1 . “Flying insects don’t fly directly to lights from far away because they’re attracted to them, but appear to change course toward a light if they happen to be passing by due to a strange inborn biological response,” writes Samuel Fabian, a bioengineer, in a research paper.
Until now, the leading scientific hypothesis has been that insects use the moon’s light to direct the way at night and mistake artificial lights for the moon. But this idea doesn’t explain why insects that only fly during the day also gather around lights.
To find out what really happens, Samuel’s team track the precise movements of insects in the wild around lights using a high-speed camera. This revealed two notable behaviours. First, when insects fly above lights, they often invert (转向) themselves and try to fly upside down, causing them to fall very fast. Just after insects pass under a light, they start doing a ring road. As their climb angle becomes too steep, they suddenly stop and start to fall. Second, when insects approach a light from the side, they may circle or “orbit” the light.
The videos show that the inversions sometimes result in insects falling on lights. It can appear to the naked eye as though they are flying at the lights. “Instead, insects turn their dorsum toward the light, generating flight perpendicular(垂直) to the source,” the team write. It is common to the two behaviours that the insects are keeping their backs to the light, known as the dorsal light response (DLR). This DLR is a shortcut for insects to work out which way is up and keep their bodies upright, as the moon or sun is usually more or less directly above them, and this direction allows them to maintain proper flight attitude and control. They also find that the insects fly at right angles to a light source, leading to orbiting and unstable flights as the light’s location relative to them changes as they move.
Samuel’s team suggest that a possible outcome of the research could help the construction industry to avoid the types of light that most attract insects.
1. What does the research focus on?| A．Why insects gather around lights. |
| B．Where artificial lights lead insects to. |
| C．What biological response insects are born with. |
| D．How to design environment friendly artificial lights. |
| A．They fly directly to lights. | B．They circle close to lights. |
| C．Their flying speed is steady. | D．Their inversions can be controlled. |
| A．balance their flying | B．keep their route straight |
| C．decide their body positon | D．shorten their flight distance |
2 . We humans are in trouble. We have let loose a new evolutionary process that we don’t understand and can’t control.
The latest leaps forward in artificial intelligence (AI) are rightly causing anxiety. Yet people are responding as though AI is just one more scary new technology, like electricity or cars once were. We invented it, the argument goes, so we should be able to manage it for our own benefit. Not so. I believe that this situation is new and potentially dangerous.
My thinking starts from the premise that all design anywhere in the universe is created by the evolutionary algorithm (算法). This is the process in which some kind of information is copied many times, the copies vary slightly and only some are selected to be copied again. The information is called the replicator (复制者), and our most familiar example is the gene.
But genes aren’t the only replicator, as Richard Dawkins stressed in The Selfish Gene. People copy habits, stories, words, technologies and songs; we change, recombine and pass them on in ever greater variety. This second replicator, evolving much faster than genes ever could, Dawkins called memes (模仿传递行为) — and they are selfish too.
As we face up to the recent explosion in AI, new questions arise. Could a third replicator take advantage of the first two? And what would happen if it did?
For billions of years, all of the Earth’s organisms were gene machines, until, about 2 million years ago, just one species — our ancestors — started imitating sounds, gestures and ways of processing food. They had let loose a second replicator and turned us into meme machines. Following the same principle, could a third replicator appear if some object we made started copying, varying and selecting a new kind of information?
It could, and I believe it has. Our digital technology can copy, store and spread vast amounts of information with near-perfect accuracy. While we had mostly been the ones selecting what to copy and share, that is changing now. Mindless algorithms choose which ads we see and which news stories they “think” we would like. Once a digital replicator takes off, its products will evolve for its own benefit, not ours.
All is not lost, though. We already cope with fast-evolving parasites such as viruses by using our immune systems, machines and vaccines. Now, we need to build our collective mental immunity, our critical thinking and our ability to protect our attention from all that selfish information. Taking lessons from evolution, we can stop imagining we are the controllers of our accidentally dangerous offspring and start learning how to live with them.
