In many parts of the world there may not be much rainfall, but there is a fair amount of water vapor (水蒸气) in the air — particularly at night. An experimental new device draws in that vapor, and uses it to water eatable plants.
Known as SmartFarm, the small device designed by a team at the National University of Singapore, led by assistant professor Tan Swee Ching aimed to help address two of the world’s biggest problems — water shortage and food shortage. It’s a transparent (透明的) box that has vegetable plants growing in soil on the bottom — on top, a hydrogel (水凝胶) panel lies beneath a solar-powered motorized cover.
The hydrogel is very absorbent, readily drawing water vapor from the cool night air while the cover is open. An integrated timer closes it at daybreak, with the sun’s rays subsequently heating the hydrogel through the clear cover material. The gel responds by releasing its stored water in the form of vapor, which turns into liquid on the inside of the cover. When that cover periodically slides open throughout the day, the liquid gets wiped off along the inside edges of the box and runs into the soil.
According to scientists, the gel can absorb up to 300 times its weight in water at night. During the day, it releases that water at an hourly rate of 2.24 grams of water per gram of gel. And what’s more, the released water meets World Health Organization standards for drinkability.
Tan said, “The SmartFarm concept greatly reduces farms’ demand for water and is suitable for urban farming techniques such as rooftop farming. This is a significant step forward in easing water and food shortage.” He believes the SmartFarm device can be further improved with additional functionalities before it moves to mass and commercial production. For example, it can include wireless networking capability to enable users to monitor and control the process using smartphones.
1. Why is the new device designed?| A．To make use of water in the air. | B．To deal with water problems. |
| C．To collect rainwater for farms. | D．To support the growth of plants. |
| A．Why the hydrogel is used. | B．What the hydrogel looks like. |
| C．How the SmartFarm device works. | D．Where the SmartFarm device comes in. |
| A．Complex but worthwhile. | B．Self-contained and effective. |
| C．Practical but unproductive. | D．Water-saving and sustainable. |
| A．It needs further testing. | B．It has come on the market. |
| C．It shows great promise. | D．It opens up urban farming. |
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【推荐1】If you are a fan of medical films, then you will know there are emergency helicopter services that will take badly injured patients to hospitals long distances away. You probably also know that in these films most ambulances (救护车) are on wheels and go across city streets where there are fewer traffic jams than in real life.
But now, Israel’s Urban Aeronautics, announced that it made an agreement to work with Hatzolah Air to produce and develop its CityHawk aircraft as an emergency medical service. The CityHawk is small and can fly anywhere and land anywhere, making it able to work in cities above the traffic jam. It has no wings outside and can work even in bad weather conditions.
“We are excited to work with Hatzolah Air on the development of our CityHawk vehicle,” said Rafi Yoeli, CEO of Urban Aeronautics. “Its small size will enable it to land in the middle of a busy city street, making it a perfect fit for medical tasks by greatly reducing the time it takes to arrive on-scene, treat and transport sick or injured patients to medical facilities.”
“One of Hatzolah’s most important goals is to be somewhere within minutes. Unlike helicopters, we can land anywhere within minutes,” Yoeli said. “We will be able to improve the care of patients. They want to be equipped with the best aircraft.” Hatzolah Air’s president Eli Rowe said that he foresees (预测) the possible need for 800 CityHawks since it is a six-passenger vehicle that can carry a pilot, a patient and a team of professionals.
Urban Aeronautics is working on certification (认证) for emergency use of its CityHawk aircraft. The development of the flying ambulance is expected to take up to five years but a model will be ready sooner. A flying ambulance may be coming to a city near you soon.
