1 . The Federal Communications Commission of the US recently issued the first-ever fine for space junk, against the Dish Network. The satellite television company failed to properly deal with one of its satellites, leaving it at a lower orbit than it promised when securing its license.
Some space junk was discarded during missions — maybe an astronaut dropped his lucky penny, or released an instrument’s camera cover after it was no longer needed. Other junk, however, is the result of collisions: Even that lucky penny, traveling at 15 times the speed of a bullet, can cause huge damage — ending a satellite’s mission or, worse, breaking that satellite into pieces.
That’s obviously bad news for satellites. The solution isn’t to demand the launch of fewer satellites; these bring real benefits to people on the Earth.
And while traffic management is certainly necessary, pieces of garbage are never going to be able to follow even the most sensible rules of the orbital road. That means two things need to happen: People need to stop littering, and they need to take out some trash.
The professionals, unsurprisingly, have more carefully considered names for these processes — mitigation (减轻) and remediation (补救). Any time a company wants to put a satellite in the sky, it should have a clear plan for the instrument’s end of life. For objects in very high geostationary orbit (地球同步轨道), this usually involves sending the item to the out-of-the-way “graveyard” orbit. For objects lower down, it tends instead to involve moving them lower still, so that they will bum up upon reentering the atmosphere.
Active removal of garbage that has failed to get out of the way is technically tricky, but at least for large objects, remediation is possible.
Encouragingly, some countries are beginning to try. No nation, however, can save space on its own. A global convention (协定) to set a 21st-century code of conduct for space is in order.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Collected up. | B．Thrown away. |
| C．Produced. | D．Ignored. |
| A．The satellites benefit our life a lot. |
| B．We need new satellites to replace old ones. |
| C．Countries are using satellites to occupy space. |
| D．We must make a deeper exploration into the universe. |
① Sending satellites to the “graveyard” orbit.
② Moving objects lower still.
③ Active removal of debris.
| A．①② | B．②③ | C．①③ | D．①②③ |
| A．To provide solutions to space junk. |
| B．To explain the damage of space junk. |
| C．To call upon countries to fine companies making space junk. |
| D．To appeal to nations for the protection off space environment. |
2 . How has artificial intelligence (AI) changed and shaped our world over the last five years? How will AI continue to impact our lives in the coming years? Those are the questions addressed in my report.
When it comes to the current state of AI, I must say some of the biggest changes in the last five years have been how well AI performs in large data systems on specific types of tasks. We’ve seen Alpha Zero become the best Go player entirely through self-play, and everyday use of AI such as grammar checks and auto complete, automatic personal photo organization, and speech recognition become commonplace for large numbers of people.
In terms of potential, I’m most excited that AI can develop better and be used to assist people in various ways. It can help with decision-making such as identifying the likely treatment options for patients and provide basic assistance such as text-to-speech transformation for the visually damaged. In many situations, people and AI are complementary; that’s why I assume there is a possibility of teaming people with AI.
In the past, people had a fairly rosy outlook on AI, but now the public have a much more mixed view. This comes from the fact we are much less willing to tolerate faults, especially discriminatory ones. There have also been questions of information and disinformation control as people get their news and entertainment by searches and rankings personalized to their needs. So, there’s a much greater recognition that we should not be waiting for AI tools to become mainstream before making sure they are morally correct.
The need to understand the basics of AI and data science starts much earlier than college education, as children are being exposed to AI as soon as they click on online videos. But for computer science students in college, I think a key thing that future engineers need to realize is when to demand input and how to talk across subject boundaries to get at often difficult-to-quantify ideas of safety, equity, and so forth.
1. Why does the author talk about AI’s performance on some tasks in paragraph 2?| A．To criticize AI’s lack of diversity. | B．To show AI’s specialized advancements. |
| C．To explain AI’s superiority to humans. | D．To highlight AI’s considerable intelligence. |
| A．Significant. | B．Independent. | C．Interrelated. | D．Contradictory. |
| A．Its disadvantages. | B．Its moral duty. |
| C．The high expectations. | D．The personalized news. |
| A．Strengths and Faults of AI | B．The Present and Future of AI |
| C．AI: How to Further Develop? | D．Humans vs AI: Who’s Better? |
1. Where does the woman usually watch the 2022 Winter Olympics?
| A．On her cellphone. | B．On TV. | C．On the computer. |
| A．It can be the best in history. |
| B．It’s widely watched in the US. |
| C．It promotes streaming services. |
| A．Figure skating. | B．Freestyle skiing. | C．Ice hockey. |
5 . When you think about it, food is an important part of our lives. Family gatherings center around food and the celebration of major life events and milestones involves food in one way or another. The same holds true for us here on the Space Station. Food is important and ends up usually being a topic of discussion for almost every crew.
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Our food also comes packaged in many ways. But no matter what the form of the food though, you still have the same problem eating it- - you do not want it flying away from you and making a mess when you open it up. In this case a little bit of extra water is extremely helpful. It keeps the food kind of sticking together and to the package and to your spoon. Small things do escape from time to time, but we really try hard to minimize the random flying food problem. That is enough for now! Next time I will write about how to cook in space.
