Researchers in China have developed a robotic chemist powered by AI that might be able to obtain oxygen from water on Mars. The robot uses materials found on the red planet to produce catalysts (催化剂) that break down water, releasing oxygen.
“If you think about the challenge of going to Mars, you have to work with local material,” says Andy Cooper, a chemist at the University of Liverpool. “So I can see the logic behind it.”
The study was led by Jun Jiang at the University of Science and Technology of China Jiang and his team used a mobile machine the size of a refrigerator with a robotic arm to analyse five meteorites (陨石) that had come from Mars. The team’s goal was to investigate whether the machine could produce useful catalysts from the material.
The AI-powered system used some chemicals to dissolve (溶解) and separate the material, then analysed the resulting substances that consists of two or more elements. These then formed the basis of a search of more than 3.7 million formulae (公式) for a chemical that could break down water—known to exist as ice at Mars’ poles and under the planet’s surface-a process the team said would have taken a human researcher 2, 000 years. The result was a catalyst that could release oxygen from water, with the potential for use on a future Mars mission.
If a catalyst that can produce oxygen from water can be made on Mars, this would remove the need for missions to carry such a catalyst from Earth. Jiang says that for every square metre of Martian material, his group’s system could make nearly 60 grams of oxygen per hour, potentially removing the need for astronauts on future missions to the planet to carry oxygen from Earth to use when they get there. “The robot can work continuously for years, ” says Jiang.
Jiang points out that his group’s robotic chemist could also be used to produce other useful catalysts on Mars, for processes like fertilizing (施肥) plants. “Different chemicals can be made by this robot,” he says. And Mars isn’t the only place where it could be used. “Maybe lunar soil is another direction,” Jiang says.
1. What can we learn about the study?| A．A chemist with a robotic arm is involved. |
| B．Researchers aim to purify the water on Mars. |
| C．Oxygen is of vital importance in space travels. |
| D．Materials from Mars are analysed to produce catalysts. |
| A．Approving. | B．Unclear. | C．Dismissive. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Precise calculation. | B．Integration of materials. |
| C．High-speed operation. | D．Flexibility of movement. |
| A．The robot can stand endless working time. |
| B．Martian catalysts can produce more oxygen. |
| C．The system can make 60 grams of oxygen per day. |
| D．The robotic chemist can be applied in a broader way. |
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【推荐1】When Denis wants to relax at work, he steps into a quiet room, sits in a chair, slips on a virtual-reality headset, and escapes to the beach. For Denis, that moment is a tool he relies on regularly to both relieve and prevent stress.
He's not the only one at his company to use the room, where workers can also use a headset to watch a moon walk, take a virtual roller-coaster ride or access a meditation （冥 想）app.
Research shows VR can help reduce pain and anxiety. But it's not yet clear why it works. Experts believe it's related to the technology's power to distract.
“Whatever their problems are, whatever their stresses are, they can leave reality and have a different emotional mood," Denis said.
Virtual-reality headsets haven't taken off with consumers, but they're now powerful and inexpensive enough for companies to consider investing in them to help make workers and customers happier.
The headsets may help people take a virtual break from their surroundings, but there are challenges to consider. Ramon Llamas, a tech-market researcher, noted that there could be challenges in handing out headsets. Some people get sick or dizzy while using virtual reality, and the headsets may get dirty or broken. There's also the task of quickly familiarizing people with using the headsets, especially since VR adoption has been so limited and the ways they are controlled can vary.
For now, Llamas said, he's concerned about privacy and security. What if, for example, someone manages to hack into a headset and insert some content into what you' re watching?
Another potential issue is the management of the headsets and software that goes along with them. This is likely not a complication for an office like Umber Realty's, where people can simply take a headset off if they feel something wrong. But it could be more of a problem if you're stuck in a dentist's chair. “The last thing you want is that in the middle of pulling a tooth something goes wrong," Llamas said.
1. What does Denis's company use Virtual Reality for?| A．Improving the customers' experience. |
| B．Showing the schedule of his company. |
| C．Relieving pressure of the staff. |
| D．Saving the trouble of transportation. |
| A．Escaping from reality for the moment. | B．Improving their thinking ability. |
| C．Designing work for the company. | D．Investing in a new industry. |
| A．Some hackers will surely endanger users' health. |
| B．It is hard for users to recognize familiar people. |
| C．The company may have difficulty storing these devices. |
| D．Some users may feel uncomfortable when using it. |
| A．To advise people to make use of VR widely. |
| B．To prove one of the potential problems of VR. |
| C．To prevent all patients from using VR. |
| D．To help dentists to repair teeth with VR. |
【推荐2】Pretty soon not even your dreams may be private anymore. Japanese scientists have learned how to interpret what you’re dreaming about by measuring your brain activity while you sleep. This data can then be connected to an algorithm that reconstructs your dream so that it can be played back for you when you’re awake, according to the journal Science. In other words, scientists have invented a sort of dream-reading machine. Before long, you may never have to worry about forgetting what you dreamed about ever again. You’ll be able to simply play your dreams back after you wake up in the morning.
