Living robots can reproduce on their own in a dish. This is not a science-fiction movie, but the result of a new research. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US on Nov 29.
Xenobots, a type of tiny robot, were first created in 2020, using cells taken from the embryo of an African frog species. Under the right lab conditions, the cells formed small structures that could self-assemble, move in groups and react to their environment. Now, the researchers have found that xenobots can also self-replicate (自我复制), according to the journal of New Scientist.
But are they living organisms or robots? They are organisms because they are made of stem cells and can reproduce. And they are also robots because they can move on their own and perform physical labor, co-author Sam Kriegman told The Washington Post.
“People have thought for quite a long time that we’ve worked out all the ways that life can reproduce or replicate. But this is something that’s never been observed before,” co-author Douglas Blackiston, a senior scientist at Tufts University in the US, told Science Daily website.
The ability to replicate adds a new layer of potential utility to the robots. Kriegman told The Washington Post that while xenobots are not yet commercially useful, they have the potential to provide a number of services, from cleaning up microplastics in the ocean to safely delivering drugs to a specific spot in a person’s body.
However, the creation of xenobots comes with concerns. Some think more advanced future xenobots, especially ones that live longer and reproduce, could out-compete other species, according to The Conversation, an Australia news media.
The researchers think these risks are manageable. “If you change the amount of sodium in that water to be too high or too low, they’ll die,” Kriegman told The Washington Post. “If there’s a piece of copper in the dish, they’ll all die. It’s an extremely controllable and stoppable and safe system.”
1. What do we know about xenobots according to the passage?| A．They should be classified into frog species. |
| B．They can reproduce and replicate themselves. |
| C．They can adapt to the environment anywhere. |
| D．They were created based on science fiction movies. |
| A．Unexpected. | B．Predictable. |
| C．Doubted. | D．Unaccepted. |
| A．They are expected to replace other species. |
| B．They have been used widely commercially. |
| C．They will serve human beings more extensively. |
| D．They will further explore their own potential ability. |
| A．Worried. | B．Cautious. |
| C．Neutral. | D．Optimistic. |
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【推荐1】More than 140 sign languages are used today, primarily by deaf communities around the world. Like spoken languages, each sign language has its own grammar, vocabulary and other special features. For example, American Sign Language is unintelligible（无法了解的）to British Sign language. In fact, American Sign language has more in common with French Sign Language, largely because French educators played a key role in helping get deaf schools founded in the United States during the 19th century.
There haven’t been a lot of comparisons of sign languages. University of Texas, Austin linguist Justin Powers and his colleagues aim to address that information gap. In order to study the question of sign language evolution, they first collected a database of manual alphabets from dozens of different sign languages around the world. So a manual alpha-bet is kind of a subsystem within a sign language that is used to represent a written language. And there’s a hand shape that corresponds to each letter.
To uncover relationships between the alphabets% the researchers used the same methods that biologists use to figure out relationships between different species, based on their DNA. The methods grouped sign languages in this study into five main European lineages（谱系）. And those were Austrian origin, British origin, French origin, Spanish and Swedish. Power says manual alphabets from Austria, France and Spain could date back to one-handed manual alphabets from 16th- and 17th-century Spain. But each of those lineages evolved independently of each other.
The study also confirmed the French origins of American Sign Language and those of other countries, including Mexico, Brazil and the Netherlands. Surprisingly, the Austrian manual alphabet influenced sign languages as far away as Russia. But while this lineage has largely died out, remains of it live on in Icelandic Sign language today.
Power says future research comparing the vocabularies of different sign languages could provide even more clues about how they’ve changed over time. Understanding how sign languages evolve would tell us a lot about the way that language, in general, evolves.
1. What can we know about American Sign Language?| A．It was created by French educators. |
| B．It is less related to French Sign language. |
| C．It was further developed before the 19th century. |
| D．It has little in common with British Sign Language. |
| A．Every letter means a hand gesture. |
| B．It is used to replace the written language. |
| C．Every letter is the same as the normal alphabet. |
| D．It is used together with the shape of mouth. |
| A．Worrying. | B．Astonishing. |
| C．Moving. | D．Disappointing. |
| A．The changes of different sign languages. |
| B．The evolution of different sign languages. |
| C．The meaning of researching sign languages. |
| D．The vocabulary of different sign languages. |
【推荐2】Fact or Fiction?
