With new advances in AI and autonomous (自动的) driverless cars and trains, it makes sense that buses will become autonomous too. Now a full-sized autonomous bus service is up and running in Scotland.
The buses began running in May, 2023, and are carrying passengers between Ferrytoll Park and the Edinburgh Park. This 14-mile route (行车路线) is the first of its kind in the UK. The autonomous buses are being operated by Stagecoach, the largest coach operator in the UK. While the buses are autonomous, fully self-driving vehicles (交通工具) are not allowed in the UK now so a driver will have to be onboard at all times. The vehicles are required to have a safety driver to monitor the technology and a bus captain that will help passengers board and buy tickets. The driver can take control in case of an emergency situation.
It took almost 10 years of research and development and 1.8 million kilometers of practice runs to reach this stage, which is considered the first full-sized use of autonomous buses in Europe.
This project aims to speed up the application of self-driving technology. The government hopes that the autonomous buses will be more dependable, and more secure to use than traditional buses since 88 percent of road accidents are caused by drivers’ errors.
Other countries in Europe are exploring using driverless buses. There have already been short tests in several cities in Italy, Finland and France, and there are plans for driverless electric minibuses to be introduced in Switzerland, Germany and Norway. An autonomous bus may be just around the corner in a city near you.
1. What do we know about the autonomous bus?| A．It is very popular with passengers. |
| B．It can only hold very few passengers. |
| C．There are two fixed workers on the bus. |
| D．It allows passengers to enjoy beautiful views. |
| A．Expensive. | B．Pioneering. | C．Fair. | D．Challenging. |
| A．Safer. | B．Faster. | C．More modern. | D．More comfortable. |
| A．To show they are also interested in driverless buses. |
| B．To show they have advanced self-driving technology. |
| C．To show people in these countries like driverless buses. |
| D．To show buses are popular transport in these countries. |
相似题推荐
| TICKET TYPE | DISCOUNT * | NOTES |
| Standard returns | 20% | return within 60 days of outward trip |
| same day returns | 25% | ticket cannot be altered or refunded |
| children | 40% | children between 4 and 11 |
| students | 25% | student card must be shown |
| senior citizens | 25% | senior card must be shown |
| groups(10-25people) | 15% | discount on each section of the trip |
| globe-trotter tickets | According to the ticket | Railpass, tourist Card, Econopass |
*Only one discount may apply to each fare.
CHANGES AND REFUNDS
Tickets may be refunded not later than 5 minutes before the departure of the train for a charge of 15% of the ticket price, or the journey may be changed to another day for a charge of 10% of the ticket price.（Not applicable to same day returns.）
CHANGES FOR SAME DAY TRAVEL
You may change your ticket once without charge for a journey on the same day as the original ticket.
INFORMATION OF INTEREST TO TRAVELLERS
When you buy your ticket it is up to you to check that the dates and times of the journey on it are exactly as you requested.
Ticket control and access to each train platform will be open until 2 minutes before departure of the train
Each traveller may take one suitcase and one item of hand luggage. You may also check in 15kgs of luggage not later than 30 minutes before departure, at no extra charge.
If you would like to charter a train, or make reservations for over 25 passengers travelling together, call the Sales Department.
1. What is the passage mainly about?| A．describe the policies of changes and refunds. |
| B．provide some information about train ticket. |
| C．introduce the luggage allowance on the train. |
| D．compare the discounts of different ticket types. |
| A．20% | B．25% | C．45% | D．50% |
| A．You can get your ticket price refunded if you are 2 minutes late for the train. |
| B．Extra money will be paid on checked luggage of 15 kgs an hour before departure. |
| C．Same day returns can be changed to another day for a charge of 10% of the ticket price. |
| D．Travelers should ensure they are ready to board the train with at least 2 minutes to spare. |
【推荐2】With so much history to explore, Rome is best visited by bike. Bikers will be in heaven with tours both within the city’s walls and a quick train ride into the nearby region. Here are some of our favorite local biking paths.
