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
2 . What will the future school look like is difficult to make clear, but most experts agree that the school will be electronic in the future.
“Present-day schools will no longer exist in the next century,” says a report in The Age. “At that time, future schools will become community-style centers, which run seven days a week, 24 hours a day.” At the same time,computers will surely become a central part of the school in the future.
According to The Age, the distant learning will be popular and students will listen to teachers on computers. Going into classrooms on their computers, students will study at any time, which is very easy for them. However, it is necessary for students to go to the actual school in order to develop some social skills.
The Seashore Primary School is an imaginary school in the future created by the Education Department of Australia. At this school, all the teachers and students have laptop computers. Teachers check messages and call students back on a special telephone system and students use telephones to search for information or speak to their experts who teach their lessons. Besides, all the lessons are related to all sorts of subjects and all the students have their own learning plans created by teachers.
As one headmaster says, a laptop computer is students' library. data storage as well as the bridge to a wider world. Technology has changed the emphasis of future learning. Thus, we'll pay more attention to the learning of kids rather than the teaching.
1. What can we infer from the second and third paragraphs?| A．Present-day schools are more practical than future schools. |
| B．Students can't have discussions in future schools. |
| C．Future schools will be open to students all the time. |
| D．The number of teachers in future schools will become larger. |
| A．It has fewer desks and chairs. |
| B．Students study at a set time. |
| C．It has no teachers and books. |
| D．Students will go to actual school when necessary. |
| A．was built by the Education Department of Australia |
| B．is not a real school, but a virtual school at present |
| C．is very popular among teachers and students in Australia |
| D．is a successful example of the future school in the world |
| A．Objective. | B．Supportive. | C．Critical. | D．Contradictory. |
3 . 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. |
4 . On paper, hydrogen（H2）looks like a dream fuel. Coal, oil, and natural gas produce carbon dioxide, which warms the earth when burned, Hydrogen produces pure water. Hydrogen packs more energy into less space than a battery（but certainly less than petrol）. Also, empty tanks（燃料箱）can be refilled with hydrogen much faster than refilling empty batteries with electricity.
While in practice, things are trickier. Storing a meaningful amount of hydrogen gas requires pressing it several hundred-fold. Changing it into the liquid form is another option, but it should be cooled to-253C. Both processes require a heavy and strong tank. While a 700 bar tank is acceptable for a city bus or a truck, adapting it for use in small vehicles is very difficult because the pressure during refilling would be too great.
The solution? Powerpaste.
A German team of researchers, led by Marcus Vogt, have come up with an interesting "powerpaste", which can store hydrogen energy at atmospheric pressure, ready for release when needed. It is so named because it comes in tubes and looks like toothpaste（牙膏）, not in its traditional form of gas.
The main ingredient（原料）of the paste is magnesium hydride, a substance that reacts with water to form hydrogen. The escaped hydrogen can then be directed into a fuel cell, where it reacts with oxygen from the air to produce electric power.
Refueling is very simple, as instead of going to a filling station, drivers and riders can simply replace an empty tube with a new one and refill the water tank.
Given that powerpaste only begins to break down at temperatures of around 250℃ it remains safe even when a vehicle stands in the baking sun for hours.
However, we will have to be patient. Just because researchers have succeeded in developing a new fueling way does not mean that we can expect to see such vehicles on the road anytime soon. It will indeed be several years before this concept is turned into reality.
1. As a fuel, what is the advantage of hydrogen over oil?| A．Refilling empty tanks will be more convenient. |
| B．It is less likely to worsen global warming |
| C．More energy can be packed in the same space. |
| D．It will produce pure water for people to drink. |
| A．The practical difficulties to use hydrogen as fuel in small vehicles. |
| B．The detailed processes of adapting a strong tank in small vehicles. |
| C．The differences in fueling between large vehicles and small ones. |
| D．The tricks of building strong tanks in small vehicles. |
| A．inexpensive | B．powerful | C．convenient | D．environment-friendly |
| A．Powerpaste-driven vehicles sometimes move very slowly on the road. |
| B．Practical use of powerpaste-driven vehicles will not come very soon. |
| C．Powerpaste-driven vehicles can only work after being in the sun for hours |
| D．It will be years before the researchers work out the concept of powerpaste. |
5 . Unless you are like Nasty Gal’s founder Sophia Amoruso, the passwords you use to access your email and the endless other accounts you need for work aren’t filled with intention. With increasing security requirements, it’s likely your word/number combinations are becoming even less memorable. But new research suggests it may not be long before you won’t need to memorize passwords.
“Brainprint”, published in Neurocomputing, reveals that the brain’s reaction to certain words could be a unique identifying code — like a fingerprint — that could eventually replace passwords.
In a small experiment, the researchers measured the brains’ signals of 45 volunteers as they read through a list of 75 acronyms such as FBI and DVD. The word-recognition response differed so much between each participant that a second experiment using a computer program could identify each one with 94% accuracy.
