1 . A robot with a sense of touch may one day feel “pain”, both its own physical pain and sympathy for the pain of its human companions. Such touchy-feely robots are still far off, but advances in robotic touch-sensing are bringing that possibility closer to reality.
Sensors set in soft, artificial skin that can detect both a gentle touch and a painful strike have been hooked up to a robot that can then signal emotions, Asada reported February 15 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This artificial “pain nervous system,” as Asada calls it, may be a small building block for a machine that could ultimately experience pain. Such a feeling might also allow a robot to “sympathize” with a human companion’s suffering.
Asada, an engineer at Osaka University, and his colleagues have designed touch sensors that reliably pick up a range of touches. In a robot system named Affetto, a realistic looking child’s head, these touch and pain signals can be converted to emotional facial expressions.
A touch-sensitive, soft material, as opposed to a rigid metal surface, allows richer interactions between a machine and the world, says neuroscientist Kingson Man of the University of Southern California. Artificial skin “allows the possibility of engagement in truly intelligent ways”.
Such a system, Asada says, might ultimately lead to robots that can recognize the pain of others, a valuable skill for robots designed to help care for people in need, the elderly, for instance.
But there is an important distinction between a robot that responds in a predictable way to a painful strike and a robot that’s able to compute an internal feeling accurately, says Damasio, a neuroscientist also at the University of Southern California. A robot with sensors that can detect touch and pain is “along the lines of having a robot, for example, that smiles when you talk to it,” Damasio says. ‘It’s a device for communication of the machine to a human.” While that’s an interesting development, “it’s not the same thing” as a robot designed to compute some sort of internal experience, he says.
1. What do we know about the “pain nervous system”?| A．It is named Affetto by scientists. | B．It is a set of complicated sensors. |
| C．It is able to signal different emotions. | D．It combines sensors and artificial skin. |
| A．Delivered. | B．Translated. | C．Attached. | D．Adapted. |
| A．Robots can smile when talked to. |
| B．Robots can talk to human beings. |
| C．Robots can compute internal feelings |
| D．Robots can detect pains and respond accordingly. |
| A．Machines Become Emotional | B．Robots Inch to Feeling Pain |
| C．Human Feelings Can Be Felt | D．New Devices Touch Your Heart |
2 . Robots are now being employed not just for dangerous tasks, such as discovering mines or rescuing people in disasters. They are also finding application as household helps and as nursing assistants. As the number of machines increases, which are equipped with the latest artificial intelligence and take on a growing variety of specialized and everyday tasks, the question of how people see them and behave towards them becomes ever more urgent.
A team led by Sari Nijssen of Radboud University and Markus Paulus, Professor of Developmental Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians- Universitat (LMU), have carried out a study to determine the degree to which people show concern for robots and behave toward them based on moral principles.
According to Sari Nijssen, the study set out to answer the following question: "Under what circumstances would adults be willing to sacrifice robots to save human lives?" The participants were faced with a hypothetical (假设的) moral dilemma:Would they be prepared to put a single person at risk in order to save a group of injured persons? The intended victim presented in the situations was either a humanoid robot that had been humanized (人性化的) to various degrees or a robot that was clearly recognizable as a machine.
The study suggested that the more the robot was humanized, the less likely participants were to sacrifice it. Situations that included vivid stories in which the robot was described as a merciful being or as a creature with its own understandings, experiences and thoughts, were more likely to stop the study participants from sacrificing it in the interests of anonymous (无名的) humans.
"This result indicates that our study group attached a certain moral status to the robot," says Paulus. "One possible suggestion of this finding is that attempts to humanize robots should not go too far. Such efforts could come into conflict with their intended function—to be of help to us."
1. What has become a concern about robots?| A．How to treat them in life. | B．How to humanize them. |
| C．How to use them effectively. | D．How to find more applications. |
| A．where to experience risks. | B．when to sacrifice a robot. |
| C．which robot to work with. | D．what robots should be like. |
| A．Humanized robots offer less help to people. |
| B．Certain moral status should be attached to robots. |
| C．Humanizing robots too much may be improper. |
| D．Conflicts often happen between humans and robots. |
| A．Robots, a Must for Future | B．Robots Saved, People Take the Hit |
| C．Humanized Robots, a New Trend | D．Humanized Robots Replace Human |
3 . Teaching English is the best way to get paid to travel the world. Flexible (灵活的) hours, paid holidays, and paid accommodations are just some of the reasons why teaching English is fit for those who want to take a gap year abroad.
Flexible Hours!
