Maya Rise and Fall (2)

New clues, unearthed from overgrown ruins and teased from newly deciphered texts, point to Fire Is Born as a central figure in this transformation. Though fragmentary, the evidence that has emerged over the past decade suggests that this mysterious outsider remade the political leadership of the Maya world. Mixing diplomacy and force, he forged alliances, installed new dynasties, and spread the influence of the distant city-state he represented, the great metropolis of Teotihuacan near present-day Mexico City.

Scholars disagree about the nature of his legacy—whether he ushered in a lasting era of foreign domination or catalyzed homegrown change. It is also possible that the Maya were already destined for greatness, and Fire Is Born just picked a lucky time to visit. But there is no question that his arrival marked a turning point. "I don't know if Fire Is Born invented the new system," says Nikolai Grube of the University of Bonn, "but he was there at the beginning."
Even before Fire is Born, the Maya had risen to unlikely heights in a harsh land. Today, the lowlands of southern Mexico and Guatemala's Petén region yield little beyond bare subsistence to their inhabitants. "A high civilization," says Vanderbilt University Maya scholar Arthur Demarest, "had no business being there."

The setting of ancient Waka, now known as El Perú, is probably much as it was when the first Maya arrived, in perhaps 1000 B.C.—a dense rain forest where scarlet macaws, toucans, and vultures nest in towering tropical hardwoods. Spider monkeys swing from branches and vines, and howler monkeys bellow in the distance. When it rains in the Petén, mosquitoes swarm in such clouds that today's Maya have to drive them away with greasy smoke from torches burning cohune palm nuts. In the dry season, the heat bakes the swampy bajos, or bottomlands, the rivers fall, and drought threatens. It is a land of machetes and mud, serpents and sweat, and cats—most notably balam, the jaguar, lord of the jungle.


unearth - 发掘，发现
tease - 梳理，强要
decipher - 解读
fragmentary - 碎片
outsider - 门外汉，局外者
diplomacy - 外交，外交手腕
forge - 锤炼，创造出
represent - 代表，象征，描绘
legacy - 遗产
usher - 引导
catalyze - 催化
destine - 注定
harsh - 粗糙的，严厉的
yield - 产出
bare - 赤裸的
subsistence - 生存，生计
scarlet - 深红色的
macaw - 金刚鹦鹉
toucan - 犀鸟
vulture - 秃鹰
vine - 藤本植物
howler monkey - 吼猴
swarm - 云集
greasy - 油脂的
torch - 火把，火炬
cohune - 巴西棕
palm - 棕榈树，手掌
swampy - 沼泽的
drought - 旱季，枯竭
machete - 弯刀
serpent - 蛇
jaguar - 美洲虎
jungle - 热带丛林

Maya Rise and Fall (1)

The doomed splendor of the Maya unfolded against the backdrop of the rain forests of southern Mexico and Central America. Here, Classic Maya civilization reached improbable heights. To chart a culture whose Preclassic roots reach back 3,000 years, we begin with new evidence suggesting that the arrival of a warlord from central Mexico ushered in an age of magnificence and masterpieces such as the death mask of Palenque's King Pakal. But empires rise only to fall. We conclude with the cascade of catastrophe—natural and man-made—that precipitated the Classic Maya collapse, leaving nature to reclaim the grandeur.

THE RISEThe Kingmaker

The stranger arrived as the dry season began to harden the jungle paths, allowing armies to pass. Flanked by his warriors, he marched into the Maya city of Waka, past temples and markets and across broad plazas. Its citizens must have gaped, impressed not just by the show of force but also by the men's extravagant feathered headdresses, javelins, and mirrored shields—the regalia of a distant imperial city.

Ancient inscriptions give the date as January 8, 378, and the stranger's name as Fire Is Born. He arrived in Waka, in present-day Guatemala, as an envoy from a great power in the highlands of Mexico. In the coming decades, his name would appear on monuments all across the territory of the Maya, the jungle civilization of Mesoamerica. And in his wake, the Maya reached an apogee that lasted five centuries.

The Maya have always been an enigma. Decades ago the glories of their ruined cities and their beautiful but undeciphered script had many researchers imagining a gentle society of priests and scribes. As epigraphers finally learned to read the Maya glyphs, a darker picture emerged, of warring dynasties, court rivalries, and palaces put to the torch. Maya history became a tapestry of precise dates and vividly named personages.