● Lungotevere Ponte
Starting from Ponte Garibaldi, you will find a 16-kilometer path that extends along the Tiber River through the north of the city. This path is excellent as it is specially for runners and bikers, meaning that you will not have to worry about cars and the majority of the path is newly paved. Along your path, you’ll pass Rome’s Olympic Stadium.
● Appia Antica
While the cobblestones certainly provide a bumpy ride, this path is unlike any other. Appia Antica has seen two thousand years of history, and served as the Roman Empire’s road from Rome to southern Italy. You will bike along streets where the Roman army originally marched and you will pass ruins simply out in the open.
● Lago Bracciano
To take advantage of this path, you will want to take a train out to the city of Bracciano. Italy’s main train company, Trenitalia, allows you to bring your bike for an additional fee, and from Bracciano you can explore its three surrounding towns. The area hosts an incredibly well-preserved castle and lovely views of the lake and mountains.
● Castelli Romani
Castelli Romani are towns surrounding Rome, and each offers its own unique feature. You can either ride out to the Castelli from Rome or take the train to Marino, Frascati, Lanuvio, Castel Gandolfo or Velletri, and plan a tour that allows you to check out a couple of them and get a feel for life in the Roman countryside.
1. What do we know about Lungotevere Ponte?| A．It’s a non-motor path. | B．It has a long history. |
| C．It cuts through the city center. | D．It’s Rome’s longest cycling path. |
| A．Lungotevere Ponte. | B．Appia Antica. |
| C．Lago Bracciano. | D．Castelli Romani. |
| A．They provide free train rides. | B．They are outside Rome city. |
| C．They wind through three towns. | D．They offer striking lake view. |
【推荐3】It’s not usual for your municipality (市政当局) to give you money — actually more like a voucher (代金券) — but Miami-Dade County in Florida is switching things up a bit and doing just that for residents who leave their cars home.
The county is troubled with big traffic jams and was looking for a way to reduce traffic and improve the quality of life for the residents. That’s why county leaders decided to team up with a new mobility app Veloci a that believes in rewarding people every time they commute (通勤) via public transportation.
Miami’s mayor Carlos Gimenez announced, “Veloci a is a revolutionary mobility app that offers rewards for smart decisions that help people break the habit of traveling alone in cars. The ultimate goal of the program is to reduce traffic and ear bone missions.”
The idea came from a Fastrack Institute — nonprofit foundation. It’s easy to use, just download the app on your iPhone and then leave your car at home and the mobility app tracks what transportation you use. Residents that use trains or buses, or even use bicycles, or their feet to get to work will earn points. The points, according to Veloci a will translate into a virtual currency in your iPhone.
The case of Miami Dade County is not alone. Municipalities worldwide are working on ways to reduce car use to cut back on greenhouse emissions and to make cities more livable. Places like Amsterdam, Netherlands and Hamburg, Germany are committed to making walking and biking the dominant form of transportation in their city-centers. Other cities are providing free public transportation to cut down on car use.
David Winterstein, Velocia CEO said, “If more US municipalities adopt programs like the Velocia app, it could go a long way to reduce smog, greenhouse gasses, and wasted time sitting in jammed streets. It really would be a win-win for city residents.”
1. What should participants in the program of Miami county do?| A．Travel alone in cars. |
| B．Pay the taxes or tickets. |
| C．Drive with a new mobility app. |
| D．Take public transportation to work. |
| A．The operation process of the app Velocia. |
| B．The advantages of the traffic program. |
| C．The introduction to a virtual currency. |
| D．The various ways of getting the reward. |
| A．To indicate the background of the program. |
| B．To show the effect of the new mobility app. |
| C．To present the popularity of low-carbon travel. |
| D．To raise awareness of protecting the environment. |
| A．A New Mobility App Makes Cities More Livable |
| B．Miami Rewards Residents for Leaving Their Cars Home |
| C．An App Reward Makes Miami People More Wealthy |
| D．Miami-Dade Is Longing to Improve People’s Quality of Life |
【推荐1】All styles of beer have one thing in common: producing them creates piles and piles of leftover barley and other grains.
