amazon and Wikipedia were all educated in Montessori schools.
谷歌，亞馬遜和維基百科的老板都在蒙特梭利學(xué)校接受過教育。
So was Will Wright, a video-game pioneer.
視頻游戲先鋒威爾·賴特也是這樣。
Messrs Page and Brin credit their Montessori education with their enthusiasm for thinking differently.
佩奇和布林把他們對不同思維方式的熱情歸于他們在蒙臺梭利接受的教育。
Mr Bezos thanks it for his enthusiasm for experimentation—for planting seeds and going down blind alleys as he puts it.
Bezos先生感謝蒙臺梭利是因為他對實驗的熱情，正如他所說的播種和減少彎路。
Mr Wright says SimCity comes right out of Montessori.
賴特先生說模擬城市正是出自蒙特梭利。
The nostrums of some management gurus sound remarkably like those of the progressive educationalists of the 1960s.
一些管理大師的秘方聽起來非常像那些20世紀60年代的教育改革者。
For example Gary Hamel, of London Business School, and Jeffrey Pfeffer, of Stanford Business School, praise companies that dismantle hierarchies and encourage experimentation.
例如倫敦商學(xué)院的加里·哈默爾和斯坦福大學(xué)商學(xué)院的杰弗里·普費弗，稱贊公司消除等級和鼓勵試驗。
It is not just rich-world businesses that are buying into this philosophy:
不只是富有的企業(yè)相信這一理念：
HCL Technologies, an Indian software company, invites workers to write assessments of their bosses—and publishes them.
印度軟件公司HCL邀請工人對老板進行評價并進行公開。
But it would be wrong to conclude that the success of Google and Amazon vindicates Montessori management.
但是僅用谷歌和亞馬遜的成功就支持蒙特梭利管理的推斷或許是錯誤的。
Both companies have pragmatically mixed progressive ideas with more traditional ones such as encouraging internal competition and measuring performance.
這兩家公司都追求實用主義，混合了務(wù)實進取的理念，如傳統(tǒng)的鼓勵內(nèi)部競爭和績效量化。
Mr Bezos is also an enthusiastic employer of ex-military personnel.
貝索斯先生也是一位喜歡雇傭前軍事人員的雇主。
As in education, where traditionalists have staged a counter-revolution against the progressives, some academics are now questioning Montessori management's basic assumptions—particularly its faith in free-flowing creativity, endless collaboration and all things open-plan.
在教育界，保守者上演了一場反改革的運動，現(xiàn)在一些學(xué)者質(zhì)疑蒙特梭利管理的基本假設(shè)，特別是其對自由流動的創(chuàng)造力，無限的協(xié)作和完全開放的信念。
For example, Morten Hansen of the University of California, Berkeley studied 182 teams who were trying to win a contract on behalf of a professional-services firm.
例如，加州大學(xué)伯克利分校的莫滕·漢森研究了試圖贏得代表一個專業(yè)服務(wù)公司的合同的182個團隊。
He found that the more time they spent consulting others, the less likely they were to win a deal.
他發(fā)現(xiàn)，他們越是花更多的時間咨詢別人就越不太可能贏得這筆交易。
This shows, he says, that collaboration has costs as well as benefits.
他說這說明合作有效益也有成本。
These need to be weighed against each other, instead of simply assuming that the more teamwork the better.
這些都需要對各方面進行權(quán)衡，而不是簡單地假設(shè)團隊合作越多結(jié)果就越好。
Mark de Rond, a Cambridge academic who once rowed for the university, argues that the most successful teams are marked by internal competition and clashing egos as well as Kum Bay Yah-style togetherness.
曾為劍橋大學(xué)賽艇的學(xué)者馬克·德·ROND認為最成功的球隊是存住內(nèi)部競爭和沖突以及自我風(fēng)格的統(tǒng)一性。
A focus on interpersonal harmony can actually hurt team performance, he suggests.
他說把重點放在人際和諧上會對球隊的表現(xiàn)不利。
Jake Breeden, a management thinker at Duke Corporate Education, worries that too much reliance on teamwork can create a culture of learned helplessness in which managers are terrified to take decisions without yet another round of consultations.
杜克大學(xué)企業(yè)教育管理思想家杰克·布里登擔(dān)心在管理者害怕在征求他人意見之前做出決定的團隊里過于依賴團隊合作會創(chuàng)造一種后天性無助的文化。
Excessive collaboration can lead to the very opposite of creativity:
過多的合作可能會走向創(chuàng)造力的反面：
groupthink, conformity and mediocrity.
群體思維，整合和平庸。
It is especially damaging at the top of an organisation. BlackBerry, a smartphone-maker, believed that having two CEOs with complementary skills would produce the best of both worlds:
這對組織的頂部害處特別大。智能手機制造商黑莓相信兩位具有互補技能的CEOs 會有的產(chǎn)出：
Jim Balsillie was a professional manager and Mike Lazaridis was a technician.