But deep mysteries remained, among them what spurred the Maya's final leap toward greatness. Around the time Fire Is Born's fame was spreading, a wave of change swept the Maya world. What had been a collection of inward-looking city-states expanded their ties with their neighbors and other cultures and reached the heights of artistic achievement that define the Classic Maya period.

doomed - 命中注定的，难逃一死的
splendor - 华丽，光辉
unfold - 展开，打开
backdrop - 背景
improbable - 难以置信的
chart - 记述，跟踪（发展），绘制地图
warlord - 军阀
usher - 引领；引座员
magnificence - 壮丽
masterpieces - 杰作
cascade - 倾泻，小瀑布
catastrophe - 悲剧结局
precipitate - 促进
collapse - 衰落
grandeur - 豪华
flank - 攻击侧面
gape - 目瞪口呆
extravagant - 过分的，浪费的
headdress - 头饰
javelin - 标枪
regalia - 勋章
inscription - 铭刻
envoy - 使节
apogee - 顶峰
enigma - 谜
undeciphered - 难以辨认的
priest - 僧侣，司祭
scribe - 书记，笔记者
epigraph - 铭文
glyph - 符号
warring - 好战的，敌对的
rivalry - 竞争
torch - 文化之光
tapestry - 挂毯
personage - 登场人物
spur - 刺激
leap - 大幅上升，跳跃
sweep - 扫除
inward-looking - 内向的

Maya Calendars Actually Predict That Life Goes On

This December, not everyone is concerned with making plans for the New Year—especially not the people who think doomsday will get here first. Instead of planning parties, they're stockpiling food, refining escape routes, and honing survival skills ahead of the alleged date on which the Maya calendar "ends"—December 21, 2012.

So should we all be preparing for imminent apocalypse? According to the scholars, no.

The ancient Maya are usually cited as the predictors of the world coming to an end this month: One of their "great cycles" supposedly ends now. But the Maya were brilliant mathematicians and fantastic record keepers. They didn't have just one calendar. They developed many different kinds, including a cyclical solar calendar and a sacred almanac. They also measured time with something known as the Long Count, which were great cycles of 5,000 years.

Somewhere along the way a rumor spread about the current great cycle, indicating it ends on December 21, 2012. This sparked the belief among some that the last of our days are upon us.

Rebirth

It's not the first time that the possibility of apocalypse has sparked the human imagination. Doomsday prophecies have a rich history, and believers tend to overlook the scientific evidence that disproves them. In this case, the doomsdayers fail to take into account the intricacies of Maya timekeeping.

"There's only one [Maya] monument that even has the 2012 date on it," says Maya scholar Ricardo Agurcia, adding that apocalypse anticipators are ignoring that according to the Maya, when one great cycle ends, another begins. "It's about rebirth, not death." 

Indeed, the Maya predicted the world would most certainly not end in 2012. Earlier this year, archaeologist and National Geographic Grantee William Saturno discovered a series of numbers painted on the walls at a Maya complex in Guatemala. The calculations included dates that go far into the future. "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," he said in a press release. 

"We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." 

It Came From Outer Space?

That should be enough to soothe Maya-inspired worries about doomsday scenarios. But what about other potential agents of catastrophe—coronal mass ejections, a "killer planet," polar shifts?

On these possibilities, NASA can shed some light. On his blog Ask an Astrobiologist, NASA space scientist David Morrison has fielded some 5,000 questions about doomsday 2012. People want to know about the existence of Nibiru, or Planet X, and whether it's coming to destroy Earth or not. Others inquire about alignment of the heavenly bodies, shifting of the magnetic poles, and bursting of solar flares. In a YouTube video, Morrison said, "There is no threat to Earth in 2012. Nibiru does not exist. There are no special forces when planets align. Don't worry about 2012, and enjoy 2013 when it comes."

Despite this emphatic professional pushback, anxiety over our impending demise persists. According to an article in the New York Times, a number of Russians have fallen under the apocalypse spell, snatching up essentials as December 21st approaches. The story also cites apprehension in southern France, where certain camps believe Bugarach mountain has the power to protect in a doomsday scenario.

