Unit 4 Brain Man
Almost 25 years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie "Rain Man." George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited.
Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called "Brain Man" in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain.
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Back in 1983, George Finn, blessed or obsessed with calendar calculation, could give you the day if you gave him the date.
"What day of the week was August 13th, 1911?" Safer quizzed Finn.
"A Sunday," Finn replied.
"What day of the week was May 20th, 1921?" Safer asked.
"Friday," Finn answered.
George Finn is a savant. In more politically incorrect times he would have been called an "idiot savant" - a mentally handicapped or autistic person whose brain somehow possesses an island of brilliance.
Asked if he knew how he does it, Finn told Safer, "I don't know, but it's just that, that's fantastic I can do that."
If this all seems familiar, there?s a reason: five years after the 60 Minutes broadcast, Dustin Hoffman immortalized savants like George in the movie "Rain Man."
Which brings us to that other savant we mentioned: Daniel Tammet. He is an Englishman, who is a 27-year-old math and memory wizard.
"I was born November 8th, 1931," Safer remarks.
"Uh-huh. That's a prime number. 1931. And you were born on a Sunday. And this year, your birthday will be on a Wednesday. And you'll be 75," Tammet tells Safer.
It is estimated there are only 50 true savants living in the world today, and yet none are like Daniel. He is articulate, self-sufficient, blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability. Take his math skill, for example.
Asked to multiply 31 by 31 by 31 by 31, Tammet quickly - and accurately - responded with "923,521."
And it?s not just calculating. His gift of memory is stunning. Briefly show him a long numerical sequence and he?ll recite it right back to you. And he can do it backwards, to boot.
That feat is just a warm-up for Daniel Tammet. He first made headlines at Oxford, when he publicly recited the endless sequence of numbers embodied by the Greek letter "Pi." Pi, the numbers we use to calculate the dimensions of a circle, are usually rounded off to 3.14. But its numbers actually go on to infinity.
Daniel studied the sequence - a thousand numbers to a page.
"And I would sit and I would gorge on them. And I would just absorb hundreds and hundreds at a time," he tells Safer.
It took him several weeks to prepare and then Daniel headed to Oxford, where with number crunchers checking every digit, he opened the floodgates of his extraordinary memory.
Tammet says he was able to recite, in a proper order, 22,514 numbers. It took him over five hours and he did it without a single mistake.
Scientists say a memory feat like this is truly extraordinary. Dr. V.S. Ramachandran and his team at the California Center for Brain Study tested Daniel extensively after his Pi achievement.
What did he make of him?
"I was surprised at how articulate and intelligent he was, and was able to interact socially and introspect on his own-abilities," says Dr. Ramachandran.
And while that introspection is extremely rare among savants, Daniel?s ability to describe how his mind works could be invaluable to scientists studying the brain, our least understood organ.
"Even how you and I do 17 minus nine is a big mystery. You know, how are these little wisps of jelly in your brain doing that computation? We don't know that," Dr. Ramachandran explains.
It may seem to defy logic, but Ramachandran believes that a savant?s genius could actually result from brain injury. "One possibility is that many other parts of the brain are functioning abnormally or sub-normally. And this allows the patient to allocate all his attentional resources to the one remaining part," he explains. "And there's a lot of clinical evidence for this. Some patients have a stroke and suddenly, their artistic skills improve."
That theory fits well with Daniel. At the age of four, he suffered a massive epileptic seizure. He believes that seizure contributed to his condition. Numbers were no longer simply numbers and he had developed a rare crossing of the senses known as synesthesia.
"I see numbers in my head as colors and shapes and textures. So when I see a long sequence, the sequence forms landscapes in my mind," Tammet explains. "Every number up to 10,000, I can visualize in this way, has it's own color, has it's own shape, has it's own texture."
For example, when Daniel says he sees Pi, he does those instant computations, he is not calculating, but says the answer simply appears to him as a landscape of colorful shapes.
"The shapes aren't static. They're full of color. They're full of texture. In a sense, they're full of life," he says.
Asked if they?re beautiful, Tammet says, "Not all of them. Some of them are ugly. 289 is an ugly number. I don't like it very much. Whereas 333, for example, is beautiful to me. It's round. It's?."
"Chubby," Safer remarks.
'It's-yes. It's chubby,' Tammet agrees.
Yet even with the development of these extraordinary abilities as a child, nobody sensed that Daniel was a prodigy, including his mother, Jennifer. But he was different.
