1 . Expressive arts therapy is a form of therapy that uses dance, drama, music, poetry, and art to enhance one's overall well-being. The arts are used to let go,
People have been using the arts as tools for
Through the arts, people can
Expressive arts therapists are professionally
A.admit | B.express | C.examine | D.trust |
A.explaining | B.proving | C.healing | D.judging |
A.recognized | B.relieved | C.affected | D.controlled |
A.results | B.experiences | C.causes | D.questions |
A.angry | B.bored | C.strict | D.free |
A.secret | B.technique | C.difficulty | D.process |
A.when | B.which | C.what | D.where |
A.as to | B.or rather | C.rather than | D.other than |
A.communicate | B.produce | C.reject | D.test |
A.offered | B.shown | C.guided | D.driven |
A.create | B.feel | C.reduce | D.recall |
A.tired | B.proud | C.afraid | D.unaware |
A.hired | B.served | C.awarded | D.trained |
A.basic | B.enough | C.impossible | D.strange |
A.finally | B.typically | C.luckily | D.hardly |
A.visit | B.life | C.education | D.money |
A.If | B.Although | C.Unless | D.Since |
A.unequal | B.friendly | C.known | D.similar |
A.goal | B.profession | C.clinic | D.theory |
A.unwelcome | B.seasonal | C.positive | D.cultural |
THE TEENAGE BRAIN
Parents, teachers, and anyone who regularly deals with teenagers knows how difficult the adolescent years can be. Adolescents have always been known to do wild — even dangerous — things. This was thought to be due to the foolishness of youth. Now, brain-imaging technology allows scientists to study the physical development of the brain in more detail than ever before. Their discoveries have led to a new theory of why teens act the way they do.
Recently, scientists discovered that though our brains are almost at their full size by the age of six, they are far from fully developed. Only during adolescence do our brains truly “grow up”. During this time, they go through great changes, like a computer system being upgraded. This “upgrade” was once thought to be finished by about age 12. Now, scientists have concluded that our brains continue to change until age 25. Such changes make us better at balancing our impulses with the need to follow rules. However, a still-developing brain does this clumsily. The result, scientists claim, is the unpredictable behavior seen in teenagers.
The studies confirm that teens are more likely to take risks and behave in extreme ways. Fortunately, the news isn’t all negative. As brain scientist B.J. Casey points out, the teen brain inspires such behavior in order to help teenagers prepare for adult life.
One way the brain does this is by changing the way teens measure risk and reward. Researchers found that when teens think about rewards, their brains release more of the chemicals that create pleasure than an adult brain would. Researchers believe this makes the rewards seem more important than the risks, and makes teens feel the excitement of new experiences more keenly than adults do.
Research into the structure of the teen brain also found that it makes social connections seem especially rewarding. As such, teens have an intense need to meet new people.
Scientists suggest this is because as teens, we begin to realize that our peers may one day control the world we live in. Because it is still developing, a teen brain can change to deal with new situations. It therefore connects social rewards with even more pleasure. In this way, the brain encourages teens to have a wide circle of friends, which is believed to make us more successful in life.
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3 . If We Are Not Just Animals, What Are We?
Philosophers and theologians (神学家) in the Christian tradition have long regarded human beings as separate from the other animals by the presence of the divine spark (神圣的火花) that is believed to exist within them. This inner source of illumination, the soul, is something that can never be grasped from without, and, as such, must be something that is detached in some fundamental manner from the natural order of things such that the soul continues to exist even after the death of the body, perhaps taking wing for some supernatural place following its demise (死亡).
Recent advances in genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology have all but killed off this idea.
This fundamental question is as relevant to the philosophical inquiry of today as it had been for the ancient Greeks. In a thousand different ways, we have drawn and continue to draw distinctions between ourselves and the rest of nature.
