[原创]学导图，学英语（浪子第一贴）(8日更新)

五分钟浪子

我把这篇文章用思维导图进行学习，请大家多多帮助

  

Batteriesower on the Go!
电池：电力带着走！

New varieties and more functions make batteries better
电池的种类与功能越来越多，也越来越好用

June 2, 2008

Nearly everything that beeps or flashes takes batteries. Here's a rundown of the different types of batteries on the market, what they're best for and tips on keeping them fresh.

Disposables

Zinc carbon碳锌电池
Zinc carbon batteries are the cheapest types of disposable batteries. They can't handle very high demands. Also, they can die after a year of being stuck in a drawer or leak after being used for an extended period. Those extra-cheap "heavy duty" batteries you see on store shelves are actually upgrades of zinc carbon batteries,and suffer fewer of those nasty problems.

Alkaline碱性电池
The vast majority of disposable batteries sold now are alkaline batteries. These don't leak like the old zinc carbons, and because of the way they're constructed they provide good, long-lasting service for most devices. Think of low-power, long-use situations, like in a clock or your remote control—places where you're not asking a lot of the battery but want it to last for a long time

Lithium锂电池
The new kids on the block are disposable lithium batteries. For starters, if you’re going to be using your battery-powered gadget outdoors or in the car, you’ll want lithiums; they operate at full power from 40 to 140 degrees, a much wider range than standard alkalines. Other advantages of lithium batteries mostly center on their ability to deliver high amounts of power without conking out so quickly. That makes them favorites for digital cameras, MP3 players and other high-drain uses.

Button cells钮扣电池
The last kind of batteries used in consumer gadgets are button cells—the tiny flat Spree candy-sized nubbins that are used in cameras, watches and calculators. Those come in two flavors: zinc air, which last longer, especially in high-use situations (you’ll often find them marketed as hearing aid batteries); and silver oxide, which are gradually being phased out because of their toxic components.

June 3, 2008

Rechargeables充电电池
Nickel cadmium镍镉电池
NiCad batteries have powered everything from cordless screwdrivers to emergency lights. However, they’re gradually losing their share of the market because of one important problem: battery memory. If NiCad batteries aren’t consistently drained to total emptiness before they’re recharged, they gradually develop a memory, taking less and less of a charge each time.

Nickel metal hydride镍氢电池
These are gradually being replaced by NiMH batteries, which cost more but don’t suffer from that problem. These are used for just about everything that takes rechargeable batteries, except high-drain electronic devices. Radios, portable power tools, music players, shavers and camcorders still use NiMH batteries. Unused, these batteries gradually lose power and if they sit longer than a month will probably need recharging.

Lithium ion锂离子电池
In gadgets in which you want incredibly high power in a very small package, lithium ion is the current standard for rechargeable batteries. Cell phones, laptops and the like all come with Li-Ion batteries built in because they can handle the high-energy draws of these devices without weighing a ton. There’s also a newer kind, lithium-ion polymer, which is lighter, cheaper and more rugged, so it’s starting to take over markets where weight is at a premium. Lithium batteries hold their charges quite well.

Charge!充电
Don’t buy the cheapest charger you find; you’ll want one that quits feeding the batteries a full dose of electricity once they’re fully charged. This prevents damage to your rechargeable batteries and makes them last longer. Also, look for a charger that’s labeled as having standby mode or trickle charge for fully charged batteries.

In general, it’s always a good idea to unplug a charger after a day or two if you’re not going to use the batteries right away. And never, ever, recharge non-rechargeable batteries; some can cause an explosion.

[此贴子已经被作者于2008-6-8 23:22:51编辑过]

五分钟浪子

今天的文章比较难,我用了近4个小时才做完,请批评指正.

 

Doing Double Duty
出一趟远门，观光又助人

Take a "volunteer vacation" and benefit others
度个“义工假期”，帮助他人吧

June 4, 2008

It doesn''t take much to get across the basics of the hokey-pokey, which turns out to be just as big a crowd-pleaser in the poorest thatched-roof villages of Cambodia as it is in the manicured suburb near Chicago where Andrew Krupp lives.

