1 . Independent living at home is the ideal for every aging person. But a fall or other health-threatening incidents can change everything rapidly.
The wearable “panic buttons” introduced in the late 1980s were a great advance. But they only work if people actually wear them and can reach the button in an emergency. Today there are passive wearables that automatically detect falls, and camera-based systems to monitor elder safety.
Coming from a 40-year career in the semiconductor and wireless communication field, Rafi Zack decided to find a better alternative. “People aren’t devoted to wearing small devices 24/7, and camera-based systems are an invasion（侵犯）of privacy,” he points out, “The most challenging aspect is a fall. How fast we can detect a fall matters because the medical situation worsens quickly. Sometimes people stay on the floor for a long time. We have to find out how to solve that problem.”
Zack is a co-founder, CEO and vice president of R&D at EchoCare Technologies which has developed ECHO (Elderly Care Home Observer), a cloud-connected monitor based on radar technology and machine learning.
Because radar sees through walls, one ECHO unit fixed on the ceiling or wall can monitor one person (or two persons, in a future version) in a standard-sized apartment in a senior living facility. The device detects falls, breathing difficulties, drowning in a bathtub and other dangerous events. It gives out warnings to potential health worsening conditions by continuously monitoring and analyzing the person’s location, posture（姿势）, motion and breath. EchoCare tested the device in the United States, Japan, Australia and Israel. ECHO was certified（认证）in 2019 in Japan with the most aging population in the world.
“Bathrooms were the main testing area where about 17,000 deadly accidents happen annually.” said SMK Director and Executive Vice President Tetsuo Hara. “Bathroom makers, home security service providers and nursing homes are highly interested in EchoCare’s solution.” Zack noted, “As more and more elder people live alone as a result of social distancing, there is an increased need to monitor them without the burden of wearables or privacy-invading cameras.”
1. What’s the advantage of ECHO over “panic buttons”?| A．It has camera-based systems. | B．It has been widely accepted. |
| C．It can function without cameras. | D．Its buttons can be easily reached. |
| A．It is designed to send out warnings regularly. |
| B．It monitors dangerous health-related events. |
| C．It was certified in many developed countries. |
| D．It detects more than one person at the same time. |
| A．It’ll become more popular with the elderly. |
| B．It’ll stop 17,000 deaths happening annually. |
| C．It’ll be used in nursing homes and hospitals. |
| D．It’ll help elderly people to live an active life. |
| A．An Advanced Medical Instrument |
| B．A High-tech Monitor for the Elderly |
| C．The Invention of a Healthcare Device |
| D．The Improvement of a Medical Facility |
2 . The use of AI (artificial intelligence) is becoming more common in many branches of industry and online shopping. Traditional lines of work, such as goods transport and driving, are developing in a similar direction although mainly out of public view. Scientists at the University of Göttingen have now investigated how efficient (高效的) the use of AI can be in the commercial management of trucks.
“Digital applications—as well as machine leaning, a kind of AI—are increasingly applied to operations and courses in the transport area,” explains Professor Matthias Klumpp from the Faculty of Economics. “The question in the commercial area, however, is whether or not this contributes to achieving goals.”
To answer this question, the researchers compared the work efficiency of truck drivers with their main use of AI applications. Looking at trade delivery by truck, they studied three groups: the first drove completely following human decision-making models; the second used a combination of human and machine; and the third depended completely on fully automated decisions.
The researchers found that an intelligent combination of human work and decision-making abilities with AI applications promises the highest transport and driving efficiency. “On average, the second group achieved the most efficient transport trips, with the fewest interventions (干预) and off-course from the best path.” one researcher said, “Clearly, neither a completely human decision-making structure nor a fully automated driving system can promise to meet current goods transport requirements.” The scientists therefore summarized that despite the progress of AI in the field of transportation by truck, human experience and decision-making abilities will still be necessary in the longer term. However, the challenge is that a wide range of training and qualification (资格) needs will come along by working with Al applications, especially for simple goods transport activities.