In the United States, doomsday preparers have help from people like Larry Hall, who is building underground luxury "survival condos" in Kansas missile silos leftover from the Cold War era. Careful not to judge anyone's reason for worry, he said, "I'm not saying you're right or you're wrong. I'm just trying to have a one-size-fits-all solution to whatever your threats may be."

doomsday - 世界末日
hone - 练习（技术），磨（刀）
allege - 宣称
imminent- 即将发生的，紧迫的
apocalypse - 启示
cite - 引用
brilliant - 才华横溢的
sacred - 神圣的
almanac - 历书，年鉴
rumor - 流言
spark - 直接导致，发出火化
prophecy - 预言
intricacy - 复杂
anticipator - 预期者
press release - 新闻稿
guarantee - 保证
mindset - 思维方式
soothe - 安慰，使镇静
catastrophe - 大灾难
coronal - 日冕
ejection - 喷射
shed - 给与，放出
inquire - 询问
alignment - 列队，排成直线    align - 形成一条直线，联合
magnetic - 磁的
solar flare - 太阳耀斑
emphatic - 强调的，措词强硬的
pushback - 抵触
anxiety - 担心
impend - 即将发生
demise - 死去
persist - 坚持
snatch - 抢
apprehension - 不安
condo - 独立产权大楼
missile - 导弹
silo - 地下处仓库

Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.

Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. 

Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.

"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." 

The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.

Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.

Root Growth

Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.

"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.

Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.

"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.

The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. 

The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.

flora - 植物群
inherent - 天生的
germinate - 发芽
sproute - 发芽
instinct - 本能
geneticist - 遗传学者
collaborator - 合作者
petri plate - 培养皿
skew - 倾斜
slant - 倾斜
encounter - 不期而遇
suspect - 觉得
cue - 线索，暗示
ultimately - 最后
boost - 促进
prospect -预期
cultivate - 培养
impediment - 妨碍
mission - 任务

A 110-Million-Year-Old Trash Collector

In a group of insects called green lacewings, larvae often make a habit of decorating themselves with bits of vegetation, insect carcasses, or whatever else the young pick up from their surroundings to use as a disguise as they sneak up on prey and to hide from predators such as birds.

Researchers had long speculated that this was an ancient behavior, but just how ancient was difficult to say until a recent find in Spain. There, in a forest 110 million years ago, a lacewing larvae was encased in amber along with its collection of fern pieces tangled on protrusions on its back.

Not only is this the earliest known occurrence of this behavior in lacewings, said paleoentomologist and study co-author Michael Engel at the University of Kansas, but "it's also the earliest occurrence of this camouflaging behavior among insects as a whole."

Lacewing larvae aren't the only invertebrates to employ odd camouflage techniques—decorator crabs will stick live animals, such as sea anemones, on their shells to blend in with their surroundings. 

But ancient use of this behavior in lacewing larvae had been seen only in 45-million-year-old fossils from the Dominican Republic. The new Spanish fossil, described in a study to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pushes the age of this behavior back to the early Cretaceous.

When doctoral student Ricardo Pérez-de La Fuente of the University of Barcelona discovered the fossil in amber he had collected, he and Engel were dumbstruck.

"It's one thing to crawl along and have things get stuck to you," Engel said. "It's another thing to select materials from your environment to put on your back—for a little larva, this is a complex behavioral suite."

The trash packet entombed with its collector is composed only of fern trichomes, or the little hairs that give some ferns a fuzzy appearance.

"It's likely [the larva] could have been very selective of what to put on its back," said Engel.

Since the lacewing lineage extends even further back in time to the latter part of the Jurassic, it's possible that a primitive form of this camouflaging behavior may go back that far as well, Engel said. 

lacewing - 草蛉
larva - 幼虫     （larvae  pl.）
decorate - 装饰
carcass - 尸体，遗骸
disguise - 伪装
sneak up - 潜行，偷偷溜走
speculate - 思索，推测
encase - 包装，把。。。装箱
fern - 蕨类植物
tangle - （使）缠结
protrusion - 突出
camouflag - 伪装
invertebrate - 无脊椎动物
crab - 蟹
anemone - 海葵
blend - 相配，参杂
Cretaceous - 白垩纪              Jurassic - 侏罗纪
dumbstruck - 吓得目瞪口呆的
stuck - 卡住的，被缠住的
suite -  一套
trash - 碎块，垃圾
entomb - 埋葬
trichome - 藻丝，毛状体
primitive - 原始的

The Transporter: Cloud Banks Carry Mercury

The towering redwood forests along California's coast are known for the clammy fog that rolls in from the ocean almost every night. Now scientists have discovered an unwelcome stowaway in these cloud banks: mercury.

Previous research had shown that fog sampled in and around Santa Cruz, California, contained the heavy metal mercury—the silvery liquid found in old thermometers—but no one knew the source. New results presented at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco today show that the mercury is likely coming from the ocean.

