Imagine you’re standing in line to buy a snack at a store. You step up to the counter and the cashier scans your food. Next, you have to pay. But instead of scanning a QR Code(二维码) with your smart phone, you just hold out your hand so the cashier can scan your fingerprint. Or, a camera scans your face, your eyes or even your ear.
Now, this type of technology might not be far away. As technology companies move away from the traditional password, biometric (生物特征识别的) security, which includes fingerprint, face and voice ID, is becoming increasingly popular.
In 2013, Apple introduced the iPhone 5s, one of the first smart phones with a fingerprint scanner. Since then, using one’s fingerprint to unlock a phone and make mobile payments has become a commonplace, bringing convenience to our lives. And since 2016, Samsung has featured eye-scanning technology in its top smart phones, while Apple’s new iphone X can even scan a user’s face. But despite its popularity, experts warn that biometrics might not be as secure as we imagine. “Biometrics is ideally good in practice, not so much,“ said John Michener, a biometrics expert.
When introducing the new iPhone’s face ID feature, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice-president, said. “The chance that a random person in the population could look at your iPhones X and unlock it with their face is about one in a million.” But it’s already been done. In a video posted on a community website Reddit, two brothers showed how they were each able to unlock the same iPhone X using their own face. And they aren’t even twins.
“We may expect too much from biometrics,” Anil Jain, a computer science professor at Michigan State University, told CBS News. “No security systems are perfect.”
Earlier last year, Jain found a way to trick biometric security. Using a printed copy of a thumbprint, she was able to unlock a dead person’s smart phone for the police, according to a tech website Splinter. “It’s good to see biometrics being used more,” Jain told CBS News, “because it adds another factor for security. But using multiple security measures is the best defense.”
1. Which is the latest identification technology in a smart phone according to the passage?| A．Face scanning. | B．Eye scanning. |
| C．QR Code scanning. | D．Fingerprint scanning. |
| A．It takes too long to unlock the phone. |
| B．It often fails to recognize its owner’s face. |
| C．Face data can be used for other purposes. |
| D．Different faces can be used to unlock the same phone. |
| A．It is as secure as traditional measures. |
| B．It is perfect without much improvement. |
| C．It has caused much trouble for the police. |
| D．It should be used with other security measures. |
| A．The popularity of biometrics. |
| B．Security problems of biometrics. |
| C．Various problems with biometrics. |
| D．Great changes caused by biometrics. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Recent studies have shown that there is a link between anxiety and intelligence and it is a positive one.Fear allows you to react to a potential threat in good time.Being too happy all the time means that you don't think about potential problems.
The general belief about anxiety is that it's a negative thing.Because suffering from anxiety is not pleasant,most of the people who deal with it hope they don't have to.
In 2002,Israeli psychologists ran a test on 80 students.The students were under the impression mat they were there to appreciate artwork on a piece of software.However,the researchers rigged（在…上做手脚）the program.
Finding IT brought new challenges.As the students left the room,they met various problems.
Obviously,the anxious students had a greater sense of the threat.
| A．So when does worry become a bad thing? |
| B．Thus,they tried their best to achieve their goal. |
| C．But this does not necessarily need to be the case. |
| D．Some students came across dropped papers as they walked by. |
| E．Instead of viewing artwork,the students found a computer virus. |
| F．Often kids and adults with anxiety have a very negative view of themselves. |
| G．People with anxiety are sometimes responding to a threat that doesn't exist. |
We had heard in school about a planet called Pluto. It was the farthest, coldest, and darkest thing a child could imagine. We guessed how long it would take to die if we stood on the surface of such a frozen place wearing only the clothes we had on. We tried to figure out how much colder Pluto was than Antarctica, or than the coldest day we had ever experienced in Pennsylvania.