1. What does Matthias Klumpp focus on?| A．The efficiency of AI. |
| B．The advantages of AI. |
| C．The problems caused by AI. |
| D．The wide applications of AI. |
| A．By providing examples. |
| B．By making comparisons. |
| C．By using different trucks. |
| D．By listing three experiments. |
| A．Al is better at making decisions. |
| B．A balance is needed between human and AI. |
| C．Human will soon be replaced by AI in driving. |
| D．Al applications meet the current requirements. |
| A．The future of transport. |
| B．Artificial intelligence as a co-driver. |
| C．Artificial intelligence-a better choice in driving. |
| D．The strengths of artificial intelligence in transport. |
3 . The practice of encouraging laughter with the sound of laughter itself dates back to the 16th century. During performances of Shakespearean plays, there were people who laughed at just the right moments. This would cause other members of the audience to laugh in a similar way, thus making the show seem funnier.
Centuries later, when comedy programs were popular on radio, the sound of a laughing audience was a natural part of performances that were aired live. To make sure his performances were aired at the same time in each time zone, actor Bing Crosby had his show prerecorded. Eventually, one of the show's writers realized that big laughs from old recordings could be added in to follow new jokes. So the world was introduced to canned laughter.
When TV came along, laugh tracks were recorded from the live studio audience that was present at a show. But sometimes, the audience didn't laugh at the expected time, making these moments seem dull to those watching at home. To fix this problem, TV audio engineer Charley Douglass invented a machine called the Laff Box.
Douglass' Laff Box was a collection of tapes connected to different keys. Each tape contained canned laughter that-was-carefully selected by Douglass for its particular quality. For example, one tape might have produced very soft laughs, while another produced loud cackles(咯咯笑). The machine could be played almost like a musical instrument: if the live audience didn't laugh enough, Douglass would “sweeten” the audio by adding the right amount and type of canned laughter. This technique could even be used when no audience was present, as with cartoons. Critics have long claimed that canned laughter is merely a trick to make people laugh at bad jokes. Live laugh tracks, however, can still be heard on popular modern shows like The Big Bang theory. Sometimes it's just more fun to share in the laughter - canned or otherwise.
1. What is mentioned about Shakespearean plays?| A．They were sometimes broadcast on radio. |
| B．Most of these plays weren't funny enough. |
| C．Some viewers were purposefully arranged to laugh. |
| D．Canned laughter was used during the performances. |
| A．Bing Crosby's older jokes got more laughs. |
| B．Bing Crosby' show was aired live worldwide. |
| C．Bing Crosby's team made comedy programs popular. |
| D．Bino Crosby's team brought canned laughter into existence. |
| A．It can offer many types of laughter. |
| B．It is inconvenient for people to use. |
| C．It isn't allowed by law today. |
| D．It can make bad jokes funny. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By analyzing reasons. |
| C．By following time order. | D．By making comparisons. |
4 . A KFC in North Platte, Nebraska received a letter like on other in their mailbox last week. Owner Rocky said he was shocked to see someone had written his store to apologize for stealing chicken! Along with the note were two $1 bills in order to repay for the chicken this “thief” took from the buffet(自助餐) line! Wow! Talk about an honest cheat!
There was no return address on the envelop and Rocky says he wishes he knew who this fried chicken snatcher (小偷) was! Not so he could catch her and bring her to justice but rather because he’d like to give her some free food! Rocky said, “It seems as if her conscience got the best of her. I really wish I knew who it was. I would buy her a few meals.”
The unknown moral letter writer explained just what went down while she was visiting the fast food restaurant, admitting, “This $2 is for the piece of chicken I brought home with me on Tuesday. That’s stealing. Sorry! I took more on my plate than I could eat and I knew it would get thrown away there because it couldn’t get put back on the buffet, so I put it in my purse and brought it home. I do love your chicken!”
She then asked for the restaurant’s forgiveness, since she felt someone else had already forgiven her. She said, “Anyway, God has forgiven me and I hope you will too. I will not be so quick to take so much next time. ” Lady, you are MORE than forgiven! You are on your way to being great!
