1 . Goldfish may seem like simple creatures swimming in a glass tank, but they possess a rather complicated navigation system, as discovered by researchers at the University of Oxford Led by Dr. Adelaide Sibeaux, the study aims to shed light on our understanding of how fish, and potentially humans, estimate distances using what could be described as an internal GPS.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Sibeaux and colleagues report how they created a tank in their experiment with 2cm-wide black and white vertical stripes (条纹) on the walls, connected by similar stripes across the floor. The team trained nine goldfish to swim a set distance of 70cm and then return to their starting point when waved at. The experiment aimed to investigate how the fish would estimate this distance without any gestures, under different patterns.
Over multiple trials, the goldfish averaged a swim distance of 74cm, give or take 17cm, when presented with the vertical 2cm-wide stripes. However, when the stripe pattern was altered to either narrower vertical stripes, checked patterns, or horizontal stripes, the fish’s behavior changed significantly. Narrower vertical stripes led them to overestimating the distance by 36%, while horizontal stripes resulted in highly inconsistent estimations.
According to the researchers, the goldfish appeared to be using an “optic (光学的) flow mechanism” based on the visual density of their environment. They kept track of how frequently the vertical pattern switched between black and white to estimate how far they had traveled. The study suggests that different optic flow mechanisms are used by mammals, including humans, based on angular (有角度的) motion of visual features. The study implies that the use of visually based distance information could have emerged early in the evolutionary timeline.
“This study is novel because, despite knowing that fish respond to geometric information regarding direction and distance, we don’t know how they estimate distances,” Professor Colin Lever, although not involved in the study, said, “it’s exciting to explore fish spatial mapping because fish navigation evolved earlier and better than most mammals.”
1. Why did Dr. Adelaide Sibeaux conduct the study on goldfish?| A．To test the accuracy of goldfish’s internal GPS. |
| B．To create an advanced navigation system for humans |
| C．To uncover how an inbuilt GPS helps calculate distances. |
| D．To explore the relationships between goldfish and humans |
| A．People gestured the goldfish throughout the experiment |
| B．The tank was decorated with colorful background patterns |
| C．Goldfish tended to underestimate distances with horizontal stripes. |
| D．The change in the tank setting led to the goldfish's incorrect judgment. |
| A．optic flow mechanism is unique to humans |
| B．mammals developed flow mechanism long before goldfish |
| C．goldfish evaluated the distance with multidimensional visual information |
| D．visual density of the environment strengthened the locating ability of goldfish |
| A．Neutral. | B．Ambiguous. | C．Disapproving. | D．Favorable. |
2 . The four people have persuaded companies to give them ￡250,000 worth of toys and food for nothing. And next Monday, they are going to
According to them, it is remarkably easy to get hold of items to give away, if you
The four friends
Their first successful “kindness act” was to help
The Kindness Offensive goes to great lengths to
| A．lead | B．distribute | C．attach | D．apply |
| A．carrying out | B．working out | C．making out | D．bringing out |
| A．children | B．customers | C．strangers | D．friends |
| A．adapt | B．depart | C．concentrate | D．persist |
| A．familiar | B．overseas | C．endless | D．aimless |
| A．initially | B．ultimately | C．unfortunately | D．naturally |
| A．launched | B．concluded | C．advertised | D．gathered |
| A．look forward to | B．pay attention to | C．pass on to | D．live up to |
| A．strategies | B．intentions | C．methods | D．routines |
| A．found | B．affect | C．obtain | D．fulfill |
| A．status | B．power | C．shelter | D．peace |
| A．reluctantly | B．eagerly | C．patiently | D．passively |
| A．avoid | B．double | C．encourage | D．oppose |
| A．complex | B．reasonable | C．influential | D．accurate |
| A．though | B．unless | C．until | D．if |
3 . On a dark night, 11-year-old Joe was playing hide-and-seek with his friends in the backyard when he thought he saw Magellan—a huge housecat. However, when the cat suddenly jumped on his head, Joe found it turned out a young cougar. He backed away from the animal, then turned and ran inside the house.