吉姆·貝爾斯利是一名職業(yè)經(jīng)理人，邁克·拉扎里迪斯是技術(shù)員。
The company soon discovered the truth of Napoleon's dictum that one bad general is worth two good ones.
該公司很快就發(fā)現(xiàn)了拿破侖的名言：一個不好的將軍好于兩個好將軍的真理。
According to one survey around 70% of all offices in America have gone open-plan.
據(jù)一項調(diào)查顯示，美國約70%的辦公室已經(jīng)是開放式的。
Yet evidence is mounting that this is a bad idea.
然而越來越多的證據(jù)顯示這是一個壞主意。
Over the past five years Gensler, a design firm, has asked more than 90,000 people in 155 companies in ten industries what they think of this way of working.
設(shè)計公司 Gensler，在過去的五年里調(diào)查十大行業(yè)155家公司的90,000人怎么評價這種工作方式。
It has found an astonishing amount of antipathy.
發(fā)現(xiàn)絕大多數(shù)人對此反感。
Workers say that open-plan offices make it more difficult to concentrate, because the hubbub of human and electronic noise is so distracting.
他們說開放式辦公室使他們更難以集中精神，因為其他人的喧鬧和電子噪音是如此令人分心。
What they really value is the ability to focus on their jobs with as few distractions as possible.
他們看重的是盡可能少分心把注意力放在工作上。
Ironically, going open-plan defeats another of Montessori management's main objectives:
具有諷刺意味的是，開放式的方式擊敗了另一個對蒙特梭利管理的主要目標(biāo)：
workers say it prevents them from collaborating, because they cannot talk without disturbing others or inviting an audience.
工作人員說這會阻礙他們合作，因為他們不邀請別人或者想不打擾別人時就沒法進行討論。
Other studies show that people who work in open-plan offices are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress and airborne infections such as flu.
其他研究表明，在開放式辦公室工作的人更容易患高血壓，壓力更大大，更易被傳染，如流感。
Time for some discipline—and separate offices
是時候進行懲罰了-和單獨的辦公室
It was the unthinking and indiscriminate application of child-centred education techniques, with little attention paid to outcomes, that eventually brought about a backlash.
以兒童為中心的教育技術(shù)沒頭沒腦的和不分青紅皂白的應(yīng)用，而且很少重視結(jié)果，最終帶來了反彈。
The more thoughtful critics did not wish to turn the clock back entirely and return to rote learning and tyrannical teachers; they simply said that structure and order have their place too.
深思熟慮的批評不希望時光完全倒流到死記硬背和教師強橫的時代，他們只是說結(jié)構(gòu)和順序也有自己的位置。
The same seems to be happening now in business.
現(xiàn)在在商業(yè)領(lǐng)域似乎也有同樣的情況。
Mr Breeden argues, sensibly, that managers should treat collaboration and creativity as techniques rather than dogmas.
布里登辯解說，很明顯管理者應(yīng)該把協(xié)作和創(chuàng)造力當(dāng)做技巧而非教條。
Diane Hoskins of Gensler speculates that her company's findings about open-plan offices are so striking that they may mark the beginning of a new era in workplace organisation.
公司Gensler的黛安·霍斯金斯推測，她們公司的開放辦公室表現(xiàn)是如此引人注目，標(biāo)志著辦公室組織方式的一個新時代。
When workers start being moved back into separate booths, and the office slide is replaced with a noticeboard bearing a list of staff instructions, you will know that the counter-revolution is well under way.
當(dāng)工人開始被搬回到單獨的辦公間，辦公室不知不覺替換的一個列著員工說明的布告板，你就會知道，反改革的工作正在順利進行。
【篇三】2020年上半年英語四級考試閱讀理解
Nanotechnology
納米技術(shù)
A fab result
生物工廠
A novel way of making computer memories, using bacteria
制造計算機存儲器的新奇方法：使用細菌
FOR half a century, the essence of progress in the computer industry has been to do more with less.
半個世紀以來，計算機產(chǎn)業(yè)發(fā)展的本質(zhì)就是花錢更少，成事更多。
Moore's law famously observes that the number of transistors which can be crammed into a given space doubles every 18 months.
摩爾定律的論斷是：能夠放入某空間內(nèi)的晶體管數(shù)量每18個月翻一番。
The amount of data that can be stored has grown at a similar rate.
儲存的數(shù)據(jù)也有著類似的增長速率，
Yet as components get smaller, making them gets harder and more expensive.
但是隨著部件越來越小，它們的制造難度和成本也逐漸增加。
On May 10th Paul Otellini, the boss of Intel, a big American chipmaker, put the price of a new chip factory at around $10 billion.
