1 . China is recognized as a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition systems. A Chinese company says it has created a new facial recognition system that can identify people even if they are wearing masks (口罩). Engineers at the Beijing-based company say their system is the first to be created to effectively identify people wearing face masks.
The company told a news agency that a team of 20 people built the system in about a month. The system is based on existing technologies developed over the past 10 years. The process involved adding a collection of about 6 million unmasked faces and a much smaller collection of masked faces, the company said.
The company is now selling two main kinds of products that use the new technology. One performs “single channel” recognition, which is designed to be used at the entrances to buildings. The other product is a “multi-channel” recognition system that uses groups of surveillance (监视) cameras. It can identify individuals in a crowd of up to 30 people within a second.
“When people are wearing a mask that covers the mouth and the nose, the recognition rate can reach about 95%, which can ensure that most people can be identified,” said Huang, vice president of the company. He added that the system’s success rate for people not wearing a mask is about 99.5%.
However, the new system struggles to identify people wearing both a mask and sunglasses. “In this situation, all of the key facial information is lost. In such cases recognition is graunchy,” Huang said.
People react to the new technology differently. While some citizens have been against using such tools, the majority have accepted the technology as an effective way to reduce crime and catch criminals.
1. What did the company do to build the system?| A．It gathered many face images. | B．It used the latest technology. |
| C．It added a collection of masks. | D．It employed hundreds of people. |
| A．Its success rate is affected by cameras. |
| B．It recognizes groups of people in seconds. |
| C．Its performance changes with the location. |
| D．It does better in identifying unmasked faces. |
| A．Tough. | B．Specific. | C．Normal. | D．Different. |
| A．Uncaring. | B．Doubtful. | C．Objective. | D．Supportive. |
2 . Britain is divided into different areas. Britain is one of the most diverse nations in Europe with over 250 different languages being spoken in London alone. With such a various culture, adapting to it can be a challenge for anyone.
Forget the stereotypes (陈旧观念). Many of the long-formed stereotypes simply have nothing to do with Britain today. Don’t think that everyone enjoys drinking tea or beer. Abandoning some old ideas of people and culture will allow you to be more open-minded and easily get into the culture.
Get used to small spaces. Like all European nations, Britain does not have the luxury of space. Houses, apartments and cars are all smaller.
Accept the jokes.
| A．Be polite |
| B．Make friends with them |
| C．Don’t play jokes on others |
| D．Understand the differences |
| E．Following these steps should be of great help to you |
| F．Therefore, trying to become familiar with smaller areas is very necessary |
| G．One of the most confusing aspects of British culture is humour |
3 . How clever can a computer be? Maybe you can get the answer after reading the following passage about a newly-developed US computer program called Smarter Child.
If you ran into Smarter Child online, you would be surprised at this kid’s huge memory. It can remember many facts. For example, Smarter Child knows every baseball player in every team this season and the weather in every city across the US. He also knows every word in the dictionary. However, if you ask Smarter Child other private questions, you will get strange answers. A question about Smarter Child’s age returns, “I’ll be older than you after further study!”, and asking where he lives, you will get, “In a clean room in a high-tech building in California.”
Smarter Child uses the huge information on the World Wide Web as his memory bank. To answer questions about spelling, for example, Smarter Child goes to www.ahdictionary.com. For the weather, he visits www.intellicast.com. He turns to www.the-scientist.com for scientists and www.moviefone.com for a fantastic movie.
Some scientists believe that by joining many systems of the Internet, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the combined (结合的) knowledge of, say, Albert Einstein, Richard Nixon and Britney Spears could be born. However, Smarter Child has difficulty in discerning whether a behavior is right or wrong, which is obvious to any young child. If he wants to think and learn without any help from the programmers like boy-computer David in the movie Artificial Intelligence (AI), he must solve two problems.
The first is that computers find it difficult to read web pages because the files are sorted in different ways. That’s why programmers need to tell Smarter Child where to look for the weather. It would be a much more difficult task to let him find it by himself. Another problem is that while Smarter Child can deal with information more exactly and faster than any human, he needs programmers to make better systems that allow machines to solve problems of common sense, which is a huge challenge.