1. How did the “thief” apologize to Rocky?| A．She sent him an email. | B．She wrote a letter to him. |
| C．She visited him in person. | D．She made a call to him |
| A．Bring the lady to justice. | B．Find out who the lady was. |
| C．Reward the lady with money. | D．Give the two dollars back to the lady. |
| A．loved it very much | B．preferred to eat it home |
| C．didn’t want it wasted | D．didn’t want to pay for it |
| A．disliked the lady | B．didn’t forgive the lady |
| C．appreciated the lady a lot | D．had deep pity on the lady |
5 . Humans have little difficulty recognizing one another. And we know that no two faces are exactly alike. Even identical twins have slightly different faces. Each human face is truly unique, and now we've invented machines that are able to recognize faces for numerous purposes.
Governments, employers and security and police services are increasingly using facial recognition technology. This allows them to quickly confirm an individual's identity. Systems are becoming so advanced that a wanted criminal can instantly be picked out of a crowd of thousands of people. All that's required is an image in a database to compare with the image of any number of people in a crowd. Ordinary people, too, are using facial recognition to unlock their phones, their computers and other devices.
Personal facial recognition protection has several benefits. It is instantaneous, and it relieves us of the need to memorize passwords. However, a device will require a password in the rare event that it doesn't, for whatever reason, recognize the user's face.
There are numerous concerns about the use of facial recognition. Primarily, the concern is that it threatens privacy. The installation of more and more cameras in public and private places is now part of everyday life. This means people can be observed and recognized wherever they go. Cameras may make public spaces safer, but keeping law-abiding(守法的) citizens under constant watch is disturbing to many.
In the age of the coronavirus and the widespread wearing of masks, facial recognition systems are having some difficulty. A mask covers many of the facial data points used by recognition software to confirm a person's identity. In response, facial recognition systems are being trained to use less facial data. That could affect how dependable it is as a method of identity detection.
1. What's the author's purpose of writing Paragraph 2?| A．To further explain the importance of facial recognition. |
| B．To describe the powerful functions of facial recognition. |
| C．To list in detail various advantages of facial recognition. |
| D．To state the unique advanced features of facial recognition. |
| A．The cameras may be occasionally out of order. |
| B．Too many cameras disturb people's daily life. |
| C．People's personal life might be exposed to others. |
| D．The cameras make law-abiding citizens feel stressful. |
| A．Getting more accurate with less information. |
| B．Becoming faster with more facial data. |
| C．Protecting personal information if necessary. |
| D．Responding more quickly to unexpected events. |
| A．The wide popularity of facial recognition. |
| B．The rapid development of facial recognition. |
| C．The benefits of facial recognition. |
| D．The introduction to facial recognition. |
6 . When he was two years old, Ben stopped seeing out of his left eye. His mother took him to the doctor and soon discovered he had cancer in both eyes. After possible treatments failed, doctors removed both his eyes. For Ben, vision was gone forever.
But by the time he was seven years old, he had developed a technique for feeling the world around him: he clicked with his mouth and listened for the returning echoes. This method enabled Ben to determine the locations of open doorways, people, parked cars, garbage cans, and so on. He was echolocating: bouncing his sound waves off objects in the environment and catching the reflections to build a mental model of his surroundings.
Echolocation may sound like an improbable feat for a human, but thousands of blind people have perfected this skill, just like Ben did. The event has been written about since at least the 1940s, when the word ''echolocation" was first invented in a science article titled “Echolocation by Blind Men , Bats, and Radar.”
How could blindness give rise to the amazing ability to understand the surroundings with one's ears? The answer lies in a gift on the brain; huge adaptability.
Mother Nature filled our brains with flexibility to adapt to circumstances. Just as sharp teeth and fast legs are useful for survival, so is the brain's ability to reset, which allows for learning, memory, and die ability to develop new skills.
In Ben's case, his brain's flexible wiring repurposed his visual cortex for processing sound. As a result, Ben had more neurons available to deal with listening information, and this increased processing power allowed Ben to interpret soundwaves in shocking detail. Ben's super-hearing proves a more general rule: the more brain area a particular sense has, the better it performs.
