1 . Earl Forlales, a graduate in Materials Science and Engineering, took inspiration from the bamboo hut his grandparents lived in outside Manila and created a house made of bamboo that can be put together in four hours to solve the chronic(长期的) shortage of affordable accommodation in the Philippines. His design won a £50.000 top prize from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in its Cities for our Future competition.
His house, known as Cubo, could be produced in a week, constructed in four hours and costs £60 per square meter. Its use of bamboo—which releases 35％ more oxygen into the environment than trees—was praised by the judges. The ability of the houses to be constructed in any bamboo-producing area was one of the key attractions.
“The world’s cities are growing all the time and there is a real need to make sure they are safe, clean and comfortable places to live in,”John Hughes, the competition’s head judge and then president at RICS, said. “As we look at our competitors, who are our next generation of leaders， I believe that real progress will be made in tackling the world’s biggest issues.
Forlales has already identified a suitable area of land to start building his Cubo houses. He plans to begin the work next year with experts from the RICS in an attempt to help relieve the huge pressure on housing in Manila, where a third of the 12 million population live in poor districts. He said, “I would like to thank RICS for the opportunity, and look forward to working with them to put this money to good use in Manila and then hopefully elsewhere around the world.”
1. What contributes most to Forlales’ winning the prize？| A．The material of his house. | B．The shape of his house. |
| C．The design of his house. | D．The expense of his house. |
| A．Facing. | B．Treating |
| C．Covering. | D．Handling. |
| A．It is created by Forlales and his parents |
| B．It is environmentally friendly and economical. |
| C．It has already been built in Forlales’ hometown. |
| D．It can be constructed in a week. |
| A．A Competition in House Building | B．A Man Devoted to City Development |
| C．The Bamboo House Winning a top Prize | D．The Way to Solve Housing Shortage |
2 . Scientists say they've developed a system using machine learning to predict when and where lighting will strike. The research was led by engineers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.
European researchers have estimated that between 6,000 and 24,000 people are killed by lightning worldwide each year. The strikes can also cause power outages, destroy property, damage electrical equipment and start forest fires. For these reasons, climate scientists have long sought to develop methods to predict and control lightning. In the United States and other places, ground-based sensing devices are used to identify strikes as they happen. But, no system has been created to effectively predict lightning.
The system tested in the experiments used a combination of data from weather stations and machine learning methods. The researchers developed a prediction model that was trained to recognize weather conditions that were likely to cause lightning.
The model was created with data collected over a 12-year period from 12 Swiss weather stations in cities and mountain areas. The data related to four main surface conditions: air pressure, air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed.
The atmospheric data was placed into a machine learning algorithm（算法）, which compared it to records of lightning strikes. Researchers say the algorithm was then able to learn the conditions under which lightning happens.
Amirhossein Mostajabi is a PhD student at the institute who led the development of the method. He said, “current systems for gathering such data are slow and complex and require costly collection equipment like radar or satellites.”
“Our method uses data that can be obtained from any weather station,” Mostajabi said. “This will improve data collection in very remote areas not covered by radar and satellite or in places where communication systems have been cut,” be added.
The researchers plan to keep developing the technology in partnership with a European effort that aims to create a lightning protection system. The effort is called the European Laser Lightning Rod project.
1. Why have climate scientists tried to predict and control lighting?| A．To collect relative data. |
| B．To reduce the destruction lightning has been causing. |
| C．To create a scientific system. |
| D．To do research in relation to machine learning. |
| A．air pollution | B．wind speed |
| C．relative humidity | D．air temperature |
| A．lighting. | B．the system being tested. |
| C．the atmospheric data. | D．the machine learning algorithm. |
| A．He developed the method and the system himself. |
| B．He thinks the current systems are too slow and simple. |
| C．He is a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. |
| D．He believes their system does much better in data collection. |
