位于东兰辛伊斯兰莘市的密歇根州立大学植物和土壤学家布拉德?罗说：“在许多城市，甚至一场雷雨就可能造成（雨水的排水系统）溢流，并与污水混在一起。谁知道它们会流到哪儿去呢？”
绿色屋顶的支持者还列举出其他好处，如节省能源。一个绿色屋顶可以降低多少能源成本，这取决于屋顶类型和使用该屋顶当地的气候。比较温暖的气候是节省能源的最佳条件，因为与降低取暖费相比，使用绿色屋顶能够更有效地减少空调费用。
绿色屋顶的另一个好处是它的寿命长于常规屋顶，典型的屋顶可能使用20年，而绿色屋顶将持续40-50年。他们可以保护屋顶防水层免受紫外线和昼夜极端温度波动的损坏，这些问题有可能导致屋顶裂缝。
虽然绿色屋顶的成本是传统常规屋顶成本的1.5-2倍，但支持者认为，即使不考虑节能因素，从长远经济利益看，屋顶绿化仍很划算。
屋顶绿化也有助于减轻被称为“城市热岛效应”的现象，当高密度人造建筑材料吸收阳光的热能时，就会发生这种小气候现象。
罗说：“在亚特兰大炎热的夏季，亚特兰大城市的温度可能比农村的温度高10华氏度（5.6摄氏度）。绿色屋顶有助于温度的这种非自然上升。” Green-Roof Zoning 绿色屋顶区
In Germany, where green roof are most common, the city of Stuttgart has promoted green roof and fa?ade planting through subsidies for nearly 20 years.
在德国，绿色屋顶是最常见的。，在财政补贴的支持下，斯图加特市在财政补贴的支持下促进屋顶和建筑物正面外墙的绿化已将近20年了。
Martina Laun and Klaus-Juergen Evert serve in the city’s park and cemetery department. They noted that the number of green roofs in the city is permanently increasing, thanks to a combination of subsidies and zoning laws, which require green roofs in certain areas.
玛蒂娜?劳恩和克劳斯?于尔根?埃弗特在城市公园和墓地部门工作。他们指出，该城市的绿色屋顶一直在增加，这归功于补贴和分区法这两种措施的结合，在某些地区分区法要求建设绿色屋顶。
Under a grant-aid program established by the Stuttgart City Council, private citizens are awarded grants to help cover construction costs.
根据斯图加特市议会的补助款项目的规定，公民个人可以得到补助款以支付建设绿色屋 顶的费用。
Between 1986 and 2003, the plan subsidized some 50,018 square meters (540,000 square feet) of private green roofs at a total cost of U.S.＄1,076,000. During the same period, the city also invested U.S.＄2,523,000 for roof paintings on public buildings. The total area covered was ＄102,423 square meters (1.1 million square feet).
1986年至2003年，该项目资助了50,018平方米（ 54万平方英尺）的私人绿色屋顶，总费用为107.6万美元。在同一期间，该市还投资252.3万美元进行公共建筑的屋顶绿化。总面积达到102,423平方米（ 110万平方英尺）。
Laun and Evert noted that the program has fostered aesthetic benefits as well as environmental ones. “Nature’s rhythm is made visible by seasonal changes in the vegetation, even in an urban roof environment,” the pair wrote in an e-mail to National Geographic News. “In terms of design, roof planting represents a considerable aesthetic improvement and altogether a significant ecological benefit.”
劳恩和埃弗特指出，该计划培育了人们的审美观以及环保理念。两人在一封给《国家地
理新闻》的电子邮件中说：“自然的节律是通过植被的季节性变化展现出来的，即使在城市屋顶这样的环境也是如此。”从设计上看，屋顶绿化代表了人们审美观的巨大改变并产生了显著的生态效益。 Cultivating Converts 赢得更多的支持者
The green roof concept is winning more converts in the United States. Ford Motor Company created a 10.4-acre (4.2-hectare) living roof, the world’s largest, atop its Dearborn, Michigan, truck plant final-assembly building.
