Put "crottin de chevre," into Google Translate, and you'll be told it means goat dung (waste). So if it appears on a menu, you may pass. Alas! You will rule out a delicious cheese made of goats5 milk that is often served as a starter in France.
Such misunderstandings are why Google Translate is not intended to replace human translators. Tourists might accept a few misunderstandings because the technology is cheap and convenient, but when in business, law or medicine, these services often fall short. " Using Google Translate can lead to some serious errors, especially when words have multiple meanings, which is often the case in fields such as law and engineering, " says Samantha Langley, a court-approved French — to — English legal translator in France.
That is not to say professional translators do not use computer assisted translation (CAT) tools. One of the most popular new tools is the translation earpiece. Usually paired with a smart-phone app, they pick up spoken foreign languages and translate them. For conferences, wearable translation tools like Waverly's are undoubtedly popular. But even this new generation tech has limitations. Users must wait at least a few seconds for a phrase to be translated, or more if the Internet connection is poor. And computers still lack the subtlety (微妙之处)of human communication.
"If you want to create a relationship with the user, you need a human translator to make sound natural and capture the sentiment, which often involves restructuring a sentence completely, says Zoey Cooper, director at Wordbank. "I believe CAT tools get in the way of creativity, " says Antonio Navarro Gosalvez, an English-to- Spanish translator in Spain.
Mr. Ochoa Spencer, chief executive of US start-up Waverly Labs, thinks this problem could be resolved within the next 10 years. "When it comes to expressing emotion and intonation, we need sentiment analysis, which may well be in ten years time, " he says. Yet, nowadays foreign language skills are still in demand in the labour market.
1. The writer uses the example of "crottin de chevre" to ______.| A．criticize Google Translate | B．regret missing the cheese |
| C．bring in the main topic | D．introduce a starter in France |
| A．Precise and cheap. | B．Cheap but inaccurate. |
| C．Convenient and effective. | D．Fast but incorrect. |
| A．Samantha Langley. | B．Zoey Cooper. |
| C．Antonio Navarro Gosalvez. | D．Ochoa Spencer. |
| A．The various disadvantages of Google Translate. |
| B．The chances of human translators being replaced by AI. |
| C．The difference between computer and human translation. |
| D．The disappearance of human translators in the near future. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Sir John, a British scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, said he had predicted at the time of his frog experiments that the successful cloning of a mammal would happen within 50 years, and that maybe the same answer is appropriate for the step to human cloning. Parents who lose children in accidents may be able to clone "copies" to replace them then.
Although any attempt to clone an entire human would raise complex moral issues, the biologist claimed people would soon overcome their concerns if the technique became medically useful. Cloning was regarded with extreme doubts when it was first developed but became widely accepted after the birth of Louise Brown, the first "test tube baby". He said, "When my first frog experiment was done, an American reporter asked how long it will be before these things can be done in mammals or humans. I said, ‘Well, it could be anywhere between 10 years and 100 years — how about 50 years?’ It turned out that it wasn’t far off the mark as far as Dolly was concerned. Maybe the same answer is appropriate." Sir John added that cloning a human being effectively means making an identical(相同的) twin, and that doctors would therefore simply be copying what nature has already produced.
The average vote on allowing parents of deceased children, who are no longer fertile(能生育的), to create another using the mother’s eggs and skin cells from the first child, thinking the technique was safe and effective, is 60 percent in favor. The reason for "no" is usually that the new child would feel they were some sort of a replacement for something.
1. Sir John predicted the human cloning would be a reality in________.| A．10 years | B．50 years | C．60 years | D．100 years |
| A．Human cloning is still a controversial topic. |
| B．Louise Brown is the first "test tube baby". |
| C．Sir John is positive about the future of human cloning. |
| D．Human cloning is creating something that didn’t exist before. |
| A．to be correct | B．to be incorrect | C．to the point | D．beside the point |
| A．The life of Sir John. | B．Prediction on human cloning. |
| C．Views on human cloning. | D．Achievements in human cloning. |
【推荐2】On a February afternoon in a Brooklyn classroom, 16-year-old Taylor came face to face with a cow — but it was all in her head. A virtual (虚拟的) reality headset had transported her and eight classmates to a New York farm 250 miles away and for students, the technology means field trips are no longer limited by the length of a bus ride. “I was not expecting it to be right in my face!” Taylor said after peeling off the purple headset and finding herself back in her classroom.