The minute amounts of mercury aren't enough to harm someone walking around in the fog—you could find more mercury in a can of tuna, said atmospheric chemist Peter Weiss-Penzias at the University of California, Santa Cruz. But fog is a big player in the central California coast's water cycle. And since mercury accumulates in plants and animals, getting more concentrated as it moves further up the food chain, the pollutant's presence poses a threat to the ecosystem. 

Weiss-Penzias and his colleagues measured seawater concentrations of dimethyl mercury—an unstable, gaseous form of mercury—at depths ranging from 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) to the surface of Monterey Bay this spring. They found the highest concentrations of the unstable form around 660 feet (200 meters). "Above 200 meters, you enter the zone where dimethyl mercury is less stable, so it decomposes and some of it escapes into the atmosphere," Weiss-Penzias said. 

Combining this research with measurements indicating that fog is the vehicle for 60 to 99 percent of all atmosphere-to-land mercury transmission, Weiss-Penzias said he thinks it's a good bet that the ocean is the source in California's case. He plans to collect measurements of dimethyl mercury in the atmosphere directly over the ocean to confirm his hypothesis and would also like to study other contaminants, including pesticides that could be carried around in the fog's cold embrace.

"It is a bit of a mystery where [the mercury's] coming from, but I think what we're seeing is a large-scale phenomenon that has to do with upwelling of deep ocean water along the coast," Weiss-Penzias said in a statement.

towering - 高耸的
clammy - 湿冷的，潮呼呼的
roll in - 滚滚而来
stowaway - 偷乘船者
thermometer - 温度计
tuna - 金枪鱼
pollutant - 污染物
presence - 存在
threat - 威胁
concentration - 浓度
dimethyl - 二甲基的
vehicle - 媒介物，交通工具
transmission - 传递，传导
bet - 可能性，赌注
contaminant - 污染物
pesticide - 杀虫剂
embrace - 拥抱，怀抱
upwelling - （海水）上升流

Girl and Baobabs, Madagascar

Photograph by Ken Thorne

Near the city of Morondava on the west coast of Madagascar lies an ancient forest of baobab trees. Unique to Madagascar, the endemic species is sacred to the Malagasy people, and rightly so. Walking amongst these giants is like nothing else on this planet. Some of the trees here are over a thousand years old. It is a spiritual place, almost magical.

Morondava  - 穆龙达瓦市（马达加斯加）
endemic - 地方特有的
Malagasy people - 马拉加什人（马达加斯加住民）
spiritual - 圣灵的

Battle of the Sexes: How Women and Men See Things Differently

Men and women have always seen things differently. Now we're closer to understanding why.

A new study published today in PLoS One finds that males and females actually view images in different ways.

When University of Bristol researchers asked 52 men and women to study various images, gender differences emerged in terms of where the subjects focused their attention and in how much of a picture they explored. 

The 26 female and 26 male study participants—ranging in age from 19 to 47—tended to focus on anywhere from one to five "hot spots" in still images made from films and taken of artwork. The images included scenes from movies such as The Sound of Music, Inside Man, and The Blue Planet, and artwork including "People in the Sun" by Edward Hopper and "Three Graces" by David Bowers.

Most of the hot spots involved the faces of people in the pictures, especially eyes, as well as other body parts, such as hands.

Women, however, explored more of an image than men did, often focusing on nonfacial areas and places slightly below where men fixed their gaze.
Lead author Felix Mercer Moss, a vision researcher and doctoral student at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, speculates that risk aversion may explain some of the differences. In Western culture, a direct gaze can be construed as threatening.

"Women may be attaching more risk to looking people in the eye," Mercer Moss noted, which is why they may focus their gaze on a lower part of the face than men do. 

Research on gender differences in eye movements isn't new. But previous studies used specific imagery, such as faces registering emotions or sexually suggestive pictures, said Mercer Moss. In this study, he wanted to know whether gender differences existed when people viewed more general visual stimuli. It turns out they do.

The next step is to figure out why, says Andrew Bayliss of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. Bayliss, a social cognition researcher who was not involved in this study, thinks Mercer Moss and his colleagues are off to an exciting start.

Mercer Moss himself hopes the study results will promote better eye-movement research. "University departments that do this kind of eye-tracking work tend to have skewed gender ratios," he noted. These include computer-science departments, which tend to be male-dominated, and psychology departments, which tend to be female-dominated.

