Imagine being able to use energy from the sun all the time, even when it’s night. That’s the idea that scientists at Caltech（California Institute of Technology）are exploring. They’re working on collecting sunlight in space and sending its energy to Earth.
Caltech’s scientists have created a special tool for this project. They call it MAPLE. MAPLE and two other devices are part of a project that was sent into space in January, 2023. MAPLE’s job is to test the idea of sending energy wirelessly from space to Earth. We’re used to using wires to move electrical energy from one place to another. But sending energy without wires is a lot trickier.
The method used by Caltech’s scientists depends on the way waves act when they meet. Imagine two waves coming together as they travel in the same direction. If the tops of the waves line up, they combine to make a bigger wave. But if the top of one wave lines up with the low point of the other, the waves cancel each other out. The Caltech team has found a way to control the timing of lots of microwaves so that they can combine their power, and focus the energy in one direction. It’s a little like using a magnifying（放大的）glass to focus sunlight into a small, hot point of light.
To prove that the system could work, MAPLE sent energy to two devices just 30 centimeters away in space. This energy was then turned into electricity, which made two small lights light up. Next, MAPLE sent energy all the way down to a lab at Caltech. The scientists were able to detect the energy, proving that it’s possible to send solar energy to Earth from space.
Dr. Hajimiri, one of the project’s leaders, thinks that one day, the system could be extremely useful, bringing energy to places that need it, all over the world. He believes that in the future, we’ll be able to send energy to remote regions and areas destroyed by war or natural disaster.
1. What is the challenge in Caltech’s project with MAPLE?| A．Solar energy detection. |
| B．Wireless energy delivery. |
| C．Sending devices into space. |
| D．Using wires to move electricity. |
| A．By changing the way microwaves act. |
| B．By magnifying waves coming together. |
| C．By controlling the timing of microwaves. |
| D．By lining up the waves in opposite directions. |
| A．Warning people of natural disasters. |
| B．Turning solar energy into electricity. |
| C．Providing a solution to energy shortages. |
| D．Sending energy to regions in urgent need. |
| A．The Use of Solar Energy in Space Exploration |
| B．The Challenges of Generating Energy Without Wires |
| C．The Development of a New Tool for Collecting Electricity |
| D．The Possibility of Sending Energy Wirelessly from Space to Earth |
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【推荐1】A self-driving ship named after the Mayflower has been brought back while trying to re-create the cross-Atlantic trip made by the original Mayflower in 1620.
Last Tuesday, a robotic ship called the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) took off from Plymouth, England. Its mission was to re-create the 1620 crossing of the Atlantic by the Mayflower, which brought the first European settlers to what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts.
But unlike the original Mayflower, there are no people on the MAS. Everything about the ship is designed to run automatically. The ship is guided by an artificial intelligence (AI) system called “Al Captain”.
The MAS is a project run by a group called ProMare along with the computer company, IBM. The ship's electric motor is powered by solar energy. The goal of the project is to test different kinds of technologies for collecting information about the sea. If these can be handled by machines, it could be a big advance in ocean research. Sending humans to collect information at sea can be difficult, lonely, and dangerous.
In addition to cameras and radar to help the ship guide itself, the ship is carrying many different kinds of tools and sensors. It has special listening devices which can detect whales and dolphins. It even has a special “tongue” which can report back on the chemicals in the water.
Last Friday morning, scientists tracking the ship noticed that it was going about half as fast as it should have been going. The AI Captain was working well, but there seemed to be something slowing the motor down. Since the ship had only covered 10% of the way across the Atlantic, the team decided to bring it back to Plymouth so they could fix the problem and send it out again. They sent the MAS instructions to turn back.
When the MAS finally does put out to sea again, it is expected to take about three weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The fastest speed for the MAS is about 10 mph (10 miles per hour). That may seem slow, but it's about 5 times faster than the original Mayflower, which took 66 days to make the journey.
