1 . The time that cars could go completely driverless is coming “very soon”, according to Jianxiong Xiao, CEO and founder of AutoX, a Shenzhen-based start-up developing autonomous driving technology.
Now, most regulations across various cities in China still require the presence of a safety driver in vehicles, but the company foresees that as more data gets captured over time, that requirement would be reduced, Xiao told CNBC's “Street Signs Asia" on Wednesday.
The autonomous driving tech firm chose to partner with Alibaba's AMAP — a Chinese mapping service provider --- to roll out its RoboTaxi ride hailing service in Shanghai on Monday. AMAP is a "super mobility app" with almost 500 million active monthly users, according to Xiao.
AutoX had received support from Shanghai authorities to roll out a fleet of 100 autonomous ride-hailing cars in Shanghai's Jiading district in September last year.
Earlier this month, AutoX announced that it had set up an 80,000 square feet RoboTaxi operations center in Shanghai to help facilitate (使容易)operations of its driverless fleet, as well as act as a center to collect data from daily operations.
Backed by investors such as Alibaba, Shanghai Motor and Dongfeng Motor, AutoX is one of the players in the trillion U.S. dollar Chinese autonomous driving vehicles market alongside others like DiDi Chuxing.
Xiao said they were working with the technology to ensure the vehicles were "very, very safe" and are carrying out a lot of testing.
Over a hundred vehicles have been arranged on roads daily to obtain enough data needed to validate the software and system, according to Xiao.
He added that the company was also running a hundred times more simulations (模拟)in the car every day, and the “huge amount of data" would help to prove that the vehicles could be used in "full safety".
“Our goal is not to just make (it) as safe as human beings, but going one step forward to really make...a superhuman safety standard; (cars) that (can) drive much safer than any human being ever,“ Xiao said.
1. What will be most required to go driverless according to CEO of AutoX?| A．Traffic regulations. | B．Driving technology. |
| C．Enough data. | D．Mapping service. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Optimistic. | C．Disappointed. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．test | B．invent | C．develop. | D．design |
| A．Driving Technology |
| B．Science Achievement |
| C．No Driver in the Future |
| D．The Development of Driverless |
2 . Researchers studied a group of black-legged kittiwakes that nest in an abandoned radar tower on Middleton Island, Alaska. They attached GPS-accelerometers onto kittiwakes to track their flight performance and discovered that they sometimes travel as far as 155 miles (250 kilometers) a day to find food.
By combining data from the GPS tracker with minute muscle samples from some of the birds, the researchers found that — despite beating their wings less frequently — birds with larger muscle fibers were able to fly as fast as those with smaller fibers. The team also found that birds that flew faster had a higher number of nuclei — which produce the proteins to power flight — in their muscle cells, allowing the birds to increase more muscle fibers to power their flight.
Athletes exercise to maintain muscle tone. The same may be happening with kittiwakes, with those individuals that exercise the most — that is, fly the most — having better developed muscles than those that move less.
“Past studies have focused on hormone levels, body mass, or levels of red blood cells as a predictor of flight performance. We found that muscle structure and body mass together predict performance, says study coauthor Kyle Elliott, an assistant professor in McGill University's department of natural resource sciences in the Bieler School of Environment.
“With the data from the GPS-accelerometers, we can understand a lot about these birds, like where they're going to find food, how fast they're flying, and how frequently they're beating their wings in flight," says Kristen Lalla, the first author of the paper, which she co-wrote as an undergraduate student under Elliott's guidance. “In the past, one of the challenges of measuring muscle structure in small birds was that it usually requires dissecting (解剖)the muscle."
1. What do the first two paragraphs tell us about kittiwakes?| A．They nest in an abandoned Island of Alaska. |
| B．With smaller muscle fibers, they can fly faster. |
| C．They often travel as far as 250 kilometers a day. |
| D．Muscle fibers play an important role in their flight. |
| A．Body mass. |
| B．Hormone levels. |
| C．Levels of red blood cells. |
| D．Muscle structure and body mass. |
| A．The influential factors of kittiwakes' flight performance. |
| B．The importance of protecting kittiwakes. |
| C．The reasons for Kittiwakes flying so far. |
| D．The process of kittiwakes' flying. |
| A．Sport. | B．Nature. | C．Health. | D．Entertainment. |
3 . For several months, Cara has been working up the courage to approach her mom about what she saw on Instagram. Not long ago, the 11-year-old girl, like all the other kids in this story, discovered that her mom had been posting her photos for much of her life.“I’ve wanted to bring it up.It’s strange to see myself up there, and sometimes there are pictures of myself I don't like,”she said.