Evolutionary psychologists tell another story. Morality, they argue, is an adaptation. If organisms (生物体) compete for resources, a strategy of cooperation will be more successful in the long run than a strategy of pure selfishness. Cooperative features of an organism will therefore be selected over time. And all that is special in the human condition can be understood in this way — as the outcome of a long process of adaptation that has given us the unbeatable advantage of morality, whereby we can resolve our conflicts without fighting and adjust to the demands that upset us from every side.
The astonishing moral equipment of the human being — including rights and duties, personal obligations, justice, resentment (憎恨), judgment, forgiveness — is the deposit (沉积物) left by millenniums of conflict.
I am fairly confident that the picture painted by the evolutionary psychologists is true, but I am also convinced that this is not the whole truth.
By speaking in the first person, we can make statements about ourselves, answer questions, and engage in reasoning and advice in ways that avoid all the normal methods of discovery. As a result, we can participate in dialogues founded on the assurance that, when you and I both speak sincerely, what we say is trustworthy: We are “speaking our minds.” This is the heart of the I-You encounter. Hence as persons we live in a life-world that is not reducible (可简化的) to the world of nature, any more than the life in a painting is reducible to the lines and colors from which it is composed.
A.We have built up our lives according to the ways in which we have sought to distinguish ourselves from the natural world. |
B.It does not take into account what is precisely the most important thing — the individual human subject. |
C.Almost all people believe that it is a crime to kill an innocent human, but not to kill an innocent tapeworm. |
D.However, they have simultaneously raised the question of what exactly should be put in its place. |
E.Philosophy has the task of describing the world in which we live — not the world as science describes it, but the world as it is represented in our mutual dealings. |
F.Morality is like a field of flowers, beneath which lie the thousand-layer deep pile of the countless bodies of prior conflicts. |
4 . ‘Small Data’ Are Also Crucial for Machine Learning
Many people relate “artificial intelligence” with “big data.” There’s a reason for that: some of the most prominent AI breakthroughs in the past decade have relied on enormous data sets. Image
Also known as “fine-tuning,” transfer learning is helpful in settings where you have
Small data approaches such as transfer learning are more
Despite the progress in research, transfer learning has received relatively little
As long as the success of small data technique like transfer learning is
A.standard | B.classification | C.quality | D.acquisition |
A.written | B.limited | C.spoken | D.abundant |
A.moral | B.visual | C.literary | D.popular |
A.complicated | B.interesting | C.promising | D.distinguished |
A.extra | B.different | C.available | D.few |
A.personal | B.specific | C.technical | D.potential |
A.in addition | B.or rather | C.in particular | D.for example |
A.adjust | B.invent | C.follow | D.check |
A.definite | B.advantageous | C.complex | D.precise |
A.remotely | B.severely | C.ultimately | D.rarely |
A.underexplored | B.underestimated | C.underpopulated | D.underqualified |
A.guidance | B.respect | C.supervision | D.visibility |
A.publication | B.adoption | C.tracking | D.polishing |
A.celebrated | B.evaluated | C.recognized | D.diversified |
A.challenge | B.concern | C.fear | D.misunderstanding |
5 . There aren’t enough resources to identify and cure the factors that are causing populations of animals around the world to decline. Artificial intelligence might have the power to change that.