1. What is the function of the first paragraph?| A．To give an example of medical rescue. |
| B．To lead to the topic of the flying ambulance. |
| C．To show the future market for aircraft medical service. |
| D．To tell the advantages of emergency medical helicopters. |
| A．It makes medical tasks in cities more convenient. |
| B．It will take the place of ambulances on city roads. |
| C．It is difficult to operate in bad weather conditions. |
| D．It can carry enough medical supplies immediately. |
| A．Worried. | B．Doubtful. | C．Positive. | D．Surprised. |
| A．The CityHawk has got certification from the government. |
| B．The CityHawk faces great difficulties to become a reality. |
| C．The CityHawk draws great attention of hospitals. |
| D．The CityHawk will come into use in the near future. |
【推荐2】Language is powerful. It’s that realization that led Poole College graduate Jeyashree Haridoss, to found Sol, a platform that instantly connects immigrants and refugees (难民) with translators. After recognizing that these communities often lack access to people who have the language skills and cultural knowledge to help them, Haridoss got to work creating an app that closes the gap.
“I have always loved the idea of using business as a force for good,” Haridoss says. “Through entrepreneurship (创办企业), I can make a difference to communities that need help in a sustainable (可持续的) way.” This passion for entrepreneurship, coupled with her interest in global cultures, first led Haridoss to NC State University. “NC State University has a great dual degree (双学位) program that allowed me to earn two degrees in four years while also giving me the opportunity to study abroad,” Haridoss says.
Born in Chennai, India, Haridoss moved to Cary, North Carolina at the age of three. She grew up speaking both English and Tamil, and often acted as a translator for her grandparents when they visited the United States. However, her experience translating didn’t end there — while studying abroad during her junior year in Argentina and Spain, Haridoss had opportunities to use her Spanish language skills to help others. “I was surrounded by other students who couldn’t speak Spanish,” Haridoss says. “I was able to help them order at restaurants, pay their cellphone bills, and even get haircuts. The role of language in connecting people began to inspire me.”
After returning to the United States, Haridoss’ eyes were opened to the need for translators among immigrant and refugee populations seeking resources — and Sol was born. The web app allows people in new places to enter the language they need help with and the amount of time they might need one. Within 60 seconds, the app connects a user with an interpreter who can help. “These communities already face so many barriers and we don’t want to put another one in their way,” Haridoss explains.
In the future, Haridoss hopes to turn the web app into a mobile app, and sees how it could provide help to international students, overseas students and tourists alike.
1. What did Haridoss want to achieve in NC State University?| A．Expanding her own business. |
| B．Improving her language skills. |
| C．Doing good by starting businesses. |
| D．Helping her community develop well. |
| A．She had a generous heart. |
| B．She was under great pressure. |
| C．She inspired lots of people around her. |
| D．She was determined to become a translator. |
| A．It focuses on language teaching. |
| B．It provides free machine translation. |
| C．It aims to remove language barriers. |
| D．It offers immigrants and refugees financial help. |
| A．Build an overseas branch. |
| B．Change the app completely. |
| C．Seek resources from communities. |
| D．Make her app available on phones. |
【推荐3】Unknown to most of us laymen(外行), there is quite a lot of interest in developing eatable tags for our food. These could perform the same role as today’s food labels but would also form a tasty snack after use — which would also do away with the information contained on the label.
Now, Japanese researchers have developed an approach to produce one such kind of unnoticeable, eatable tag, which can be safely embedded inside eatable products. So far, the team has been experimenting with tags that are baked into cookies. Known as “interiQR”, such tags can be read using a device without altering the food or its packaging and don’t have any impact on the taste of the product.
One enormous drawback of our labels as they are today is that, increasingly, they lead to amounts of extra material used for packaging — which translates to increased waste and pollution. Using a QR cookie as a tag would help cut down on packaging waste while not altering the items in any way. The information is contained in 3D-printed “infills”, around which the cookies are baked. Such a ‘label’ would also allow producers, retailers, or customers to read the information using a QR code reader and a backlight at any point in a product’s life.
“Our 3D printing method is a great example of the digital transformation of foods, which we hope will improve food traceability(可追溯性) and safety,” says senior author of the study, Kosuke Sato. “This technology can also be used to provide novel food experiences, which is an exciting new field in the food industry.”
The team is confident that their cookie tags could prove to be a great help in reducing packaging waste worldwide once they’re adopted on a wide scale. Needless to say, suddenly having a cookie available to chew on with every purchase is suggestive enough to adopt the use of these interiQR cookies.
