1 .

News anchors(主播) must have been reluctant to read out the following news: Xin Xiaomeng began working as the world’s first female artificial(人工的) intelligence news anchor at Xinhua News Agency on Sunday, three months after a male robot joined the profession.

Unlike previous news robots though, Xin does not read news like a cold machine; she reads it almost like a human being. The muscles on her face stretch and relax-and her reactions change-as she continues reading. That’s why many news anchors were worried: Will AI replace us in the near future?

To find the answer, we have to analyse the technologies that support Xin at her job. Three key technologies are used to support Xin. First, samples of human voices are collected and synthesized (合成). This is followed by the collection and synthesis of human muscle movement samples. And third the voices and movements are married in a way that when the Al news anchor reads, the micro -electric motors behind her face move to make her expressions seem more human.

Yet we need a thorough knowledge of deep leaning technology to make a robot imitate a person’s voice. The developer needs to collect tens of thousands of pieces of pronunciations, input them Into the machine and match them with the text or the Al to lean and read. The process for imitating facial movements is similar. The developer has to analyse the movements of the 53 muscles in the human face, make a model set from the collected data for the AI news anchor to lean, and imitate the movements of facial muscles via programs

Both the technologies used to make Xin’s performance impressive are mature. The real difficulty lies in the third -the technology to match the pronunciations with facial movements so that Xin expressions vary according to the content of the news report. In fact, Xins expressions don' t always change according to the content. As a result, her expressions look anything but human. Actually. AI is still no match for human qualities.

1. What does the underlined word "reluctant "in the first paragraph mean?

A．Delighted.

B．Unwilling.

C．Confused.

D．Optimistic.

2. What can we infer about previous news robots?

A．They read news without expressions.	B．They looked like a human being
C．They could interview sports stars	D．They could interact with audience.

3. What do we know about the third technology?

A．This technology is very perfect so far

B．This technology is quite popular now

C．This technology remains at the theoretical stage

D．This technology is far from mature.

4. From the last paragraph, we can draw a conclusion that____.

A．human news anchors should learn from AT anchors to save their jobs

B．Al anchors perform much better than human news anchors at present

C．Al news anchors won 't replace human news anchors in the near future

D．Xin Xiaomeng s expressions vary so naturally that they are true to life

2 . Can We Stop Food Longing Through Imaginary Eating?

Are you fighting an urge to reach for chocolate? Then, let it melt in your mind, not in your mouth. According to the recent research, imagining eating a specific food reduces your interest in that food, so you eat less of it.

This reaction to repeated exposure to food—being less interested in something because you’ve experienced it too much—is called habituation.     1    

The research is the first to show that habituation can occur through the power of the mind. “If you just think about the food itself—how it tastes and smells—that will increase your appetite,” said Carey Morewedge, a well-known psychologist. “It might be better to force yourself to repeatedly think about chewing and swallowing the food in order to reduce your longing.     2     Visualizing yourself eating chocolate wouldn’t prevent you from eating lots of cheese,” he added.

Morewedge conducted an interesting experiment. 51 subjects were divided into three groups. One group was asked to imagine putting 30 coins into a laundry machine and then eating three chocolates.     3     Another group was asked to imagine putting three coins into a laundry machine and then eating 30 chocolates. Lastly, a control group imagined just putting 33 coins into the machine—with no chocolates.     4     When they said they had finished, these were taken away and weighed. The results showed the group that had imagined eating 30 chocolates each ate fewer of the chocolates than the other groups.

    5     Physical signals—that full stomach feeling—are only part of what tells us we’ve finished a meal. The research suggests that psychological effects, such as habituation, also influence how much a person eats. It may lead to new behavioral techniques for people looking to eat more healthily, or have control over other habits.

A．What’s more, this only works with the specific food you’ve imagined.

B．People were advised to try different methods to perform the experiment.

C．For example, a tenth bite is desired less than the first bite, according to the study.

D．All of them then ate freely from bowls containing the same amount of chocolate each.

E．It meant those who repeatedly imagined eating would concern about some specific food.

F．This requires the same motor skills as eating small chocolates from a packet, the study says.

G．This study is part of the research looking into what makes us eat more than we actually need.

3 . Chinese researchers say they have come up with a simple way to find out a person’s biological age —how much the body has aged physically – through a urine (尿) test.

Their findings will help researchers conduct numbers of ageing studies and even predict a person’s risk of age-related diseases, according to a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Ageing Neuroscience.

Another paper by researchers at the Beijing Hospital and the West China Hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan province, said on Tuesday that people aged at different rates due to changes in their genetic make-up and their environment.

Chronological age – which is based on one’s birth date —was an inaccurate measure of biological age so a more accurate method was needed, the team said.

Ageing is driven by the lifelong gradual accumulation of a broad variety of molecular (分子) faults in the body’s cells. The team said they had identified a matter —8-oxoGsn — that indicated increases in oxidative (氧化性) damage in urine as people’s bodies aged.

Cai Jianping, a co-author at the Beijing Hospital, said: “As we age, we suffer increasing oxidative damage and so the levels of oxidative matters increase in our body.” The team tested the levels of 8-oxoGsn in urine samples from 1,228 Chinese people aged two to 90 and concluded the marker helped accurately determine the stage of biological ageing in adults.

They had previously found that 8-oxoGsn levels also increased with age in the urine of animals such as mice.

The team has also developed a rapid analysis technique called ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography, which can process up to 10 urine samples an hour, according to the study.

1. Scientifically speaking, by what does a doctor judge the stage of a person getting old?

A．His biological age.	B．His condition.
C．His psychology.	D．His chronological age.

2. What are the outer factors the speed of one’s ageing physically depend on?

A．One’s birth date.

B．The increases in oxidative damage in urine.

C．The accumulation of various molecular faults in the body’s cells.

D．The changes in their genetic make-up and their environment.

3. Which can take the place of the underlined word “marker” in the sixth paragraph?

A．Molecular faults.	B．8-oxoGsn.
C．Oxidative damage.	D．Stage of biological ageing in adults.

4. What is the passage about?

A．Why people are ageing.

B．How to delay people’s ageing physically.

C．A rapid method with which to judge how much people are aging physically.

D．What determines the stage of people’s ageing physically.