1 . Women are still underrepresented in top academic positions. One of the possible explanations for this is the increasing importance of obtaining research funding. Women are often less successful in this than men. Psychology researchers Dr. Romy van der Lee and professor Naomi Ellemers investigated whether this difference also occurs at the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and examined potential explanations.
The researchers were assigned by NWO to carry out this study as part of the broader evaluation of NWO’s procedures and its gender diversity policy. The aim was to gain more insight into the causes of the differences in awarding rates for male and female applicants for research funding. The analysis addressed an important “talent programme” of NWO, the Veni grant. “Whoever receives this grant has a greater chance of obtaining an important appointment at a university, ” says Naomi Ellemers.
Van der Lee and Ellemers investigated all the applications submitted by male and female researchers over a period of three years: a total of 2823 applications. Under the direction of NWO these applications were assessed by scientific committees consisting of men and women. The results demonstrate that the awarding rates for female applicants (14.9%) are systematically lower than those for male applicants (17.7%). “If we compare the proportion of women among the applicants with the proportion of women among those awarded funding, we see a loss of 4%,” said Ellemers.
The study reveals that women are less positively evaluated for their qualities as researcher than men are, “Interestingly the research proposals of women and men are evaluated equally positively. In other words, the reviewers see no difference in the quality of the proposals that men and women submit,” says Romy van der Lee.
In search for a possible cause for the differences in awarding rates and evaluations, the researchers also investigated the language use in the instructions and forms used to assess the quality of applications. This clearly revealed the occurrence of gendered language. The words that are used to indicate quality are frequently words that were established in previous research as referring mainly to the male gender stereotype (such as challenging and excellent). Romy van der Lee explains: “As a result, it appears that men more easily satisfy the assessment criteria, because these better fit the characteristics stereoty-pically associated with men.”
In response to the results of this research, NWO will devote more attention to the gender awareness of reviewers in its methods and procedures. It will also be investigated which changes to the assessment procedures and criteria can most strongly contribute to more equal chances for men and women to obtain research funding. This will include an examination of the language used by NWO. NWO chair Jos Engelens said, “The research has yielded valuable results and insights. Based on the recommendations made by the researchers we will therefore focus in the coming period on the development of evidence-based measures to reduce the difference in awarding rates.”
1. Van der Lee and Ellemers carried out the research to find out whether _________.| A．women are less successful than men in top academic positions |
| B．female applicants are at a disadvantage in getting research funding |
| C．NOW’s procedures and gender diversity policy enhance fair play |
| D．there are equal chances for men and women to be admitted to a university |
| A．grant receivers were more likely to get appointments at universities |
| B．men applicants for research funding outnumbered women applicants |
| C．the research proposals of women are equally treated with those of men |
| D．the reviewers have narrow, prejudiced conceptions of women candidates |
| A．The words used in the instructions and forms. |
| B．The reviewers’ preference to applications. |
| C．The methods and procedures for evaluation. |
| D．The vague and unclear assessment criteria. |
| A．Eliminate possibilities for difference in awarding rates. |
| B．Design a language examination for all the reviewers. |
| C．Emphasize the importance of gender awareness. |
| D．Improve the assessment procedures and criteria. |
Hi, everyone.
Traditionally,
Of course, the events of 2020 haven’t shown a lot of respect for our traditions. In a year of so much tragedy, it can be tough to give thanks when you’re doing your best to get by. And far too many of us will have to gather around a table with an empty chair, if we were able to gather together at all.
One thing, though, we can say about 2020 is that it forced us all to cherish what is most important, what’s most meaningful in our lives. To stop taking things for granted,
Throughout this challenging year, I’ve been moved, again and again, by the sacrifices so many were willing to make on behalf of others. The healthcare professionals who risked their lives to save ours. The workers who have kept our lights on and our shelves stocked, always essential to our economy, but finally
These are exactly the leaders Michelle and I started our Foundation to support. We always thought they
What we learned in 2020 is that these emerging leaders aren’t just building a brighter future, they’re safeguarding our present. In hard times, they are the ones who’ve given me solace. It’s
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everybody.