Where is the text most probably taken from?| A．A food magazine. | B．An astronaut’s journal. |
| C．A sci-fi handbook. | D．A space history website. |
1. What can ChatGPT do?
| A．Write long articles. |
| B．Give proper responses. |
| C．Reply to emails interestingly. |
| A．Your satisfaction is guaranteed by the policy. |
| B．Your refund will be back within 10 days. |
| C．You can get your refund after you’ve used 17, 000 words. |
| A．To criticize ChatGPT. |
| B．To advertise KoalaChat. |
| C．To introduce KoalaChat. |
7 . Researchers in China have developed a robotic chemist powered by AI that might be able to obtain oxygen from water on Mars. The robot uses materials found on the red planet to produce catalysts (催化剂) that break down water, releasing oxygen.
“If you think about the challenge of going to Mars, you have to work with local material,” says Andy Cooper, a chemist at the University of Liverpool. “So I can see the logic behind it.”
The study was led by Jun Jiang at the University of Science and Technology of China Jiang and his team used a mobile machine the size of a refrigerator with a robotic arm to analyse five meteorites (陨石) that had come from Mars. The team’s goal was to investigate whether the machine could produce useful catalysts from the material.
The AI-powered system used some chemicals to dissolve (溶解) and separate the material, then analysed the resulting substances that consists of two or more elements. These then formed the basis of a search of more than 3.7 million formulae (公式) for a chemical that could break down water—known to exist as ice at Mars’ poles and under the planet’s surface-a process the team said would have taken a human researcher 2, 000 years. The result was a catalyst that could release oxygen from water, with the potential for use on a future Mars mission.
If a catalyst that can produce oxygen from water can be made on Mars, this would remove the need for missions to carry such a catalyst from Earth. Jiang says that for every square metre of Martian material, his group’s system could make nearly 60 grams of oxygen per hour, potentially removing the need for astronauts on future missions to the planet to carry oxygen from Earth to use when they get there. “The robot can work continuously for years, ” says Jiang.
Jiang points out that his group’s robotic chemist could also be used to produce other useful catalysts on Mars, for processes like fertilizing (施肥) plants. “Different chemicals can be made by this robot,” he says. And Mars isn’t the only place where it could be used. “Maybe lunar soil is another direction,” Jiang says.
1. What can we learn about the study?| A．A chemist with a robotic arm is involved. |
| B．Researchers aim to purify the water on Mars. |
| C．Oxygen is of vital importance in space travels. |
| D．Materials from Mars are analysed to produce catalysts. |
| A．Approving. | B．Unclear. | C．Dismissive. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Precise calculation. | B．Integration of materials. |
| C．High-speed operation. | D．Flexibility of movement. |
| A．The robot can stand endless working time. |
| B．Martian catalysts can produce more oxygen. |
| C．The system can make 60 grams of oxygen per day. |
| D．The robotic chemist can be applied in a broader way. |
8 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. What impact has the coronavirus had on public transport?| A．It has been shut. | B．It is being used less. | C．It has been destroyed. |
| A．25%. | B．39%. | C．300%. |
| A．We should keep positive changes. |
| B．The world can adapt to any change. |
| C．It’s better to look to the past for answers. |
1. Which of the following can people do in the “Gravity Chair”?
| A．Experience spacewalk. | B．Sleep in a special bed. | C．See a rocket take off. |
| A．Visitors must build a rocket themselves. |
| B．Children under nine are forbidden to take part. |
| C．People have to eat freeze-dried food. |
| A．$325. | B．$575. | C．$875. |
| A．Camp activities. | B．Astronauts’ life. | C．Space travel. |
10 . In one horrible film plot, Al eventually outsmarts humans and takes over computers and factories. In another, large language models (LLMs) of the sort that power generative AI like ChatGPT give bad guys the know-how to create destructive cyberweapons.
It is time to think hard about these film plots, not because they have become more probable but because policymakers around the world are considering measures to guard against them. The idea that AI could drive humans to extinction is speculative—no one yet knows how such a threat might materialise and no common methods exist for determining what counts as risky. Plenty of research needs to be done before standards and rules can be set.
Governments cannot ignore a technology that could change the world deeply. Regulators have been too slow in the past, but there is danger, too, in acting hurriedly. If they go too fast, policymakers could create global rules that are aimed at the wrong problems and are ineffective against the real ones.
Because of the computing resources and technical skills required, only a handful of companies have so far developed powerful “frontier” models. New hurried regulations could easily block out competitors to the “handful of companies”, especially because these companies are working closely with governments on writing the rule book. A focus on extreme risks is likely to make regulators careful of open -source models, which are freely available and can easily be revised.
The best that governments can do now is to set up the basic systems to study the technology and its potential risks, and ensure that those working on the problem have enough resources. As AI develops further, regulators will have a far better idea of what risks they are guarding against, and consequently what the rule book should look like. A fully mature body could eventually take shape. But creating it will take time and reflection.
1. What does the first paragraph function as?| A．An argument. | B．An explanation. | C．A comment. | D．A lead-in. |
| A．Theoretical. | B．Common. | C．Unique. | D．False. |
| A．Competition in this area is prevented. | B．The development of AI is restricted. |
| C．AI will be applied to a limited degree. | D．The public will be misled about danger. |
| A．AI: a Real Threat? | B．Don’t Rush into Policing AI |
| C．AI: Humans’ Friend or Enemy? | D．Time for Government to Regulate AI |
