A Japanese start-up called Ashirase is stepping into the global market with a new navigation (导航) assistance product intended to help people with low vision.
Its new product will feature flexible vibrating (震动) bases around each foot and are put into each shoe, and a small pack that can be removed for charging (充电). Once fitted, the vibrating parts are set along the sensitive nerves on the foot and can send coded walking instructions to the user.
Its present form navigates a route that comes from a smartphone app. It can help clear up distractions by freeing up the attention that is normally needed to either listen to voice directions or check the phone. Visual-damaged users can use their hearing to listen to traffic sounds and signals, like warning beeps at crossings or sidewalks, and use their hands to carry walking sticks or other belongings.
The device is paired with an app through a Bluetooth connection. The app uses information from Google Maps or similar vendors to draw up a walking route to the destination. Based on the destination and how the user is walking, it will send signals to the device that will cause a vibration on the foot.
The device will vibrate at a regular frequency at the front of the foot to let the users know they’re on the right track and should keep going straight. It will speed up the vibrations once the user is approaching a turn and needs to stop, and it will vibrate in either the left or right shoe to signal the direction the user needs to turn.
Ashirase’s new tech is waterproof and washable. It can be charged at the end of the week to power through seven days of walking, accounting for three active hours each day. And it can be fitted in two types of shoes: sneakers and leather lace-up shoes.
1. Who can benefit most from this device?| A．Deaf people. | B．Blind people. | C．Normal people. | D．Poor people. |
| A．A computer. | B．Nothing else. | C．A mobile phone. | D．Both A and C. |
| A．By how often the device vibrates. | B．By the sound sent by the device. |
| C．By the signals from their mobile phones. | D．By how long the device vibrates. |
| A．The device can be used for 21 hours a week. |
| B．The device can’t be washed or charged. |
| C．The device can only be fitted into sneakers. |
| D．People wearing the device can’t hear traffic warnings. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】People often take the ability to communicate for granted, but when you grow up with a sibling who is nonverbal, it changes the way you look at the world.
Archer Calder is a 16-year-old high school student from Utah. His sister is 14-year-old Della, who has a rare genetic condition called Bainbridge-Ropers syndrome. Even though Della isn’t able to speak, she and her brother are very close. Last year, Archer was searching online for an app that might help Della express her needs, wants, likes, and dislikes.
However, he found that the available apps were too expensive, and didn’t offer everything he was looking for. Since Archer has always loved coding and computer programming, he decided to make his own app. Apart from that, Archer was determined to make his app better than the rest, completely open source, and free. That’s how Freespeech was born.
Archer said he decided to help his sister communicate because he wanted to hear her thoughts, but he also had a deeper reason. Growing up, he had a stutter (口吃) that kept him from expressing himself. It took him four years of speech therapy to overcome the difficulty, and the feeling of not being able to get his words out stuck with him.
Freespeech refers to the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) that helps people communicate by pressing buttons that represent words. Users like Della can make sentences by pressing multiple buttons in a sequence. It opens up a whole new world of communication for people who are nonverbal. Now Della can communicate like anybody else, through the iPad.
Archer first put it on TikTok, and the response was so positive that he continued sharing it on GitHub, where experienced programmers helped beef it up. Archer says even if Freespeech only helps one person, his sister, all the time and the put in was worth it.
1. What do we know about Della?| A．She gets along well with Arch. | B．She suffers greatly from blindness. |
| C．She quits school because of disability. | D．She shows deep love for computer science. |
| A．Interesting. | B．Beneficial. | C．Affordable. | D．Disappointing. |
| A．His unpleasant early experience. | B．His high expectation of success. |
| C．His willingness to help his sister. | D．His decision to develop his own app. |
| A．Make profits. | B．Improve it. | C．Make use of it. | D．Give it likes. |
【推荐2】Over the past few months, I’ve been invited to speak with well-known writers, musicians and film producers regarding my recent book, Extraterrestrial. Prior to these conversations, I was on the receiving (and admiring) end of their artistic work, but now they were curious about my own research as a scientist. The reverse led me to recognize the similarities between innovation in the arts and the sciences.
In sciences and arts alike, creativity appears magically as an unpredictable fountain of inspiration from the subconscious (潜意识). Its unexpected content breaks routines within traditional thinking. It delivers something new that is distinct from common practices, often taking people out of their comfort zone because it is ahead of its time. As a result, many innovators are laughed at and denied the recognition they deserve when they need it the most.
