Are all changes good?
It is a commonly held belief that as people get older, they become resistant to change. Their complaints that things used to be better in the past or
But is this automatically true? Are the views of an older person on a new development always to be disregarded? This would suggest that every new development must be a good
Take
2 . What are your retirement plans? Keep working? Get more exercise? Or learn something new? You may put them on hold. There’s a chance that, sooner or later, you might have to move further than you were thinking, as far as mars.
On Thursday, National Geographic will show the first-ever Mars show home, giving earthlings (地球人) an idea of what their life could look like on the Red Planet. In the not-so-distant year of 2037, the igloo-shaped structure could be the home of your future.
It shows a house built using recycled spacecraft (航天器) parts and Martian soil, called regolith, which has been microwaved into bricks. Some parts of the home are recognizable—a kitchen, a bedroom—but there are fundamental differences that are important to human survival.
As the Martian atmosphere is around one hundredth as thick as the Earth’s, people will need permanent (永久的) shelter from the sun; society will move largely indoors. Most buildings will be connected by underground passages and the houses won’t have windows. The homes will have simulated solar lighting, or natural light that has been bent several times.
Walls will need to be 10 to 12 feet thick to protect people from dangerous rays (光线) that can pass through six feet of steel, and a double air-locked entrance to keep the home under proper pressure.
“We don’t think of our houses as things that keep us alive, but on Mars your house will be a survival centre,” says Stephen Petranek, author of How We’ll Live on Mars. This is not just the stuff of sci-fi. “10 to 20 years from now there will certainly be people, on Mars.” Petranek says.
“We’ve had the technology for 30 years to land people on Mars, but we haven’t had the will,” Petranek says. But two main factors have “completely swung public attitudes”.
The private companies’ participation has forced government agencies to speed up their game, and influential films such as Gravity and The Martian have caught society’s eye.
1. What can we know about the show home from the text?| A．It has no windows or doors due to security concern. |
| B．Its design presents the idea of environmental protection. |
| C．It has thick walls keeping the home under proper pressure. |
| D．Its underground passages connect all the building together. |
| A．Put them off. |
| B．Give them away. |
| C．Carry them through. |
| D．Take them seriously. |
| A．The great influence of the Mars show home. |
| B．The development of related technology. |
| C．The competition from private companies. |
| D．The popularity of influential books on Mars. |
| A．Living on Mars: Possible or Not |
| B．Sending People to Mars: Yes or No |
| C．First-ever show home: How Is It Made |
| D．Future Home on Mars: What Will It Be Like |
1. 学习；
2. 工作；
3. 业余生活。
注意：1. 词数80左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3. 不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；
4. 开头语已为你写好。
I often imagine what my life will be like in five years.
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注意：1. 词数100左右；文章的开头已经为你写好，不计入总词数；
2. 可以适当增加细节，使行文连贯；
3. 文中不得透漏个人姓名和学校名称。
| School Life: different activities; richer and more interesting; teachers and students get along well |
| Building and equipment: modern; easy to use; everything run by computer |
| Subjects: more subjects to choose from; most subjects offered on the Internet |
| Ways of learning: learn at school or at home; choose teachers |
Future Schools
In the future, schools will be different in many ways from what they are now.
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5 . After decades of playing catch-up with the U.S. and Russian space programs, China did something neither nation nor any other had done this December: land a spaceship on the dark side of the moon.
Strictly speaking, of course, the moon has no dark side. But because of the way it orbits Earth, our natural satellite shows us only one side － the other is hidden from our view. No one even saw the far side until 1959, when the Soviet Luna 3 spaceship flew around for a look and sent back photos. No astronaut or spaceship went there until this December, when the China National Space Agency (CNSA) launched a 2,500-pound lander called Chang’e-4 to the southern end of the lunar far side.
Chang’e-4 operated a small rover (探测车) to survey the geography there for the first time ever. By examining the geography of its landing area, Chang’e-4 could solve longstanding puzzles about the moon, including how it formed 4.5 billion years ago. Chang’e-4 also carried a very small ―lunar biosphere (生态圈) ‖ containing silkworm eggs and a tiny greenhouse designed to grow potatoes in order to study the growth of the seeds on the moon.
Besides Chang’e-4, China plans to launch Chang’e-5 in 2019. Its mission will be to gather moon rocks using an orbiter, a lander or collector, an ascent stage (上升器) and a capsule that will separate from the orbiter and return the rocks to the earth. ―With these missions, the Chinese will have shown complete mastery of flight in the space between the earth and the moon,‖ said Paul Spudis, an experienced lunar researcher based in Houston.
CNSA has already outlined ideas for Chinese astronauts to follow the robots to the moon. Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of CNSA’s Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center, told that China plans a permanent robotic lunar station in about 10 years and suggested a human presence on the moon another decade or so after that. Spudis said China’s ambitious Chang’e-4 and Chang’e-5 missions should send human’s plans for lunar return into rapid development.
