2 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

3D printing and virtual reality are cool, but when are we going to be able to clone ourselves? It'd be fantastic for    1    （we）to send our clone off to school or work and sit back and do    2    we really want to do. There have been important advances in cloning in the last several decades, leading to the    3    （success）cloning of various animals. So far, however, there    4    （be）no human clones.

In large part, cloning has been    5    victim of pop culture to the degree that the general public has grand notions of what it will be like. There is no    6    （possible）of cloning a grown version of ourselves in a matter of hours or days（like you see in the movies）.

    7    （general）, we already have the tools to make cloning happen today; we just have some moral problems     8    （overcome）before the world won't raise major alarms at scientists cloning someone. That leaves the question     9    us then, the general public, do you think cloning is okay? Would you clone a lost loved one to bring them back, or if you found yourself unable to have kids, would you clone yourself? These are the questions we must answer first before we succeed in    10    （create） human clones.

3 . Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest person, was just five when American astronauts stepped on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. However, he’s never forgotten the black-and-white footage from the historic moment. Since then, the moon has always been the center of his space dreams which are channeled through his spaceflight company, Blue Origin.

On May 9, 2019, at a meeting held in Washington, DC, Bezos came one step closer to achieving his dream of sending people there, when he presented a model of a lander, Blue Moon, designed to carry both humans and goods to the satellite.

Though details of how Blue Moon will be sent to space remain unclear, Bezos is confident it’ll be ready for its mission (使命) by 2024. He considers it unavoidable to settle in space given our ever-increasing population and fewer resources. Unlike those seeking a home on another planet, Bezos thinks humans will be living in orbital space settlements, which are similar to the International Space Station, except much bigger, each housing millions of people. Space taxis would make it easy for humans to travel between settlements.

But first we need to develop a cheaper way to travel between space and Earth. Bezos may have solved the problem partly by removing the biggest cost of spaceflights—single use rockets—with Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard rocket, which has made several trips to space and back since 2015.

To encourage future space dreamers, the company’s recently built a free online club that will keep members informed of its progress and challenge them to find solutions to help humans and save earth. It invites students of all ages to draw or write how they imagine humans living and working in space on a self-addressed, stamped postcard and send it to the “Club for the Future” by July 20, 2019. The first 10,000 postcards will be sent to space aboard the New Shepard rocket later this year. When it returns to Earth, the postcards, stamped “flown to space,” will be returned to their owners.

1. What does Paragraph 1 mainly talk about?

A．An impressive historic moment.

B．The beginning of Bezos’ space dream.

C．The exciting news of sending man to space.

D．Bezos’ secret of becoming the wealthiest person.

2. What will be orbital space settlements like in Bezos’ eyes?

A．Overpopulated.	B．Solar-powered.
C．Energy-hungry.	D．Conveniently accessible.

3. What may contribute greatly to the low cost of travelling to space?

A．Space taxis.	B．Single use rockets.
C．New Shepard rocket.	D．Orbital space settlements.

4. What’s the purpose of the free online club?

A．To help humans and save earth.

B．To challenge students of all ages.

C．To build a new way of sending postcards.

D．To encourage future space dreamers.

4 . There’s a good chance something you've bought online has been in the hands of a “ picker” first. These are the workers in warehouses(仓库)who pick, pack and ship all those things we’re ordering.

At Amazon and other companies, they’re working side by side with robots. Experts say while the robots are replacing some human workers, the machines aren't quite ready to take over completely.

When a robot finds its storage unit, it slides underneath, lifts it up and then delivers it to a worker 一 they’re called pickers. On a recent day, the computer told a picker to grab what looked like a fantasy board (棋盘)game. The picker found it, canned it and placed it on the conveyor belt.

^“In a traditional fulfillment center where the associate would walk to the different items , it can take hours to fulfill a customer order. “ Robinson says.

Now, with the help of robots, that task takes minutes 一 and fewer humans.

So is this a sign we're entering a new industrial revolution?

“It’s definitely going to take over a lot of jobs. " says Karen Myers, a scientist at SRI, one of Silicon Valley's oldest research centers.

At the same time, she says, we're running against the limits of technology. Take “the picker” at the Amazon fulfillment center. Myers says those skills are proving to be uniquely human.

“Our fingers are incredibly flexible and the current generation of robotic operators, they’re getting much_, much better,” she says. “But they're just not quite there yet. ”

There’s also the robot’s brain.

Remember that board game the Amazon worker was looking for? She could barely see the box filled into the storage bin — but she could tell it was a board game. Robots can’t do that.

