शैडोइंग अभ्यास: What’s Ruining Our Ruins? - वीडियो के साथ अंग्रेजी बोलना सीखें
पाठ बनाया जा रहा है...
1
The United Nations has designated roughly 1,000 culturally important world heritage sites around the world.
2
But at many of them, something has quietly been going wrong.
3
Paintings are flaking away, wood is rotting, even stone is slowly dissolving into powder.
4
If you're wondering what's so powerful that it could take down some of our oldest and most protected sites, well, this destruction isn't the product of war or natural disasters or other huge events.
5
It's the work of microbes.
6
Here's how some mini-microbes are ruining our ruins.
7
First up, we're going to the Maijishan Grottoes,
8
a series of roughly 200 caves carved into the side of a sheer sandstone mountain in the Gansu province of northwest China.
9
You have to be feeling brave to cross these soaring walkways that lead inside, but once you've entered Agrano,
10
you can find sculptures and wall paintings from as far back as the 300s.
11
But despite standing through 1700 years, the site is in trouble.
12
In 2018, experts reported that microbial plaques had started growing on the art.
13
As far as we know, it's not like microbes hate art or something.
14
They do this to make a home for themselves or to get nutrients.
15
In fact, while a painting might seem like a weird place for life to grow, if you're a microbe, paintings can be full of tasty bits.
16
There's the paint itself, which might contain things like plant oils, egg yolk, or animal glue.
17
But there may also be layers of organic materials like straw or other plant fibers beneath as well,
18
which the ancient painters would have slathered on the wall to give themselves a smooth surface to work on.
19
That is a balanced meal for a microbe.
20
As for what kind of microbes, there's a wide variety of bacteria and algae.
21
Both of those organisms can do art damaging things like poop out acids or form gooey biofilms that can trap water.
22
You can also get molds and other fungi growing on those ruins, which spread their root-like hyphae underneath the surface looking for nutrients.
23
All these little fellas can physically separate the layers of a painting, causing bits to flake or fall off.
24
They can also cause changes in color, either by degrading existing pigments or by adding their own colors into the mix.
25
Green algae can turn things, well, green.
26
Certain bacteria can do green as well, plus yellow, brown, or black.
27
One kind of bacteria can even create a lovely salmon pink.
28
But in the case of Maijishan, there were mainly white and black splotches appearing on the walls.
29
When scientists analyzed the splotches, they found that a common decomposing fungus was the dominant microbe in the black biofilms.
30
Meanwhile, Cladosporium, a super common indoor mold, and an unclassified species of fungus were dominant in white biofilms.
31
As for what caused the outbreak, they don't know for sure, but it probably had to do with cave critters.
32
The decomposing fungus is associated with arthropods, like bugs, and fungi can also grow on animal dung or after flooding.
33
So animals getting into these caves to shelter from heavy rains might be contributing.
34
In fact, previous work on the splotches also pointed fingers at excess humidity as a possible cause
35
and suggested it could be from more human visitors or even shifts in the weather thanks to climate change.
36
We know this is possible.
37
The Lescaux Caves in southwestern France contain wall paintings from as far back as 22,000 years ago.
38
But after their rediscovery in the 1940s, lots of people began visiting, and the carbon dioxide, heat, and water vapor from their breath caused microbes to grow.
39
The authorities eventually closed the caves to the public, and for 40-ish years tried using biocides, including antibiotics, to get rid of those microbes.
40
And it worked on some of the microbes.
41
But that opened up space for a new fungus to move in, which left a whole new set of white stains behind.
42
Similar things happened when people tried to disinfect the frescoes of St. Paul in Ephesus.
43
So biocides don't always work as well as we hope.
44
Another option is manual removal, like using soft brushes, a vacuum, and a little bit of elbow grease,
45
which they tried in the Maijishan grottos, along with biocide treatments.
46
Those measures seem to have worked well, even though this is probably going to be an ongoing project.
47
But paintings aren't the only type of heritage under pressure for microbes.
48
We've also had some problems with wood.
49
But before we go there, it's time for a quick ad.
50
Worth Knowing, and it's live at the Wilshire Ebel Theater in Los Angeles, California on September 16th, 2026.
51
This first ever Complexly In-Person event is a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building.
52
Because curiosity builds understanding, and understanding builds a better world.
53
You can get your ticket at somethingworthknowing.org.
54
See you there.
55
In the desert of New Mexico, you can find Chaco Canyon.
56
It's another UNESCO World Heritage Site, occupied by the ancestral Puebloan people for about 300 years, starting around the mid-800s.
57
While they were there, they built impressive great houses and other infrastructure out of stone and wood.
