首页
登录
职称英语
(1) There’s this great recurring Saturday Night Live skit from several years
(1) There’s this great recurring Saturday Night Live skit from several years
游客
2023-11-27
43
管理
问题
(1) There’s this great recurring Saturday Night Live skit from several years back where Phil Hartman plays an unfrozen caveman who goes to law school. He pontificates (发表武断的意见) on the American judicial system while marveling at modern technology like The Tiny People in The Magic Box (a TV). It fits a common stereotype: Human ancestors were, well, cavemen, and not as smart as we are today. A new hypothesis from a Stanford geneticist tries to turn this stereotype upside down.
(2) Human intelligence may have actually peaked before our ancient predecessors ever left Africa, Gerald Crabtree writes in two new journal articles. Genetic mutations during the past several millennia are causing a decline in overall human intellectual and emotional fitness, he says. Evolutionary pressure no longer favors intellect, so the problem is getting worse. He is careful to say that this is taking quite a long time, so it’s not like your grandparents are models of brilliance while your children will be cavemen rivaling Hartman’s SNL character. But he does maintain that an ancient Athenian, plucked from 1000 BC, would be " among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions. "
(3) His central thesis is that each generation produces deleterious (有害的) mutations, so down the line of human history, our intelligence is ever more impaired compared to that of our predecessors.
(4) Not surprisingly, the hypothesis, published in the journal Trends in Genetics, has several geneticists scratching their heads.
(5) "It takes thousands of genes to build a human brain, and mutations in any one of those can impair that process, that’s absolutely true. It’s also true that with each new generation, new mutations arise...but Crabtree ignores the other side of the equation, which is selection," said Kevin Mitchell, associate professor at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity College Dublin. " Natural selection is incredibly powerful, and it definitely has the ability to weed out new mutations that significantly impair intellectual ability. There are various aspects in these papers that I think are really just thinking about things in a wrong way. "
(6) Crabtree said he wanted to examine the cumulative effect of generation-to-generation mutation on intelligence, which is thought to be controlled by many genes. Using indexes that measure X-chromosome-related mental retardation, he comes up with between 2,000 and 5,000 genes related to human intellectual ability. Using another index measuring average mutations that arise in each generation of children, he calculates that within 3,000 years, " we have all sustained two or more mutations harmful to our intellectual or emotional stability. "
(7) " There is a general feeling that evolution constantly improves us, but it only does that if there is selection applied," Crabtree said in an interview. " In this case, it is questionable about how much selection is occurring now compared to the process of optimizing those genes, which occurred in the jungles of Africa 500,000 years ago."
(8) There’s already evidence for this in other areas, he argues: Take our sense of smell. Humans have far fewer olfactory receptors than other animals, he said—we’re guided by our intellect now, not by smell. We can think about where a piece of food came from, how it was processed, which plant it’s from, who has been around it, and so on. A dog, on the other hand, simply sniffs something and either eats it or doesn’t.
(9) Similarly, he believes evolution now selects for other traits—namely, the most healthy and the most immune, not the most intelligent.
(10) But geneticists took issue with his claims, not to mention his citations and methods. Mitchell took issue with Crabtree’s characterization of genes—he describes them as links in a chain, with incredible overall disruptive power. They’re like a bulb on a string of Christmas tree lights that suddenly fails to work, taking out the entire strand with it: " It can be concluded that genes related to intelligence do not operate as a robust network, but rather as links in a chain, failure of any one of which leads to intellectual disability," he writes. Mitchell countered that this ignores other genes that don’t cause intellectual disability.
(11) "Biological systems are robust to degradation of several different components," Mitchell said. "Evolution has gone to a lot of trouble to craft your genome so it’s finely honed to do its job, and it doesn’t make sense that you would have all this random mutation in your brain cells. Also, you would have a very high rate of brain cancer. " [br] According to the passage, Saturday Night Live skit is a______.
选项
A、TV series with a playful spirit
B、documentary on human ancestors
C、talk show on exotic experiences
D、radio program on modern technology
答案
A
解析
事实细节题。根据第一段的描述可知,《周六夜现场》是一档具有调侃风格、以轻松搞笑为目的并结合现今社会话题的滑稽短剧,类似于一些情景喜剧,故A为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3223241.html
相关试题推荐
(1)There’sthisgreatrecurringSaturdayNightLiveskitfromseveralyears
Thereareseveralpossiblerelationshipsbetweenlanguageandsociety.One
Thereareseveralpossiblerelationshipsbetweenlanguageandsociety.One
Thereareseveralpossiblerelationshipsbetweenlanguageandsociety.One
Thereareseveralpossiblerelationshipsbetweenlanguageandsociety.One
Thereareseveralpossiblerelationshipsbetweenlanguageandsociety.One
Thereareseveralpossiblerelationshipsbetweenlanguageandsociety.One
Thereareseveralpossiblerelationshipsbetweenlanguageandsociety.One
Unlikemanymid-centurypapers,TheColumbian,publishingeverySaturdayinOlym
Theterm"print"hasseveralmeanings,soitisimportanttounderstandexa
随机试题
JobstresshasbecomeacommonandcostlyproblemintheAmericanworkplace,l
[originaltext]M:WasthereagoodturnoutforProfessorDonna’slectureyesterd
[originaltext]W:Peter,haveyougotatelevision?M:Yes,Ihave.InfactI’ve
户外广告是现代城市景观中不可或缺的部分,反映着城市的繁荣程度,文化特色和品位。企业热切地希望通过户外广告不断提升形象,传播商业信息。各级政府也希望通过它
根据流动性偏好理论,如果在未来10年中预期利率水平上升的年份有5年,预期利率水平
下列不符合全球投资业绩标准关于收益率计算的条款的是()。A.必须采用总收
按投资目标划分,证券投资基金可以分为()。 Ⅰ、衍生证券投资基金; Ⅱ、成
14、某220kV线路14号杆位于煤矿采空区,塔头垂直线路方向倾斜2.1m,顺线
理性投资者认为最小方差集合上的资产或资产组合都是有效组合。()
对结核病的发生中起着重要的作用A、感染的细菌数量大 B、细菌毒力强 C、患者
最新回复
(
0
)