1. How can people operate a self-driving car?
A.By calling the operator. |
B.By pressing some buttons. |
C.By telling the car their destinations. |
A.In Chicago. | B.In California. | C.In Los Angeles. |
A.It broke the law. |
B.It hit another car. |
C.It broke the speed limitation. |
A.About 2 million kilometers. |
B.About 9 million kilometers. |
C.About 19 million kilometers. |
The home of the future won't be
Space holidays will develop in the future, but these holidays won't be for everyone because they are
According to the laws of physics, the earth is going to
A.revealed B.display C.doubles D.contrary E.suggestions F.raw G.advance H.dramatic I.functions J.connected K.developed |
Your new smart TV might be your pride and joy today but they will pale into insignificance compared with the technology expected to fill homes by 2030.
And now experts at Rightmove have
In just two years’ time, a temperature-changing mattress(床垫) will come into being that warms up in the winter and stays cool in the summer.Self-cleaning fabrics(布), truly waterproof materials and personal climate control are all being
Fast forward to 2023, a “smart window” appears in the bedroom that
A smart mirror, which is actually a screen with an integrated computer, could even make polite outfit (服装)
And by 2025 the experts predict there will be self-heating towels.
While in 2030 the home will seem like an incredibly hi-tech space, with
Perhaps most excitingly, there’s a 3D printer that could be used to print everything from tools and electronics to food and clothing using just
And the experts predict that by 2030, the machines will be as popular as televisions.Pocket-lint’s Stuart Miles said that every single electronic device in the home will be
Tim Danton, Editor of PC Pro magazine thinks smart phones will
Today, we have to use switches for our lights, knobs for our appliances,
5 . What will future schools look like in 100 years? Imagine future schools in which students are totally engaged in a class. They are concentrating on working together to solve real-world problems. They are self-driven and are coming up with amazing ideas on the spot. They are concerned with each other’s well-being as part of a team. Their concerns reach far beyond the classroom to others all over the globe.
The school of the future will be an amazing melting pot of different peoples coming together to solve real-world problems.
Will they even be called “schools” in the future?
The teacher-student relationship is changing. Teachers are acting more as helpers rather than keepers of all knowledge. Students are driving their own education to the path that they feel best fits them. In the future, employers may not be as concerned with a diploma. They’ll look more at cases and examples of how students contribute to solving real-world problems. They’ll want to know how well they work in a team.
What will problem-solving look like in the future?
Information from the Internet is accessible everywhere and at unimaginable speeds. Kids are connected to news around the world in real time. Imagine someone could put out a request to the global community to help solve an issue in their own community! Classes can adopt an issue and work with other classes around the world in real time to create solutions.
What will information look like in the future?
It’s already everywhere. Users can get flooded by the constant flow of information. The need to understand what is true and what is not is important. The flipped classroom (翻转课堂) has already completely changed lecture-based lessons. It presents interesting content to students before they even come to class. They can access the Internet as many times as they want to review the lessons.
1. What is the key message of the first paragraph?A.The things students will do in the future school. |
B.The situation where students will be in the future. |
C.The attention students will pay to in the classroom. |
D.The methods students will use to study in the classroom. |
A.Respect. | B.Patience. | C.Teamwork. | D.Concern. |
A.Teachers encourage students to develop leadership. |
B.Students are really relaxed with their heavy study. |
C.The employers value students’ diplomas most. |
D.Students have the right to choose the most suitable lessons. |
A.To help students to improve the problem-solving ability. |
B.To provide the lessons for students to study before or after class. |
C.To help students to keep in contact with the outside world. |
D.To help students to understand the most difficult content. |
Scientists and engineers
Two American researchers, Andrew McKenzie from the University of Kansas and Jeffrey Punske of Southern Illinois University, have explored one possible problem with such travel. They considered the possibility
Languages naturally change as communities grow more isolated from each other, the researchers noted in the paper. The long isolation of a community could lead to enough differences in language to make
The researchers say one possible solution to
7 . For years, planet-hunters have been searching for a planet other than Earth that can support life. They may have found one.
The planet is the sixth found orbiting a star called Gliese 581. Steven Vogt, one of the scientists involved, expects the new planet to have water. On Earth, when we find water, we find life.
A planet that can support life has to be just the right size for its system and just the right distance from its star. Some planets orbit so close to their stars that they’re much too hot for liquid water—or for life as we know it.
But a right-sized planet that's neither too close nor too far might be just right for water. Gliese 581 is probably just right. It is about three times as huge as Earth.
The new planet is 20 light years away, which is as far as 250 million trips to the Moon and back.
Gliese 581 is an exciting discovery—and astronomers are likely to find more soon, thanks to new, powerful telescopes specifically designed to look for planets.
A.We can’t travel at the speed of light. |
B.It’s pretty hard to imagine that water wouldn't be there. |
C.Human beings won’t be visiting this planet any time soon. |
D.So scientists looking for life on other planets look for water first. |
E.It orbits its star so closely that it goes all the way around in only 37 days. |
F.Astronomers will probably find more potential life-supporting planets soon. |
G.Other planets keep their distance from the stars—where they’re too cold to have water or life. |
8 . In May this year, as part of our 150th anniversary, we asked readers aged between 18 and 25 to enter an essay competition. The task was to tell us, in no more than 1,000 words, what scientific advance they would most like to see in their lifetimes, and why it mattered to them.
