古生物学

活动活动
在加拿大出土了迄今为止发现的最早动物足迹

Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
寒武纪的大爆炸是生命史中最大的谜团之一。5.6亿年以前的动物化石寥寥无几。然而，仿佛地质层只眨了眨眼，它们便多得不足为奇了。像三叶虫、腕足动物此般壳类动物的祖先没有在岩层中留下什么痕迹，但它们的遗迹却突然间比比皆是。生物学家们迫不及待地想知道当时到底发生了什么。
纽芬兰岛上有个地方名字很有趣，叫“错误点”，正是最近在这里的一些发现轻轻掀起了这个神秘面纱的一角。 继续阅读“活动活动（关于动物始祖）”

Looking for ET
寻找ET

Signs of life
生命迹象

As the search for alien life turns 50, its practitioners find new methods
人类探寻外星生命迹象近半个世纪，探索者们又找到了新方法。

Feb 25th 2010 | SAN DIEGO | From The Economist print edition

Speak to me!跟我说话！

HALF a century ago a radio astronomer called Frank Drake thought of a way to calculate the likelihood of establishing contact with aliens. He suggested the following figures should be multiplied: how many stars are formed in the galaxy in a year; what fraction of these have planets and thus form solar systems; the average number of planets per solar system that have the potential to support life; on what percentage of those where it is possible do such biospheres actually form; what percentage of such biospheres give rise to intelligent species; what percentage of intelligent life is able to transmit signals into space; and for how long could such intelligence keeps sending signals.

半个世纪前，一位名叫法兰克•德雷克的无线电天文学家发明了一种计算探寻外星生命可能性的方法。他的方法包括一系列应该纳入考虑范围的数据：银河系每年新诞生的恒星数；拥有行星并组成了星系的恒星比率；有可能会出现生命迹象的行星平均数；以上行星能够真正孕育生命的比率；演化出了智能物种的比率；能使用无线电通讯与外太空联系的智能生物比率；智能生物使用无线电通讯方式的持续时间。

This calculation became celebrated as the Drake equation—perhaps the best attempt so far to tame a wild guess. Most of the terms remain hard to tie down, although there is a consensus that about ten stars are formed per year in the galaxy. Also, recent searches for extrasolar planets have concluded that planets are not rare.

这种计算方式便是后来著名的德雷克方程式——这也许是迄今为止对人类漫无边际的想象的最好归纳。尽管银河系每年新诞生约10颗恒星已成为共识，但是公式中还有很多要素没有具体数值。另外，近期对太阳系外行星的研究结论表示，行星数量并不算少。

At the AAAS, Dr Drake reflected on his search for alien signals. One reason this is hard is that radio telescopes must chop the spectrum into fine portions to study it, like tuning into a signal on a car radio. Another is the trade off between a telescope’s field of view and its magnification. Small telescopes see a lot of sky but can detect only strong signals. Large ones, which can detect weak signals, have a narrow focus. Astronomers therefore have difficulty looking both carefully and comprehensively.

作为美国艺术与科学院成员的德雷克博士对他的外星生命研究进行了反思。该项研究进展的困难之一是必须要用无线天文望远镜将频谱切割成精细的部分进行研究，这就像需要把车载收音机调准台一样。另一个则是需要在天文望远镜的视场和放大率之间进行取舍。小型天文望远镜视场更广但是只能探测到较强烈的信号。而大型天文望远镜，虽然可以探测到较微弱的信号，但视场却更窄。因此，天文学家们很难在视场和放大率之间鱼与熊掌兼得。

Dr Drake said there may be another difficulty. Researchers tend to look for signals similar to those now made by humanity. The Earth, though, is getting quieter because the rise of spread-spectrum communication makes stray emissions less likely than in the past.

德雷克博士曾表示，也许还会有其他的困难。研究者们倾向于寻找和人造信号相似的信号。然而，由于扩频通信技术的兴起，杂散发射减少，地球现在变得越来越“安静”了。

Spread-spectrum works by smearing a message across a wide range of frequencies. That has the advantages of combating noise and allowing many signals to be sent at once. But it also makes those signals hard for eavesdroppers to hear (which is why spread-spectrum is beloved by military men). If technologically sophisticated aliens came to the same conclusions, and thus used spread-spectrum technology, humans would have a hard time hearing them. Dr Drake suggests, therefore, that there might be only a narrow window of time in the development of civilisations, analogous to the past 50 years on Earth, during which noisy electromagnetic signals are generated in large amounts.

扩频通信利用宽频带信号传送信息。这一技术的优势在于其抗干扰性和多址信息传送性能，该技术同时还能很好的防止窃听（因此广受军事人员的青睐）。如果外星生物已经在技术上达到了这样的高度，并且也在使用扩频通信技术，那么人类想要捕获到它们发出的信号就得不是那么容易了。因此，德雷克博士表示，在人类文明发展的长河中也许只有在一个非常短暂的时间段里，譬如地球上的过去50年，人类制造了大量的电磁波信号。

It is, however, also possible that someone is actively trying to send signals to the Earth. If that were the case, the best way to do this, reckons Paul Horowitz, a physicist at Harvard, is with a laser.

但是，也可能有外星生物在不断往地球发送信号的。如果真的有，哈佛大学物理学家保罗•霍洛维茨认为，最好的发送方式便是使用激光发射。

Although radio power has changed little over the decades, the power of lasers has grown exponentially. Today’s most powerful versions can shine ten thousand times brighter than the sun, though only for a billionth of a second. If aliens have made similar progress, and point a laser towards the Earth’s solar system, such brief flashes would be detectable at a distance of many light-years. Dr Horowitz has already set up one suitable detector and this, because no huge magnification is involved, is capable of looking at broad swathes of sky.

尽管在过去的几十年里无线电功率几乎不变，但是激光的功率则呈指数增长。如今功率最大的激光机所发出的光瞬间可以比太阳所发出的光亮一万倍，即使维持的时间不超过十亿分之一秒。如果外星生物在技术上已经取得如此进步，并且向太阳系里的地球发射激光信号，那么这些激光信号在一定光年之后便很有可能会被人类探测出来。霍洛维茨博士已经建好了一个合适的探测仪，因为对放大率的要求不高，所以这个探测仪能够观测到较广的太空视场。

There is also potential for improvement on the radio side. For many years, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, which is 300 metres across, has led the search for alien life. (Sadly, its founder, William Gordon, died on February 16th.) Now the Chinese are building a 500-metre telescope, known as FAST, in Guizhou province, and an international collaboration called the Square Kilometre Array is trying, as its name suggests, to build a grid of radio-telescopes over a square kilometre of land in either South Africa or Australia. Both may be helpful. As indeed may a large new telescope in northern California built by Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft.

在无线电探测方面也可能有所进展。位于波罗黎各的阿雷西博望远镜直径达300米，它在许多年里一直是外太空生命迹象探索和研究的引领者。（但不幸的是，其建造者威廉•戈登于2月16日去世了。）目前，中国也正在贵州省建造一个直径达500米的射电天文望远镜，名为FAST。而另一项名为“平方公里望远镜阵”的国际合作也即将在南非或澳大利亚展开，该项目正如其名，将在一平方公里的区域内修建起一个无线电天文望远镜阵列。这两个项目都可能会推动人类的外太空探索。同样做出贡献的还有微软创始人之一保罗•艾伦在加州北部建造的大型全新天文望远镜。

Many of the terms in the Drake equation are likely to remain elusive, so it is still impossible to predict how likely such efforts are to succeed. But even after 50 fruitless years—if the eagerness in the eyes of Dr Drake and his colleagues is any guide—it still is fun looking.

德雷克方程式中的很多要素依旧扑朔迷离，同样，要准确地预测人类探索的成功几率也不太现实。但是，即使过去的半个世纪里人类并无明显收获——从德雷克博士和他的同事们眼中的那股热忱来看——这样的探索仍然是很有意思的。

译者：lizst
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How siestas help memory
午睡怎样增进记忆力

Sleepy heads
昏昏欲睡的大脑

Feb 25th 2010 | SAN DIEGO | From The Economist print edition

Researchers say an afternoon nap prepares the brain to learn

研究者认为午睡可以让头脑更清醒，学习更高效

MAD dogs and Englishmen, so the song has it, go out in the midday sun. And the business practices of England’s lineal descendant, America, will have you in the office from nine in the morning to five in the evening, if not longer. Much of the world, though, prefers to take a siesta. And research presented to the AAAS meeting in San Diego suggests it may be right to do so. It has already been established that those who siesta are less likely to die of heart disease. Now, Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. A post-prandial snooze, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning.