—Quoted from Barack Obama’s Christmas speech in 2020
| A. celebrated B. ideals C. currently D. enlarged E. formerly F. incomparable G. laid H. referred I. restored J. scale K. seat |
If you only had an afternoon to experience London on a grand
A royal palace was said to have existed at the site under the Danish king of England Canute. The building, however, spoken of by William Fitzstephen as a(n) “
Sir Charles Barry, assisted by A.W.N. Pugin, designed the present buildings in the Gothic Revival style. Construction was begun in 1837, the cornerstone was
The Palace is one of the centers of political life in the United Kingdom; “Westminster” has become a metaphor for the UK Parliament and the British Government. The Elizabeth Tower, in particular, often
4 . How can the train operators possibly justify yet another increase to rail passenger fares? It has become a grimly reliable annual ritual: every January the cost of travelling by train rises, imposing a significant extra burden on those who have no option but to use the rail network to get to work or otherwise. This year’s rise, an average of 2.7 percent, may be a little bit lower than last year’s, but it is still well above the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation(通货膨胀).
Successive governments have permitted such increases on the grounds that the cost of investing in and running the rail network should be borne by those who use it, rather than the general taxpayer. Why, the argument goes, should a car-driving pensioner from Lincolnshire have to subsidise(补贴)the daily commute(通勤)of a rail traveller from Surrey? Equally, there is a sense that the sufferings of commuters in the South East, have received too much attention compared to those who must endure the relatively poor infrastructure of the Midlands and the North.
However, over the past 12 months, those commuters have also experienced some of the worst rail strikes in years. It is all very well train operators boasting about the improvements they are making to the network, but passengers should be able to expect a basic level of service for the substantial sums they are now paying to travel. The responsibility for the latest wave of strikes rests on the unions. However, there is a strong case that those who have been worst affected by industrial action should receive compensation for the disruption they have suffered.
The Government has promised to change the law to introduce a minimum service requirement so that, even when strikes occur, services can continue to operate. This should form part of a wider package of measures to address the long-running problems on Britain’s railways. Yes, more investment is needed, but passengers will not be willing to pay more indefinitely if they must also endure cramped, unreliable services, along with regular chaos when timetables are changed, or planned maintenance is managed incompetently. The threat of nationalisation may have been seen off for now, but it will return with a revenge if the justified anger of passengers is not addressed in short order.
1. The author holds that this year’s increase in rail passengers fares ________.| A．creates extra burden on taxpayers. |
| B．has kept pace with inflation. |
| C．is beyond the expectation of commuters |
| D．remains an unreasonable practice. |
| A．Compensations are to be given to the commuters affected by the strikes. |
| B．A minimum service requirement will be likely to settle the railway problems. |
| C．In terms of service, there is a conflict between train operator’s claim and the reality. |
| D．Train operators have suffered huge losses owing to the strikes. |
| A．the loss of investment. | B．the collapse of operations. |
| C．a reduction of revenue(收入) | D．a change of ownership. |
| A．Who Are to Blame for the Ever-rising Fares? |
| B．Rail Strikes Need to Be Stopped |
| C．Enhance Railway Service, Ease Passenger Anger |
| D．Ever-rising Fares Are Unreasonable |
5 . You’re running late for work and you can’t find your keys: What’s really annoying is that in your search, you pick up and move them without realizing. This may be because the brain systems involved in the task are working at different speeds, with the system responsible for perception(感知)unable to keep pace.
So says Grayden Solman and his colleagues at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. To investigate how we search, Solman’s team created a simple computer-based task that involved searching through a pile of colored shapes on a computer screen. Volunteers were instructed to find a specific shapes as quickly as possible, while the computer monitored their actions.“Between 10 and 20 percent of the time, they would miss the object,”says Solman, even though they picked it up.“We thought that was remarkably often.”
