4 . Research from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute have made “robotic shorts” that can help people use less energy when they walk or run.
In the past, such devices have focused only on helping people walk or run, but not both, since walking and running use different hip (臀部) movements. But a computer on the shorts can tell which way the user is moving,
The researchers found that the main benefit of the shorts was reducing the energy people needed to walk or run. In tests, the energy needed for walking was reduced by 9.3 percent.
The researchers said that while the shorts weigh about 5 kilograms, moving with them makes users feel lighter. The tests showed that a person walking with the device would feel 4 kilograms lighter,
The team now also wants to make the device itself 40 percent lighter. They hope the shorts can help people in danger of injury at work and those who want to improve their physical performance,
| A．as well as those with disabilities. |
| B．Are you eager to possess such kind of shorts? |
| C．and someone running would feel 5.7 kilograms lighter. |
| D．For running, people needed about 4 percent less energy. |
| E．but those excellent athletes are also able to benefit from running. |
| F．The shorts are made of soft material and are designed to be easy to move in. |
| G．allowing the device to provide the right kind of assistance for both movements. |
5 . When John Todd was a child, he loved to explore the woods around his house, observing how nature solved problems. A dirty stream, for example, often became clear after flowing through plants and along rocks where tiny creatures lived. When he got older, John started to wonder if this process could be used to clean up the messes people were making.
After studying agriculture, medicine, and fisheries in college, John went back to observing nature and asking questions. Why can certain plants trap harmful bacteria (细菌)? Which kinds of fish can eat cancer-causing chemicals? With the right combination of animals and plants, he figured, maybe he could clean up waste the way nature did. He decided to build what he would later call an eco-machine.
The task John set for himself was to remove harmful substances from some sludge (污泥). First, he constructed a series of clear fiberglass tanks connected to each other. Then he went around to local ponds and streams and brought back some plants and animals. He placed them in the tanks and waited. Little by little, these different kinds of life got used to one another and formed their own ecosystem. After a few weeks, John added the sludge.
He was amazed at the results. The plants and animals in the eco-machine took the sludge as food and began to eat it! Within weeks, it had all been digested, and all that was left was pure water.
Over the years, John has taken on many big jobs. He developed a greenhouse — like facility that treated sewage (污水) from 1,600 homes in South Burlington. He also designed an eco-machine to clean canal water in Fuzhou, a city in southeast China.
“Ecological design” is the name John gives to what he does. “Life on Earth is kind of a box of spare parts for the inventor,” he says. “You put organisms in new relationships and observe what’s happening. Then you let these new systems develop their own ways to self-repair.”
1. What can we learn about John from the first two paragraphs?| A．He was fond of traveling. | B．He enjoyed being alone. |
| C．He had an inquiring mind. | D．He longed to be a doctor. |
| A．To feed the animals. | B．To build an ecosystem. |
| C．To protect the plants. | D．To test the eco-machine. |
| A．To review John’s research plans. | B．To show an application of John’s idea. |
| C．To compare John’s different jobs. | D．To erase doubts about John’s invention. |
| A．Nature can repair itself. | B．Organisms need water to survive. |
| C．Life on Earth is diverse. | D．Most tiny creatures live in groups. |
6 . ChatGPT, designed by OpenAI to carry on conversations just like humans, has become a viral excitement. The AI-powered tool went from zero to a million users in just five days! Its ability to provide in-depth answers to user questions has even drawn the attention of distinguished technology companies.
The intelligent robot understands what the user says or types and then responds in a way that makes sense. Its vast body of knowledge has been gathered from the internet and archived books. It is further trained by humans. This makes ChatGPT a useful tool for researching almost any topic.
“We have a lot of information on the internet, but you normally have to Google it, then read it and then do something with it,” says Ricardo, chief science officer and co-founder of AI company Erudit. “Now you’ll have this resource that can process the whole internet and all of the information it contains for you to answer your question.”
ChatGPT cannot think on its own. It depends on the information that it has been trained on. As a result, the AI tool works well for things that have accurate data available. However, when unsure, ChatGPT can get creative and flow out incorrect responses. OpenAI cautions users to check the information no matter how logical it sounds. Also, ChatGPT has only been trained with information till 2021. Hence, it cannot be relied upon for anything that happened after that.
Experts believe ChatGPT has limitless potential to solve real-world problems. It can translate long texts into different languages, create content on almost any topic, and even summarize books.
However, ChatGPT has received mixed reactions from educators. Some believe it could serve as a valuable tool to help build literacy skills in the classroom. It could also be used to teach students difficult science or math concepts. But other educators think ChatGPT will encourage students to cheat. They fear this will prevent them from building critical thinking and problem-solving skills. As a result, many districts are starting to ban its use in schools.