在美国,绿色屋顶正在赢得越来越多的支持者。福特汽车公司在密歇根州迪尔伯恩卡车总装配厂的屋顶上建造了一个全世界最大10.4英亩（ 4.2公顷）的“活的屋顶”，面积为10.4英亩（ 4.2公顷）是世界上最大的。
In Chicago, Mayor Daley is leading by example. City Hall sports a green roof that was the city’s first. Over a hundred building projects, incorporating a million square feet (93,000 square meters) of green roof, are now underway. Official are even experimenting with green roofs at O’Hare International Airport as a means to reduce noise.
在芝加哥市，市长戴利以身作则，市政大厅第一个修建了绿色屋顶。正在施工的建设项目超过100个，其中包括100万平方英尺（93,000平方米）的绿色屋顶。官员们甚至尝试在奥黑尔国际机场建设绿色屋顶，作为一种减少噪音的手段。
At the Chicago Center for Green Technology, demos showcase green-roof technology to everyone from developers and builders to schoolchildren. The center also serves as a research center, where leading suppliers are invited to install different green-roof plots that are monitored and compared.
在芝加哥绿色科技中心，展品向包括开发商、建设者和到中小学生在内的每一个人展示绿色屋顶技术，该中心也还是一个研究中心，邀请大供应商来安装各种各样的绿色屋顶板块，并对其进行监测和比较。
And the city government is providing at least a nudge to those involved in new building ventures. Projects that receive tax-increment financing support from the city are required to include some level of green roof.
市政府至少为对那些从事新的建筑工程的人们至少提供了一些动力，凡享受城市税收增值和财政支持的项目都必须包括一定程度的绿色屋顶。
“I hate to say that we are mandating, but we’re really talking to big box stores, architects, contractors, developers and others about how important green roofs are to the environment and to business,” Delay said.
戴利说：“我不想说这是强制规定，但我们的确在向那些巨型零售商店、建筑师、承包商、开发商，以及其他人宣传绿色屋顶对环境和商业是多么的重要。”
The mayor believes that the city’s cleaner, greener roofs are an important part of long-term environmental planning close to home.
市长认为，更加清洁、更加绿色环保的屋顶是与我们家园关系密切的长期环境规划的一个重要组成部分。
“The environmental movement often seems like it’s happening somewhere else and people forget about our own community,” he said. “We need to be sure that we’re planning well.”
他说：“环境改善运动似乎总是发生在其他的地方，但人们却忘记了自己的社区。我们必须确保我们规划的很好。”
Unit 5 Computer
The Disappearing Computer 正在消失的计算机
“Will we be surrounded by computers by 2010? Yes, but we don’t know it,” says Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and chief software architect.
到2010年，我们将被计算机包围吗？是的，但我们却觉察不出来。 —比尔?盖茨（微软公司总裁和首席软件设计师）
A few years from now, the average home entertainment system might not look much different than it does today. But it will probably have an Internet connection that enables it to download and play digital music and video, display album artwork and song title on the television, and even interrupt your listening if an important message arrives. It will have a central processor, disk storage, graphic hardware and some kind of intuitive user interface. Add a wireless mouse and a keyboard, and this home entertainment systems will start looking a lot like a personal computer. Will people buy and use these systems in large numbers? Absolutely. Will they think of them as computers? Probably not.
几年后，普通家庭娱乐系统可能与现在并没有太大的区别，但它很可能具有网络连接功能，用来下载和播放数字音乐和视频，在电视上显示艺术作品集和歌曲的名字，甚至收到重要邮件时打断正在播放的内容来提示你。它将拥有一个中央处理器、磁盘存储器、制图硬件和某种直观的计算机用户界面。如果再在加上一个无线鼠标和键盘，这个家庭娱乐系统看起来便很像是一台个人电脑。人们会大量购买和使用这些系统吗？当然会。他们会认为这种系统就是电脑吗？也许不会。
According to the Gartner Dataquest, an American research firm, the world computer industry shipped its one billionth PC in 2002, and another billion more are expected to be built in the next six years. Almost all of the first billion were traditional desktop and laptop PCs, but the second billion will be very different. They will be optimized for the things that people actually want to do with them—we will have tablet-sized PCs for taking notes at meetings or reading e-mail on the couch, entertainment PCs that play music and movies on the living-room television, and pocket-sized PCs that keep people connected and informed wherever they are.