On any given day, students nationwide are deep-sea diving, observing medical operations, even swimming through the human circulatory system using gadgets (小装置) that are becoming increasingly accessible in both cost and content. At least it’s another way to engage the iPhone generation of students and at best, it can enhance their understanding and improve their grades.
“It instantly grabs the students,” said Colin Jones, who teaches science in the Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District. He has used a system called zSpace to dissect (解剖) cells and has walked goggled students through the boreal forest with a Google app called Expeditions. “It’s something that can be done in a period or two,” he said, “it could take even a week sometimes when you’re doing in a lab.”
In Brooklyn, Taylor and classmates virtually walked through barns and fields in Watkins Glen, stretching arms toward videotaped pigs and cows. “It’s different from watching video because you can have more than one perspective; you can actually move,” Taylor said.
Students can not only move, but also feel. In the lab, the physical effects of virtual reality become clear as subjects standing on solid ground teeter (摇晃) on storeys-high virtual scaffolding or experience motion sickness without moving.
“Some of the research we’re doing has actually shown that what you experience in virtual reality has very similar, if not the same, physiological responses that you would get if you were doing the actual activity, like your heart rate, cognition, breathing and even everything,” said Richard Lamb, who studies how the brain processes information at the University at Buffalo Neurocognition Science Lab. “The effect on learning is to improve interest, understanding and recall.”
It’s unknown how many classrooms have or will adopt the technology, but experts say it’s still relatively rare largely due to the fact that, while individual headsets that require a user’s phone can cost as little as $20 or $30, systems and software for classes run into thousands of dollars. Early complaints about a lack of good software are fading as more companies enter the market, but the rules for use haven’t necessarily caught up to the technology. In New York, for example, simulated lab experiments don’t count toward the state’s hands-on lab time requirements. Even so, the science is the area where virtual reality, especially enhanced to let users manipulate their surroundings, holds particular promise for classrooms.
“The biggest barrier, I think, is going to be the quality of that experience, how closely it mimics the physical world,” said David Evans, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. “However, the ability to do dangerous things and to run many, many more common cases in a simulation (模拟) space as opposed to the real physical space represents a huge learning opportunity.”
Lamb, who taught chemistry, agreed. “Too often in schools, when we do things with labs, it’s... you mix this together, mix that together and get this outcome. And if you don’t get that outcome, you did something wrong, but we don’t have enough resources for you to redo it,” he said. In virtual reality, “all I do is hitting reset on the computer. I don’t have to actually use chemicals.”
Both Lamb and Evans stressed using the technology to have similar experience to their real world, where any number of subtle factors can affect an outcome. “ We have to remain anchored in the actual world,” Evans cautioned, “because that’s the one that we really need to explain.”
1. What’s Colin Jones’ attitude towards the application of virtual reality to teaching?| A．Positive. | B．Critical. |
| C．Objective. | D．Disapproving. |
| A．Students can hardly experience everything in real life. |
| B．It’s beneficial for students to experience virtual reality. |
| C．Much exposure to virtual reality makes students focused. |
| D．Actual experiences are more important than virtual reality. |
| A．students show little interest in it |
| B．rules for it haven’t been made so far |
| C．users will spend much money applying it |
| D．it isn’t good enough to be operated by students |
| A．It imitates the real world perfectly. |
| B．It features many unpractical life skills. |
| C．It shouldn’t refer to dangerous things. |
| D．It offers guidance for users on real life. |
| A．Saving lots of time. |
| B．Reducing resource waste. |
| C．Minimizing experimental errors. |
| D．Improving experimental success rate. |
| A．Virtual reality shouldn’t be divorced from reality. |
| B．There’re still many unsolved mysteries in real life. |
| C．People gain much inspiration from the actual world. |
| D．Everyone should have a chance to try virtual reality. |
【推荐3】When you’re behind the wheel, distractions (分心) cost lives. Nevertheless, drivers take selfies, and respond to text messages.