To find out why, the team developed a number of further experiments. To check whether volunteers were just forgetting their target, they gave a new group a list of items to memorize before the search task, which they had to recall afterwards.
The idea was to fill each volunteer’s“memory load”，so that they were unable to hold any other information in their short-term memory. Although this was expected to have a negative effect on their performance at the search task, the extra load made no difference to the percentage of mistakes volunteers made.
To check that the volunteers were paying enough attention to the items they were moving, Solman’s team created another task involving a pile of cards marked with shapes that only became visible while the card was being moved. Again, they were surprised to see the same level of error, says Solman. Finally, the team analyzed participants’ mouse movements as they were carrying out a similar search task. They discovered that volunteers’ movements were slower after they had moved and missed their target.
Solman’s team propose that the system in the brain that deals with movement is running too quickly for the visual system to keep up. While you are searching around a messy house to find your keys, you might not be giving your visual system enough time to work out what each object is. Since time can be costly, sacrificing accuracy on occasion for speed might be beneficial overall, Solman thinks.
The slowing of mouse movements suggests that at some level the volunteers were aware that they had missed their target, a theory that is backed up by other studies that show people tend to slow down their actions after they have made a mistake, even if they don’t consciously realize the mistake.
1. What conclusion has Solman drawn from the first task?| A．More volunteers are needed to confirm the findings. |
| B．It happens very often that people miss what they intend to find. |
| C．Computers make negative effects on how people perform at the task. |
| D．Targets tend to be forgotten after people search for 10 minutes or more. |
| A．Cards marked with shapes may become a source of distraction. |
| B．Fewer errors will be made if people are forbidden to move cards. |
| C．People may be absent-minded even when they are moving something. |
| D．Volunteers prefer to use a mouse to control the objects on the computer screen. |
| A．Mistakes will cause people to reduce the speed. |
| B．Our visual system can’t keep up with the brain system. |
| C．The faster people move, the more mistakes they will make. |
| D．People’s actions are independent of the mistakes they make. |
| A．Better memory, worse search |
| B．Accuracy speaks louder than speed |
| C．Hurry up, or you will make mistakes |
| D．Slow down your search to find your keys |
Major trends that may affect education systems
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which promotes policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world, has been looking at the future of global education. Its head of education, Andreas Schleicher, has been talking about some major international trends affecting education systems around the world.
One trend is the widening gap between rich and poor. In OECD countries, the richest 10% have incomes 10 times greater than the poorest 10%. This inequality is a challenge for schools who want to offer equal and fair access to education for everyone.
Another trend is the rising wealth in Asia. It’s suggested that a large rise in the middle-classes in countries like India will increase demand for university places. Andreas Schleicher asks the question “What values will these newly wealthy consumers want from their schools?”
Increasing migration will also have an impact on education systems. Mobility results in more culturally diverse students eager to learn and develop good life for themselves. But that can be challenge, too, as Andreas Schleicher asks: “How should schools support pupils arriving from around the world? Will schools have a bigger role in teaching about shared values?”
Funding pressure is another issue: as our demand and expectation for education rises and more people go to university, who’s going to pay for it all? The rise in dependency on technology is another concern. What should students learn when many of their talents can be reproduced by machines? And how reliant should we be on learning from the internet?
These are just some of the issues the OECD is highlighting. But they remain irrelevant for hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest children who don’t even have access to school places or receive such low-quality education that they leave without the most basic literacy or numeracy.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7 . Thanks to Top Gear, a British television show for motoring enthusiasts that is now a global brand, a former WWⅡ airfield called Dunsfold has become one of the best-known testing tracks in the world. On October 15, however, instead of booming to the roar of supercars driven by the show’s racing driver, it witnessed the sight of what appeared to be the cableless trailer of an articulated lorry (铰接式卡车) running almost silently around the course at over 80kph.
The Pod, as this vehicle is known, was made by Einride, Swedish firm founded in 2016 by Robert Falck, an engineer who used to work for Volvo. Mr. Falck thinks that the technology of vehicle autonomy, long experimental, has now evolved sufficiently for driverless goods vehicles to begin earning their livings properly. Some Pods are already in trials for real jobs: running between warehouses, dragging logs from forests and delivering goods for Lidl, a supermarket group.