This by-product is made up of 30 per cent protein and 70 per cent fiber. While suitable for consumption by cows, the high fiber content makes it difficult for humans to digest. But now, researchers at Virginia Polytechnic and State University (Virginia Tech) have developed a new method of extracting (提取) nutrients and fiber from spent grain for use in food sources and biofuels.
“Spent grain has a very high percentage of protein compared to other agricultural waste, so our goal was to find a novel way to extract and use it,” said Virginia Tech graduate student Yanhong He. His team partnered with local breweries (酿酒厂) and developed a method of separating the grain into a protein concentrate and a fiber-rich powder by treating it with alcalase, a commonly available enzyme (酶).
Through this method they were able to extract more than 80 per cent of the protein from the grain. Initially, they proposed that this could be used as a cheap, sustainable food for use in shrimp farms. But now, because of the rise in the number of people switching to a plant-based diet, they are looking into using it as an alternative protein source in various foods for human consumption.
In a separate project, another team from Virginia Tech has developed a method of treating the fiber with Bacillus licheniformis, a species of bacteria recently discovered in a spring in Yellowstone National Park. By treating the fiber with the bacteria, it is possible to change various sugars within it to 2, 3-butanediol, a compound (化合物) that is used to make many products, such as biofuels, manmade rubber, and materials for creating plastics.
1. What led He’s team to treat the leftover material in a different way?| A．The interest they show in beer research. |
| B．The pity that it pollutes the environment. |
| C．The fact that it has high protein content. |
| D．The trouble they face with fiber digestion. |
| A．They have aimed at studying foods. |
| B．They have objected to feeding shrimps. |
| C．They have developed a new brewing method. |
| D．They have considered the expanding consumer base. |
| A．Various teams attempt to discover existing species. |
| B．Spent grain may still have potential to be unlocked. |
| C．National parks are blanketed with friendly bacteria. |
| D．By-products can be transformed into food and fuel. |
| A．Health. | B．Entertainment. |
| C．Education. | D．Science. |
【推荐2】In the United States, most of our electricity comes from power plants(发电厂) that burn coal and oil.
There are two big problems with using these things for electricity. First. their supply is limited(有限的). Second, burning them causes pollution. So to make sure we always have power and to keep our planet clean, we must find other ways to make electricity.
Some people think that wind power is our best choice. First, there will always be more wind. Also, wind power does not pollute the environment. Best of all, we don’t have to search for wind.
Today, less than 1 percent of our electricity comes from wind. But scientists have been developing better wind machines. As a result, wind power is getting more popular in this country.
Yet wind power may not keep growing so quickly in years to come. Why not? Many wind turbines(风力涡轮机)are needed to make much electricity. So wind-power companies try to build wind farms but are competing(竞争)with other uses for the land. A wind farm is a group of turbines placed close together in an area with frequent winds.
In places where companies try to build wind farms, people think that lines of turbines are ugly. Noise from turbines often troubles people. Also, turbines kill birds that fly into them.
Wind-power supporters disagree. They think the sight of wind turbines is lovely. They point out that people have gotten used to living near noisy highways. They say ways can be found to keep birds away from turbines.
In today’s world, we need clean and unlimited power sources more than ever. Unless a better power source comes along, people may just have to accept wind power as a part of their lives.
1. The underlined part “these things” in the second paragraph refers to _______.| A．frequent winds. | B．coal and oil. |
| C．power plants. | D．wind turbines. |
| A．How wind power works. |
| B．How wind power was found. |
| C．The development of wind power. |
| D．The advantages of wind power. |
| A．It is very expensive to build lots of wind turbines. |
| B．It is difficult to improve the wind power technology. |
| C．There are few people who accept it as a new power source. |
| D．Many wind turbines are needed and there is less space for them. |
| A．The Power of Wind. | B．The Role of Wind. |
| C．The Cost of Wind Power. | D．The History of Wind Power. |
【推荐3】Today just as technology changed the face of industry, farms have undergone an “agricultural revolution”. On the farm of today, machines provide almost all the power.