1. What do we know about the dark side of the moon from the first two paragraphs?| A．Two western countries have taken its photos. |
| B．It is hidden from people’s view due to the earth’s orbit. |
| C．China is the first country to land a spaceship there. |
| D．It exists because the sun never shines there. |
| A．To study the geography of the lunar dark side. |
| B．To grow potatoes on the moon. |
| C．To examine the growth of eggs and seeds. |
| D．To survey the lunar biosphere. |
| A．The lander. | B．The collector. |
| C．The ascent stage. | D．The capsule. |
| A．Cautious. | B．Disapproving. |
| C．Ambiguous. | D．Favorable. |
6 . The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is mostly a desert. However, this has not stopped the country from creating great building projects. On September 26, UAE officials announced another ambitious project — Mars Science City. Expansive deserts and miles of coastline provide plenty of options for safe rocket launches (发射). And its position on the Earth makes it especially appealing as the spin of the Earth provides an extra push, meaning less fuel is needed to get payloads into orbit. All these seem to make it possible.
The Mars City Project, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG, will provide a realistic model to simulate (模仿) living on the surface of Mars, the red planet. It is part of the UAE’s Mars 2117 Project to lead the global race to land humans on Mars and be the first to build a settlement there. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai, says, “The UAE seeks international support to develop technologies that benefit humans, and lay the foundation of a better future for more generations to come.”
Built outside Dubai, the 1.9 million square feet city is expected to cost $135 million. It will consist of several dome-shaped laboratories, similar to the ones imagined for the first Mars settlers. Scientists from around the word will be invited to conduct research to come up with methods to create food, water and energy, using techniques which can be copied onto the red planet. The living spaces, where the researchers can live for up to a year, will simulate the planet’s conditions as much as possible.
The research city will also include a museum featuring famous space achievements to help educate and inspire children to undertake space exploration and discovery. To discover whether the construction method works on Mars, the museum’s walls will be 3D printed using the sand from the nearby desert. Now, if they would only add some living quarters for the general public to experience life on Mars without leaving Earth, life would be perfect.
1. What can we conclude about the United Arab Emirates?| A．It is short of fine weather. |
| B．It is a nice place for launching. |
| C．It can provide adequate fuel supply. |
| D．It has the greatest architects in the world. |
| A．Educate visitors on trips to Mars. |
| B．Develop the Mars settlers’ imagination. |
| C．Find ways to produce food, water and energy on Mars. |
| D．Create a climate-controlled environment for future use. |
| A．To show famous space techniques. |
| B．To make full use of the nearby desert. |
| C．To inspire children to love exploration. |
| D．To test building skills used by Mars settlers. |
| A．UAE to Build Mars Science City |
| B．UAE’s Great Exploration of Mars |
| C．UAE to Build First Mars Settlement |
| D．UAE’s Scientistific Contribution to Humans |
7 . What if the car waiting patiently behind a parked bus is a driverless or autonomous vehicle(AV)? Will this robot car be able to understand what you mean when you flash your lights or madly wave your hands? Its sensors could decides that it’s only safe to overtake when there’ no oncoming traffic at all. On a busy road at school home time, this may be never leading to increasingly angry passengers and increasingly angry driers queuing behind.
And how will a robot car driving out from a T-junction into oncoming traffic be able to make the necessary eye contact with a human driver? These safety-first robot cars could become victims of their own politeness and end up being bullied and ignored by aggressive, impatient humans. This, at any rate, is one of the conclusions to be drawn from research carried out by Dr Chris Tennant of the psychological and behavioral science department at the London School of Economics. His Europe-wide survey finds that nearly two-thirds of drivers think machines won’t have enough common sense to interact with human drivers. And more than two-fifths think a robot car would remain stuck behind our parked lorry for a long time.
“If you view the road as a social space, you will consciously negotiate your journey with other drivers. People who like that negotiation process appear to feel less comfortable engaging with AVs than with human drivers,” says Mr. Tennant in his report. Of course, humans are always skeptical about new technologies of which they have little experience. That skepticism usually decreases with usage, however. And even many skeptics accept that emotionless AVs could cause fewer accidents than we humans, with our tendency to road anger, tiredness and lack of concentration. A statistic often repeated is that human error is responsible for more than 90% of accidents. But 70% of the 12,000 people Mr. Tennant and his team interviewed agreed that: “ As a point of principle, humans should be in control of their vehicles.” An even greater proportion-80%-thought an autonomous vehicle should always have a steering wheel.
1. According to the text, an autonomous vehicle______.| A．is controlled by a robot | B．waits shorter than other cars |
| C．judges traffic by drivers online | D．recognizes angry human drivers |
| A．won’t interact with human drivers |
| B．avoid passing T-junctions ahead of time |
| C．drive in the same ways as a human driver |
| D．may suffer from impatient human drivers |
| A．Autonomous vehicles will be less social |
| B．Autonomous vehicles are safer than generally expected |
| C．Human drivers have been replaced by autonomous vehicles |
| D．Human drivers are willing to interact with autonomous vehicles |
| A．An autonomous car takes a test run |
| B．What is driverless technology like? |
| C．Say no to the coming driverless trend |
| D．Would you bully a driverless car or show it respect? |
