Have you ever seen a rushing car without a driver?
So how do they work? The cars have sensors all around which can detect other cars and obstacles in the road. Sensors on the wheels also help when parking, so the car knows how far it is from the kerb (马路牙子) or other parked cars. Road signs are read by cameras, and satellite navigation systems are used so the car knows how to get to your destination.
Sound like your idea of heaven? Sitting back, looking out of the windows and even watching a film or reading a book while “driving” would be possible with this new technology.
Although being driven around by a machine would perhaps mean that no one needs a driving license, saving money for everyone, many people would be put out of a job by the dawn of driverless cars.
| A．All you have to do is type in the address! |
| B．There would also be many legal decisions to be made. |
| C．However, there are many drawbacks of driverless cars. |
| D．Driverless cars have many advantages as well as disadvantages. |
| E．It sounds crazy, but driverless cars will soon be filling roads near you. |
| F．In addition, computers are generally more efficient drivers than humans. |
| G．Bus, taxi, train and tram drivers as well as driving instructors would be made unnecessary. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Doctors faced with the tricky task of spotting rare genetic diseases in children may soon be asking parents to email their family photos. A computer program can now learn to identify rare conditions by analyzing a face from an ordinary digital photograph. It should even be able to identify unknown genetic disorders if groups of photos in its database share specific facial features. Rare genetic disorders are thought to affect 6 per cent of people. Genetic tests exist for the more common conditions such as Down’s syndrome, but many people with the rarer disorders never get a proper clinical diagnosis (诊断) .Genetic tests aren’t available for many conditions because the gene variants that cause them haven’t been identified.
The software developed by Christoffer Nell Ker and Andrew Zisserman of the University of Oxford and their colleagues should help family doctors make a preliminary (初步的) diagnosis. “The idea is to offer it to health systems right across the world because all you need is a computer and a digital photo,” says Nellaker.
To show that it works, the team analyzed photos of people with known genetic disorders. The accuracy of the software increases with the number of photos of a specific disorder it learns from. For the eight training diseases, for example, each disorder was represented by between 100 and 283 images. On average, this resulted in 93 per cent of the predictions being correct.
The team have since expanded the software so that it recognizes 90 disorders. It can’t give an exact diagnosis yet, but based on the 2,754 faces now in the database, the researchers estimate that the system makes it almost 30 times more likely that someone will make a correct diagnosis than by chance alone.
For example, after looking at photos of former US president Abraham Lincoln, the software ranked Marfan syndrome (马凡氏综合征)—a disorder resulting in unusually large features, which some believe he had—as the seventh most likely diagnosis out of 91 syndromes.
1. How will the computer program identify rare genetic diseases?| A．By taking pictures of a person’s face. |
| B．By analyzing what one writes in his email. |
| C．By studying one’s face from a digital photo. |
| D．By distant on-line clinical check. |
| A．genetic tests aren’t available for their conditions |
| B．computers can’t recognize their facial features |
| C．their genes vary from person to person |
| D．the causes of their disorders are still unknown |
| A．It can now recognize 90 disorders. |
| B．It gives too few correct predictions now. |
| C．It has been used across the world. |
| D．It can be used by common people. |
| A．his special facial feature |
| B．the wide use of the software |
| C．the difficulty with clinical diagnosis |
| D．the accuracy of the software |
【推荐2】Nature has inspired researchers to develop a robotic gripper（抓取器）that behaves like an elephant's trunk(象鼻)to pick up and put down objects without breaking them. The University of New South Wales(UNSW)Sydney researchers sail the technology could be widely applied in industries where breakable objects are handled, such as agriculture, food and the scientific exploration industries—even for human rescue operations.
Dr Thanh Nho Do, UNSW Medical Robotics Lab director, said the gripper could reach consumers in the next 12 to 16 months if his team found an industry partner. “Our new soft fabric gripper is thin, flat, lightweight and can grip various objects—even in narrow spaces—for example, a pen inside a tube,” Dr Do said. “This gripper also has an improved real-time force sensor which is 15 times more sensitive than traditional designs and detects the grip strength required to prevent damage to objects it’s handling. The gripper body can change, enabling it to hold objects of various shapes and weights.”