Cougar encounters like this one are becoming increasingly common in the U.S. Most people assume that’s because cougar populations are growing, or because the big cats are coming into closer contact with the expanding web of human suburbs. But Professor Robert Wielgus at Washington State University argues that poorly designed hunting policies might be causing an increase in cougar-human conflicts.
Wielgus’s research teams have been fitting the big cats with radio collars and monitoring their movements. They find that the cougar population is actually declining rapidly and almost no male cougars are over four years of age. And a study shows that the heavily hunted area has five times as many cougar complaints as the lightly hunted area—even though the density of cougars is about the same in both areas.
Wielgus suspects that hunting policies, which allow older males to be killed to keep cougar populations in check, were the culprit and teenage cougars in the heavily hunted area may be responsible for most of the trouble. To test his theory, he adds two more groups of cougars to the tracking program—one in a heavily hunted area and another in a comparable but lightly hunted area. He concludes that heavy hunting indeed almost wipes out older males and the population structure in the heavily hunted area shifts toward younger animals.
With these findings, Wielgus believes without adults to keep them under control, the disorderly teens are more likely to come into conflict with humans, farm animals and pets.
Wielgus’s ideas don’t sit well with everyone. “Hunting definitely does cause lots of teenage males to flow in, but I don’t yet see solid proof that they are more likely to cause trouble than older cats,” says the University of Montana’s Robinson. “In many cases, the new arrivals have been squeezed out of remote wilderness habitat and forced into areas where they are more likely to encounter humans. I think humans are primarily responsible for all the interaction you see. We’re moving into these areas where cougars and deer are,” according to Alldredge, a researcher at the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
We may not understand what makes 18-year-old males more likely than 48-year-old men to do dangerous things, Wielgus says, but we know that the world would be a different place, if teenagers were in charge.
1. The passage begins with a story to ________.| A．lead into the topic | B．describe an incident |
| C．show the author’s attitude | D．warn of the dangers of cougars |
| A．effect | B．evidence | C．cause | D．target |
| A．Alldredge agrees hunting results in the arrival of lots of teens. |
| B．Robinson doubts whether age is a key factor in human-cougar conflicts. |
| C．Alldredge believes killing older males may cause a bigger threat. |
| D．Robinson holds humans are to blame for the fall of older males. |
| A．Driving teenage cougars back into their natural habitat. |
| B．Getting people to move out of the areas where cougars are. |
| C．Forbidding children to play in the backyard by themselves. |
| D．Changing hunting policies to ensure a healthy cougar population. |
4 . I was never very neat. Yet, when I arrived at college, my roommate didn't seem to appreciate my
However, it all came to an end one late evening and I didn't even know why we had both returned to each other's
Slowly, I began to clear up my side of the room. I took back the
Kim and I stayed roommates for the rest of that year. We didn't always see eye to eye, but we learned the
| A．untidiness | B．dignity | C．privilege | D．capability |
| A．persuaded | B．stuck | C．limited | D．recorded |
| A．recognized | B．acquired | C．simplified | D．labeled |
| A．puzzle about | B．inquire about | C．complain about | D．joke about |
| A．newly-furnished | B．neatly-arranged | C．fully-occupied | D．well-designed |
| A．annoyance | B．company | C．responsibility | D．absence |
| A．deadly | B．slightly | C．moderately | D．gradually |
| A．breathing | B．murmuring | C．warning | D．sobbing |
| A．forgiveness | B．anxiety | C．understanding | D．comfort |
| A．sort out | B．come across | C．switch off. | D．go through |
| A．book | B．sock | C．clothing | D．pencil |
| A．absorbed | B．relieved | C．overwhelmed | D．deserted |
| A．disappointment | B．nervousness | C．disbelief | D．frustration |
| A．knocked | B．reached | C．swept | D．got |
| A．aim | B．agreement | C．objection | D．key |
5 . In September, thousands of monuments, civic buildings and private homes throw open their doors to offer a rare glimpse of normally of-limits spaces. Here are some less-known treasures around the UK.