"He was constantly counting things," Jennifer remembers. "I think, what first attracted him to books, was the actual numbers on each page. And he just loved counting."
Asked if she thinks there?s a connection between his epilepsy and his rare talent, she tells Safer, "He was always different from-when he was really a few weeks old, I noticed he was different. So I'm not sure that it's entirely that, but I think it might have escalated it."
Daniel was also diagnosed with Asperger?s Syndrome-a mild form of autism. It made for a painful childhood.
"I would flap my hands sometimes when I was excited, or pull at my fingers, and pull at my lips," Tammet remembers. "And of course, the children saw these things and would repeat them back to me, and tease me about them. And I would put my fingers in my ears and count very quickly in powers of two. Two, four, eight, 16, 32, 64."
"Numbers were my friends. And they never changed. So, they were reliable. I could trust them," he says.
And yet, Daniel did not retreat fully into that mysterious prison of autism, as many savants do. He believes his large family may have actually forced him to adapt.
"Because my parents, having nine children, had so much to do, so much to cope with, I realized I had to do for myself," he says.
He now runs his own online educational business. He and his partner Neil try to keep a low profile, despite his growing fame.
Yet the limits of his autism are always there. "I find it difficult to walk in the street sometimes if there are lots of people around me. If there's lots of noise, I put my fingers in my ears to block it out,' he says.
That anxiety keeps him close to home. He can?t drive, rarely goes shopping, and finds the beach a difficult place because of his compulsion to count the grains of sand. And it manifests itself in other ways, like making a very precise measurement of his cereal each morning: it must be exactly 45 grams of porridge, no more, no less.
Daniel was recently profiled in a British documentary called ?Brainman.? The producers posed a challenge that he could not pass up: Learn a foreign language in a week - and not just any foreign language, but Icelandic, considered to be one of the most difficult languages to learn.
In Iceland, he studied and practiced with a tutor. When the moment of truth came and he appeared on TV live with a host, the host said, "I was amazed. He was responding to our questions. He did understand them very well and I thought that his grammar was very good. We are very proud of our language and that someone is able to speak it after only one week, that?s just great."
"Do you think that Daniel, in a certain way, represents a real pathway to further understanding the brain?" Safer asks Dr. Ramachandran.
"I think one could say that time and again in science, something that looks like a curiosity initially often leads to a completely new direction of research," Ramachandran replies. "Sometimes, they provide the golden key. Doesn't always happen. Sometimes it's just mumbo-jumbo. But that may well be true with savants."
Daniel continues to volunteer for scientists who want to understand his amazing brain. But he is reluctant to become what he calls ?a performing seal? and has refused most offers to cash in on his remarkable skills.
"People all the time asking me to choose numbers for the lottery. Or to invent a time machine. Or to come up with some great discovery," he explains. "But my abilities are not those that mean that I can do at everything."
But he has written a book about his experiences, entitled "Born on a Blue Day."
He also does motivational speeches for parents of autistic children-yet one more gift of his remarkable brain.
But at the end of the day-genius or not-that brain does work a little differently.
"One hour after we leave today, and I will not remember what you look like. And I will find it difficult to recognize you, if I see you again. I will remember your handkerchief. And I will remember you have four buttons on your sleeve. And I'll remember the type of tie you're wearing. It's the details that I remember," Tammet tells Safer.
And it?s the details that make us all so different. One man may see numbers as a tedious necessity of modern life, another sees them as the essence of life.
"Pi is one of the most beautiful things in all the world and if I can share that joy in numbers, if I can share that in some small measure with the world through my writing and through my speaking, then I feel that I will have done something useful," he says.