One of the most important benefits will be the farm computer. A few forward-looking farmers are already using computers to help them run their farms more efficiently. The computers help them keep more accurate records so they can make better decisions on what crops to plant, how much livestock to buy, when to sell their products, and how much profit they can expect. Because of the growing importance of computers on the farm, students at agricultural colleges are required to take computer classes in addition to their normal agricultural courses. There can be no doubt that farmers will rely on computers even more in the future. While the old-time farm depended on horse power, and modern farms depend on machine power, farms of the future will depend on computer power.
Another technological advance which is still in the experimental stage is the robot, a real “mechanized hired hand” that will be able to move and, in some ways, think like a human being. Agricultural engineers believe that computer-aided robots will make startling changes in farming before the end of the century. Unlike farmers of the present, farmers of the future will find that many day-to-day tasks will be done for them. The complete mobilization of the farm is far in the future, but engineers expect that some robots will be used before long.
1. Which sentence carried the main idea of the whole passage?| A．The first sentence of the first paragraph. |
| B．The first sentence of the second paragraph. |
| C．The first sentence of the third paragraph. |
| D．The last sentence of the second paragraph. |
| A．Farmers in the future will depend totally on computers. |
| B．Both computers and robots have been in use on today’s farms. |
| C．Farmers mainly use machines on their farms at present. |
| D．Students at agricultural colleges must take computer classes because they can do nothing without the help of computers on today’s farms. |
| A．all farm work | B．little work |
| C．some work | D．most work |
| A．Computer, Farmers’ Best Friend | B．Farmers in The Future |
| C．Computers and Robots | D．The Agricultural Revolution |
【推荐1】A lunar probe launched by the Chinese space agency recently brought back the first fresh samples of rock from the moon in more than 40 years. Now an international team of scientists has determined the age of these moon rocks at close to 1.97 billion years old.
“It is the perfect sample to close a 2-billion-year gap,” said Jolliff, the Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Jolliff is a U.S.-based co-author of an analysis of the new moon rocks led by the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, published Oct. 7 in the journal Science. The age determination is among the first scientific results reported from the successful Chang’e-5 mission, which was designed to collect and return rocks to the Earth from some of the youngest volcanic surfaces on the moon.
“Of course, ‘young’ is relative,” Jolliff said. “All of the volcanic rocks collected by Apollo were older than 3 billion years. And all of the young impact craters whose ages have been determined from the analysis of samples are younger than 1 billion years. So the Chang’e-5 samples fill a critical gap.”
The gap that Jolliff references is important not only for studying the moon, but also for studying other rocky planets in the solar system.
As a planetary body, the moon is about 4.5 billion years old, almost as old as the Earth. But unlike the Earth, the moon doesn’t have mountain-building processes that tend to erase craters over the years. Scientists have taken advantage of the moon’s lasting craters to develop methods of estimating the ages of different regions on its surface.
“Planetary scientists know that the more craters on a surface, the older it is; the fewer craters, the younger the surface. That’s a nice relative determination,” Jolliff said. “But to put absolute age dates on that, one has to have samples from those surfaces.”
1. What function does paragraph 1 play?| A．Briefly introducing the text. | B．Introducing the Chang’e-5 mission. |
| C．Motivating readers to read the text. | D．Analyzing the reasons for the study. |
| A．The analysis of the new moon rocks was organized by America. |
| B．The result of the new moon rock analysis was made public. |
| C．Chang’e-5 mission is to collect all moon rocks. |
| D．The new moon rocks are 3 billion years old. |
| A．By analyzing rocky planets. | B．By seeing the photos of the moon surface. |
| C．By calculating the number of the craters. | D．By studying the samples from the moon surface. |
| A．Chang’e-5 Samples Uncover Key Age of the Moon Rocks |
| B．Chang’e-5 Completed Its Tasks Successfully |
| C．The Age of the Young Moon Craters was Determined |
| D．China and America Worked Together Successfully |
Most Facebook users don’t realize this is happening. Even if they know what the company is up to, they still have no idea what they’re paying for Facebook because people don’t really know what their personal data is worth.