Pluto, which famously was downgraded from a “major planet” to a “dwarf planet”（矮星）in 2006, captured our imagination because it was a mystery that could complete our picture of what it was like at the most remote corners of our solar system
Pluto’s underdog discovery story is part of what makes it so attractive. Clyde Tombaugh was a Kansas farm boy who built telescopes out of spare auto parts, old farm equipment and self-ground lenses. As an assistant at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Tombaugh's task was to search millions of stars for a moving point of light, a planet that the observatory’s founder thought existed beyond the orbit of Neptune. On February 18，1930，Tombaugh found it. Pluto was the first planet discovered by an American, and represented a moment of light in the midst of the Great Depression’s dark encroachment (入侵).
Pluto is much more than something that is not a planet. It’s a reminder that there are many worlds out there beyond our own and that the sky isn’t the limit at all. We don’t know what kinds of fantastic variations on a theme nature is capable of making until we get there to look.
1. Why did Pluto become famous in 2006 according to the passage?
| A．Because it lost its major planet status. |
| B．Because it disappeared in the sky. |
| C．Because it was discovered by an American. |
| D．Because it was proved to be the coldest planet in the universe. |
| A．An American Scientist: Clyde Tombaugh |
| B．Pluto was First Discovered by a Boy |
| C．Pluto’s Strange Romance |
| D．The Days I Spent with My Brother in Pennsylvania |
| A．Clyde Tombaugh discovered the darkness in the Great Depression. |
| B．Pluto was the only planet that was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh. |
| C．Clyde Tombaugh’s job was to build telescopes for Lowell Observatory. |
| D．Clyde Tombaugh’s telescopes used for searching stars were very simple. |
| A．Pluto is no less than a planet in the solar system. |
| B．Pluto is much more than a planet in the solar system. |
| C．Pluto is more important than any other planet in the sky. |
| D．Pluto is not a planet in the solar system, but it is more than a planet. |
【推荐3】The Age of Information is mushrooming, perhaps even bulging. If you tried to download all the data available today, you’d need more than 180 million years to do so. But you are wrong to assume that all this information would stimulate a boost of innovation to match the output of data. Indeed, the last time we found ourselves in a period of significant innovation, pursuing the ideas with the biggest spark, was more than 120 years ago, in a period called the Age of Insight.
Innovations, both big and small, start with a new idea. Often, these ideas occur as a moment of insight-the result of a novel connection in our brains made between existing and new information. Studies show insights involve quiet signals deep in the brain, just under the surface of awareness. Anything that helps us notice quiet signals, such as taking breaks between meetings, only adopting necessary learning approaches or avoiding distractions like social media, can increase the chance of insights. However, it’s becoming more challenging to find those quiet signals with the increasing use of technology, filling every moment with emergencies and an endless supply of content.
Besides, we also want to increase the quality of them-to be able to sort through big new ideas and find the ones that have real value, which can be hard to measure. Launched in 2015, the Eureka Scale(尤里卡量表) allows us to assess the strength of our insight experiences on a five-point scale, which is marked by intense emotions, motivation, memory advantage, aftershocks, and following ideas. The Scale combines these five variables into a single value and allows us to define the importance of a new idea. The level-5 insight, involving the richest emotion, motivation, and lasting impact, holds the greatest significance.
Because insights are one of the best ways to drive engagement, innovation, and behavior change, the Eureka Scale has broad applications for measuring and improving individual and organizational performance. More importantly, it can be used to measure the impact of different kinds of work environments and learning approaches on participants’ growth-both in the moment or afterward.
In order for organizations to benefit from another age of insight, it’s not enough to try to access more data or increase the number of insights we generate. Instead, it’s about making space for the biggest ideas to emerge from all the information. Using the shared language of the Eureka Scale as a way to measure how important ideas are, relative to each other, will enable better decision-making toward practical and competitive outcomes. And if we’re to enter a new age of insight, we must design our environments to allow for the best insight possible to surface.
