1 . As we all know, insects can be remarkably agile (灵活的) in flight. This is really hard to build into flying robots, but MIT Assistant Professor Kevin Yufeng Chen has developed an insect-sized drone (无人机) that approaches insects’ agility.
Typically, drones require wide open spaces. “If we look at most drones today, they’re usually quite big,” says Chen. “Most of their applications involve flying outdoors. The question is: Can you create an insect-sized drone that can move around in very crowded and complex spaces?”
According to Chen, he overcame many problems when building the drone. The insect-sized drone requires a fundamentally different construction from a larger one. The large drone is usually powered by a motor, but the motor loses efficiency as you shrink it. So, Chen says, “For an insect-sized drone, you need to look for alternatives.” The principal alternative until now has been employing a small, rigid actuator (执行器) built from new materials. Chen designed a more agile tiny drone using soft actuators instead of hard ones.
......
1. What can we know about the actuator designed by Chen?A.It weighs about six grams. |
B.It drives the insect-sized drone. |
C.It loses efficiency too much. |
D.It employs conventional materials. |
2 . If you want to tell the history of the whole world, a history that does not privilege one part of humanity, you cannot do it through texts alone, because only some of the world has ever had texts, while most of the world, for most of the time, has not. Writing is one of humanity’s later achievements, and until fairly recently even many literate (有文字的) societies recorded their concerns not only in writing but in things.
Ideally a history would bring together texts and objects, and some chapters of this book are able to do just that, but in many cases we simply can’t. The clearest example of this between literate and non-literate history is perhaps the first conflict, at Botany Bay, between Captain Cook’s voyage and the Australian Aboriginals. From the English side, we have scientific reports and the captain’s record of that terrible day. From the Australian side, we have only a wooden shield (盾) dropped by a man in flight after his first experience of gunshot. If we want to reconstruct what was actually going on that day, the shield must be questioned and interpreted as deeply and strictly as the written reports.
In addition to the problem of miscomprehension from both sides, there are victories accidentally or deliberately twisted, especially when only the victors know how to write. Those who are on the losing side often have only their things to tell their stories. The Caribbean Taino, the Australian Aboriginals, the African people of Benin and the Incas, all of whom appear in this book, can speak to us now of their past achievements most powerfully through the objects they made: a history told through things gives them back a voice. When we consider contact (联系) between literate and non-literate societies such as these, all our first-hand accounts are necessarily twisted, only one half of a dialogue. If we are to find the other half of that conversation, we have to read not just the texts, but the objects.
What does the author indicate by mentioning Captain Cook in paragraph 2?
A.His report was scientific. |
B.He represented the local people. |
C.He ruled over Botany Bay. |
D.His record was one-sided. |
We sat down next to each other, but David wouldn’t look at me. Tapping him gently on the shoulder, I asked David what had caused him to decide to give up the opportunity.
Family is the cell of the society, and rulers of past dynasties all paid great attention to the stability of families, which affected the stability of the society and the ruler’s system of government as well.
In the Past
The Chinese family as it is described in the Story of the Stone (hong lou meng, Qing dyansty) is the result of a long historical development.
The Chinese for “family” is Jia, which generally means the basic family group, those who are related by blood, marriage, or adoption, living and managing their finances together. In a Jia, the males are all blood relations. Sons live in their father's house with their wives, who have been brought in from outside the family. As soon as daughters come of age, they are married out, that is, they join another Jia. They are members of their parents’ Jia only as long as they are unmarried. During the wedding ceremony, daughters officially end their ties to their father’s patriline, and are promised to serve their new family, including its ancestors. Males are permanent members of the family they were born into; females, however, are expected to eventually leave their born family. Women, therefore, belong to a place in a patriline -- that of their husband, not their father -- when they give birth to a son.
The Jia shares living space and finances. One male, the patriarch (the oldest competent male) has the most authority in all family matters. In the ideal Jia, three, four, or five generations live under one roof. Sons obediently follow their father’s direction in choosing a career and a wife, and every member of the Jia works together for a single aim: keeping and increasing the Jia’s wealth and status. Such a large, multi-generational Jia can grow to be very complex.