When an endangered seabird hits a power line, it
His team recorded 600 hours of audio and sent the recordings to Preservation Metrics, a company that assists preservation efforts with AI
In science fiction stories such as The Matrix, AI-powered machines take over the world and end life on the planet as we know it. But
By many
Humans,
In large national parks and wildlife reserves,
We still face many challenges to
A.makes a sound | B.catches fire | C.keeps the distance | D.takes chances |
A.affected | B.preserved | C.recorded | D.attracted |
A.unlawfully | B.instantly | C.frequently | D.deliberately |
A.fiction | B.significance | C.factors | D.resources |
A.deceiving | B.doubtful | C.desirable | D.disturbing |
A.Engaged in | B.Qualified for | C.Armed with | D.Exposed to |
A.in addition | B.in reality | C.in return | D.in fact |
A.measures | B.programs | C.services | D.species |
A.biodiversity | B.production | C.population | D.economy |
A.distribute | B.pool | C.lack | D.exploit |
A.meanwhile | B.however | C.otherwise | D.besides |
A.big-game | B.professional | C.local | D.illegal |
A.impossible | B.dangerous | C.urgent | D.thankless |
A.disproved | B.explained | C.predicted | D.ignored |
A.estimate | B.reverse | C.experience | D.sustain |
6 . People with a rare genetic disorder known as Prader-Willi syndrome never feel full, and this excess hunger can lead to life-threatening obesity (肥胖症). Scientists studying the problem have now found that the fist-shaped structure known as the cerebellum (小脑) — which had not previously been linked to hunger — is key to regulating satiation (饱食) in those with this condition.
This finding is the latest in a series of discoveries revealing that the cerebellum, long thought to be primarily involved in movement harmony, also plays a broad role in cognition, emotion and behavior. “We’ve opened up a whole field of cerebellar control of food intake,” says Albert Chen, a neuroscientist at the Scintillon Institute in California.
The project began with an accidental observation: Chen and his team noticed they could make mice stop eating by activating small pockets of neurons (神经元) in regions known as the anterior deep cerebellar nuclei (aDCN), within the cerebellum. Fascinated, the researchers gathered data using functional MRI to compare brain activity in 14 people who had Prader-Willi syndrome with activity in 14 unaffected people while each testee viewed images of food -- either immediately following a meal or after fasting (禁食) for at least four hours.
New analysis of these scans revealed that activity in the same regions Chen’s group had accurately pointed out in mice, the aDCN, appeared to be significantly disturbed in humans with Prader-Willi syndrome. In healthy individuals, the aDCN were more active in response to food images while fasting than just after a meal, but no such difference was identifiable in participants with the disorder. The result suggested that the aDCN were involved in controlling hunger. Further experiments on mice, conducted by researchers from several different institutions, demonstrated that activating the animals’ aDCN neurons dramatically reduced food intake by weakening how the brain’s pleasure center responds to food.
For years neuroscientists studying appetite focused mainly either on the hypothalamus, a brain area involved in regulating energy balance, or on reward-processing centers such as the nucleus accumbens (伏隔核). But this group has identified a new feeding center in the brain, says Elanor Hinton, a neuroscientist at the University of Bristol in England who was not involved with the study. “I’ve been working in appetite research for the past 15 years or so, and the cerebellum has just not been a target,” Hinton says. “I think this is going to be important both for Prader-Willi syndrome and, much more widely, to address obesity in the general population.”
1. Before the recent study, scientists had assumed that the cerebellum ________.A.helps control everyday food intake |
B.plays a minor role in movement harmony |
C.has nothing to do with appetite regulation |
D.has a direct link to behavioral development |
A.the healthy testees were more likely to overeat after fasting |
B.food images increased the appetite of the testees with Prader-Willi syndrome |
C.the aDCN in the healthy testees responded to food images more actively after fasting |
D.the aDCN in the testees with Prader-Willi syndrome made no response to food images |
A.It may help in the early diagnosis of Prader-Willi syndrome. |
B.It will have broader implications for the treatment of obesity. |
C.The potential feeding center in human brain remains to be discovered. |
D.More studies are needed to understand the link between appetite and reward-processing. |
A.How our brain controls overeating. |
B.How the aDCN works up our appetite. |
C.How Prader-Willi syndrome can be prevented. |
D.How lowering food intake benefits our overall health. |
7 . Smartphones are our constant companions. For many of us, their glowing screens are a ubiquitous (十分普遍的) presence, drawing us in with endless distractions. They are in our hands as soon as we wake, and command our attention until the final moments before we fall asleep.
Steve Jobs would not approve.