With the ever-energetic Krupp occupying the kids, his five traveling companions are free to grab hammers and saws and get down to the real task of the morning: building new eraser boards for the rural school''s ramshackle classrooms.

It''s a lot of work. It''s also their vacation. Krupp and the others have signed up to visit Cambodia with GlobeAware, one of a growing number of organizations that design vacations for people who want to spend as much time helping in the destinations they visit as they spend seeing the major sites

A scene from a Dickens novel
In Siem Reap, the region’s tourist hub, the tiny, run-down orphanage houses 23 children in two rooms—one for girls, one for boys. Many of the kids are barefoot, their hair a mess, their clothes stained—a Cambodian version of a scene from a Dickens novel.

Like the thousands of other tourists arriving each week in this low-lying region of rice paddies and rural villages, famed for its 1,000-year-old temples, GlobeAware participants spent a day or so of their one-week trip exploring the legendary ruins of Angkor Wat and other remnants of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer empire.

In addition to spending time at the orphanage, the group takes on at least one, sometimes two, more volunteer activities each day. On one morning, the group assembles wheelchairs for some of the war-ravaged country’s thousands of landmine victims. Before dinner, the volunteers help teach English to locals, many of whom hope to become English-speaking tour guides at the nearby temples, a relatively high-paying job in the region.

June 4, 2008

Less than $1 a day
A typical job in the Angkor region pays only $100 a month. Those who speak English, however, can find work in tourist hotels paying as much as $250 a month, a small fortune in an economy in which more than a third of the population subsists on less than $1 a day.

Still, even for the higher earners, it’s a rough existence-a point that hits home when the group is whisked into the countryside to visit a typical village. The guide points to the rickety, one-room huts that house families of five, six or even eight people. Built on wooden stilts to keep occupants dry during the rainy season, the thatched-roof huts have flimsy walls made of palm leaves. There’s no electricity, running water or toilets. And the “kitchen” is a fire circle in the dirt.

Much can be done in a week
Visiting such sites long has been part of the volunteer vacation experience . but it also has brought criticism from some. Even some of the participants on this trip are conflicted. “I felt a bit embarrassed, like it was a show for us,” says Cabrielle Duchesne, 26, of Toronto, Canada. “But… if we can go back and find a way to volunteer, to donate, to integrate giving into our lives, then it was worth it.”

On the final day, the group meets grateful recipients of the wheelchairs assembled during a single morning. Some have waited years for a wheelchair, which costs many times the $20-a-month stipend that one disabled recipient says he has received since stepping on a mine in 1987.

“At first I was nervous, but it was a happy occasion, not sad,” Duchesne says afterward. The wheelchair recipients “left better than they had arrived, and that’s the reason we’re here.”

Vocabulary focus
Hokey-pokey(n)一种舞步（配合歌谣，供儿童边唱边跳）
A certain dance, usually for children, in which a circle of people sing out instructions for movements that everyone performs at the same time

Manicured(adj)整理得当的
Referring to something that is well cared for and looks very tidy

Ramshackle(adj)粗略搭建的
Badly or untidily made and likely to break or fall down easily

Low-lying(adj)低洼的，低地的
Describes land that is at or near the level of the sea

Rickety(adj)摇摇欲坠的，残破的
In bad condition and therefore weak and likely to break

Flimsy(adj)薄弱的
Very thin, or easily broken or destroyed

Stipend(n)津贴
A fixed regular income

阳关三叠

不错。对自己有用的，就是最好的

五分钟浪子

 首先感谢楼上兄弟的鼓励!

下面是我的第三张导图,讲的是全球六大食品供应商之一的"通用磨坊"是如何在全球化过程中培养和吸引人才的.

