1 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. advances B. combed C. net D. heads E. automation F. modest G. comprehensive H. thinned I. prior J. underlie K. unearth

Does technology replace more jobs than it creates? What is the     1     balance between these two things? Until now, that has not been measured. But a new research project led by MIT economist David Autor has developed an answer, at least for U.S. history since 1940. The study uses new methods to examine how many jobs have been lost to machine     2    , and how many have been generated through “augmentation (增强),” in which technology creates new tasks. Overall, the study finds, and particularly since 1980, technology has replaced more U.S. jobs than it has generated.

“There does appear to be a faster rate of automation, and a slower rate of augmentation, in the last four decades. from 1980 to the present, than in the four decades     3    .” says Autor. However, that finding is only one of the study’s     4    . The researchers have also developed an entirely new method for studying the issue, based on an analysis of thousands of U.S. census job categories in relation to a(n)     5     look at the text of U. S. patents over the last century. That has allowed them, for the first time, to quantify the effects of technology over both job loss and job creation.

The study finds that overall, about 60 percent of jobs in the U.S. represent new types of work, which have been created since 1940. To determine this, Autor and his colleagues     6     through about 35,000 job categories, tracking how they emerge over time. They also used natural language processing tools to analyze the text of every U.S. patent filed since 1920. The research examined how words were “embedded” in the census and patent documents to     7     related passages of text. That allowed them to determine links between new technologies and their effects on employment.

From about 1940 through 1980, for instance, jobs like elevator operator and typesetter tended to get automated. But at the same time, more workers filled roles such as shipping and receiving clerks, buyers and department     8    , and civil and space engineers. From 1980 through 2018, the ranks of cabinetmakers and machinists, among others, have been     9     by automation, while industrial engineers, and operations and systems researchers and analysts, have enjoyed growth.

Ultimately, the research suggests that the negative effects of automation on employment were more than twice as great in the 1980-2018 period as in the 1940-1980 period. There was a more     10    , and positive, change in the effect of augmentation on employment in 1980-2018, as compared to 1940-1980.

2 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

In an age of rapidly growing urbanization, rooftop farming has emerged as a sustainable response     1     the challenge of creating green space in cities. This innovative practice transforms rooftops into mini farms, where vegetables, fruits, and even flowers     2     (plant), providing local residents with fresh produce and adding a touch of nature to urban environments.

Rooftop farming, also     3     (refer) to as vertical agriculture, is more than just a trend; it’s a step towards environmental conservation. Green roofs with vegetation help to absorb sunlight and release moisture, cooling the air and reducing the demand for air conditioning,     4     in turn lessens energy     5     (consume) and carbon emission. Meanwhile, rooftop farms serve as educational platforms,     6     (teach) city dwellers about sustainable agriculture practices and the importance of locally     7     (source) food.

As urban populations continue to grow, rooftop farming fosters community engagement     8     promotes healthier lifestyles by providing access to fresh and organic produce. When we look towards     9     future where environmental consciousness and sustainable practices become increasingly vital, rooftop farming stands as a testament to our ability to cultivate more than just food—we cultivate hope for a     10     (green) and more resilient world.

3 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. process     B. impacting       C. appearance       D. linked        E. assessment     F. costly G. crucial       H. highly            I. legal                 J. pause          K. marketed

Tobacco use and its negative impacts on health have been well-documented for decades. Traditional tobacco products, such as cigarettes, have been     1     to a wide range of health problems, including cancer, heart disease, respiratory (呼吸的) disorders and others. According to a survey, 78.3 percent of smokers start smoking before age 20. Taiwan Province of China has raised the     2     smoking age to 20 or above. By instituting this change, they hope to reduce the number of young people taking up the habit.

Despite being     3     as a safe alternative to traditional cigarettes, heated tobacco products (HTPs) are still considered tobacco. As such, they pose significant dangers to human health. The heating     4     used in these products releases harmful chemicals and poisons, including tar (焦油), carbon monoxide and nicotine, a(n)     5     addictive substance.

HTPs are packaged to appeal to young people who perceive them as safer than smoking. To prevent young people from experimenting with HTPs and     6     their health, Taiwan Province strictly controls every kind of tobacco product by adding a health risk     7     review mechanism. Only products that pass the review process are allowed to be manufactured, imported and sold to consumers.

