第11单元 · 四档阅读与填词

On 9 April 1860, a French inventor named Scott tried to record a song. The recording became a thin black line on paper, but nobody could hear it. Scott had made the phonautograph, a machine that drew sound as it happened.

A wide tube took in the singer's voice. The sound made a thin sheet inside the machine move. A small point followed this motion across paper made dark with smoke. This recorder saved the shape of sound, but it had no way to play it.

The paper stayed safe in France for nearly 150 years. In 2008, a team made a clear picture of the black line without touching it. A computer translated the line's shape into sound, and people could finally hear the old song.

The voice sounds fast and unclear, but listeners can recognise the song's words. Its maker was no longer alive when people first played the line. A new tool found the voice that his machine left for the eye.

A science museum points red, green, and blue lamps at the same white wall. Together, their light looks almost white. When a person stands before the lamps, several coloured shadows appear behind the body.

The lamps stand in different places, so the person blocks different lights in different parts of the wall. If the blue light is blocked, red and green still reach the wall and make a yellow shadow. Where two lights are blocked and only blue reaches the wall, the shadow looks blue.

A smaller test shows the first step. Shine one flashlight at a wall and hold a hand in its light. The hand makes one dark shadow. Add a lamp from the side, and its colour fills the part that the side light can reach.

Sunlight also has many colours, although it usually looks white. The museum keeps the coloured lamps apart so people can watch the colours change. Move your hand away. The light will reach the wall again and lighten the dark area. Soon the shadow is gone.

Before Anne began at a new school, she waited for the test list. When it came, her name and another student's were together in first place. The result gave her a place at the school for the next year.

At the end of that year, the school gave out its prizes. She received a special prize, which would pay for more English study. Her friends came to congratulate her. She felt grateful. Their congratulations made her want to write home at once.

At the final school event, Anne read her work to the people in the hall. She was in pale green and read with quiet grace. Her family watched with pride as she finished.

That evening, she returned to Green Gables. A close friend waited outside among the spring trees. The prize opened a road to more study, and the welcome reminded her of the home she already had.

Scott Kelly returned to Earth on 2 March 2016 after 340 days aboard the International Space Station—almost a whole year without normal gravity. His identical twin Mark had stayed on Earth. By testing both men before, during and after the mission, researchers could compare Scott with a person who shared much of his genetic background.

One finding concerned telomeres, the protective ends of chromosomes. They often become shorter as cells divide. During the flight, however, Scott's average telomere length increased, while Mark's stayed more stable. The result surprised researchers; it did not mean that space had made Scott younger.

After Scott landed, the direction changed quickly. Many of his telomeres shortened within days, and the study found more very short telomeres after the flight than before it. Measurements of other parts of his health followed different timelines. Many returned close to their preflight baseline within six months, while some changes remained. His body had to adjust to gravity as scientists watched a slower biological adjustment.

The study followed only one pair of twins, so it cannot show that every astronaut will respond in the same way. Its strength was the long series of samples and the Earth-based comparison. For future missions, the memorable point lies in the change of direction: Scott's telomeres lengthened in space and shortened soon after his environment changed again.

The names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial are fixed in stone. The objects left below them keep changing. Visitors bring letters, medals, photographs, boots, and handmade gifts. Each tribute carries a private memory into a public place.

Park workers gather the objects, but museum status is not automatic. Thousands arrive each year. Curators cannot ignore storage space, long-term care, and the collection's purpose. They examine each item instead of treating the act of leaving it as a final decision.

Preference goes to an object with a direct link to a person named on the wall or to service in the Vietnam War. Context also matters. A letter or name can establish a connection that appearance alone does not show; an impressive object may still fall outside the collection's scope.

A catalogue records the selected tribute and the story attached to it. A visitor may remember one name. The archive gives later researchers a way to trace patterns across many lives. The wall presents names together, while the collection preserves some of the relationships that visitors bring to them.

Henry Dunant reached Solferino in northern Italy after a battle on 24 June 1859. About 40,000 soldiers lay dead or wounded. Dunant organised local people to give water, dress wounds, and offer aid to soldiers from both sides. He also paid for food and sheets from his own pocket.

