1 . The moon may hold water in more places and in larger amounts than scientists have suggested in the past. The finding is based on two studies published in Nature Astronomy — that examined new data from the U.S. space agency NASA.
Until about 10 years ago. scientists believed the moon was mostly dry. Then, a series of findings provided evidence that water ice was widespread in small amounts on parts of the moon. The ice was thought to be in areas permanently blocked from sunlight.
But in one of the new studies. NASA said it was able to validate the presence of water molecules (分子) on sunlit parts of the lunar surface. The space agency says the identification came from data collected by its SOFIA airborne observatory equipped with a powerful telescope. The research was led by Casey Honniball of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Scientists have suggested the source of the water may have been comets (彗星), asteroids (小行星), solar wind or interplanetary dust. The new research provides evidence that the water may be surviving on sunlit lunar surfaces because it is attached to minerals.
The second study centered on so-called "cold traps" on the moon. These are areas of the lunar surface that exist in a state of permanent darkness where temperatures are below about minus 160 degrees Celsius. Scientists say temperatures this cold can hold frozen water for billions of years.
Planetary scientist Paul Hayne of the University of Colorado Boulder led the research on cold traps. He said likely "tens of billions" of traps. Hayne's team says the new research suggests more than 40,000 square kilometres of the moon's surface may have the ability to trap water in the form office. That figure is 20 percent bigger than predicted in the past, Hayne said.
Jacob Bleacher is the chief exploration scientist for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. He told reporters the agency believes it is very important to find out more about where the water comes from and how accessible it is.
1. Which word can replace the underlined word "validate" in paragraph 3?| A．Deny. | B．Confirm. | C．Observe. | D．Control. |
| A．There's much moving water there. |
| B．They exist for a relatively short time. |
| C．The temperature is extremely low there. |
| D．They are on the sunlit part of the lunar surface. |
| A．How water is attached to minerals. | B．How much water is on the lunar surface. |
| C．How cold traps take shape. | D．How to make use of the water. |
| A．Moon holds more water than expected. |
| B．Scientists found cold traps on the lunar surface. |
| C．Water is found to exist on the moon. |
| D．NASA's exploration of the moon is under way. |
2 . I travel a lot in my work, and what I dislike about my job is eating alone. It always makes me feel lonely to see others laughing and taking. So, room service for several nights was a better choice for me.
After having room service three nights at a hotel in Houston, however, I needed to get out of my room. Although the restaurant opened at 6:30, I arrived at 6:25. The waiter at the front desk made a comment about my “being there really early”. I explained my dislike of eating alone m restaurants. He then seated me at a lovely table and asked me whether I would mind if he sat down with me for a while.
I was glad! He sat and talked with me about his career goals and the difficulty of being at work on nights, weekends and holidays. He said he hadn’t enough time to be with his family. After 15 minutes, he saw some customers at the front desk and excused himself. I noticed that before he went to the front desk, he stopped in the kitchen for a moment.
Then another waiter came out of the kitchen and had a wonderful chat with me. Before I left that night, some other waiters, even the cook, had come out of the kitchen and sat with me!
When I asked for my bill about one hour later, all the people who had sat down with me came over in a big group to my table, and presented me with a red rose. And I cried! What had begun as a lonely night ended as a beautiful experience!
1. The reason why the author hated to eat in the hotel restaurant is that the author didn’t like__________.| A．meeting strangers in the restaurant | B．being disturbed by the noises around |
| C．being pointed at or laughed at | D．feeling uncomfortable and lonely |
| A．Satisfied. | B．Surprised. | C．Delighted. | D．Annoyed. |
| A．knew how to talk with customers in his restaurant |
| B．was disappointed with his present job |
| C．found it hard to balance his work and his family |
| D．had never had such a chance to talk about his own worries |
| A．the kindness of strangers can make you less lonely |
| B．restaurants should put the needs of customers first |
| C．people are actually all lonely in their own way |
| D．restaurants are full of surprises for lonely people |
3 . You try to keep your eyes wide open while watching a basketball match or a wonderful firework show in case you might miss something exciting in just the blink (眨眼睛) of an eye. But in fact, humans blink about 15 times per minute on average. Have you ever missed anything because you blinked? Probably not. Why is that?