There are many examples of such circumstances. In 1933 Fritz Zwicky inferred the existence of “dark matter”, but it took four decades for this concept to gain recognition within the astronomy community. Vincent van Gogh was considered a madman and a failure throughout his life. Today, his paintings are among the most expensive ever sold, though.
Typically, life offers two ways of acquiring objects. One is by collecting available items, and the other is by creating things that never existed before. Whereas most items on the shelves of supermarkets are mass-produced, products that are newly created by artists or scientists are originally unique. Just like aging wine, a product of creative work acquires quality over time. It is colored by the response of the audience as well as by imitations. The initial circumstances are a reminder of an admirable baby. It is fascinating for a scientist or an artist to watch the interaction of their creation with the world, just as it is for parents to watch their children.
Creativity in arts and sciences establishes a backdrop for human existence, as the content it invents gives pleasure and meaning to our lives. The human act of creation is an infinite-sum game, from which all of us benefit. And we can all participate in the creative process.
1. Which can best replace the underlined word “reverse” in paragraph 1?| A．Priority. | B．Assumption. | C．Shift. | D．Preference. |
| A．It tends to be forecastable. | B．It mirrors common beliefs. |
| C．It usually leads the times. | D．It enjoys instant acceptance. |
| A．Creative works withstand the test of time. |
| B．Mass-produced items are preferable. |
| C．Old wine can’t be put into new bottles. |
| D．Inventiveness starts from childhood. |
| A．To clarify a concept. | B．To launch an appeal. |
| C．To offer an entertainment. | D．To advocate a lifestyle. |
【推荐3】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 500000 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 24separate 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 (发放) 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 (输入) 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 (心脏病学) at Imperial College London, said, “Cardioskin could be an important development for cardiologists.”
1. What is the main idea of Paragraph 3?| 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 |
Parents and kids today dress alike, listen to the same music, and are friends. Is this a good thing? Sometimes, when Mr. Ballmer and his 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, listen to rock music together and talk about interests both enjoy, such as pop culture, he remembers his more distant relationship with his parents when he was a teenager.
“I would never have said to my mom, ‘Hey, the new Weezer album is really great. How do you like it?’ ” says Ballmer. “There was just a complete gap in taste.”
Music was not the only gulf. From clothing and hairstyles to activities and expectations, earlier generations of parents and children often appeared to move in separate orbits.
Today, the generation gap has not disappeared, but it is getting narrow in many families. Conversations on subjects such as sex and drugs would not have taken place a generation ago. Now they are comfortable and common. And parent-child activities, from shopping to sports, involve a feeling of trust and friendship that can continue into adulthood.
No wonder greeting cards today carry the message, “To my mother, my best friend.”
But family experts warn that the new equality can also result in less respect for parents. “There’s still a lot of strictness and authority on the part of parents out there, but there is a change happening,” says Kerrie, a psychology professor at Lebanon Valley College. “In the middle of that change, there is a lot of confusion among parents.”
Family researchers offer a variety of reasons for these evolving roles and attitudes. They see the 1960s as a turning point. Great cultural changes led to more open communication and a more democratic process that encourages everyone to have a say.
“My parents were on the ‘before’ side of that change, but today’s parents, the 40-year-olds, were on the ‘after’ side,” explains Mr. Ballmer. “It’s not something easily accomplished by parents these days, because life is more difficult to understand or deal with, but sharing interests does make it more fun to be a parent now.”
1. Which of the following shows that the generation gap is disappearing?
| A．Parents help their children develop interests in more activities. |
| B．Parents put more trust in their children’s abilities. |
| C．Parents and children talk more about sex and drugs. |
| D．Parents share more interests with their children. |
| A．more confusion among parents |
| B．new equality between parents and children |
| C．1ess respect for parents from children |
| D．more strictness and authority on the part of parents |
| A．follow the trend of the change | B．can set a limit to the change |
| C．fail to take the change seriously | D．have little difficulty adjusting to the change |
| A．describe the difficulties today’s parents have met with |
| B．discuss the development of the parent—child relationship |
| C．suggest the ways to handle the parent—child relationship |
| D．compare today’s parent—child relationship with that in the past |
【推荐2】A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre showed that a mere 16% of Americans think that a four-year degree course prepares students very well for a high-paying job in the modern economy. But technology also seems to be complicating the picture.