疯狗和英国人——正如这首歌唱到的那样——正午时分顶着太阳外出。而英国人的直系后裔——美国公司的惯例会让你朝九晚五地呆在办公室里，甚至更长时间。但是世界上大部分人还是更喜欢来个午觉。一份提交到在圣迭戈举行的AAAS科学年会的报告中说：这么做是正确的。有午睡习惯的人很少有死于心脏类疾病的——这个已成定论。现在，马修·沃克和他在加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校的同事发现这些人很可能记忆力也会比其他人好。沃克博士发现，午餐之后打个小盹会让头脑更清醒，学习更高效。

The role of sleep in consolidating memories that have already been created has been understood for some time. Dr Walker has been trying to extend this understanding by looking at sleep’s role in preparing the brain for the formation of memories in the first place. He was particularly interested in a type of memory called episodic memory, which relates to specific events, places and times. This contrasts with procedural memory, of the skills required to perform some sort of mechanical task, such as driving. The theory he and his team wanted to test was that the ability to form new episodic memories deteriorates with accrued wakefulness, and that sleep thus restores the brain’s capacity for efficient learning.

人们早已知道睡眠能够巩固已建立的记忆。沃克正在试图扩展这一认识，他的办法是观察睡眠在大脑记忆形成的初始阶段扮演的角色。他的兴趣点在一种叫做“事件记忆”的记忆上，这种记忆与时间、地点和次数相关联。和这种记忆相反的是“程序记忆”，是记住那种完成机械任务所需的技能，例如开车。他和他的团队想验证的理论是：一个人随着清醒状态的加深，其形成新的“事件记忆”的能力就会减弱；还有，睡觉因此就能恢复大脑高效学习的能力。

They asked a group of 39 people to take part in two learning sessions, one at noon and one at 6pm. On each occasion the participants tried to memorise and recall 100 combinations of pictures and names. After the first session they were assigned randomly to either a control group, which remained awake, or a nap group, which had 100 minutes of monitored sleep.

他们找来39个人来参加两个时间段的学习——一个在中午，一个在晚上6点。在每段时间的学习中，参与者都要努力去记住并且回忆100组图片和名字的组合。在第一个时间段的学习过后，参与者被任意安排到两组：一组是“受控制组”——必须一直保持清醒；一组是“打盹儿组”——有100分钟的睡觉时间，期间全程监控。

Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. Those who napped, by contrast, actually improved their capacity to learn, doing better in the evening than they had at noon. These findings suggest that sleep is clearing the brain’s short-term memory and making way for new information.

从头到尾一直保持清醒的那群人的学习效果变差了。而那些小睡的人则相反——他们提高了学习能力，在晚上的表现要优于中午。这些发现表明睡觉加强了短期记忆，而且为吸收新信息铺平了道路。

It is already well known that fact-based memories are stored temporarily in an area called the hippocampus, a structure in the centre of the brain. But they do not stay there long. Instead, they are sent to the prefrontal cortex for longer-term storage. Electroencephalograms, which measure electrical activity in the brain, have shown that this memory-refreshing capacity is related to a specific type of sleep called Stage 2 non-REM sleep.

人们都知道知识性的记忆会被存在一个叫作“海马”的区域，该结构位于大脑中心。但是这些记忆并不会在那里停留很长时间，而是会被发送到前额皮质以备长期储存。测量脑电活动的脑电图显示，这种记忆转移的能力和一种叫作“第二阶段非REM睡眠”的特定状态的睡眠有关。

The ideal nap, then, follows a cycle of between 90 and 100 minutes. The first 30 minutes is a light sleep that helps improve motor performance. Then comes 30 minutes of stage 2 sleep, which refreshes the hippocampus. After this, between 60 and 90 minutes into the nap, comes rapid-eye-movement, or REM, sleep, during which dreaming happens. This, research suggests, is the time when the brain makes connections between the new memories that have just been “downloaded” from the hippocampus and those that already exist—thus making new experiences relevant in a wider context.

理想的小睡遵循一个90-100分钟的周期。头30分钟是浅睡，帮助改善运动功能。然后是30分钟的第二阶段睡眠，在此期间，“海马”得到唤起。之后，小睡的60到90分钟之间是“快速眼动睡眠”，或被叫作REM，期间会有梦境发生。研究表明，在这段时间，大脑将刚刚从海马里“下载”来的新记忆和那些已存记忆建立了联系——从而使新体验与更广阔的背景相关联。

The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a siesta.

沃克博士说，小睡的好处非常大，甚至抵得过一整夜的睡眠。但是他也建议白天的小睡不应睡得太晚，否则会影响夜间的睡眠。除此之外，也并不是所有人都能在午睡之后精神充沛的。

The grogginess that results from an unrefreshing siesta is termed “sleep inertia”. This happens when the brain is woken from a deep sleep with its cells still firing at a slow rhythm and its temperature and blood flow decreased. Sara Mednick, from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that non-habitual nappers suffer from this more often than those who siesta regularly. It may be that those who have a tendency to wake up groggy are choosing not to siesta in the first place. Perhaps, though, as in so many things, it is practice that makes perfect.

因午睡而引起的不清醒状态被称作“睡眠惰性”，发生在大脑从深睡中醒来之时，这个时候，脑细胞仍然在慢节奏律动，大脑温度低，血流速度缓慢。位于圣迭戈的加利福尼亚大学的萨拉·麦德尼克说，没有午睡习惯的人和有规律午睡的人比起来更容易发生这种情形。这可能是因为那些醒来容易头脑晕沉的人平时很少午睡的原因。但是，也许只有多多午睡，才能少少头晕。熟能生巧嘛！万事同理。

译者：eastx
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Private-sector space flight
私人公司的太空旅行

Moon dreams
奔月之梦

The Americans may still go to the moon before the Chinese
也许美国人仍会比中国人更早登月

Feb 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Can you direct me to reception, please?
请您告诉我服务台怎么走，好吗？

WHEN America’s space agency, NASA, announced its spending plans in February, some people worried that its cancellation of the Constellation moon programme had ended any hopes of Americans returning to the Earth’s rocky satellite. The next footprints on the lunar regolith were therefore thought likely to be Chinese. Now, though, the private sector is arguing that the new spending plan actually makes it more likely America will return to the moon.

当美国宇航局在二月份宣布预算案时，一些人担心“星座计划”的取消会熄灭美国人重返地球卫星的希望。所以有人认为下一个在月壤留下脚印的可能会是中国人。但现在，私有企业辩称，新的预算案实际上更可能使美国登月。

The new plan encourages firms to compete to provide transport to low Earth orbit (LEO). The budget proposes $6 billion over five years to spur the development of commercial crew and cargo services to the international space station. This money will be spent on “man-rating” existing rockets, such as Boeing’s Atlas V, and on developing new spacecraft that could be launched on many different rockets. The point of all this activity is to create healthy private-sector competition for transport to the space station—and in doing so to drive down the cost of getting into space.

新计划鼓励私人公司通过竞争来提供近地轨道的运输服务。预算案意图在五年内花费60亿美元来刺激国际空间站的商业载客与载货服务的发展。这笔资金将用于现有的波音阿特拉斯五号等火箭的“载人改造”以及可以被不同火箭搭载的宇宙飞船的研发。所有这些举措都是为私人公司竞争国际空间站的运输服务创造一个良好条件，并以此降低进入太空的成本。

Eric Anderson, the boss of a space-travel company called Space Adventures, is optimistic about the changes. They will, he says, build “railroads into space”. Space Adventures has already sent seven people to the space station, using Russian rockets. It would certainly benefit from a new generation of cheap launchers.

“太空探险”旅行公司的老板埃里克•安德森对于所发生的变化持乐观态度。他说，他们公司将修筑“太空轨道”。该公司利用俄罗斯运载火箭，已将七人送入国际空间站。他们肯定会从新一代廉价发射器中获益。

Another potential beneficiary—and advocate of private-sector transport—is Robert Bigelow, a wealthy entrepreneur who founded a hotel chain called Budget Suites of America. Mr Bigelow has so far spent $180m of his own money on space development—probably more than any other individual in history. He has been developing so-called expandable space habitats, a technology he bought from NASA a number of years ago.

另一个潜在的受益者，也是私人公司运输的拥趸，就是创建了“美国廉价套间”连锁旅馆的大亨罗伯特•比奇洛。比奇洛目前已经花费了1.8亿美元用于太空开发，堪称前无古人。他一直在开发所谓可伸展的太空屋，这是他几年前从美国宇航局购买的技术。

These habitats, which are folded up for launch and then inflated in space, were designed as interplanetary vehicles for a trip to Mars, but they are also likely to be useful general-purpose accommodation. The company already has two scaled-down versions in orbit.