5月10日，美國芯片巨頭因特爾總裁兼CEOPaul Otellini宣布將花費上百億美元建設(shè)新工廠。
Happily for those that lack Intel's resources, there may be a cheaper option—namely to mimic Mother Nature, who has been building tiny devices,
對于不像因特爾那么有錢的廠家的好消息是，他們或許可以選擇更便宜的方式—模擬大自然。
in the form of living cells and their components, for billions of years, and has thus got rather good at it.
對于大自然來說，她建造微小設(shè)備已經(jīng)有數(shù)十億年了，所以自然是信手拈來，當(dāng)然，這些設(shè)備都是以活細胞和其組份的形式呈現(xiàn)。
A paper published in Small, a nanotechnology journal, sets out the latest example of the technique.
發(fā)表在納米技術(shù)期刊《微小》的一篇論文描述了這一新技術(shù)的示例，
In it, a group of researchers led by Sarah Staniland at the University of Leeds, in Britain, describe using naturally occurring proteins to make arrays of tiny magnets, similar to those employed to store information in disk drives.
該技術(shù)團隊由英國利茲大學(xué)的Sarah Staniland領(lǐng)導(dǎo)，他們用自然生成的蛋白質(zhì)讓微型磁性材料進行排列，這與磁盤驅(qū)動器上儲存信息的磁性材料排序是類似的。
The researchers took their inspiration from Magnetospirillum magneticum, a bacterium that is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field thanks to the presence within its cells of flecks of magnetite, a form of iron oxide.
研究人員從趨磁細菌上獲得了靈感，由于該細菌內(nèi)部存在磁性顆粒，所以對地球磁場非常敏感。
Previous work has isolated the protein that makes these miniature compasses. Using genetic engineering, the team managed to persuade a different bacterium—Escherichia coli, a ubiquitous critter that is a workhorse of biotechnology—to manufacture this protein in bulk.
他們先要把制造這種微型羅盤的蛋白質(zhì)分離出來，并采用基因工程技術(shù)設(shè)法讓另一種細菌—大腸桿菌來批量生產(chǎn)這種蛋白質(zhì)，而大腸桿菌在生物體內(nèi)普遍存在，是生物工程中的常用苦力。
Next, they imprinted a block of gold with a microscopic chessboard pattern of chemicals.
然后他們用化學(xué)方法繪制微小的棋盤圖案，并把圖案的每一塊染成金黃色，
Half the squares contained anchoring points for the protein.
每塊區(qū)域的一半用該蛋白質(zhì)做固定點，
The other half were left untreated as controls.
另一半不做任何處理作為對照，
They then dipped the gold into a solution containing the protein, allowing it to bind to the treated squares, and dunked the whole lot into a heated solution of iron salts.
再把這些金黃色的棋盤浸入含蛋白質(zhì)的溶液中，并允許溶液中的蛋白質(zhì)與棋盤上的固定蛋白質(zhì)結(jié)合，最后把該棋盤全部浸入加熱的鐵鹽溶液中。
After that, they examined the results with an electron microscope.
他們再用電子顯微鏡觀察實驗結(jié)果，
Sure enough, groups of magnetite grains had materialised on the treated squares, shepherded into place by the bacterial protein.
果然，棋盤上的固定蛋白質(zhì)區(qū)域產(chǎn)生了成群的磁鐵顆粒，并由細菌蛋白質(zhì)控制在相應(yīng)位置。
In principle, each of these magnetic domains could store the one or the zero of a bit of information, according to how it was polarised.
基本上每個磁域都能按極化的方式存儲一個字節(jié)信息的1或0。
Getting from there to a real computer memory would be a long road.
但是要制成真正的計算機存儲器還有很長的路要走，
For a start, the grains of magnetite are not strong enough magnets to make a useful memory, and the size of each domain is huge by modern computing standards.
首先對于可用的存儲器來說，那些磁鐵顆粒的磁性還不夠強大，并且每個區(qū)域的尺寸對現(xiàn)在計算機標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來說太大了。
But Dr Staniland reckons that, with enough tweaking, both of these objections could be dealt with.
但Staniland認為，只要做些足夠的調(diào)整，那些困難都將不是問題。
The advantage of this approach is that it might not be so capital-intensive as building a fab.
這種方法的好處就是不用像因特爾那樣如此資源密集地去建造新工廠，在制造不斷發(fā)展的產(chǎn)品時也不需要同樣多的設(shè)備，
Growing things does not need as much kit as making them. If the tweaking could be done, therefore, the result might give the word biotechnology a whole new meaning.
所以，如果這種調(diào)整可以成功的話，生物技術(shù)將會有一個全新的定義。