The remarkable breakthrough makes use of a fairly straightforward idea: that when we visualize certain types of objects in our minds, our brains generate consistent neural patterns that can then be correlated with what is being visualized. For instance, when you imagine a chair, your brain fires in a pattern that occurs whenever a chair is visualized. An algorithm can then be used to tie the data from a brain scan to the appropriate correlated images. In this way your dream can be reconstructed. So far the research is still fairly basic—researchers only claim to get the dream right about 60 percent of the time—but it’s still an extraordinary turn for the science of the mind.
Here’s how the study worked. Subjects were first asked to hook themselves up to an electroencephalography (EEG) machine, then to fall asleep within an fMRI machine. Scientists used the EEG readings to identify when the subjects began to enter a dreaming phase. The subjects were then promptly woken up and asked to recall what they were dreaming about. This process was repeated nearly 200 times for each subject.
Later, the scientists processed this data and discovered that certain common types of objects from the subjects’ dreams could be correlated with brain patterns as recorded by the fMRI scans. They then used an Internet search engine to look for images that roughly matched the objects from the subjects’ dreams, and entered all of this information into a learning algorithm that improved the model even further. That algorithm was then able to use the data from the dreamers, fMRI scans to assemble videos from the Internet images, basically creating a primitive movie for each dream.
Again, the research is still in a basic phase. So far these videos only represent rough approximations of the images from the subjects’ dreams, but researchers claim that the machined predictions were still better than chance. Over time, the technology will improve as the algorithm learns. The research could eventually revolutionize how dreams are interpreted and understood. Scientists may even find out valuable clues about what the mysterious function of dreaming is in the first place.
1. Which of the following statements is true about dream-reading machine?| A．It can make your dream come true. | B．It can rebuild your dream while you sleep. |
| C．It can help you remember your dream. | D．It can record your dream when you are awake. |
| A．How our dream can be rebuilt during sleep. | B．Patterns generated in our brain can be visualized. |
| C．Images can be visualized in our minds. | D．The data from a brain scan can build images. |
| A．Main feature of a talk in the research. | B．People who were tested in an experiment. |
| C．Topics which happened in a conversation. | D．Courses that were studied in the process. |
| A．analyze how our brains generate consistent neural patterns |
| B．discover when the subjects began to enter a dreaming phase |
| C．visualize the common types of objects from the subjects’ dreams |
| D．make the images matching the objects from dreams into videos |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Supportive. | C．Optimistic. | D．Tolerant. |
【推荐3】A team in Europe are working with wood, but not in the usual ways. They are not carpenters (木匠). Instead, they are scientists exploring how wood can lead to a greener electronic device, a transistor (晶体管) made from balsa wood, whose production releases less climate-warming gas into the air.
Transistors play an important role in computers and other devices. They act like tiny switches to control the flow of electricity. Engineers use them to process and store data. Today’s laptops may host billions of them. So they must be tiny — only a little wider than a strand of DNA.
The new transistor being built by physicist Isak Engquist and his team at Sweden’s Linkoping University isn’t as small as those. Big enough to see and hold, it can stand only an electric pressure that pushes electrons along. And it controls a current using charged particles (粒子) called ions.
This new technology shows a “proof of concept” that the idea can work, even if the new device is not yet ready to put into today’s electronics. “While it seems large by today’s standards, such a transistor still might prove useful for electronics that require low electric pressures,” says Engquist.
“The new transistor suggests that future electronic devices might be made in living plants,” Daniel Simon, a physicist in the team, says. “Imagine peeling away some bark from a living tree,” he says, “and stamping electronic circuits into the living wood.”
In fact, Engquist says, “There are so many ways we can use wood and the components of wood that we would never have thought of.” For instance, he can now imagine a wood-based sensor that could monitor crop health, measure pollution or survey a forest for fire risk.