这些太空屋，可以在发射时折叠起来，在太空中打开。它们曾被设计成火星之旅的星际车辆，但它们也可能成为多用途的住房。比奇洛的公司已经有两个缩小版在轨道上运行。

Mr Bigelow is preparing to build a space station that will offer cheap access to space to other governments—something he believes will generate a lot of interest. The current plan is to launch the first full-scale habitat (called Sundancer) in 2014. Further modules will be added to this over the course of a year, and the result will be a space station with more usable volume than the existing international one. Mr Bigelow’s price is just under $23m per astronaut. That is about half what Russia charges for a trip to the international station, a price that is likely to go up after the space shuttle retires later this year. He says he will be able to offer this price by bulk-buying launches on newly man-rated rockets. Since most of the cost of space travel is the launch, the price might come down even more if the private sector can lower the costs of getting into orbit.

比奇洛准备建造一个空间站，向其他国家提供廉价进入太空的机会，他相信此举会引起许多国家浓厚的兴趣。现阶段的计划是2014年发射首个实际比例的太空屋（阳光舞者），更多舱室将在一年之内添加完毕，完成后将比现有的国际空间站拥有更多可使用面积。比奇洛太空旅馆的价格仅为每人不到2300万美元，该价格仅是俄罗斯为国际空间站旅行定价的一半，而且这个定价还有可能由于航天飞机在今年退役而水涨船高。比奇洛称，它将向大量购买使用新载人火箭升空的旅客提供这个价格。因为太空旅行最大的开销就是发射，一旦私人公司可以降低发射成本，旅行价格甚至可能会下降得更多。

The ultimate aim of all his investment, Mr Bigelow says, is to get to the moon. LEO is merely his proving ground. He says that if the technology does work in orbit, the habitats will be ideal for building bases on the moon. To go there, however, he will have to prove that the expandable habitat does indeed work, and also generate substantial returns on his investment in LEO, to provide the necessary cash.

比奇洛称，他所有投资的最终目的是登月。近地轨道飞行只是他的试验田。他说，如果这项技术可以在轨道上成功实施，可伸展太空屋将是建立月球基地的理想材料。然而为了达到那个目标，他将要证明可伸展太空屋确实能用，而且需要他在近地轨道飞行的投资产生大量的回报来提供必需资金。

If all goes well, the next target will be L1, the point 85% of the way to the moon where the gravitational pulls of moon and Earth balance. “It’s a terrific dumping off point,” he says. “We could transport a completed lunar base [to L1] and put it down on the lunar surface intact.”

如果一切顺利，下一个目标将是第一个拉格朗日点（这个点在到月球路程的85%处，该点地月引力平衡）。比奇洛称：“这是一个完美的安置点，我们可以将一个完整的月球基地运到那里，然后将它完好地放在月球表面。”

There are others with lunar ambitions, too. Some 20 teams are competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, a purse of $30m that will be given to the first private mission which lands a robot on the moon, travels across the surface and sends pictures back to Earth. Space Adventures, meanwhile, is in discussions with almost a dozen potential clients about a circumlunar mission, costing $100m a head.

其他人也对登月抱有雄心壮志。20多只队伍正在角逐谷歌月球X大奖，谷歌出资3000万美元用来赞助首个让无人探测器登上月球，在表面漫步一段距离，拍摄图片传回地球的私人公司。与此同时，“太空探险”公司正在与十多位潜在客户商谈环月旅行，价格为每人1亿美元。

The original Apollo project was mainly a race to prove the superiority of American capitalism over Soviet communism. Capitalism won—but at the cost of creating, in NASA, one of the largest bureaucracies in American history. If the United States is to return to the moon, it needs to do so in a way that is demonstrably superior to the first trip—for example, being led by business rather than government. Engaging in another government-driven spending battle, this time with the Chinese, will do nothing more than show that America has missed the point.

阿波罗计划最初只是为了证明美国资本主义比苏联社会主义更优越而进行的竞争。资本主义取得了胜利，但代价是造就了美国历史上最大的官僚机构之一——美国宇航局。如果美国重返月球，就需要用明显优于第一次的方式来完成，例如由企业主导而不是政府。而如果美国再次卷入由政府主导的军备竞赛的话，一切只会表明美国必输无疑，因为这次的对手是中国。

译者：schalke
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Chemical pollution and fertility
化学污染与生殖能力

Flame wars
火焰战争

Fire retardants may affect female reproduction
阻燃剂可能会影响女性生育

Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

With free birth control? 免费避孕？

IN MANY ways DDT was a miracle chemical when its efficacy against biting insects was discovered at the start of the second world war. Its widespread use against malarial mosquitoes saved countless lives. What was not known at the time, however, was DDT’s propensity to accumulate, persist and damage the environment.

当第二次世界大战伊始发现它抗蚊虫叮咬的功效之后，滴滴涕在许多方面都成为一种特效化学药剂。它广泛用于抵抗传染疟疾的蚊虫，拯救了无数生命。然而在那时没有人知道，滴滴涕有富集性，稳定性并且破坏环境。
继续阅读“Flame wars 火焰战争”

Aerial bombardment

空袭

The calibration of destruction

校准破坏范围

Smaller, cleverer and more accurate munitions are changing warfare

军备的小型化、智能化、精准化引发战争变革

Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

THE Perseus, a 900kg (2,000lb) bomb made in Greece, incinerates almost everything in an area larger than a dozen football fields. Farther out, oxygen is sucked from the air and people may be crushed by a pressure wave. The inferno is similar to that caused by napalm—a jellied-petrol explosive heavily restricted by a United Nations weapons convention.

珀尔修斯是一种希腊制造的900公斤（2000磅）重的炸弹，爆炸后几乎能将比12个足球场还大的区域内的一切物体化为灰烬。更大范围内空气中的氧气被“抽走”，人也可能受到压力波冲击。这与凝固汽油弹爆炸产生的结果相似。凝固汽油弹是联合国武器公约严格限制使用的胶状汽油爆炸物。

Modified with new technologies, however, the Perseus is increasingly considered legitimate. Mark Hiznay, a bombs-control expert at Human Rights Watch, a humanitarian group based in New York, has gone so far as to say it has become a necessary weapon. With a stronger steel casing and backup shock-resistant triggering mechanisms, the Perseus can smash through several metres of reinforced concrete and detonate only after it has gone into a bunker. This makes the bomb a good way to destroy and sterilise germ- and chemical-warfare laboratories while limiting damage nearby, says Mr Hiznay.

然而，经过新技术改造的珀尔修斯炸弹逐渐被认为是合法的。位于纽约的人道主义组织“人权观察组织”炸弹控制专家马克•希茨内甚至表示，珀尔修斯已经成了一种必要的武器。珀尔修斯拥有更坚固的钢铁外壳和抗震性延时触发系统，能击穿数米厚的钢筋混凝土，并在进入掩体之后才引爆。希茨内说，凭借这种性能，使用珀尔修斯成了在限制对周围的破坏的前提下，毁灭生化武器实验室并进行一次彻底消毒的好手段。

A new generation of advanced ordnance, including the Perseus, is making bombing campaigns safer for civilians. During the first Gulf war, in 1991, American warplanes had to drop an average of six 450kg satellite-guided bombs to destroy a tank or a small building. During the second war, 12 years later, a similar attack required bombs half that size, and fewer of them. Today 100kg bombs would suffice, because guidance systems are so good that individual rooms, as opposed to entire buildings, can be aimed at.

包括珀尔修斯在内的新一代先进炸弹使得轰炸行动对平民更为安全。1991年第一次海湾战争期间，要摧毁一辆坦克或一座小型建筑，美国战斗机平均得投下六枚450公斤重的卫星制导炸弹。12年后，第二次海湾战争期间，类似的空袭所需炸弹体积减半，枚数更少。如今只要使用100公斤重的炸弹就足够了，因为现在的制导系统可以精确地瞄准瞄准单个房间而无须像以往那样将整座建筑作为轰炸目标。

Greek fire

希腊火

Much of this revolution, as Mr Hiznay terms it, is due to guidance kits that can be attached to existing “dumb” bombs. An upgraded bomb, when falling, uses data from the global-positioning system in combination with laser and infra-red sensors to adjust a set of fins that work like aeroplane flaps. This steers the bomb towards its target—even if that target is moving. The AASM, a French navy and air-force guidance system, has fins that can guide and glide bombs for 50km (31 miles) and hit a target within a metre of the bullseye. The LJDAM, a system made by Boeing and first exported in 2008, can land a bomb on a vehicle that is travelling at 110kph.