Like most other modern kids, Cara grew up in social media. While many kids may not yet have accounts themselves, their parents, schools, sports teams, and other organizations have been organizing online presence for them since birth.The shock of realizing that details about your life have been shared online without your permission or knowledge has become an important experience in the lives of many teenagers. Recently a parenting blogger (博主) wrote in an essay of The Washington Post that despite (尽管)her 14-year-old daughter’s horror of discovering that her mother had shared years of highly personal stories and information about her online, she simply could not stop posting them on her blog and social media. The writer said that promising her daughter that she would stop posting things about her publicly on the Internet “would mean shutting down an important part of myself, which isn't necessarily good for me or her”.
But it’s not just crazy mommy bloggers who construct their children’s online identity; plenty of average parents do the same. There’s even a special word for it: sharenting (晒娃成癖). Almost a quarter of children begin their digital lives when parents upload their photos to the Internet, according to a study conducted by the Internet-security (安全)firm AVG. The study also found that 92 percent of kids under the age of 2 already have their own unique digital identity.
1. How does Cara probably feel about her mom’s behavior?| A．It’s aggressive. | B．It’s appropriate. |
| C．It’s annoying. | D．It’s favorable. |
| A．It filled up her blog. | B．It showed off her success. |
| C．It recorded her stories. | D．It meant a lot to her. |
| A．A quarter of students. | B．Many ordinary parents. |
| C．Kids under the age of 2. | D．Some crazy bloggers. |
| A．Children’s New Trouble |
| B．Social Media |
| C．Kids’ Online Performance |
| D．Mommy Bloggers |
4 . Poaching has been threatening the survival of the African black rhino for long. But thanks to conservation efforts, the population of this endangered animal is slowly increasing, according to a recent update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
Between 2012 and 2018, the number of black rhinos in Africa has increased moderately, at annual rate of 2.5%, The population in the wild has grown from approximately 4,845 to 5,630. As IUCN's update suggests, the population models predict the number will continue to rise slowly over the next five years.
The white rhino, Africa's another rhino species that exists in greater numbers, has been on the IUCN Red List categorized as Near Threatened. Compared to the black rhino, the white rhino is at higher risk of being poached as it has larger horns and prefers more open habitats, which makes it easier to spot.
The threat to the two species mainly comes from poaching for the illegal international rhino horn trade. Fortunately, in recent years, a number of groups including range states, private landowners, and communities have been making efforts to protect them, and the measures are working. In 2015, there were at least 1,349 rhinos poached—an average of 3.7 rhinos hunted per day. Since then, the poaching numbers have decreased every year. In 2018, there were at least 892 rhinos poached, meaning approximately 2.4 African rhinos poached per day, or one every 10 hours. The data for 2019 looks promising as the poaching levels appear to have further gone down.
Although the levels of rhino poaching have been declining slightly in recent years due to conservation efforts, the costs of keeping rhinos safe have greatly gone up and sale prices for live rhinos have decreased considerably over the last 10 years, making private landowners and communities less motivated to protect rhinos. This trend could delay the continued progress of expanding the species range and numbers.
1. Which of the following can best describe the number of the African rhinos now?| A．Slightly declining. | B．Slowly expanding. |
| C．Greatly increasing. | D．Considerably decreasing. |
| A．The better situation for the African white rhinos. |
| B．The reason for protecting the African white rhinos. |
| C．The process of the white rhino being on the IUCU Red List. |
| D．The reason why the African white rhino is more likely to be poached. |
| A．In 2015. | B．In 2016. | C．In 2018. | D．In 2019. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Confident. | C．Concerned. | D．Uninterested. |
5 . A joint research team recently have developed a new electronic skin that is similar to human skin in strength, durability(耐久性) and sensitivity. The skin or e-skin may play an important role in next-generation personalized medicine, soft robotics and artificial intelligence.