1. What may be unknown to Smarter Child?| A．His age. | B．The weather in New York. |
| C．A word in the dictionary. | D．A player’s name of the Boston Redsox. |
| A．www.moviefone.com | B．www.intellicast.com |
| C．www.the-scientist.com | D．www.ahdictionary.com |
| A．Preventing. | B．Copying. | C．Inventing. | D．Telling. |
| A．He has a huge memory. | B．He can think and learn independently. |
| C．He can make a weather forecast. | D．He deals with information fast. |
4 . “If music is the medicine of the soul(灵魂), let it play on," said a famous person. I think he said so because probably he got some help from music. Music has some strange abilities. Medical scientists have found that a person that feels stressed can actually listen to some kind of music and become well.
The researchers said that since stress comes as a result of life events such as starting a new family, starting a new business, and starting a new job, one can actually listen to good music and feel good because good music touches the human mind in a positive way. Music helps you to forget the life events that make you worried and remember the important events that once happened in your life.
Depression(抑郁) is a disease caused by stress, smoking, social problems and so on. Depression is also caused by problems such as failure in business. Depression may bring us weakness, headache, and loss of concentration. Good music makes one remember happy moments or good days. If you play music about love, it makes you feel like falling in love again though you may have had several upset experiences. And such good feelings make you healthy.
Anxiety(焦虑) is another health problem that can be controlled by music. Anxiety is a side effect of some major health problems such as cancer of the liver and cancer of the breast. Good music makes you feel relaxed and removes the pains from these diseases and you feel all right.
Good music can send you to sleep. And you need to know that sleep puts your body in a healthy condition. Sleep takes away the effects of stress, depression and anxiety from a person.
1. According to the famous person in Paragraph 1, music can .| A．treat many kinds of diseases |
| B．help you keep healthy in your mind |
| C．take the place of medicine in treating illness |
| D．make you remember things that happened |
| A．letting people have a good sleep |
| B．making people think positively |
| C．showing something new to people |
| D．making people focus only on important things |
| A．Stress. | B．Smoking. |
| C．Failure in business. | D．Loss of concentration. |
| A．The Health Benefits of Listening to Music |
| B．Stress Can Bring Us Many Kinds of Diseases |
| C．Some Diseases Have Something to Do With Music |
| D．Tips For Us to Live a Healthy And Comfortable Life |
5 . My 88-year-old grandfather and I are both starting 2022 as new college graduates. He was unable to continue school because he got married and started a family in the 1950s. Over the next few decades, he managed to balance his roles as a husband, a father of five, working at a local bank and taking a college class here and there.
Our higher education journey together at Palo Alto College began in 2016. I had just graduated from high school then and my grandfather, 82, was determined to take classes to make his lifelong dream of earning his bachelor’s degree become a reality. In 2017, we were both admitted into the University of Texas at San Antonio. I majored in engineering while my grandfather majored in literature. We would have lunch together and work silently side-by-side in the library. There were also many times when I drove him to school in my car. That was really special because I could always show off him and shout out my grandpa was here.
When COVID-19 broke out suddenly, my grandfather asked for leave from school. I often assisted him with his schoolwork online. Over the past year, his health has continued to decline and he now has difficulty speaking. As graduation day approached in December, my family and I persuaded university officials to approve of my grandfather having a degree of recognition. We had the expectation that he could have that memory before his death.
My grandfather was worried he would steal the show from my graduation moment when I told him we were graduating together. I told him this is our moment and that I want to share it with him. I’m so grateful and proud that I was able to have this moment with him. Applause run through the hall when my grandfather was awarded to his bachelor’s degree at the commencement (毕业典礼).
I appreciate my grandfather’s lifelong passion of learning and his strong wills.
1. What can we know about the author’s grandfather?| A．He was unable to continue his study because of his family. |
| B．In 2016, he was admitted into the University of Texas. |
| C．He was asked to leave from school because of COVID-19. |
| D．He was unwilling to present himself for the graduation day. |
| A．Because they shared the same major. |
| B．Because he felt proud of his grandfather. |
| C．Because the teacher was looking for his grandfather. |
| D．Because he learnt to drive his grandfather to school. |
| A．He cared about his family very much. |
| B．He didn’t attend the graduation ceremony. |
| C．He was afraid of attending the commencement. |
| D．He would steal something from the graduation moment. |
| A．Hard work pays off. | B．Time is money. |
| C．It’s never too late to learn. | D．Education is the key to success. |
6 . Elon Musk isn’t content with electric cars, shooting people into orbit and populating Mars. He also wants to get inside your brain.
His goal is to develop devices that can provide treatment to neural (神经的) diseases and that may one day be powerful enough to put humanity on an equal footing with possible future super intelligent computers.
