首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The Prize: $10 Million A They are an elite club of billionaires, movie producers, dotcom wiz kids and the occasional astronaut
The Prize: $10 Million A They are an elite club of billionaires, movie producers, dotcom wiz kids and the occasional astronaut
admin
2011-01-14
24
问题
The Prize: $10 Million
A They are an elite club of billionaires, movie producers, dotcom wiz kids and the occasional astronaut and between them they hope to change the face of scientific research with money and influence, the 20-strong team—among them the producer of the Blues Brothers and Naked Gun movies, the cofounder of Google, a former White House aide and the Vietnam veteran-turned-billionaire genetics entrepreneur, Craig Venter, are to launch a series of multimillion dollar prizes to accelerate scientific breakthroughs that otherwise might be decades away.
B Together, they make up the X-Prize Foundation, an organisation set up by Peter Diamandis of Space Adventures, the company that arranged for Dennis Tito to fly to the International Space Station in 2001 and so become the world’s first space tourist. The foundation (motto: "Creating radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity"), plans to launch three prizes of at least $10 million this year to crack some of the toughest problems facing genetics, nanotechnology and the car industry. "Our goal is to build ourselves into a world-class prize institute and focus on using those prizes to attack some of the grand challenges of our time," Dr Diamandis said. "By setting up prizes with a big enough purse, you can reach across space and time and problems will get solved."
C The move follows the foundation’s huge success with the Ansari X-Prize, which promised $I0 million for the first commercial manned spacecraft to reach suborbital space twice within two weeks. Named after Anousheh Ansari, a dotcom multimillionaire and one of only two women on the foundation’s board, the prize attracted 26 teams which spent more than $100 million trying to win. The prize was triggered by what Dr Diamandis calls his "absolute frustration at the glacial pace of progress" and was won in 2004 by Burt Rutan, an American aeronautics expert, with his rocket-plane SpaceShipOne. The competition forced US officials to draw up regulations for commercial spaceflight and paved the way for Richard Branson to add space tourism to his portfolio with the launch of Virgin Galactic, a spaceflight venture that will use a rocket designed by Mr Rutan.
D Now the foundation is looking to repeat its success in other areas of science. Dr Diamandis is cagey about the finer details of future prizes, but one will offer $10 million for the first company to sequence the genetic code of 100 people in a matter of weeks. The prize is intended to force private industry to find ways of making full genome sequencing cheap enough for everyone to afford. It will be no cakewalk: a full genome sequence now takes around six months to read and costs $20 million. "The value of having the human genome doesn’t really occur until you have it for tens or hundreds of thousands of people, so the prize will make that happen," Dr Diamandis said. "To say this gene correlates with adult onset diabetes, that this gene reacts badly with that drug, you need a huge statistical database."
E A second prize is aimed at kicking America’s self-proclaimed addiction to oil, by spurring research into greener vehicles. "This is a hot button that can effect our reliance on energy from around the world and our production of pollution, which are major problems from a national security standpoint and an environmental standpoint,’ Dr Diamandis said. "We’re still using the internal combustion engine after 100 years, and getting 20 miles per gallon for the past 40 years. It’s ripe for a major prize to break things open." The foundation is also planning prizes in nanotechnology and education and is considering a second space prize, which could see the first commercial team to put a person into orbital spaceflight win $50 million to $100 million. "We’re always looking for where things have become stuck, where there are bureaucratic, technology, government or industrial problems stopping things evolving." According to Dr Diamandis, in the future such prizes will shape research by focusing minds on a particular problem and ensuring the goalposts do not change with political whims. Soon, he believes $100 million and even $1 billion prizes will be put up by organisations keen to draw on the mass intelligence of the world’s experts.
F The money for the prizes comes from donations from wealthy individuals and sponsorship, and entry is usually open to all. "In general we want these open to the most brilliant minds on the planet," Dr Diamandis said. "A lot of the value is not just the cash, it’s the heroism that goes along with winning the competition. It’s what drives people to work around the clock and take risk to levels required for breakthroughs." The X-Prize Foundation has inspired others to follow suit, notably Nasa, which believes its money might be better spent setting up a prize fund than running parallel research projects in-house. This month it released details of six $5 million "challenges" to solve technical hurdles standing in the way of typically Nasaish projects, namely how to build extraterrestrial fuel depots, human lunar all-terrain vehicles, low-cost space pressure suits, lunar night power sources, micro reentry vehicles and "station-keeping solar sails".
*
选项
答案
真
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/ldVO777K
本试题收录于:
雅思阅读题库雅思(IELTS)分类
0
雅思阅读
雅思(IELTS)
相关试题推荐
Thepriceofanarticleofclothingwasreducedfrom$25to$20.Thereducedpriceofthearticlewasthenincreasedbyxpercen
Johnisbuildingacircularfencearoundhiscircularpool.Thepoolis26feetindiameter.IfJohnwantstohave2feetofspa
Apollof2,000studentswastakenbeforeCentervilleCollegechangedthenameofitsmascot.All2,000studentsindicatedwhich
In1988,Mr.Smith’sannualincomewasgreaterthanMrs.smith’sannualincome.In1989,Mr.Smith’sannualincomedecreasedby
Ifthecontagiousnatureofyawningisameansofcommunicationwithingroupsofanimals,possiblyasameansto______behavior
Themostcompellingevidenceoftherisksofcarcinogeniceffectsofenvironmentalpollutantscomesfromanimaldata,suc
NewYorkCityisfullofpeoplelikeMr.O’Neal-life-longbibliophileswithaaccumulation,holedupincompactspacesinthein
Thesupplyoffreshwatercontinuestobea______formostenvironmentalistssince,surprisingly,over97percentoftheworld’s
Thousands,perhapsevenmillions,ofpeoplearoundtheworldareafflictedwithaneurologicalconditioncalledsynesthesia.The
Theexistenceofenvironmentalcontaminationisnolongerapointof______;government,industry,andthepublicagreethatiti
随机试题
常用的风险管理方法主要有()。
我国莜麦产量最高的地区是________。
仓库的警卫工作是在本单位保卫部门和()的领导下进行的。
AnUnwelcomeGuestMaggiewasverygladthatJameswasnotafrequentvisitortothehouse.Sofarasthechildrenwereconce
一产妇分娩时产道出血400ml,血压100/65mmHg,血红蛋白110g/L。因平时身体虚弱,其家属要求输血以补充营养和加快恢复体力。此时正确的处理是
某气体反应在密闭容器中建立了化学平衡,如果温度不变但体积缩小了一半,则平衡常数为原来的多少?
甲、乙公司均为增值税一般纳税人,适用的增值税税率为16%。甲公司接受乙公司投资的原材料一批,账面价值100000元,投资协议约定的价值为120000元,假定投资协议约定的价值与公允价值相符,增值税进项税额由投资方支付,并开具了增值税专用发票,该项投资没有产
我们的共产党和共产党所领导的八路军、新四军,是革命的队伍。我们这个队伍完全是为着解放人民的,是彻底地为人民的利益工作的。这段话所反映的思想观点是()。
CampingFirst,theequipment.【1】______.and【1】______sleeping-bagarethemostimportantitems.Bot
Manypeople,particularlyrecentcollegegraduates,dreamofowningtheirownbusinesses.Althoughsuchventuresareoftenexcit
最新回复
(
0
)