1997年6月英语四级 - 阅读理解D

Even plants can run a fever, especially when they’re under attack by insects or disease. But unlike humans, plants can have their temperature taken from 3,000 feet away-straight up. A decade ago, adapting the infrared scanning technology developed for military purposes and other satellites, physicist Stephen Paley came up with a quick way to take the temperature of crops to determine which ones are under stress. The goal was to let farmers precisely target pesticide spraying rather than rain poison on a whole field, which invariably includes plants that don’t have pest problems.
即使是植物也会发烧，尤其是当它们受到昆虫或疾病的攻击时。但与人类不同的是，植物可以在3000英尺外直接测量温度。十年前物理学家斯蒂芬·佩利利用为军事目的和其他卫星开发的红外线扫描技术，想出了一种快速测量作物温度的方法，以确定哪些作物处于压力之下。目标是让农民精确喷洒农药，而不是向整片田地喷洒毒药，其中总是包括那些没有虫害问题的植物。

Even better, Paley’s Remote Scanning Services Company could detect crop problems before they became visible to the eye. Mounted on a plane flown at 3,000 feet at night, an infrared scanner measured the heat emitted by crops. The data were transformed into a color-coded map showing where plants were running “fevers”. Farmers could then spot-spray, using 50 to 70 percent less pesticide than they otherwise would.
更棒的是，佩利的远程扫描服务公司可以肉眼可见之前检测到这些作物问题。安装在一架夜间3000英尺高空飞行的飞机上的红外扫描仪测量作物发出的热量。这些数据被转换成一张彩色编码的地图，显示植物“发烧”的地方。然后，农民可以现场喷洒，使用的农药要少50%到70%。

The bad news is that Paley’s company closed down in 1984, after only three years. Farmers resisted the new technology and long-term backers were hard to find. But with the renewed concern about pesticides on produce, and refinements in infrared scanning, Paley hopes to get back into operation. Agriculture experts have no doubt the technology works. “This technique can be used on 75 percent of agricultural land in the United States,” says George Oerther of Texas A&M. Ray Jackson, who recently retired from the Department of Agriculture, thinks remote infrared crop scanning could be adopted by the end of the decade. But only if Paley finds the financial backing which he failed to obtain 10 years ago.
坏消息是，仅仅三年以后，1984年佩利的公司倒闭。农民抵制这项新技术，很难找到长期的支持者。但随着人们对农产品中杀虫剂的重新关注，以及红外扫描技术的改进，佩利希望重新投入使用。农业专家们完全相信这项技术是有效的。德克萨斯农工大学的乔治·奥斯特说：“这项技术可以在美国75%的农田上使用”。最近从农业部退休的雷·杰克逊认为，到本世纪末，远程红外作物扫描可能会被采用，但前提是佩利找到了10年前未能获得的资金支持。