这次革命（希茨内的叫法）主要归功于可以安装在已有的“傻瓜”炸弹上的制导装置。一枚升级后的炸弹，落下过程中，利用全球定位系统以及激光和红外感应器提供的数据调整弹身上的一组鳍片，其工作原理类似飞机襟翼。即使目标在移动，它也能相应进行调整，使炸弹准确命中目标。法国海空军联合研制的制导炸弹“模块化空对地武器（AASM）”拥有的鳍片能引导炸弹滑行50公里（31英里）后准确地击中目标，误差不到1米。由波音公司制造、2008年首次输出的杰达姆(LJDAM)系统能能使炸弹准确命中一辆时速达110公里的车辆。

The market for add-on guidance systems is booming. More than a dozen countries, including South Africa, make them. Two dozen—including India, Pakistan and Turkey—buy them. They are not cheap: $23,000 per bomb will get you one at the bottom of the range. It is not just a more effective weapon, but also a safer one for the bomber. He can fly higher, meaning that he is at less risk from ground fire.

附加制导系统的市场正在迅速扩大。有十多个国家（包括南非）生产这种系统。有24个国家——包括印度、巴基斯坦和土耳其——购买这种系统。附加制导炸弹不便宜，最便宜的也要23000美刀一枚。这种武器不仅效率更高，对投弹者也更安全。投弹者可以飞得更高一些，从而使自己受到的地面火力威胁更少。

Moreover, these bombs continue to be clever even after arriving at the target. Their fuses can set off explosions at precisely the right moment. One defence contractor, Israel Military Industries, makes a 225kg bomb, the MPR-500, that can hammer through several storeys of a building and explode on a chosen floor. This feat means triggering the detonation about two milliseconds after the bomb hits the ceiling above the doomed storey. The bomb can be programmed to do this just seconds before it is dropped. Such precision means it is sold as a replacement for ordnance two or more times its size.

而且这些炸弹抵达目标后仍未丧失智能，上面的引信能在恰到好处的时刻引爆。 国防承包商以色列军事工业公司生产的一种225公斤炸弹MPR-500能击穿数层建筑，并在选定的楼层爆炸。如此绝技，意味着要在炸弹击中目标楼层天花板后约2毫秒引爆。炸弹可以在投下前数秒通过编程完成设定。如此高的精确度，意味着它能代替体积是其两倍以上的炸弹。

Bomb-makers are also finding cleverer ways of destroying deeply buried bunkers. Almost five years ago, America’s Congress cut research funding for a controversial bunker-busting nuke called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. Today the bulk of effort to develop bunker-smashers in Western countries employs conventional weaponry. In a classic attack, a succession of big bombs is dropped on the same spot. Such “drilling”, however, may require numerous warplanes and inflict great damage on the surrounding area.

而且，炸弹生产商正在寻找更智能的方法，以摧毁深埋地下的掩体。几乎就在五年前，美国国会削减了一种引起争议的掩体核弹——坚实型核钻地弹——的研究经费。如今，西方国家大多数寻找粉碎掩体的方法的努力都使用常规武器。传统的打击方法将一连串大型炸弹投掷到同一地点。然而，这种“钻孔”的方式需要投入大量战斗机，而且会对周围地区造成很大破坏。

Souping up bombs with rockets that speed up their impact might provide an alternative. Bunker-busters work best if they detonate after burrowing into the ground. This helps “couple” the explosion to the ground so that shock waves designed to collapse a bunker travel deeper. Israel Military Industries is studying a rocket that would ignite just before the bomb hit, digging it deeper than ever before exploding.

利用火箭推进炸弹以加大其冲击力，或许是一种选择。 掩体炸弹若能在钻入地下以后再引爆，效果最好。这样能将爆炸“系”在地底，令用来摧毁掩体的冲击波传播得更深。以色列军事工业公司正在研制能刚好在炸弹触地前点火的火箭，使炸弹能钻得更深些再爆炸。

That, according to Meir Geva, head of aerial munitions at Israel Military Industries, can be very deep indeed. His firm makes a bunker-buster which weighs about as much as a small car. “To my great sorrow”, Mr Geva says, its shockwave ranges cannot be revealed.

以色列军事工业公司航空弹药负责人梅厄•戈瓦认为，这样炸弹确实可以钻得非常深。他们公司制造了一种重量约与一部小轿车相当的掩体炸弹。“非常遗憾，”格瓦说，不能透露它的冲击波范围。

Whatever the bunker-buster’s destructive power, the next generation of bombs will dwarf it. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator, an American bunker-buster scheduled for deployment at the end of the year, weighs 15 times as much.

无论这种掩体炸弹的破坏力有多大，下一代炸弹都会令其相形见绌。巨型钻地弹是美国计划年底部署的掩体炸弹，重量是它的15倍。

On April 2nd 2003, during the second Gulf war, a hundred or so Iraqi armoured vehicles approached a far smaller American reconnaissance unit south of Baghdad. Responding to a call for help, a B-52 bomber attacked the first 30 or so vehicles in the column with a single, historic pass. It dropped two new CBU-105 bombs, and the result shocked the soldiers of both sides—and, soon enough, military observers everywhere.

2003年4月2日第二次海湾战争期间，约100辆伊拉克装甲车逼近巴格达南部一个小得多的美军侦察部队。收到求救信号，一架B-52轰炸机用具有历史意义的单次投弹，炸毁了队伍前面的约30辆装甲车。当时共投下了两枚CBU-105新型炸弹，令双方士兵大为震惊，很快，全世界的军事观察员也为之震惊。

While falling, the CBU-105 bombs popped open, each releasing ten submunitions which were slowed by parachutes. Each of these used mini rockets to spin and eject outward four discs the size of ice-hockey pucks.

CBU-105炸弹落下过程中自行裂开，每枚炸弹释放出10枚子弹药，子弹药在降落伞作用下速度减慢。每枚子弹药利用微型火箭旋转射出冰球大小的4个圆盘。

The 80 free-falling discs from the pair of bombs then scanned the ground with lasers and heat-detecting infra-red sensors to locate armoured vehicles. Those discs that identified a target exploded dozens of metres up. The blast propelled a tangerine-sized slug of copper down into the target, destroying it with the impact and the accompanying shrapnel. The soldiers in the 70 vehicles farther back in the column surrendered immediately.

两枚炸弹释放出来的80个自由落下的圆盘，利用激光发射器和热探测红外线感应器扫描地面以确定装甲车位置。确定目标位置之后，圆盘在离地几十米的空中爆炸。爆炸将橘子大小的铜弹射向目标，利用撞击力和弹片摧毁目标。伊拉克队伍后面的70辆装甲车中的士兵随即投降。

A kinder, gentler future

更宽容、更温和的未来

The CBU-105, however frightening, may actually point the way toward less violent warfare. Cluster munitions—which release bomblets to cover a wide area—are banned or tightly restricted by an international convention. But the CBU-105 and its cousins, known as sensor-fused weapons, are considered legal because very few discs remain unexploded on the battlefield. Those that fail to detect a target are supposed to self-destruct in the air. The trigger batteries of those that do not will quickly die, so duds are unlikely to kill civilians later.

无论CBU-105多么令人恐惧，实际上，它可能令战争更加温和。释放小炸弹以覆盖大范围地区的各种集束弹，受到国际公约禁止或严格限制。但CBU-105和同类产品被称为传感器融合武器，由于极少有未爆炸的圆盘留在战场上而被认为合法。那些没有探测到目标的圆盘，理应在空中自毁。即使没有自毁，它们的触发电池也会很快耗尽，所以哑弹不可能在以后炸死平民。

Crucially, the manufacturer of the CBU-105, Textron Defense Systems, of Wilmington, Massachusetts, is improving sensors to allow the weapon to distinguish the heat signatures of cars, buses and homes from those of military hardware. If there is such a thing as a humanitarian bomb, this might be it.

重要的是，CBU-105的制造商，马萨诸塞州维明顿的达信防御系统公司正在改进感应器，以帮助炸弹区分军事装备和汽车、公共汽车、民房的热量信号。要是有人道主义炸弹存在，或许CBU-105就是。

By contrast, consider another sort of new weapon. The explosion of Russia’s “Father of All Bombs” approaches that of a small nuclear weapon; it would flatten many city blocks. In 2007, the government showed it off proudly on prime-time television. To most military men, such a bomb is not a PR coup, but an embarrassment.