Guided tour of Gladstone’s Library, Hawarden
Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden will be running special tours as part of the Open Doors-Wales festival. It was built as a memorial to prime minister Wiliam Gladstope, Take a tour of beautiful Reading Rooms housing 150,000 books.
September 16, 10 am-2 pm, booking required.
Britannia Panopticon Music Hall, Glasgow
The atmospheric Britannia Panopticon will be showing off its collection of theatrical relics, props and costumes. Sample Victorian items at the world’s oldest surviving music hall without booking.
September 15 and 16, 11 am-5 pm and September 17, 12 pm-5 pm
Gothic Temple, Stowe Gardens
Visitors to Stowe Gardens will be offered a rare chance to see inside the 18th century Gothic Temple. Though it’s normally rented as a holiday let, its circular rooms and mosaic ceilings will be open to prebooked visitors for one weekend.
September 16 and 17, 10: 30 am-4: 30 pm, free of charge
Appleton Tower: School of Informatics, Edinburgh University
As part of Scotland’s Doors Open Days festival, Edinburgh University’s Appleton Tower will be offering tours of the world-leading School, including a visit to the study suite on Level 9 which offers far-reaching views of the Edinburgh skyline.
September 23, 11 am-2 pm, booking in advance.
1. What can visitors do at Britannia Panopticon Music Hall?
| A．They can appreciate theatre-related items |
| B．They can listen to the oldest surviving music |
| C．They can visit a study room with far-reaching scenery. |
| D．They can read in Reading Rooms with 150,000 books in store. |
| A．Gothic Temple. Stowe Gardens |
| B．Britannia Panopticon Music Hall, Glasgow. |
| C．Guided tour of Gladstone’s Library. Hawarden |
| D．Appleton Tower: School of Informatics, Edinburgh University |
| A．They both last for four hours. | B．They both require early reservations |
| C．They both honor world famous figures | D．They both offer special views to visitors. |
6 . In 2013, my husband Robin took a new job in Ghana. We relocated from London, where I worked as a photographer, to the capital, Accra.Robin worked,but my visa didn’t permit me to, and I was left homesick and lacking
In September 2018,after one bad thunderstorm,I found a bird,barely a month old,on the ground. He was
For the next 84 days, the
| A．purpose | B．interest | C．experience | D．confidence |
| A．family | B．sports | C．nature | D．school |
| A．grateful | B．alive | C．stressed | D．scared |
| A．envied | B．controlled | C．recognized | D．abandoned |
| A．survive | B．fight | C．escape | D．play |
| A．go with | B．care for | C．focus on | D．speak about |
| A．travel | B．stay | C．wild | D．change |
| A．rare | B．lazy | C．proud | D．tiny |
| A．noises | B．dances | C．flights | D．stops |
| A．kindly | B．cheerfully | C．once | D．never |
| A．remind | B．promise | C．cheat | D．motivate |
| A．attracted | B．honored | C．shocked | D．rewarded |
| A．high | B．strong | C．smart | D．calm |
| A．Raising | B．Tolerating | C．Evaluating | D．Amusing |
| A．secret | B．message | C．news | D．lesson |
7 . Despite all the efforts students make to graduate with a science major, research has shown that most college science courses provide students with only a fragmented (碎片化的) understanding of fundamental scientific concepts. The teaching method improves memorization of separate facts, proceeding from one textbook chapter to the next without necessarily making connections between them, instead of learning how to use the information and connect those facts meaningfully.
With that in mind, we developed a series of cross-disciplinary (跨学科的) activities. In our most recent study, we investigated how well college students could use their chemistry knowledge to explain real-world biological phenomena. To begin with, we interviewed 28 first-year college students majoring in sciences or engineering. All had taken both introductory chemistry and biology courses. We asked them to identify connections between the content of these courses and what they believed to be the take-home messages from each course. The students responded with extensive lists of topics, concepts, and skills that they’d learned in class.