The innumerable downsides to smoking should give smokers     8     and encourage them to quit. Quitting tobacco improves your health and reduces your risk of various diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and breathing problems. Quitting smoking can also improve your     9    . Tobacco use can cause wrinkles and yellow teeth. Quitting can lead to healthier skin, whiter teeth and fresher breath. Smoking can also dull your senses of taste and smell. By stopping tobacco use, your senses recover, leading to enhanced enjoyment of food and beverages.

Unfortunately, quitting tobacco isn't easy. Most people will also encounter numerous challenges including nicotine withdrawal and symptoms such as eagerness, irritability (易怒) and difficulty concentrating. Supportive social environments, coping strategies and professional help are     10     for overcoming these things and living a smoke-free life.

4 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one more word than you need.

A. conserve             B. wrinkly             C. stationary             D. exceptional             E. oddities             F. nursing       G. timely             H. sounding             I. generalize             J. comprise             K. rules

The Curious World of Bats

Not all bats are unbelievably adorable, like the one below. Many of them have     1     faces and large ears that help them “see” in the dark, using echo location (回声定位). But all bats are, without a doubt,     2     creatures.

Scientists are typically reluctant to     3     about bats because they make up such a large and diverse group of winged animals. With nearly 1, 500 species, bats     4     about one-fifth of all mammal (哺乳动物) species on Earth. But one thing that can be said about them as a group is that they are, in not- so-scientific terms, very odd. “They break all the     5    ,” said Cori Lausen, a bat expert at the environmental group Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

Being able to fly is just one of their     6    , since mammals rarely fly. Apart from that, bats can also push their heart rate to extreme highs and lows-as slow as one beat per minute. Many bat species can go into a period of deep sleep, known as “torpor”, for a few hours a day or even for weeks to     7     energy when it’s cold or food is unavailable. And while most small mammals have short lives and lots of babies, some bats can live for two decades or more and typically have just one baby per year.

For how much energy they need, it’s also surprising that many bat species, including most of those in the US, rely on insects alone for food. They have to eat ridiculous quantities of them. A mom that is     8     a baby can catch more than 4,000 insects in one night.

Oddly, although bats can fly, they can’t easily take off from a(n)     9     position, like most birds and insects do. That’s one reason why they hang upside down-bats have to gain the momentum they need by falling. “For them, it’s not upside down,” Frick said. “It’s flight-side ready!”

While bats remain highly understudied relative to birds and other mammals, scientists are     10     the alarm. In North America, more than half of all bat species are at risk of severe population decline. Climate change, they say, threatens to only speed up their extinction.

5 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. accompanied       B. allowed       C. feasibly       D. fueled E. intensity       F. option       G. prompting       H. routine I. surgically       J. underlying       K. varied

Brain Signals for Lasting Pain

Brain signals that reveal how much pain a person is in have been discovered by scientists who say the work is a step towards new treatments for people living with lasting pain.

It is the first time researchers have decoded the brain activity     1     patients’ lasting pain. That has raised the hope that brain stimulation treatment already used for Parkinson’s and major depression can help those running out of any other     2    . “We’ve learned that lasting pain can be tracked and predicted in the real world,” said Prasad Shirvalkar, lead researcher on the project at the University of California.

Lasting pain affects nearly 28 million adults in the UK alone, and the causes are     3    . ranging from cancer to back problems. That being the case, lasting pain has     4     a rise in taking powerful painkillers. But no medical treatments work well for the condition,     5     experts to call for a complete rethink in how health services handle patients with lasting pain.

For the latest study, Shirvalkar and his colleagues     6     implanted electrodes(电极) into four patients with lasting pain hard to deal with after the loss of legs. The devices     7     the patients to record activity and collect data in two brain regions— the ACC and the OFC—at the press of one button on a remote handset. Several times a day, the volunteers were asked to complete short surveys on the     8     of pain, meaning how strong the pain was, and then record their brain activity. These scientists, armed with the survey responses and brain recordings, found they could use computers to predict a person’s pain based on the electrical signals in their OFC. “We found very different brain activity     9     severe pain and have developed an objective biomarker for that kind of pain,” said Shirvalkar. The finding may explain, at least in part, why     10     painkillers are less effective for lasting pain. “The hope is that we can use the information to develop personalized brain stimulation treatment for the most severe forms of pain.”