相比之下，想想另一种新武器。俄罗斯的“所有炸弹他爹” 爆炸当量接近一枚小型核弹，会将许多街区夷为平地。2007年，俄政府在电视黄金时段炫耀这种武器。对许多军人来说，这种炸弹并不是公关上的重大成就，反而是一种令人难堪的东西。

译者：hddmail126
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Tech.view
科技·视点

Decimated
十进制时间的过去……

Jan 15th 2010 | LOS ANGELES
From Economist.com

What if Napoleon hadn’t abolished decimal time?
如果拿破仑当初没有废止十进制时间？

SINCE the start of 2010, your correspondent has amused himself by interpreting the date as a binary number, and then converting that into its decimal equivalent. Expressed internationally as dd.mm.yy, the first day of this year was 010110. In decimal form, that works out to be 24+22+21=22. The game is pointless, of course. But it has made him ponder the whole date and time arrangement people take for granted.

2010年一开始，笔者多了个乐子——把日期转换成一个二进制数，然后再把这个二进制数转换成相应的十进制数。国际通行的日期标注法是“日.月.年”，所以，2010年的第一天就可以表示成010110，转换成十进制就是24+22+21=22。这种游戏当然没什么意义，但是笔者却由此思考起来人们已习以为常的整套日期和时间的表示法。

There are only four years a century when you can play this little game. In the current century, two years (2000 and 2001) have already passed. Like the previous pair, the two that remain (2010 and 2011) contain only three days (1st, 10th and 11th) in three months (January, October and November) that lend themselves to this phoney binary treatment.

每个世纪只有四年可以玩这个小游戏。本世纪已经过去了两年（2000年和2001年）。剩下的这两年和过去这两年一样，每年只有三个月（1月，10月，11月）的三天（1号，10号，11号）可以用这种形式上的二进制方法表示。

Obviously, the smallest binary number in this century’s set was January 1st at the turn of the millennium (010100). The largest will be November 11th next year, when all the bits in the six-digit sequence are present (111111). In decimal terms, that is equal to 25+24+23+22+21+20= 63. There is nothing magical about such a number, though November 11th does happen to be the birthday of a member of your correspondent’s family. For his own amusement, 63 of something will figure in the celebration.

很明显，本世纪最小的二进制数是千禧之交的一月的第一天（010100），最大的将是明年的11月11日，届时这个六位数字的所有数码都会是1（111111）；用十进制表示，就是25+24+23+22+21+20= 63。这样一个数字没什么神奇的，但11月11日却恰巧是笔者一位家人的生日。有趣的是，明年在他庆祝生日之时，他是63岁。

All this playing around with binary numbers has made him wonder why binary time—or, for that matter, decimal time—never caught on in the Western world. Decimal time has been tried on many occasions. Indeed, a decimal calendar based on a ten-month year was used by Romans during the time of Romulus and Remus. Their calendar ran from March to December. The two missing months needed to make up a solar year were dismissed as winter when nothing grew or happened—and therefore not worth worrying about.

通过摆弄这些二进制数，笔者不由引发一个疑问：二进制时间——或者十进制时间——为什么从未在西方世界流行开来。人类迄今为止已多次尝试使用过十进制时间；而且，在罗莫路和勒莫时代，罗马人使用的是每年10个月份的十进制日历——从3月到12月。阳历年缺失的这两个月被作为冬天而舍弃掉，因为在那段期间，万物沉寂，草木不生——所以，这两个月有没有都无所谓。

The ancient Egyptians were far smarter. For three millennia before Christ, they used a 12-month calendar, with each month comprising three ten-day weeks. Five rogue days were tacked on the end of the cycle to complete the solar year. By the time of Augustus, the so-called Alexandrian calendar had even incorporated an additional day for leap years. This was essentially the decimal calendar that the French introduced during the revolution. But the French Republic’s official ten-day week lasted for little more than a dozen years before Napoleon abolished it in 1806.

而古埃及人要更智慧。在公元前的三千年间，他们使用的是12个月份的日历，每个月由3个十天的周组成。在每个太阳年年尾，会用5个机动日来补全。到奥古斯都时期，“亚历山大历”甚至在闰年包含额外的一天。法国在大革命期间弄的“十进制日历”本质上来说就是这种玩意。但是法兰西共和国官方这种10天一周的日历仅仅持续了10多年，就在1806年被拿破仑废止掉了。

Ironically, when the French invented the metric system in 1795, two years after they changed the calendar, they decimalised everything except time. There were base units for length, area, volume, weight and even currency. But seconds and minutes, hours and days, weeks and months were left unscathed.

颇具讽刺意味的是，当法国人在1795年发明了十进制时，也就是他们更改日历的两年后，他们把除时间以外的所有东西都改成了十进制，包括基本度量单位，比如长度、面积、体积、重量，甚至货币。但是秒、分、小时、日、周、月却丝毫未动。

That, along with the failure to decimalise the compass, was perhaps the metrication commission’s biggest setback. Its august president, the noted mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, tried in vain to get the Republic to adopt the déci-jour and centi-jour (a tenth and a hundredth of a day, respectively). But the decimal calendar was deemed enough of a gesture to the new age of rationalism, even though it did not comply with the strict divisions and multiples of ten, and used none of the metric system’s prefixes (milli-, centi-, deci-, deca-, hecto-, kilo-, etc).

这些，再加上指南针十进制化的失败，可能是十进制委员会最大的挫败。该委员会不苟言笑的主席，也就是著名数学家约瑟夫·路易斯·拉格朗日，努力要让法国人接受“十分日”和“百分日”（分别是将每天十等分和一百等分），却徒劳无功。但是十进制日历却被认为足以作为向新时代理性主义的一次敬礼，尽管十进制日历并未遵循严格的十等分和十等倍法，并且没有使用任何一个十进制的前缀（milli-，centi-， deci-，deca-，hecto-，kilo-等）。

Even so, the idea of a centi-jour (14.4 minutes) has cropped up on several occasions since. One reason is that a ten-hour clock, with each hour divided into 100 decimal minutes, and each decimal minute sub-divided into 100 decimal seconds, would make navigation easier—provided, of course, you had a decimal sextant and compass to go with it. Decimal time and longitude would then correlate directly without the need for logarithmic conversion tables. Even the Royal Geographical Society in Victorian England was keen on decimal navigation, and published tables to convert sexagesimal angles and hours into centi-jours and their decimal subdivisions.

尽管如此，从那时起，百分日（每一等分14.4分钟）的概念却已见诸于有些场合。一个原因就是十小时的钟（每小时被分成100个十进制分，每个十进制分被分成100个十进制秒）会让航海变得更简单——当然前提是你要有一个十进制的六分仪和罗盘作为辅助。这样一来，十进制时间就会与经度直接相关联，对数转换表就变得不需要了。在维多利亚时期的英格兰，甚至皇家地理学会都对十进制航海很感兴趣，发行了将六十等分的角和小时转换成百分日及其十等分次级的换算表。

Numerous clocks were made in France and elsewhere during the 19th century with faces showing both the numbers 1-12 for standard time and 1-10 for decimal time. The supposed advantage was that any observer with a decimal chronometer and a view of the sun’s height above the horizon would then know instantly where on the planet he was. With 100 decimal degrees (or “gons” as they became known) to a right-angle, and the distance from the pole to the equator being almost exactly 10,000 kilometres, 1 km along the surface subtends an angle of one centigon (a hundredth of a decimal degree) at the centre of the Earth. Had it come to pass, decimal time and decimal angular measurement might have done for the 19th century what GPS did for the 20th.

在19世纪的法国和世界其它地方做了很多这样的表：表面上既显示表示标准时间的1到12，还显示表示十进制时间的1到10。人们认为这种表的优势在于：任何人只要有这样一块十进制表，再能看到地平线以上太阳的高度，就会立刻知道他在地球上的位置。100个十进制度（更为流行的称法叫作“百分度”）就是一个直角，从极点到赤道的距离几乎就是10000公里；这两点就使得地球表面的一公里的地心夹角恰巧是1centigon （即1百分度的百分之一）。如果当初这些办法流行开来，十进制时间测量方法和十进制角度测量方法之于19世纪可能就会像GPS之于20世纪。

But the French were not the first to think of the ten-hour day, nor even the centi-jour. Like the Egyptians with their decimal calendar, the Chinese used decimal (not to mention duodecimal) time several millennia before Christ. Since the beginning of history, they have divided the day into a 100 equal parts called ke (14.4 minutes), and split each of those into 60 fen (14.4 seconds). When Jesuit missionaries introduced Western clocks to China in the 17th century, the local inhabitants simply changed the number of divisions in a day from 100 to 96, making a ke equal to exactly 15 minutes.

