Unit1 A land of diversity Reading 1 CALIFORIA California is the third largest state in the USA but has the largest population. It also has the distinction of being the most multicultural state in the USA, having attracted people from all over the world. The custom and languages of the immigrants live on in their new home. This diversity of culture is not surprising when you know the history of California. NATIVE AMERICANS Exactly when the first people arrived in what we now know as California, no one really knows. However, it is likely that Native Americans were living in California at least fifteen thousand years ago. Scientists believe that these settlers crossed the Bering Strait in the Arctic to America by means of land bridge which existed in prehistoric times. In the 16th century, after the arrival of the Europeans, the native people suffered greatly. Thousands were killed or forced into slavery. In addition, many died from the diseases brought by the Europeans. However, some survived these terrible times, and today there are more Native Americans living in California than in any other state. THE SPANISH In the 18th century California was ruled by Spain. Spanish soldiers first arrived in South America in the early 16th century, when they fought against the native people and took their land. Two centuries later, the Spanish had settled in most parts of South America and along the northwest coast of what we now call the United States. Of the first Spanish to go to California, the majority were religious men, whose ministry was to teach the Catholic religion to the natives. In 1821, the people of Mexico gained their independence from Spain. California then became part of Mexico. In 1846 the United States declared war on Mexico, and after the war won by the USA. Mexico had to give California to the USA. However, there is still a strong Spanish influence in the state. That is why today over 40% of Californians speak Spanish as a first or second language. RUSSIANS In the early 1800s , Russian hunters, they had originally gone to Alaska, began settling in California. Today there are about 25,000 Russian-Americans living in and around San Francisco. GOLD MINERS In 1848, not long after the American-Mexican war, gold was discovered in California. The dream of becoming rich quickly attracted people from all over the world. The nearest, and therefore the first to arrive, were South Americans and people from the United States. Then adventurers from Europe and Asia soon followed. In fact, few achieved their dream of becoming rich. Some died or returned home, but most remained in California to make a like for themselves despite great hardship. They settled in the new towns or on farms. By the time Clifornia elected to become the thirty-first federal state of the USA in 1850, it was already a multicultural society. LATER ARRIVALS Although Chinese immigrants began to arrive during the Gold Rush Period, it was the building of the rail network from the west to the east coast that brought even larger numbers to California in the 1860s. today , Chinese –Americans live in all parts of California, although a large percentage have chosen to stay in the “Chinatowns” of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Other immigrants such as Italians, mainly fishermen but also wine makers, arrived in California in the late 19th century. In 1911 immigrants from Denmark established a town of their own, which today still keeps up their Danish culture. By the 1920s the film industry was well established in Hollywood, California. The industry boom attracted Europeans including many Jewish people. Today California has the second largest Jewish population in the United States. Japans farmers began arriving in California at the beginning of the 20th century, and since the 1980s a lot more have settled there. People from Africa have been living in California since the 1800s, when they moved north from Mexico. However, even more arrived between 1942 and 1945 to work in the ship and aircraft industries. MOST RECENT ARRIVALS In more recent decades, California has become home to more people from Asia, including Koreans, Cambodians, Vietnamese and Laotians. Since its beginning in the 1970s, the computer industry has attracted Indians and Pakistanis to California. THE FUTURE People from different parts of the world, attracted by the climate and the lifestyle, still immigrate to California. It is believed that before long the mix of nationalities will be so great that there will be no distinct major racial or cultural groups, but simply a mixture of many races and cultures. Unit2 cloning Reading 1 CLONING: WHERE IS IT LEADING US? Cloning has always been with us and is here to stay. It is a way of making an exact copy of another animal or plant. It happens in plants when gardeners take cuttings from growing plants to make new one. It also happens in animal when twins identical in sex and appearance are produced from the same original egg. The fact is that these are both examples of natural clones. Cloning has two major uses. Firstly, gardeners use it all the time to produce commercial quantities of plants. Secondly, it is valuable for research on new plant species and for medical research on animal. Cloning plants is straightforward while cloning animals is very complicated. It is a difficult task to undertake. Many attempts to clone mammals failed. But at last the determination and patience to the scientists paid off in 1996 with a breakthrough-the cloning of Dolly the sheep. The procedure works like this: 1 female sheep A provides an egg cell. 2 the nucleus is remove from the egg cell. 3. The egg cell is ready for a new nucleus. 4. Female sheep B provides a somatic cell for the clone. The nucleus of thiscell contains all the genes needed to produce a new sheep. 5. The nucleus is taken out of the somatic cell. 6. The nucleus from sheep B and the egg cell from sheep A are joined using electricity. 7. The cell divides and grows into an embryo. 8. The embryo is put into female sheep C, who becomes the carrier of the clone. 9. The lamb is the clone of the donated cell from Sheep B which provides the nucleus. On the one hand, the whole scientific world followed the progress of the first successful clone, Dolly the sheep. The fact that she seeded to develop normally was very encouraging. Then came the disturbing news that dolly had become seriously ill. Cloning scientists were cast down to find that Dolly’s illnesses were more appropriate to a much older animal. Altogether Dolly lived six and a half years, half the length of the life of the original sheep. Sadly the same arbitrary fate affected other species, such as cloned mice. The questions that concerned all scientists were: “ would this be a major difficulty for all cloned animas? Would it happen forever? Could it be solved if corrections were made in their research procedure?” On the other hand, Dolly’s appearance raised a storm of objections and had a great impact on the media and public imagination. It became controversial. It suddenly opened everybody’s eyes to the possibility of using cloning to cure serious illnesses and even to produce human beings. Although at present human egg cells and embryos needed for cloning research are difficult to obtain, newspapers wrote of evil leaders hoping to clone themselves to attain their ambitions. Religious leaders also raised moral questions. Governments became nervous and more conservative. Some began to form their legal systems and forbade research into human cloning, but other countries like China and the UK, continued to accumulate evidence of the abundant medical aid that cloning could prove. However, scientists still wonder whether cloning will help or harm us and where it is leading us. 本文来源：https://www.wddqw.com/doc/1da0a604336c1eb91b375d1c.html