1. What does the underlined word “bulging” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Stabilizing. |
| B．Exploding. |
| C．Shifting. |
| D．Collapsing. |
| A．By engaging in ongoing social media interactions. |
| B．By relying on technology to receive regular notices. |
| C．By stepping away from computers between meetings. |
| D．By participating in additional training and coaching sessions. |
| A．The Eureka Scale controls the influence of our insights. |
| B．Possessing minimal emotional responses is a level-5 insight. |
| C．Both the quantity and quality of insights are essential to innovation. |
| D．A breakthrough has been made in innovation due to a wealth of information. |
| A．Uncertain. |
| B．Optimistic. |
| C．Unconcerned. |
| D．Dissatisfied. |
【推荐1】How AI Protects Us
We should consider AI not as something competing with us, but as something that can strengthen our abilities.
Predict infectious (传染性的) diseases
The AI in medicine is a system that combines the time and location of each new infectious disease. “These are all factors that determine how the disease will spread,” explains a researcher.
Keep hunger from the door
Researchers develop an automated system aimed at fighting against diseases in crops. The Mcrops project allows local farmers to take pictures of their plants and use computers that have been trained to spot the signs of the four main diseases that are responsible for damaging crops.
Fight cancer
Cancer causes more than 8.8 million deaths worldwide and 14 million people are diagnosed with some form of cancer every year.
The task of balancing power supplies is getting harder. The spread of smart meters — digital energy monitors that automatically record usage - is also providing more data than ever about how and when consumers use energy. The EU alone plans to have 500 million smart meters in homes by 2020.
| A．Record the locations smartly. |
| B．Keep the balance of power supplies |
| C．Thus, the farmers can have a good harvest. |
| D．The system can also help to predict the disease. |
| E．This is because AI has an ability that’s far beyond humans. |
| F．But now people have no ideas how to deal with the terrible problem. |
| G．Yet catching cancers as early as possible can greatly improve a patient’s chances of survival. |
Bad news sells. If it bleeds, it leads. No news is good news, and good news is no news. Those are the classic rules for the evening broadcasts and the morning papers. But now that information is being spread and monitored(监控) in different ways, researchers are discovering new rules. By tracking people’s e-mails and online posts, scientists have found that good news can spread faster and farther than disasters and sob stories.
“The ‘if it bleeds’ rule works for mass media,” says Jonah Berger, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. “They want your eyeballs and don’t care how you’re feeling. But when you share a story with your friends, you care a lot more how they react. You don’t want them to think of you as a Debbie Downer.”
Researchers analyzing word-of-mouth communication—e-mails, Web posts and reviews, face-to-face conversations—found that it tended to be more positive than negative(消极的), but that didn’t necessarily mean people preferred positive news. Was positive news shared more often simply because people experienced more good things than bad things? To test for that possibility, Dr. Berger looked at how people spread a particular set of news stories: thousands of articles on The New York Times’ website. He and a Penn colleague analyzed the “most e-mailed” list for six months. One of his first findings was that articles in the science section were much more likely to make the list than non-science articles. He found that science amazed Times’ readers and made them want to share this positive feeling with others.
Readers also tended to share articles that were exciting or funny, or that inspired negative feelings like anger or anxiety, but not articles that left them merely sad. They needed to be aroused(激发) one way or the other, and they preferred good news to bad. The more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared, as Dr. Berger explains in his new book, “Contagious: Why Things Catch On.”
1. What do the classic rules mentioned in the text apply to?
| A．News reports. | B．Research papers. |
| C．Private e-mails. | D．Daily conversations． |
| A．They’re socially inactive. |
| B．They’re good at telling stories. |
| C．They’re inconsiderate of others. |
| D．They’re careful with their words. |
| A．Sports new. | B．Science articles. |
| C．Personal accounts. | D．Financial reviews. |
| A．Sad Stories Travel Far and Wide |
| B．Online News Attracts More People |
| C．Reading Habits Change with the Times |
| D．Good News Beats Bad on Social Networks |
For all the technological wonders of modern medicine, health care-with its fax machines and clipboards(写字板)—is out of date. This outdated era is slowly drawing to a close as the industry catches up with the artificial-intelligence ( AI) revolution.
