阅读理解解析版 · 第 3 周 · 2024 新课标 I 卷

"I am not crazy," says Dr. William Farber, shortly after performing acupuncture (针灸) on a rabbit. "I am ahead of my time." If he seems a little defensive, it might be because even some of his coworkers occasionally laugh at his unusual methods.24 But Farber is certain he'll have the last laugh. He's one of a small but growing number of American veterinarians (兽医) now practicing "holistic" medicine — combining traditional Western treatments with acupuncture, chiropractic (按摩疗法) and herbal medicine.

Farber, a graduate of Colorado State University, started out as a more conventional veterinarian. He became interested in alternative treatments 20 years ago when he suffered from terrible back pain. He tried muscle-relaxing drugs but found little relief. Then he tried acupuncture, an ancient Chinese practice, and was amazed that he improved after two or three treatments. What worked on a veterinarian seemed likely to work on his patients.25 So, after studying the techniques for a couple of years, he began offering them to pets.

Leigh Tindale's dog Charlie had a serious heart condition. After Charlie had a heart attack, Tindale says, she was prepared to put him to sleep, but Farber's treatments eased her dog's suffering so much that she was able to keep him alive for an additional five months.26 And Priscilla Dewing reports that her horse, Nappy, "moves more easily and rides more comfortably" after a chiropractic adjustment.26

Farber is certain that the holistic approach will grow more popular with time, and if the past is any indication, he may be right: Since 1982, membership in the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association has grown from 30 to over 700.27 "Sometimes it surprises me that it works so well," he says. "I will do anything to help an animal. That's my job."

Is comprehension the same whether a person reads a text onscreen or on paper. And are listening to and viewing content as effective as reading the written word when covering the same material? The answers to both questions are often "no." The reasons relate to a variety of factors, including reduced concentration, an entertainment mindset (心态) and a tendency to multitask while consuming digital content.

When reading texts of several hundred words or more, learning is generally more successful when it's on paper than onscreen. A large amount of research confirms this finding. The benefits of print reading particularly shine through when experimenters move from posing simple tasks — like identifying the main idea in a reading passage — to ones that require mental abstraction — such as drawing inferences from a text.28

The differences between print and digital reading results are partly related to paper's physical properties. With paper, there is a literal laying on of hands, along with the visual geography of distinct pages. People often link their memory of what they've read to how far into the book it was or where it was on the page.

But equally important is the mental aspect. Reading researchers have proposed a theory called "shallowing hypothesis (假说)." According to this theory, people approach digital texts with a mindset suited to social media, which are often not so serious, and devote less mental effort than when they are reading print.29

Audio (音频) and video can feel more engaging than text, and so university teachers increasingly turn to these technologies — say, assigning an online talk instead of an article by the same person.30 However, psychologists have demonstrated that when adults read news stories, they remember more of the content than if they listen to or view identical pieces.

Digital texts, audio and video all have educational roles, especially when providing resources not available in print. However, for maximizing learning where mental focus and reflection are called for, educators shouldn't assume all media are the same, even when they contain identical words.31

In the race to document the species on Earth before they go extinct, researchers and citizen scientists have collected billions of records. Today, most records of biodiversity are often in the form of photos, videos, and other digital records.32 Though they are useful for detecting shifts in the number and variety of species in an area, a new Stanford study has found that this type of record is not perfect.

"With the rise of technology it is easy for people to make observations of different species with the aid of a mobile application," said Barnabas Daru, who is lead author of the study and assistant professor of biology in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. These observations now outnumber the primary data that comes from physical specimens (标本), and since we are increasingly using observational data to investigate how species are responding to global change, I wanted to know: Are they usable?33

Using a global dataset of 1.9 billion records of plants, insects, birds, and animals, Daru and his team tested how well these data represent actual global biodiversity patterns.

We were particularly interested in exploring the aspects of sampling that tend to bias (使有偏差) data, like the greater likelihood of a citizen scientist to take a picture of a flowering plant instead of the grass right next to it.34 said Daru.

Their study revealed that the large number of observation-only records did not lead to better global coverage. Moreover, these data are biased and favor certain regions, time periods, and species. This makes sense because the people who get observational biodiversity data on mobile devices are often citizen scientists recording their encounters with species in areas nearby. These data are also biased toward certain species with attractive or eye-catching features.

What can we do with the imperfect datasets of biodiversity?

"Quite a lot," Daru explained. Biodiversity apps can use our study results to inform users of oversampled areas and lead them to places — and even species — that are not well-sampled.35 To improve the quality of observational data, biodiversity apps can also encourage users to have an expert confirm the identification of their uploaded image.35