1. Wearing a seat belt saves lives; it reduces your chance of death or serious injury by more than half.
2. But it will be the driver’s responsibility to make sure that children under 14 do not ride in the front unless they are wearing a seat belt of some kind.
3. However, you do not have to wear a seat belt if you are reversing your vehicle; or you are making a local delivery or collection using a special vehicle; or if you have a valid medical certificate which excuses you from wearing it.
4. Remember you may be taken to court for not doing so, and you may be fined if you cannot prove to the court that you have been excused from wearing it.
5. Professor Taiju Matsuzawa wanted to find out why otherwise healthy farmers in northern Japan appeared to be losing their ability to think and reason at a relatively early age, and how the process of ageing could he slowed down.
6. With a team of colleagues at Tokyo National University, he set about measuring brain volumes of a thousand people of different ages and varying occupations.
7. Computer technology enabled the researchers to obtain precise measurements of the volume of the front and side sections of the brain, which relate to intellect (智能) and emotion, and determine the human character.
8. Contraction of front and side parts as cells die off was observed in some subjects in their thirties, but it was still not evident in some sixty and seventy-year-olds.
9. The findings show in general terms that contraction of the brain begins sooner in people in the country than in the towns.
10. White collar workers doing routine work in government offices are, however, as likely to have shrinking brains as the farm worker, bus driver and shop assistant.
11. We know that you have a high opinion of the kind of learning taught in your colleges, and that the costs of living of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you.
12. But you must know that different nations have different ways of looking at things, and you will therefore not be offended if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same as yours.
13. We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we refuse to accept it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education, teach them in all we know , and make men of them.
14. In what now seems like the prehistoric times of computer history, the earth’s postwar era, there was quite a wide-spread concern that computers would take over the world from man one day.
15. Already today, less than forty years later, as computers are relieving us of more and more of the routine tasks in business and in our personal lives. We are faced with a less dramatic but also less foreseen problem.
16. Obviously, there would be no point in investing in a computer if you had to check all its answers, but people should also rely on their own internal computers and check the machine when they have the feeling that something has gone wrong.
17. Certainly Newton considered some theoretical aspects of it in his writings, but he was reluctant to go to sea to further his work.
18. For most people the sea was remote, and with the exception of early intercontinental travellers or others who earned a living from the sea, there was little reason to ask many questions about it , let alone to ask what lay beneath the surface.
19. The first time that the question “ What is at the bottom of the oceans?” had to be answered with any commercial consequence was when the laying of a telegraph cable from Europe to America was proposed.
20. At the early attempts, the cable failed and when it was taken out for repairs it was found to be covered in living growths, a fact which defied contemporary scientific opinion that there was no life in the deeper parts of the sea.
1-20句譯文
1、系好安全帶能夠挽救性命，它能將喪生和重傷的概率減少一半以上。
2、但是司機有責任確保14歲以下的孩子不要坐在前排，除非他們系好了安全帶。
3、當然，如果有以下情況你可以不系安全帶：你在倒車時，或者你用一種特殊交通工具進行當地的貨物運送、收集時，或者你有合法的醫學證明你不能系安全帶時。
4、注意你如果不這么做(系安全帶)的話，你有可能被告上法庭，而且你有可能被處以罰款除非你能證明你有不帶安全帶的理由。
5、Taiju Matsuzawa 教授想找出為什么日本北部的健康農民在相對年輕的年齡就顯得開始失去思考與推理的能力的原因以及怎樣才能延緩老化過程。
6、在東京國立大學的同事們的幫助下，他開始對一千來自不同職業的人群進行了大腦體積的測量。
7、計算機技術幫助研究人員獲得人腦前部和側部的準確體積，這是與人的智能和情緒有關的部分，而且也決定人的性格特點。
8、有的人(大腦)前部和側部的收縮——隨著細胞的死亡——在三十多歲時就能被觀察到了，但是也有些人直到六七歲依然不明顯。
9、研究結果表明在農村的人大腦收縮基本上比城市里的人要早。
10、在政府部門從事簡單重復工作的白領也像農場工人、公共汽車司機和商店職員一樣大腦細胞容易收縮。
11、我們知道你們很看重你們在大學里面教育的學習方法，而且我們的年輕人與你們生活的花費即使對于你們來說也不便宜。
12、但是你們也要明白不同的民族看待事物有不同的方法，所以如果剛好我們的看法與你們的不一樣的話，你們也不應覺的被冒犯了。
13、當然，對于你們的盛情我們沒有被逼迫的感覺，盡管我們拒絕接受。而且，為了表示我們的感謝，如果維吉利亞洲的紳士們愿意派來一些他們的子弟的話，我們會盡全力教育他們，并把他們培養成為真正的男人。
14、在這個像是計算機史前時代的時代，地球的戰后時代，人們普遍擔憂有一天計算機會取代人類控制世界。
15、今天或者不到五十年后，計算機將越來越多的減輕人們的工作事務和日常瑣事。我們也將面對一個沒有什么戲劇性和更不可預測的問題。
16、顯然，如果你不得不檢查計算機提供的所有答案的話，對它投資就沒有任何意義了。但是當人們覺的計算機確實出了一些問題的時候，應該靠自己內部的“計算機”來檢查機器。
17、當然牛頓在他的作品中寫到了一些理論方面的東西，但他不愿進行更加深刻的研究。
18、除了一些洲際旅行者和以大海為生的人，對于大多數人來說，大海是遙遠的，沒有什么必要提出太多問題，更別說思考大海海底的東西了。
19、當鋪設一條從歐洲到美洲的海底電報光纜的時候，出于商業動機，人們第一次不得不回答這個問題“海底是什么東西”。
20、在早期的嘗試中，光纜鋪設失敗，不得不取出來維修。這時人們發現上面覆蓋有生物，這推翻了當時科學界認為深海沒有生命的理論。
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