时间:2018-12-08 作者:英语课 分类:2017年VOA慢速英语(十一)月


英语课

 


This is What’s Trending Today.


Are you a cat person or a dog person?


People around the world are bitterly divided about which animal is the better pet. But a new study may have found a clear winner when it comes to which animal is more intelligent: dogs.


Researchers at Vanderbilt University in the U.S. state of Tennessee recently studied the brains of several meat-eating mammals, including dogs, cats, lions, raccoons and bears. They found that dogs have many more neurons in the cerebral 1 cortex than cats do. That area of the brain is connected to “thinking planning and complex behavior.” These are considered key to understanding an animal’s intelligence.


Dogs have about 530 million cortical neurons; cats have about 250 million, the researchers found.


Humans, for comparison 2, have 16 billion.


Suzana Herculano-Houzel is a neuroscientist and a professor at Vanderbilt. She developed a way to measure the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex. She says the higher the number of neurons an animal has, the greater their ability to, in her words, “predict what is about to happen in their environment based on past experience.”


The study’s findings 3 mean that dogs may be able to do more complex things in their lives than cats can.


Herculano-Houzel worked with graduate students and professors from across the United States as well as Brazil, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Their research is to appear in the journal 4 “Frontiers of Neuroanatomy.”


The results of the study became a trending topic on social media Thursday.


The researchers studied the brains of other animals, too. They found that bears had about as many neurons as cats -- despite having much bigger brains. And raccoons, despite their smaller brain size, had almost as many neurons in their cerebral cortex as dogs.


And as for Herculano-Houzel herself, she is “100 percent” a dog


person.


And that’s what’s trending today.


I'm Alice Bryant.


Words in This Story


bitterly - adv. to an extreme or forceful degree.


pet - n. an animal (such as a dog, cat, bird, or fish) that people keep mainly for pleasure


mammal - n. a type of animal that feeds milk to its young and that usually has hair or fur covering most of its skin


behavior - n. the way a person or animal acts or behaves


neuroscientist - n. a person who studies the functions of the nervous system and brain



1 cerebral
adj.脑的,大脑的;有智力的,理智型的
  • Your left cerebral hemisphere controls the right-hand side of your body.你的左半脑控制身体的右半身。
  • He is a precise,methodical,cerebral man who carefully chooses his words.他是一个一丝不苟、有条理和理智的人,措辞谨慎。
2 comparison
n.比较,对照;比拟,比喻
  • They make a comparison of New York to a beehive.他们把纽约比作一个蜂巢。
  • This dress is really cheaper by comparison.比较起来,这件衣服确实便宜。
3 findings
n.发现物( finding的名词复数 );调查(或研究)的结果;(陪审团的)裁决
  • It behoves us to study these findings carefully. 我们理应认真研究这些发现。
  • Their findings have been widely disseminated . 他们的研究成果已经广为传播。
4 journal
n.日志,日记;议事录;日记帐;杂志,定期刊物
  • He kept a journal during his visit to Japan.他在访问日本期间坚持记日记。
  • He got a job as editor of a trade journal.他找到了一份当商业杂志编辑的工作。
标签: VOA慢速英语
学英语单词
aerospace medicines
aircraft simulation
amdroid
assault life
b.p.d
Babycham
bakable
balance reading
Bettona
bolted-type separable connector
capital of Jamaica
Cinchona succirubra
collection of random event
colour sensibility
Consolea
content-addressable basis
copynere
cowlhead
creaming power
cubensis
cultural-familial mental retardation
cycloreversion reaction
Cylindrolobus
cymobarbatol
decorative porcelain
deodourant
dimethylfuran
eddy formation
electric arc welded joint
elmt.
entropy index
equisignal
fawney
forty-niners
French cell press
function as
Garrisdale Point
Godard
gravitational collector
heat sensitive
imperfect competitive market
inquiery
intra-ureteral
jaw of the chair
junk-grades
La Tournette
laminal flow
Lammhult
least preferred coworker scale (lpc scale)
loss of availability
Lypholyte
macrolactams
meal-skipping
mechanical loom
mequitazine
microohms
missing-person
Munsell color notation
natural gas processing
Ninja Pinch
non-return-to-zero inverse
non-swapable
NPDU
Numidian crane
o.r.b.
one-lever
optic chiasms
outfind
parking brake magnet apply relay
PEP/LVET
perchedspring
phenacetolin
prelubricated bearing
radiotopography
Rastafarian
rauen
reboundeth
redwood-baringer water finder
sexperimenting
six-gilled sharks
skin-surface temperature
SOCCENT
soft-boiled eggs
sphaceloma tsujii hara
steering moment for keeping a given control
streptogramins
Tamarix leptostachya
Taraxacum orientale
theory of baryspheric origin
theory of consumer's choice
Thākurpur
tiger-wood
TinyFugue
Torfufell
uniteth
unmassaged
vargo
volvics
wet mixture
white-wash
winpac