Technologists say that, increasingly, humans will work side by side with robots — instead of robots working alone.

Amazon says robots and humans enabled the Tracy warehouse to fulfill customer orders faster. That means more customers and more human workers.

1. A picker does some tasks except .

A．picking goods

B．producing goods

C．spotting goods

D．packing goods

2. With the help of robots, some tasks are .

A．more efficient

B．less straight

C．more difficult

D．less profitable

3. Compared with robots, humans are more .

A．powerful

B．artificial

C．flexible

D．energetic

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．Robots replacing humans completely.

B．The advantages of shopping online.

C．The future of robots.

D．Robots and humans working side by side.

5 . Olaf Stapledon wrote a book called First and Last Men, in which he looked millions of years ahead. He told of different men and of strange civilizations, broken up by long “dark ages” in between. In his view, what is called the present time is no more than a moment in human history and we are just the First Men. In 2,000 million years from now there will be the Eighteenth or Last Men.

However, most of our ideas about the future are really very short-sighted. Perhaps we can see some possibilities for the next fifty years. But the next hundred? The next thousand? The next million? That’s much more difficult.

When men and women lived by hunting 50,000 years ago, how could they even begin to picture modern life? Yet to men of 50,000 years from now, we may seem as primitive in our ideas as the Stone-Age hunters do to us. Perhaps they will spend their days gollocking to make new spundels, or struggling with their ballalators through the cribe. These words, which I have just made up, have to stand for things and ideas that we simply can’t think of.

So why bother even to try imaging life far in the future? Here are two reasons. First, unless we remember how short our own lives are compared with the whole human history, we are likely to think our own interests are much more important than they really are. If we make the earth a poor place to live because we are careless or greedy or quarrelsome, our grandchildren will not bother to think of excuses for us.

Second, by trying to escape from present interests and imagine life far in the future, we may arrive at quite fresh ideas that we can use ourselves. For example, if we imagine that in the future men may give up farming, we can think of trying it now. So set you imagination free when you think about the future.

1. A particular mention made of Stapledon’s book in the opening paragraph                 .

A．serves as a description of human history

B．serves an introduction to the discussion

C．shows a disagreement of views

D．shows a popularity of the book

2. The text discusses men and women 50,000 years ago and 50,000 years from now in order to show that                         .

A．human history is extremely long

B．life has changed a great deal

C．it is useless to plan for the next 50 years

D．it is difficult to tell what will happen in the future

3. Spundels and ballalators are used in the text to refer to               .

A．tools used in farming	B．ideas about modern life
C．unknown things in the future	D．hunting skills in the Stone Age

4. According to the writer of the text, imagining the future will              .

A．serve the interests of the present and future generations

B．enable us to better understand human history

C．help us to improve farming

D．make life worth living

6 . Want to see 16 sunrises in one day? Float in zero gravity? Be one of the few to have gazed upon our home planet from space? In just four years’ time, and for an astronomical $9.5 million dollars, it’s claimed you can.

What’s being billed as the world’s first luxury space hotel, Aurora Station, was announced Thursday at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California. Developed by US-based space technology start-up Orion Span, the fully modular space station will host six people at a time, including two crew members, for 12-day trips of space travel. It plans to welcome its first guests in 2022.

“Our goal is to make space accessible to all,” Frank Bunger, CEO and founder of Orion Span, said in a statement. “Upon launch, Aurora Station goes into service immediately, bringing travelers into space quickly and at a lower price point than ever seen before.” While a $10 million trip is outside the budget of most people’s two-week vacations, Orion Span claims to offer a real astronaut experience.

During their 12-day adventure, the super-rich travelers will fly at a height of 200 miles above the Earth’s surface in Low Earth Orbit, or LEP, where they will see incredible views of the blue planet. The hotel will orbit Earth every 90 minutes, which means guests will see around 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours.

Activities on board include taking part in research experiments such as growing food while in orbit--which guests can take home for a super-smug souvenir—and soaring over their hometown. Guests can have live video chats with their less-fortunate loved ones back home via high-speed wireless Internet access and, upon return to Earth, will be greeted with a specially arranged hero’s welcome. While enjoying the thrills of zero gravity, the travelers will be able to float freely through the hotel, taking in views of the northern and southern Aurora from the station’s windows.