Pods use the same technology of cameras, radar, lidar (the optical equivalent of radar) and satellite-positioning as other competitors in the field, but they differ from those others in the way their maker tries to deal with the regulatory concerns which prevent fully autonomous vehicles from being let loose on public roads. Einride’s approach, at least at the moment, is to avoid these by avoiding the roads in question. Instead, the Pod’s first version operates on designated routes within the limits of enclosed, private areas such as ports and industrial parks. Here, Pods act like bigger and smarter versions of the delivery robots which already run around some factories—though by having the ability to carry 16 tons and with room on board for 15 industrial pallets’ worth of goods, they are indeed quite a lot bigger.
The second difference from most other attempts at vehicle autonomy is Einride’s approach to the word “autonomy.” Some makers take the idea literally, and aim to keep humans out of the decision-making process entirely. Others, often prompted by traffic regulations, arrange things so that a normally passive human occupant can take the controls if necessary. Pods represent a third way. They always have a human to keep an eye on what is happening and to take over the driving for a difficult operation or if something goes wrong. But this human operates remotely.
Having the driver sitting back at headquarters rather than in the vehicle itself is departure from convention, but not a huge one. Aerial drones are usually controlled in this way. The dramatic step is that Mr. Falck believes you do not need a remote driver for each Pod. Einride already uses one person to control two Pods, but plans eventually for a single driver to look after ten.
1. What purpose does the first paragraph mainly serve?| A．To inform readers about a popular racing show. |
| B．To explain the significance of the Dunsfold track. |
| C．To introduce a much-sought-after global brand. |
| D．To offer a glimpse of the main subject of the passage. |
| A．they can be used in many different real job settings |
| B．they use advanced satellite-positioning technology |
| C．their maker is not seeking to put them on public roads |
| D．they are actually meant to be smart and big delivery robots |
| A．The carrying capacity of Pods has yet to be fully exploited. |
| B．Aerial drones are usually operated remotely from headquarters. |
| C．Low-performance self-driving vehicles have a human standby. |
| D．No remote driver will be needed in the future for each Pod. |
| A．A British TV show advertises a newly-developed self-driving vehicle. |
| B．A new lorry being tested approaches autonomous driving differently. |
| C．A remote handler plays a crucial role in future autonomous driving. |
| D．A driverless lorry is being tested on a famous track. |
8 . The US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently asked scientists, lawyers, social scientists and other experts to consider some of these ethical dimension. To give two examples: on privacy, as we let more listening devices into our homes, how do we prevent the data they collect falling into the wrong hands through hacking (黑客) or simply being sold between companies without us receiving any money? Another example: mixed reality, including virtual reality, will become pervasive in the next few years. As we move from headsets to what the IEEE committee describes as “more delicate sensory enhancements” we will use technology to live in an illusory world in many aspects of our lives. How do we balance the rights of the individual, control over our virtual identity, and the need to live and interact on a face-to-face basis while being empowered to live rich lives in mixed reality?
There is, of course, always a tension between innovation and regulation. But it can often seem that giant steps are taken in technology with minimal public discussion. Take the self-driving car: although it may be safer than human drivers and is likely to save more than a million lives a year worldwide, it will also take jobs from drivers, traffic police, sign-makers, car-repair companies, carmakers and more. Is this a bargain we want to make? In taking that decision, have we given thought to a car that knows everywhere we go, decides routes, perhaps, based on paid advertisement from shops along the way—and listens and sees everything we do on board? What will happen to that data and can it be kept safe?
Additionally, while some worry about the uncommon “trolley problem” of whom the car should choose to hit in a strange accident—an old lady or a mother and baby—perhaps the more frequent issue will be how we find out what the algorithm (运算程序) was thinking at the time of an accident, because AIs (Artificial Intelligence) are self-learning and devise their own strategies.
