When the conversation turns to clean, renewable energy, the talk almost always is about sun and wind. No one ever brings up another natural power source-snow. Unbelievable as it may sound, falling snow carries an electrical charge. Scientists have known this for decades, but until recently they couldn’t figure out how to turn it into electricity.
Two UCLA scientists have invented a device that uses silicone (硅胶) to catch the electrical charge from snow and create electricity. Their tool is small, thin and flexible, inexpensive, and needs no batteries. “We have a great source of energy ready to be collected,” said Maher El-Kady, a researcher in chemistry at UCLA and co-inventor of the device.“And we can do that using materials that are already produced in mass quantities.”
To be sure, their invention is still a “proof of concept” experiment for now, since its power output remains low. But the researchers believe its potential could be limitless. “There is room for development and further improvements by revisiting the device structure and operating method,” E-Kady said.
Snow builds up a charge on its surface because of the way water molecules (分子) order themselves as they turn into snowflakes, He said, “We thought,‘Why not bring another material with the opposite charge to get these electrons (电子) to create electricity?’ After trying a countless number of materials, we found that silicone produces more charge with snow than any other material.”
The scientists see numerous future uses. It could power a wearable tool that tracks the performance of cold-weather athletes. The device could also be included into solar panels, kicking in extra power during snowstorms.
They predicted that one of its most important applications will be its eventual use as in a miniaturized (微缩的)weather station that could monitor snow in real time, providing data about snowfall rate, accumulation, wind direction and speed. “Every time snow hits the surface of the device, it produces electricity,” El-Kady said.
“Technically, we made a weather station, but one that is self-powered,” he added. ”Unlike conventional weather stations that are huge in size and often rely on batteries for power, our device can work endlessly.”
1. Why does the author mention sun and wind in paragraph 1?| A．To make comparisons. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To support the argument. | D．To provide examples. |
| A．How to turn snow into electricity. |
| B．There is a lot of clean energy in nature. |
| C．Snow might be next clean energy source. |
| D．We should find other natural power sources. |
| A．The features of the device. | B．The applications of the device. |
| C．The limitations of the device. | D．The working principle of the device. |
| A．It is already in use. |
| B．It relies on battery for power. |
| C．It is small in size and self-powered. |
| D．It is similar to conventional weather stations. |
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【推荐1】Call it a mobility system or a wheelchair—it can be seen at the Tokyo airport moving on its own.It is helping with social distancing while fighting the spread of the coronavirus. It also helps older passengers and those who otherwise need assistance walking the last few steps to the boarding gate.
The mobility system seats one person and runs on its own without hitting anything. It has a pre-programmed path of about 600 meters at Tokyo's Haneda International Airport. It was shown on Monday by WHILL, the company behind the technology.
WHILL Chief Executive Satoshi Sugie said robotics and self-driving technology reduce the need for a human at the wheel. They are good for these times of "living with" coronavirus. The ride lasts several minutes. It travels from the security area to the boarding gate at a speed of 3.5 kilometers per hour. But many people hope the technology can help in other places, such as hospitals or parks. The technology uses sensors and cameras to see a clear path and avoid hitting those walking toward it. It could also help Japan free up laborers. Japan, like many other nations, suffers from a labor shortage. The technology could free a worker to do another job.
Tests have been carried out at several airports since last year, including John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The company hopes to put it in airports around the world.
The person on the machine can start or stop it through a simple controller .It runs on batteries and is programmed to return to where it started when its passenger gets off Anyone needing help walking long distances can use it at Terminal One at Haneda airport. It is called the "last-mile mobility, says WHILL.
1. What do we know about the mobility system?| A．It can seat more than one person. | B．It runs with the assistance of a controller. |
| C．It helps older passengers to the boarding gate. | D．It has a flexible path of about 600 meters. |
| A．Humans at the wheel. | B．The needs for human beings. |
| C．These times of "living with" coronavirus. | D．Robotics and self-driving technology. |
| A．Sensors and cameras. | B．The speed of the machine. |
| C．The path of the ride. | D．The distance of the ride. |
| A．The system runs completely on its own. |
| B．The system has been put into use in the US. |
| C．WHILL will continue to test the system in airports worldwide. |
| D．The system is controlled by a passenger to return to the start. |
【推荐2】Reading people’s minds seems to be a superpower that only exists in movies. But scientists have now made it possible to translate people’s brain waves!
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco developed a new device. It can turn brain waves into words on a screen in front of the user. In the study, they tested it with a paralyzed (瘫痪的) man. “To our knowledge, this is the first successful demonstration (演示) of direct decoding (解码) of full words from the brain of someone who is paralyzed and cannot speak,” said Edward Chang, the senior author of the study. Each year, thousands of people lose the ability to speak due to accidents or diseases. With up to 93 percent accuracy, the new device shows “strong promise” to let these people fully communicate in the future.
