Two years ago, Kursat Ceylan was in New York to give a talk about disability rights. Blind since birth, the Turkish businessman was struggling to find his hotel, holding a cane (手杖) in one hand and pulling his luggage with the other while trying to get GPS directions from his phone.
"Not surprisingly, suddenly I hit a pole," he says. "It was a bit bloody."
The problem with a cane is that, while it can tell you what's on the ground, it doesn't with objects at the body or head level. It wasn't the first time Ceylan had run into something, injuring himself.
"I have no problem with my scars, which make me more handsome, I guess," Ceylan says, laughing. "But I don't need new ones".
With WeWalk, a new smart cane he invented, Ceylan hopes to help other blind people navigate their environments more easily. The cane uses an ultrasonic(超声波) sensor to find objects at body or head level and gives a warning vibration (振动). WeWalk users pair the cane with their smartphones and then use the canes' touchpad to access features like voice assistant or navigation. Before leaving home, they can plug their destinations into Google Maps and get spoken directions as they walk. In the future, Ceylan hopes to connect WeWalk with public transportation and ridesharing services.
Ceylan sees Wewalk as part of an attempt to help blind people achieve greater freedom of movement, which he believes will give them greater access to education and jobs. The canes are already having an impact on users, Ceylan says. He recently received an email from a teacher in Ireland who had become blind as an adult. He had been depressed and housebound. But since getting a WeWalk cane, the device has kept encouraging him to go out. He has became happier and more relaxed.
1. Why is a story about Kursat Ceylan given at the beginning of the text?| A．To tell people how he became blind. | B．To show why he invented WeWalk. |
| C．To indicate people's coldness to the blind. | D．To show he is positive and humorous. |
| A．Provide fast Internet access. | B．Start conversations with strangers. |
| C．Inform users what is around them. | D．Connect with ridesharing services. |
| A．By increasing their participation in social life. |
| B．By giving them freedom to do whatever they like. |
| C．By helping them to perform better academically. |
| D．By bringing them higher social status. |
| A．A helpful technology for the blind | B．A blind man's secret to success |
| C．Universal concern about blind people | D．Increasing demand for smart canes |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】A T-shirt that constantly monitors the heart's activity and detects abnormalities could help protect people against stroke. The T-shirt, which can be washed up to 35 times before it needs replacing, has been developed to improve the detection of dangerous heart conditions like atrial fibrillation（心房颤动）,which causes an irregular heart rhythm and raises the risk of stroke.
At least one million people in Britain are known to have this condition; however, it's estimated that at least another 50（）, 000 have it but haven't yet been diagnosed because they have no obvious symptoms. Some will have symptoms such as chest pain, dizziness and fatigue； but a large number of people have no idea they're ill until they suffer a stroke.
Detecting atrial fibrillation involves carrying out an ECG（心电图）.Conventional ECGs are done in a hospital and involve highly trained teams of staff attaching up to 24 separate electrodes（电 极）to different parts of the body to measure electrical signals. But most patients experience abnormal rhythms only intermittently（间歇地）. This means the chance of picking them up during a short hospital check is slim.
Doctors sometimes issue patients with a device called a Holter monitor to wear under their clothes to try to pick up cardiac(心脏的）problems. This is an electronic box which clips onto your waistband and is connected to a series of electrodes worn on the upper part of your body. But the box itself is quite bulky, hard to hide beneath clothing and involves a dozen or more wires being attached to the patient's chest.
The Cardioskin T-shirt, which is made from cotton, could be a much more convenient alternative and can be worn 24 hours a day—meaning it is more likely to pick up any abnormal rhythms in the patients heart. It has 15 tiny electrodes woven into the material which are strategically placed around the chest area to track the electrical signals from the heart as they travel across the main part of your body.
The electrodes are powered by a battery which can be removed easily when you need to wash the T-shirt and feed results to a microchip which then sends them out wirelessly to an app. This converts（转换）the data into an easy-to-read chart showing if the heart rate is abnormal. The results are shared with the patient's doctor so they can check the patient's heart without having to call them into the hospital.
Martin Cowie, a professor of cardiology at Imperial College London, said, "Cardioskin could be an important development for cardiologists.”
1. How many British people are having dangerous heart conditions according to the text?| A．Less than 0.5 million. | B．Less than 1 million, |
| C．At least 1.5 million. | D．At least 2 million. |
| A．The difficulty in detecting atrial fibrillation. |
| B．The benefit of detecting atrial fibrillation. |
| C．The process of detecting atrial fibrillation. |
| D．The future of detecting atrial fibrillation. |
| A．To show the advantage of a Cardioskin T-shirt over it. |
| B．To introduce a way to check the patient’s heart. |
| C．To encourage people to care about their health. |
| D．To explain why doctors like using the device. |
| A．It has a battery that can be charged easily and quickly. |
| B．It can be worn a month without being washed. |
| C．It has electrodes placed all over the T-shirt. |
| D．It can make the process of diagnosis timely and convenient. |
| A．New ECG that could be an important development for doctors. |
| B．Hi-tech T-shirt that could help doctors spot risk of stroke. |
| C．Holter monitor that could track patients' heart problems. |
| D．Cardioskin T-shirt that could prevent patients from diseases. |
【推荐2】Since the 1970s, scientists have been searching for ways to link the brain with computers. Brain Computer Interface (BCD) technology could help people with disabilities send commands to machines.