根据格特纳信息咨询公司（一家美国研究公司）的统计，世界计算机业在2002年销售了第10亿台个人电脑，而还有10亿台电脑预计在此后的6年中生产出来。第一批的10亿台电脑几乎都是传统的台式机和笔记本电脑，但第二批的10亿台电脑将会明显不同，人们对它们进行了尽可能的完善，使它们能更好的按照人们的期望运作，例如微型电脑，开会时我们可以用它来做笔记，或是躺在床上阅读电子邮件；娱乐型电脑，用来在客厅电视上播放音乐和电影；袖珍型电脑，用来与他人保持联系，无论你身处何处。
Add to this the exploding number of embedded computers—the kind found in mobile phones, gas pumps and retail point-of-sale systems—which are fast approaching the power and complexity of desktop PCs. On one estimate, people in the United States already interact with about 150 embedded systems every day, whether they know it or not. These systems—which use up to 90% of the microprocessors produced today—will inevitably take on more PC-like characteristic, and will be able to communicate seamlessly with their traditional PC counterparts. They will also become amazingly ubiquitous. In 2001, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the world microchip industry produced around 60m transistors for every man, woman and child on earth. That number will rise to one billion by 2010.
除此之外，还有各种数量庞大的嵌入式计算机（如在手机、加油站和零售终端设备中使用的计算机），在功能和复杂性方面正迅速赶上台式电脑。据估计，在有意无意之中，美国人每天会接触到大约150个嵌入式计算机系统。这些系统使用了现在生产的90% 的微处理器，它们将不可避免地呈现出更多个人电脑的特点，而且能够与传统PC机进行无缝对接。这一系统将无处不在。根据半导体工业协会的调查，在2001年，世界芯片业为地球上的每位男士，女士和儿童生产了大约6千万个晶体管，这一数字到2010年将上升为10亿。
At the same time, the general-purpose PC as we know it today will continue to play an important—and increasingly central—role in most people’s lives, but it will be at the centre of a wide range of intelligent devices that most people wouldn’t think of as “computers” today.
与此同时，今天的多功能PC机将继续在大多数人的生活中发挥重要（而且是越来越重要）的作用，但其中心地位将体现在今天大部分人不认为是“电脑”的各类智能设备中。
This scenario is in sharp contrast to the computers of just a few years ago—back in the pre-Internet age—which were still mostly passive appliance that sat in the corner of the den or living room. Back then, people used their PCs for little more than writing letters and documents, playing games of managing their family finances. As a communications tool, they were largely ineffective, except for a few primitive e-mail networks and bulletin-board systems. The PC had not yet become essential to most people’s lives—not in the sense that the television, telephone or automobile now are.
这种情景与仅仅几年前的计算机形成了鲜明的对比（回溯到网络时代之前），那时的计算机多是被动的设备，被安置在书房或客厅的角落里。那时，计算机的使用仅限于书写信函、文件，玩游戏或处理家庭财务。作为通讯工具，其效率很低，仅能应用于少数简单的电子邮件网络和电子布告栏系统。个人电脑尚未成为大多数人生活的必需品（不像现在的电视、电话或汽车那样）。
But today we are in the early years of a truly digital decade, in which the intelligence of the PC is finding its way into all kinds of devices, transforming them from passive appliance into far more significant and indispensable tools for everyday life. Many of the core technologies of computing—processing power, storage capacity, graphics capabilities and network connectivity—are all continuing to advance at a pace that matches or even exceeds Moore’s Law (which famously, and correctly, predicted that the number of transistor on a computer chip would double every two years).