但是并不是法国人第一个想到十小时日的，百分日甚至也不是第一个。和埃及人的十进制日历一样，中国也早在公元前的几千年就使用十进制时间（十二进制时间就更不用说了）。很久很久以前，他们就把每天分成100等分，并且称作“刻（14.4分钟）”，并且把每一个刻成60“分（14.4秒）”。在耶稣会的传教士将西方的钟表引进中国之后，中国的老百姓就直接把每天从100等分改为96等分，这样1刻就正好是15分钟。

To this day, the term ke is used in China to denote “a quarter of a hour”. In Japan, the same character (pronounced either “koku” or “kizamu”) translates roughly into “carving out a small amount of time” and was used, until the Meiji era, to signify “hour”, while the character for fen (pronounced “fûn” in Japanese) is used to this day to denote “minute”.

今天的中国仍然用“刻”来表示“1/4小时”。在日本，同样一个字（音发作“koku”或 “kizamu”），大约可以翻译成“挤出一小点时间”，而且直到明治时期，这个字一直表示“小时”。但是“分”（在日语里发作“fûn”）这个字直到今天仍然表示“分钟”的意思。

Ultimately, the only unit of time that really matters is the second. Originally, the internationally accepted system of units known as SI (Système International d’Unités) defined the second as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day—simply the inverse of the number of seconds in 24 hours. But irregularities in the rotation of the Earth made that unreliable. Thus, in 1967, SI adopted a more precise definition based on the frequency of the radiation a caesium atom emits when it flips between two energy states. No ifs and buts, at absolute zero temperature, this is exactly 9,192,631,770 hertz.

到最后，真正起决定作用的时间单位就是秒了。国际通用的单位制体系SI（国际单位制）规定一秒等于一个平均太阳日的1/86400——简单来说就是24小时所含秒数的倒数。但是地球自转的不规律使得这个数值不可靠。所以，在1967年，SI采用了一个更为精确的制定办法，该办法基于一个铯原子在两个能级之间跃迁时的辐射频率。这个频率不存在“如果和但是”，绝对零度的条件下，9192631770赫兹，不会有任何偏差。

Physicists have no trouble using, on the one hand, picoseconds (trillionths of a second) or even femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second) to discuss time at the atomic scale. They also talk cheerfully of 1018 seconds needed for light to travel from the farthest reaches of the universe. Likewise, in computing, “Unix Time” gives the date and time in terms of the number of seconds since January 1st 1970, and Microsoft’s “Filetime” is recorded as multiples of 100-nanosecond units since January 1st 1601.

在讨论原子级别时间的时候，物理学家用起皮秒（百万兆分之一秒）甚至飞秒（千万亿分之一秒）来都没任何不便。这是一方面。另一方面，这些人也会兴奋地谈论1018秒——这是从宇宙最远处传来的光运行所需的时间。同样，在计算机领域，Unix系统给出的时间“Unix Time”是从1970年1月1日以来经过的秒数，微软的“Filetime”是以100纳秒为单位记录的，开始时间为1601年1月1日。

But computer scientists are just as likely to divide their day into hexadecimal hours, with each hour broken up into hexadecimal minutes. (The 16-base hexadecimal system uses the numbers 0-9 followed by the letters A-F.) The hexadecimal day begins at midnight at .0000. One second after midnight, the time is .0001. Half a day later, noon arrives at .8000. A second before the next midnight is .FFFF. Got it? Your correspondent neither.

但是计算机学家同样也会把一天分成十六进制小时，每一小时又分成十六进制分钟。（十六进制这套系统使用的是数字0到9，后面接着A到F。）十六进制日始于午夜的.0000。一秒钟之后，时间变为.0001。半天过后，来到中午，此时时间为.8000。次日到来的前一秒钟是.FFFF。看懂了吗？笔者我同样没看懂。

In normal life, people have to go to work, arrange schedules, catch planes and trains, and pick up children from school at given times. The number of seconds needed to do such useful things has to be given names everyone recognises and agrees upon. It would be nice if such units of time were decimal multiples of one another. Unfortunately, here on planet Earth, with its decidedly undecimal sidereal year of 365-and-a-quarter days, that is just not going to happen.

在平日生活中，人们必须要在给定的时间上班工作，安排日程，赶飞机火车，去学校接孩子。做这些事情所需的一定量的秒数必须要给出个名字来，而且这些名字必须要人人都认识且达成一致。这样的时间单位上下级之间要都是以十倍进位就好了。但是不巧的是，在地球这个行星星球上，这种事不会发生，因为“恒星年（由365又1/4天所组成）是非十进制的”这一事实是确凿无差的。

译者：eastx
如想与译者本人对该文进行切磋，请到如下链接：http://bbs.ecocn.org/viewthread.php?tid=30359&extra=page%3D1

The psychology of power
权力心理学

Absolutely
绝对如此
Jan 21st 2010
From The Economist print edition

Power corrupts, but it corrupts only those who think they deserve it
权力腐蚀人，但它腐蚀的仅仅是那些认为权力是自己应得之物的人

REPORTS of politicians who have extramarital affairs while complaining about the death of family values, or who use public funding for private gain despite condemning government waste, have become so common in recent years that they hardly seem surprising anymore. Anecdotally, at least, the connection between power and hypocrisy looks obvious.
在政府官员中，有人一边热衷婚外情一边哀叹家庭价值观的沦丧；有人尽管一边嘴上谴责政府浪费资金，却一边私下利用公众经费为己图利。近些年来，这一类新闻已经司空见惯，不足为奇了。至少，从趣闻轶事的角度来看，权力和伪善之间的关系十分明显。

Anecdote is not science, though. And, more subtly, even if anecdote is correct, it does not answer the question of whether power tends to corrupt, as Lord Acton’s dictum has it, or whether it merely attracts the corruptible. To investigate this question Joris Lammers at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, and Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University, in Illinois, have conducted a series of experiments which attempted to elicit states of powerfulness and powerlessness in the minds of volunteers. Having done so, as they report in Psychological Science, they tested those volunteers’ moral pliability. Lord Acton, they found, was right.
但趣闻轶事毕竟不是科学。而且，就算趣闻轶事属实，它也并没有更深入细致地回答下列问题：究竟是权力——如阿克顿爵士的名言所说【1】——容易腐败所有人，还是权力只不过吸引了原本就腐败的人? 为此，荷兰蒂尔堡大学的里斯•拉默斯（Joris Lammers）博士和美国伊利诺斯州西北大学的亚当•林斯基（Adam Galinsky）博士做了一系列的实验，尝试从实验志愿者的心理中诱导出“有权有势和无权无势”的心理状态。做完诱导后，再测试参与者的道德柔韧性。他们将结果发表在《心理学科学》期刊上并在报告中证实: 阿克顿爵士说对了。

In their first study, Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky asked 61 university students to write about a moment in their past when they were in a position of high or low power. Previous research has established that this is an effective way to “prime” people into feeling as if they are currently in such a position. Each group (high power and low power) was then split into two further groups. Half were asked to rate, on a nine-point morality scale (with one being highly immoral and nine being highly moral), how objectionable it would be for other people to over-report travel expenses at work. The other half were asked to participate in a game of dice.
在第一轮研究中，拉默斯和林斯基博士要求61名大学生写下他们经历中曾拥有高或低权力职位的一段时间。早期的实验已经证实，这样可以有效地让志愿者感到自己目前正处在这个职位【注：称为诱导过程“prime”process】 。志愿者分为（高、低权位）两组后再每组一分为二。其中一半人将自己对别人在工作中虚报出差费用的反感程度，在标有1-9选项的道德测量表上以打分表示（1表示道德标准最低点，9为最高）。另一半人参与一种掷骰子游戏。

The dice players were told to roll two ten-sided dice (one for “tens” and one for “units”) in the privacy of an isolated cubicle, and report the results to a lab assistant. The number they rolled, which would be a value between one and 100 (two zeros), would determine the number of tickets that they would be given in a small lottery that was run at the end of the study.
骰子游戏者每人在一个隔开的斗间里投掷两个10面骰子（其中一个表示十位数，另一个表示个位数），然后向实验助理报告结果。他们掷骰所报告的点数（1 到100）用来决定各自领取的彩票张数。当实验结束时，这些彩票用来参与一个小型抽奖活动。