That means results from such studies may not be broadly applicable, Mercer Moss explained.
But one thing now seems clear: As the age-old battle of the sexes continues, beauty isn't the only thing in the eye of the beholder.

emerge - 出现
participant - 参加者，出场者
speculate - 推测，思索
aversion - 厌恶     She felt an aversion to him
construe - 解释
threaten - 威胁
attach - 连在一起，从属
imagery - 意象
suggestive - 暗示 的
stimulus - 刺激      （pl.）stimuli
promote - 促进，晋升
skew - 曲解
ratio - 比例
broadly - 完全地，宽广地
applicable - 适当的
age-old - 由来已久的，古老的
beholder - 观看者，旁观者

Hot Springs National Park

Location: Arkansas

Established: March 4, 1921

Size: 5,550 acres

Most national parks cover hundreds of thousands of acres, are far from city streets, and keep natural resources away from commercial users … but not Hot Springs. This smallest of national parks borders a city that has made an industry out of tapping and dispensing the park's major resource: mineral-rich waters of hot springs.

The heart of this peculiar park is Bathhouse Row on Central Avenue, the main street of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Rising above Central Avenue is Hot Springs Mountain, from which the waters flow. The mountain's lower western side once was coated with tufa, a milky-colored, porous rock formed of minerals deposited from the hot springs' constant cascade.

When Hot Springs prospered as a health spa in the mid-19th century, promoters covered, piped, and diverted the springs into Central Avenue bathhouses. They also prettified the slope by covering it with tons of dirt and planting grass and shrubs. "Ever since then," a longtime Hot Springs resident says, "it's been afflicted by eastern landscape architects who can't stand the sight of rocks."

The park calls itself the "oldest area in the national park system" because in 1832, 40 years before Yellowstone became the first national park, President Andrew Jackson set aside the hot springs as a special reservation. The federal land became a national park in 1921. By then Hot Springs had long been famous as a spa where people "took the waters," seeking relief from bunions, rheumatism, and other afflictions.

The park preserves the springs' "recharge zone," slopes where rain and snow soak into the ground, and the "discharge zone," which contains 47 springs belonging to the park. Each day about 700,000 gallons of water—at 143°F—flow from the springs into a complex piping and reservoir system. This supplies water to commercial baths and to free "jug fountains," where people flock daily to fill containers with the odorless, fresh-tasting, chemical-free water.

border - 临接
tap - 开发
dispense - 分配
peculiar - 特殊的奇怪的
porous - 能渗透的，多孔的
deposit - 使沉淀    deposite（沉淀物）
cascade - 小瀑布
prosper - 繁荣
promoter - 发起人，促进者
divert - 使转移
prettify - 修饰，美化
shrub - 灌木
afflict - 折磨            affliction - （苦恼，痛苦）
set aside - 留出，放置一旁
relief  - 减轻，宽慰
bunions - 脚趾囊肿
rheumatism - 风湿病
soak - 渗透，浸泡
jug - 大罐
flock - 群集，蜂拥；群众

Thanksgiving 2012 Myths and Facts （2）

Thanksgiving Turkey-in-Waiting

Each year at least two lucky turkeys avoid the dinner table, thanks to a presidential pardon—a longstanding Washington tradition of uncertain origin.

Since 1947, during the Truman Administration, the National Turkey Federation has presented two live turkeys—and a ready-to-eat turkey—to the President, federation spokesperson Sherrie Rosenblatt said in 2009.

"There are two birds," Rosenblatt explained, "the presidential turkey and the vice presidential turkey, which is an alternate, in case the presidential turkey is unable to perform its duties."

Those duties pretty much boil down to not biting the President during the photo opportunity with the press. In 2008 the vice presidential bird, "Pumpkin," stepped in for the appearance with President Bush after the presidential bird, "Pecan," had fallen ill the night before.

The lucky birds once shared a similar happy fate as Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks—a trip to Disneyland's Big Thunder Ranch in California, where they lived out their natural lives.

Since 2010, however, the birds have followed in the footsteps of the first President and taken up residence at George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens.

After the holiday season, however, the two 40-pound (18-kilogram) toms won't be on public display. These fat, farm-fed birds aren't historically accurate, unlike the wild birds that still roam the Virginia estate.

administration - 执政
vice president - 副总统
alternate - 代理
boil down to - 归结为，使浓缩
press - 记者团
quarterback - 橄榄球四分位
tom - 雄的动物
roam - 徘徊
estate - 房地产

Talking Turkey

Pilgrims had been familiar with turkeys before they landed in the Americas. That's because early European explorers of the New World had returned to Europe with turkeys in tow after encountering them at Native American settlements. Native Americans had domesticated the birds centuries before European contact.