1. As for people’s attitude toward AI, the author is ____________.| A．disapproving | B．unconcerned |
| C．sympathetic | D．tolerant |
| A．memes are composed of selfish genes | B．the speed of evolution is underestimated |
| C．replicators vary with human interference | D．memes and genes share a common feature |
| A．Technologies can be double-edged. |
| B．Collective efforts make a better world. |
| C．We should live in harmony with nature. |
| D．Past experience is relevant to future action. |
| A．The pace of technological progress is unstoppable. |
| B．The initiative of algorithm should be strengthened. |
| C．The new evolution can bring about negative effects. |
| D．The artificial intelligence can satisfy our real desires. |
The colour was rushing to his cheeks, and his eyes were wide open,
How to Stop Overthinking
We all have times when we worry, whether it’s about work, health, family, relationships or a host of other reasons. But is there a point when you may think and worry too much?
Overthinking is an unhealthy habit that typically causes more stress by focusing on the negative instead of coming up with logical solutions. For example, we may start worrying about a specific situation at work, which leads to worrying about money or losing jobs.
But why do we tend to overthink? This is often due to cognitive errors, which are basically errors in logical thinking, such as all-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralisation. Although overthinking is hard to break, Natacha Duke, a registered psychotherapist, outlines strategies that can help.
“Healthy distraction can be useful,” says Duke. Activities like reading and taking a walk can help keep our stress levels down. They can reduce our baseline level of anxiety and make us less likely to overthink.
Duke adds, “Keeping a daily journal can help us actively manage stress before our feelings expand out of control.” As we practise journaling our emotions and thoughts, it becomes easier to identify when we’re starting to worry. Stopping worrying early will ultimately help us feel better and stay focused on what matters most to us.
Some people constantly think about questions like “What if I lose my job?” or “What if I get sick?” While having these thoughts is normal, it becomes a problem when we focus only on the worst-case situation. “For every ‘what if’ worry, change this to an ‘if then’ statement where you come up with ideas to deal with the worry or the worst-case situation,” says Duke. “Focus on having a concrete plan in place.”
So, face the problems, then challenge and reframe them. Finally, we will develop effective ways to cope with overthinking.
1. What is overthinking?2. What causes overthinking?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
A man can stop overthinking if he changes “what if” questions to “if then” statements, because it helps him focus on the worst-case situation.
4. Besides the suggestions mentioned in the passage, what other advice will you give to a person who is always overthinking?
8 . A person could be forgiven for believing 20 years ago that the Internet would soon revolutionise academic publishing, because it became possible for publishers to spread scholarly work at the click of a button — much cheaper than the traditional subscription-based (订阅) model. Recognising the opportunity, many scholars and librarians began to advocate a new, open access model, in which articles are made freely available online to anyone. The result would be a true online public library of science.
However, more than two decades later, the movement has made only slight progress, and the traditional subscription-based model remains entrenched.
Fortunately, things are changing. A big shoe dropped when the University of California (UC) Libraries, one of the biggest library systems, declined to renew its contract with Elsevier, a leading scientific publisher. Elsevier wanted the Libraries to pay two fees: One for its package of licensed journals and the other for the use of Elsevier’s open access model. UC Libraries wanted the licensed journals fee to cover the open access fee; they also wanted open access to all UC researches published in Elsevier journals. When the two sides couldn’t come to terms, the Libraries walked away.
Actually, the open access revolution is more likely to be led by research funding agencies, who can use their purse power to promote open access. A team of funders, Coalition S, insisted that any research they fund should be published in a journal that makes all of its articles freely and immediately available to the public, which is called Plan-S.
Now that some librarians and funders are flexing their muscles, what should academics do? The worst response would be to complain that Plan-S deprives(剥夺) them of academic freedom. Some thoughtful academics might worry that a shift to open access would affect their promotion. After all, subscription journals are more familiar and more prestigious (有威望的) in the current system. However, if enough academics support open access, the system could reach a tipping point beyond which subscriptions no longer signal prestige. Reaching that point would take considerable time and efforts, but it is possible.