One problem with such mind-reading machines, however, is that they have to put electrodes (电极) into people’s brains. It’s inconvenient and has health risks. But scientists from the University of Texas, US, have taken steps to change this. They tried to translate people’s thoughts without even touching their heads, reported Live Science.
The new brain scanning technique is called FMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging. It’s a safer way of “reading” brain activity. Active brain cells have more oxygen. By tracking this, scientists can translate brain activity.
The team asked participants to listen to 16 hours of radio shows while scanning their brains. Then they used a computer algorithm (算法) to create a story based on the FMRI recording. It matched the radio shows pretty well.
In other tests, the algorithm could basically explain the story of a silent movie that the participants watched. It could even retell a story that the participants imagined in their heads. Although it’s not a word-for-word translation, the technique provides many possibilities.
1. Why did the researchers at the University of California think their test is a success?| A．They could cure the patient. | B．They could make the patient speak again. |
| C．They could create a story. | D．They could read the patient’s mind. |
| A．Inconvenience. | B．Mind-reading. | C．Algorithm. | D．Accuracy. |
| A．Let the patients listen to a radio. | B．Made the patient recall a movie. |
| C．Used an algorithm to explain the minds. | D．Told the patient’s experience. |
| A．A Film About Reading Minds | B．Reading Minds in Medical Science |
| C．Developing A New Minds-Reading Way | D．Saving One’s Life by Using a New Machine |
【推荐3】The dodo, a Mauritian bird last seen in the 17th century, will be brought back to a semblance (外观) of life if attempts by a gene-editing company are successful. Gene-editing techniques now exist that allow scientists to extract the dodo genome (基因组) that they believe they can then effectively recreate within the body of a living relative.
The scientists in question said their work, beyond providing an insight into the extinct dodo’s existence, could help inform the conservation of rare species that are not yet extinct. However, there is a fierce debate among biologists over whether this sort of research should be pursued.
Beth Shapiro, the lead paleo-geneticist (古遗传学家) at Colossal, told the Guardian she tried to persuade a museum to let her extract DNA from a preserved dodo exhibited there. She said there were hundreds of dodos in collections around the world, so it had been possible to sequence the dead bird’s genome. But she warned that the revived dodo could never replace what has been made extinct. “It would be crazy to think the solution to the world’s biodiversity crisis was to bring back a proxy.” she said.
Ben Lamm, the chief executive of the company, said they were raising a further 150 million dollars to pursue the research on the dodo. He pointed out that it could assist conservation efforts for many other threatened species around the world, as it would develop techniques that could allow scientists to detect and preserve key features in those existing species that could help them adapt in a changing climate.
Prof. Ewan Birney from European Molecular Biology Laboratory, who was not involved with Colossal’s work, said it would be “very, very challenging” to recreate the dodo genome. He added, “I’ve no idea whether the project will work as they claim, but the question is not just ‘can you do this’, but ‘should you do it?’ … I’m not sure what purpose it serves, and whether this is really the best distribution of resources. We should be saving the species that we have before they go extinct.”
1. What can we learn about dodo from the text?| A．It is a bird that is only unique to Mauritius. |
| B．The research on it has raised conflicting opinions. |
| C．It has been successfully brought back to life. |
| D．It could be recreated within the remains of a relative. |
| A．fake | B．creature | C．model | D．replacement |
| A．Critical | B．Indifferent | C．Supportive | D．Conservative |
| A．Pros and Cons of Reviving Dodo |
| B．Gene-editing Techniques in Effect |
| C．Scientists Trying Hard to Recreate Dodo |
| D．A Vain Attempt to Bring Dodo Back to Life |
【推荐1】Most of us relate creativity to our concept of self, Either we’re “creative” or we aren’t, without much of a middle ground. “I’m just not a creative person!” a frustrated student might say in art class, while another might blame her talent at painting for her difficulties in math, giving a comment such as, “I’m very right-brained.”
Dr. Pillay, a tech entrepreneur and an assistant professor at Harvard University, has been challenging these ideas. He believes that the key to unlocking your creative potential is to ignore the traditional advice that urges you to “believe in yourself. “ In fact, you should do the opposite: Believe you are someone else.
Dr. Pillay points to a 2016 study examining the impact of stereotypes (固有印象) on one’s behavior; The authors, educational psychologists Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar, divided their college student subjects into three groups, instructing the members of one to think of themselves as “romantic poets” and the members of another to imagine they were “serious librarians” (the third group was the control). The researchers then presented all the participants with ten ordinary objects, including a fork, a carrot, and a pair of pants, and asked them to come up with as many different uses as possible for each one. Those who were asked to imagine themselves as romantic poets came up with the widest range of ideas, whereas those in the serious-librarian group had the fewest. Meanwhile, the researchers found only small differences in students’ creativity levels across academic majors.
These results suggest that creativity is not a fixed individual characteristic but a “malleable product, as long as he or she feels like a creative person. Dr. Pillay argues that, besides identifying yourself as creative, taking the bold, creative step of imagining you are somebody else is even more powerful. So, wish you were more creative? Just pretend!