58
And so far, it's stood the test of time, but not entirely unscathed.
59
For example, in the mid-aughts, expert examined some of the wooden beams that made up the buildings and found a significant amount of damage.
60
Some was from weathering and other physical processes, but some was from microbes.
61
Now, wood, especially wood in harsh, dry environments like the New Mexico desert, can be pretty resistant to microbes like bacteria.
62
Wood is tough and durable because plant cells are surrounded by cell walls, and woody plants in particular pack them especially full of tough,
63
hard-to-break-down molecules like cellulose and lignin.
64
But wood is vulnerable to fungi because they have ways to get into and even get food from these compounds.
65
One of the main troublemakers is a group of fungi that includes brown rot fungi.
66
These little guys specialize in decaying the cellulose in plant cells, leaving the colorful lignin behind.
67
This turns the wood soft, but leaves the wood's brown color behind.
68
And that's where they got their name.
69
White rot fungi, meanwhile, turn wood white, since they decay everything, including lignin.
70
Some even specialize in lignin.
71
Another major kind of fungal wood decay is soft rot.
72
This looks really similar to brown rot.
73
In fact, it's so similar
74
that you generally need to look at samples under a microscope to tell soft rot and brown rot apart, even though the organisms behind the rot are pretty different.
75
And experts have found some brown rot and a lot of soft rot setting in at Chaco.
76
Some parts of the wood were so degraded they could be crushed into a fine powder with even slight pressure.
77
Part of the problem may have come from fissures in the wood, which can catch moisture and nutrient-rich particles from the environment, the perfect conditions for microbes to move in.
78
In this case, instead of biocides, we've been reburying parts of the site since the 1980s.
79
The idea is that digging them up likely exposed them to the moisture the fungi needed to thrive, so reburying them should hopefully remove that moisture and stop further growth.
80
As an added layer of protection, conservationists also installed things like moisture monitors alongside the buried material,
81
as well as waterproof fabric sheets or drains and pipes that can funnel surface water away from stuff buried further down.
82
Free burial is pretty low-tech, practical, and compared to trying to replace the wooden beams or other materials again and again, a good deal money-wise.
83
We like to imagine technology solving all our problems, but sometimes the best option for archaeologists is to leave things alone and preserve them for the future.
84
We can get the technology to fix it later.
85
Although eventually everything breaks down, whether it's paint or wood or even stone itself, as our last location shows.
86
In 2018, scientists took samples from a bunch of sites in Egypt, from tombs and obelisks to mosques and even the pyramids at Giza.
87
These sites are ancient and have withstood the test of time, but over the years, people have noted damage at some of them,
88
including black stains and pitting in the rocks themselves.
89
Scientists have found two species of a common mold, along with Cladosporium, one of the fungi found at Mygishan.
90
And we're not just seeing it in Egypt.
91
Another desert site, Megiddo, was surveyed in 2023.
92
This World Heritage site was swabbed from the visitor entrance to its major archeological sites.
93
Experts didn't report damage, but did detect acid producing microbes.
94
As for what a microbe would even want with stone, just like wood or paintings, it can give them a home and even food.
95
They might even damage the stone itself by doing things like dissolving minerals from the rocks, which unfortunately for UNESCO can be especially damaging in rocks like limestone.
96
Plus they can cause damage through things like those watery biofilms and root-like hyphae.
97
And And in some cases, they can even poop out salts, which can be destructive both chemically and physically, if it starts to build up in cracks and force them apart.
98
Case in point, the Egyptian group applied cladosporium fungi to some fresh stone and found it discolored and weakened.
99
It had even dissolved some of the stone after just two months.
100
To treat those issues, they tried a bunch of different biocides on their stone blocks and found some that worked,
101
including synthetic topical antiseptics, as well as natural options like clove oil.
102
But we don't want to go indiscriminately killing all life at these UNESCO sites, because in some cases, microbes might actually protect them.
103
At Angkor Wat in Cambodia, for example, scientists found that lichens might help protect the stone buildings there from water damage.
104
They were effectively shielding the site from the weather, and may also have been pushing out other microbes that could have damaged the site.
105
Now, lichens are actually a mix of microscopic bacteria and algae living inside a kind of fungal web, and some of them are microscopic so they might tow the line of microorganism,
106
but for the purposes of this video, we are counting them.
107
But if you're not team microbe when it comes to lichens, there are still other protective guys under the microscope.
108
Some scientists are even experimenting with the idea of purposefully applying certain harmless bacteria
109
or amoebas to different archeological sites as a preventative or even restorative treatment.
110
In plaques and other microbial communities, including ones from places like murals or ruins, there are protective microbes that may crowd out,
111
chemically suppress or directly prey upon the ones that cause damage.