Similar concerns are emerging over the internet of things. Robot vacuum-cleaners already plot cleaning cycles using computer-aided vision that, for some models, is relayed to their manufacturers. As more things at home become connected, they will be hackable and the data they collect saleable.
It’s time for some messy, democratic discussions about the future of AI.
1. Two examples in paragraph 1 are used to________.| A．shed some light on hacking in our modern life |
| B．lead the reader to think of ethical issues brought by hi-tech |
| C．lead in the following example concerning the self-driving car |
| D．list the existing problems that caught the attention of experts |
| A．intelligent | B．powerful | C．widespread | D．skillful |
| A．innovation should be accompanied by guidelines to relieve tension |
| B．more giant innovative steps will lead to fewer public discussion |
| C．disadvantages of the self-driving car will outweigh its advantages |
| D．artificial intelligence fails to have a promising and bright future |
| A．expose some underlying problems in high-technology |
| B．call on professionals to enforce law and order |
| C．illustrate AI’s abilities in self-devising and self-learning strategies |
| D．display our inter-connected computer-aided life in future |
9 . When your home becomes a tourist attraction
Have you ever looked at a beautiful little news house in London and thought “It must be so amazing to live there?”
Alice Johnston is a longtime resident of Notting Hill, the London neighborhood famous for pastel-painted row houses and for being the setting of the movie of the same name. Johnston, a journalist, has complicated feelings about her Instagram-beloved neighborhood. She lives on Portobello Road, one of the capital’s most famous streets.
Once, she and a friend were walking his French bulldog when a tourist asked if they could “borrow” the pup for a quick photo. The friend and the dog agreed, the Instagrammer posed with the Frenchie in front of a bright blue door and then handed over five pounds as a thank you. In that story, everybody had a good time.
| A．And she has witnessed all kinds of crazy behavior committed in the pursuit of the perfect snapshot. |
| B．But there can be a darker side to living inside what some people think is a movie set. |
| C．“For us it’s a tremendous pleasure to be able to share the house and see so many people happy and excited about it.” |
| D．If so, you’re not the only one. |
| E．When private homes become tourist attractions, conflicts can occur. |
| F．When it comes to living in a much-photographed place, some people try to take the good with the bad. |
The Metaverse(元宇宙): The Future of Web Design and Development?
To many, the Metaverse might seem like this is something that is still far from becoming a reality. To others, it is the inevitable future of web design and development.
The Metaverse is an ambitious project that seeks to bring together many different web development and HiTech technologies in order to offer users a new experience of the web. Today, users view content on the web. On the Metaverse, users will be immersed(沉浸在)in the content thanks to technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Machine Learning, and other forms of Artificial Intelligence.
In brief, it is the next iteration(迭代)of the Internet where users will be able to navigate through a virtual space instead of the current two-dimensional screens. Although much has been said about it, there is still much that needs to be done, and this is both an opportunity and a challenge. Whatever the case is, it is the future of web design, and companies need to start thinking about how to reap the benefits of it.
One of the most important implications of this upgraded version of the web is the impact it will have on apps and websites. The rise of the Metaverse will not eliminate digital products as we currently know them. On the contrary, it will most likely be the case that both will coexist in new and more powerful forms.
This means that business websites will not become obsolete(淘汰的). As a matter of fact, they will probably become more relevant. Traditional websites will probably end up coexisting with the Metaverse, creating synergies(协同作用)that benefit users and businesses alike.
Aside from the impact on business websites, it is also important to consider operational aspects like the changes in the role of the typical web designer and developer. Digital product teams will have to rethink the tech stacks(一大推)they use in order to build interfaces and experiences for the user journeys coming our way.
Business decision-makers need to understand this and allow their teams to experiment with what might be the future of web experiences for users. Yes, it is a risky bet, but this is something that is gaining a lot of strength, and we might be hearing more about it sooner than we expect.
As mentioned above, traditional websites and other digital products aren’t going anywhere, but they surely need to be reworked in terms of what is expected of the future of web design.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