Eric Topol, an expert in heart disease and enthusiast for digital medicine, thinks AI will be particularly useful for such tasks as examining images, observing heart traces for abnormalities or turning doctors' words into patient records. It will be able to use masses of data to work out the best treatments, and improve workflows in hospitals. In short, AI is set to save time, lives and money.
The fear some people have is that AI will be used to deepen the assembly-line culture of modern medicine. If it gives a “ gift of time” to doctors, they argue that this bonus should be used to extend consultations, rather than simply speeding through them more efficiently.
That is a fine idea, but as health swallows an ever-bigger share of national wealth, greater efficiency is exactly what is needed, at least so far as governments and insurers are concerned. Otherwise, rich societies may fail to cope with the needs of ageing and growing populations. An extra five minutes spent chatting with a patient is costly as well as valuable. The AI revolution will also enable managerial accountants to adjust and evaluate every aspect of treatment. The autonomy of the doctor will surely be weakened, especially, perhaps, in public-health systems which are duty-bound to cut unnecessary costs.
The Hippocratic Oath(誓言) holds that there is an art to medicine as well as a science, and that “warmth, sympathy and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug”. There's lots of sense in it: the patients of sympathetic physicians have been shown to recover better. Yet as the supply of human carers fails to satisfy the demand for health care, the future may involve consultations on smartphones and measurements monitored by chatbots. The considerately warmed stethoscope (听诊器) ,placed gently on a patient's back, may become a relic of the past.
1. What's Dr Topol's attitude toward AI's coming into medicine?| A．Concerned. | B．Doubtful. | C．Optimistic. | D．Cautious. |
| A．Medical costs. | B．National wealth. |
| C．Longer consultation. | D．Greater efficiency. |
| A．To prove the bright future of AI. |
| B．To show the advantage of a human doctor. |
| C．To explain medical equipment is more important. |
| D．To argue a human doctor performs as well as a robot. |
| A．Health care and AI | B．AI and its applications |
| C．Doctors and Patients | D．Dr Topol and digital medicine |
【推荐1】If you’re reading this story, the chances are you’ve got a pretty good command of English. You’re not alone — an estimated 1.5 billion people speak English today, making it the most commonly used language in the world. Most are non-native speakers with English as their second language, while it serves as a third or fourth language for hundreds of millions more. So which place has the most fluent non-native English speakers?
According to a new report by international education company, the Netherlands is the best non-native English speakers across the globe. The results of its English Proficiency Index (英语能力指数), based on a free online test taken by 2.3 million volunteers, show that the Dutch are the most fluent. Sweden was positioned just below, with a score of 68.74 out of 100, while Norway came in third with 67.93 points.
Although the places with “very high proficiency” were largely made up of European countries, Singapore and South Africa also scored highly, coming in fifth and sixth place respectively.
The report also found that English was the most widely studied second language in the world by far. This may be the reason why just 20% of school students in the United States were studying a foreign language.
The survey was measured by testing non-native English speakers in 100 countries and over 400 cities and regions who voluntarily agreed to take the test. But there’s one thing that should be noticed. People are more likely to participate (参与) in the survey if they can surf the internet more easily. And this may greatly influence the accuracy (准确性) of the results.
1. Which of the following country has the most fluent non-native English speakers?| A．America. | B．Singapore. |
| C．Sweden. | D．The Netherlands. |
| A．Americans do not need to learn a second language. |
| B．Americans dislike languages other than English. |
| C．More and more people are taking English as a second language. |
| D．Not many Americans would like to learn another language. |
| A．By asking volunteers to test online. |
| B．By handing out paper survey in some places. |
| C．By inviting volunteers to participate in the company. |
| D．By cooperating with other organizations. |
| A．Positive. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Objective. |
【推荐2】It is natural for young people to admire cool and good-looking young “idols (偶像)”. We spend a lot of time caring about them-even more time than we spend on our studies or work. We often wonder: What makes them so popular? What could I do to be cool like them?