“The ideal e-skin will mimic(模仿) the many natural functions of human skin, such as sensing temperature and touch, accurately and in real time,” says leading researcher Yichen Cai. However, making suitably flexible electronics that can perform such delicate tasks while also used repeatedly is challenging, and each material involved must be carefully engineered.
Most e-skins are made by putting an active sensor on the surface that attaches to human skin. However, the connection between them is often too weak, which reduces the durability and sensitivity of the material; otherwise, if it is too strong, it won’t be flexible enough, making it more likely to break the circuit.
“The landscape of skin electronics keeps shifting at a remarkable pace,” says Cai. “The discovery of 2D sensors has accelerated efforts to turn these quite thin but strong materials into functional, durable artificial skins.”
The new man-made skin built by the researchers could sense objects from 20 centimeters away. It could further make a quick response when touched in less than one tenth of a second. “ It is a striking achievement for an e-skin to maintain toughness after repeated use,” said Shen, “which mimics the softness and rapid recovery of human skin.”
This type of e-skin could monitor a range of biological information, such as changes in blood pressure, which can be detected from movements of arms and legs. This data can then be shared and stored on the cloud via Wi-Fi.
“One remaining problem to the widespread use of e-skins lies in mass production of high-resolution sensors,” adds group leader Vincent Tung “ however, the latest technology offers new promise. ”
1. What’s the feature of the new e-skin?| A．It can store information. | B．It’s quite hard and tough. |
| C．It’s flexible and sensitive. | D．It can replace human skin. |
| A．To stress the challenges of making e-skins. |
| B．To introduce the popularity of e-skins. |
| C．To show the process of making e-skins. |
| D．To compare the similarity between e-skins. |
| A．Adjust the blood pressure. | B．Recover the wounded skin. |
| C．Work as a remote controller. | D．Sense the outside temperature. |
| A．A Breakthrough in Hi-tech | B．Man-made Skin, Improved |
| C．E-skin, A Promising Business | D．The Widespread Use of E-skin |
6 . Welcome to the Sydney Opera House
Ticket Info and Guided Tours
Visitors can enjoy the Sydney Opera House foyer for free, but for a more insightful visit, you'll need to book a tour.
There are several different ways to experience the Sydney Opera House, and multiple tours are available including back-stage passes and walking tours.
Tour Type Adult （AUD $ ） Child
Guided Walking Tour $ 42 $ 22
Guided Walking Tour + Dinner $ 73 $ 52
Guided Walking Tour + Tasting Plate $ 82.20 $ 64. 80
Backstage Tour $ 175 $ 175
Opening Hours and the Best Time to Visit
The Sydney Opera House is open year-round with the following opening hours：
● Monday—Saturday ： 9am—8 ： 30pm
●Sunday： 9am—5pm
As for the best time of day, it's recommended to book the earliest Sydney Opera House tour of the day to beat the crowds. To enjoy sunny weather with fewer crowds, try visiting in the shoulder season (October, November, February, or March )
Points of Interest
●The Steps
Before entering the Opera House, take a picture of the building from the steps outside.
●The Sails
Step beneath the sails on a guided tour and enjoy harbor front views.
●The Concert Hall
The Concert Hall is the largest venue with seats for more than 2000 people. It features contemporary live music shows and highly -regarded orchestral (管弦乐的)performances. It is also here that you will find the world's largest mechanical tracker-action pipe organ.
● Opera Bar
After your tour, head to the Opera Bar for a bite to eat or drink in the sun.
● Badu Gili
Badu Gili, which is ‘water light’ in the language of the Gadigal people-takes place most evenings after sunset at 9pm, 9：30pm, and 10pm. The seven-minute display is free to view.