Dr Do said the researchers found inspiration in nature when designing their soft fabric gripper. “Animals such as an elephant use the soft structures of their bodies to hold objects. These animals can do this because of a combination of highly sensitive organs, the sense of touch and the strength of thousands of muscles without bone—for example, an elephant's trunk has up to 40,000 muscles. So, we wanted to copy these gripping abilities,”he said.
Dr Do said the researchers' new soft gripper was an improvement on existing designs that had disadvantages that limited their application. “Many soft grippers are based on human hand-like structures with multiple inward-bending fingers, but this makes them unsuitable to grip objects that are strangely shaped, heavy or big, or objects smaller or larger than the gripper’s opening. Many existing soft grippers also lack the ability to provide sensory information and flexibility, which means you can’t use them with breakable objects or in narrow spaces,” he said. “Our technology can grip long objects and get them from narrow spaces, as well as get into holes to pick up objects.”
1. What is Dr Thanh Nho Do's team trying to do at the moment?| A．Put the gripper on the market. | B．Partner with agriculturalists. |
| C．Perfect the gripper. | D．Increase their new products' sales. |
| A．It is quite hard. | B．It can change to meet needs |
| C．It comes in different shapes. | D．It is able to send real-time warnings. |
| A．How the researchers carried out the study. | B．Where the researchers got the idea. |
| C．What the researchers want to achieve. | D．Why the researchers love nature. |
| A．They are weak. | B．They are big and heavy. |
| C．They have limited applications. | D．They work differently from human hands. |
【推荐3】Batteries can power anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves. University of Missouri（MU) researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient.
“To provide enough power,we need certain methods with high energy density（密度)", said Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU. ''The radioisotope（放射性同位素）battery can provide power density that is much higher than chemical batteries ."
Kwon and his research team have been working on building a small nuclear battery, presently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro systems（MNEMS）. Although nuclear batteries can cause concerns, Kwon said they are safe.
“People hear the word ‘nuclear' and think of something very dangerous." he said. "However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pace-makers, space satellites and underwater systems."
His new idea is not only in the battery's size, but also in its semiconductor（半导体). Kwon's battery uses a liquid semi conduct or rather than a solid semiconductor.
“The key part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure（晶体结构）of the solid semiconductor." Kwon said, “By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem."
Together with J. David Robertson, chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor, Kwon is working to build and test the battery. In the future, they hope to increase the battery's power, shrink its size and try with various other materials. Kwon said that battery could be thinner than the thickness of human hair.
1. Which of the following is true of Jae Kwon?| A．He teaches chemistry at MU. |
| B．He developed a chemical battery. |
| C．He is working on a nuclear energy source. |
| D．He made a breakthrough in computer engineering. |
| A．to show chemical batteries are widely applied. |
| B．to introduce nuclear batteries can be safely used. |
| C．to describe a nuclcar powered system |
| D．to introduce various energy sources. |
| A．get rid of the radioactive waste | B．test the power of nuclear batteries |
| C．decrease the size of nuclear batteries | D．reduce the damage to lattice structure |
| A．science news report | B．book review |
| C．newspaper ad | D．science fiction story |
【推荐1】Predictions for Automation by 2040
Experts have given their top predictions for what house technology will revolutionise home living in the near future.
House Robots
Predicted to start appearing in households in the 2030s, they will be able to load the dishwasher and put away pots and pans, fold the laundry, change sheets and move furniture.
Multi-Function Drones(无人机)
Tiny drones will be commonplace in the 2030s. Some will pick up small spots of dirt, clean surfaces, water plants and monitor security around the home. Some will shine an infrared beam(红外光束)at the room's occupants to warm them as they move around the house.
AI Butlers(人工智能管家)
They are best imagined as extremely advanced versions of Siri or Alexa. They will be able to take control of all rountine life administrator like paying bills, managing subscriptions, doing your shopping and constantly monitoring ways to save you time and money.