For women and children, especially in the large, wealthy, elite families, the Jia was essentially both the center and the limit of the world. The wealth, reputation, and status of the Jia, however, rested largely on the success or failure of men operating outside the Jia.
Modern Chinese Family
According to latest statistics, China has 430 million families (the year 2014), with 3.13 people per household on average. In general, a Chinese family is made up of a couple and their children, but big families with three or more generations can also be found in China. With the pursuit of personal freedom, the trend of forming small families with only directly related members is now popular.
In the past, each Chinese family had a “head”, who had absolute authority at home, and had the final say in family affairs. But now in most Chinese families, the husband and wife, or a couple with other family members, work out together the household plans, and decide family affairs through consultation.
Moreover, family members share the housework, making the division of labor at home more reasonable; and the husband and wife support each other’s work.
Chinese people have the tradition of respecting the old and loving the young. Though many young couples do not live with their parents, they keep close contact with them. Grown-up children have the duty to support and help their parents. The Chinese people attach great importance to relations between family members and relatives, and treasure their parents, children, brothers and sister, uncles, aunts and other relatives.
Family planning has been pushed forward as one of the basic state policies in China. The basic requirements of family planning are late marriages and late childbearing, so as to have fewer but healthier babies, especially one child per couple. But a flexible family planning policy is adopted for rural people and ethnic minorities: in rural areas, couples may have a second baby in exceptional cases, but must wait several years after the birth of the first child; in areas inhabited by minority peoples, each ethnic group may work out different regulations in accordance with its wish, population, natural resources, economy, culture and customs -- now in general a couple may have a second baby, or a third child in some places. As for ethnic minorities with extremely small populations, a couple may have as many children as they want.
Nowadays, universal two-child or three-child policy has been carried out to meet with the country’s aging trend.
1. Taking the Story of the Stone for example, tell your foreign friends about Chinese families.
2. What’s difference between modern Chinese family and Chinese family in the past?
5 . Early fifth-century philosopher St.Augustine famously wrote that he knew what time was unless someone asked him.Albert Einstein added another wrinkle when he theorized that time varies depending on where you measure it.Today’s state-of-the-art atomic(原子的) clocks have proven Einstein right.Even advanced physics can’t decisively tell us what time is, because the answer depends on the question you’re asking.
Forget about time as an absolute.What if,instead of considering time in terms of astronomy,we related time to ecology?What if we allowed environmental conditions to set the tempo(节奏) of human life?We’re increasingly aware of the fact that we can’t control Earth systems with engineering alone,and realizing that we need to moderate(调节)our actions if we hope to live in balance.What if our definition of time reflected that?
Recently,I conceptualized a new approach to timekeeping that’s connected to circumstances on our planet,conditions that might change as a result of global warming.We’re now building a clock at the Anchorage Museum that reflects the total flow of several major Alaskan rivers,which are sensitive to local and global environmental changes.We’ve programmed it to match an atomic clock if the waterways continue to flow at their present rate.If the rivers run faster in the future on average,the clock will get ahead of standard time.If they run slower,you’ll see the opposite effect.
The clock registers both short-term irregularities and long-term trends in river dynamics.It’s a sort of observatory that reveals how the rivers are behaving from their own temporal frame(时间框架),and allows us to witness those changes on our smartwatches or phones.Anyone who opts to go on Alaska Mean River Time will live in harmony with the planet.Anyone who considers river time in relation to atomic time will encounter a major imbalance and may be motivated to counteract it by consuming less fuel or supporting greener policies.
Even if this method of timekeeping is novel in its particulars,early agricultural societies also connected time to natural phenomena.In pre-Classical Greece,for instance,people“corrected”official calendars by shifting dates forward or backward to reflect the change of season.Temporal connection to the environment was vital to their survival.Likewise,river time and other timekeeping systems we’re developing may encourage environmental awareness.
When St.Augustine admitted his inability to define time, he highlighted one of time ‘s most noticeable qualities:Time becomes meaningful only in a defined context.Any timekeeping system is valid,and each is as praiseworthy as its purpose.
What can we infer from this passage?A.It is crucial to improve the definition of time. |
B.A fixed frame will make time meaningless. |
C.We should live in harmony with nature. |
D.History is a mirror reflecting reality. |
6 . China’s first deep-sea floating wind power platform, which is expected to be put into operation by the end of May, marks significant progress in China’s key technological advancement in deep-sea floating wind power, industry experts said.
