Passage OneAmazon rain forest, normally one of the world's wettest regions, shows the weat

Passage One

Amazon rain forest, normally one of the world's wettest regions, shows the weather cycle is swinging to one extreme rather than signaling climate change, local meteorologists said Thursday. Water levels on two major Amazon tributaries, Madeira and Solimoes, dropped to record--38-year lows respectively, creating long delays in fiver traffic, the main form. of regional transport.

Dry weather also fanned huge forest fires, notably in the remote western State of Acre. But weather forecasters added that elsewhere in continentally sized Brazil, seasonal spring rains had started in the south and were spreading northwards through Brazil's major coffee belt and gradually into soybean areas in the center-west. "The Amazon drought shows extreme climate variability, not climatic change," said Jose Marengo, researcher at the Weather Forecasting and Climatic Studies Center, part of the National Institute of Space Research. Marengo said that normal rains were forecast for the south Amazon --the States of Acre and Rondonia, southern part of Para State and northern part of Mato Grosso State.

"Rain is forecast in Acre in the next couple of weeks," he said, adding that the region is normally dry between June and September and wettest in December and January. But we are a bit worried that there could be less rain than usual at the mouth of the Amazon, around Belem, he said, noting that extreme climatic events were occurring more frequently, "We could be seeing the first symptoms of changing cycles." Meteorologists discounted a link between unusually severe hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and drought in the Amazon.

Dry weather in the Amazon is linked to warmer ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific and to low sunspot activity, said Expedito Rebello, head of applied meteorology at the government's National Institute of Meteorology in Brasilia. "It's a phenomenal (不同寻常的) drought and could be linked to a warmer Pacific and little sunspot activity," Rebello said, noting extremely low water levels in the Amazon. But he added that the weather cycle would reach a low next year and then start to moderate. Paulo Etchitchury, director of private meteorologists Somar, said that the Pacific should start to enter a cooler period next Brazilian summer and this could result in a weak La Nina weather pattern. "It won't affect summer rains and it's still very early to talk about next winter," he said, adding that La Nina doesn't necessarily signal a cold winter and extra risk of frost damage to Brazil's coffee crop, the world's biggest.

Brazil was in a transitional period between the dry May/August winter and rainy spring which started in south Brazil in September, Etchitchury said. He said that this year weather conditions are in general seasonally normal in Brazil's main farming areas, except that drought in the Amazon could affect Mate Grosso, Brazil's main soy state. "Rains in the south are replenishing (补充) a water deficit and providing reserves for summer soy and com harvests," he said, adding, "Last September was hot and dry and people were worried about drought damage to crop flowering."

Passage Two

Even today, many experts say women scientists are often not treated fairly. The Washington Post newspaper reported a study about the number of research articles published in medical magazines in which a woman was the main writer. Women were the main writers only twenty-nine percent of the time. Nancy Andreasen is a scientist at the University of Iowa. Scientists like Miss Andreasen often send stories about their research to special professional publications. Miss Andreasen says her research is published more often when she signs them as N.C. Andreasen rather than Nancy Andreasen. In that way, the editors of the publications do not know if the writer is a man or a woman.

Women also receive fewer patents for their inventions. A p

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