Not that it’s anywhere close to that yet.
In a video Friday obviously aimed at seeking new employees, Musk showed off the second version of the Neuralink, a device about the size of a large coin. It’s designed to be put in a person’s head. An earlier version of the device has to be placed behind an ear like a huge hearing aid.
But the young company is far from having a commercial product, which would involve complex human trials and governmental approval. Friday’s video showed three pigs. One, named Gertrude, had a Neuralink device in its brain.
Musk, a founder of both the electric car company Tesla Motors and the space-exploration firm SpaceX, has always been worried about that smarter AI machines will outwit humans. His solution? Link our brains to computers so we can keep up with or even win over them in intelligence!
Musk urged coders (程序员), engineers and especially people who have actually created a product to apply. “You don’t need to have brain experience,” he said, adding that this is something that can be learned on the job.
Connecting a brain up directly to electronics is not new. Doctors have already put similar devices in brains to treat such conditions as Parkinson’s disease. In 2016, researchers reported that a man regained some movement in his own hand with a similar brain implant. But Musk’s proposal goes beyond this. Neuralink wants to build on those existing medical treatments and work on devices that could link our brains to computers one day.
1. What can we learn about the first version of the Neuralink?| A．It is smaller than a hearing aid. |
| B．It can be put in a person’s head. |
| C．It has to be placed behind the ear. |
| D．It is already available at the market. |
| A．copy | B．defeat | C．understand | D．destroy |
| A．Someone who also wants to create the same device. |
| B．Doctors who already know how to treat brain diseases. |
| C．People who have already designed some unique products. |
| D．Engineers who are good at linking brains to computers. |
| A．An advertisement. | B．A test report. |
| C．A science fiction novel. | D．A news report. |
7 . On one summer weekend, my wife, son and I entered an eight-kilometre running race on mountain trails. Now, when the race started, our son took off quickly.
Unluckily, after going about half the course, I realized my watch on my wrist was gone. Discouraged, I told my wife to go on ahead, and I would return to see if I could find it. After running back for some time, I found my broken watch off the trail.
So, how does this story relate to us in everyday life? Although everyone wants to live a comfortable life, the truth is that we often face pain and struggle.
| A．I realized I'd got my toe injured. |
| B．I grabbed it, and quickly put it into my pocket. |
| C．You discover you are simply thankful for being alive. |
| D．However, my wife and I stayed back and ran together. |
| E．Now, most people think of running races on neighbour streets. |
| F．Actually, the key to real happiness is turning pain into something positive. |
| G．As it turned out, both my wife and son had won first place in their age groups. |
8 . What limits you from hiking more often? If not having a suitable hiking partner is keeping you out of the woods, why not take a look at the great hiking clubs across Canada?
Yukon Outdoors ClubMembership cost: $10 for a single membership
Description: The club organises day hikes, backpacking trips, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing trips for members to gain new skills and valuable information. The trips are open to everyone and range from easy to moderate to difficult.
UBC Varsity Outdoor ClubMembership cost: Students $40; non-UBC students $60
Description: The UBC Varsity Outdoor Club is a social group that hikes and rock climbs. Members lead trips, run skills workshops, and host presentations. Members can borrow equipment from the club. The UBC VOC has also constructed a few huts in the Coast Mountains.
Pender Harbor Hiking GroupMembership cost: Free
Description: The Pender Harbor Hiking Group offers a way for members to meet like-minded people and get fit. Hikes are scheduled two months in advance, so check the website regularly to find a hike that suits you! Hikes are usually one and a half to two hours long every Monday and Wednesday morning, but some full-day hikes are scheduled, depending on member interest.
Vernon Outdoors ClubMembership cost: A single membership is $25, and students pay $10. Children are free when they come with a registered family member.
Description: The Vernon Outdoors Club is an active group that enjoys hiking and cycling. Members are encouraged to share their activity ideas and interests. The group organises a Tuesday Activity each week.
1. If you want to learn some mountain biking skills, which club will you choose?| A．Vernon Outdoors Club |
| B．UBC Varsity Outdoor Club |
| C．Yukon Outdoors Club |
| D．Pender Harbor Hiking Group |
| A．They are mostly held on weekends. |
| B．Their schedule is always emailed to the members. |
| C．More full-day hikes are offered than half-day hikes. |
| D．They are arranged two months ahead of time. |
| A．$50 | B．$60 | C．$75 | D．$125 |
9 . Several weeks ago, I pulled an old road map out of the glove box and passed it to my children. They had never seen the province of Ontario laid out like that before. They stared at the map, asking about all the towns, parks, and other landmarks we’d visited, and I pointed them out on the map.
