《考研英语阅读理解基础进阶88篇》【第一阶段】【第12周】.PDFVIP

新东方《考研英语阅读理解基础进阶 88 篇》 《考研英语阅读理解基础进阶88 篇》【第一阶段】【第 12 周】 From banknotes to bottles of Bordeaux and Vans shoes, good forgeries can be hard to detect—even for experts. The difficulty is finding a quick and reliable way to tell the difference between what is real and what is faked. Yet if you look closely enough with a microscope, the surface of almost any material shows a naturally occurring randomness: the wood fibres in a piece of paper look like a layer of noodles; smooth plastic resembles a mountain range. The details of these patterns are unique to each item and thus could be used like a fingerprint, to provide an almost foolproof means of identification. The trouble is that employing a microscope powerful enough to record surface features at the required level of detail would be an expensive and troublesome business, and not at all practical on a production line. However, if you shine a laser at the surface of an object, the way the light is reflected back can be used to gather information about the same features. And a fast, low-cost way of doing just that has now been commercialised by Ingenia Technology, a company based in London, to provide a fake-proof method of “laser surface authentication”. The process is based on a phenomenon known as laser speckle. Variations in the speckle can be digitised to produce a code that is unique to the scanned item. According to Andrew Gilbert, one of Ingenia ’s directors, the probability of two surfaces generating the same code tends to be zero. That is far more accurate than fingerprints. Nor is the system easy to fool. A piece of paper such as a banknote can be crushed, soaked in water, burnt and scribbled on but still have its surface clearly readable. Even torn, scratched and partially missing surfaces can be read. This is becaus