Smartphones are often at the root of these tragedies. As Big Tech sets its sights on modern vehicles, it’s appropriate to ask if it’s time to limit attention-stealing technology that distracts the driver.
Big Tech wants to take on the automotive industry. And it is good at grabbing both attention and information from users. At first, the goal of these technology companies was to give away services at no cost, simply to attract a customer base.
Mobile tech is walled off from vehicle operating systems by software that keeps infotainment (information and entertainment) features away from the mission-critical driving electronics. If auto makers give up their core operating system to tech powerhouses, they will essentially become hardware suppliers to Silicon Valley.
With electric vehicles transforming the auto industry, and artificial intelligence more common than ever, we’re at a dangerous moment.
The quality, safety and security will make or break trust in auto makers. Without it, cars will be simply one more intrusive and risky mobile device.
| A．Car companies have priorities opposed to those of Big Tech. |
| B．Now they exist to sell information about their users to advertisers. |
| C．They enjoy the convenience and fun brought by modern technology. |
| D．Car makers are, and should be, the most trusted technology companies in the world. |
| E．Currently video-streaming services are starting to be built into car operating systems. |
| F．And operating systems and autonomous-driving software are all gateways for this information. |
| G．Statistics show that an average of eight people a day die in accidents caused by distracted driving. |
【推荐1】In the more and more competitive service industry, it is no longer enough to promise customer satisfaction. Today, customer “delight” is what companies are trying to achieve in order to keep and increase market share.
It is accepted in the marketing industry, and confirmed by a number of researches, that customers receiving good service will promote business by telling up to 12 other people; those treated badly will tell their tales of woe to up to 20 people. Interestingly, 80 percent of people who feel their complaints are handled fairly will stay loyal.
New lineages for customer care have come when people can obtain goods and services through telephone call centers and the Internet. For example, many companies now have to invest (投资) a lot of money in information technology and staff training in order to cope with the “phone rage (愤怒)” — caused by delays in answering calls ,being cut off in mid-conversation or left waiting for long periods.
“Many people do not like talking to machines,” says Dr. Storey Senior Lecturer in Marketing at City University Business School, “Banks, for example, encourage staff at call centers to use customer data to establish instant and good relationship with them. The aim is to make the customer feel they know you and that you can trust — the sort of comfortable feelings people have during face-to-face chats with their local branch manager.”
Recommended ways of creating customer delight include: under-promising and over-delivering (saying that a repair will be come out within five hours, but getting it done within two ); replacing a faulty product immediately: throwing in a gift voucher (购物礼券) as an unexpected “thank you” to regular customers; and always returning calls, even when they are complaints.
Aiming for customer delight is all very well, but if services do not reach the high level promised, disappointment or worse will be the result. This can be eased by offering an apology and an explanation of why the service did not meet usual standards with empathy (for example, “I know how you must feel”), and possible solutions (replacement, compensation or whatever suggests best meets the case).
Airlines face some of the toughest challenges over customer care. Fierce competition has convinced them that delighting passengers is an important marketing tool, while there is great potential for customer anger over delays caused by weather, unclaimed luggage and technical problems.
For British Airways staff, a winning telephone style is considered vital in handling the large volume of calls about bookings and flight times. They are trained to answer quickly, with their name, job title and a “we are here to help” attitude. The company has invested heavily in information technology to make sure that information is available instantly on screen.
British Airways also says its customer care policies are applied within the company and staff are taught to regard each other as customers requiring the highest standards of service.
Customer care is obviously here to stay and it would be a foolish company that used slogans such as “we do as we please”. On the other hand, the more customers are promised, the greater the risk of disappointment.