1. Which can best describe the transistor?| A．Costly. | B．Widely used. |
| C．Time-saving. | D．More environmentally friendly. |
| A．It is much bigger. | B．It can’t stand electric pressure. |
| C．It can’t be seen. | D．It is made from metal. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Doubtful. | C．Positive. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Wood’s surprising roles in modern electronic design |
| B．Wood-made transistors: a step toward greener electronics |
| C．Scientists are researching the history of transistors |
| D．Scientists are working as carpenters to invent transistors |
【推荐1】Robert Irwin is a typical teenage boy, who enjoys mountain biking and photography. He also lives in a large zoo.
Robert, the son of the late “Crocodile Hunter” star Steve Irwin, is now taking center stage in “Crikey! It's the Irwins,” a new series on Animal Planet.
“We've worked on quite a few different TV projects, but this is actually the first time my whole family has come back to Animal Planet together, so it's pretty unusual,” says Robert.
Premiering at 8 p. m. on Sunday, “Crikey!” follows the Irwins as they run the 100-acre Australia Zoo, founded by Steve Irwin's parents. Steve owned and ran the zoo before he died in 2006, “We've always grown up in front of a camera. Bindi, my sister, and I were both filmed for some of the original ‘Crocodile Hunter’ documentaries,” says Robert.
“I'm very lucky in the way that I've had so much of my life captured on camera, so as the memories you have of Dad start to fade, you can always look back at the old footage and relive those special moments,” he says.
“Crikey! It's the Irwins” has some footage of Steve. The most exciting part of the premiere involves Robert leading the “Croc Show” at the zoo's “Crocoseum,” a 5, 500-seat stadium Steve built to give crocodile performances and educate visitors about crocodile behavior.
Of course, running a zoo doesn't leave much time for school, so Robert participates in Distance Education, a program similar to homeschooling, “School can be difficult for me to fit he says. “But I've actually got a classroom that's set up at Australia Zoo and a teacher that travels with us wherever we go, so I can fit in all of my studies.”
Robert continues, “I'm learning as much as I can about all of the animals and all of the work at Australia Zoo. I feel really honored to be following in Dad's footsteps. I love continuing that work.”
1. Why is the new series special to Robert?| A．It is being filmed in a large zoo. | B．It includes his whole family. |
| C．It is the first documentary he has made. | D．It allows him to work with his dad. |
| A．It encourages him to work hard. | B．It helps increase his popularity. |
| C．It helps strengthen his ties to his dad. | D．It encourages him to care about animals. |
| A．Feeding animals. | B．Becoming a crocodile expert. |
| C．Becoming a wildlife photographer. | D．Running Australia Zoo. |
【推荐2】We’ve all been there: in a lift, in line at the bank or on an airplane, surrounded by people who are, like us, deeply focused on their smartphones or, worse, struggling with the uncomfortable silence.
What’s the problem? It’s possible that we all don’t have enough conversational ability. It’s more likely that none of us start a conversation because it’s embarrassing and challenging, or we think it’s annoying and unnecessary. But the next time you find yourself among strangers, consider that small talk is worth the trouble. Experts say it’s a valuable social practice that leads to big benefits.
It is easy to consider small talk as unimportant, but we can’t forget that deep relationships wouldn’t even exist (存在) if there weren’t casual conversations. Small talk is the grease (润滑剂) for social communication, says Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. “Almost every great love story and each big business deal begins with small talk,” he explains. “The secret to successful small talk is learning how to connect with others, not just communicate with them.”
In a 2014 study, Elizabeth Dunn, professor of psychology at UBC, invited people to a coffee shop. One group was asked to interact with its waiter, the other, to speak only when necessary. The results showed that those who chatted with their server reported obviously higher positive feelings and a better coffee shop experience. “It’s not that talking to the waiter is better than talking to your husband,” says Dunn. “But interactions with peripheral (边缘的) members of our social network is important for our happiness and health.”
Dunn believes that people who reach out to strangers feel a greater sense of belonging, a link with others. Carducci believes developing such a sense of belonging starts with small talk. “Small talk is the basis of good manners,” he says.
1. What does the underline word “casual” in paragraph 3mean?| A．Addictive | B．Public | C．Personal | D．Informal |
| A．Showing good manners. | B．Making business deals. |
| C．Focusing on a topic. | D．Keeping in contact with other people. |
| A．It raises people’s confidence. | B．It makes people feel good. |
| C．It improves family relationships. | D．It matters as much as a formal talk. |
| A．Conversation Counts | B．Ways of Making Small Talk |
| C．Importance of Small Talk | D．Uncomfortable Silence |
【推荐3】High school is difficult for everyone. You are going through an awkward time and you may either fit in right away or feel like a complete outcast. But no matter how well you may fit in (or not), joining a club will be good for you in the short term and long term.