In the case of the travel expenses—when the question hung on the behaviour of others—participants in the high-power group reckoned, on average, that over-reporting rated as a 5.8 on the nine-point scale. Low-power participants rated it 7.2. The powerful, in other words, claimed to favour the moral course. In the dice game, however, high-power participants reported, on average, that they had rolled 70 while low-power individuals reported an average 59. Though the low-power people were probably cheating a bit (the expected average score would be 50), the high-power volunteers were undoubtedly cheating—perhaps taking the term “high roller” rather too literally.
在出差报销的测验中（当问题涉及他人的行为时），高权组员在9分之内，对多报出差费用的行为给了平均5.8分。低权位组给了7.2分。换句话说，有权者更赞成高道德要求。在骰子游戏中，高权组员报出的平均数为70，而低权组员的平均数为59。 虽然低权组员也可能编了点小谎（预计的平均值应该是50），但高权组显然明显地谎报了数字—大概他们把“狂赌徒”的字面层意过度当真了【2】。

Taken together, these results do indeed suggest that power tends to corrupt and to promote a hypocritical tendency to hold other people to a higher standard than oneself. To test the point further, though, Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky explicitly contrasted attitudes to self and other people when the morally questionable activity was the same in each case. Having once again primed two groups of participants to be either high-power or low-power, they then asked some members of each group how acceptable it would be for someone else to break the speed limit when late for an appointment and how acceptable it would be for the participant himself to do so. Others were asked similar questions about tax declarations.
上述综合结果确实显示出权力容易使人腐败，并且促成一种伪善趋向，即对别人持有高过对己的要求标准。 为了更进一步测试这点，拉默斯和林斯基博士通过一个无论“对人和对己”同样都存在道德问题的活动，来清楚地比较组员的态度。将高、低权两组成员再次引导进入状态后，他们对每组中的部分成员提出一些问题：对他人因为赶去面谈而超速违规所能接受的程度？换成自己又怎样? 另一部分成员针对缴税事项回答相类似的问题。

Only the little people pay taxes…【3】
只有小人物在缴税

In both cases participants used the same one-to-nine scale employed in the first experiment. The results showed that the powerful do, indeed, behave hypocritically. They felt that others speeding because they were late warranted a 6.3 on the scale whereas speeding themselves warranted a 7.6. Low-power individuals, by contrast, saw everyone as equal. They scored themselves as 7.2 and others at 7.3—a statistically insignificant difference. In the case of tax dodging, the results were even more striking. High-power individuals felt that when others broke tax laws this rated as a 6.6 on the morality scale, but that if they did so themselves this rated as a 7.6. In this case low-power individuals were actually easier on others and harsher on themselves, with values of 7.7 and 6.8 respectively.
两个活动的参与者使用同样的测试表，即第一次实验中的1-9分测量表。测试结果显示，高权力者的确行为伪善。别人因迟到而超速，他们认为理应给6.3分，而自己超速的话则理应给7.6分。相比之下，低权者却认为各人都该平等对待。他们给自己7.2分，给他人7.3分—这种差距在统计中可忽略不计。针对逃漏税的问题，测试结果甚至更为突显。高权力者认为他人破坏了法律，在道德测量表上打了6.6分，而倘若是自己所为的话，则给7.6分。回答同一问题的低权位者反而对他人宽容，对自己更严格，分别给了7.7和6.8分。

These results, then, suggest that the powerful do indeed behave hypocritically, condemning the transgressions of others more than they condemn their own. Which comes as no great surprise, although it is always nice to have everyday observation confirmed by systematic analysis. But another everyday observation is that powerful people who have been caught out often show little sign of contrition. It is not just that they abuse the system; they also seem to feel entitled to abuse it. To investigate this point, Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky devised a third set of experiments. These were designed to disentangle the concept of power from that of entitlement. To do this, the researchers changed the way they primed people.
这些结果反映了高权者确实具伪善行为，与对待自己的违法相比，他人的违法行为将更多地受到这些人的谴责。其实这并不会令人特别惊奇，不过这种日常所见经过科学分析后得到证实总归是好事。还有一种司空见惯的现象，即有权人物犯规被逮之后鲜有忏悔之意。他们不仅滥用职权，并且认为自己有权利这么做。为了研究这一点，拉默斯和林斯基博士设计了第三套实验。这次实验的目标是把权力概念从权利概念中分开来。研究人员因此改换了他们引导试验者的方法。

A culture of entitlement
权利文化

Half of 105 participants were asked to write about a past experience in which they had legitimately been given a role of high or low power. The others were asked to write about an experience of high or low power where they did not feel their power (or lack of it) was legitimate. All of the volunteers were then asked to rate how immoral it would be for someone to take an abandoned bicycle rather than report the bicycle to the police. They were also asked, if they were in real need of a bicycle, how likely they would be to take it themselves and not report it.
105名参与者中有一半被要求写下一段“合理地”处于高或低权位的过往经历。另一半被要求写一段拥有高、低权力职位的经历，但他们感到自己的有权（或无权）是不合理的。其后，所有的志愿者都要给下列问题打分：有人将一辆拾到的自行车归为己有而没有交予警察，其行为不符合道德标准的程度是多少？他们还要回答：假如你此时正急需一辆自行车，你留下车子而不交出去的可能性有多大？

The “powerful” who had been primed to believe they were entitled to their power readily engaged in acts of moral hypocrisy. They assigned a value of 5.1 to others engaging in the theft of the bicycle while rating the action at 6.9 if they were to do it themselves. Among participants in all of the low-power states, morally hypocritical behaviour inverted itself, as it had in the case of tax fraud. “Legitimate” low-power individuals assigned others a score of 5.1 if they stole a bicycle and gave themselves a 4.3. Those primed to feel that their lack of power was illegitimate behaved similarly, assigning values of 4.7 and 4.4 respectively.
那些已进入角色，认为有权利享用自己权力的“当权者”毫不迟疑地干起道德伪善的行径。他们给他人偷车行为5.1分，却替自己的同样行为打6.9分。而在所有的低权位者之中，道德伪善行为恰恰反了过来，就同偷税问题一样。“合理”的低权势者给他人行为打5.1点，却为自己留车不还的行为打了4.3分。那些感到自己被“不合理”地剥夺了权力的人具有类似的举动，分别给了4.7和4.4分。

However, an intriguing characteristic emerged among participants in high-power states who felt they did not deserve their elevated positions. These people showed a similar tendency to that found in low-power individuals—to be harsh on themselves and less harsh on others—but the effect was considerably more dramatic. They felt that others warranted a lenient 6.0 on the morality scale when stealing a bike but assigned a highly immoral 3.9 if they took it themselves. Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky call this reversal “hypercrisy”.
然而值得注意的是，在拥有高权位、但认为自己并没有资格处于高位的参与者身上显出一种耐人寻味的特征。他们比较倾向于严己宽人，与低权力者相类似，但差异却更为明显。他们认为他人将自行车归己所有的道德表现应得到一个宽恕性地6.0分，却对自己同样行为给了相当低的3.9道德分。拉默斯和林斯基博士称之为反向“伪善”。

They argue, therefore, that people with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want. This sense of entitlement is crucial to understanding why people misbehave in high office. In its absence, abuses will be less likely. The word “privilege” translates as “private law”. If Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky are right, the sense which some powerful people seem to have that different rules apply to them is not just a convenient smoke screen. They genuinely believe it.
他们分析说，由此可见，拥有自己认为是合法权力的人们违规犯法，不但是因为他们可以违法而不受惩罚，而且也是因为他们在某种直觉层次上感到自己本来就有权利夺取所需。这种权利意识对了解人们为什么在高位上会胡作非为具有关键意义。这种意识不存在时，权力滥用就不太容易发生。特权这个词儿，应解读为私法。如果拉默斯和林斯基博士没错的话，有权势者似乎具有将自己置身于不同法律之中的意识，而这种意识，不仅仅是一个方便的遁词，他们倒是真心相信的。

What explains hypercrisy is less obvious. It is known, though, from experiments on other species that if those at the bottom of a dominance hierarchy show signs of getting uppity, those at the top react both quickly and aggressively. Hypercrisy might thus be a signal of submissiveness—one that is exaggerated in creatures that feel themselves to be in the wrong place in the hierarchy. By applying reverse privileges to themselves, they hope to escape punishment from the real dominants. Perhaps the lesson, then, is that corruption and hypocrisy are the price that societies pay for being led by alpha males (and, in some cases, alpha females). The alternative, though cleaner, is leadership by wimps.
这样一来，“伪善”的解释就不再那么明显了。从其他生物的实验得知，如果处在强权统治等级底层变得自大而不安分时，顶层强势者就会立即出面压制。“伪善”因此可能变成一种“恭顺服从”的信号——这个信号在那些自己认为在等级制度中占了错误位置的生物身上得到强化。通过赋予自己“反向特权”【注：放弃权力权利的信号】，希望逃脱真正强势头领对他们的惩罚。或许，此中可学到的教益就是，社会群体要求得到强人（阿尔法雄性，某些别的状况下则为阿尔法雌性）的领导， 就要付出腐败和伪善的代价。舍此， 另一个选择， 政治上虽然比较干净， 但是由弱主主政。

【注释】

【1】Lord Acton’s dictum：Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
阿克顿爵士的名言：
原文：所有权力都易腐化，绝对的权力则绝对地会腐化。
阿克顿勋爵 是 英国十九世纪著名的自由主义政论家，作品《自由和权力浅说》
约翰•埃默里克•爱德华•达尔伯格•阿克顿(John Emerieh Edward Dalberg Acton)，1834年1月10日生于那不勒斯，费迪南德•理查德•爱德华•达尔伯格•阿克顿和玛丽•德•达尔伯格(即后来的格兰维尔伯爵夫人)之子。

【2】high roller 一掷千金的赌徒: someone who spends a lot of money carelessly or risks a lot of money on games, races etc.