Not Your Average Teen Lots of teenage girls dream of becoming rich and famous. But it's not a fantasy for Michelle Wie. Just before her 16th birthday last fall, she became the highest-paid woman golfer in history simply by turning professional and lending her name to commercial endorsements that will pay her between $10 million and $12 million a year, most of which will go into a trust fund until she becomes an adult. Wie has been a celebrity since she was 13, when people began predicting she would become the Tiger Woods of women' sgolf. But, as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, that has never been enough for Wie. She wants to become the first woman ever to successfully compete with men in a professional sport. She has tried a couple of times on the PGA Tour without embarrassing herself. As you will see, she has changed a lot since we first talked to her way back in 2004, when she was 14. At the time, Wie told Kroft her ultimate goal was to play in the Masters. "I think it'd be pretty neat walking down the Masters fairways," she said. It was a neat dream for a 14-year-old kid. Nothing has happened in the last two years to change Wie's mind or shake her confidence. She is stronger now, more mature and glamorous. She has already demonstrated that she can play herself into the middle of the pack against the best men on the PGA Tour and has come within a shot of winning her first two starts on the LPGA Tour this year as a part-time professional. The day before 60 Minutes interviewed her at the Fields Open in Honolulu, she shot a final round of 66, coming from six strokes off the lead to just miss a playoff. "You won your first check yesterday," Kroft says. "Uh-huh," Wie says. "It was, it was really cool. I mean, I was like looking at how much I won. I was like 'Oh my God.' " Wie says she won around $72,000. Asked whether she gets to keep that money, Wie said she didn't know. "I'm trying to negotiate with my dad how much I can spend of that, and stuff like that. We're still working it out. But, you know, I'm definitely gonna go shopping today," she says, laughing. Half of her life is spent in the adult world, competing with men and women twice her age for paychecks they may need to make expenses and dealing with the media, sponsors and marketing executives. The rest of the time she is a junior at Punahou High School in Honolulu, where she is an A student and claims to lead the life of a typical 16-year-old.
Unit 1 Pirates of the Internet It’s no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry as millions of people stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. Now the hign-tech thieves are coming after Hollywood. Illegal downloading of full-length feature films is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s becoming easier and easier to do. The people running America’s movie studios know that if they don’t do something----and fast---they could be in the same boat as the record companies. Correspodent: “What’s really at stake for the movie industry with all this privacy?” Chernin: “Well, I think, you know, ultimately, our absolute features.” Peter Chernin runs 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. He knows the pirates of the Internet are gaining on him. Correspont: “Do you know how many movies are being downloaded today, in one day, in the United States?” Chernin: “I think it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Correspondent: “And it’s only going to grow.” Chernin: “It’s only going to grow. √Somebody can put a perfect digital copy up on the internet. A perfect digital copy, all right. And with the click of mouse, send out a million copies all over the world, in an instant.”
Book 2 Chapter 1 The Population Today we’re going to talk about population in the United States. According to the most recent government census, the population is 281,421,906 people. Now this represents an increase of almost 33 million people since the 1990 census. A population of over 281 million makes the United States the third most populous country in the whole world. As you probably know, the People’s Republic of China is the most populous country in the world. But do you know which is the second most populous? Well, if you thought India, you were right. The fourth, fifth, and sixth most populous countries are Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan. Now let’s get back to the United States. Let’s look at the total U. S. population figure of 281 million in three different ways. The first way is by race and origin; the second is by geographical distribution, or by where people live; and the third way is by the age and sex of the population. First of all, let’s take a look at the population by race and origin. The latest U. S. census reports that percent of the population is white, whereas percent