Joining a club is a great way to meet new people, especially if you are new to the school. Joining a club forces you to communicate with people who have similar interests as you. Even if you are the shyest and quietest person, you are sure to develop a relationship with at least one person in the club that you decide to join. Speaking from personal experience, I have met some of my best friends from my after-school activities and had many new doors open to me.
Another really nice thing about joining a club is that doing activities looks good on college applications (申请). Being known as outgoing is a highly valued trait (特质); it shows that you are willing to put yourself out there, be determined (意志坚定的), and best of all try new things. Another nice thing is that (depending on the activity) it could help you develop skills that you could use during a college interview.
Productivity is something that teens seem to continuously have a problem with. Most teens go to school and then come home and spend the rest of the day in front of the television or phone, but activities prohibit (阻止) this. Teens are also very easy to influence and if they fall into the wrong group of people they could fall into consequences such as problems with the law. Clubs are a great place to spend time and be with good people who you can fall back on if you need them.
Maybe the most important reason why you should join a club is the long-term benefit (益处) it brings. The classroom isn’t the only learning environment in a school. Things such as meeting and speaking to new people, keeping an eye on the time, and being organized are things you will use every single day of your life.
1. What might the underlined word “outcast” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．A person who is popular. | B．A person who is not smart. |
| C．A person who is confident. | D．A person who is not accepted. |
| A．The number of clubs you have joined. |
| B．The strong relationships you have built. |
| C．The bright personality you have developed. |
| D．The skills you have learned while forming a club. |
| A．Increasing knowledge. | B．Learning teamworking skills. |
| C．Improving your fitness level. | D．Making good use of your time. |
| A．What club should you join? | B．How to join a club you like? |
| C．Why should you join a club? | D．Should you join a second club? |
【推荐1】I’m used to seeing small leaps in technological progress, but occasionally, there are things that will still shock me. At the end of last year, a company called Open AI released a truly jaw-dropping demonstration of a new AI technology that feels almost like technology has skipped ahead by a few generations.
This new AI technology is called ChatGPT, a computer program that can understand and respond to human language. It is trained on a lot of text, so it can understand what people are saying and respond in a way that sounds like a real person. What’s even more amazing is that ChatGPT seems frighteningly human in its ability to understand questions and answer them competently. “Write a story about Leonardo da Vinci in the style of Roald Dahl,” you can ask it, and it’ll spin up a pretty good children’s story.
One area where I’ve found ChatGPT to be enormously useful is its ability to write computer code. This has particularly amazed me as unlike the English language, when you write code it has to be very precise (精确的) and carefully structured — but when I asked it to write me a program that would put some data into a database for me, in a particularly complex way, within seconds it generated something that would have taken me hours to do manually (人工地). ChatGPT isn’t completely human, however. For example, it sometimes generates things that sound true, but are actually just nonsense. This is because of the way the AI learns through pattern recognition. There’s no real intelligence operating there — it is just repeating something based on what it has “read” before. ChatGPT is better at some tasks than others: it can write a brilliant invitation email, but its ability to rhyme leaves a lot to be desired.
And this is why I’m pretty convinced that ChatGPT is going to change the world, sooner rather than later. It’s already hugely impressive, but what exists at the moment is just a demonstration. Once the same AI is built into other apps and can connect to the live internet to learn more, it will become even more advanced. Our computers will no longer be just our word processors, but our writing partners too.
1. Which aspect about ChatGPT especially amazed the author?| A．Its structure. | B．Its variety. | C．Its efficiency. | D．Its correction. |
| A．ChatGPT has some limitations. |
| B．There’s no real intelligence in the world. |
| C．ChatGPT is better than other chatbot AI. |
| D．AI cannot think the same way as humans do. |
| A．Worried. | B．Doubtful. | C．Optimistic. | D．Unconcerned. |
【推荐2】September 2022 was apparently the month artificial intelligence essay anxiety boiled over in academia, after a user of an AI writing service claimed to be getting straight A’s with essays “written” using artificial intelligence. Most professors expressed concern. One wrote, “Grading something an AI wrote is an incredibly depressing waste of my life.”