1. What does “interiQR” refer to ?| A．A yummy snack. | B．An eatable label. |
| C．A unique food experience. | D．Information on a food tag. |
| A．Better traceability and security . |
| B．More packaging but less pollution. |
| C．Making use of 3D-printed methods. |
| D．Being eatable unnoticeable and eco-friendly. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Cautious. |
| C．Disapproving. | D．Unclear. |
| A．To advertise for QR cookies. |
| B．To report the findings of a research. |
| C．To explain how to make eatable tags. |
| D．To introduce a new kind of food labels. |
【推荐1】The waste management park at Water Beach in Cambridgeshire handles 400,000 tons of recycling every year, and is the biggest centre of its kind in the East of England.
Fran Hawes is standing on the edge of a mountain of dry recycling. She says, “Some think it’s a discouraging thing, but for me personally, it is a huge responsibility.” Fran, who started to do the job at the age of 26, takes her job very seriously. “I am that annoying person at a party who will get everyone’s recycling and make sure everything goes in the right bin,” she admits. “That’s my job. That’s my mission. That’s what I need to do. It allows me to find my leadership style.”
Bin loader Richard Hughes and his colleagues clock on (打卡上班) at the waste service garage in Peter borough at 6:30 and are out emptying bins within half an hour. Richard works four 12-hour days and admits the pay and the condition are not great — but there are three days off which he can spare to his partner and children. His colleague Crystal Teal has been working as a bin loader for two and a half months. “I didn’t feel my last job gave me self-worth and general happiness, so I decided to change and do something completely different,” she says. “I decided to be a binman. It doesn’t bother me that men are mainly doing it,” Crystal adds. “It can be smelly some days, but go home and have a shower, you’ll be all right.”
Their biggest problem? When householders put the wrong material — like rotting food and nappies — in the recycling bins. “It makes me feel angry that they are just putting it out there. We’re doing our job to serve them. We are providing service to take their rubbish away and they can’t do their part to put the right things in,” said Richard. “Any problem has a solution — therefore I’m not afraid of a pile of waste,” Fran says. “To any normal person, this might be intimidating (吓人的). It’s a challenge. But this will be gone by Monday morning.”
1. Why does Fran Hawes make others annoyed at a party?| A．She still performs her task of garbage sorting. | B．She hosts the party in a leadership way. |
| C．She asks everyone to be responsible for their jobs. | D．She might be smelly at parties. |
| A．She needed a well-paid job. | B．She preferred the three-day-off holiday. |
| C．She liked to do something meaningful. | D．She didn’t find loading bins dirty and smelly. |
| A．People didn’t take out their rubbish. | B．People threw away rubbish everywhere. |
| C．People didn’t sort their rubbish out rightly. | D．People picked out useful things from the bins. |
| A．Brave. | B．Amazing. | C．Anxious. | D．Optimistic. |
【推荐2】Golden eagle populations in the UK are set to increase as some chicks are reintroduced to the north of England. Ten birds will be released(释放)from south of Edinburgh in summer 2018, with the hope of bringing the species back from disappearing in England. More eagles will be released in the summertime of the next five years.
The project received ￡ 1.3 million of lottery funding in March and has now been awarded a further ￡ 150,000 to employ workers to run the operation. Project manager Cat Barlow said: “This is a really exciting time as the project is now starting to happen and we will soon start to see its benefits. Work will start next summer, when we will collect a number of golden eagle chicks in the Highlands and bring them south to be reared and released from an already selected place.”
The birds will be released with satellite tracking tags that will allow the scientists to gather information about their behavior and find if they suddenly go offline.
Recently, golden eagles have died out in England as the last known individual is believed to have died. Due to the popularity of shooting birds of prey(食肉猛禽), those birds in the wild struggle to survive. Main causes of death are systematic poisoning, shooting and nest disturbance by gamekeepers.
It is hoped that the newly released birds will move further south in search of new living areas and food supplies. The project expects to see the number of wild birds in Scotland and England increase as the range of the animals develops. While the birds were gone in England, in the Highlands of Scotland the number of golden eagles rocketed. With up to 500 breeding pairs, the chicks will be sourced from here. It is hoped that golden eagles may finally return to the north of England, and if all goes well, numbers should grow steadily.