1. The aim of the MAS project is to ________.| A．take more Europeans across the Atlantic |
| B．experiment with technologies for sea exploration |
| C．develop new artificial intelligence system |
| D．test the AI Captain on the sea |
| A．The robotic ship's electric motor didn't work well. |
| B．The scientists failed to guide the ship completely. |
| C．The AI Captain reduced the speed of the MAS. |
| D．There was something wrong with the AI Captain. |
| A．The entire cross-Atlantic journey will be about 2,100 miles. |
| B．The journey are likely to be difficult and dangerous. |
| C．The Mayflower Autonomous Ship has set sail again. |
| D．The original Mayflower travelled at about 2 mph at most. |
| A．A Robotic Ship Guided by the AI Captain System |
| B．Self-driving Mayflower Ship Forced to Turn Back |
| C．The Fastest Robotic Ship Sailing Across the Atlantic |
| D．Another Mayflower Managing to Re-create the Cross-Atlantic Trip |
【推荐2】We have long known that, for particular skills, people tend to rate themselves incorrectly. In a famous study in 1981, researchers asked people to rate their driving ability. More than 90 percent considered themselves above average. Of course, some people who think they are above average drivers really are. But the 90 percent statistic shows that many people inflate how they compare with others. In fact, only 50 percent of people can rate above average.
So when are people likely to be overconfident in how they rank? And when are they underconfident? Spencer Greenberg of Clear Thinking and his team conducted a study and asked people where they ranked on 100 skills.
For each skill, participants were asked how they thought they compared with others on the platform who shared their age and gender (性别), and lived in their area. If, on average, people thought they could outperform more than 50 percent of others at the task, that suggests systematic overconfidence. If, however, people thought they would outperform less than 50 percent, that's evidence of underconfidence.
There was great variation in how people assessed their relative skills at a task. On average, people rated themselves better than 75 percent of others in their ability to use a computer, for example. But people rated themselves better than only 32 percent of others in their ability to knit (编织) a sweater.
Next, the researchers found that people tend to be overconfident when it comes to tasks that are viewed as easy and underconfident when it comes to tasks that are viewed as hard. People overestimate (高估) how they compare with others in cutting up vegetables but underestimate where they rank in their ability to recite the alphabet backward.
Also, the more experienced people are at a task, the more people tend to be overconfident. People tend to be overconfident in their skill at frying an egg, which most people have done multiple times, and underconfident in their ability to paint a portrait (画像), which most people have rarely tried.
1. What does the underlined word “inflate” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Overstate. | B．Imagine. | C．Reconsider. | D．Evaluate. |
| A．32%. | B．50%. | C．75%. | D．90%. |
| A．Knitting a sweater. | B．Painting a portrait. |
| C．Cutting up vegetables. | D．Reciting the alphabet backward. |
| A．They tend to lose interest in it. |
| B．Their skill increases at a rapid pace. |
| C．They want to try more challenging things. |
| D．Their confidence rises faster than their skill. |
【推荐3】Human activity emits far less methane(甲烷) than carbon dioxide, but methane has a bigger impact on the earth. Over the course of 20 years, a ton of the gas will warm the atmosphere about 86 times more than a ton of CO₂. As a result, methane has been responsible for 23% of the rise in temperatures since pre-industrial times. Carbon dioxide gets most of the attention, but unless methane emissions are limited, there is little hope of stabilizing the climate.
Unfortunately, methane emissions have been anything but stable. After briefly pausing in the early 2000s, atmospheric concentrations of the gas started rising again in 2007. A global inventory (清单) concluded last year, found that humans were largely to blame. Chief among the reasons for the rise are the gassy output of livestock farming, rice cultivation and the fossil-fuel industry. Agriculture and energy each make up roughly one-third of annual methane emissions.
By how much do methane emissions need to fall? Carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for centuries, making it hard to reduce its atmospheric concentrations. By contrast, methane has a half-life of roughly ten years, which means that it degrades quickly. If new emissions can be cut to below the rate at which old emissions reduce, the concentration of methane lingering in the atmosphere will soon fall, slowing global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that, to keep temperatures between 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial levels, human methane emissions must drop to 35% below where they stood in 2010 by mid-century.
Politicians and the public tend to worry about carbon-dioxide emissions but neglect the effects of cutting methane. But dealing with the gas would have a large effect rapidly and at relatively low cost. Governments are supposed to firm up their commitments to cut emissions under the Paris agreement. It should go further and include a specific target for methane.
1. What does the text mainly argue for?| A．Methane emissions should be taken seriously. |
| B．Atmospheric concentrations of methane will soon fall. |
| C．Methane is mainly responsible for the rise in temperature. |
| D．Human activities were largely to blamed for the global warming. |
| A．We’ve produced 86 times more carbon dioxide than methane. |
| B．Carbon dioxide takes up 23% of the responsibility for global warming. |
| C．Methane emissions have been rising dramatically since the early 2000s. |
| D．Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a long time while methane degrades quickly. |
| A．The rising temperature. |
| B．Agriculture and energy. |
| C．Rapidly developing industry. |
| D．Atmospheric concentrations of methane dropping slowly. |
| A．Dealing with methane emissions will cost a lot. |
| B．Carbon dioxide emissions is no longer a serious problem. |
| C．Cutting methane emission is against the Paris agreement. |
| D．Governments should do more to reduce methane emissions. |
【推荐1】When customers in downtown Vancouver placed orders with Pizza Hut in September, many of the pies landed on their doorsteps without a person in sight. Instead, diners were met by autonomous robots looking like a cooler on four wheels with eyelike lights.