According to a new study published in the journal Current Biology in September, our brain has the ability to skip the temporary darkness when we blink. It can keep visual information for a short period of time and then put it together to form an image without interruption.
In order to understand how this works, a group of scientists at the German Primate Center and the University Medical Center Gottingen in Germany conducted an experiment. In the study, the participants were asked to look at patterns on a screen whose direction could be shown in different ways, such as horizontally or vertically (垂直地). When one pattern was about to disappear and the next one was about to come, the participants had to indicate the direction that the next pattern would appear.
The researchers found that when the directions of two patterns didn’t match, the area in our brain which is responsible for visual memory was activated. This same area showed less activity when two patterns were in the same direction.
“The medial prefrontal cortex (前额叶皮层) adjusts current visual information with previously obtained information, and thus enables us to sense the world with more stability, even when we briefly close our eyes to blink，” Caspar Schwiedrzik explained in Science Daily. He is the first author of the study and also a scientist at the German Primate Center.
1. We don’t miss anything when blinking because our brain can ________.| A．remember all that we see | B．deal with the missing image |
| C．imagine what our eyes miss | D．recognize our pieces of memory |
| A．Visual information. | B．Our brain. |
| C．Current Biology. | D．The temporary darkness. |
| A．The different directions activated visual memory. |
| B．Visual memory can be more activated by similarity. |
| C．Participants can interpret patterns differently. |
| D．The two patterns appear at the same time. |
| A．the brain’s structure | B．the brain’s special skill |
| C．the brain’s activated patterns | D．the brain’s directions |
4 . Professor Ashok Goel of Georgia Tech developed an artificially intelligent teaching assistant to help handle the enormous number of student questions in the online class, Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence. Professor Goel already had eight teaching assistants, but that wasn’t enough to deal with the overwhelming number of daily questions from students.
Many students drop out of online courses because of the lack of teaching support. When students feel ignored or confused and reach out with questions that go unanswered, their motivation to continue begins to taper off. Professor Goel decided to do something to improve this situation and his solution was to create a virtual assistant named Jill Watson.
Goel and his team developed several versions of Jill Watson before releasing her to the online forums. At first, the virtual assistant wasn’t too great. But Goel and his team sourced the online discussion forum to find all the 40,000 questions that had ever been asked since the class was launched. Then they began to feed Jill with the questions and answers. After some adjustments and sufficient time, Jill was able to answer the students’ questions correctly 97% of the time. The virtual assistant became so advanced and realistic that the students didn’t know she was a computer. The students, who were studying artificial intelligence, were interacting with the virtual assistant and couldn’t tell it apart from a real human being. Goel didn’t inform them about Jill’s true identity until April 26. The students were actually very positive about the experience.
The goal of Professor Goel’s virtual assistant next year is to take over answering 40% of all the questions posed by students on the online forum. Professor Goel has a much rosier outlook on the future of artificial intelligence.
1. What problem did Professor Goel meet with?| A．Students’ questions were too many to deal with. |
| B．Teaching assistants were not professional at all. |
| C．Many students were lack of interest in his class. |
| D．He felt confused about how to teach online. |
| A．grow dramatically | B．increase sharply |
| C．decrease gradually | D．decline unreasonably |
| A．She could answer all questions without mistakes. |
| B．She turned out to be a great success. |
| C．Her performance was remarkable all the way. |
| D．Her true identity was still a secret to students. |
| A．A robot gives an online course. |
| B．Virtual assistant is getting popular in school. |
| C．Robots will replace humans in online classes. |
| D．One Georgia Tech’s teaching assistant isn’t human. |