is black. Three percent are of Asian origin, and 1 percent is Native American. percent of the population is a mixture of two or more races, and percent report themselves as “of some other race”. Let’s make sure your figures are right: OK, white, percent; black, percent; Asian, 3 percent; Native American, 1 percent; a mixture of two or more races, percent; and of some other race, percent. Hispanics, whose origins lie in Spanish-speaking countries, comprise whites, blacks, and Native Americans, so they are already included in the above figures. It is important to note that Hispanics make up percent of the present U.S. population, however. Finally, the census tells us that 31 million people in the United States were born in another country. Of the 31 million foreign born, the largest part, percent are from Mexico. The next largest group, from the Philippines, number percent. Another way of looking at the population is by geographical distribution. Do you have any idea which states are the five most populous in the United States? Well, I’ll help you out there. The five most populous states, with population figures, are California, with almost 34 million; New York, with 21 million; Texas, with 19 million; and Florida, with 16 million; and Illinois with million people. Did you get all those figures down? Well, if not, I’ll give you a chance later to check your figures. Well, then, let’s move on. All told, over half, or some 58 percent of the population, lives in
《英语高级视听说》 教学大纲 课程编码：3011104 课程性质：专业教育必修课 教学时数：96学时 学分数：6学分 开课学期：第五、六、七学期 授课单位：英语系视听说教研室 授课对象：英语专业本科学生 一、课程概述 1.性质与地位 英语高级视听说课程是为英语专业本科学生在专业学习提高阶段开设的专业教育必修课程。该课程以外语教学理论为指导，广泛应用多媒体教学，融课堂教学与自主学习为一体，以真实语境下的常速语料为基本教学材料，紧扣时代脉搏，是全面提升学生听说能力、使学生的目标语听力理解能力与口语产出能力满足高层次语言应用要求的重要课程。 2.基本理念 英语高级视听说课程以素质教育、创新教育思想为理论指导，以双主模式及Anderson的“听前－听时－听后”理论为理论支撑，着力发展学生的目标语高级实时应用能力。 课程在实施过程中，一方面坚持以人为本，关注学生的情感，另一方面注重营造自主学习的气氛，创造自主学习的条件和环境，培养学生的可持续自我发展能力。 本课程摒弃接受式、填鸭式的学习方式和教学方式，坚持以学生为中心，以方法为主导，强调启发式、引导式教学，同时利用该课程材料均以多媒体形式呈现于课堂、内容时效性强等独特优势，激发学生的学习兴趣与积极性，培养和增强学生探索知识的能力和欲望。 利用校园网、互联网等信息渠道，开展多媒体课堂教学与课后自主学习，着力提高教学效率与教学质量，同时努力提升听与说在认知学习中的地位，贯彻“听为学”、“说为学”的理念，使学生认识到视听是与阅读同等重要的语言输入途径，也是同样有效的认知途径。 3.设计思路
本课程教学以解放军外国语学院生长干部学历教育本科人才培养方案（英语）为依据，参照《高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲》（以下简称《大纲》）的要求实施。教学安排在3个学期内完成，第八学期举行3次有关英语区域变体的讲座，第五、六、七学期每学期32学时，第八学期6学时，总时数为102学时。 教学实施分为课堂教学与自主学习，教学内容分为音频和视频两部分：音频教材方面主要包括《英语专业三年级听力教程》、《英语中级听力》、《英语专业四年级听力教程》，以及带前方记者报道的最新VOA、BBC、NPR新闻等；视频教材包括《高级英语视听说教程》、《英语高级视听说》、片长10分钟左右的多主题短片，BBC/CNN 视频新闻以及部分精选的记录片、影视剧片段等。授课教师在教材既定的总体框架下，可根据学生的实际水平和国际国内形势的发展情况，灵活组合、添加部分最新音、视频材料用于课堂教学，以保证教学内容时时更新，反映最新形势。 英语区域变体讲座内容涉及澳大利亚英语、新西兰英语、南亚英语、东南亚英语的特点，重点解决学生在听辨这些英语变体时所遇到的苦难。 二、课程目标 1.总体目标 系统讲授听力理解过程中各环节所需的语言知识和理解判断要素；利用新闻、对话、讲座、电影等语料训练学生对声像信息的辨读能力；通过“视”、“听”、“说”的结合，综合多种训练手段，提高学生的听力理解和口头表达能力，加深其对英语国家政治、军事、经济、社会、文化等方面的认识和了解，全面提升真实语境下的实时语言运用能力，并使之具备较强的自主学习能力。 2.分类目标 （1） 通过本课程的学习，学生应具备独立解决辨音难点的能力，掌握运用字典等工具书逆向查词、独立解决疑难问题的能力。 （2） 通过本课程的学习，学生应掌握政治、军事、经济、科技、文化等方面的听力理解词汇及口语产出词汇，并最终达到《大纲》八级水平。 （3） 通过本课程的学习，学生应充分理解“听为学”、“说为学”的理念，并积极通过这两种渠道进行目标语认知。 （4） 通过本课程的学习，学生应充分理解自主学习的重要性，充分利用教师提供的自主学习资源或自主开发新资源，养成良好的自主学习习惯，开展有效的 自主学习。 （5） 通过视频材料的广泛使用，使学生有效掌握大量非语言性对象国知识。 （6） 通过讲座，使学生了解英语区域变体的语音、语法特点，并能够准确把握视、音频材料的大意及细节内容。 三、内容标准 1.授课内容 第五、六学期，教学内容主要为《英语专业三年级听力教程》、《英语中级听力》、《英语高级视听说》（上）中的材料，辅以带有前方记者报道的VOA、BBC、NPR新
Burning Rage This story originally aired on Nov. 13, 2005. When they first emerged in the mid-1990s, the environmental extremists calling themselves the "Earth Liberation Front" announced they were "the burning rage of a dying planet." Ever since, the ELF, along with its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front, has been burning everything from SUV dealerships to research labs to housing developments. In the last decade, these so-called "Eco-terrorists" have been responsible for more than $100 million in damages. And their tactics are beginning to escalate. Some splinter groups have set off homemade bombs and threatened to kill people. As correspondent Ed Bradley first reported last November, things have gotten so bad, the FBI now considers them the country's biggest domestic terrorist threat. 错误! The biggest act of eco-terrorism in U.S. history was a fire, deliberately set on the night of August 1, 2003, that destroyed a nearly-completed $23 million apartment complex just outside San Diego. The fire was set to protest urban sprawl. "It was the biggest fire I have ever responded to as a firefighter," remembers Jeff Carle, a division chief for the San Diego Fire Department. "That fire was not stoppable. At the stage that the fire was in when we arrived, there were problems in the adjacent occupied apartment complexes. Pine trees were starting to catch fire. Items on patios were starting to light up and catch fire. And we had to direct our activity towards saving life before we could do anything about the property." Hundreds