1. We can learn from Paragraph 2 that .| A．well-treated customers promote business |
| B．unsatisfied customers receive better service |
| C．Satisfied customers catch more attention |
| D．complaining customers are hard to satisfy |
| A．customers often use phones to express their anger |
| B．customer care becomes more demanding |
| C．people still prefer to buy goods online |
| D．customers rely on their phones to obtain services |
| A．“I’m sorry for the delay.” |
| B．“I appreciate your understanding.” |
| C．“I know how upset you must be.” |
| D．“I know it’s our fault.” |
| A．Face-to-face service creates comfortable feelings among customers. |
| B．A company should promise less but do more in a competitive market. |
| C．Companies that promise more will naturally attract more customers. |
| D．Customer delight is more important for airlines than for banks. |
【推荐2】Ariel Procaccia has thought a lot about how to cut a cake over the last 15 years. As the father of three children, he knows how hard it is to divide a birthday cake to everyone’s satisfaction. But it’s also because Procaccia’s work focuses on exploring the mathematical rules for dividing stuff up fairly. One way to do that is to think abstractly about dessert.
For decades, researchers have been asking the seemingly simple question of how to cut a cake fairly. The answer reaches far beyond birthday parties. A mathematical problem at its heart, cake cutting connects strict reasoning to real-world issues of fairness, and so attracts not only mathematicians, but also social scientists, economists and more. “It’s a very elegant model in which you can distill what fairness really is, and reason about it,” Procaccia says.
The simplest approach is called the “divider-chooser” method, where one person cuts the cake into two equal pieces in his view, and the other person picks first. Each receives a piece that they feel is as valuable as the other’s. But when personal preferences are taken into account, even the easiest rule becomes complicated. Suppose Alice and Bob are to divide a cake, and Alice knows Bob prefers chocolate, she may knowingly divide the cake unequally so the smaller piece contains more chocolate. Then Bob will choose according to his preference, and Alice will get the larger piece. Both of them are satisfied with what they get, but the meaning of fairness changes in this situation.
The cake is a symbol for any divisible good. When cake-cutting principles are employed to settle disagreements, they are potentially helping the world find solutions. Procaccia has used fair division algorithms (算法) to model food distribution. Social scientist Haris Aziz is exploring situations ranging from how to divide up daily tasks to how to best schedule doctors’ shifts in hospitals.
Even after decades of investigation, cake cutting isn’t like a simple jigsaw puzzle (拼图) with a well-defined solution. Instead, over time, it has evolved into a kind of mathematical sandbox, a constructive playground that brings together abstract proofs and easy applications. The more researchers explore it, the more there is to explore.
1. What does the underlined word “distill” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Get the essence of. | B．Find the opposite of. |
| C．Keep the focus on. | D．Reduce the impact on. |
| A．Its standard is stable. | B．It prevents unequal division. |
| C．Its concept is complex. | D．It dominates personal preferences. |
| A．The application of its rules. | B．The details of its process. |
| C．The problems it produces. | D．The harmony it symbolizes. |
| A．Who benefits most from fairness? |
| B．How has fairness changed over time? |
| C．What method works best in cake-cutting? |
| D．Why are researchers so interested in cake-cutting? |
【推荐3】At 9 pm, Li Zhigang was sitting in front of his fruit shop on a busy street in central Shanghai’s Xujiahui area, removing the thin plastic film from rotten pears and oranges. “This is so much trouble!” he complained while throwing the plastic into one garbage can and the fruit into another. In the past, Li simply threw away what could not be sold with the packaging on, but from July 1, 2019, he could be fined up to 200 yuan for doing so.
Like Li, many of the tens of millions of residents in Shanghai have been complaining recently that the introduction of compulsory household garbage sorting is making life difficult, but at the same time have been having to learn to do it.