1. How did Ben “see” after he had his eyes removed?| A．By using a walking stick. | B．By asking others for help. |
| C．By inventing a new system. | D．By echolocating surroundings. |
| A．Skill. | B．Task. | C．Sense. | D．Invention. |
| A．He laughs best who laughs last. | B．Actions speak louder than words. |
| C．God shuts one door but he opens another. | D．Man becomes learned by asking questions. |
| A．Culture Shock. | B．Human Biology. |
| C．Scientific Technology. | D．Environmental Protection. |
7 . Here on Earth where most of us live, we spend about a third of everyday lying down sleeping and two-thirds standing or sitting in an upright position.
That's not really how it goes in space when people are weightless and the zero gravity environment causes more liquid to shift to the head. Faces get swollen, legs lose volume and appear to be smaller. Many astronauts have complained of eye and back problems after coming back down to Earth and its gravity.
And now scientists say they have discovered some new risks with long-term space flight. A study published recently in JAMA Network Open, a medical journal, examined 11 healthy astronauts who had been on the International Space Station for six months. Eight of them had unusual characteristics observed in their blood. For instance, six of the astronauts had reverse （反向的）blood flow from their heads.
The lead author of the study says he doesn't know if that's actually harmful. The blood is still leaving the head from other pathways, so flowing backwards through a jugular vein（颈静脉） may not be dangerous. But he says it does show a change in how blood moves through the body while in space.
Another issue the study found was blood clots （凝块）. One astronaut had one. Another showed signs of a partial blood clot. That is potentially harmful as the clots can block the flow of blood to the lungs. The astronaut who had one was treated for the rest of the spaceflight and made it home safely.
What does all this mean? Well, one researcher says these issues have probably been oc- curring since humans first went into space and that they would likely resolve themselves when astronauts came back down to Earth. Knowing about them now gives doctors something else to monitor when people leave our atmosphere.
1. What causes the physical problems for astronauts?| A．Sleeping for a long time. | B．The zero gravity environment. |
| C．Staying in the spaceship. | D．The shift in their bodies. |
| A．Four. | B．Three. | C．Two. | D．One. |
| A．It is a common problem. | B．It is a new kind of disease. |
| C．It is a threat to people's health. | D．It was first found by astronauts. |
| A．Doctors have a new task for astronauts |
| B．Zero gravity stops astronauts flying in space |
| C．It's dangerous for astronauts to fly into space |
| D．New risks are found in long-term space flight |
8 . When I was young, I had a wrong understanding of being great. I believed I was special and different and should be rich and famous because of my talent. I was going to live my dream rather than being a “normal” person. But as time passed, reality set in and my perspective changed.
I am a teacher, married to a salesman with a baby and a mortgage（按揭贷款）. Could my life be more normal? Yet, I am okay with this.
Were I to have a conversation with my twenty-year-old self, she wouldn't understand why I'm not going to NYC to get an audition （试演）. In four years my coworkers have never heard me sing. If I'd bought a house, it should have been in an interesting neighborhood with coffee houses at every corner. She would laugh at the corner house in the neighborhood I now call home.
But I know things she didn't know. Life is so much more complicated, wonderful and terrible. I know what it means to work for love, not just sitting back and letting it happen the way it can when you're young. I know about bringing life into the world, and the complexity of emotions.
My life is simple. It is small, and may seem interchangeable with so many other lives there. I may never make an impact outside my house. But I've learned it is important to be relative. To my little girl, I am irreplaceable. When she cries, she calls for “Mama”. When she reaches out, it's for me alone. So, is it a small life? It's perfectly fine to me. In fact, I think it's what I've wanted all along.
1. What was the author like when she was young?| A．She was honest. | B．She was brave. |
| C．She was proud. | D．She was cautious. |
| A．To show she has become mature. | B．To prove her dream has come true. |
| C．To reveal the key to her success. | D．To introduce her present unhappiness. |
| A．Learning the complexity of emotions. | B．Opening her heart to the world. |
| C．Living with her daughter specially. | D．Caring for her family. |
| A．We can achieve our dreams if we work hard. |
| B．We will come back to a normal life some day. |
| C．We should keep in contact with our families. |
| D．We can be the one we feel satisfied with. |
9 . Ever wondered if dogs can learn new words? Yes, say researchers as they have found that talented dogs may have the ability to grasp new words after hearing them only four times.