Non-fiction can be broken down into many categories. One category is literary non-fiction, which is still based in fact but employs some of the storytelling elements that fiction uses. Literary non-fiction includes a type of autobiography(自传) called memoir. Memoir most often focuses on a certain period of the author’s life. It is, by definition, rooted in truth. Still, people sometimes question whether memoir should be categorized as non-fiction at all.
As non-fiction, memoir is intended to be factual. Is this really the case, though, considering memoir relies on human memory? One classic study, led by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, showed how easily an interviewer’s choice of wording can influence an eyewitness’s account of a traffic accident. It is therefore reasonable to wonder whether memoir should continue to be branded as non-fiction.
Certainly, human memory can be unreliable. However, a memoir author is undoubtedly writing about significant and impactful life events. Memories of such events are actually more reliable than others. Studies show that the more influential an event is, the more accurately people recall the details. As an emotionally charged event unfolds, the brain activity changes in a way that amplifies small details. This activity helps build a more precise and accurate memory.
Of course the brain is not a camera that can “save” any memory with perfect accuracy. But if memoir is questionable due to the imperfections of the human mind, then critics will have to tackle non-fiction more broadly. All writers are using their memories when they create, and moreover, they are relying on the memories of others. Journalists conduct interviews to tell a news story and history writers depend on the accuracy of accounts from long ago. Yet they all rightfully fall under the umbrella of non-fiction.
Some people may doubt memoir not because they mistrust human memory, but because they mistrust the author’s morality. Critics may suspect an author of making up events. However, there is no reason to be suspicious of memoir author’s intentions. Writing a factual memoir that appeals to readers has the potential to be profitable for the author, and there is no motivation for a memoir writer to knowingly change or beautify the truth.
Looking beyond the author’s own life events, memoir can inform readers about the world in the same way that other non-fiction can. Memoir has a way of relaying facts about anything from an occupation to brief fashion trends, all of it meaningful to the author.
1. The author introduces the topic in Paragraph 1 by _____ .| A．illustrating why it is important to talk about memoir |
| B．listing some interesting facts and features of memoir |
| C．defining key terms that are discussed later in the passage |
| D．making a comparison between autobiography and memoir |
| A．Collects. | B．Ignores. |
| C．Enlarges. | D．Absorbs. |
| A．critics argue that a news story by a journalist is fiction |
| B．a memoir author’s memory can be influenced by the interviewees |
| C．memoir can’t show readers facts about what an author experienced |
| D．emotional moments can cause the creation of more detailed memories |
| A．the most profitable memoirs are those shown to be the most factual |
| B．many authors are untrustworthy, although many memoirs are fact-based |
| C．memoir is rightfully categorized under the umbrella of literary non-fiction |
| D．memory is too unreliable for memoir to be considered a type of non-fiction |
【推荐3】Face blindness, a mystifying condition that can trick us into believing we recognize people we’ve never met or make us fail to recognize those we have, has been previously estimated to affect between 2 and 2.5 percent of people in the world.Now, a new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the VA Boston Healthcare System is providing fresh insights into the disorder, suggesting it may be more common than currently believed.
Published in February 2023 in Cortex, the study findings indicate that as many as one in 33 people may meet the criteria for face blindness, or prosopagnosia (面孔失认症).“This translates to more than 10 million Americans,” the research team said.
The study found similar face-matching performance between people diagnosed with prosopagnosia using stricter vs looser criteria, suggesting that diagnostic criteria should be expanded to be more inclusive. That could lead to new diagnoses among millions who may have the disorder but don’t realize it.
The study results are based on a web-based questionnaire and tests administered to 3,341 individuals.First, the researchers asked participants whether they experience difficulties recognizing faces in their everyday lives.Then they administered two objective tests to determine whether they had difficulties learning new faces or recognizing highly familiar famous faces.
The results showed that 31 individuals out of the 3,341 had major prosopagnosia, while 72 of the 3,341 had a milder form. The researchers also observed that there were no neatly divided separate groups of people with poor or good ability to recognize faces. Rather, the ability to recognize faces appeared to lie on a continuum (连续体).
Finally, the researchers compared face-matching scores among people with prosopagnosia diagnosed using different criteria and found that using stricter diagnostic cutoffs did not correspond with lower face-matching scores.