112
There are even microbe-targeting viruses we might be able to use.
113
One group experimented with using sulfate-eating bacteria to remove unsightly black sulfate-rich gypsum deposits from the base of a famous marble sculpture,
114
Michelangelo's Rondonini Pieta.
115
The bacteria were mixed into a gel that could be slathered onto the sculpture.
116
A day later, scientists came back, washed it off, and found that the deposits were gone.
117
So along with all of the publications coming out that highlight microbes' destructive ways, people are experimenting with plenty of them that could help in preservation.
118
We often talk about these sites as if they're kind of frozen in time, but in fact, they're constantly changing ecosystems.
119
Microbial research helps us understand those changes so we can preserve the sites for generations to come.
120
Sometimes if you want a better view of the future, you need to get out a microscope.
📺 उसी चैनल से
B21
Do Penguins Control the Weather?
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
The Science Behind The Odyssey's Greatest Challenge
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
The Most Important Picture in the History of Science
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C14
Why Do We Sneeze?
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
Why Can’t We Have Unicorns?
American AccentKids
B2Does Aloe Really Treat a Sunburn?
American AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1What's Really Behind The Adderall Shortage?
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1Ticks Can Spread An Allergy To… Red Meat?
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1The ONE Disease That Smoking Can Help Treat
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1How Onions ACTUALLY Make You Cry (And How to Stop Them)
American AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
✨ अनुशंसित वीडियो
B24
35 वाक्य
RE2 Unit 6A
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
150 वाक्य
How Often do Asteroids Hit the Earth?: Crash Course Geology #20
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1112 वाक्य
Van Gogh's Art in 7 Minutes: From Iconic Paintings to Immersive Experiences
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1105
16 वाक्य
Can Earth Run Out of Water?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B23
155 वाक्य
Why Ancient Humans Were The Most TERRIFYING Animal Alive
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B23
219 वाक्य
Something’s Happening to the Ozone Hole
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B21
62 वाक्य
IELTS listening actual test Part 4: The preservation of fossils (answer+ transcript)
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B238
36 वाक्य
Biodiversity | Consider This #4
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B2217
43 वाक्य
How mass tourism is destroying cities
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
41 वाक्य
Micro-Biology: Crash Course History of Science #24
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
114 वाक्य
There's a Giant Hole In Earth's History
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
108 वाक्य
Every Dodo You’ve Ever Seen Is Probably Wrong. These Aren’t.
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
इस पाठ की शब्दावली और बोलने के सुझाव
यह B2 स्तर का स्पीकिंग पाठ वीडियो “What’s Ruining Our Ruins?” पर आधारित है। सबसे ज़्यादा दोहराए गए शब्द ये हैं: microbe, site, wood, fungi, rot। इस वीडियो में शैडोइंग के लिए 120 वाक्य और 1965 शब्द हैं। बोला गया हिस्सा 11:19 लंबा है। वक्ता लगभग 174 शब्द प्रति मिनट की स्वाभाविक गति से बोलता है, जो रोज़मर्रा की बातचीत के करीब है। केवल 77% शब्द अंग्रेज़ी के 3,000 सबसे आम शब्दों में से हैं, इसलिए शब्दावली कठिन है।