The belief held by Serve Robotics is simple: with slim restaurant profits, a labor shortage and climate change worries “Why move a two-pound hamburger in a two-ton car?” A handful of other robotic delivery companies have the same idea, but they are facing several roadblocks.
“They’re drawing a lot of attention from people while they’re out on the sidewalk because they’re not seeing them that often and people are excited to see them, but as usage continues to increase, this can cause a lot of crowding on already narrow sidewalks,” said Prabhjot Gill, a McKinsey & Co. associate partner.
Ali Kashani, Serve’s Vancouver-bred chief executive, considers the criticism to be a natural part of innovation and thinks they are “a win-win for everybody“. But he’s tried to quiet concerns by ensuring his robots flash their lights to warn people they are around. They are equipped with automatic crash prevention, vehicle collision avoidance and emergency braking.
However, David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, said, ”It’s not like we’re denying people a service. We’ve got a way to deliver pizzas that we’ve had since we’ve had pizza delivery. It’s called human beings.“
Manish Dhankher, Pizza Hut Canada’s chief customer officer, agrees no pizza delivery is worth risking somebody’s safety, but said his company only partnered with Serve once the robots had made thousands of injury-free trips.
Serve robots only made nearby deliveries for Pizza Hut’s 1725 Robson St. location for two weeks, but the pilot generated ”childlike excitement“ from customers and had a 95 per cent satisfaction rate.
But Pizza Hut isn’t ready to roll out robots permanently.
”We want to learn more,“ he said. “What happens when you put this in the snowy areas of Saskatchewan and what happens when there is freezing rain?”
1. What is Gill’s attitude toward food delivery robots?| A．Supportive. | B．Negative. | C．Tolerant. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Add security systems. | B．Create special routes. |
| C．Put them to practical tests. | D．Advocate their safety. |
| A．Food delivery robots are completely safe. |
| B．Pizza Hut may use food delivery robots in the future. |
| C．Pizza Hut won’t choose food delivery robots forever. |
| D．He worries about the effect of bad weather conditions. |
| A．Food Delivery Robots Need to Be Improved |
| B．The Food Delivery Companies Are Taking off |
| C．The Inventor of Food Delivery Robots Are Optimistic |
| D．Mass Adoption of Food Delivery Robots Was Delayed |
【推荐2】Did you know it’s possible to swim with whales in the ocean while lying on a hospital bed? Have you imagined experiencing your 74th birthday as a 20-something? Medical virtual reality is an area with interesting and attractive possibilities. Although the field is brand new, there are already great examples of VR having a positive effect on health care. Here are some.
Have you ever lain down on a hospital bed counting the clays until you leave the hospital? Brennan Spiegel and his team at the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles introduced VR worlds to their patients to help them reduce stress and pain. With the special glasses, they could escape the four walls of the hospital and enjoy amazing scenery in Iceland, take part in the work of an art studio or swim together with whales in the ocean. So the hospital experience is improved.
As we know, the experience in a hospital is even more stressful for small children who miss their parents and friends. Now, a Dutch company made their dream possible. Through a smart phone and virtual glasses, VisitU makes live contact possible with a 360 degree camera at the patient’s home, school or special occasions like a birthday celebration or a football game. Though staying in hospital, young patients can relax and still enjoy their lives.
Did you wonder what it feels like to grow old? Embodied Labs created “We Are Alfred” by using VR technology to show young medical students what ageing means. Everyone can be the imagined Alfred for 7 minutes, and experience what it feels like to live as a 74-year-old man. Thus it’s possible to solve the disconnection between young doctors and elderly patients clue to their huge age difference.
MindMotionPro, produced by the Swiss Mindmaze, allows patients with a brain injury to u practicen how to lift their arms or move their fingers with the help of virtual reality. The app makes the practice of repetitive movements fun for patients. The mental effort helps their damaged nervous systems to recover much faster than lying helplessly in bed.
