【正文】 backer bag 60 34Batteries Built by Viruses 病毒電池 What do chicken pox, the mon cold， the flu， and AIDS have in mon? They39。re all disease caused by viruses， tiny microanisms that can pass from person to person. It‘s no wonder1 that when most people think about viruses, finding ways to steer clear of2 viruses is what39。s on people39。s minds. 水痘、普通感冒、流感和艾滋病有哪些相似之處呢？這些都是由病毒引起的疾病。病毒是能夠在人與人之間傳染的微生物。難怪大部分人一提到病毒，首先想到的是如何躲避病毒。 Not everyone runs from the tiny disease carriers , Cambridge， Massachusetts4, scientists have discovered that some viruses can be helpful in an unusual way. They are putting viruses to work， teaching them to build some of the world‘s smallest rechargeable batteries. 然而， 并不是每個人都躲避這些病毒攜帶者。在馬薩諸塞州劍橋市，科學家發(fā)現(xiàn)有些病毒能起到非同尋常的作用。他們使病毒開始工作，使病毒構成世界上最小的充電電池。 Viruses and batteries may seem like an unusual pair, but they39。re not so strange for engineer Angela Belcher, who first came up with5 the idea. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge， she and her collaborators bring together different areas of science in new ways. In the case of the virusbuilt batteries， the scientists bine what they know about biology ， technology and production techniques. 病毒和電池的搭檔似乎并不常見，但這對于工程師安吉拉 貝爾徹來說卻并不陌生。安吉拉 貝爾徹最早產生了這一想法。在位于劍橋市的麻省理工學院，她和合作者一起用新方式融合了不同的科學領域。在由病毒構成的 電池里，科學家融合了他們在生物、技術和生產工藝方面的知識。 Belcher‘s team includes Paula Hammond，who helps put together the tiny batteries， and YetMing Chiang, an expert on how to store energy in the form of a battery. We39。re working on things we traditionally don‘t associate with nature, says Hammond. 貝爾徹的團隊包括幫助組裝微型電池的寶拉 哈蒙德和以電池形式存儲能量的專家蔣業(yè)明。哈蒙德說， ―我們現(xiàn)在從事的行業(yè)是傳統(tǒng)中不會想到的。 ‖ Many batteries are already pretty small. You can hold A， C and D batteries6 in your hand. The coinlike batteries that power watches are often smaller than a penny. However， every year， new electronic devices like personal music players or cell phones get smaller than the year before. As these devices shrink， ordinary bakeries won‘t be small enough to fit inside. 許多電池已經很小了。 A 型、 C 型和 D型電池都可以握在手里。硬幣形狀的手表電池通常比分幣還小。然而，個人音樂播放器和手機等 新型電子設備變得越來越小。這些設備變小了，普通電池就無法安裝進去了。 The ideal battery will store a lot of energy in a small package. Right now， Belcher‘s model battery， a metallic disk pletely built by viruses， looks like a regular watch battery. But inside， its ponents are very smallso tiny you can only see them with a powerful microscope. 理想的電池應當體積小、儲能多。 ，貝爾徹的電池模型是完全由病毒構成的金屬圓盤，看起來就像普通手表電池。但里面的部件卻非常小——小到用高倍望遠鏡才能看到。 How small are these battery parts? To get some idea of the size， pluck one hair from your head. Place your hair on a piece of white paper and try to see how wide your hair ispretty thin，right? Although the width of each person‘s hair is a bit different， you could probably fit about 10 of these virusbuilt battery parts， side to side， across one hair. These microbatteries may change the way we look at viruses7. 這些電池部件到底有多小呢？從頭上拔一根頭發(fā)，把它放到白紙上，看看頭發(fā)的寬度 ——是不是很細呢？盡管每個人的頭發(fā)寬度不同，每個頭發(fā)上可以并列排放大約 10個病毒電池部件。這些為電池能會改變我們對病毒的看法。 to the first paragraph， people try to 根據(jù)第一段，人們設法去 …… away from viruses because they are causes of various diseases. 躲避病毒，因為他們的疾病都是由病毒引起的。 is Belcher‘s team doing at present? Belcher的團隊現(xiàn)在正在做什么 is making batteries with viruses. 制造病毒電池。 expression below is opposite in meaning to the word shrink appearing in paragraph 5 ? 那個詞可以和第 5 段中的 ―shrink 收縮 ‖表達意思相反 . 膨脹 of the following is true of Belcher‘s battery mentioned in paragraph 6? 6 段中提到的Belcher‘s battery哪個描述是真的 is a metallic disk with viruses inside it. 它是指由病毒構成的金屬圓盤。 tiny is one battery part? 一個電池部件有多?。? width is one tenth of a hair. 它的寬度是頭backer bag 60 發(fā)的 1/10 35Putting Plants to Work 植物效能 Using the power of the sun is nothing new. People have had solarpowered calculators and buildings with solar panels for decades. But plants are the real experts : They39。ve been using sunlight as an energy source for billions of years. 太陽能的使用已經不足為奇。幾十年前，人們就開始使用太陽能計算器，制造太陽能電熱板鑲嵌的建筑。但是植物當屬應用太陽能的專家：十億年來，植物一直把陽光作為能源資源。 Ceils in the green leaves of plants work like tiny factories to convert sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into1 sugars and starches, stored energy that the plants can use. This conversion process is called photosynthesis. Unfortunately, unless you39。re a plant, it39。s difficult and expensive to convert sunlight into storable energy. That39。s why scientists are taking a closer look at exactly how plants do it. 綠葉植物細胞的工作就像微型加工廠一樣，將陽光，二氧化碳和水轉化為糖和淀粉，并且同時儲存植物本身所需的能量。這種轉換過程叫做光合作用。可惜你不是一株植物，必須困難的并且花上大價錢將陽光轉換為穩(wěn)定的能源。因此，科學家們正在對植株進行準確細致的研究。 Some scientists are trying to get plants, or biological cells that act like plants, to work as miniature photosynthetic power stations. For example, Mafia Ghirardi of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. 2, is working with green algae3. She39。s trying to trick them into producing hydrogen4 instead of sugars when they perform photosynthesis. Once the researchers can get the algae working efficiently, the hydrogen that they produce could be used to power fuel Cells in cars or to generate electricity.一些科學家正試圖像植物的作用過程一樣，將植物，或生物的細胞活動看做微型光合發(fā)電站。例如，瑪麗亞 奇若蒂在美國科羅拉多州的國家可再生能源實驗室里對綠藻進行研究。她正想方設法的通過植物的產生氫來取代光合作用產生的糖。一旦研究人員了解藻類如何有效率的進行工作，由此產生的氫氣可用于燃料電池動力汽車和發(fā)電。 The algae are grown in narrownecked glass bottles to produce hydrogen in the lab. During photosynt