The scene stayed with him. In 1862 he published A Memory of Solferino and proposed two changes: volunteer relief groups in each country and an agreement protecting wounded soldiers. Both proposals grew from the same principle of neutral care.

A Geneva committee took up the proposals. Its five-member group first met in February 1863, with Dunant as secretary. They helped found what became the International Committee of the Red Cross. That year also brought an international conference and the red-cross emblem.

The first Geneva Convention followed in August 1864. At its core was a duty to care for wounded soldiers whichever side they served. Neutral aid had become an international rule. The movement grew because Dunant's response at Solferino became a plan others could repeat.

A Victorian silk quilt can look rich and strong while its fibres are close to failure. Some old silks were weighted with mineral salts to feel heavier and stiffer. Those properties pleased buyers at the time, yet the added substances speed deterioration. A bright surface may therefore hide weak threads.

Conservators focus first on light exposure. Silk is extremely sensitive: too much light can make it brittle, split it, and weaken its colours. Guidance keeps the light level low, places lamps at a distance, and blocks direct sunlight. Staff also keep display periods short.

Physical handling matters as much as lighting. Before cleaning, conservators must be aware of how weak the textile has become. Even a low-power vacuum needs a screen, and some quilts are too fragile for any vacuuming. Damaged areas may instead be covered with sheer silk organza.

Plastic brings a different risk. A sealed bag can trap moisture and release damaging fumes, although a vented outer cover may help during a water emergency. The quilt illustrates a central fact of conservation: a method that protects against one danger may create another. Safe display and long-term storage can therefore require different conditions.

A one-page notice from the Rio 2016 Olympics records a small but exact change. New Zealand gymnast Courtney McGregor had performed two vaults in women's qualification. On 13 August, the Jury of Appeal raised the difficulty value of her second vault from 5.2 to 5.6. The notice includes her name, bib number, event, time, and the decision. The change did not affect the execution score or the value of her first vault.

A vault score has two parts. The D-score indicates the difficulty assigned to the skills performed; execution receives a separate score. The review therefore had to identify the submitted vault and its recognised value. An overall impression that the performance looked good could not answer that technical question.

The page is precise about the outcome and silent about the deliberations. It records the old and new values but excludes the judges' discussion. Read closely, it supports a narrow conclusion: the official D-score rose by 0.4. It cannot tell readers why every judge accepted the change. The difference between a published decision and its reasoning is easy to miss.

That limit matters. The record can justify saying that the value changed, but it cannot support a fuller account of the appeal. The principle is simple: describe the public evidence fully, and stop before adding reasons the document does not reveal.

In a village with no regular bus, a shared shuttle may start with bookings rather than a fixed route. Demand-responsive transport collects requested pick-up places and times, then combines trips that can work together. The idea suits parts of the countryside where a small population is spread across a large area.

Software fits each request among other journeys, vehicle hours, and the service district. A door-to-door request may become a meeting point, or a chosen time may shift so several riders can travel together. The service can be flexible, but each trip still has to work as shared transport.

England's Rural Mobility Fund evaluated eighteen pilot schemes. Across them, the average journey was booked nearly three days ahead, although the booking rate varied widely. Some schemes accepted live requests; others required advance notice. That variation makes a single promise about waiting time impossible.

The evaluation measured passenger journeys, empty running, unfulfilled bookings, connections, revenue, and user experience. A shortcoming of direct comparison was that authorities recorded failed requests in different ways. Local planners therefore have to choose a priority: wider coverage, shorter waits, or fuller vehicles. Each choice affects who can ride and how much empty driving the service accepts.

Rain drives a diverse crowd under the church portico at Covent Garden. One man, Henry Higgins, writes down the voices around him and astonishes strangers by naming where they come from. His notebook seems like a living dictionary of accents: each sound points to a street, town, or education. Eliza Doolittle, a flower seller, fears that his notes may be police evidence against her.