A paper published by a trio (三人小组) of Canadian economists, Paul Beaudry, David Green and Benjamin Sand, questions optimistic assumptions about demand for non-routine work and shows that since 2000 the share of employment accounted for by high-skilled jobs in America has been falling. This analysis supports the view that technology has come as a blow to employment. Skilled and unskilled workers alike are in trouble. Those with a better education are still more likely to find work, but there is now a fair chance that it will be unenjoyable. Those who never made it to college face being squeezed out of the workforce altogether. This is the argument of the techno-pessimists.
There is another, less pessimistic possibility. James Bessen, an economist at Boston University, finds that since 1980 employment has been growing faster in occupations that use computers than in those that do not. Partial automation can actually increase demand by reducing costs. But even though technology may not destroy jobs in all, it does force change upon many people.
In many occupations it has become essential to acquire new skills as established ones become out-of-date. Burning Glass Technologies, a Boston-based startup that analyses labor markets by obtaining data from online job advertisements, finds that the biggest demand is for new combinations of skills—what its boss, Matt Sigelman, calls “hybrid jobs”. The composition of new jobs is also changing rapidly.
A college degree at the start of a working career does not answer the need for the continuous acquisition of new skills, especially as career spans (持续时间) are lengthening. Vocational training is good at giving people job-specific skills, but those, too, will need to be updated over and over again during a career lasting decades. Vocational training has a role, but training someone early to do one thing all their lives is not the answer to lifelong learning.
Add all of this up, and it becomes clear that times have got tougher for workers of all kinds. A college degree is still a prerequisite (必备条件) for many jobs, but employers often do not trust it enough to hire workers just on the strength of that, without experience. In many occupations workers on company payrolls face the prospect that their existing skills will become outdated, yet it is often not obvious how they can gain new ones.
1. We can learn from the paper conducted by the Canadian economists that ____________.| A．employment has been shaken by technology |
| B．college degree is a necessity in career success |
| C．skilled workers are no longer required in most American industries |
| D．techno-pessimism paves the way for future technology development |
| A．increased demand can bring about cost reduction |
| B．progressive automation is beneficial to companies |
| C．technology advancement has a positive impact on most people |
| D．computer has always been an essential factor in employment |
| A．online job advertisements require a precise data analysis |
| B．acquisition of new skills is essential in current job market |
| C．the composition of new jobs is shaped by technology |
| D．Matt Sigelman predicts a bright future of job market |
| A．Lifelong Learning: an Economic Priority |
| B．Technology Revolution: the Way to Success |
| C．College Degree: a Guarantee for Career Change |
| D．Vocational Training: a Blessing for Job Seekers |
【推荐3】The topic of China’s “slash youth” has fueled heated debate on social media recently, drawing attention to the diverse pursuits of the younger generation.
The slash youth, which could also be called slashers or slash-generation means those who refuse to be defined or bound by just one personal identity. They are keen to present themselves as multiple and sometimes distinct identities, such as a nurse and model, a teacher and stand-up comedian, and an engineer and band player. Rather than material comforts, they pursue meaningful achievements.
A study on “slash youth” published in the China Youth Research magazine analyzes the background of this phenomenon: with part of modern society’s structured organization and stability norms are broken, flexible labor markets and structural unemployment has emerged, eliminating the sense of job security of the young people in employment. Young people also face the dilemma of self-actualization, including the sense of powerlessness, lost sense of value and lack of self-identity in the profession, which forces them to re-find the meaning of work.
“The ‘slash life’ shows that our society is becoming more and more diversified and inclusive and it welcomes everyone’s self fulfillment,” said Shi Yanrong, an associate researcher from Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences. The researcher added that against the background that people have multiple interests and are willing to pay for these interests nowadays, the “slash life” of the youth would drive the growth of a new economy, just as animation culture affected the market.
1. Which is true about the slash youth?| A．Tending to pursue meaningful achievements. |
| B．Enjoying posting themselves on social media. |
| C．Adjusting themselves to challenges in life. |
| D．Refusing to undertake multiple careers. |
| A．The significance of flexible labor markets. |
| B．Reasons for the appearance of slash youth. |
| C．Young people’s interest in their profession. |
| D．Causes of losing power among the youth. |
| A．It can gain people’s independence. |
| B．It inspires young people’s creativity. |
| C．It can pick up an economic growth. |
| D．It enables young people to earn high. |
| A．To provide latest career guidance. |
| B．To introduce a social phenomenon. |
| C．To analyze a new cultural difference. |
| D．To highlight a unique life experience. |