Calls for garbage sorting have brought little progress in China in the past decade, but Shanghai is leading a fresh start for the world’s second-largest waste producer. “If we say China is now classifying its waste, then it’s Shanghai that is really doing it,” said Chen Liwen, an environmentalist who has devoted herself to waste classification for the past decade. “It’s starting late, compared with the US or Japan, but if it’s successful in such a big city with such a huge population, it will mean a lot for the world,” she said. While the measures force a change of habits for most people, they bring opportunities for some. Du Huanzheng, director of the Recycling Economy Institute at Tongji University, said waste sorting was important for China’s recycling industry. “Without proper classification, a lot of garbage that can be recycled is burned, and that’s a pity,” he said. “After being classified, things suitable to be stored and transported can now be recycled.” Besides, prices of small sortable garbage cans for home use have increased on e-commerce (电子商务) platforms, while garbage can makers are also developing smart models in response to new needs. What’s more, garbage sorting is also an important part of a country’s soft power. “For China, it is an opportunity to improve its international reputation. However, it is a long process that requires effort from government, enterprises and individuals (个人),” Du said.
1. What do the underlined words “doing so” in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Packaging fruit with plastic film. |
| B．Selling rotten fruit to customers. |
| C．Throwing rotten fruit into a garbage can. |
| D．Throwing fruit and its packaging into the same garbage can. |
| A．The new garbage sorting rules in Shanghai are strict. |
| B．Garbage sorting puts Shanghai residents into trouble. |
| C．It is not easy to learn how to sort garbage. |
| D．It’s necessary to sort garbage in Shanghai. |
| A．Hopeful. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Uninterested. | D．Worried. |
| A．It helps reduce the burden of individuals. |
| B．It makes smart garbage cans affordable. |
| C．It helps improve China’s hard power. |
| D．It avoids recyclable things being burned. |
【推荐1】You have probably heard the saying,"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Since lemons are considered bitter and lemonade is considered sweet, the saying tells you to make the best out of a bad Situation.
Unfortunately, when something bad happens, it's not uncommon for most people to talk about it to anyone who'll listen, and complain about life, "Why me?" That's like getting a bag of lemons, putting them down, and thinking, "Lemons taste bad! I'd rather have chocolate!" If you don't make anything with the lemons, they will go bad. But what if you did something with them? What if you made lemonade? Isn't it possible to do something similar with a bad situation?
Here's an example. Let's say you're about to go to the movies, but you discover you have a flat tire (瘪胎). You consider this a terrible thing. After all, you are really looking forward to spending some time with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Now you're all stressed out, hating the tire, the car, and your life. But what if you called AAA, got your tire fixed or got caught up on things that you'd been meaning to do? What if you did some reading, or had coffee with a friend instead? A negative experience can be turned into something positive. Almost anything can work itself out into something better. You can't change what has happened, right? So make the best of it. I'm not saying it will be easy. The easy thing to do is complain about your bad situation and not consider what it could be turned into.
Next time when some unfortunate things happen, stop and think, "How can I turn this around? How can I make it a positive experience? You needn't fear difficulties. As long as you keep on changing it, you will see the benefits (好处) at last.
1. What do we know about the saying in paragraph 1?| A．It is encouraging. | B．It is funny. |
| C．It is easy to do. | D．It is negative. |
| A．Accept it. | B．Find out the reasons. |
| C．Complain about it. | D．Ask others for help. |
| A．a flat tire happens sometimes |
| B．it doesn't matter to make mistakes |
| C．meeting film stars is a very exciting thing |
| D．how to turn something bad into something good |
| A．Trying hard to solve it. |
| B．Laughing your way through it. |
| C．Thinking more about its benefits. |
| D．Turning it into a positive experience actively. |
【推荐2】Certainly, a well-rounded(全面的) education is the foundation(基础)from which all of us spring forth. I am grateful to the many great teachers who have inspired me to do greater things, and have fired my enthusiasm(热情)for everlasting learning!
But, sometimes I wonder if the outline of our educational plan is lacking (缺少)something. I watched the movie Easy A with my daughter. The main character's parents were loving, supportive, and built great confidence in their children and developed their ability to handle their own problems.