were roused from their beds and evacuated. Luckily, nobody –including firefighters – was injured. By the time the fire burned itself out the next morning, all that remained was a 12-foot-long banner that read: "If you build it, we will burn it." Also on the banner was the acronym: E-L-F. When Carle saw the banner, he says he knew he had a problem. A problem, because he knew what ELF stood for: the Earth Liberation Front, the most radical fringe of the environmental movement. It's the same group that set nine simultaneous fires across the Vail Mountain ski resort in 1998 to protest its expansion, causing $12 million in damage. And it is the same group that has left SUV dealerships across America looking like scenes from Iraq's Sunni triangle, their way of protesting the gas-guzzling habits of American car buyers. The ELF is a spin-off of another group called the ALF, or Animal Liberation Front, whose masked members have been known to videotape themselves breaking into research labs, where they destroy years of painstaking work and free captive animals. In recent years,
Unit 4 Brain Man Almost 25 years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie "Rain Man." George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited. Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called "Brain Man" in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain. ________________________________________ Back in 1983, George Finn, blessed or obsessed with calendar calculation, could give you the day if you gave him the date. "What day of the week was August 13th, 1911?" Safer quizzed Finn. "A Sunday," Finn replied. "What day of the week was May 20th, 1921?" Safer asked. "Friday," Finn answered. George Finn is a savant. In more politically incorrect times he would have been called an "idiot savant" - a mentally handicapped or autistic person whose brain somehow possesses an island of brilliance. Asked if he knew how he does it, Finn told Safer, "I don't know, but it's just that, that's fantastic I can do that." If this all seems familiar, there?s a reason: five years after the 60 Minutes broadcast, Dustin Hoffman immortalized savants like George in the movie "Rain Man." Which brings us to that other savant we mentioned: Daniel Tammet. He is an Englishman, who is a 27-year-old math and memory wizard. "I was born November 8th, 1931," Safer remarks. "Uh-huh. That's a prime number. 1931. And you were born on a Sunday. And this year, your birthday will be on a Wednesday. And you'll be 75," Tammet tells Safer. It is estimated there are only 50 true savants living in the world today, and yet none are like Daniel. He is articulate, self-sufficient, blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability. Take his math skill, for example.
Chapter 1 The Population I 2 populous 3 race 4 origin 5 geographical distPrelistening B 1 census ribution 6 made up of 7 comprises 8 relatively progressively 9 Metropolitan densely 10 decreased death rate 11 birth rate increasing 12 life expectancy D 1 a 18.5 mill b 80% c 1/2 d 13.4 mill e 2: 10 f 4% g 1990 h 40% i 3/4 j 33.1% 2 a 3 b 1 c 2 d 5 e 4 II First Listening ST1 population by race and origin ST2 geographical distribution ST3 age and sex III Postlistening A 1. People’s Republic of China, India 2. 281 mill
3. Hispanics(12.5%) 4. Texas 5. the South and the West 6. 20% 7. by more than 5 million 8. about 6 years 9. 2.2 years 10. a decreasing birth rate and an increasing life expectancy Chapter 2: Immigration: Past and Present PRELISTENING B. Vocabulary and Key Concepts immigrated natural disasters/ droughts/ famines persecution settlers/ colonists stages widespread unemployment scarcity expanding/ citizens failure decrease
Not Y our A verage Teen Lots of teenage girls dream of becoming rich and famous. But it's not a fantasy for Michelle Wie. Just before her 16th birthday last fall, she became the highest-paid woman golfer in history simply by turning professional and lending her name to commercial endorsements that will pay her between $10 million and $12 million a year, most of which will go into a trust fund until she becomes an adult. Wie has been a celebrity since she was 13, when people began predicting she would become the Tiger Woods of women’s golf. But, as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, that has never been enough for Wie. She wants to become the first woman ever to successfully compete with men in a professional sport. She has tried a couple of times on the PGA Tour without embarrassing herself. As you will see, she has changed a lot since we first talked to her way back in 2004, when she was 14. At the time, Wie told Kroft her ultimate goal was to play in the Masters. "I think it'd be pretty neat walking down the Masters fairways," she said. It was a neat dream for a 14-year-old kid. Nothing