Recently, two researchers, Jose Millan and Michele Tavella from the Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne, Switzerland, showed a small robotic wheelchair directed by a person's thoughts.
In the laboratory, Tavella operated the wheelchair just by thinking about moving his left or right hand. He could even talk as he watched the vehicle and guided it with his thoughts.
"Our brain has billions of nerve cells. These send signals through the spinal cord(脊髓) to the muscles to give us the ability to move. But spinal cord injuries or other conditions can prevent these weak electrical signals from reaching the muscles.” Tavella says. “Our system allows disabled people to communicate with external(外部的) world and also to control devices.”
The researchers designed a special cap for the user. This head cover picks up the signals from the scalp(头皮) and sends them to a computer. The computer interprets the signals and commands the motorized wheelchair. The wheelchair also has two cameras that identify objects in its path. They help the computer react to commands from the brain.
Prof. Millan, the team leader, says scientists keep improving the computer software that in-terprets brain signals and turns them into simple commands. “The practical possibilities that BCI technology offers to disabled people can be grouped in two categories: communication, and controlling devices. One example is this wheelchair.”
He says his team has set two goals. One is testing with real patients in order to prove that this is a technology they can benefit from. And the other is to guarantee that they can use the technology over long periods of time.
1. What is the function of Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology?| A．Helping the disabled to recover. | B．Controlling a person's thoughts. |
| C．Helping to update computer systems. | D．Linking the human brain with computers. |
| A．By using his mind. | B．By moving his hand. |
| C．By talking to the machine. | D．By controlling his muscles. |
| A．To make profits from them. | B．To make them live longer. |
| C．To prove the technology useful to them. | D．To learn about their physical condition. |
| A．Introduction of the BCI Research Center in Switzerland |
| B．New Findings About How the Human Brain Works |
| C．Robotic Vehicles Could Help to Cure Brain Injuries |
| D．BCI Could Mean More Freedom for the Disabled |
【推荐3】The different parts of a health care system have different focuses. A hospitals stroke（中风） unit monitors blood flow in the brain. The cardiac unit is interested in that same flow, but through and from the heart. Each collection of equipment and data is effective in its own field. Thus like the story of blind men feeling an elephant, modern health care offers many separate pictures of a patient, but rarely a useful united one.
On top of all this, the instruments that doctors use to monitor health are often expensive, as is the training required to use them. That combined cost is too high for the medical system to scan regularly for early signs of illness so patients are at risk of heart disease or a stroke.
An unusual research project called AlzEye, runby Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, in cooperation with University College London （UCL）may change this. It is attempting to use the eye as a window through which signals about the health of other organs could be discovered. The doctors in charge of it. Siegfried Wagner and Pearse Keane, are studying Moorfields database of eye scans, which offers a detailed picture of the health of the retina.（视网膜）.
The project will go a step further：With the information about other aspects of patients health collected from other hospitals around England doctors will be able to look for more accurate signs of disease through eye scans.
The Moorfields data set has lots of linked cases to work with---far more than any similar project. For instance, the UK Biobank, one of the world’s leading collections of medical data about individual people, contains 631 cases of a major cardiac adverse event”. The Moorfields data contain about 12, 000 such. The Biobank has data on about 1,500 stroke patients. Moorfields has 11900. For the disease on which the Moorfields project will focus to start with dementia, the data set holds 15100 cases. The only comparable study has 86.
Wagner and Keane are searching for patterns in the eye that show the appearance of disease elsewhere int he body. If such patterns could be recognized reliably, the potential influence would be huge.
1. What does the author mean by referring to "the story of blind men feeling an elephant” Paragraph 1?| A．The scanning process is complex. |
| B．Modern health care system has its limitations. |
| C．The data collected from the units is not effective. |
| D．Different health care units have many similarities. |
| A．By examining one's body organs thoroughly. |
| B．By helping doctors discover one's diseases of the eye. |
| C．By identifying one's state of health through eye scans. |
| D．By comparing the eye-scan data from different hospitals. |
| A．To criticize the repeating scanning process. |
| B．To show the abundant resources to study on. |
| C．To claim Moorfields's top place among London hospitals. |
| D．To explain the competition between Moorfields and the Biobank. |
| A．Eye scanning: a cure for diseases. |
| B．Huge breakthrough in scanning technology. |
| C．The importance of building eye scan database. |
| D．A picture of the eye---door to your health condition. |
【推荐1】If you were an exchanged student in New York City, one day your math teacher gave you following questions as your homework, please write down your answers.
Ⅰ.A company sold a product for α dollars in 1990. The price of the product would increase by 2.5% every year.