1. Why will some golden eagles be set free from south of Edinburgh?| A．To keep the balance of nature |
| B．To prevent eagles from dying out |
| C．To bring back the number of other species |
| D．To encourage more birds to live in the wild |
| A．Raised | B．Stored |
| C．Sold | D．Exhibited |
| A．Harmful effects of shooting birds |
| B．Why animal hunting should be forbidden |
| C．Reasons for golden eagles’ dying out |
| D．The difficult situation golden eagles face |
| A．Ambiguous | B．Cautious |
| C．Doubtful | D．Hopeful |
【推荐3】The first Earth Day was an inspiration. On that day in 1970, 20 million people turned out to demand the protection and restoration of the Earth, air, water, forests, natural lands, and species that support, sustain and enrich every aspect of our lives. But in recent years, Earth Day hasn’t had quite the same impact.
| A．Let’s change that. |
| B．It is our common sense to recycle. |
| C．Bring your own cups, bottles and bags. |
| D．Was your bottled water in a plastic bottle? |
| E．Switch from disposable paper to reusable cloth. |
| F．Have you ever thought about the reason for its insignificance? |
| G．It also comes at a price: loss of trees, use of water and the generation of greenhouse gases. |
【推荐1】A cup of coffee in the morning sets the world’s workers right, but a new study shows that tropical forests can regrow much faster when treated with coffee pulp.
This was found in a direct case-control study of tropical land in Costa Rica, where scientists from the University of Hawaii (UH) spread 30 truckloads of coffee pulp over a 35 x 40 meter plot of land. They set aside an equal-size plot of the same land just next to it as a control plot.
Coffee grounds are naturally acidic, with a pH of less than 5, and therefore aren't always nutritious for some houseplants or decorative flowers. Tropical soil on the other hand, traditionally containing very poor nutrients, can stand coffee’s acidity; it is acidic itself, and contains a variety of plants that grow healthily in low pH environments. “Our results show that the quality of soil was greatly improved by the coffee pulp compared to control treatment after 2 years,” write the authors in their study led by Dr. Rebecca Cole.
Indeed, a report from the British Ecological Society (BES) claimed the area treated with coffee pulp became a small forest, with 60% greater tree coverage. Its tree coverage reached 4 times as high as that of the non-treated area which mostly remained filled with grasses and weeds. It’s an important finding, since coffee is grown mostly in tropical climates, and tropical soil can deal with coffee’s acidity. As we know, tropical forests are cut down at rates faster than any others, and tropical forests take in more carbon and contain greater biodiversity than other ones.
The authors figure that there are 218000 tons of coffee pulp that must be managed for every one million bags of coffee sent to market. It’s a brilliant solution — to enrich tropical land as countries produce a cash crop. It’s cheap and local. Moreover, it gives animals more habitat and pulls more carbon from the atmosphere, and best of all, we can keep drinking that lovely cup of coffee.
1. How did UH researchers get the result of the study?| A．By analyzing the spread of tropical forests. | B．By collecting and studying coffee pulp. |
| C．By comparing two plots of test land. | D．By measuring the land size. |
| A．Tropical soil. | B．Coffee pulp. | C．Coffee’s acidity. | D．The house plant. |
| A．To find out the changes of coffee’s acidity. | B．To show the importance of tropical forests. |
| C．To stress the uniqueness of tropical soil. | D．To prove the effect of coffee pulp. |
| A．Coffee is gaining much popularity. | B．Tropical land needs to be better used. |
| C．Coffee is a treasure in many aspects. | D．Tropical land is suitable for growing coffee. |
【推荐2】Laughter comes in many forms, from a polite chuckle to an infectious howl of amusement. Scientists are now developing an AI system that can copy various forms of laughter accurately. The team behind the laughing robot, Erica, say that the system could improve natural conversations between people and AI systems.