6 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. activate       B. amounted       C. compared       D. energetic       E. guidelines       F. identify G. image       H. influenced       I. respects       J. review       K. substantial

Exercise Can Help Prevent Depression, Study Finds

How often do you exercise? A new     1     from researchers at the University of Cambridge shows that those who exercise are less likely to develop depression, even if they exercise less than the recommended amount.

The Department of Health and Human Services recommends that adults engage in 2.5 to 5 hours of moderate activity per week or one hour and 15 minutes to 2.5 hours of     2     aerobic (有氧的) exercise per week or some combination of the two.

Adults who took a walk for what     3     to 2.5 hours per week were less likely to develop depression than those who didn’t exercise at all, the study found. But even those who exercised less felt better than those who didn’t exercise at all, according to researchers. “In this study, a relatively small amount of physical activity were associated with a(n)     4     decrease in risks of depression,” the study says. The researchers analyzed 15 studies with nearly 200,000 participants. Those who did about half the recommended amount of physical activity per week had an 18% lower risk of depression     5     with adults who did not exercise, the study says. Participants who exercised the recommended amount had a 25% lower risk of depression than those who did not. Exercising more than the recommended amount hardly     6     depression risk, according to researchers.

Many     7     of exercise can lead to improved mental health. For example, working out can increase circulation (血液循环) to the brain and     8     the central nervous system, leading to what many refer to as a “runners high,” the study says. More exercise can also lead to improved physical health and a better body     9    , which can cause a person to be more social, researchers say.

Nearly 5% of adults in the U.S. report regular feelings of depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among the study participants, researchers estimate that 1 in every 9 cases of depression might have been prevented had everyone met recommended exercise     10    , the study says.

7 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once.   Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. chaos        B. consume        C. plentiful       D. discharge        E. evolutionarily     F. extent G. freeze   H. mechanism       I. novel          J. subsequently     K. unstable

Science in Images

Oyster mushrooms feature in cuisines around the world, but they should be off the menu for hungry worms -- which these delicious mushrooms will kill and eat. Now researchers finally know how they do it.

A study published in Science Advances details how oyster mushrooms use a particular poisonous substance to freeze and get rid of mushroom-eating roundworms called nematodes (线虫). The mushrooms, which grow on nutrient-poor dead wood, then     1     the worms for nutrition.

“Nematodes happen to be the most     2     animals these mushrooms encounter. So I think,     3    , this cross-kingdom interaction is very interesting,” says study senior author.

The study team of geneticists, biochemists and biologists had previously found that oyster mushrooms release an unidentified poisonous substance that will somehow     4     the worms within minutes and cause a chemical element to flow into their cells, killing them. This     5     differs from those used by other meat-eating mushrooms and could be unique to oyster mushrooms.

For their new work, the researchers grew and analyzed samples of the mushroom’s tissue, finding no noticeable poison even when they broke it up. They reasoned that whatever was killing the worms must be a kind of     6     compound that disappears into air when disturbed. When they damaged the oyster mushroom tissue again and     7     analyzed the nearby air, they finally found a nerve gas that turned out to be contained with tiny, special-shaped structures on the mushroom surface. When nematodes touch the mushrooms, these structures     8     their gas, disturbing the worms’ cell walls to cause immobility and death. The worm is then digested by the mushrooms.

Before this study, “we underestimated the     9     to which wild mushrooms defend against or consume nematodes,” notes Nick Talbot, a geneticist at Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, England. The study demonstrates “a very     10     approach,” he adds. “These organisms are really difficult to work on, and Dr. Hsueh is showing that you can do some really amazing work with them.”

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. actually B. amazed C. breathtaking D. critics E. gradually F. prize G. reflection H. release I. solid J. standardize K. switched

Will AI allow humans to play a part?

Rebecca used to have a regular job, translating a fashion brand’s website into German. One day a big change happened. The company     1     to using machine translation. She kept the job, and it still paid the bills; however, she was now there to check and     2     whatever was produced by the computer. But there was a complaint.

“What it meant,     3    , was that we humans were training a machine,” she says. Each corrected caption for a mid-priced T-shirt, each pair of skinny jeans, was a data point for the robot that was going to replace her. With the     4     of chat programs that can imitate humans, the world is now beginning to consider what the coming of artificial intelligence means. What will it do for our jobs if many once     5     professions — law, accountancy, medicine — disappear? What does it mean to be a human when the thing that humans most       6    — intelligence — has become the cheapest product on the planet? Translators, for good and ill, don’t have to wonder. “You can take the world of translators and interpreters as a       7     of the world,” says Nicki Bone, chairwoman of the board of the Institute of Translating and Interpreting. Not all of them are adjusting. “Of course, we have our     8    ,” but she adds, “There are also opportunities, and optimists.”