As all this online depression was playing out, I asked my students, who were mostly majors in writing, to submit a 2,000-word proposal about a local issue. I asked them to rely on the AI as much as possible. After reviewing their 22 AI essays, I can tell you confidently that the technology just isn’t there. My students used free accessible text generators online and put in a lot of effort. But, if I had believed these were genuine student essays, the very best would have earned somewhere around a C or C-minus. Many of the essays had obvious red flags for AI generation: outdated facts, quotes from prior university presidents presented as current presidents, fictional professors and named student organizations that don’t exist. At the same time, the students reported that using AI required far more time than simply writing their essays the old-fashioned way would have.
There has been a fair amount written about the supposed impressiveness of AI-generated text. There are even several high-profile AI-written articles, essays or even scientific papers or screenplays that showcase this impressiveness. In many of these cases, the “authors” have access to higher-quality language models than most students are currently able to use. But, more importantly, the published examples are generally the polished form of professional writers and editors. In contrast, many of my students’ AI-generated essays showed the common problems of student writing—uncertainty about the appropriate writing style, issues with organization and transitions, and inconsistent paragraphing. Obviously, producing a quality essay with AI requires having high writing skill and revising skill to produce appropriate outputs.
My experimental so tells me that a good assignment sheet is the best defense against AI essays. If your assignment is “Describe the reasons for the U.S. Civil War”, you are more likely to get AI or downloaded essay submissions. My assignment was a challenge because it asked students to address local issues of concern. There are just not enough relevant examples in the data the AI text generators are drawing from.
It has been just over five years since computer scientists declared, “We should stop training radiologists(放射科医生) now. Deep learning is going to do better than radiologists.” Well, we’re still training radiologists, and there’s no indication that deep learning is going to replace human doctors anytime soon. In much the same way, I strongly suspect full-on robot writing will always and forever be “just around the corner”.
1. What can we learn about the students in the experiment?| A．Their writing efficiency was affected. |
| B．Their essays were better structured. |
| C．They preferred AI-written essays. |
| D．They overcame AI’s weaknesses. |
| A．Online text generators are far from reliable. |
| B．Genuine student essays deserve higher marks. |
| C．Students need to have better mastery of technology. |
| D．Revising applications decide the quality of AI essays. |
| A．Standard criteria | B．Strict regulations.. |
| C．Clear instructions. | D．Unique writing tasks. |
| A．To assess AI’s influence on students’ writing. |
| B．To discuss the threat of AI to the teaching of writing. |
| C．To appeal for the appropriate application of AI text generators. |
| D．To analyse the differences between genuine and Al-written essays. |
【推荐3】ChatGPT is a new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that can write essays, solve complex problems, compose song lyrics, and more. It has caused a new moral panic as many teachers, parents, and even some teens are convinced that students will use this tool to cheat. In response, a number of school districts have moved to ban ChatGPT.
Moral panics generally reveal underlying beliefs in technological determinism, so before jumping on the trend of banning ChatGPT, remember that technology will continue to be a big part of our kids’ lives. There is no putting that horse back in the barn, so it’s a good idea to figure out how to prepare kids to navigate a world with AI.
Preparing kids for AI means teaching them the skills and knowledge they need to work with AI technologies. Foremost among these are critical thinking and ethical (合乎道德的) decision-making. This includes learning how to check information sources to develop data literacy and understanding key ethical concepts such as copyright and privacy. It also means age-appropriate exposure to the benefits, challenges, and dangers of AI tools as they emerge.
As parents, you’d better not dismiss a tool like ChatGPT until you explore it for yourself. Think about how you would use ChatGPT. I asked it to write a recipe for Sole Meuniere (香煎鳎目鱼). It was very fast and accurate and included serving suggestions.
Ask your kids to brainstorm how they might use ChatGPT. Ask ChatGPT some questions together with your kids. All questions can lead you to a discussion about when it’s a helpful tool and what uses would be unethical or inappropriate.
AI is driving a lot of our interactions with technology. But it will never replace human cognition and will not go away. The only way to make use of its potential is to learn how to use it well.
1. What is the main purpose of paragraph 1?| A．To raise a question to be discussed. |
| B．To list some interesting phenomena. |
| C．To express the main idea of the text. |
| D．To introduce a new trend in technology. |
| A．Tolerant. | B．Opposed. | C．Neutral. | D．Unclear. |
| A．To show that ChatGPT is easy to use. |
| B．To encourage readers to use ChatGPT in their daily life. |
| C．To prove that ChatGPT is commonly used in many aspects of life. |
| D．To inspire readers to consider whether ChatGPT would be useful for them. |
| A．Kids should be allowed to explore AI freely. |
| B．Parents should instruct kids to use AI properly. |
| C．AI will replace human cognition in some fields. |
| D．AI needs to be improved to answer all questions. |