In the new study, the researchers provide diagnostic suggestions for identifying mild and major forms of prosopagnosia based on guidelines for major and mild neurocognitive disorders in the DSM5, the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
1. Which of the following indicates a person has face blindness?| A．Failing to identify his belongings. |
| B．Being able to recognize his friends. |
| C．Mistaking a stranger for an acquaintance. |
| D．Misunderstanding ones’ facial expressions. |
| A．Do you have trouble recognizing faces? |
| B．Do you know what face blindness means? |
| C．Do you know anybody with face blindness? |
| D．Do you experience difficulties in everyday life? |
| A．It came up based on the new study. |
| B．It has experienced four revisions. |
| C．It is only used to identify face blindness. |
| D．It participated in and funded the new study. |
| A．A fiction novel. | B．A fashion website. |
| C．A health brochure. | D．A science magazine. |
【推荐1】Electrical devices(仪器) could soon use power made by human energy. Scientists say they have developed an experimental device that produces electricity from the physical movement of a person walking. British scientist Max Donelan and other scientists in Canada and the United States developed the device.
The device connects to a person’s knee. As the person walks, the device captures energy each time the person slows down. To do this, the device helps with the slowing down movement of the leg. The movements of the walking person push parts of a small machine that produces electricity. Using the device, an adult walking quickly could produce thirteen watts of electricity in just a minute. Donelan says walking at that speed could produce enough power to operate a laptop computer for six minutes.
There are several possible uses for the device. Developers say it could help people who work in areas without electricity to operate small computers. The device could also be used in hospitals to operate heart pacemakers(起搏器). It could even be used to assist in the movement of robotic arms and legs.
The experimental version of the device weighs about one and a half kilograms, but it is too costly for most people to buy. But the researchers hope to make a lighter, less costly version. An improved version should be ready in one year.
The developers hope the device will one day help developing countries. Nearly twenty five percent of people around the world live without electric power.
A similar product was invented in 2005 by Larry Rome of the University of Pennsylvania. He created a bag carried on a person’s back that also produces power from walking.
The knee device does not produce as much electricity as the bag. But the bag requires the walker to carry a load of twenty to thirty kilograms.
1. The second paragraph mainly talks about .| A．who developed the device |
| B．how the device works |
| C．several possible uses for the devices |
| D．how much electricity the device can produce |
| A．produces power without adding more loads to the walker |
| B．can produce more power in a much shorter time |
| C．needs to be equipped with a battery |
| D．can help the walker walk faster |
| A．help housewives operate the washing machine |
| B．make it much easier for us to go online |
| C．produce more electricity than that invented by Larry Rome |
| D．be applied in medicine to operate heart pacemakers |
| A．First device powered by walking will soon be on the market |
| B．Advanced technology brings in a new way to operate heart pacemakers |
| C．Device gives new meaning to the idea of power walking |
| D．Human energy will become a main source of electricity |
【推荐2】The next time you fly, your drink cup might just look and taste a little bit different.
As we all know, air travel is not eco-friendly. In fact, each flight leaves a pretty big carbon footprint. According to the United Nations, emissions of carbon dioxide from airplanes is expected to have tripled by the year 2050. This is a big problem. In 2018 alone, over 900 million metric tons of emissions were created from air travel. While that issue is going to require a lot of attention, one airline is trying to find more immediate ways to reduce its own footprint, at least within the interior of its airplanes.
Air New Zealand is testing out an edible coffee cup aboard its flights. The cups are vanilla-flavored and leak-proof.
The cups are being produced by the New Zealand company Twiice. Currently, they are Twiice's only edible products, but the company says it expects to launch other edible items soon. According to its website, the coffee cups are made from wheat flour, sugar, egg and vanilla essence.
Air New Zealand currently uses eco-friendly cups on all of its flights. The edible cups may push its efforts to go green even further.
What are the passengers who've received their drinks in edible cups saying about them?
“The cups have been welcomed by our customers. We’ve also been using the cups as dessert bowls,” says Niki Chave, Air New Zealand's manager of customer experience.
The airline is also encouraging its customers to bring their own reusable bottles on flights. "It's great to see that more and more customers are bringing their own reusable drink bottles and are keeping cups on board,”says Air New Zealand. “Our cabin crew team is happy to fill these.”