In 2007, Jobs took the stage and introduced the world to the iPhone. If you watch the full speech, you will be surprised by how he imagined our relationship should be with this iconic (标志性的) invention. This vision is so different from the way most of us use these devices now.
In his remarks, Jobs spent an extended amount of time demonstrating how users could utilize (应用) its touch screen before detailing the many ways Apple engineers had improved the age-old process of making phone calls. “It’s the best iPod we’ve ever made,” Jobs exclaimed at one point. “The killer app is making calls,” he later added. Both lines drew thunderous applause.
The presentation confirms that Jobs imagined a simpler iPhone experience than the one we actually have more than a decade later. For example, there was no App Store when the iPhone was first introduced, and this was by design. Jobs was convinced that the phone’s carefully-designed native features were enough. He did not seek to completely change the rhythm of users’ daily lives. He simply wanted to take experiences we had already found important — listening to music, placing calls, generating directions — and make them better.
The minimalist (简约主义者) vision for the iPhone Jobs offered in 2007 is unrecognizable today — and that is a shame.
Under what I call the “constant companion model,” we now see our smartphones as always-on portal (通道) to information. We have become so used to it over the past decade that it is easy to forget the novelty (新奇) of the device. It seems increasingly clear to me that Jobs probably got it right from the very beginning: Many of us would be better-off returning to his original minimalist vision for our phones.
Practically speaking, to be a minimalist smartphone user means only using your device for a small number of features that do things of value to you. Otherwise, you simply put it away outside of these activities. This approach removes this gadget (小玩意) from the position of a constant companion down to a luxury object, such as a fancy bike, that gives you great pleasure when you use it but does not dominate your entire day.
Early in his 2007 keynote jobs said, “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” What he didn’t add, however, was the follow-up promise: “Tomorrow, we’re going to reinvent your life.” The smartphone is fantastic, but it was never meant to be the foundation for a new form of existence. If you return this innovation to its original role, you will get more out of both your phone and your life.
1. According to Steve Jobs, what was the main selling point of Apple’s first iPhone?A.It allowed its users to have access to the Internet. |
B.It was actually an iPod that could make phone calls. |
C.It was installed with applications by third-party developers. |
D.It could fulfill people’s desire to multitask in their daily lives. |
A.expect to reinvent his life with the device |
B.buy the latest model of iPhone and see it as a luxury |
C.spend more time working than playing with his device |
D.remove the unnecessary applications from the device |
A.the native features of smartphones | B.the information on the Internet |
C.the novelty of the device | D.the constant companion model |
A.The minimalism of iPhone helps users bring out the best of the device. |
B.Jobs expected iPhone to be the foundation for a new form of existence. |
C.Smartphone users have changed their life to enjoy pleasant experiences. |
D.The invention of App Store has made smartphones luxury objects. |
A.tell readers why Steve Job created the iPhone |
B.remind readers not to be addicted to their smartphones |
C.show readers that smartphones can greatly change their lives |
D.encourage readers to block Internet access on their smartphones |
8 . “ Humans and machine algorithms (算法) have complementary (互补的) strengths and weaknesses. Each uses different sources of information and strategies to make predictions and decisions, ” said Mark Steyvers, UCI professor of cognitive sciences. “ We show through experiments that humans can improve the predictions of AI even when human accuracy is below that of the AI, and vice versa (反之亦然). This accuracy is higher than combining predictions from two individuals or two AI algorithms. ”
To test the framework, researchers conducted an image classification experiment where human participants and computer algorithms worked separately to correctly identify disorderly pictures of animals and everyday items including chairs, bottles, bicycles and trucks. The human participants ranked their confidence in the accuracy of each image identification as low, medium or high, while the machine classifier generated a continuous score. The results showed large differences in confidence between humans and AI algorithms across images.