Dr. Koji Inoue, lead author of the research from Kyoto University, highlights empathy (共情) as a crucial aspect of conversational AI, suggesting laughter sharing as a means for robots to connect with users. To achieve this, Inoue and his team gathered data from over 80 speed-dating dialogues between male students and Erica, initially operated by amateur actors.
Dialogue data labeled for individual, social, and joyful laughter was used to train an AI system to identify and produce fitting laughter responses. Based on the audio files, the algorithm (算法) learned their subtle differences, aiming to imitate social laughs subtly and hearty laughs empathetically.
“Our biggest challenge in this work was identifying the actual cases of shared laughter,” explained Inoue, emphasizing the need for careful categorization. Erica’s “sense of humor” was tested with four dialogues, integrating the new shared-laughter algorithm. These were compared to cases where Erica didn’t laugh or emitted social laughs upon detecting laughter.
The clips were played to 130 volunteers who rated the shared-laughter algorithm highly for empathy and naturalness. The team believed laughter could imbue robots with unique character traits, including conversational behaviors like laughter, eye gaze, gestures, and speaking style. However, Inoue acknowledged it could take over 20 years to have a “casual chat with a robot like we would with a friend.”
Professor Sandra Wachter, of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, said, “One of the things I’d keep in mind is that a robot or algorithm will never be able to understand you. It doesn’t understand the meaning of laughter. They fail to feel, but they might get very good at making you believe they understand what’s going on.”
1. Why do scientists develop the AI system that can copy various forms of laughter?| A．To make robots sound more human-like. |
| B．To help robots understand human emotions better. |
| C．To enable robots to have a sense of humor like humans. |
| D．To enhance the emotional interaction between people and AI systems. |
| A．Creating an algorithm that can genuinely feel amusement. |
| B．Identifying the situations where laughter is truly understood. |
| C．Distinguishing between different types of laughter accurately. |
| D．Collecting sufficient data for training the machine learning system. |
| A．Equip. | B．Inspire. | C．Engage. | D．Influence. |
| A．They are not capable of capturing human laughter. |
| B．They can imitate laughter but lack thorough comprehension. |
| C．It is possible for them to play tricks on humans occasionally. |
| D．It will take long before humans have comfortable conversations with them. |
【推荐3】I know what you’re thinking: Pizza? For breakfast? But the truth is that you can have last night’s leftovers with it in the morning, if you want to.
I know lots of women who skip breakfast, and they have a ton of different excuses for doing it. Some say they don’t have time. Others think they’re “saving” calories (卡路里), still others say they just don’t like breakfast food.
But the fact is that eating in the morning is very important when you’re trying to lose weight. “Eating anything from 300 to 400 calories would be better than nothing at all,” says Katherine Brooking, who developed the super-easy eating plan for this year’s “SELF CHALLENGE”. And even pizza can be healthy if it’s loaded with vegetables, as long as you stick to only one small piece.
Breakfast is one meal I never miss, and the same goes for most weight loss success stories. Research shows that eating breakfast keeps you from overeating later in the day. Researchers at the University of Southern California found that breakfast skippers have a bigger chance of gaining weight than those who regularly have a morning meal.
So eat something in the morning, anything. I know plenty of friends who end up having no breakfast, or they just have coffee or orange juice. I say, try heating up last night’s leftovers. It may sound crazy, but if it works for you, do it! I find if I tell myself, “You can always eat it tomorrow,” I put away the leftovers instead of eating more that night. Try it, and you may save yourself some pre-bedtime calories. And you will watch your body gain the fat-burning effects.
1. The underlined word “leftovers” in Paragraph 1 probably means _________.| A．food remaining after a meal | B．breakfast |
| C．meals made of vegetables | D．pizza with fruit |
| A．Working women usually have breakfast in a hurry. |
| B．Many people have wrong ideas about breakfast. |
| C．If we have pizza loaded with vegetables, we will certainly not gain weight. |
| D．Eating vegetables helps us to save energy. |
| A．eat something for breakfast | B．be careful about what you eat |
| C．heat up food before eating it | D．eat calorie-controlled food |
| A．who go to work early | B．who want to lose weight |
| C．who stay up late | D．who eat before sleep |