1. How much will a guided walking tour for two adults cost?| A．$ 64. | B．$ 84. | C．$ 128, | D．$ 168. |
| A．9：30 am, a Monday in February. | B．10：00 am, a Sunday in December. |
| C．5：00 pm, a Friday in September. | D．6：00 pm, a Saturday in March. |
| A．A local language. | B．A pipe organ. | C．A light show. | D．A dinning area. |
7 . Sugar cane（甘蔗）contains around 10% sugar. But that means it contains around 90% non-sugar—the material known as bagasse （甘蔗渣）which remains once the sugar-bearing juice is squeezed out. World production of cane sugar was 185 million tonnes in 2017 , which results in a lot of bagasse.
At the moment, most of it is burned. But Zhu Hongli, a mechanical engineer at Northeastern University, in Boston, thinks it can be put into better use. As she, and her colleagues describe, in Matter this week, with a bit of improving bagasse makes an excellent and biodegradable （可生 物降解的）replacement for the plastic used for disposable food containers such as coffee cups.
Dr. Zhu is not the first person to have this idea. But previous attempts tended not to survive contact with liquids. She knew from previous research that the main reason why past efforts fell to pieces when wet is that bagasse is composed of short fibres which are unable to hold the finished product. She therefore sought' to insert a suitably long-fibred substance.
Bamboo seemed to be the best choice. It grows quickly /degrades readily and has appropriately long fibres. And it worked. When the researchers blended bamboo remaining into bagasse, they found that the result had a strong crossing of short and long fibres.
To put their new material through its paces, Dr. Zhu and her colleagues first poured hot oil onto it and found that, rather than passing through the material, as it would have with previous, bagasse products, the oil was resisted by their invention.
They also found that when they made a cup out of the stuff and filled it with water heated almost to boiling point, the cup remained unbroken for more than two hours. Though this is not as long as a plastic cup would Hast, it-is long enough for all practical purposes.
1. What do we know about bagasse?| A．It is widely used. | B．It is usually wasted. |
| C．It can not be degraded. | D．It takes up 10% of sugar cane. |
| A．The cups are not disposable. | B．The fibres of bagasse are short. |
| C．The plastic can not be replaced. | D．The material is not biodegradable. |
| A．It can let oil pass through. | B．It can be boiled in the water. |
| C．It can hold liquid and resist heat. | D．It can reduce the use of bamboo. |
| A．New Bamboo Containers | B．A New Application of Fibres |
| C．Young and Promising Materials | D．A Perfect Mix of Cane and Bamboo |
8 . For years, Hainan, China's southernmost island province, has been an attractive tourist destination for people around the world because of its pleasant environment. Beginning this year, the beautiful island will have a new identity — an open and distinctive free trade port.
The Hainan Free Trade Port will serve as a special functional economic area and its level of openness will be better than any other port in the world. Products and funds from abroad will have free access to the port, and most goods will be duty-free. The decision shows China's willingness to further open up to the world.
The province of Hainan was founded in 1988. Later it became an appointed special economic (SEZ) to attract foreign investment. In 1992, the Yangpu Economic Development Zone, which was the first area in China to be comprehensively developed by foreign investors, was established. After eight years, in 2000, Hainan took the lead in carrying out a policy of visa on arrival. In the following years, a series of similar initiatives have been implemented for Hainan's continuous development, including a pilot zone for free trade founded in 2018.
Apart from an attractive landscape, Hainan's industrial structure features tourism and modern services. Not only will they become the highlights of the free trade port, but also they are in line with the rapid trade growth in global services as well as the development of many ports toward the service sector. In addition, as a free trade zone and port at provincial level, Hainan has a satisfying scale and full experience. All these advantages will enable Hainan to become a global trade center.
From SEZ to free trade pilot zone, and now today's free trade port, Hainan's development and its determination to build an open economy are evident to all. It's hoped that it will seize the chance of free trade and attract more business and experienced professionals from around the world to come to the island.