इस वीडियो की मुख्य शब्दावली
वीडियो के 15 सबसे कठिन शब्द, उच्चारण और अर्थ के साथ:
| शब्द | उच्चारण | अर्थ |
|---|---|---|
| microbe संज्ञा | /ˈmaɪkɹoʊb/ | सूक्ष्मजीव |
| bacterium संज्ञा | /bækˈtɪəɹ.ɪəm/ | जीवाणु, कीटाणु |
| fungus संज्ञा | /ˈfʌŋ.ɡəs/ | फफूंद, फफूँद |
| moisture संज्ञा | /ˈmɔɪs.t͡ʃɚ/ | आर्द्रता, नमी |
| alga संज्ञा | /ˈæl.ɡə/ | शैवाल, सिवार |
| lichen संज्ञा | /ˈlaɪ.kən/ | लाइकेन, शैवाक |
| microscope संज्ञा | /ˈmaɪ.kɹəˌskoʊp/ | ख़ुर्दबीन, सूक्ष्मदर्शी |
| decay संज्ञा | /diˈkeɪ/ | अपघटन |
| sculpture संज्ञा | /ˈskʌlpt͡ʃɚ/ | शिल्पकला, प्रतिमा |
| cellulose संज्ञा | /ˈsɛljəloʊs/ | कोशाधु |
| decompose क्रिया | /ˌdiːkəmˈpəʊz/ | विघटन |
| organism संज्ञा | /ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/ | जीव |
| poop संज्ञा | /ˈpuːp/ | टट्टी, मल |
| archaeological विशेषण | पुरातात्विक | |
| stain संज्ञा | /steɪn/ | दाग, दाग़ |
वीडियो में आने वाली फ़्रेज़ल वर्ब
| शब्द | अर्थ |
|---|---|
| come back क्रिया | वापस आना |
| take down क्रिया | उतारना |
इस वीडियो का व्याकरण
वक्ता जिन संरचनाओं का सबसे अधिक प्रयोग करता है, वीडियो के असली शब्दों के साथ:
| संरचना | वीडियो में |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — पहले शुरू हुआ काम जो अब भी जारी है | we've been reburying · have been pushing |
| Passive voice be + past participle — ज़ोर इस पर कि क्या होता है, न कि कौन करता है | is associated · are surrounded · could be crushed |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — बीता हुआ काम जिसका असर अभी भी है | has designated · you've entered · have found |
| Relative clauses who / which + उपवाक्य — व्यक्ति या वस्तु के बारे में अतिरिक्त जानकारी | wood, which can · salts, which can |
ध्यान देने योग्य उच्चारण
वक्ता 16 बार संक्षिप्त रूपों का प्रयोग करता है, जैसे don't, you're, they're। इन्हें वैसे ही छोटा बोलें जैसा आप सुनते हैं।
- “th” की ध्वनियाँ: slather /ˈslæðə(ɹ)/, arthropod /ˈɑːθɹəpɒd/, thrive /θɹajv/, synthetic /sɪnˈθɛtɪk/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/
- “sh” और “zh” की ध्वनियाँ: specialize /ˈspɛʃəˌlaɪz/, sheer /ʃɪɚ/, preservation /ˌpɹɛz.əˈveɪ.ʃən/, harsh /ˈhɑɹʃ/, crush /kɹʌʃ/
- लंबे शब्द — बलाघात सही रखें: microbial /maɪˈkɹəʊ.bi.əl/, microscopic /ˌmaɪ.kɹəˈskɑ.pɪk/, organism /ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/, curiosity /ˌkjʊɹ.iˈɑ.sə.ti/, ancestral /ænˈsɛs.təɹ.əl/
हिंदी भाषियों के लिए मुश्किल ध्वनियाँ:
- /v/ और /w/ का फ़र्क़ — /v/ में ऊपर के दाँत निचले होंठ को छूते हैं, /w/ में होंठ गोल होते हैं: dissolve /dɪˈzɑlv/, destructive /dɪˈstɹʌktɪv/, visitor /ˈvɪzɪtɚ/, protective /pɹəˈtɛk.tɪv/, preserve /pɹəˈzɝv/
- /z/ — इसे “ज” (/dʒ/) न बनाएँ: dissolve /dɪˈzɑlv/, decompose /ˌdiːkəmˈpəʊz/, specialize /ˈspɛʃəˌlaɪz/, organism /ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/, visitor /ˈvɪzɪtɚ/
- शब्द की शुरुआत में s + व्यंजन — पहले “इ” न जोड़ें: splotch /splɑt͡ʃ/, sculpture /ˈskʌlpt͡ʃɚ/, slather /ˈslæðə(ɹ)/, specialize /ˈspɛʃəˌlaɪz/, stain /steɪn/
इस वीडियो से अभ्यास कैसे करें
- पहले बिना बोले पूरा वीडियो एक बार सुनें और जो शब्द नहीं आते उन्हें लिख लें।
- 0.75× गति से शुरू करें, एक-एक वाक्य की शैडोइंग करें, और सहज लगने पर सामान्य गति पर लौटें।
- अपनी आवाज़ रिकॉर्ड करें और मूल से तुलना करें, ख़ासकर microbe, bacterium, fungus जैसे शब्दों पर ध्यान दें।
शैडोइंग तकनीक क्या है?
शैडोइंग (Shadowing) एक विज्ञान-समर्थित भाषा सीखने की तकनीक है जो मूल रूप से पेशेवर दुभाषिया प्रशिक्षण के लिए विकसित की गई थी। विधि सरल लेकिन शक्तिशाली है: आप मूल अंग्रेज़ी ऑडियो सुनते हैं और तुरंत इसे ज़ोर से दोहराते हैं — जैसे वक्ता की छाया 1-2 सेकंड की देरी से। शोध से पता चलता है कि यह उच्चारण सटीकता, स्वर, लय, जुड़ी हुई ध्वनियाँ, सुनने की समझ और बोलने की प्रवाहशीलता में काफ़ी सुधार करता है।