“ Human participants were confident that a particular picture contained a chair, for example, while the AI algorithm was confused about the image, ” said Padhraic Smyth, UCI Chancellor’s Professor of computer science. “ Similarly, the AI algorithm was able to confidently provide a label for the object shown, while human participants were unsure if the disorderly picture contained any recognizable object. ”
When predictions and confidence scores from both were combined using the researchers’ new Bayesian framework, the mixed model led to better performance than either human or machine predictions achieved alone.
“ While the past research has demonstrated the benefits of combining machine predictions or combining human predictions, this work shows a new direction in demonstrating the potential of combining human and machine predictions, pointing to new and improved approaches to human-AI cooperation, ” Smyth said.
“ The blend of cognitive science focusing on understanding how humans think and behave and computer science in which technologies are produced will provide further insight into how humans and machines can cooperate to build more accurate artificially intelligent systems, ” the researchers said.
1. Which of the following may the research’s findings agree with?A.Humans have poor performance in making predictions. |
B.Humans and machine algorithms should work together. |
C.Machine algorithms have low accuracy in calculation. |
D.Machine algorithms failed in the classification experiment. |
A.Comparison. | B.Assumption. | C.Giving examples. | D.Analysing reasons. |
A.Difference. | B.Combination. | C.Contradiction. | D.Advantage. |
A.Humans are confident of their predictions |
B.Humans can improve the predictions of AI |
C.Develop mixed human- machine model for smarter AI |
D.Identify the strengths of humans and machine algorithms |
9 . A huge crowd has gathered to watch China’s new scientific research ship enter the water for the first time. This ship, equipped with on-board labs and the latest scientific kit, will eventually explore the world’s oceans. But it is also going to help China plunge beneath the waves: it will serve as a launch-pad for submarines that can dive to the deepest parts of the ocean. “Humans know much less about the deep oceans than we know about the surface of the Moon and Mars. That’s why I want to develop the facility for ocean scientists to reach the deep seas,” says Prof. Cui Weicheng.
He is the dean of deep sea science at Shanghai Ocean University but he has also set up a private company called Rainbow Fish, which built the new research ship and is busy developing submersibles. One of its unmanned subs reached a depth of 4,000m (13,000ft) in its most recent trial. But Rainbow Fish’s ultimate goal is manned exploration and it plans to take humans to the very bottom of the ocean the Mariana Trench, in the Pacific, at a depth of nearly 11,000m (36,000ft). He shows me around a life-size model of the submarine and explains that there is room inside for a crew of three, who will be protected by a thick metal sphere.”At the moment, we are in the design stage, so we are testing several extremely high-strength materials for it.” It will have to bear immense pressures from the crushing weight of water above. If there are any weaknesses, the submarine will implode. The deepest ocean is a place few people have ever experienced first-hand. The first dive to the Mariana Trench was carried out in 1960 by US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Picard. Their vessel, the Bathyscaphe Trieste, creaked and groaned as it made the descent, taking nearly five hours.
The only other manned expedition was carried out by Hollywood director James Cameron, who took a solo plunge in a bright green submarine in 2012. Rainbow Fish wants its sub to be next. The team insists its venture isn’t about politics and that it is looking to collaborate with American, Russian and European scientists. It is, though, a commercial operation. The company plans to charge people to use its research ship and submarines, and is targeting three groups, says managing director Dr. Wu Xin. “The first is definitely the scientists who are interested in studying deep-sea science and technology. The second group is offshore companies and oil companies. The last one is tourists and adventurers [who] want to go down themselves to have a look at what’s going on there,” he says. This kind of entrepreneurial approach may be a new model for science in China. Deep-sea research is a difficult, high-risk activity — and much of the ocean remains unexplored. But Cui, who hopes to be the first Chinese person to reach the Mariana Trench, believes that China could be the nation to truly open up this final frontier.