DepositsHYPERLINK “https://www.orionspan.com/aurora-station-reservations”（订金）are already being aHYPERLINK“http://www.orisonspan.com/aurora-station-reservations”cHYPERLINK“http://www.orionspan.com/aurora-station-reservations” cepted for future stays on the space hotel. The $80,000 is fully returnable, should applicants find themselves unable to rise to the full $9.5 million. Travelers will complete a three-month Orion Span Astronaut Certification (OSAC) program before takeoff. Orion Span has a team of space industry veterans who together have more than 140 years of human space experience.

1. What’s the purpose of questions in Paragraph 1?

A．To ask questions about space travel.

B．To describe what you can do in space.

C．To arouse interest and introduce the topic.

D．To tell us scientific facts about space and planet.

2. What does the word veterans (last Para.) mean?

A．old soldiers	B．doctors specializing in treating animals
C．researchers	D．experienced people

3. Which of the following is true according to the passage?

A．The luxury space hotel is designed specially for super-rich travelers.

B．A 3-month training program is unnecessary before space travel.

C．The space hotel will orbit the earth 16 times in total.

D．The space hotel can only host 4 guests at a time.

4. You can do many activities in space such as ________.

A．taking incredible photos of the earth

B．receiving warm greetings from people back on earth

C．buying a souvenir for loved ones from the space store

D．participating in research experiments and appreciating Aurora

5. Travelers can have their deposits back if ________.

A．they can not finish the Orion Span Astronaut Certification

B．they are physically unfit for space travel

C．they cannot hand in the full payment

D．the space hotel is not ready in 2022

7 . Self-driving cars are so popular that the University of Michigan has even established a town called Mcity to allow car manufacturers to safely test their autonomous cars.

While Mcity can be used to simulate（模拟）many real-life road conditions，it can't help test gestures drivers use to communicate their intention（意图）to other drivers，pedestrians or cyclists. To find a solution，US car manufacturer Ford，with researchers from Virginia Tech，at the beginning considered using text as a way to communicate the car's intention，but decided it would probably not work universally. The option of using symbols was also rejected，because research shows that a majority of people do not have a good understanding of what they mean.

Finally, the researchers settled on light signals. A white light warned that there were no humans in the car. A slow blinking one indicated that the car was coming to a stop, while a rapidly flashing light cautioned passersby that the car was about to speed up.

Then came the big challenge—testing the signals on real roads. "We needed to try out this new lighting to communicate the intention of the vehicle, but if you've got a driver behind the seat, you still have natural communication between humans," said Andy Shaudt, who led the research team. "So we needed to make it look like a driverless car."

The team designed a car seat costume（戏装）that the driver would wear to cover his or her face and upper body. Of course，the drivers could see very clearly. The researchers then equipped the car with cameras to capture human reactions to a light bar，which flashed one of the three signals when appropriate. Six drivers，all keeping their hands low on the wheel so as not to be noticed，took turns to test driving the car through the busy streets.

The overall reaction to the flashing lights was very encouraging. Who knew costumes could be useful for more than Halloween？

1. What did the team first consider using as a way to communicate the car's intention?

A．Light.	B．Language.
C．Symbols.	D．Sound.

2. The underlined word "they" in the second paragraph refers to ________.

A．symbols	B．drivers
C．researchers	D．flashes

3. What does a rapidly flashing light mean?

A．The car was coming to a stop.

B．There was no driver in the car.

C．The car was about to speed up.

D．The car was about to slow down.

4. The car seat costume was intended to ________.

A．amuse the driver	B．attract the pedestrians
C．warn the cyclists	D．confuse the people

8 . The office of the future will look quite different from the office of today. There will be big savings in space, because records will not to be kept on paper. Also, because things can be done at a much quicker pace, it’s likely that working hours will be much shorter.     1    Because a company needs less stuff it can afford to pay workers more money.

    2    Are you a secretary, clerk, or a receptionist? If you are, you should be worried by the changes that are going to take place. Because of information technology, your job may become unnecessary in the near future. You will certainly have to know more about using the computer.     3    Instead of doing just one of the three jobs mentioned above, it’s likely that a person will have to do all three. Because of this, there’s likely to be unemployment. While bosses will benefit because they can employ less people, thousands of office workers will find themselves out of work.     4    They will be forced to learn new skills which require the use of the computer to survive.

There may be some good points to the changes for workers as well as employers however. Government should benefit from IT and have more money to spend. Because of the increase in revenue(收入) caused by higher productivity, the government could afford to spend more on things such as social work, charities and culture.    5    

A．However, not all the news is good.

B．Salaries are also expected to increase.

C．Even workers who can keep their jobs may have to suffer.

D．Their bosses will not want to employ them in a few years time.