When the journal system began in 1665, it was kind of a form of open access. Journals allowed academics to learn openly from one another. It was only in the 1900s that the journal system became thoroughly commoditized(商品化). Now is the time to bring it back to its roots.
1. What does the underlined word probably mean?| A．Uncertain. | B．Rooted. | C．Limited. | D．Popular. |
| A．The duration of the contract. | B．The way of payment. |
| C．The charge for open access model. | D．The choice of licensed journals. |
| A．Academics welcome open access model with full heart. |
| B．Open access model will soon achieve a dominant position. |
| C．Publishers are willing to abandon the subscription model gradually. |
| D．Establishing a true online public library of science requires joint efforts. |
| A．Critical. | B．Supportive. | C．Disapproving. | D．Indifferent. |
Bandung, one of Indonesia’s major cities, is only 150 kilometers from Jakarta, the capital, but the drive is at an average of three hours even with a freeway
10 . Automation (自动化) was a hot topic. Nearly everyone agreed that people would be working less once computers and other kinds of automatic machinery became widespread. For optimists, this was a promise of liberation: At last humanity would be freed from constant toil, and we could all devote our days to more refined pursuits. But others saw a threat: Millions of people would be thrown out of work, and desperate masses would roam the streets. Looking back from 50 years hence, the controversy over automation seems a quaint and curious episode. The dispute was never resolved.
A. J. Hayes, a leader (and no relation to me), wrote in 1964: Automation is not just a new kind of mechanization but a revolutionary force capable of overturning our social order. Whereas mechanization made workers more efficient — and thus more valuable — automation threatens to make them superfluous (过剩的) — and thus without value. The opinions I have cited here represent extreme positions, and there were also many milder views. But I think it’s fair to say that most early students of automation, including both critics and enthusiasts, believed the new technology would lead us into a world where people worked much less.
As for economic consequences, worries about unemployment have certainly not gone away — not with job losses in the current recession approaching 2 million workers in our country alone. But recent job losses are commonly attributed to causes other than automation, such as competition from overseas or a roller-coaster financial system. In any case, the vision of a world where machines do all the work and people stand idly by has simply not come to pass.
The spread of automation outside of the factory has altered its social and economic impact in some curious ways. In many cases, the net effect of automation is not that machines are doing work that people used to do. Instead we’ve dispensed with the people who used to be paid to run the machines, and we’ve learned to run them ourselves. These trends contradict almost all the expectations of early writers on automation, both optimists and pessimists. So far, automation has neither liberated us from the need to work nor deprived (剥夺) us of the opportunity to work. Instead, we’re working more than ever.
What about trades closer to my own vital interests? Will science be automated? Technology already has a central role in many areas of research; for example, genome sequences could not be read by traditional lab-bench methods. Replacing the scientist will presumably be a little harder than replacing the lab technician, but when a machine exhibits enough curiosity and tenacity, I think we’ll just have to welcome it as a companion in zealous research. And if the scientist is elbowed aside by an automaton, then surely the science writer can’t hold out either. I’m ready for my 15-hour workweek.
1. In Paragraph 1, the writer mainly wants to convey that ________.| A．automation results in unemployment |
| B．automation does more harm than good |
| C．the issue of automation was still in discussion |
| D．automation brings in much convenience in life |
| A．automation is more valuable than what we imagine |
| B．automation is a revolutionary force to better development |
| C．the disadvantages of automation far outweigh the advantages |
| D．the new technology would lead people into working much less |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Supportive. | C．Disapproving. | D．Neutral. |
| A．People needn’t work so hard due to automation. |
| B．Traditional labor force will be replaced in the near future. |
| C．Automation should be accepted reasonably in development. |
| D．Automation results in more job losses in the writer’s country. |