Following that, a set of cross-disciplinary activities were designed to guide students in the use of core chemistry ideas and knowledge to help explain real-world biological phenomena. One activity explored the impacts of ocean acidification on seashells. Here, the students were asked to use basic chemistry ideas to explain how the increasing level of carbon dioxide in sea water is affecting shell-building marine animals such as corals, clams and oysters.
Overall, the students felt confident of their chemistry knowledge. However, they had a harder time applying the same chemistry knowledge to explaining the biological phenomena. These findings highlight that a big gap remains between what students learn in their science courses and how well prepared they are to apply that information.
The students in our study also reported that these activities helped them see links between the two disciplines that they wouldn’t have perceived otherwise. The ability to make these connections is important beyond the classroom as well, because it’s the basis of science literacy (科学素养). So we also came away with evidence that our chemistry students at least would like to have the ability to have a deeper understanding of science and how to apply it.
1. What does the existing science education fail to do according to the research?| A．Extend students’ theoretical knowledge. |
| B．Engage students in more outdoor activities. |
| C．Encourage students to enjoy the learning process. |
| D．Teach students to make connections among different subjects. |
| A．They have rich academic knowledge. | B．They pay little attention to biology courses. |
| C．They hardly identify the core ideas of science. | D．They fully understand their major’s importance. |
| A．analyse the exact composition of sea water. |
| B．study some unusual phenomena under the sea. |
| C．come up with practical methods to protect sea life. |
| D．explain the effects of carbon dioxide on sea creatures. |
| A．The need to remove the unfairness in education. |
| B．The difficulties of cross-disciplinary study. |
| C．The potential to promote students’ science literacy. |
| D．The method of increasing students’ practical skills. |
8 . A child’s early years of language development are important for the basics of school readiness, such as literacy (读写) skills and social and emotional growth. In a recent study, University of Miami Assistant Professor of Psychology Lynn Perry and a team of fellow researchers who examined child speech communications over the course of a year found that children benefit from conversations with their peers (同龄人) and their teachers. The study examined how language use and development in 2-and 3-year-old children was influenced by what they heard from their teachers and their peers.
“Previous research on language development looked mostly at the role of parent-child communication within a home setting or a lab environment, which means we’re missing a big part of a child’s everyday life — the classroom,” said Perry. “We know that parent language is important for children’s development and their academic achievement, but we don’t have much research on what happens in the kindergarten or preschool setting.”
Using a device (设备) called a Language Environment Analysis (LENA) recorder, Perry collected hundreds of hours of audio recordings. Children wore the LENA recorder once a week. LENA software then assessed whether the recorded audio was speech or not, and whether the speech came from the child wearing the recorder or from an adult or another child talking to them.
After studying the audio data, Perry found that the speech children heard from other children was positively related to their own language use, meaning children who heard the most from their peers learn more new words and vocalize more during the course of the year. Additionally, there was a positive association between a teacher talking and children’s language use and development — but only when that teacher talked to the child in a back-and-forth conversation, rather than just talking to the child with no opportunity for the child to respond.
“One important aspect of the study that stands out to me is how important it was to see those conversational turns with teachers, and that back-and-forth conversation with the child is very beneficial. We talked to the teachers about the results, and they are very excited about this finding and currently brainstorming additional opportunities to have conversations with children,” adds Perry.
1. What does the new study focus on?| A．The basics of school readiness for preschool children. |
| B．The parent-child communication at home or in the lab. |
| C．The influence of conversations in the kindergarten on children. |
| D．The ways to improve preschool children’s healthy growth. |
| A．By observing the children in class . | B．By conducting a survey of teachers. |
| C．By communicating with the children. | D．By recording the children’s speech in class. |
| A．Listen. | B．Speak. | C．Read. | D．Write. |
| A．Have more back -and- forth conversations with children. |
| B．Encourage children to listen more to their own speech. |
| C．Inform parents of the importance of conversational turns. |
| D．Add more brainstorming activities to their daily teaching. |
9 . When driving, Clara-Marina Martinez takes down any unusual behaviour she sees on the road. She then feeds these into machine-learning algorithms (算法), a form of AI, which are intended to produce a system reliable enough for a car to drive itself without any disturbance from the driver, and cope with all situations on the road. But this proving hard to achieve, carmakers choose to scale back many attempts to do so. Last year, for instance, Uber, a ride-hailing service, sold off its unit developing self-driving cars at a low price.