Ⅱ.A man needs to make 3 curtains. The cloth which is used to make curtains sells for $8.00 per meter and can be purchased only by the full（完整的） meter. The length of cloth required for each curtain is 1.6 meters.
Ⅲ.A pet store sells only dogs and cats. In March, the store sold twice as many dogs as cats. In April, the store sold twice the number of dogs that it sold in March, and three times the number of cats that it sold in March.
1. Which of the following expressions could be used to calculate the price of the product in the____ year 2000?| A．α × (25)10 | B．α × (0.25)10 |
| C．α × (1.25) 10 | D．α × (1.025)10 |
| A．$40.00 | B．$24.00 |
| C．$38.40 | D．$48.00 |
| A．80 | B．100 |
| C．120 | D．160 |
【推荐2】Born in France, but raised in Spain, linguistics and literature professor Juan José Ciruela Alferez from the University of Granada is passionate about Chinese literature and has been doing some research about it. With painstaking effort, his Spanish translation of a Chinese classic was published last year.
Ciruela said translating the novel was an interesting challenge. In recent years, many Chinese works have been introduced to Spain. However, as most of them had been translated first into English and then from that language into Spanish, much of the originality was lost. For this reason, when the Spanish publishing house Kailas contacted Ciruela to translate it directly from Chinese, he accepted the mission immediately, even if it presented difficulties like a heavy workload within a short time limit.
“I encountered various difficulties, especially at the beginning of the task,” said Ciruela in an interview. “This novel, in particular, needs a prior reading process in which the translator gets into the plot and the characters, since at first it is difficult to enter the world that the novel constantly raises. So I read the novel first in Chinese, paying attention to all those details and how all of that could be translated in a way that the Spanish readers would understand.
For Ciruela, the most important criterion when translating is fidelity (忠诚) to the original text. While it is true that one cannot always be strictly faithful, he believes translators should not be too far from original texts. For example, the translation of culturemes (expressions of culture in language)is quite complicated due to the cultural gap between Spanish and Chinese. Ciruela believes that these must always be appropriate to the specific function they perform within the text, in each specific case and moment.
1. What does the underlined phrase “that language” probably refer to?| A．Spanish. | B．English. | C．Chinese. | D．French. |
| A．His passion for Spanish literature. | B．His determination to popularize it. |
| C．The lack of its direct translation into Spanish. | D．The loss of diversity in Spanish translation. |
| A．Its barrier. | B．Its principle. | C．Its style. | D．Its meaning. |
| A．Meeting readers’ needs. | B．Targeting cultural phenomena. |
| C．Bridging the cultural gap. | D．Being loyal to the original text. |
【推荐3】When Thomas Panek lost his eyesight more than 25 years ago, the avid runner doubted he would ever pursue his lifelong passion again.
Indeed, although Panek had been crazy about running since high school, the idea of running blind seemed altogether too challenging. But he did manage to keep his dream alive—with help from human guides who assisted him on each run.
Even so, the real joy of the run—the thrill of independence that comes from conquering a course on your own terms—eluded(躲避) him. “When you’re tied to another person, it’s no longer your own race,” the 48-year-old said. “The independence isn’t quite there.”
Then Panek found a friend—indeed, man’s best friend—who would help him achieve that sense of purpose. He started running with a guide dog named Gus. Not only did Panek rediscover his love for running, but, along the way, he founded Guiding Eyes for the Blind, an organization dedicated to providing service dogs for the visually disabled.
On March 16, Gus glided across the finish line with his human at the New York City Half Marathon. At that moment, they both breezed into the history books. Panek, who finished the course in a little more than two hours and 20 minutes, became the first blind runner to complete the race led by dogs.
Brandishing their respective medals, Panek and Gus—who would retire after the race—shared a breathless embrace. “It’s a little emotional for me because he’s been there with me the whole time,” Panek said.
But Panek was quick to point out that it wasn’t just Gus who provided the wind beneath his running shoes. In all, three guide dogs helped him see his way to the finish line. Siblings Westley and Waffle picked up the early legs of the course, each running between five and eight kilometers of the 21-kilometer race.
With retirement looming, it would be the faithful yellow lab’s last race. But for Panek, the road ahead remains long and bright—not only for him, but for anyone with a disability who still hopes to run down a dream.
1. When did Thomas become blind?| A．When he was about 23. | B．When he was 25 years old. |
| C．When he was in high school. | D．When he was 48 years old. |
| A．Because he didn’t want to have another person with him. |
| B．Because he wanted to found Guiding Eyes for the Blind. |
| C．Because he wanted to help those with visual disability. |
| D．Because he wanted to enjoy the delight of running independently. |
| A．It was the first dog to lead a blind runner at the Half Marathon. |
| B．It ran the whole course of the New York City Half Marathon. |
| C．It ran about eight kilometers with Thomas Panek at the race. |
| D．It wouldn’t be working as a guide dog to Thomas Panek any more. |
| A．Independent and caring. | B．Passionate and persistent. |
| C．Crazy and emotional. | D．Kind and helpful. |