has happened in the last two years to change Wie's mind or shake her confidence. She is stronger now, more mature and glamorous. She has already demonstrated that she c an play herself into the middle of the pack against the best men on the PGA Tour and has come within a shot of winning her first two starts on the LPGA Tour this year as a part-time professional. The day before 60 Minutes interviewed her at the Fields Open in Honolulu, she shot a final round of 66, coming from six strokes off the lead to just miss a playoff. "Y ou won your first check yesterday," Kroft says. "Uh-huh," Wie says. "It was, it was really cool. I mean, I was like looking at how much I won. I was like 'Oh my God.' " Wie says she won around $72,000. Asked whether she gets to keep that money, Wie said she didn't know. "I'm trying to negotiate with my dad how much I can spend of that, and stuff like that. We're still working it out. But, you know, I'm definitely gonna go shopping today," she says, laughing. Half of her life is spent in the adult world, competing with men and women twice her age for paychecks they may need to make expenses and dealing with the media, sponsors and marketing executives. The rest of the time she is a junior at Punahou High School in Honolulu, where she is
1 Unit8 Chasing The Flu If this year of tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes has taught us anything, it's that worst case scenarios do sometimes happen. Now with winter upon us, the latest thing to worry about is the avian flu -- a particularly deadly bird virus that is ravaging the poultry industry in Asia, and has, on rare occasions, infected humans, killing half of its victims. Fewer than 100 people have died worldwide, yet the World Health Organization calls it the most serious health threat facing the planet, greater than AIDS or tuberculosis. Because humans have no immunity to the virus, and there are no proven drugs or vaccines to stop it, it has the potential to cause an influenza pandemic similar to the one that killed 50 million people in 1918. It may no t happen, but billions of dollars are being spent to sequence its genes, track its movement, and sl ow its progress in what many people believe could be a race against time. 60 Minutes set out for Europe and Asia chasing the flu. Correspondent Steve Kroft reports. It's called the H5N1 virus, a primitive piece of genetic material so small it can barely be seen unde r the most powerful microscopes. Like all flu viruses, it is constantly evolving and every day scient ists record the latest changes as it moves silently around the globe in the bellies of birds. The virus has infected the waterfowl now migrating the flyways over Southeast Asia. This is the fr ont line in the battle against avian flu, where the most cases have been identified and the most p eople have died. Ducks and geese have passed it along to domestic poultry, and humans have gotten it from sick bi rds. So far, the virus can't pass easily from human to human, but a single deadly mutation could c hange that and trigger the deaths of tens of millions of people. "Time is the essence," says Dr. Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization's chief of Pandemic Influenza in Geneva. She calls it a warning signal from nature. "For the first time in history we are seeing a pandemic unfolding in front of our eyes," says Dr. Ch an. No one has more experience with H5N1 than Dr. Chan. She was director of health in Hong Ko ng when the first outbreak occurred there in 1997. This is a virus that affects mostly birds and has killed fewer than 100 people. Why does Dr. Chan s ee it as such a serious health threat? "We are seeing very worrying signs, the geographical spread of this virus, and it has extended bey ond the usual sort of poultry sector. It is infecting cats. It's causing death in tigers, and so on and s o forth. Now we are getting all these signals, and we are tracking the changes of the virus," she ex plains. "If you look at the disease it causes in human being, [it] is very severe, with a very high fat ality rate. More than about half of the people infected die. We have not seen anything quite like i t," says Dr. Chan. "And also, this virus causes unprecedented spread in the animal sector. And we have never seen this in the entire history of mankind." The best minds in health, science and veterinary medicine have been mobilized to try and stop th e bird flu before it can become highly contagious in humans. Nearly 200 million chickens exposed to the virus have already been destroyed, yet, in the last few months the H5N1 virus has spread from Asia into Europe. Every morning at the World Health Organization's Strategic Health Operations Center, scientists a nd public health officials gather to go over the latest information and monitor every suspected hu