The speed of change, though, has been     9    . Increasingly, says Bone, she and her colleagues are acting as editors of a machine’s first pass, rather than translators of the raw material.

For some, that’s fine. “People will say, ‘OK, instead of working at one rate for this number of words per hour, I’m working at many more words per hour, but for a much lower rate.’ Some are happy to take on. Some won’t, as a matter of principle.”

As we are     10     at ChatGPT and its great ability to imitate human writing, translators are, compared with the rest of the professions, sensitive. Anyway, this technology is here to stay.

9 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. convincing       B. disinformation       C. hazards       D. illogical       E. maintain   F. preview G. publicly       H. racing       I. response       J. speed       K. seemingly

OpenAI Unveils A.I. that Instantly Generates Eye-Popping Videos

Last April, a New York start-up called Runway AI revealed technology that let people generate videos. The four-second videos were shadowy and disturbing. But they were a clear sign that artificial intelligence technologies would generate increasingly     1     videos sooner. Just 10 months later, OpenAI has revealed a similar system, Sora, that creates videos that look as if they were lifted from a Hollywood movie.

OpenAI is among the many companies     2     to improve this kind of instant video generator. The technology could     3     the work of experienced moviemakers. It could also become a quick and inexpensive way of creating online     4    , making it even harder to tell what’s real on the internet.

In an interview, the team behind the technology said the company was not yet releasing Sora to the public because it was still working to understand the system’s     5    . The intention here is to give a(n)     6     of what is likely to happen soon, so that people can see the capabilities of this technology.

Like other generative A.I. technologies, OpenAI’s system learns by analyzing digital data — in this case, videos and subtitles describing what those videos contain. OpenAI declined to say how many videos the system learned from or where they came from, except to say the training included both     7     available videos and videos that were licensed from copyright holders. The company says little about the data used to train its technologies, most likely because it wants to     8     an advantage over competitors.

Sora generates videos in     9     to short descriptions. Though the videos can be impressive, they may include strange and     10     images. The system, for example, recently generated a video of someone eating a cookie — but the cookie never got any smaller.

10 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. empowers          B. termed                 C. interaction          D. implications       E. advances   F. question                       G. obtained             H. additionally       I. pressure                  J. currently             K. defining

A New Era of Creative Partnerships

In a new paper in a Nature Human Behavior special issue on AI, researcher Janet Rafner from Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies and Center for Hybrid Intelligence at Aarhus University and Prof. Jacob Sherson, director of the Center for Hybrid Intelligence, together with international partners, discuss research and societal       1     of creativity and AI.

The team of researchers argue that we should direct our attention to understanding and developing co-creativity, the interaction between humans and machines towards what is       2     a human-centered AI and hybrid intelligence.   In this way we will be able to develop interfaces(界面) that at the same time ensure both high degrees of automatization through AI and human control and hereby supporting a relationship that best    3     each other.

Rafner comments: To date, most studies on human-AI co-creativity come from the field of human-computer     4     and focus on the abilities of the AI, and the interaction design and dynamics.

While these       5     are key for understanding the dynamics between humans and algorithms(算法) and human attitudes towards the co-creative process and product, there is an urgent need to enrich these applications with the insights about creativity     6     over the past decades in the psychological sciences.

“Right now, we need to move the conversation away from questions like Can AI be creative? One reason for this is that    7     creativity is not set in stone. When investigating human only, machine only, and human-AI co-creativity, we need to consider the type and level of creativity under       8    , from everyday creative activities that are perhaps more suitable to machine automatization to contributions that may require higher-level human intervention;     9    , it is much more meaningful to consider some questions like, what are the similarities and differences in human cognition, behavior, motivation and self-efficacy(自我效能) between human-AI co-creativity and human creativity?”explains Rafner.

We,     10    , don’t know enough about co-creativity between humans and machines, because the line between humans and artificial intelligence isn’t always clear. Looking ahead, researchers should balance predictive accuracy with theoretical understanding, towards the goal of developing intelligent systems to both measure and enhance human creativity.