Teachers can choose their hours in many teaching abroad programs, so if you want to spend a day walking in the city, taking a cooking class, reading a book, learning a new language, or simply resting under a tree, teaching English gives you that flexibility to let yourself experience the new culture. Tell us what you would do for fun in another country and get a free Teaching English to Young Learners course when you take the advanced 120-hour TESOL course!
Paid Holidays!
Our paid teaching abroad programs include paid holidays, so you can take a few weeks to travel anywhere in the world.
Save Money to Travel!
TESOL includes accommodations. Many also provide teachers with transportation and health insurance (保险). When you have all your living costs paid for, you can use every dollar that you earn when teaching English abroad to have fun and travel!
What are you waiting for? Go Abroad!
TESOL offers free job placement to certificated (有执业资格的) teachers. You don't even need a degree in Education or a teaching license to teach English abroad. A TESOL certification is your key to leaving your 9-to-5 job and getting paid to travel the world. The TESOL course will give you all the training that you need to teach English. It only takes 120 hours of TESOL training to get qualified to teach abroad and you can complete the course in 4 weeks!
1. When you teach English abroad, you ________.| A．don't have to pay for your travels |
| B．can travel at your own convenience |
| C．are able to learn some local languages |
| D．have to pay for health insurance by yourself |
| A．Free transportation. | B．Free safety insurance. |
| C．A degree in Education. | D．A teaching license. |
| A．Nature. | B．Business. | C．Advertisement. | D．Sports. |
4 . Betty Schrampfer Azar is a world-famous expert on teaching English grammar. Here are some of her opinions.
Why do students need to learn grammar? When teachers are deciding which grammar points to teach, they should first ask two questions. First, will understanding the point help students be understood and will it help them understand better? Next, will learning the grammar point help students be acceptable as English speakers?
People usually think that grammar is all about memorizing rules. In fact, grammar is not just learning rules. It is a way to help students along the way to communication. Teachers should know that students do not all learn in the same way. Each may have a different learning style when it comes to learning grammar. Some may see a pattern and understand the rule. Others need explanations and more practice. “But to teach grammar as subject matter and test it as though you were testing the memorization of dates in history is sure to bore everybody and not to reach the goals that you are trying to reach—successful communication experiences,” she says.
Why do some teachers hate teaching grammar? Many teachers are not comfortable teaching grammar because they do not know how to answer their students’questions. “Most native speakers of English don't learn it in school,” she says. “If you don’t know any grammar of your own language and then you are asked to teach it, it's possible that your students may know more grammar than you and you can't answer their questions.”
Can teaching grammar really be fun? Teachers should learn to make the teaching of grammar fun. She says, “My students enjoy learning grammar as much as I enjoy teaching it. I think grammar is fascinating. It holds language together. It is really beautiful when you get to know it. Grammar is quite a remarkable (非凡的) thing.”
1. What should teachers do before teaching grammar points?| A．Know the specific goal of teaching grammar. |
| B．Develop a good teaching style. |
| C．Find out students’learning needs. |
| D．Let students memorize some rules. |
| A．Memorizing rules. |
| B．Grammar. |
| C．Learning rules. |
| D．Practice. |
| A．Grammar should be taught as a subject. |
| B．Native speakers don’t need to learn grammar. |
| C．Different students learn grammar in different ways. |
| D．It's useful to memorize rules when students learn grammar. |
| A．Boring. | B．Beautiful. | C．Hard to teach. | D．Easy to learn. |
5 . To develop one's taste in English, the most effective way is to read English books extensively. Yet one may be at a loss to choose the appropriate books, especially as a beginner. As a native Spanish, I would like to share some of my experience.
My first English novel was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, recommended by many English teachers and professors as an ideal book for English learners. But my experience was somewhat disastrous. I had great difficulty in understanding the novel, let alone enjoying it. It's not the vocabulary that troubled me, but rather the way Austen constructs sentences, and her way of thinking, which seemed too remote to me at that time. My fading enthusiasm was much recovered after reading Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms. No long and complicated sentences. And I particularly liked his brief and straightforward (简洁的) style. So my first suggestion is, as a beginner, you'd better choose contemporary novels instead of classical ones.
However, if you restrict yourself to novels you will miss a lot of treasures. English essays can at once inform you, entertain you, and improve your taste in English. The best example is Bertrand Russell's work. Its language is plain, yet you cannot help feeling the elegance and the peculiar sense of humor. His simple language enables his philosophy within the reach of ordinary people. Here comes my second suggestion — essays are indispensable.