Offshore construction of China’s first deep-sea floating wind power platform has been completed and ready _____________________, after the 5-kilometer underwater cable was successfully laid on Saturday, said its operator China National Offshore Oil Corp.
A.to be made public by the end of this month |
B.to be promoted by social media from this month |
C.to be put into operation by the end of this month |
D.to be supervised by law from the end of this month |
7 . Teens interested in losing weight, for instance, got advertisements for unhealthy tips on how to become anorexic (厌食者). Such advertisements targeted these kids in hopes of persuading them to try things that were either dangerous or illegal at their age.
Advertisements are just one example of persuasion — trying to change another’s mind. Advertisements may try to convince us to buy something or do something new and different. Marketing is a field of persuasion designed to sell things, notes Jacob Teeny. Persuasion can be used to sell things. At its worst, it can be used to control people. Clearly, persuasion can be used for good and bad.
People open to new experiences tend to be more easily persuaded, Teeny says. But open-minded people can resist some persuasive arguments — such as the idea that eating junk food is cool. And closed-minded people can sometimes be persuaded. “If you haven’t really thought about the arguments” ahead of time, Teeny says, you’re going to be “much more persuadable.”
…
What is the main idea of Paragraph 2?
A.Marketing is designed to sell things. |
B.Persuasion is used to control people. |
C.Persuasion has advantages and disadvantages. |
D.We should follow advertisements to buy things. |
8 . The call for public engagement with the unthinkable is especially germane in this moment of still-uncontrolled pandemic and economic crises in the world’s most technologically advanced nations. Not very long ago, it was also unthinkable that a virus would shut down nations and that safety nets would be proven so disastrously lacking in flexibility.
What does the underlined word “germane” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?
A.Scientific. | B.Credible. |
C.Original. | D.Relevant. |
9 . As much as many ALifers hate emphasizing their research’s applications, the attempts to create artificial life could have practical payoffs. Artificial intelligence may be considered ALife’s cousin in that researchers in both fields are enamored by a concept called open-ended evolution (演化). This is the capacity for a system to create essentially endless complexity, to be a sort of “novelty generator”. The only system known to exhibit this is Earth’s biosphere. If the field of ALife manages to reproduce life’s endless “creativity” in some virtual model, those same principles could give rise to truly inventive machines.
What does the word “enamored” underlined in Paragraph 3 most probably mean?
A.Shocked. | B.Protected. | C.Attracted. | D.Challenged. |
10 . In 1916, two girls of wealthy families, best friends from Auburn, N. Y.—Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood—traveled to a settlement in the Rocky Mountains to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. The girls had gone to Smith College. They wore expensive clothes. So for them to move to Elkhead, Colo. to instruct the children whose shoes were held together with string was a surprise. Their stay in Elkhead is the subject of Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden, who is a magazine editor and Dorothy Woodruff’s granddaughter.
Why did they go then? Well, they wanted to do something useful. Soon, however, they realized what they had undertaken.
They moved in with a local family, the Harrisons, and, like them, had little privacy, rare baths, and a blanket of snow on their quilt when they woke up in the morning. Some mornings, Rosamond and Dorothy would arrive at the schoolhouse to find the children weeping from the cold. In spring, the snow was replaced by mud over ice.
In Wickenden’s book, she expanded on the history of the West and also on feminism, which of course influenced the girls’ decision to go to Elkhead. A hair-raising section concerns the building of the railroads, which entailed (牵涉) drilling through the Rockies, often in blinding snowstorms. The book ends with Rosamond and Dorothy’s return to Auburn.
Wickenden is a very good storyteller. The sweep of the land and the stoicism (坚忍) of the people move her to some beautiful writing. Here is a picture of Dorothy Woodruff, on her horse, looking down from a hill top: “When the sun slipped behind the mountains, it shed a rosy glow all around them. Then a full moon rose. The snow was marked only by small animals: foxes, coyotes, mice, and varying hares, which turned white in the winter.”
What is the text?A.A news report. | B.A book review. |
C.A children’s story. | D.A diary entry. |