研究生阅读库.doc

Passage 1 Squashed压扁的压碎的 Eyeballs 眼球Are a Danger for Astronauts （4 26 关明俐） Space is not good for your eyes — unless you are nearsighted近视, in which case it might help a bit. Trips to weightlessness失重状态 can squash the eyeballs of astronauts, swell膨胀肿胀 the optic nerves视神经 and blur vision使视力模糊不清 — changes that often persist存留 long after the astronauts return to weightbound Earth. That is one more health effect that NASA 美国国家航空和宇宙航行局will have to worry about before astronauts venture冒险 farther out into the solar system太阳系. “When you’re talking about missions任务 that might be two years round trip往返旅行, it has to be in the back of your mind that this could be a potential limiting factor,” said Dr. Larry A. Kramer, a professor of diagnostic imaging and intervention at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Dr. Kramer and his colleagues have put more than 35 astronauts into high-resolution高分辨率 magnetic resonance imaging machines核磁共振显像. This month in the journal Radiology放射学, they reported their findings on the first 27 astronauts they examined. Four of the 27 had some swelling around the optic nerve. In seven of the astronauts, the back of one or both of the eyeballs was somewhat flattened有点扁平. Those abnormalities异常情况, Dr. Kramer said, resemble类似 those in patients on terra firma陆地 who have a condition in which fluid pressure increases in the skull脑壳 and presses against挤压 the eyes. Dr. Kramer said he suspected increased pressure was at the heart of the problem for the astronauts, too. Without the downward pull of gravity向下的重力, fluids in the body shift移动 higher in the body, including inside the skull. (It is, however, too early to rule out把。。排除 other causes, he said, like the increased radiation辐射 that astronauts experience while in orbit轨道.) The flattening of the eyes is easily compensated for补偿 by eyeglasses, and nearsighted people become less nearsighted. But the M.R.I. scans also revealed little ripples波纹 in the back of the eyes of some of the astron