Never follow others' recommendations and opinions blindly, however famous or influential (有很大影响的) the person might be. We should be open to various ideas, but always think and determine for ourselves. As a saying goes, one man's meat is another man's poison. With that in mind, we are bound to find out our favorite writers through reading and develop our fine taste in English.
1. What made the first English novel that the author read hard to understand?| A．Complicated conversations. |
| B．Sentences and Austen's thinking pattern. |
| C．The old-fashioned vocabulary. |
| D．Not knowing the social background. |
| A．Necessary | B．Challenging | C．Relevant | D．Inspirational |
| A．Choose books that challenge us most. |
| B．Read books that are instructive. |
| C．Don't be affected by others' choices. |
| D．Compare books before buying. |
| A．Give comments on literature works. |
| B．Tell beginners how to choose English books. |
| C．Encourage people to read more English books. |
| D．Recommend first class books to English learners. |
6 . Best Gifts to Children This Season
Marble (弹珠游戏) Circuit
With brightly colored pieces and a seemingly simple layout, Marble Circuit doesn’t present as a tough logic game—but don’t underestimate (低估) its difficulty. After drawing a challenge card, players must arrange pieces and fill in holes on the game board to allow the right number of marbles to run through the channels and into each box at the bottom of the board. Because it requires more patience and abstract, special thinking skills than some other kinds of logic puzzles, Marble Circuit is recommended for the over-8 crowd. (Mind Ware, $ 24. 95)
Botzees
Kids can follow directions or use their imaginations to build a robot out of the 130 blocks, and then command it to dance, sing, drum and light up with the companion app on a smart device (设备) or tablet. Though the robot-building appealed to younger testers, kids aged 5 and up enjoyed the toy’s advanced features (特色). (Pai Technology, $ 99. 99)
How to Code a Rollercoaster
Just as coding can be used to tell stories, this is a story about coding. This picture book does a good job of introducing and explaining what code is, how computers understand it, and introducing common coding terms—variables, loops, if/then. The volume is part of the popular “Girls Who Code” series, but intended for the younger reader. (Penguin Random House, $ 17. 99)
Code Like a Girl
Miriam Peskowitz features women in the computer science field in this how-to book. It shows how people are working to make tech a more inclusive place to code. Written with a cookbook-like feel, the book provides encouraging, step-by-step tips and tricks for learning the Python computer language, and more. (Penguin Random House, $ 21. 99)
1. What can we know about the gifts?| A．Botzees enables its players to build a robot as they want. |
| B．Marble Circuit is an easy logic game for those 7-year-olds. |
| C．How to Code a Rollercoaster is written by a famous writer. |
| D．Code Like a Girl is about female scientists’ achievements. |
| A．Botzees. | B．How to Code a Rollercoaster. |
| C．Code Like a Girl. | D．Marble Circuit. |
| A．They are for teenagers. |
| B．They are related to technology. |
| C．They have the picture introductions. |
| D．They can be bought on Penguin Random House. |
7 . While a man was passing by an elephant, he suddenly stopped. The elephant was held by only a small rope. The farmer ties the rope to the elephant's front leg. No chains, no cages. The man was very confused. He wanted to know why the elephant didn't run away.
He visited the farmer and asked why the elephant just stood there and didn't run away. "Well," the farmer said, "when it was very young and much smaller, we used the same size rope to tie it. At that age, the rope was strong enough to hold it. Of course it couldn't run away. When it grew up, it still believed the rope could hold it. So it never tried to run away."
The man was very amazed. In fact, the grown-up elephant could run away at any time. But it didn't run away just because it believed it couldn't. As a result, it was stuck right there.
We have such problems in our life. Sometimes we don't think we can deal with the problems. Sometimes we fail to deal with them. It's not wise to stop struggling. See? Failure is part of learning. We should never give up the struggle.
1. The farmer held the elephant by ________.| A．making a chain to tie the elephant | B．making a cage for the elephant |
| C．tying a rope to the elephant's front leg | D．tying a rope around the elephant's body |
| A．a stronger rope | B．a smaller rope |
| C．the same size rope | D．a longer rope |
| A．no one came to save it | B．the elephant couldn't run fast |
| C．it was not strong enough | D．it believed it couldn't |
| A．not to stop struggling | B．to give up the struggle in life |
| C．to learn from the farmer | D．to learn from the elephant |
8 . In the United States, 30 percent of the people have a “weight problem”. To many people the cause is obvious (明显的): they eat too much. But scientific evidence (证据) does little to support this idea. Going back to America of 1910, we find that people were thinner than today, yet they ate more food. In those days people worked harder physically, walked more, used machines much less, and didn’t watch television.