A century later Ben Franklin famously made known his preference that the turkey, rather than the bald eagle, should be the official U.S. bird.

But Franklin might have been shocked when, by the 1930s, hunting had so decimated North American wild turkey populations that their numbers had dwindled to the tens of thousands, from a peak of at least tens of millions.

Today, thanks to reintroduction efforts and hunting regulations, wild turkeys are back. 

Some seven million wild turkeys are thriving across the U.S., and many of them have adapted easily to the suburbs—their speed presumably an asset on ever encroaching roads.

Wild turkeys can run some 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 kilometers) an hour and fly in bursts at 55 miles (89 kilometers) an hour. Domesticated turkeys can't fly at all.

in tow - 拖拽，跟在后面
encounter - 不期而遇
preference  - 偏爱的事物，偏爱
bald - 秃头的，单调的
decimated - 相当程度地减少
dwindle - 减少，衰退
thrive - 茁壮成长，兴隆
suburb - 城郊
presumably - 据推测，大概
asset - 资产
encroaching - 渐渐渗入的    encroach（蚕食）
burst - 爆发

On Thanksgiving, Pass the Pigskin

For many U.S. citizens, Thanksgiving without football is as unthinkable as the Fourth of July without fireworks.

NBC Radio broadcast the first national Thanksgiving Day game in 1934, when the Detroit Lions hosted the Chicago Bears.

Except for a respite during World War II, the Lions have played—usually badly—every Thanksgiving Day since. For the 2012 game, the 73rd, they take on the Houston Texans.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

For a festive few, even turkey takes a backseat to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, originally called the Macy's Christmas parade, because it kicked off the shopping season.

The tradition began in 1924, when employees recruited animals from the Central Park Zoo to march on Thanksgiving Day.

Helium-filled balloons made their debut in the parade in 1927 and, in the early years, were released above the city skyline with the promise of rewards for their finders.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, first televised nationally in 1947, now draws some 44 million viewers—not counting the 3 million people who actually line the 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) Manhattan route.

Thanksgiving weekend also boasts the retail version of the Super Bowl—Black Friday, when massive sales and early opening times attract frugal shoppers.

A National Retail Federation survey projects that up to 147 million Americans will either brave the crowds to shop on 2012's Black Friday weekend or take advantage of online shopping sales, a slight dip from last year's 152 million shoppers.

respite - 延期
parade - 游行
backseat - 次要位置
kick off - 开始
debut - 初次露面，初次表演
boast - 引以为荣
retail - 零售的；零售
frugal - 节俭的

Planes, Trains, and (Lots of) Automobiles

It may seem like everyone in the U.S. is on the road on Thanksgiving Day, keeping you from your turkey and stuffing.

That's not exactly true, but 43.6 million of about 314 million U.S. citizens will drive more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home for the 2012 holiday, according to the American Automobile Association. That's a small 300,000-person increase from last year.

An additional 3.14 million travelers will fly to their holiday destination and 1.3 million others will use buses, trains, or other modes of travel. These modestly rising Thanksgiving travel numbers continue to rebound slowly from a steep 25 percent drop precipitated by the onset of the 2008 recession.

Thanksgiving North of the Border

Cross-border travelers can celebrate Thanksgiving twice, because Canada celebrates its own Thanksgiving Day the second Monday in October.

As in the U.S., the event is sometimes linked to a historic feast with which it has no real ties—in this case explorer Martin Frobisher's 1578 ceremony, which gave thanks for his safe arrival in what is now New Brunswick.

Canada's Thanksgiving, established in 1879, was inspired by the U.S. holiday. Dates of observance have fluctuated—sometimes coinciding with the U.S. Thanksgiving or the Canadian veteran-appreciation holiday, Remembrance Day—and at least once Canada's Thanksgiving occurred as late as December.

But Canada's colder climate eventually led to the 1957 decision that formalized the October date.

mode - 方式，风尚
destination - 目的地
rebound - 反弹
steep - 急剧升降的
precipitate - 由高处抛下
onset - 袭击
recession - 不景气
cross-border - 跨国境
inspire - 启迪，鼓舞
fluctuate - 波动
veteran - 老兵；退伍的，资深的