1. What is implied in the questions raised in Paragraph 1?| A．The characters of medical VR. |
| B．The function of medical VR. |
| C．The popularity of medical VR. |
| D．The limitation about medical VR. |
| A．Relaxing patients in hospital. |
| B．Raising the hospitals’ price. |
| C．Exposing patients to real life. |
| D．Making patients adapt to their surroundings. |
| A．To make doctors trust their patients. |
| B．To increase doctors’ interest in their work. |
| C．To help doctors experience the life of an elder. |
| D．To help young doctors know much about elderly patients. |
| A．Spieget’s special glasses. | B．The application of VisitU. |
| C．The use of MindMotionPro. | D．The creation of “We Are Alfred”. |
【推荐3】Angela Guzman was born in Bogotd, Colombia. At the age of 8 she moved to a tiny island in South Florida. The contrast was pretty vast. She didn’t speak any English, so she met with lots of challenges. At school, she would get stuck because she couldn’t understand or be understood. She thought “Well, everyone understands a picture! Why don’t I start drawing to communicate?” That was what she did. She tried hard to create pictures to show her meanings exactly, and then she became known as the artist in the classroom, from third grade through her whole years of secondary schooling. Later she chose to study design in college.
When Angela began her work in a big company, she was tasked with designing emojis — the company’s very first. At first, she intended to refuse the task because she had no idea what the word meant and what emojis would be used for. Her mentor (导师) said that the emoji was an icon (图标), an image, or a type of illustration, sharing joy, surprise, anger, fear, sorrow, love and so on.
Angela then began to study micro-expressions of humans and simplify or exaggerate (夸大) them in an illustrative manner. For example, the eyebrows make a V in anger and an upside down V in surprise. When she designed object emojis, she often turned to real-life items. She went to the party supply store,buying party poppers (派对烟花) to watch how the colorful paper pieces came out, and how light reflected off them. They were hard to capture, but Angela tried to make it.
Later, the tiny icons Angela and her mentor created were born and soon used by millions of people. When people praised Angela for her emoji design, she replied, “Actually, it’s an experience that teaches me a lot. One major thing is empathy (同理心) for communities worldwide. I pay close attention to the symbolism of color and the cultural symbolism overall. I think the cultural questions are important. For example, how do we make sure that every culture, every accent, or every person that speaks to these devices feels included? That was something I struggled with early on. This kind of thinking allowed my mind to be inclusive and mindful of everyone who would use the product.”
1. What can we learn about Angela’s childhood?| A．She had a hidden talent for language. |
| B．She was good at communicating through drawing. |
| C．She often held views different from her classmates, |
| D．She was always on the move with her family. |
| A．By diving into real life. |
| B．By referring to some popular emojis. |
| C．By gaining related knowledge of emojis. |
| D．By seeking help from experienced people. |
| A．Her mentor guided her in every detail. |
| B．Her design was inclusive of varied cultures. |
| C．She introduced color elements to her works. |
| D．She had a thoughtful attitude towards the poor. |
| A．What Influence a Mentor Has on a Girl |
| B．How a Humorous Girl Achieves Success |
| C．How a Girl Develops into an Emoji Designer |
| D．What Contributes to the Invention of Emojis |
【推荐1】Just as digital transformation improved many businesses and emerging technology, artificial intelligence (A.I.), and machine learning also have the potential to greatly improve operations in health care settings. Bringing in these changes is becoming increasingly popular for health care providers.
One company leading the automation revolution in health care is AKASA, a San Francisco-based developer of A.I. for health care operations. “American medicine may be the best in the world, but the health care system is still far behind because it has a complicated back-end system,” says AKASA’s chief executive officer and co-founder Malinka Walaliyadde. “We are simplifying and automating that system to make it a better experience for health care providers.”
For AKASA, the result has been an immediate improvement in both patient satisfaction and Omaha, for example, began their organization’s revenues(收入). Methodist Health System in Omaha, for example, began working with AKASA to automate the non-value-added aspects within its revenue cycle. “Now, processes that used to take more than seven minutes to determine are down to just one minute,” says Jeff Francis, Methodist Health System’s chief financial officer and vice president of finance. “There has been a sharp increase in revenue, which is up by at least 1% to $3 billion.”
Walaliyadde credits AKASA’s impressive product offering and its amazing results to the devotion and unmatched expertise of its workforce. “We hire the best and the brightest in both the health care and technology worlds from around the country and give employees the resources to solve old problems in new ways. The more unique backgrounds we can bring to a project, the better equipped we’ ll be to handle challenges with new and creative solutions,” Walaliyadde says. Even as AKASA strengthens its place in the health care technology field, Walaliyadde knows there are many more innovations to come. “We have made a large amount of progress already,” he says, “but there is so much more to do.”