【3】语出Leona Helmsley

利昂娜•赫尔姆斯利（1920年7月4日–2007年8月20日）曾是个亿万富翁。因逃税于1992年8月入狱16月。她的佣人在法庭上指证她曾经说过这样的话：
“我们不缴税，只有小人物才缴税”（”We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”）。
（http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leona_Helmsley）

【4】阿尔法雄性 alpha male：
In social animals, the alpha is the individual in the community with the highest rank (MDL found in social groups). Where one male and one female fulfill this role, they are referred to as the alpha pair (the term varies when several females fulfill this role – it is extremely rare among mammals for several males to fulfill this role with one female). Other animals in the same social group may exhibit deference or other symbolic signs of respect particular to their species towards the alpha.

The alpha animals are given preference to be the first to eat and the first to mate, among some species the only animals in the pack allowed to mate. Other animals in the community are usually killed or ousted if they violate this rule. (wiki)

译者：skittos

Cancer and stem cells
癌与干细胞

A strand apart
一链之差

Jan 14th 2010 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

More evidence that tumours, like healthy organs, grow from stem cells
更多证据显示，肿瘤同健康器官一样，由干细胞发育而成。

THE notion that tumours are chaotic masses of anarchic cells has been falling by the wayside recently. Many researchers now think, by contrast, that cancers actually resemble normal, well-regulated organs in several important ways. One of these is that they are believed to have a small population of stem cells which keep them going when other cells die or are killed off. The existence of such cancer stem cells is still a matter of debate. But this week the discussion may have taken an important turn. Brid Ryan, Sharon Pine and Curtis Harris, of America’s National Cancer Institute, reported that some lung-cancer cells do, indeed, seem to behave like stem cells during the process of cell division.

认为肿瘤是一堆杂乱无章的异常细胞的观点，最近已经遭到摒弃。许多研究者认为，恰恰相反，肿瘤在几个重要方面都与正常有序的器官相似。其中一个方面就是，人们认为肿瘤内也有一定数量的干细胞，这些干细胞使得肿瘤能够在其他细胞死亡或被消灭的情况下还能继续生长。这种肿瘤干细胞是否存在，目前仍存在争议。但是，这种争论在本周或许已经发生重大变化。美国国家癌症研究所布里德·瑞安、沙农·派恩和柯蒂斯·哈里斯报道，一些肺癌细胞在细胞分裂过程中确实表现得像干细胞。

Unlike normal cells, stem cells can divide in two different ways. They may do so symmetrically, thereby producing identical daughter cells, each of which resembles the mother cell. Or they may do so asymmetrically, and give rise to two very different daughters. In such cases, one of the daughters is identical to the original stem cell, while the other takes on new characteristics and can then differentiate into whatever cell type the tissue it inhabits requires.

与普通细胞不同，干细胞分裂有两种途径。干细胞可进行对称分裂，从而产生完全相同的子细胞，每个子细胞与母细胞相似。干细胞也可进行不对称分裂，产生两个完全不同的子细胞。在第二种情况下，其中一个子细胞与原始干细胞相同，而另一个子细胞则具有了新特征，并能分化成所在组织需要的任何细胞类型。

During asymmetrical divisions, some stem cells take an extra step to preserve the integrity of their DNA. Part of the process of cell division involves the duplication of a cell’s chromosomes, so that each daughter can have a full set of these strands of DNA. Instead of sending old and new chromosomes into the daughter cells at random, the dividing stem cell carefully shuttles all of its old chromosomes into the daughter that remains a stem cell. The newly synthesised DNA, which may contain errors, is put into the daughter that is destined to differentiate. That way, any mutations which have arisen during DNA replication will not affect the all-important stem cell population.

为了保留DNA的完整性，一些干细胞的不对称分裂过程要多经历一个步骤。细胞分裂过程包含细胞染色体的复制，以使每个子细胞具有完整的DNA链。分裂的干细胞并不是将原来的染色体和新生成的染色体随机分配给子细胞，而是精心地将原来的染色体封装到仍充当干细胞的子细胞中。可能含有错误片段的新合成DNA则被分配给分化子细胞。通过这种方式，DNA复制过程中出现的任何错误都不会影响到极为重要的干细胞群。

Until now, the main evidence supporting the cancer-stem-cell hypothesis has been the observation that many different types of tumour contain a small group of cells, identifiable by special types of protein found on their surfaces, that can form new tumours with high efficiency. (By contrast, the cells that comprise the bulk of most tumours lack these surface proteins and are poor at creating new tumours.)

到目前为止，支持肿瘤干细胞假说的主要证据是发现许多不同类型的肿瘤都含有能高效率生成新肿瘤的一小群细胞，通过细胞表面的特殊类型的蛋白质能够识别这些细胞。（与之相比，组成大部分肿瘤主体的细胞没有这种表面蛋白，生成新肿瘤的能力也很弱。）

Dr Ryan, Dr Pine and Dr Harris reasoned that if such cells really are stem cells then they should be able to undergo both symmetrical and asymmetrical divisions, just like the stem cells in healthy tissue. They looked in samples taken directly from patients with lung cancer, and also in lung-cancer cells from laboratory cultures. In both cases, when they grew the cells in the presence of a chemical that infiltrates newly synthesised DNA, they could see that the unlabelled template strands of DNA went into one daughter cell and the new strands went to the other. Moreover, the daughter that retained the old DNA also retained the cell-surface proteins that mark the putative cancer stem cells.

瑞安、派恩和哈里斯三位博士推论认为，若此类细胞真是干细胞，它们就应该像健康组织中的干细胞一样，既能进行对称分裂，又能进行不对称分裂。他们观察了直接取自肺癌患者的样本，也观察了实验室培养的肺癌细胞。他们在培养基中添加能渗入新合成DNA的化学试剂，结果，两种情况下都观察到未标记的模板DNA链进入了一个子细胞，而新合成的DNA链进入了另一个子细胞。而且，保留了原来DNA的子细胞同时也保留了假定的肿瘤干细胞特有的细胞表面蛋白。

The team, who presented their results at a joint meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer in Coronado, California, this week, are now investigating whether their putative cancer stem cells are more resistant than run-of-the-mill cancer cells to chemotherapy or radiation, as research on other putative stem cells has suggested. What they do know is that when they grow these cells in culture, they can push them toward either asymmetrical or symmetrical division by controlling the density of cells and the amount of oxygen available. If they can find a similar way to control the cells’ fate in patients’ tumours, they may have opened a new avenue for cancer therapy.

本周，在加利福尼亚州科罗纳多举行的美国癌症研究学会和国际肺癌研究学会联合会议上，该小组公布了他们的研究结果。他们现在正在研究假定的肿瘤干细胞是否像其他假定干细胞上的研究显示的一样，比普通癌细胞更耐化疗及放疗。目前他们所知道的是，人工培养这些细胞时，可以通过控制细胞密度和氧通量来强制细胞进行不对称分裂或是对称分裂。如果能找到类似的方法来控制患者肿瘤细胞，或许，他们就开启了癌症治疗的新途径。
译者：hddmail126

Flow batteries
流体电池

All pumped up
全都泵起来

Dec 16th 2009
From Economist.com

Batteries that can be “refuelled” quickly could give electric cars greater range
可以快速“中途加油”的电池可以使电动汽车跑得更远。

继续阅读“All pumped up 全都泵起来”