General Mills Goes Global
“通用磨坊”迈向全球化
General Mills' employees are making moves from one country to another
“通用磨坊”的员工四海为家
June 6, 2008

The kids were scrambling. The bags were still being packed. The Martinezes looked like a typical family about to go on vacation. Only this time, the trip was not all play. Ivan Martinez had taken a new job with General Mills that required his family to move to Mexico City, trading Minnesota for the Zona Rosa so he can market breakfast cereal throughout Latin America. The family's new adventure is part of the company's rising use of an international sales force to find growth in the global economy, pushing breakfast cereal out to the markets where Wheaties are a foreign food.

It's a lucrative bet—about 20 percent of the company's sales in its most recent year were from markets outside of the United States—and one that should get better with time

More employees going international
  
General Mill’s international focus has sharpened in recent months. New CEO Ken Powell spent most of his career outside the United States. At least half of his senior team have international management experience. And right there in the annual report this year was the company’s new mantra: “We are a global consumer foods company.”

The company anticipates that within five years, a majority of its employees will be foreign nationals, up from just 4 percent six years ago. This year had a 46 percent rise over the previous year in the number of employees making moves from one country to another.

The moves are occurring in all directions. For every Ivan Martinez, there’s someone like Juliana Chugg, who performed so well for the company in her native Australia that she was awarded a prestigious job at the Golden Valley, Minnesota, headquarters: president of Pillsbury USA. There are even folks such as Colombian Luis Gabriel Merizalde, a rising star in Latin America, recently promoted to manage the company’s Australia and New Zealand business.

June 7, 2008

Don Mulligan, an experienced international manager, learned early on that working in a foreign market required ignoring your instinct—because it’s often wrong.

“You have to be willing to have confidence in the local management to make the right decisions,” he said, recalling an experience where he went against his instincts and followed the recommendation of a local manager in China. The local manager’s opinion—to grow a brand aggressively rather than slowly—paid off.

A good investment
Within headquarters, there’s mounting interest in working overseas. The company uses an international assignment to develop stronger leaders, sometimes planning their return before the executive even leaves.

“We want to get a good return on the investment,” said Tanya Srepel, vice president for human resources, international. Srepel said she just knows the type of people who will thrive overseas—passionate, smart and with broad interests.

The payoff comes with executives like Jeff Harmening, president of Big G cereals, whose years abroad beefed up his knowledge of the 130 markets worldwide where the company is active.

The company has 10,000 employees outside of the United States, many of them local hires. It is also bringing more foreign nationals to the mothership. For example, Johnny Sung, a Shanghai native, moved to Minneapolis this year to do marketing for Haagen-Dazs and Nature Valley.

Not for everyone
  
Yet for all the focus on the company’s international growth, no one is pretending that the domestic business takes a backseat. The United States still accounts for 80 percent of company revenue.

Maybe that’s good. Working overseas isn’t for everyone. “I found it terribly exciting, but excitement for me might be someone else’s hardship,” said Ian Friendly, chief operating officer. In the mid-1990s, he worked in South America and Southeast Asia, among other foreign locales.

The combination of travel and navigating a mishmash of cultures requires a certain temperament, which is why General Mills tells its young executives that overseas assignments aren’t the only route to the top.

“You have to do it for the right reasons,” Friendly said.

Vocabulary focus
Scramble(v)仓促但吃力地行动
To move quickly, but with difficulty

Push(v)强力推销
To advertise sth repeatedly in order to increase its sales.

Lucrative(adj)有利可图的
Producing a lot of money, especially in a business or job

Foreign national(n phr)客居他乡的外国人
Any person living in a country who is not a citizen or does not currently have the right to live as a permanent resident in that country.

Rising star(n phr)明日之星，将要成功的人
A person who is likely to become successful

Mothership(n)母舰
A main ship or vehicle that carries a smaller vehicle which can operate independently, but still relies on the first (often used metaphorically)

Take a backseat(idiom)地位不如旁人或别的事物
To be in a less important position than something else.
  

[em07]

[此贴子已经被作者于2008-6-8 23:21:19编辑过]