There was a scene where the mother was speaking to the younger child who announced that he received an "A" on his spelling test. She replied, "That's great, honey, but everything has. spell check these days. "It was funny…. but TRUE! I don't mean that we shouldn't teach our children how to spell, but maybe some of our time should be spent educating them about the dangers of posting things on Facebook. Maybe we might want to spend time showing them how real life works—the credit card(信用卡)isn't free money—you will have to pay it back at sometime. Oh, and get this—they charge you for borrowing that money. Perhaps, we should spend some time on interpersonal relationships. I worry that our kids do not know how to relate to one another.
Choosing a career(职业)is a daunting task. My daughter is in her second year in college and has changed her major(主修课程)twice. It's not that she didn't know what she wanted to do. What she "wanted to do" and the course she chose did not match.
I have learned many college students do not know what they want to do because they haven't seen what it looks like in the real world. Being a journalist (记者)in the real world looks very different from writing stories. Maybe if we spent some time exposing them to real life experience—maybe two or three courses in areas of interest in high school that give them a feel "for what that particular field would look like, they might be better prepared. I do not know the solution, but it seems that it should at least be a topic of discussion.
1. Why does the author mention the movie Easy A?| A．To share the movie with readers. |
| B．To show parents' love for their children. |
| C．To lead to the topic he is going to talk about. |
| D．To prove the importance of being supportive. |
| A．parents and school should work together |
| B．there is no need for students to learn spelling |
| C．children are able to handle their own problems |
| D．it is important to help students understand real world |
| A．special | B．discouraging | C．unimportant | D．simple |
| A．Schools should prepare students for their future life. |
| B．Foundation is important for a well-rounded education. |
| C．Life experience is more important than school education. |
| D．Students should take part-time jobs to get working experience. |
【推荐3】The need for clarity extends beyond how we communicate science to how we evaluate it. Who can really define stock phrases such as ‘a significant contribution to research’? Or understand what ‘high impact’ or ‘world-class’ mean? Scientists demand that institutions should be clear about their criteria and consider all scholarly outputs—preprints, code, data, peer review, teaching, mentoring and so on.
My view about the practices in research assessment is that most assessment guidelines permit sliding standards: instead of clearly defined terms, they give us feel-good slogans that lack any fixed meaning. Facing the problem will get us much of the way towards a solution.
Broad language increases room for misunderstanding. ‘High impact’ can be code for where research is published. Or it can mean the effect that research has had on its field, or on society locally or globally—often very different things. Yet confusion is the least of the problems. Words such as ‘world-class’ and ‘excellent’ allow assessors to vary comparisons depending on whose work they are assessing. Academia(学术界) cannot be a fair and reasonable system if standards change depending on whom we are evaluating. Unconscious bias(偏见) associated with factors such as a researcher’s gender, ethnic origin and social background helps the academic injustice continue. It was only with double-blind review of research proposals that women finally got fair access to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Many strategies exist to improve fairness in academia, but conceptual clarity is paramount. Being clear about how specific qualities are valued leads assessors to think critically about whether those qualities are truly being considered. Achieving that conceptual clarity requires discussion with faculties, staff and students: hours and hours of it. The University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, for example, held a series of conversations, each involving 20-60 researchers, and then spent another year revising its research assessment policies to recognize social impacts.
Frank conversations about what is valued in a particular context, or at a specific institution, are an essential first step in developing concrete recommendations. Although ambiguous(模棱两可的) terms, for instance ‘world-class’ and ‘significant’, are a barrier when performing assessments, university administrators have said that they rely on flexible language to make room to reward a variety of contributions. So it makes sense that more specific language in review and promotion must be able to accommodate varied outputs, outcomes and impacts of scholarly work.
Setting specific standards will be tough. It will be inviting to fall back on the misleading standards such as impact factors, or on ambiguous terms that can be agreed to by everyone but applied wisely by no one. It is too early to know what those standards will be or how much they will vary, but the right discussions are starting to happen. They must continue.