1. What does the underlined word “edible” in Paragraph 3 most probably mean?| A．Eatable. | B．Beautiful. | C．Unbreakable. | D．Green. |
| A．A new way to use cups on flights. |
| B．A new way to make air travel eco-friendly. |
| C．Air New Zealand’s good service. |
| D．Air New Zealand’s popularity among travelers. |
| A．Food waste is the main reason of pollution from air travel. |
| B．Twiice will lose more money due to its environmental efforts. |
| C．More and more air travelers are willing to protect environment. |
| D．Twiice will ask its customers to bring their own drinks in the future. |
| A．Tourism Economy. | B．Food Industry. |
| C．Environmental Protection. | D．Exclusive Interview. |
【推荐3】Though not as mainstream as devices like smartphones and fitness trackers, more companies are now experimenting with the concept of connected garments. Among the pioneers is London-based CuteCircuit, which has been creating fashionable smart clothing since 2004. The company’s latest creation is the “Sound Shirt,” which allows deaf people to “feel” live music by transforming the tunes into touch sensations in real time.
The fashionable jacket achieves the incredible function using software that changes the music into data and wirelessly sends it to the 16-micro motors fitted inside the clothing’s fabric. The devices shake in sync (同步) to the intensity (强度) of the music being played, allowing the wearer to feel each instrument individually. The series of touch-like sensations across the wearer’s body enables them to feel the entire works, resulting in a fully amazing musical experience.
To ensure the shirt is comfortable, the designers chose to leave out wires and instead wove conductive textiles (纺织品) into the garment’s fabric. Francesca Rosella, co-founder and chief creative officer of CuteCircuit, explains, “There are no wires inside, so we’re only using smart fabrics — we have a combination of microelectronics and very thin, flexible and conductive fabrics. All these little electronic motors are connected with these conductive fabrics so that the garment is soft and stretchable.”
CuteCircuit, which has been testing the Sound Shirt for three years, expects to make it available to the general public shortly. Priced at $3,673 (3,000 pounds), the smart jacket will not be cheap. However, twin sisters Hermon and Heroda Berhane, who lost their hearing at a young age, believe the hi-tech garment is a worthwhile investment, especially for deaf people with a passion for dancing. “It’s almost like feeling the depth of the music,” says Hermon. “It just feels as though we can move along with it.” Heroda agrees, adding, “I think it could definitely change our lives.”
This is not CuteCircuit’s first groundbreaking smart garment. Over the years, the company has produced hundreds of shocking connected outfits. Among them is an interactive concert dress for American musical artist Nicole Scherzinger that displayed tweets from her fans. Also fun is the HugShirt which enables people to send hugs to loved ones who are not physically in the same area.
1. What is “sound shirt” meant for?| A．Children. | B．Students. |
| C．Deaf people. | D．Travelers. |
| A．working principle | B．powerful function |
| C．special materials | D．fashionable design |
| A．By using wires. |
| B．By using smart fabrics. |
| C．By using electronic motors. |
| D．By making it very thin. |
| A．To persuade us to learn from them. |
| B．To get the public to know them better. |
| C．To state the smart jacket is affordable. |
| D．To prove the smart jacket enjoys promising future. |
| A．add some background information |
| B．introduce the company’s new products |
| C．praise the contributions the company has made |
| D．appeal to the public to buy the company’s products |
【推荐1】It’s late at night, the weather is bad and you’re hungry. Your favorite restaurant is less than a mile away, but you don’t want to leave the house, and you don’t want to pay a $5 delivery fee. So, what do you do? Back in the old days, you would have braved the weather. But those days are coming to an end, at least in Washington, D.C.
A group of about 20 knee-high robots recently has appeared on the sidewalks of the nation’s capital. Their tasks are to bring take-out food from restaurants to hungry customers at home—while keeping the delivery cost to around a dollar.
The robots are European, created in Estonia by a company called Starship Technologies. Each of them is a middle-sized cooler on six wheels, drives at an average speed of about 4 miles per hour, about the speed of a walker. It has lights and a tall, bright orange flag so that it can be noticed by people on the sidewalk.
Here in Washington, Starship has teamed up with Postmates, the online delivery service, and the robots already are completing deliveries around the city.
They move almost silently. They are electric so there isn’t much sound aside from their wheels. Their cameras recognize a lot—including traffic lights and stop signs.
The robots have only been in Washington for about a month, and they’re still causing quite a stir, often getting stopped for photos. A young mother Maria is on the sidewalk, pointing out the robot to her daughter. “It’s super cool,” she says. “But the only thing that concerns me—is it going to put people out of jobs?”
The company does not see robots as a replacement, says Russell Cook, the director of Postmates. “We have people that drive cars, walk and bike, and we see robots as another type of vehicle that helps us offer deliveries,” he says.