1. What's Hainan's future plan?| A．To construct a free trade port. |
| B．To boost Hainan's tourism and services. |
| C．To remove the tax on all imports and exports. |
| D．To strengthen environmental protection. |
| A．By analyzing causes. | B．By giving descriptions. |
| C．By following time order. | D．By making comparisons. |
| A．Its slow trade growth. | B．Its traditional services. |
| C．Its development of IT industry. | D．Its distinctive service industry. |
| A．Hainan: A Push for Global Economy |
| B．Hainan: A Witness to China's Opening-Up |
| C．Hainan: An Island Full of Ups and Downs |
| D．Hainan: An Unforgettable Tourist Destination |
9 . English is changing faster than ever with the development of society. Do you long to keep up with the times? If so, here are some old-fashioned words you should remove from your vocabulary list.
Whippersnapper
As an alteration of the term "snippersnapper'', the word first appeared in the 17th century, expressing our ancestors' annoyance at ill-mannered children. In its more contemporary version, the word relates to a young person who is too confident and does not show enough respect to older.
Tape
Are you born in the 1980s? If so, you may still be using the term "tape" when speaking of recording music or TV shows. Today, though digital media has made data storage on magnetic an outdated thing, this old linguistic habit still exists.
Stewardess
In the earlier age of air travel, female crew members serving airline passengers were called stewardesses. It was the development of women's rights movement in the 1960s that the word fell out of use. "Stewardess" was replaced by a more gender-neutral term, "flight attendant”. Dungarees
What we know as "jeans" today were once called “dungarees" to refer to trousers made of denm （蓝粗棉布）.As traders began importing the cloth from Genoa in Italy, this kind of trousers got a new name ’jeans”. So don't be surprised if you catch your grandpa saying dungarees.
1. Who can be described as a whippersnapper nowadays?| A．A child who is bad-tempered. |
| B．An elder who doesn't like children. |
| C．An elder who has confidence and influence. |
| D．A teenager who is overconfident and impolite. |
| A．Whippersnapper. | B．Tape. | C．Stewardess. | D．Dungarees. |
| A．To show readers how to stay young. |
| B．To explain how to keep up with the times. |
| C．To analyze the differences among modern words. |
| D．To advise readers not to use some old-fashioned words. |
10 . Most sea turtles, whales and fish may have plastic in their bodies. To determine the various forms and colors of this material in marine animals, Marga Rivas at the University of Almeria in Spain and her team analyzed data from 112 studies published in the past decade. These looked for microplastics and larger macro plastics in marine species globally.
Of the studies, 80 examined the gastrointestinal tracts (胃肠道)of animals to see what they had taken in. The others also looked at wider animal tissues to identify plastics that end up in other parts of the body. After examining all of the data, Rivas and her team concluded that 66 per cent of sea turtles have white-colored macro and microplastics in their systems, while 55 percent have a distinct class of plastic called microfibers, which are shed by some fabrics (织物). The high amount of white plastic in turtles was unsurprising, says Rivas, given that plastic of this color, particularly larger pieces, may resemble jellyfish, a large part of the animals' diets.
Microfibers were also present in 80 percent of whales and dolphins - and white macro and microplastics in 38 percent of them. The researchers also concluded that clear fiber microplastics are probably the most common form of this waste that is taken in by large marine animals globally. Rivas and her colleagues also discovered that the animals with the highest rates of plastic were those in the Mediterranean and the northeast Indian Ocean.
“The Mediterranean is the most contaminated sea in the world, so we expected to find these results,” says Rivas. Marine plastic pollution has increased roughly 10-fbld since 1980, and Rivas says the problem is worsened by inadequate water treatment systems. In parts of India and the southeast Mediterranean, waste water isn’t adequately treated or recycled, she says. This means that microfibers shed by fabrics in washing machines, and larger pieces of rubbish, enter the sea. “It’s possible to introduce management strategies to control these huge threats,” says Rivas.
1. How did Rivas and her team conduct the study?| A．By doing comparative experiments. |
| B．By analyzing data from previous studies. |
| C．By determining the forms and colors of plastics. |
| D．By looking for plastics in global marine animals. |
| A．White plastic looks like the food sea turtles consume. |
| B．More while plastic was in the sea than that of other colors. |
| C．White plastic is the most common form of the plastic waste. |
| D．White microfibers from fabrics were abundant in the oceans. |
| A．Researched | B．Conserved | C．Examined | D．Polluted |
| A．Health. | B．Lifestyle. | C．Science. | D．Education. |