The response was phenomenal: we received 661 entries. Some entrants hoped that science would make their lifetimes much longer than they can currently expect. Many looked forward to work that will end climate change. Others wanted to see advances in our understanding of human history, crop growth, space exploration, and medical technologies. The ideas were inspiring.
The winner is a compelling essay by Yasmin Ali, a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, UK. Ali submitted a piece on Beethoven, her brother’s hearing loss and the science which she hoped would one day cure it. It stood out to the judges as a reminder of why many scientists do research: to make the world better tomorrow than it is today.
All essays were judged by a group of Nature editors. The top ten submissions were then ranked by three members of a separate judging group: Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature; Faith Osier, a researcher; and Jess Wade, a physicist. All submissions were kept anonymous throughout the process.
We also selected two runners-up(非冠军的获奖者).Physicist Robert Schittko at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, proposes that nuclear fusion(核聚变) could offer a solution to the climate crisis, in a piece that effortlessly mixes grand ambition with gentle humour. And chemist Matthew Zajac at the University of Chicago in Illinois wrote a powerful personal account of why he wants to see advances in the field of same-sex reproduction.
The results show that today’s young scientists have a wealth of ideas, talent and conviction that research can transform their world. We look forward to seeing what they do next.
1. What’s the essay competition about?A.The scientific expectation. |
B.The fantastic scientific ideas. |
C.The dreams of future life. |
D.The celebration of anniversary. |
A.She showed great talent in music. |
B.She found the cure for the loss of hearing. |
C.She appealed for people to care about hearing loss problem. |
D.She reminded people to remember the meaning of science development. |
A.Robert Schittko won the second place. |
B.There were two winners in the essay competition. |
C.Matthew Zajac presented his view of same-sex reproduction. |
D.The two runners-up were selected for the same field they chose. |
A.Doubtful. |
B.Favorable. |
C.Impossible. |
D.Ignorant. |
9 . Robots and computers are weakening wages by simplifying jobs and turning skilled work into unskilled labour. Automation is spreading into office jobs and the services sector, meaning middle-class careers and professions whose wages risk being cut down were influenced in a way never seen before. It will squash pay packets severely for years or even decades to come, a new report from Barclays has warned, which said several careers have already been destroyed as routes to prosperity.
Lorry drivers were once highly paid, but as the technology of vehicle is improving, real wages have crashed. The average US trucker earned $38 000 (£26 000) in 1980, but only $46 000 now—but to keep up with price inflation (通胀率), the wage should be several multiples of this. Similarly London’s black cab drivers have to learn the knowledge, training hard to learn the capital’s streets in detail by memory. However, satnavs (卫星导航) and apps such as Uber have led to a large inrush of drivers who have not had to pass this test, driving down earning for cabbies.
Industries soon to be affected include medicine with even complex tasks such as surgery becoming simpler. Surgeons already use robots widely in surgeries, microrobots can perform surgeries at microscopic levels that surgeons cannot manually perform. Human judgement is sill necessary, but might become less so with the development of machine, learning platforms in the medical field. With the development of machine vision, machines could also be better equipped to make medical diagnoses.
It could take many years before new technologies such as artificial intelligence (人工智能) becomes fully embedded (嵌入) in the economy to the extent that they boost productivity and wages once more. So far the effect has broadly been positive. It is estimated that 15.8 million jobs have been created overall by computer technology in the past 40 years, counting those both created and destroyed.
1. What can we learn from Paragraph 1?A.Robots will replace humans soon. |
B.Robots have influenced humans’ wages. |
C.Robots have a negative effect on humans. |
D.Robots will steal your wages but not your job. |
A.Tested drivers rushed in. | B.Price inflation is very serious. |
C.Apps such as Uber appeared. | D.Black cab drivers are too many. |
A.Negative. | B.Positive. | C.Neutral. | D.Indifferent. |
A.Fast Spread of Automation. | B.Advantages of Automation. |
C.Potential Market for Automation. | D.Great Influence of Automation. |
10 . Where is the future going?
Our work habits have changed a lot over the past thirty years. While our parents may have expected to stay in one job, with one company, for their whole life, we are faced with the possibility of changing jobs and even careers several times. Our understanding of education, work and society is different from that of earlier generations.
People in the future will still need food, of course, but the way we produce food will not be the same.
What about people who work with computers? Well, things will change for them, too. More advanced computer programs and new technologies will remove the need for computer operators who perform simple actions. Modern search engines can do many of the things that yesterday's computer operators did. Word processing and simple information handling can be done automatically.
A rapidly changing job market also creates new challenges for students, teachers and parents.
A.What life will be like in the future is difficult to predict. |
B.Not only the way we work and view the job has changed. |
C.It is hard to imagine where all these advanced technologies will lead us. |
D.For people with these skills, there will be new jobs as database managers. |
E.Where is the future going and what can we do to find a place for ourselves in it? |
F.Small farms that use old methods will be replaced by large farms with high efficiency. |
G.The difference in values, skills, education and desires between two generations is growing. |