1. What purpose does Paragraph 1 serve in the text?| A．To introduce the topic. | B．To express the main idea. |
| C．To tell an interesting story. | D．To offer some suggestions. |
| A．They can communicate with walkers. |
| B．They create little noise while walking. |
| C．They are able to travel at a high speed. |
| D．They were developed by a US company. |
| A．They may be not as safe as expected. |
| B．They may cause a stir on the sidewalk. |
| C．They may be destroyed by some people. |
| D．They may take the place of deliverymen. |
| A．A Leading Online Delivery Company |
| B．Delivery Robots in Washington, D. |
| C．C. The Latest Development of Postmates |
| D．The Growing Concern about Delivery Robots |
【推荐2】Visual Symbols and the Blind
From several recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space. But pictures are more than literal representations.
This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle(Fig. 1). I was surprised. Lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration.
When I asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever interpretation appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel’s spokes(把柄)as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines—or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were liable ways of showing movement or if they were merely specific marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.
To search out these answers, I created raised—line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dotted and extended beyond the perimeter of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: shaky, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.
All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was shaky; and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that the spokes extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dotted spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.
In addition, the favoured description for the sighted was the favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.
1. The author makes the point that blind people___________.| A．can draw accurately | B．may be interested in studying art |
| C．can recognise conventions such as perspective | D．can draw outlines of different objects and surfaces |
| A．drew a circle on her own initiative | B．was the first person to use lines of motion |
| C．included a symbol representing movement | D．did not understand what a wheel looked like |
| A．got better results than the sighted undergraduates |
| B．worked together well as a group in solving problems |
| C．could control the movement of wheels very accurately |
| D．had good understanding of symbols representing movement |
| A．steadily spinning | B．rapidly spinning | C．shaky | D．jerking |
【推荐3】Independent living at home is the dream for every aging person. But a fall or other incidents dangerous to health can change everything rapidly.
The wearable "panic buttons" introduced in the late 1980s were a great advance. But they only work if people actually wear them and can reach the button in an emergency. Today there are passive wearables that automatically detect (探测) falls, and camera-based systems to monitor elder safety.
Coming from a 40-year career in the semiconductor and wireless communication field, Rafi Zack decided to find a better alternative. “People aren’t devoted to wearing small instruments 24/7, and camera-based systems are a violation of privacy,” he points out, “The most challenging aspect is a fall. How fast we can detect a fall matters because the medical situation worsens quickly. Sometimes people stay on the floor for a long time. We have to find out how to address that problem.”
Zack is a co-founder, CEO and vice president of R&D at EchoCare Technologies which has developed ECHO (Elderly Care Home Observer), a cloud-connected monitor based on radar technology and machine learning.
Because radar sees through walls, one ECHO unit fixed on the ceiling or wall can monitor one person (or two persons, in a future version) in a standard-sized apartment in a senior living facility(机构). The instrument detects falls, breathing difficulties, drowning in a bathtub and other dangerous events. It gives out warnings to potential health worsening conditions by continuously monitoring and analyzing the person’s location, posture (姿势), movement and breath. EchoCare tested the instrument in the United States, Japan, Australia and Israel. ECHO was certified (认证) in 2019 in Japan with the most aging population in the world.
“Bathrooms were the main testing area where about 17,000 deadly accidents happen annually.” said SMK Director and Executive Vice President Tetsuo Hara. “Bathroom makers, home security service providers and nursing homes are highly interested in EchoCare’s invention.” Zack noted, “As more and more elder people live alone as a result of social distancing, there is an increased need to monitor them without the burden of wearables or privacy-violating cameras.”
1. What’s the advantage of ECHO over “panic buttons”?| A．It has camera-based systems. | B．It has been widely accepted. |
| C．It can function without cameras. | D．Its buttons can be easily reached. |
| A．It monitors dangerous health-related events. |
| B．It was certified in many developed countries. |
| C．It is designed to send out warnings regularly. |
| D．It detects more than one person at the same time. |
| A．It’ll become more popular with the elderly. |
| B．It’ll stop 17,000 deaths happening annually. |
| C．It’ll be used in nursing homes and hospitals. |
| D．It’ll help elderly people to live an active life. |
| A．An Advanced Medical Instrument |
| B．A High-tech Monitor for the Elderly |
| C．The Improvement of a Medical Facility |
| D．The Invention of a Healthcare Instrument |