E．Travel companies need to adopt IT to be competitive and survive.

F．Therefore, some who lose their office jobs may be able to work in these new areas.

G．And you will be expected to get a lot more information by using the computer than you did in the past

9 . A 2 billion year old Martian (火星的)rock appeals to have at our time been full of water from the surface of the Red Planet.

“Here we have a piece of Mars that I can hold in my hands. That’s really exciting,” Carl Agee, director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico, told the Associated Press.

Agee led a team of scientists who published their report on the newly discovered meteorite （陨石），nicknamed Black Beauty. The rock is estimated to have contained 6,000 parts per million water and scientists believe it likely interacted with water at a time when most of the planet’s surface was believed to have been arid.

The baseball-size rock was discovered in the Sahara, and scientists say it contains more evidence of water than any of the other known Martian rock samples.

“It’s fairly fresh. It hasn’t been subjected to a whole lot of weathering (风化作用），” University of Alberta meteorite expert Chris Herd told the AP.

Billions of years ago an eruption on the surface of Mars, likely caused by a volcano or planet collision, sent the rock into space, where it eventually made the journey to Earth, Agee and his team said the sample is “strikingly similar to the volcanic rocks examined by the NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity on the Martian surface.”

Over the years, scientists have collected more than 60 Martian rock samples, with most being discovered in the Sahara and Antarctica. The new sample is much older than most of the other specimens, which are about 600 million years old or younger. The oldest known sample is an estimated 4.5 billion years old.

1. The underlined word “it”in Paragraph 3 refers to “________”.

A．Mara	B．the Red Planet
C．Black Beauty	D．the report

2. Where was the meteorite found?

A．In the Sahara.	B．In Antarctica.
C．In Mars.	D．In America.

3. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

A．Black Beauty has the size of a baseball.

B．Blank Beauty contains the most evidence of water among the known Martian rock samples.

C．An eruption on the surface of Mars sent the rock into Earth directly.

D．Black Beauty is not the oldest known sample.

4. Where can we most probably read this text?

A．In a personal diary.	B．In a science report.
C．In a travel magazine.	D．In a geography textbook.

10 . It’s an ordinary morning，like all the others．But instead of being woken up by the buzzing of an alarm clock, you’ll be roused by the smell of freshly made coffee，light entering your room as the curtains open automatically，and a gentle back massage（按摩）provided by your high-tech bed.
This is what a typical(典型的) person's life will be like two decades from now，according to The Guardian. Want to know more?
After you get up, your apartment will be like an electronic orchestra with you as the conductor. With simple moves of your hand and spoken instructions, you’ll be able to control your apartment’s temperature, humidity, music and lighting. You’ll be able to look through the day’s news on translucent screens while your breakfast waits for you in the automatic oven.
As you move into your kitchen, you might accidentally hit your toe on a cupboard. If you do, you’ll grab your cell phone and open the diagnostics(诊断) app. Inside your phone there will be a tiny microchip(芯片) that uses X-ray waves to scan your body. The scan will tell whether your toe is bruised or broken.
After breakfast, your driverless car will take you to work. While you “drive”, your central computer system will suggest a list of chores(家务事) that your housekeeping robots can do that day and it will also remind you to buy a gift for your mother’s upcoming birthday.
As you can see, with the help of advanced technology, our lives will be more efficient(有效率的). Technology will mitigate our forgetfulness and free us of many small burdens that distract us, such as buying a ticket. Our brain will therefore be able to focus on more important things like preparing for a presentation or doing “deep thinking”.
However, the development of technology might have some disadvantages as well. By 2036, we’ll be relying heavily on the virtual(虚拟的) world, which will mean that all of our data will be stored in the cloud, a remote digital storage system with near limitless capacity(容量). That will increase the possibility of someone else accessing, sharing or manipulating(操控) our personal information.
1. What might be the author’s purpose in writing the text?

A．To stress the importance of developing technology.

B．To remind people not to depend too much on computers．

C．To introduce one new invention that will benefit our future lives.

D．To describe how advanced technologies will affect our future lives.

2. According to the text, in two decades, ________.

A．you’ll be able to rely on an electronic orchestra to wake you up instead of an alarm clock

B．a tiny microchip in your phone will treat you when you are sick

C．you will be able to adjust the conditions of your apartment via oral instructions or simple hand gestures

D．technology will be smart enough to help us with important things like preparing for a presentation

3. What does the underlined word “mitigate” in Paragraph 6 mean?

A．Make up for.

B．Worsen.

C．Cure.

D．Take advantage of.