1. What do we know about AKASA?| A．Its revenue reaches $3 billion. | B．Its aim is to upgrade American health care. |
| C．Its headquarter is based in France. | D．Its employees are of similar backgrounds. |
| A．He is impressed by AKASA’s service. |
| B．His company has increased its revenue. |
| C．His current system is facing challenges. |
| D．Value-added aspects are to be transformed. |
| A．Advanced digital technology. | B．Its simple corporate structure. |
| C．Joint efforts made by its skilled staff. | D．Diverse products offered by the company. |
| A．AKASA Pioneers A.I. Industry | B．AKASA Welcomes More Innovation |
| C．American Health Care Needs Talents | D．Automation Improves American Health Care |
【推荐2】A Natural History of the Future
£25.00
Ways to Buy: They Are Being Sold in Bookstores and Online
Introduction in Detail
Over the past century, humans have made surprising technological achievements with which we have found ways to control nature. From river dams (水坝) to huge one-crop fields, we continue to try to change nature for our goals — so much so it seems we may be in danger of affecting it seriously.
In A Natural History of the Future, expert Rob Dunn thinks that nothing could be further from the truth: rather than asking whether nature will let us live, better to ask whether we will let nature last. Although we try our best or worst efforts to control the nature world, life has its own laws, and no matter what man does, he cannot change them.
Explaining several basic laws of ecology (生态), Dunn shows why life cannot be stopped. We grow one single crop on the field, only to find new life appearing to attack them. We throw away harmful waste only to find microbes (微生物) to take it over. And even in the London Tube, we have seen a new type of insect appear to use a place that is clearly not fit to live. Life will not follow our carefully made plans. Instead, Dunn shows us the future of living things and the challenges that the next generation may face.
A Natural History of the Future sets a new standard for understanding the different kinds of life and our future as a kind of creature.
Weight 478 g
Size 223×146×33 mm
1. What does the author think of human’s scientific achievements?| A．Great. | B．Quick. | C．Dangerous. | D．Slow. |
| A．Living things like poisonous waste. | B．Life will be out of control in the future. |
| C．Life can live in any living conditions. | D．Living things have their own rules to grow. |
| A．Historian. | B．Naturalist. | C．Physicist. | D．Chemist. |
We often ask these questions: Are African wild dogs really dogs? What’s the difference between African wild dogs and the dogs we know as pets? For one thing, African wild dogs, which live in Africa, only have four toes, while domestic (驯养的) dogs and wolves have five. But you won’t want to count for yourself, because they are truly wild animals.
“Wild dogs are not somebody’s domestic dogs that ran away and didn’t come back, although some people used to think that, ” explains Dr McNutt, who studies these animals at Wild Dog Research Camp in the African country of Botswana. “They are actually Africa’s wolves, and just like wolves, they do not make good pets. They need to be out in the wild doing what they are supposed to do—find the food they need to survive and feed their babies.” In fact, they travel so far that researchers have to use radio collars (颈圈) to keep track of them. The collars send out radio signals that tell people where the dogs are. No two wild dogs have the same pattern of coats, so it is easy to tell them apart.
African wild dogs are smart and sociable, like pet dogs. Adult dogs, male and female, are willing to take good care of young ones.
Millions of domestic dogs live on the planet, but there are probably fewer than 6,000 African wild dogs left. Humans hunt them and farmers who don’t want them to go after cows and sheep poison them. Humans are also destroying the wild, natural habitat (栖息地) they need to survive in. Fortunately, today more farmers are finding other ways to protect their cows and sheep from African wild dogs instead of killing the animals.
1. Which of the following can explain why African wild dogs are different from domestic dogs?| A．African dogs can live longer than domestic dogs. |
| B．African dogs have fewer toes than domestic dogs. |
| C．African dogs are much bigger in size than domestic dogs. |
| D．African dogs are much more dangerous than domestic dogs. |
| A．are a kind of wolves |
| B．can be trained as pet dogs |
| C．actually are missing domestic dogs |
| D．generally are not used to living in groups |
| A．Farmers should use domestic dogs to fight against wild dogs. |
| B．African wild dogs should be protected instead of being killed. |
| C．Farmers should take responsibility for feeding African wild dogs. |
| D．African wild dogs should be used to protect farmers’ cows and sheep. |
| A．How to keep wild dogs |
| B．How to train domestic dogs |
| C．An introduction to African wild dogs |
| D．Differences between domestic dogs and wild dogs |