1. What is the unique feature of ChatGPT?| A．It has artificial intelligence. | B．It can answer users’ questions. |
| C．It has the largest number of users. | D．It can engage in meaningful conversations. |
| A．Its capability of information processing. | B．Its accurate information. |
| C．Its availability of up-to-date data. | D．Its vast body of questions. |
| A．ChatGPT is unable to think itself. | B．ChatGPT lacks creativity. |
| C．ChatGPT offers illogical information. | D．ChatGPT is not properly trained. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Disapproving. | C．Objective. | D．Intolerant. |
7 . Computer games have seriously caught the attention of Mass Media. The increasing amount of games with violent scenes socks the society and makes it very aware of them. The fact that violent games cause violence in people is not even doubted by most people. Some say that the reason lies in games being too close to reality. But is it justified only according to the external similarity of these two worlds?
Games originally are entertainment. Contemporary games are very realistic and for this reason they are a source of great experience for the player and develop the imagination. Games are more than entertainment. The research of the New York University led by Green and Bavelier claims that the player preferring active games get an improvement of some types of brain activity, related to processing of visual information. In particular, game players cope with problems of simultaneously (同时地) tracking several moving objects at the average level of 30% better than people who do not play active computer video games. A game is an abstraction. A player gets abstract tasks and acts according to abstract rules. Games are also the possibility to be whoever a person wants to be and to rest from the outside world for some time.
But what if a person gets so much excited with the game scenes that he becomes violent in reality? Then, it proves that the games cause people to become violent. A psychologically healthy person will never confuse or connect these two different worlds. A game is a virtual world with visual images very similar to human. These images represent by themselves nothing but simple playing obstacles. A game may potentially give the opportunity to “destroy the obstacles” that may not be destroyed according to the rules, but it is more about personal choice whether to do it or not. This leads us to the conclusion that violence is not a consequence but the cause. People who originally tend to violence may get annoyed by games and perform violence in the “real world”. In this case violence in games is a simple justification of the violent nature of the player.
1. Which of the following best explains “sock” underlined in Para. 1?| A．Transform. | B．Strike. | C．Interest. | D．Confuse. |
| A．Games can promote some kinds of brain activity. |
| B．Games can give people space to be themselves. |
| C．Games can be a source of great experience. |
| D．Games can help players solve problems. |
| A．Abstract violent tasks. | B．Violent visual images. |
| C．Realistic computer games. | D．Individuals’ violent nature. |
| A．Violence: Not a Consequence of Games | B．Violence: Not a Justification of Players |
| C．Games: The Violent Virtual Reality | D．Games: The Cause of Violence |
8 . What is the purpose of lightning? The new study published at the end of April in Science found that lightning may play a bigger role in global climate change than was previously known by the scientific community.
Many are familiar with the potentially deadly dangers posed by lightning, which is blamed for an average of 43 deaths in the United States each year, based on data from 1989 to 2018. Although the odds of being struck are quite low-1 in 1, 222, 000 in a given year and 1 in 15, 300 in a lifetime many in the weather community have long urged people to take proper precautions to stay safe in storms. However, the researchers recently uncovered a surprising and beneficial impact of lightning.
The study, which included contributions from nine atmospheric researchers across a dozen universities, was based on an airborne research flight conducted by a NASA DC-8 storm-chasing plane in 2012. Researchers initially thought there was a problem with the equipment on the plane, which was being used to measure the hydroxyl radicals (羟基自由基) in the atmosphere until they realized increases they observed corresponded with lightning flashes, ABC News reported.
Hydroxyl radicals, described as a “chemical scavenger (清洗剂) ” by Science Direct, are important chemical compounds found in the atmosphere due to the reactive nature with other organic molecules (分子). Researchers previously understood that lightning could help to clean the atmosphere, but there was no evidence that it could generate compounds like these radicals. “No one has seen that much in the atmosphere from natural processes, ever,” Brune said. As a result, the study estimates that somewhere between 2% and 16% of the oxidizing (氧化), or cleaning that happens naturally in the Earth’s atmosphere, is done by lightning.
Why is this significant? The oxidation process helps to reduce chemicals like carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere. These chemicals, known for being greenhouse gases, have been proven to contribute to rising temperatures associated with climate change. Researchers say that more studies will need to be conducted to verify the degree to which lightning contributes to the fight against global climate change.
1. What do the statistics in Para 2 tell us about lightning?| A．It threatens human lives. | B．It can only harm people. |
| C．It is a strange phenomenon. | D．It happens quite frequently. |
| A．The equipment failure on the storm-chasing plane. |
| B．The increase of Hydroxyl radicals during lightning. |
| C．The lightning flashes observed by the research team. |
| D．The airborne research conducted by NASA scientists. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Amazed. | C．Frustrated. | D．Ambiguous. |
| A．Hydroxyl radicals clean the atmosphere. |
| B．Oxidizing is a natural result of lightning. |
| C．Lightning may help address climate change. |
| D．Greenhouse gases contribute to rising temperature. |
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