但是我们今天已经处在真正数字化时代的初期，在这一时期，个人计算机的智能化正应用于各种设备，使它们从被动的设备转化为日常生活中重要得多的不可或缺的工具。许多计算机的核心技术（如处理能力、存储量、制图能力和网络连接）将继续以莫尔法则（该法则因正确预测了用于计算机芯片上的半导体将以每两年增加一倍的速度增长而闻名）、甚至超过莫尔法则的速度发展。
Computers are becoming smaller, more powerful, less power-hungry and far less expensive, making it easier to build computing power and connectivity into everyday devices. And user interfaces—including speech and handwriting recognition—are growing more efficient and easier to use.
计算机体积正变得越来越小，功能越来越强大，能耗更低，价格也越来越便宜，因而使其更容易与日常设备连接，并发挥其计算功能。此外，计算机用户界面（包括语音和文字识别）正变得越来越有效，越来越易于应用。 有趣的未来
正当人们寻找更多的方式把这些价廉、灵活、可以各种各样的方式满足用户需要的设备
引入自己的生活时，计算机本身却逐步在我们的生活中“消失”。虽然我们距离那个充满虚拟智能机器的世界还很遥远，但正在发展的计算机技术将变得如此完善、自然，我们将越来越注意不到它的存在。与此同时，计算机技术的普及程度将会达到我们视而不见的地步，正如当今发达国家中大多数人信赖的电话服务。
众多新技术（如价格低廉、柔性灵活的显示器，指甲盖大小的、能够存储兆兆字节数据的微电子机械系统芯片，以及依靠周围热能和机械运动来运转的大功率感应式无电池计算机）使计算机技术一方面无处不在，而另一方面又几乎淡出了人们的视线。
计算机技术也将从经济学的角度给人们带来变化。通过降低成本，电子产品制造商能更容易地在即使是最普通的设备中装入类似于个人电脑的智能和装置，最后，计算机技术本身也会变得十分经济实惠。
所有这一切都将从根本上改变了我们对计算机的看法。使用计算机将会变得像开灯时使用电源一样简单。计算机将会像电力一样，在几乎你所做的一切事情中发挥作用，但计算机技术的使用本身将不再是孤立的。我们将集中精力研究用计算机能做些什么，而不是研究这一设备本身。计算机无处不在，几乎成为我们生活中每一个部分的必需品，但它们最终将真正地从我们的生活中“消失”。
Unit 6 Robot
For Simpler Robots, a Step Forward 简单—机器人的进步
The moment of truth had come for the knee-high robot standing on its improvised runway at a hotel news conference.
在酒店新闻发布会上，一个只有人们膝盖高的机器人站在为它临时准备的通道上。揭开秘密的时刻到了。
Reporters circled it, their microphones and cameras trained on the machine as it tried to start up. Then a curious 13-year-old boy who had joined the throng reached out, poked his fingers between the robot’s metal legs and gave them an exploratory push.
当这台机器启动时，众多记者围了上来，把麦克风和摄像机都对准了它。人群中一个13岁的男孩好奇的用手指在机器人的金属腿上戳戳这儿，戳戳那儿，又试着推了推。
With that, the robot, built at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, live up to its nickname, the Toddler. It rocked gently until the poking stopped, steadied itself and marched firmly across the level surface, a tabletop propped up on cinderblocks.
这时人们可以看到，这台由麻省理工学院制造的机器人的确像它的昵称：“学步的小孩”(Toddler)。它轻轻地晃动了一会儿，直到那个小孩不再动它，接着它平稳地迈着步子从台子（一个由煤砖支起的桌面）的一端走到另一端。
If two-legged robots are ever going to walk among people, they may look a lot like this sturdy machine and two others, introduced Feb. 17 on the makeshift catwalk at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
如果未来装有双腿的机器人真的行走于人群中，它们也许看起来和这个敦实的机器人以及另外两个机器人没有什么不同。在2月17日美国科学促进会召开的年会上，这三个机器人都出现在了那个临时通道上，与公众见面。
The robots—the others were built at Cornell and at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands—are designed in a way that differs significantly from standard creations. One of the robots moves so efficiently that in the future it may be able to amble along for a day, not the 20 or 30 minutes most robots now manage without recharging or refueling.