Reverse Microwave
It is designed to cool things down in seconds so wines and beers can be chilled in seconds rather than hours.
Washing Balls
A tennis-ball sized ultrasonic(超声的)device that uses ultrasound(超声)to clean. It will be placed inside a pile or bucket of clothing to clean clothes without the need for a bulky(庞大的)washing machine.
Super Smart Fridges
They will learn what you eat, record when stocks are low, and even recommend recipes.
1. Which is NOT needed with multi- function drones?| A．Broom. | B．Computer. | C．Fridge. | D．Washing machine. |
| A．Backward. | B．Opposite. | C．Multifunctional. | D．Changeable. |
| A．They can record what they have. | B．They will be environmentally friendly. |
| C．They will learn to cook to people's taste. | D．They can offer people instructions for preparing dishes. |
【推荐2】Fancy a holiday to the moon? Sounds crazy? Not really. A Japanese company has been working on how to organize holidays to the moon for several years now.
Trying to make the holiday possible will not be an easy task, and the Japanese company plans to make it in stages.
The next stage is to build a big hotel orbiting 500 km above the earth. The hotel will orbit the earth once every four or five hours, which will offer visitors some fascinating views of the earth.
The final stage in the plan is the construction of a hotel on the surface of the moon itself. As solar energy would be used to provide power, it would be important to build the hotel near one of the poles of the moon in order to gather as much solar energy as possible.
So perhaps in a few years you might be enjoying yourselves on the moon.
| A．Next, the hotel will have a wide range of sporting activities. |
| B．Tourists who want to travel into space can stay at a big hotel. |
| C．The first thing to do is to organize trips around the earth for a few hours. |
| D．There would probably be holidays to a moon hotel within the next ten years. |
| E．There is plenty of sand, but the big problem will come with producing water. |
| F．This part of the development plan does not seem to be too difficult to carry out. |
| G．This is because a lunar day, which is 14 earth days long, is followed by 14 days of darkness. |
【推荐3】Is there anybody out there? For centuries humans have wondered although the ways in which we have gone about this have varied. As we have gained a greater understanding of the universe, our searches have taken on more concrete(具体的) forms. Questions about aliens(外星人) have become a subject for science rather than science fiction.
Now new cooperation between the Very Large Array (VLA) observatory in New Mexico and the SETI Institute in California means that our curiosity about whether aliens exist can be closer than ever before to being satisfied. Data from the VLA’S 28 radio telescopes, used to scan a vast area of sky, will be fed through a special supercomputer that will search for distant signals.
How likely it is that a signal will be found, and what this might mean, are hard questions to answer. SETI’s existing projects have not discovered any signals from other planets so far. But recent discoveries in space and Earth sciences have provided some encouragement for those who are enthusiastic about the possibility, however remote, of detecting other civilizations.
Once it was thought that our solar system could be unique. Since the discovery of the first exoplanet (a planet beyond the solar system) in the 1990s, thousands more have been located. Around one in five stars is now thought to have a planet in their orbit(运行轨道) in a so-called “habitable(适合居住的) zone”—that is, at a distance from the star where the temperature means that life is theoretically possible.
Are Earth’s 7.5 billion humans, along with billions of other animals and plants they share their home with, on their own in the universe? If there is another life form somewhere, could it be as intelligent as humans? Or could it threaten them? I think all of these need further exploration. As explorations of Mars continue, and a new set of observations from the James Webb Space Telescope are set to begin, our interest in the possibility of alien life appears as much as before.
1. Why does the VLA work with SETI?| A．To develop new radio telescopes | B．To find evidence of aliens’ existence |
| C．To build a special supercomputer | D．To search for distant signals |
| A．Life does indeed exist on exoplanets |
| B．New technologies are employed to find aliens |
| C．Some exoplanets may have habitable zones |
| D．Signals have been discovered from other planets |
| A．Uncertain | B．Positive | C．Unacceptable | D．Worried |
| A．Space: the unknown place | B．Finding aliens: possible or not? |
| C．Receiving signals: aliens appear again? | D．Exoplanets: home of aliens |