It’s not enough to feel totally secure, but promising enough to hint at the future of securing sensitive information.
The advantage of using such a biometric system (生物识别系统) is that it can be used for continuous verification (验证), New Scientist points out. Passwords or fingerprints only provide a tool for one-off identification. Continuous verification could in theory allow someone to interact with many computer systems at the same time or even with a variety of intelligent objects, without having to repeatedly enter passwords for each device.
As Hollywood has illustrated, it’s simply a matter of cutting off a finger to steal that person’s identity. “Brainprints, on the other hand, are potentially cancellable,” said Sarah Laszlo, assistant professor of psychology and linguistics at Binghamton University and co-author of the study, “So, in the unlikely event that attackers were actually able to steal a brainprint from an authorized user, the authorized user could then ‘reset’ their brainprint.”
Until now, brain signals have been a challenge to understand. This experiment leaped over the obstacle by focusing on the brainwaves from the specific area that reads and recognizes words. The signal is therefore clearer and easier to measure.
The problem, so far, is that the brain signal is still not as accurate as scanning someone’s fingerprint, and initially requires sticking diodes (二极管) on your head in order to get a read. That’s ok, according to Zhanpeng Jin, assistant professor at Binghamton University and coauthor of the study, because brainprint isn’t going to be mass-produced any time soon. He says the researchers foresee its use at places such as the Pentagon, where the number of authorized users is small, and they don’t need to be continuously verified the way you do to access your mobile device or email.
Better keep your memory sharp, at least a little while longer.
1. In paragraph 5, “one-off identification” refers to the identification that _______.| A．happens as part of a regular series | B．interacts with intelligent objects |
| C．can be verified continuously | D．needs repeated verification |
| A．fingerprints can be canceled once stolen | B．brainprints are theft-proof and resettable |
| C．attackers can steal and replace brainprints | D．users have the authority to cancel brainprints |
| A．brainprints will sharpen users’ memory | B．brainprints will become easier to be measured |
| C．brainprints will receive narrow application | D．brainprints will eventually replace fingerprints |
| A．Brainprints: A New Way to Replace Passwords |
| B．Brainprints: A Unique Device to Identify Codes |
| C．Brainprints: A Quicker Way to Access Your Email |
| D．Brainprints: A Securer Device to Identify Brain Signals |
Dream for Future
People were busy in their own laboratories in the Mars.Turtex told me,“Let us go to the Earth to have a cup of coffee.”
I laughed for such a childish joke and I also jokingly asked him,“Is there no coffee shop in the Mars?”
He replied,“It has but they can’t prepare coffee as tasty as that on the Earth.”
However,for a while I thought it would be better to take a cup of tasty coffee from Ramu’s Coffee Shop located at our village,Kushmandi.
Turtex told me to enter a room near his laboratory.We entered there and found that the room was internally coated with some materials like sponge.Turtex closed the door of the room with a clap.I saw some colourful buttons inside the room.After a few seconds I heard another clap and noticed that the door opened.
Turtex said,“Come with me.”
I asked,“Where?”
He replied,“Now we are at Kushmandi.”
I shouted,“What?”
We came out of the room and I astonishingly viewed the sky-scrapers around me.Turtex said loudly,“What’s wrong with you?Come with me.”
Eventually we entered a coffee club designed like a Five Star Restaurant.Suddenly I noticed a display board with an electronic text on,“Welcome to Kushmandi.Now you are in famous Ramu’s Coffee Shop.Enjoy the taste of the best coffee on the Earth.”
Suddenly many hazy and crazy questions came to my mind.
“What was the nearby room of the lab?How was it possible to travel an enormous distance from the Mars to the Earth?Is it like opening my favourite TV channel with a remote?How the poor coffee stall of our village turned into a Five Star Coffee Club?In which century were we?”
注意:续写词数应为150左右。
Thinking such hazy things,I followed Turtex into the coffee club.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
The waiter brought us two cups of coffee and left.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
7 . Smart cities are coming. And you can be sure that hackers (黑客) won’t be very far behind. We’ve already gotten a glimpse of that future, as cities across the globe start to use technology to connect their services and people in ways that were science film just a few years ago. They are using sensors to collect data — such as traffic, garbage collecting, and road conditions —and then using that data to deliver services to more people and more efficiently.
But this rush to become a smart city has a major weakness: The more connected a city is, the easier it is to cyber-attacks. Hackers have, in recent years, effectively held cities hostage through ransom ware (赎金器), sometimes damaging critical systems for months at a time. The damage can cost millions to repair, as Baltimore and Atlanta have discovered.
And this is just the beginning. As cities add connectivity to their streetlights, power grids, dams, transit lines and other services, they are adding more targets that are possible to be hacked. What’s more, as additional information on people is collected, officials worry the result —lots of data could attract nation-states or terrorists who could use the data to launch physical and cyber war.