1. What function does the new scientific research ship serve?A.As a deep-sea facility for tourist adventures |
B.As a supply ship for scientific explorations. |
C.As a station for observing giant squid. |
D.As a launch-pad for submarines. |
A.Testing high-strength materials for building submarines. |
B.Designing a thick metal sphere for bearing space pressure. |
C.Charting the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean. |
D.Making plans for his dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. |
A.Prof. Cui doesn’t rely on government funding. Instead he runs a for-profit business. |
B.Prof. Cui is bold in his submarine design. |
C.Prof. Cui, who started the company, is a professor-turned entrepreneur. |
D.Prof. Cui is the first to offer his ship for tourists. |
A.Deep-sea science and technology | B.Ocean exploration |
C.Race to the deep | D.The rising of Rainbow Fish |
10 . By the age of seven months, most children have learned that objects still exist even when they are out of sight. Put a toy under a blanket and a child that old will know it is still there, and that he can reach underneath the blanket to get it back. This understanding, of “object permanence”, is a normal developmental milestone, as well as a basic tenet of reality. It is also something that self-driving cars do not have. And that is a problem. For a self-driving car, a bicycle that is momentarily hidden by a passing van is a bicycle that has ceased to exist.
This failing is basic to the now-widespread computing discipline that has arrogated to itself the slightly misleading moniker of artificial intelligence (AI). Current AI, based on the idea of machine learning, works by building up complex statistical models of the world, but it lacks a deeper understanding of reality. Similar techniques are used to train self-driving cars to operate in traffic. Cars thus learn how to obey lane markings, avoid other vehicles, hit the brakes at a red light and so on. But they do not understand many things a human driver takes for granted—that other cars on the road have engines and four wheels, or that they obey traffic regulations (usually) and the laws of physics (always). And they do not understand object permanence.
In a recent paper in Artificial Intelligence, Mehul Bhatt of Orebro University, in Sweden, describes a different approach. He and his colleagues took some existing AI programs which are used by self-driving cars and bolted onto them a piece of software called a symbolic-reasoning engine.
Instead of approaching the world probabilistically, as machine learning does, this software was programmed to apply basic physical concepts to the output of the programs that process signals from an autonomous vehicle's sensors. This modified output was then fed to the software which drives the vehicle. The concepts involved included the ideas that discrete objects continue to exist over time, that they have spatial relationships with one another-such as “in-front-of” and “behind”—and that they can be fully or partly visible, or completely hidden by another object. The improvement was not huge, but it proved the principle. And it also yielded something else. For, unlike a machine-learning algorithm, a reasoning engine can tell you the reason why it did what it did. A machine-learning program cannot do that. Besides helping improve program design, such information will, Dr Bhatt reckons, help regulators and insurance companies. It may thus speed up public acceptance of autonomous vehicles.
1. Why does the author mention a bicycle hidden by a van in the first paragraph?A.To show the self-driving car isn't as able to know an object permanently exists as a 7-month-old child. |
B.To make a comparison between a self-driving car and a bicycle that can for a moment cease to exist. |
C.To consolidate the problem a self-driving car has as opposed to a 7-month-old child. |
D.To verify the fact that a self-driving car isn't as intelligent as a 7-month-old child. |
A.It fails as a misleading computing discipline used on self-driving cars. |
B.It basically works on machine learning which is effective to train cars how to operate in traffic. |
C.It is not that intelligent compared with the real human intelligence, hence the name AI. |
D.It can teach cars many things except the reasons why they have engines and four wheels. |
A.When an accident is around the corner, the car automatically alarms the driver. |
B.If the car momentarily blocked the sight of another, it could predict and take steps to avoid bumping. |
C.The car can make up reasons for hitting the brakes when a bicycle hidden by a van is about to appear. |
D.When you are at a loss how you can make it to the destination, the car can always figure out the best route. |
A.Is reasoning-engine better than machine learning? |
B.Is it smarter than a seven-month-old? |
C.Al---a misleading moniker |
D.The self-reflection of a self-driving car |