The biggest problem, however, is that the company keeps changing the rules. Early on, you keep everything private. That was the great thing about Facebook — you could create your own little private network. Last year, the company changed its privacy rules so that many things — your city, your photo, your friends’ names—were set, by default (默认) to be shared with everyone on the Internet.
According to Facebook’s vice-president Elliot Schrage, the company is simply making changes to improve its service, and if people don’t share information, they have a “less satisfying experience”.
Some critics think this is more about Facebook looking to make more money. Its original business model, which involved selling ads and putting them at the side of the page, totally failed. Who wants to look at ads when they’re online connecting with their friends?
The privacy issue has already landed Facebook in hot water in Washington. In April, Senator(议员) Charles Schumer called on Facebook to change its privacy policy. He also urged the Federal Trade Commission to set guidelines for social-networking sites. “I think the senator rightly communicated that we had not been clear about what the new products were and how people could choose to use them or not to use them, ” Schrage admits.
I suspect that whatever Facebook has done so far to invade our privacy is only the beginning, which is why I’m considering deactivating(撤销) my account. Facebook is a handy site, but I’m upset by the idea that my information is in the hands of people I don’t know. That’s too high a price to pay.
1. What do we learn about Facebook from the first paragraph?| A．It is a website that sends messages to targeted users. |
| B．It makes money by putting on advertisements. |
| C．It profits by selling its users’personal data. |
| D．It provides loads of information to its users. |
| A．They are reluctant to give up their personal information. |
| B．They don’t know their personal data enriches Facebook. |
| C．They don’t identify themselves when using the website. |
| D．They care very little about their personal information. |
| A．To provide better service to its users. |
| B．To follow the Federal guidelines. |
| C．To improve its users’connectivity. |
| D．To expand its scope of business. |
| A．He is dissatisfied with its current service. |
| B．He finds many of its users untrustworthy. |
| C．He doesn’t want his personal data abused. |
| D．He is upset by its frequent rule changes. |
【推荐3】Salt was so valuable in ancient Rome that soldiers were sometimes paid with it. In fact, the word salary comes from the Latin word sal, for salt. When a soldier was doing an awful job, his paycheck might be cut, which is how we got the expression “not worth his salt.” Salt can still he valuable today. Amethyst Bamboo 9x salt, which rings up at &398 a pound, may be the most expensive in the world. This pricey stuff takes a lot of time to produce — it’s roasted nine times inside a bamboo pole at temperatures over 1,400 degrees F.
Historically, salt’s value came from its ability to preserve food. Venice, Italy, may be famous for its canals now, but salt imports helped its rise as an important trade power by the end of the 13th century. Salt also took on a great deal of symbolic value, like “old salt” referring to an experienced sailor. Salt is mentioned so many times in the Bible. For instance, “the salt of the earth” is used to describe a person who is dependable; “a covenant of salt” means a firm promise.
Most people know about the health risks associated with sodium (钠), but reducing your intake isn’t always easy. Even foods that don’t taste salty may contain it. If you are looking for sodium-free flavoring, try garlic, pepper, rosemary and other spices or herbs.
Still, we all need at least some salt. It promotes the transport of nutrients and oxygen, allows nerves to send messages, and helps our muscle work. The average adult’s body contains about 250 grams of sodium.
Consumption of too much salt can be deadly. For older folks especially, a heavy hand with the saltshaker may raise blood pressure, causing hypertension and hurt the head. A study of 975 people between the ages of 60 to 80 and with high blood pressure found that reducing sodium in their diets was associated with lower risk of headache.
1. Which of the following is used to describe a dependable person?| A．Worth their salt. | B．Old salt. |
| C．A covenant of salt. | D．The salt of the earth. |
| A．The more expensive salt is, the longer it takes to produce. |
| B．Old people with hypertension must choose sodium-free food. |
| C．Eating more salt is good for health. |
| D．Salt imports can establish a country as an international trade power. |
| A．A recipe. | B．A container. | C．A gesture. | D．A disease. |
| A．Objective knowledge of salt. | B．Advice on healthier eating habits. |
| C．Various amazing values of salt. | D．Tips on reducing the health risk of salt. |