Digital maps and GPS are modern wonders that have gotten me out of many confusing places, but paper maps still have a role to play in our lives. Most of us adults learned to read them out of necessity, but it’s up to us to pass on that skill to children whose need may not be so obvious, but who still will benefit from it.
As Trevor Muir wrote in an article on this topic, “When kids learn how to create and use paper maps, they are doing more than just learning how to get around. They are actually developing a fundamental skill that they will use for the rest of their lives. Map skill still belong in today’s classroom.”
As a child, I had National Geographic Maps taped to my bedroom walls. This aroused my curiosity and imagination about those places and thus made me eager to remember my geography and history lessons because they were tied to places I’d “seen”. Even now as a mother of four, I’ve also spared time to travel to many of the countries whose maps I studied as a child.
Additionally, in this fast-changing world, unexpected events can rapidly influence one’s usual way of life. When GPS satellites or Internet connections are affected, this old-fashioned skill can get you out of a mess without requiring a smartphone. Last but not least, paper maps arouse big picture thinking, showing kids that there’s a much bigger world out there and helping to direct them within it.
So, now is a good time to pull out those dusty old maps and lay them on the kitchen table.
1. How did the children react when they were given the paper map?| A．They showed great curiosity. |
| B．They seemed totally confused. |
| C．They found it less convenient than GPS. |
| D．They refused to read it without hesitation. |
| A．Neutral. | B．Negative. | C．Supportive. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Paper maps are already out of date. |
| B．Internet connections are always reliable. |
| C．Paper maps provide kids with a grand vision. |
| D．GPS will sooner or later replace paper maps. |
| A．Time to Encourage Kids to Explore a Real World |
| B．How to Teach Kids to Survive in the Wild |
| C．How to Teach Kids to Recognize Strange Places |
| D．Time to Teach Kids to Read Paper Maps |
10 . According to the Solar Energy Industry Association, the number of solar panels installed(安装)has grown rapidly in the past decade, and it has to grow even faster to meet climate goals. But all of that growth will take up a lot of space, and though more and more people accept the concept of solar energy, few like large solar panels to be installed near them.
Solar developers want to put up panels as quickly and cheaply as possible, so they haven’t given much thought to what they put under them. Often, they’ll end up filling the area with small stones and using chemicals to control weeds. The result is that many communities, especially in farming regions, see solar farms as destroyers of the soil.
“Solar projects need to be good neighbors,” says Jordan Macknick, the head of the Innovative Site Preparation and Impact Reductions on the Environment(InSPIRE)project. “They need to be protectors of the land and contribute to the agricultural economy.” InSPIRE is investigating practical approaches to “low-impact” solar development, which focuses on establishing and operating solar farms in a way that is kinder to the land. One of the easiest low-impact solar strategies is providing habitat for pollinators(传粉昆虫).
Habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change have caused dramatic declines in pollinator populations over the past couple of decades, which has damaged the U.S. agricultural economy. Over 28 states have passed laws related to pollinator habitat protection and pesticide use. Conservation organizations put out pollinator-friendliness guidelines for home gardens, businesses, schools, cities—and now there are guidelines for solar farms.
Over the past few years, many solar farm developers have transformed the space under their solar panels into a shelter for various kinds of pollinators, resulting in soil improvement and carbon reduction. “These pollinator-friendly solar farms can have a valuable impact on everything that’s going on in the landscape,” says Macknick.
1. What do solar developers often ignore?| A．The decline in the demand for solar energy. |
| B．The negative impact of installing solar panels. |
| C．The rising labor cost of building solar farms. |
| D．The most recent advances in solar technology. |
| A．Improve the productivity of local farms. |
| B．Invent new methods for controlling weeds. |
| C．Make solar projects environmentally friendly. |
| D．Promote the use of solar energy in rural areas. |
| A．To conserve pollinators. | B．To restrict solar development. |
| C．To diversify the economy. | D．To ensure the supply of energy. |
| A．Pollinators: To Leave or to Stay | B．Solar Energy: Hope for the Future |
| C．InSPIRE: A Leader in Agriculture | D．Solar Farms: A New Development |
