題組解析: 92. Researchers have achieved speeds of 224 gigabits per second in lab conditions, much faster than Wi-Fi broadband.
題組解析: 95. Li-Fi-enabled street lights could provide internet access to mobile phones, making walking at night safer.
題組解析: 96. The LED bulbs in traffic lights could provide drivers with weather conditions and traffic updates.
題組解析: 98. At home, smart light could also provide parents with solutions to their children’s Internet addiction: Just turn off the lights and you’ve turned off their access.
題組解析: 99. When 14 billion light bulbs mean 14 billion potential transmitters of wireless data, a cleaner, a greener, and even a brighter future is on the way.
題組解析: 100. Some of the world’s largest beetles are getting smaller because their habitats are warming up, according to new research from the University of British Columbia, Canada.
題組解析: 101. The study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology in January 2018, shows that climate change is having an impact on these “teeny tiny” organisms.
題組解析: 103. Evolutionary ecologist Michelle Tseng and her students combed through all the articles they could find, looking for laboratory studies of temperature effects on insects.
題組解析: 104. They found 19 that indicated at least 22 beetle species shrank when raised in warmer than normal temperatures.
題組解析: 105. To see whether this pattern held true in the wild, the team made use of the university’s 600,000-specimen insect collection, which included thousands of bugs collected locally since the late 1800s.
題組解析: 106. The researchers took photographs of more than 6,500 beetles from the eight species with the most extensive records.
題組解析: 107. They also looked at climate records to determine trends in rainfall and other factors besides temperature.
題組解析: 108. Sorting the beetles into size categories, they found that five of the eight species have shrunk over the past century.
題組解析: 109. The four largest species of beetles, including the snail-killer ground beetles, shrank 20% in the past 45 years.
題組解析: 111. Some ecologists are cautious about Tseng’s findings, saying that it hasn’t yet been proved whether the warming temperatures are the actual cause for the beetle shrinkage.
題組解析: 113. Baudron’s studies have documented shrinkage of certain fish species due to climate warming.
題組解析: 114. His account is that warmer temperatures lower the concentration of oxygen in the water, causing fish to burn energy faster and mature at a smaller size.
題組解析: 115. But neither he nor Tseng is convinced that decreased oxygen can explain the shrinkage in the beetles.
題組解析: 116. In order to protect the diversity of crops from catastrophe, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a seed bank, was built beneath a mountain on an Arctic island halfway between Norway and the North Pole.
題組解析: 117. The Vault is meant to help farmers and scientists find the genes they need to improve today’s crops.
題組解析: 118. It also aims to breed varieties that might better respond to emerging challenges, such as climate change and population growth.
題組解析: 119. Currently, the Vault holds more than 860,000 samples, originating from almost every country in the world.
題組解析: 120. There is now, however, a growing body of opinion that the world’s faith in Svalbard is misplaced.
題組解析: 121. Those who have worked with farmers in the field say that diversity cannot be boxed up and saved in a single container—no matter how secure it may be.