Well, guess what? Many of your idols are only made to “look” cool. If you could see into their private lives, you would find these stars aren’t so bright. Their beauty is only skin-deep. Some of them might not be as honest, kind or hard-working as you are! They aren’t worth the popularity that they enjoy at all!
When I was a teenager, I, along with most of my classmates, had admired pop idols, too. Then, one day, I discovered Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. They were ordinary-looking people who played the guitar while sitting on a bench. They wore no flashy (奢华的) clothes, and they had no screaming fans. They didn’t need to be flashy because their songs were great and meaningful. They told the truth: Life is hard and the road you take might sometimes be lonely. Most of all, they taught me that it was okay if I was not popular and cool all of the time. I still listen to them today.
Modern “idol culture” often sends the wrong message that life is always easy and fun. But the best actors, the top-ranking sports stars and the most creative scientists all have scars (伤疤) from the stress of dealing with many life difficulties. Many of the successful “outgoing” people we admire today were shy when they were teenagers.
Idols can serve as important role models in our lives, so it’s very important to choose the right ones. We should celebrate people who teach us important values that can help to guide us on the road ahead. The next time you see some pretty, popular “stars,” ask yourself: Do I really need these people in my life?
1. What is the function of the underlined sentences in the first paragraph?| A．To prove the author’s argument. |
| B．To interest readers in reading further. |
| C．To show the importance of the idol culture. |
| D．To serve as the topic sentence of the paragraph. |
| A．He understands it. | B．He is against it. |
| C．He supports it. | D．He is uninterested in it. |
| A．All the teenagers admire pop stars. | B．Leonard and Neil are famous musicians. |
| C．Life is easy and fun for stars. | D．Being popular and cool is not necessarily important. |
| A．Teenagers should be cool like stars. | B．Teenagers should say no to the wrong idols. |
| C．Role models should be chosen from idols. | D．Wrong messages are from idol culture. |
The most difficult aspect of a learning vacation may be choosing one because the possibilities are endless. If you enjoy cooking，various companies can take you to Italy, France, Spain, Mexico or even Peru. Once there, you can learn to prepare the local cuisine(烹饪). Trips are often planned to fit in with local food festivals or special events.
The term “learning vacation” often brings language to mind. The best way to learn a language is in an environment where it’s spoken. Study Spanish, French or English. Or attempt a more unusual language like Polish, Estonian or Thai. You’ll be able to learn about the country and absorb the culture at the same time. In that case, you can really learn the authentic foreign language.
If you are fond of sports, you can polish your skills or learn new ones. Golf and tennis schools welcome players of all levels. If you want a bigger thrill, you can learn to surf, go climbing or race cars. It’s even possible to learn the art and techniques of bull fighting while on vacation!
You can also discover your inner artist. Many places offer painting classes in different mediums. The scenic locations of the schools offer plenty of subjects that provide inspiration for practice.
If you prefer capturing the world on film, take a photography vacation. Travel with a small group to photograph beautiful animals or scenery. You can also practice your technique on people or at historical sights.
Once you decide on a vacation, choose a company carefully. Request names of recent customers you can contact, and then ask them for an evaluation. The more you know before you go, the better prepared you’ll be. Then go out and learn something!
1. Why is it hard for you to decide on a learning vacation?
| A．Because it is hard for you to make plans. |
| B．Because the possibilities are unlimited. |
| C．Because there are many good foods from abroad. |
| D．Because there’re too many food festivals or events. |
| A．the environment is fit for you to use the language. |
| B．you are able to learn the real foreign language. |
| C．native speakers offer you a lot of chances to practice. |
| D．you can learn the language and experience its culture. |
| A．advertise some popular summer programs. |
| B．encourage readers to have a good time relaxing. |
| C．offer some tips on how to enjoy a learning vacation. |
| D．attract more readers to spend summer time learning. |
