美国国家公共电台 NPR Old Animal Specimens May Hold The Key To New Discoveries

 

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Do you remember the last time you moved? Odds¹ are that as you packed, you found things stuffed in drawers and closets you forgot you'd ever owned. That happens when scientists move from lab to lab too. Georgia Public Broadcasting's Grant Blankenship has more.

GRANT BLANKENSHIP, BYLINE²: Last year, biologist Craig Byron and the rest of the Mercer University Science Department in Macon were moving into their brand-new building - state-of-the-art labs, technology in the classrooms, the works. And so while packing up the old place across the street, Byron found a forgotten big, blue, metal cabinet. He showed me what was inside.

CRAIG BYRON: I mean, here's a possum skull³. You can tell because it's got a tiny, little brain compared to a similarly sized - probably a raccoon or something. So this one's got a tag on it. So here's a red fox, March 22, 1956, SRPSCX. You can see some bats here. That's Aiken County, S.C. I don't know if a Lynx rufus - are there lynx out there anymore?

BLANKENSHIP: All these animals were trapped, killed and preserved flat to store in drawers for science.

BYRON: So here's a fox squirrel right there. So Sciurus niger from Bibb County. I've never seen a fox squirrel in Bibb County.

BLANKENSHIP: That's Macon. Collection date? November 20, 1958. At twice the size of grey squirrels, fox squirrels need special habitat - mature stands of longleaf pine forest. There's none of that in Bibb County today. But this squirrel tells us there was on November 20, 1958. The birds will go to Louisiana State University. The mammals?

BYRON: Somebody in D.C. wants them.

BLANKENSHIP: That somebody is Suzanne Peurach at the Biological Survey Unit, part of the U.S. Geological Survey. It's the largest animal-research collection in the world, 600,000 specimens⁴ total, housed at the Smithsonian. And yes, they have things preserved in jars - big jars. Peurach curates the 300,000-plus North American species. Researchers ask to see them for all kinds of reasons.

SUZANNE PEURACH: The whole point of these collections is we don't know what they're going to be used for. We save them for future research as well.

BLANKENSHIP: For example, take what happened when Peurach was a college student at the University of New Mexico in the 1990s. She and her mentor⁵, Terry Yates, got a message to come back in from fieldwork as fast as possible.

PEURACH: People were dying from a mystery illness, and they thought it might be related to mammals.

BLANKENSHIP: A disease was killing⁶ people in the Four Corners area. Investigators⁷ from the Centers for Disease Control came to look for clues in Yates' collection of preserved deer mice, which they knew carried deadly hantavirus. When they looked at years and years-worth of mice, researchers saw hantavirus outbreaks occurring at regular intervals⁸. Now they had a window to the next outbreak.

PEURACH: And then all of a sudden, it was like a lightning bolt hit me.

BLANKENSHIP: These mice in drawers? They could save lives. Federal budget talk heated up after I spoke⁹ to Peurach. Some science programs were cut in the new federal spending bill. But the six-person Biological Survey Unit isn't even named in the legislation, either as something cut or funded. For now, Peurach can't take new specimens.

BYRON: So we come in this room. Let's click on the light.

BLANKENSHIP: That's why Mercer University's Craig Byron still has them, in the basement of the brand-new science building. They're on a pallet of about five cardboard boxes, packed up and ready to ship.

BYRON: Yeah, but they're still just kind of in limbo¹⁰.

BLANKENSHIP: We don't know yet what questions the Georgia bats, muskrats¹¹ and fox squirrels can answer. For now, they still need a good home. For NPR News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon, Ga.

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1 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 skull   

n.头骨；颅骨

参考例句：

• The skull bones fuse between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.头骨在15至25岁之间长合。
• He fell out of the window and cracked his skull.他从窗子摔了出去，跌裂了颅骨。

4 specimens   

n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人

参考例句：

• Astronauts have brought back specimens of rock from the moon. 宇航员从月球带回了岩石标本。
• The traveler brought back some specimens of the rocks from the mountains. 那位旅行者从山上带回了一些岩石标本。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 mentor   

n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导

参考例句：

• He fed on the great ideas of his mentor.他以他导师的伟大思想为支撑。
• He had mentored scores of younger doctors.他指导过许多更年轻的医生。

6 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

7 investigators   

n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• This memo could be the smoking gun that investigators have been looking for. 这份备忘录可能是调查人员一直在寻找的证据。
• The team consisted of six investigators and two secretaries. 这个团队由六个调查人员和两个秘书组成。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 intervals   

n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息

参考例句：

• The forecast said there would be sunny intervals and showers. 预报间晴，有阵雨。
• Meetings take place at fortnightly intervals. 每两周开一次会。

9 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

10 limbo   

n.地狱的边缘；监狱

参考例句：

• His life seemed stuck in limbo and he could not go forward and he could not go back.他的生活好像陷入了不知所措的境地，进退两难。
• I didn't know whether my family was alive or dead.I felt as if I was in limbo.我不知道家人是生是死，感觉自己茫然无措。

11 muskrats   

n.麝鼠（产于北美，毛皮珍贵）( muskrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：