While previous evidence seems to show that most dogs do not learn words, unless eventually very well trained, a few individuals have shown some extraordinary abilities, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
“We wanted to know under which conditions the gifted dogs may learn novel words,” said researcher xuekw Claudia Fugazza from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. For the study, the team involved two gifted dogs, Whisky and Vicky Nina. The team exposed the dogs to the new words in two different conditions.
In the exclusion-based task, presented with seven known toys and one new toy, the dogs were able to select the new toy when presented with a new name. Researchers say this proves that dogs can choose by exclusion when faced with a new word, they selected the only toy which did not have a known name.
However, this was not the way they would learn the name of the toy. In fact, when they were presented with one more equally new name to test their ability to recognize the toy by its name, the dogs got totally confused and failed.
The other condition, the social one, where the dogs played with their owners who pronounced the name of the toy while playing with the dog, proved to be the successful way to learn the name of the toy, even after hearing it only 4 times. “The rapid learning that we observed seems to equal children’s ability to learn many new words at a fast rate around the age of 18 months,” Fugazza says. “But we do not know whether the learning mechanisms(机制) behind this learning are the same for humans and dogs. ”
To test whether most dogs would learn words this way, 20 other dogs were tested in the same condition, but none of them showed any evidence of learning the toy names, confirming that the ability to learn words rapidly in the absence of formal training is very rare and is only present in a few gifted dogs.
1. What was the purpose of the study published in Scientific Reports?| A．To better train dogs’ ability to learn new words. |
| B．To further confirm previous evidence about dogs. |
| C．To prove extraordinary memory abilities of gifted dogs. |
| D．To explore favorable conditions for gifted dogs’ new-word learning. |
| A．Slow to understand. | B．Quick to learn. | C．At a loss. | D．In a panic. |
| A．Learning through playing applied to most dogs. |
| B．The social condition helped dogs learn new words. |
| C．Dogs’ new-word learning turned out to be less effective. |
| D．Dogs shared similar learning mechanisms with children. |
| A．Gifted Dogs Can Learn New Words Rapidly. |
| B．Dogs Identify Newly-named Toys by Exclusion. |
| C．Dogs Can Acquire Vocabulary through Tons of Training. |
| D．Gifted Dogs Have Similar Learning Abilities to Humans. |
10 . Every day, art comes alive in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and through its exhibitions and events, revealing new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.
Making The Met 1870-2020
The signature exhibition of The Met’s 150th-annivei-sary year takes visitors on a fascinating journey through the history of one of the world’s top cultural institutions. Rarely seen valuable records, photographs, and stories of both behind-the-scenes work and the Museum’s community outreach enhance this unique experience.
The New British Galleries
The British Galleries exhibit almost seven hundred works of art, including a large number of new acquisitions. particularly objects made in the, nineteenth century that were purchased with this project in mind.
About Time: Fashion And Duration
The Costume Institute’s 2020 exhibition tracks a century and a half of fashion—from 1870 to the present - along a troubled timeline, on the occasion of The Met’s 150th anniversary. Employing Henri Bergson’s concept of la durée (duration), it explores how clothes generate time-related associations that mix past, present, and future.
Art of Native America: The Charles and Valeric Diker Collection
This splendid exhibition in the Museum’s American Wing shows 116 masterworks, ranging in date from the second to the early twentieth century, the diverse works are promised gifts, donations and loans to The Met from the pioneering collectors Charles and Valerie Diker.
1. what makes the exhibition Making The Met 1870-2020 unique?| A．Travelling around the world. |
| B．Some valuable records, photographs and stories. |
| C．Photography skills. |
| D．Diverse masterworks. |
| A．The New British Galleries. | B．Art of Native America. |
| C．About Time: Fashion And Duration. | D．Making The Met 1870-2020. |
| A．A statue made in 106. | B．A vase made in 318BC. |
| C．A teapot made in 2020. | D．A violin made in 1999. |
