1 . When I was a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, we had a milkman delivering milk to our doorstep. His name was Mr. Basille. He wore a white cap and drove a white truck. As a 5-year-old boy, I couldn’t take my eyes off the coin changer fixed to his belt. He noticed this one day during a delivery and gave me a quarter out of his coin changer.

Of course, he delivered more than milk. There was cheese, eggs and so on. If we needed to change our order, my mother would pen a note — “Please add a bottle of buttermilk next delivery” — and place it in the box along with the empty bottles. And then, the buttermilk would magically (魔术般) appear.

All of this was about more than convenience. There existed a close relationship between families and their milkmen. Mr. Basille even had a key to our house, for those times when it was so cold outside that we put the box indoors, so that the milk wouldn’t freeze. And I remember Mr. Basille from time to time taking a break at our kitchen table, having a cup of tea and telling stories about his delivery.

There is sadly no home milk delivery today. Big companies allowed the production of cheaper milk, thus making it difficult for milkmen to compete. Besides, milk is for sale everywhere, and it may just not have been practical to have a delivery service.

Recently, an old milk box in the countryside I saw brought back my childhood memories. I took it home and planted it on the back porch (门廊) . Every so often my son’s friends will ask what it is. So I start telling stories of my boyhood, and of the milkman who brought us friendship along with his milk.

5 . In 2017,the United Arab Emirates announced its ambition to colonize Mars within the next 100 years. But architects are already imagining what a Martian city might look like-and planning to recreate it in the desert outside Dubai.

Mars Science City was originally scheduled to cover 176,000 square meters of desert-the size of more than 30 football fields-and cost approximately 135 million dollars. To create a space for Dubai's Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) to develop the technology needed to colonize Mars,architects Bjarke Ingels Group were asked to design a prototype of a city suitable for sustaining life on Mars-and then adapt it for use in the Emirati desert.

For this unique commission,the architects first had to overcome the immense challenges of creating a design to make the severe environment of Mars habitable. Mars has a thin atmosphere and no global magnetic field,so there's little protection from harmful radiation. Temperature is another problem-the average on Mars is a chilly 63 degrees C. The thin atmosphere also means there's little air pressure,so liquids quickly evaporate into gas; despite freezing temperatures,an unprotected human's blood would boil on Mars.But according to Jonathan Eastwood,director of the Space Lab at Imperial College London,the biggest challenge in terms of a sustained presence on Mars is not the engineering or scientific challenge,but the human and personal one.More researches need to be done to test the effects of isolation on mental and physical health of astronauts.

The MBRSC hopes that,in future,such research could take place in Mars Science City.This is going to be our platform where we can develop the science and the technology that will help us in our future missions to Mars,said Adnan AlRais,Mars 27 Program Manager at MBRSC."We want to come up with a totally new facility that will help the international community.”

Human beings has been interested in robots for quite some time. Scientists are always inventing new and better robots, that will play an important role in our future lives.

First, smarter robots will help us for the housework. They will take over jobs such as preparing meals, washing dishes, and sweep the floor. So we will have much free time to have a fun than before. Second, robots will be helpful for our work. They will do all the heavy and dangerous work, and help out in hospitals, schools and offices. Third, robots will be your friends. Whenever we felt sad, lonely or upset, we can have a chat with a robot. Robots will not only be good listeners but they will also offer us good advices.

In conclusion, robots will be more and more intelligent and we will benefit it in many ways.

Experts have started working on    1     unbelievable project to make a robot made by NASA act like a human.

    2    (name) Valkyrie, the robot looks like a woman and may be used to explorer Mars one day. It       3     (invent) by NASA scientists to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenges(DRC). It is 1.9 meters tall and    4     (weight) 125 kilograms. It comes with a series    5     cameras, sonar, and other sensors spread across its body to help it move around.

Valkyrie is powered by a battery on its back, which can keep it     6     (operate) for an hour. It can walk on    7       (it) own, pick up objects and control many objects and tools,    8    is part of the requirements for the DARPA challenge.

The machine can walk on two legs and perform basic    9     (move) at present. However, the team from Scotland’s Edinburgh University wants to give it       10     (many) skills. It is hoped that the new and improved robot will work along with astronauts in space.

9 . 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.

10 . Traffic is a very important part in daily life.Nearly everyone complains about being stuck in traffic so much     1    people are making it possible that the future city will have no traffic at all.H.G Wells,in his book.The Sleeper Awakes,tells something about the traffic.In the streets of that future London there will be no vehicles.The city    2     (provide) with moving roads.One side of the road travels    3    one direction;    4    other side moves the opposite way. Anyone who wants to go to another part of the city steps on the moving “way” and sits on one of the seats until he arrives.He has none of the troubles,    5    a private car brings with it: whether there is enough petrol,whether the tyres are all right,and where to park it.The moving way is always at his service,always moving    6    (silent) along,always ready    7    (take) him to his destination.That city of the future will have no traffic jams.

To link up the    8    (vary) cities,vehicles driven by atomic power will pass along highways    9    (divide) into two main groups of lanes.Each group will consist of several lanes.Some for slow traffic,some for fast.Crossroads will not exist on these highways,but will be replaced by bridges and junctions.Where these highways enter cities,    10     (port) and other built-up areas,they will pass through underground tunnels.