1. Regarding the current practices in research assessment, the author is ________.| A．supportive | B．puzzled |
| C．unconcerned | D．disapproving |
| A．Bias on assessors can cause inequality. | B．Frank conversations harm scholarly work. |
| C．Specific qualities need to be clearly stated. | D．Broad language ensures academic fairness. |
| A．primary. | B．recognized. |
| C．optional. | D．accomplished. |
| A．Fix research assessment. Change slogans for clear standards. |
| B．Fix research assessment. Change evaluations for conversations. |
| C．Define research assessment. Change simplicity for specification. |
| D．Define research assessment. Change broad language for flexible one. |
【推荐1】Ship tourism to Antarctica is on the rise: More than 35,000 tourists are expected to visit Antarctic this summer. In 1992-1993, 6,750 visited Antarctica, according to the Antarctica Treaty. All of this tourism, however, is putting both tourists and the environment in great danger.
Among the tourist ships that visit the continent, the Explorer, a Canadian ship, was one of the first. Put to use in 1969, it was built to carry tourists to Antarctica. Last week, however, it became the first commercial passenger ship to sink beneath the waters. Fortunately, all of the passengers and crew members were rescued from the ship. However, the sunken ship endangered the Antarctic’s fragile(脆弱的) environment. The ship was estimated to be holding 48,000 gallons of fuel.
The accident was not unexpected. Both the US and UK had warned a conference of the Antarctic Treaty member countries in May that the tourism situation in this area was a potential disaster. The US said in a paper, people “should take a hard look at tourism issues now, especially those related to ship safety.” Although the Antarctic seas are relatively calm, floating ice causes a potential threat to ships. The owner of the Explorer blamed the sinking on a fist-like hole in the ship created by ice.
Many of the other large ships now visiting Antarctica are not designed especially against thick ice. Such ships generally can only come to the continent in summer. But the tourist rush is pushing ships into dangerous situations. “The increasing number of ships operating in Antarctic means that the ship are under great pressure to get there in time for the key visiting sites,” the British government wrote in a paper at the meeting of member countries.
As a natural frontier, Antarctica is in a messy legal situation. There are no obvious answers as to who is responsible for dealing with the threat that tourist may cause to human life and the environment.
There is no coast guard for Antarctica. Do we want it to become Disneyland, or do we need some controls?
1. Which of the following is true according to this passage?| A．Antarctica tourism has a history of about 17 years. |
| B．The number of tourists to the Antarctic is over 5 times as large as that of 17 years ago. |
| C．The tourism boom has caused holes in the floating ice in the Antarctic. |
| D．The Antarctica Treaty is responsible for the environmental problems. |
| A．led to a conference about the tourism situation in the Antarctic. |
| B．was caused by the rough seas |
| C．had been predicted |
| D．did harm to the Antarctic. |
| A．people had better not make a tour of the Antarctic |
| B．ships to the Antarctic should be built strong enough |
| C．there should be legal controls over tourism in the Antarctic |
| D．the Antarctic’s environment is fragile to be protected |
【推荐2】Now the Bush team is pushing hard an idea which is inherited from the Clinton administration and which, in some way, builds on the debt-relief initiative. For the very poorest countries, America strongly favors moving from loans to grants, though other industrial-country donors are still doubtful of the wisdom of this. Giving grants, they argue, will cut future aid flows because some of the funding for loans on generous terms comes from money which has been repaid to donors.
America takes the view that, since many developing—country loans will never be repaid, mainly because the recipients cannot afford to make large payments to their creditors, it makes more sense to treat them as grants in the first place. The Bush administration has threatened to hold up the provision of the funds used for this sort of aid. International Development Assistance (IDA), if it cannot persuade everyone else to come on board. All members talked about having made progress in this area, but it remains a stumbling block.
Work is also under way in the IMF and the G7 to reform the international financial system. This now has two objectives. One is to make it harder for terrorist organizations to obtain funding by cracking down on money—laundering and increasing financial transparency. The other is to reduce the occurrence and severity of financial crises in emerging—market countries. On this, American views seem to have prevailed. The G7 meeting on April 19th and 20th ended with an unexpected decision to proceed with an American plan to include collective action clauses in future loans taken out by emerging- market governments. The idea is that in the event of a delay of payment—such as that by Argentina last December--a government could negotiate with a “super-majority” of its creditors to restructure its debts, rather than, as now, have a small minority of creditors able to weaken such attempts.