Higgins explains that he studies phonetics. During the noisy conversation, he boasts that speech training could make Eliza pass as a duchess at a formal party. The claim allows him to advertise his skill before he knows what Eliza wants. She hears something more practical: clearer speech might help her work in a flower shop instead of selling flowers outdoors.

The next morning Eliza arrives at Higgins's home in a taxi. She has washed carefully, brings money, and asks for lessons. Her offered price is only a shilling, yet Higgins calculates that it is a large share of her income. Colonel Pickering proposes a challenge: he will pay the costs if Higgins can present her successfully as a duchess within six months.

Mrs Pearce interrupts their excitement with ordinary questions. Where will Eliza sleep? What clothes will she wear? Has anyone asked about her family? Higgins treats diction as a technical puzzle, while Mrs Pearce keeps Eliza's daily life in view. Eliza also resists the version of the plan in which other people discuss her future as though she were absent.

Eliza entered the room to purchase a lesson, not to become somebody's experiment without terms. Her small payment changes the balance of the scene because it gives her request a purpose of its own. The play's linguistic diversity drives the comedy, while its deeper pressure comes from who may define improvement. By setting a price, Eliza begins to claim a voice in the bargain built around her voice.

In 1915, Albert Einstein made a prediction about a sight that could not normally be measured from Earth. According to general relativity, the Sun's gravity should bend light from stars passing near it. Those stars would appear slightly shifted, but daylight hid them beside the Sun. A total eclipse offered a brief chance to see them.

British teams prepared observing stations at Sobral in Brazil and on Príncipe, an island off West Africa, for the eclipse of 29 May 1919. They photographed stars in the Hyades cluster while the Moon covered the Sun, then compared their positions with reference photographs taken when the Sun had moved away. Einstein predicted a larger shift than Newtonian gravity did, so tiny differences mattered.

Conditions were uneven. Sobral had mostly clear skies and produced twenty useful plates; clouds over Príncipe left only two. The analysis also had to allow for changes in the scale and orientation of the photographs. Even with those limits, the combined result was found to accord with Einstein's prediction more closely than with the Newtonian alternative. The teams announced their findings in London that November.

The announcement made Einstein famous, yet it did not end controversy. Some astronomers questioned whether the instruments could measure such a small shift reliably. Later critics claimed that Arthur Eddington had rejected inconvenient data. A historical assessment published by the American Physical Society reaches the contrary conclusion: it reports equipment problems in the observations and argues that the data choices were scientifically defensible.

The 1919 plates were an early and imprecise test. Later observations with better instruments repeatedly confirmed gravitational deflection. The episode shows how a prediction becomes evidence: a theory specifies what to look for, an eclipse makes the effect visible, and repeated measurements test whether the first result holds.

Evidence about a closed institution must pass through two doors. The first opens inward, allowing an inspector to see conditions that managers might prefer to present selectively. The second opens outward, allowing findings to reach people who cannot enter. A prison restricts liberty by design, so both doors require rules that protect access, accuracy, dignity, and safety.

Rules 83 and 84 of the United Nations Nelson Mandela Rules require internal inspections and external inspections by a body independent of the prison administration. Inspectors may enter facilities without prior notice, choose where to go, and examine records about treatment and detention. They may also select any prisoner for a private and fully confidential interview. Administrative control therefore cannot determine the inspector's entire field of view.

The outward door is a written report. Rule 85 requires one after each inspection and says authorities should give due consideration to making external reports available to the public. Inspectors can publish recommendations, while the administration should indicate within a reasonable time whether it will act. This sequence lets outsiders compare a finding with the institution's response.

Openness carries its own risk. A report that names a prisoner or reveals identifying details may expose the person who supplied evidence. Rule 85 therefore says personal data should be excluded unless explicit consent is given. That restriction protects confidentiality while leaving room to describe conditions, patterns, and institutional action.

The two doors solve different failures. Access without reporting can leave strong evidence inside a closed system; reporting without protected access can repeat the institution's preferred picture. Together, independent entry, confidential interviews, written findings, and a reasoned response create a testable chain. Public accountability grows from the chain's design, not from the mere existence of a rulebook.