Autonomous vehicles are boasted as being not just convenient but potentially safer. However, just as people take time to learn how to drive safely, machines are no exception. The RAND Corporation, an American think-tank, calculates that to develop a system 20% safer than a human driver, a fleet of 100 self-driving cars would have to operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and cover 14 billion kilometres. At average road speeds, that would take about 400 years.
Carmakers such as Porsche therefore accelerate the development process using simulators (模拟器). These teach software about danger only rarely encountered in reality. Dr Martinez and her colleagues employ “game engines”, the programs that generate photo realistic images in computer games, to do this. These are used to create virtual worlds through which the software can drive.
How quickly, if ever, all this will translate into reality remains to be seen. Both regulators and customers will need to overcome doubt that a software driver really can be safer than human. From Porsche’s point of view, though, there is one other relevant question. Given that much of the reason for owning a sports car is for owners to show off what they regard as their driving skills, just how big a market will there be for a version where software takes those boasting rights away?
1. What do the underlined words “scale back” mean in Paragraph 1?| A．Make | B．Overlook. | C．Encourage. | D．Reduce. |
| A．time-consuming | B．fast-paced | C．thought-provoking | D．well-designed |
| A．Ensuring the pleasure of driving | B．Making their sports cars affordable. |
| C．Removing public doubts about safety. | D．Integrating game engines into their vehicles. |
| A．Porsche: Sports Cars at Risk | B．Self-driving Cars: Still Some Way to Go |
| C．Simulators: The Core of Autonomous Vehicles | D．Machine Learning Algorithms: The Arrival of Al |
10 . Given how valuable intelligence and automation are, we will continue to improve our technology if we are at all able to. At a certain point, we will build machines that are smarter than we are. Once we have machines that are smarter than we are, they will begin to improve themselves. The concern is really that we will build machines that are much more competent than we are. And the slightest divergence (分歧) between their goals and our own could destroy us.
Just think about how we relate to ants. We don’t hate them. We don’t go out of our way to harm them. In fact, sometimes we take pains not to harm them. We step over them on the sidewalk. But whenever their presence seriously conflicts with one of our goals, we will kill them without hesitation. The concern is that we will one day build machines that, whether they’re conscious or not, could treat us with similar disregard.
The bare fact is that we will continue to improve our intelligent machines. We have problems that we desperately need to solve. So we will do this, if we can. The train is already out of the station, and there’s no brake to pull. If we build machines that are more intelligent than we are, they will very likely develop in ways that we can’t imagine, and transcend us in ways that we can’t imagine.
So imagine we hit upon a design of super intelligent AI that has no safety concerns. This machine would be the perfect labor-saving device. It can design the machine that can build the machine which can do any physical work, powered by sunlight, more or less for the cost of raw materials. So we’re talking bout the end of human labour. We’re also talking about the end of most intellectual work. So what would apes like ourselves do in these circumstances?
But the moment we admit that information processing is the source of intelligence, we have to admit that we are in the process of building some sort of god. Now would be a good time to make sure it’s a god we can live with.
1. Why does the author mention ants in Paragraph 2?| A．To compare intelligent machines to ants. |
| B．To show improved machines will get away from us. |
| C．To stress the presence of machines does conflict with our goals. |
| D．To explain future intelligent machines could treat us without mercy |
| A．Disable. | B．Inspire. | C．Disappoint. | D．Outpace. |
| A．By making comparisons. |
| B．By giving assumptions. |
| C．By showing valid evidence. |
| D．By analyzing statistics |
| A．Human beings will no doubt be destroyed by AI in the future |
| B．Super intelligent AI will put an end to human labour eventually. |
| C．We should keep the development of AI within humans’ control. |
| D．Human beings should stop the development of super intelligent AL. |