Several modern studies, moreover, have shown that fatter people don’t eat more on average than thinner people. A 1979 study of 3,545 London office workers showed that fat people eat less than slim (苗条的) people.
Studies also show that slim people are more active than fat people. A study by a research group at Stanford University found the following interesting facts:
The more the man ran, the greater loss of the body fat.
The more they ran, the greater increase in food intake.
Thus, those who ran the most ate the most, yet lost the greatest amount of body fat.
1. Nowadays many Americans have the problem that ______.| A．they are too slim | B．they work too hard |
| C．they are too fat | D．they lose too much body fat |
| A．150. | B．300. | C．600. | D．270. |
| A．ate more food and had more physical activities | B．ate less food but had more physical activities |
| C．ate less food and had less physical activities | D．had more problems |
The answer depends largely on cultural values as well as personal experiences. To the Egyptians, green was a color that represented the hope and joy of spring, while for Muslims, it means heaven. Red is a symbol (象征) of good luck in many cultures. In China, children are given money in a red envelope to bring good fortune in the New Year. For many nations, blue is a symbol of protection and religious beliefs. Greek people often wear a blue necklace hoping to protect themselves against evils (灾祸).
People’s choice of colors is also influenced by their bodies’ reactions (反应) toward them. Green is said to be the most restful color. It has the ability to reduce pain and relax people both mentally and physically. People who work in green environment have been found to have fewer stomach aches.
Red can cause a person’s blood pressure to rise and increase people’s appetites (食欲). Many decorators will include different shades of red in the restaurant. Similarly, many commercial websites will have a red “Buy Now” button because red is a color that easily catches a person’s eye.
Blue is another calming color. Unlike red, blue can cause people to lose appetite. So if you want to eat less, some suggest that eating from blue plates can help.
The next time you are deciding on what to wear or what color to decorate your room, think about the color carefully.
1. Muslims regard green as a symbol of heaven mainly because of their______.
| A．cultural values | B．commercial purposes |
| C．personal experiences | D．physical reactions to the color |
| A．To relax people physically. |
| B．To increase people’s appetites. |
| C．To encourage people to make a purchase. |
| D．To cause a person’s blood pressure to rise. |
| A．Red. | B．Green. | C．Blue. | D．Purple. |
| A．Colors and Human Beings |
| B．The Cultural Meaning of Color |
| C．The Meaning and Function of Color |
| D．Colors and Personal Experiences |
10 . September is an exciting month in every college freshman's life. For many, it's the first time that they've left home to live in a new environment. But after the hustle and bustle of a few weeks, excitement gives way to a less enjoyable emotion—homesickness.
Homesickness manifests itself in many ways. You may miss mum's cooking, your pets, or even your old bed. All this becomes a fond memory of the past. Homesickness can be a bitter feeling for many students, especially when faced with the challenges of settling into an unfamiliar environment.
But remember, you're not alone. According to a recent BBC article, 70 percent of British college students experience homesickness. In this increasingly globalized world in which people migrate to faraway places for a relationship, education or work, homesickness is a feeling shared by many adults.
Homesickness can have similar symptoms to depression and in extreme cases it can develop into a panic attack. As for the term, homesickness or nostalgia wasn't invented until the 17th century. It was considered a disorder by a Swiss physician, who attributed soldiers' mental and physical discomfort to their longing to return home, "nostos" from Greek, and the accompanying pain, "algos".
Studies in recent years, however, have shown that nostalgia may have some benefits to our mental health. After a decade of surveys and researches, Constantine Sedikides, a US social psychologist, found that nostalgia is what makes us human. He explains that nostalgia can resist loneliness, boredom and anxiety. Therefore, it's necessary for college students to learn some ways to overcome the uncomfortable feeling.
1. From the first two paragraphs, we can infer that ________.| A．homesickness means a fond memory of the past |
| B．only a few students will experience homesickness |
| C．homesickness is an enjoyable emotion among freshmen |
| D．college freshmen usually suffer from homesickness after weeks |
| A．homesickness may cause mental diseases |
| B．homesickness is a feeling only shared by adults |
| C．homesickness won't do any good to our health |
| D．homesickness is also called nostalgia in Switzerland |
| A．some benefits about homesickness | B．other problems in college freshmen's life |
| C．how to make campus life more meaningful | D．some tips on how to cope with homesickness |
| A．Let's embrace homesickness | B．How to fit into the college life |
| C．A harmful emotion—homesickness | D．The disadvantages of homesickness |