1. According to the passage, who is more likely to unlock his creative potential?| A．An art major who always believes in himself. |
| B．A math major who has excellent academic performance. |
| C．A physics major who likes to imagine himself as a poet. |
| D．A history major who works as a librarian on weekends. |
| A．The creativity of the college students. |
| B．The stereotypes of the college students. |
| C．The impact of stereotypes on one’s behavior. |
| D．The influence of creativity on one’s behavior. |
| A．Settled. | B．Continuous. | C．Predicable. | D．Changeable. |
| A．there is no doubt that we are either creative or not. |
| B．a student who doesn’t do well in art class is not creative. |
| C．right brain determines whether a person is creative or not. |
| D．if we pretend to be creative, then we might be really creative. |
【推荐2】A group of planners, scientists and engineers in charge of China’s Chang’e 5 robotic lunar mission have received the highest team award from the International Academy of Astronautics. At the academy’s annual conference on Sunday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the Chinese team was awarded the 2023 Laurels for Team Achievement Award.
Hu Hao, chief designer of the Chang’e 5 mission and a senior planner at the China National Space Administration, said at the ceremony that he hopes more scientists and engineers from the international space community could take part in China’s lunar exploration projects. He also added that the samples retrieved (回收) by the Chang’e 5 probe will soon be open to foreign researchers.
One of the world’s most notable space activities in 2020, the Chang’e 5 robotic mission was launched in November 2020. It was China’s first lunar sample-returning mission and one of its most sophisticated and challenging space attempts. The landmark mission returned 1,731 grams of rocks and soil back to Earth on Dee 17, 2020, presenting the first lunar substances to humans since the Apollo era.
On the certificate awarded to the Chinese team, the academy wrote that during the 23-day mission, the Chang’e-5 team successfully completed the complicated mission which included a rocket launch, lunar-Earth transfer, lunar sampling, lunar surface takeoff, rendezvous and docking, sample transfer, skip re-entry and many other processes, and obtained two types of lunar samples. It noted the Chinese team has made outstanding contributions to mankind’s lunar and deep-space exploration.
1. Where is the text most probably taken from?| A．An advertisement of a robotic lunar company. |
| B．A research on Chinese lunar exploration. |
| C．A news report about an international awarding ceremony. |
| D．A review of the International Academy of Astronautics. |
| A．China encourages cooperation and sharing in exploring the moon. |
| B．China has made a difference to international space community. |
| C．China National Space Administration will soon be open to the world. |
| D．Chang’e 5 probe will soon continue its mission. |
| A．It marks the world’s first lunar sample-returning mission. |
| B．It contains various missions except for sample transfer. |
| C．It was launched on December 2020, |
| D．It’s a complex space exploration. |
| A．Hu Hao: A Pioneer in Chinese Lunar exploration |
| B．Amazing Lunar Adventures: A Fairy Tale Has Come True |
| C．Challenging Ways to Returning the First Lunar Sample |
| D．The Impact of International Academy of Astronautics |
【推荐3】ChatGPT, designed by OpenAI to carry on conversations just like humans, has become a viral excitement. The AI-powered tool went from zero to a million users in just five days! Its ability to provide in-depth answers to user questions has even drawn the attention of distinguished technology companies.
The intelligent robot understands what the user says or types and then responds in a way that makes sense. Its vast body of knowledge has been gathered from the Internet and archived books. It is further trained by humans and can process the whole Internet and all of the information it contains for you to answer your question. This makes ChatGPT a useful tool for researching almost any topic.
ChatGPT cannot think on its own. It depends on the information that it has been trained on. As a result, the AI tool works well for things that have accurate data available. However, when unsure, ChatGPT can get creative and flow out incorrect responses. Therefore, OpenAI cautions users to check the information no matter how logical it sounds. Also, ChatGPT has only been trained with information till 2021. Hence, it cannot be relied upon for anything that happened after that.
Experts believe ChatGPT has limitless potential to solve real-world problems. It can translate long texts into different languages, create content on almost any topic, and even summarize books.
However, ChatGPT has received mixed reactions from educators. Some believe it could serve as a valuable tool to help build literacy skills in the classroom. It could also be used to teach students difficult science or math concepts. But other educators think ChatGPT will encourage students to cheat. They fear this will prevent them from building critical thinking and problem-solving skills. As a result, many districts are starting to ban its use in schools.
1. What makes ChatGPT attractive to technology companies?| A．It has artificial intelligence. |
| B．It has the largest number of users. |
| C．It can engage in meaningful conversations. |
| D．It can answer all of the users’ questions. |
| A．Its accurate information. | B．Its availability of up-to-date data. |
| C．Its ability to process information. | D．Its vast body of questions. |
| A．ChatGPT lacks creativity. |
| B．ChatGPT is unable to think itself. |
| C．ChatGPT offers illogical information. |
| D．ChatGPT is not properly trained. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Disapproving. |
| C．Intolerant. | D．Objective. |