This market--based approach is still controversial and implementing it could be difficult given the previous reluctance of governments to include such clauses in loan contracts (lest they appear to be signaling a readiness to default (拖欠)even as they borrow). Work on IMF plans for more far —reaching reforms of supreme debt, on which the Bush team recently appeared to pour cold water, is to proceed at the same time. The two approaches, said the G7, are “complementary”.
1. According to the passage, America favors moving from loans to grants on the purpose of____| A．making more money for the donors |
| B．relieving debt of the poorest countries |
| C．solving the problem of poverty completely |
| D．collecting more money for future aid to other countries |
| A．makes no progress at all |
| B．makes progress smoothly |
| C．still face some difficulties |
| D．will achieve its success in near future |
| A．relieving the debt of poor countries |
| B．establishing a global financial market |
| C．distributing money more fairly in the world |
| D．preventing the possible financial crisis and terrorists to raise money through the system |
| A．a country can never expect to reconstruct its debts |
| B．a country can reconstruct its debt with the permission of IMF |
| C．a country in default cannot reconstruct its debts without the permission of all of its creditors |
| D．a country in default can reconstruct its debts by acquiring the permission of most of its creditors. |
【推荐3】Of all the components of a good night’s sleep, dreams seem to be least within our control. In dreams, a window opens into a world where logic is suspended and dead people speak. A century ago, Freud stated his revolutionary theory that dreams were the disguised (伪装的)shadows of our unconscious desires and fears: by the late 1970se neurologists had switched to thinking of them as just "mental noise"—the random byproducts of the neural-repair work that goes on during sleep. Now researchers suspect that dreams are part of the minds emotional thermostat, regulating moods while the brain is "off-line". And one leading authority says that these intensely powerful mental events can be not only influenced but actually brought under conscious control, to help us sleep and feel better. "It's your dream," says Rosalind Cartwright, chair of psychology at Chicago's Medical Center. "If you don't like it change it."
The link between dreams and emotions shows up among the patients in Cartwright's clinic. Most people seem to have more bad dreams early in the night, progressing toward happier ones before awakening, suggesting that they are working through negative feelings generated(产生)during the day. Because our conscious mind is occupied with daily life. we don't always think about the emotional significance of the day' s events—until, it appears, we begin to dreams.
And this process need not be left to the unconscious. Cartwright believes one can exercise conscious control over repeated bad dreams. As soon as you awaken, identify what is upsetting about the dream. Visualize how you would like it to end instead; the next time it occurs, try to wake up just enough to control its course. With much practice people can learn to, literally, do it in their sleep.
At the end of the day, there's probably little reason to pay attention to our dreams at all unless they keep us from sleeping or "we wake up in a panic," Cartwright says. Terrorism, economic uncertainties and general feelings of insecurity have increased people's anxiety. Those suffering from persistent nightmares should seek help from a therapist. For the rest of us, the brain has its ways of working through bad feeling Sleep—or rather dream—on it and you'll feel better in the morning.
1. By saying that "dreams are part of the mind's emotional thermostat" in paragraph 1, the researchers mean that______.| A．dreams can help us keep our mood comparatively stable |
| B．dreams can be brought under conscious control |
| C．dreams represent our unconscious desires and fears |
| D．we can think logically in the dreams too |
| A．become worse in our unconscious mind |
| B．develop into happy dreams |
| C．persist till the time we fall asleep |
| D．show up in dreams early at night |
| A．control what dreams to dream |
| B．sleep well without any dreams |
| C．wake up in time to stop the bad dreams |
| D．identify what is upsetting about the dreams |
| A．lead their life as usual |
| B．seek professional help |
| C．exercise conscious control |
| D．avoid anxiety in the daytime |
