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.

2. What does the underlined word “converted” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Delivered.

B．Translated.

C．Attached.

D．Adapted.

3. What does Damasio consider as an interesting development?

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.

4. What can be the best title of the text?

A．Machines Become Emotional	B．Robots Inch to Feeling Pain
C．Human Feelings Can Be Felt	D．New Devices Touch Your Heart

2 . When I was a kid, my sister and I would fight all the time over nearly everything. But as we grew older, our bond strengthened by sharing secrets, offering advice and trading clothes. Having a sister by my side while growing up taught me many lessons about the unique bond.

And now, thanks to an 8-year long study that’s making the rounds on the Internet again, science is confirming what I know is true. In the study, researchers discovered that having an older or younger sister can help ease the anxiety for kids between the ages of 10 and 14 years. They also found that people with sisters can “learn how to make up and to have control over their emotions again, which are skills that undoubtedly serve children well.

The revival of this study actually comes on the heels of another newer study, which shows that it’s not just the older kids and parents who influence and shape children as they grow. It turns out that younger siblings(兄弟姐妹) do too, and what’s more, they may also give their older siblings a greater chance of developing empathy (同情).

The Canadian study followed 452 pairs of siblings, all between a year-and-a-half and 4 years old. The researchers found that having a younger sibling increased the older sibling's level of empathy.

This research confirms that sisters are pretty amazing in making the world a much lovely place. As the mom of two boys, I often wonder what kinds of lessons they will learn from their younger sister. Perhaps they will be the same lessons I learned from mine that cooler heads always win. This study gives me hope that all those endless arguments between my kids may actually be laying the groundwork for conflict-settlement skills.

1. What can we learn from the study?

A．Children under four develop empathy fastest.

B．It is normal for siblings to quarrel.

C．Having siblings is not always a headache.

D．Having sisters is helpful to mental health.

2. What does the underlined word "revival"in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Result	B．Beginning.
C．Reappearance.	D．Significance.

3. What can we learn about the author’s children?

A．They love their mom very much.

B．They have a higher level of empathy.

C．They often quarrel with one another.

D．They have learned the same lessons as the the author.

4. What’s the main idea of the passage?

A．Siblings have a unique bond.

B．Siblings have something in common.

C．Having siblings is good to children.

D．Children having siblings are considerate.