What cyber security lesson can’t be taught in this hack? For example: Don’t open email attachments from unfamiliar sources; don’t click on unrecognized links; don’t leave sensitive information visible on the walls or surfaces of your office.
But let’s just stick to the most important lesson: The information you share on social media can be used to profile and target you, whether that’s by engineering click bait (点击诱饵) aimed at your particular interests, guessing your password based on your birthday or figuring out your schedule and travels so that an intruder can access your home or office.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
1. What did people use to think of smart cities?| A．It was the product of science. | B．It was sure to be popular. |
| C．It existed in imagination. | D．It improved people’s life. |
| A．Introduce the harm of hackers. |
| B．Show the danger of a smart city. |
| C．Add some background information. |
| D．Summarize the previous paragraphs. |
| A．It is convenient to provide service. |
| B．It is certain to bring about progress. |
| C．There are actually potential dangers. |
| D．There’s competition in high technology. |
| A．Describe. | B．Protect. | C．Impress. | D．Fund. |
Life on Mars
Some people believe humans could live on the planet Mars by the year 2100. Our own planet, the Earth, is becoming more and more crowded and polluted because of the rapid increase in population.
9 . The European Space Agency(ESP) wants to build a village on the moon, said Woerner, the head of the agency, in a video interview posted on its website on March 21.
“I would like to build a base station on the moon, meaning that it’s an open station...for different states around the globe,” Woerner said to Euronews. He said the village could replace the International Space Station(ISS) in the future, which will be ended in 2024. In December Nexgen Space, a consultant(咨询) company for NASA, said that a lunar refueling station could “reduce the cost to NASA of sending humans to Mars by as much as $10 billion per year.”
According to the ESA’s plan, starting from the early 2020s, robots will be sent to the moon to begin building different facilities(设备), followed a few years later by the first humans to live there. Instead of bringing expensive resources from Earth, the moon’s natural resources like metal and frozen water could be used to build the village.
Having a lunar base could be challenging because of space radiation(辐射), meteorite(陨石) and extreme temperatures from 123℃ to 153℃, according to CNN. But Woerner said these risks could be made smaller by choosing the right locations on the moon.
“If we go into the shadow on the moon, we’ll have places where we don’t have the radiation... At the South Pole, we can find water,” he said.
Right now, the moon village is just an idea. But as the BBC said, there is a growing interest in returning to the moon and the idea will be taken seriously.
“Inside all of us there is something that goes beyond being practical,” Woerner said. “We like to discover. This is humankind and this is what brings us into the future.”
1. What is most likely to happen after robots finish building different facilities?| A．Humans will be sent to Mars. |
| B．Humans will be sent to live on the Moon. |
| C．Expensive resources will be sent to the moon. |
| D．International Space Station(ISS) will be ended. |
| A．It is too hot to live there. |
| B．There is too much radiation. |
| C．It’s too far away from the earth. |
| D．There may be rocks landing from outer space. |
| A．Humans are very practical. |
| B．Humans want to experience the future. |
| C．Humans don’t like to stay in the same place. |
| D．Humans are nature-born to explore the unknown. |
| A．To inform. | B．To analyze. | C．To persuade. | D．To criticize. |
10 . These days, it seems like everyone wants to go out into space and live on new planets.Rather than depend on another pre-existing planet, could we make a new, proper planet ourselves?
To start with, if we do want to be living on it, we should find a good place in space to put the new planet. We’d want it to be in a habitable zone, meaning the planet should be at the right distance from its star to make sure there would be perfect temperatures and most importantly, liquid(液态的) water.
We’d also need the right materials to make the planet. Our Earth is made up of many different elements(元素). If we made our own new planet we’d probably want it to have similar elements and a similar structure(结构) We’ d also want enough water to form some oceans.
But even if we get all of the materials creating a new planet like Earth could have many troubles. It might be something more like a huge space station. It would be pretty expensive if we wanted it to be super big.
We would probably also need a lot of food since there s going to be many scientists and astronauts out in space working on this project!
According to NASA, each astronaut uses about 0. 83 kilograms of food per meal, including 0.12 kilograms of packaging(包装) material. Without the weight of the packaging material, we’d need about 780 kilograms of food just to feed one astronaut for a year.
Putting all these together could make it possible to make our own planet one day! In reality, creating a new planet would probably require a very modern technology and there would be tons of other things to think about. And if this is even possible, it likely won’t happen for a very long time.
1. What's the first thing we should do if we want to create a new planet?| A．To prepare enough food. |
| B．To design its inner structure. |
| C．To find a proper place to set the planet. |
| D．To collect materials similar to our Earth. |
| A．Our Earth. | B．Outer space. |
| C．The new planet. | D．The ocean water. |
| A．About 0. 12 kilograms. | B．About 0. 71 kilograms. |
| C．About 0. 83 kilograms. | D．About 0.95 kilograms. |
| A．It is a waste of money and time. | B．It should be one of NASA’S next plans. |
| C．It is not a good idea for humans. | D．It won’t come true in the near future |
