1 . Salad is good for you, generally speaking, so growing fresh greens in orbit seems like a winning way for space workers to stay healthy. New research suggests that as nutritious as space salad might be, it could pose something of a risk to astronauts.
The problem is growing leafy plants like lettuce (生菜) in space can come with a side dish of bacteria (细菌), according to a new study from a team at the University of Delaware. In tests on plants grown in modeled micro-gravity, they were shown to actually be more sensitive than normal to the Salmonella enterica (SE) (沙门氏菌).
We know that the International Space Station (ISS) is home to a lot of aggressive bacteria, and if these space virus were to cause widespread sickness in an astronaut crew, it would mean lives were at risk. “You don’t want the whole mission to fail just because of a food safety outbreak,” says plant biologist Harsh Bais from the University of Delaware.
Bais and his colleagues used a device to perform some clever rotation tricks in the lab, putting lettuce plants into a similar state as they would be in micro-gravity. They then added SE bacteria to the leaves. What was interesting — and surprising — was that the tiny stomata (气孔) in the lettuce opened up to allow the bacteria to get in. Ordinarily, the job of the stomata is to keep dangerous attackers out, while at the same time helping the plant to breathe.
The researchers then added a more helpful species of bacteria, one that typically protects plants from external stressors. Again, the defense didn’t work in micro-gravity — suggesting there’s something about this state that disables the chemical reactions that the lettuce would normally use to keep itself safe.
Add in what we know about space bacteria being particularly tricky, and this is a potential problem. The team behind the study wants to see a lot more research into making sure our foodstuffs are safe outside of orbit.
1. Why can’t lettuce be grown in ISS?| A．Its leaves takes up too much space. | B．It brings in illness-causing bacteria. |
| C．It is only a side dish to astronauts. | D．It can’t grow well in micro-gravity. |
| A．Negative. | B．Sensitive. | C．Enthusiastic. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．They kept lettuce from breathing. | B．They ensure the safety of lettuce. |
| C．They failed to function as expected. | D．They stopped all bacteria coming in. |
| A．SE, the Worst Bacteria in Space | B．Greens for Salad, a Risk in Space |
| C．Lettuce, Plant Samples Used in Space | D．Food Safety, a Key Problem in Space |
2 . Thanks to artificial intelligence, education is more accessible and efficient than ever. To give you an overview of the industry, we round up some AI technology applied in education.
Duolingo
Duolingo provides listening, reading and speaking exercises in dozens of global languages, all the while providing aspects of gamification to keep users coming back. By applying AI, Duolingo’s lessons are paced and leveled specifically for each student according to their performance. It also uses data and machine learning to make course improvements, taking into consideration the differences of various languages.
Amira Learning
Amira Learning is a virtual learning application created to accelerate young students’ reading comprehension. Using AI technology, Amira has students read stories aloud and can assess oral reading fluency as well as identify areas for improvement. For teachers and parents, Amira also provides services such as student progress reports and dyslexia (阅读障碍) risk screening.
Blippar
Blippar’s products combine computer vision intelligence technology and augmented reality to enhance the way students learn in the classroom. The interactive materials bring subjects like geography, biology and physics to a visual space. For example, instead of reading about a volcanic eruption, the system shows students a virtual 3D model of the eruption process.
Nuance
Nuance makes speech-to-text software used by students and faculty to transcribe (转成) up to 160 words per minute. The technology is especially helpful for students who struggle with writing or have limited mobility. It also enhances spelling ability and word identification. Instructors use the software to dictate lectures for later use or quicken repetitive tasks like document and email creation.
1. Which platform uses gamification to engage users in language learning?| A．Amira Learning. | B．Blippar. |
| C．Nuance. | D．Duolingo. |
| A．Speech-to-text software. |
| B．Reading comprehension. |
| C．Computer vision intelligence technology. |
| D．Personalized language learning with gamification. |
| A．They focus on language learning. |
| B．They specialize in science subjects. |
| C．They use technology to aid learning. |
| D．They offer computer programming courses. |
3 . FREE ONLINE FIRST AID COURSE
Welcome to our online first aid course. Anyone can take this training online and learn more about lifesaving first aid. We provide this first aid training for no charge.
Simply work your way through our online first aid modules (模块) below. You must be logged in (登录) to access the course material. If you don’t have an account, then please register. Basic online first aid course
Below are the modules for our online first aid course. You do not have to take them in a specific order. However, if you are totally new to first aid, it may help to start at the beginning.
At the end of each module there is a first aid test where you can test your knowledge. Once you’ve completed all the modules, you can download a free first aid certificate (证书).
| Module 1 | Introduction to First Aid |
| Module 2 | The Unconscious Victim |
| Module 3 | Bleeding and Shock. |
| Module 4 | Burns |
Please remember to mark all the modules as completed otherwise you will not be able to download your basic first aid certificate. Modules marked as completed will have a green tick next to them above.
Advanced online first aid courseCompleted the above course? Why not check out our new free online advanced first aid course? This course will build upon the training and content in the basic first aid course above and will help further your knowledge on topics such as:
* Medical conditions
* Minor injuries
* Patient assessment
* Clinical observations
* The roles and responsibilities of a first aider
As always, you will receive a free first aid certificate once you complete the advanced course.
1. What is a must to learn this online course?| A．Offering a small fee for the training. | B．Having an account on this website. |
| C．Learning the course in the required order. | D．Taking a first aid test before the course. |
| A．Module 1. | B．Module 2. | C．Module 3. | D．Module 4. |
| A．It provides a paid certificate of honor. |
| B．It is intended for professional medical workers. |
| C．It teaches people how to judge patients’ condition. |
| D．It has nothing to do with basic first aid knowledge. |
4 . The Australian National University (ANU) and an Australian start-up, Lunaria One, are teaming up to grow plants on the moon together, as early as 2025. Lunari a One’s ALEPH project is an early step toward growing plants for food, medicine and oxygen production. However, the problem is that the moon is like a desert (沙漠). There’s no life there, only dust, rocks and water.
“Space provides a unique opportunity to study how to grow plants in extreme environments,” said ANU Associate Professor Caitlin Byrt. “The extreme conditions that the Earth is facing because of climate change present challenges for how we manage food security in the future. Having controlled environments can create the ability to rapidly grow plants after natural disasters or events caused by climate change. So this project is important. If you can create a system for growing plants on the moon, then you can create a system for growing food in some of the most challenging environments on Earth.”
As to what plants to be grown on the moon researchers are still deciding, but one of the front runners under consideration is Tripogon loliiformis, a kind of Australian native (本土的) grass that can live in extreme conditions and survive for months without water. According to a plant biologist, even after losing more than 95 per cent of its relative water content, the dead-looking grass remains alive and continues to grow when provided with water. Whatever plants are selected, they will be transported to the moon in a dry and sleeping state and will come to life upon watering.
The ship will take off in 2025. Upon arrival, pictures and videos will be sent back to Earth over a 72-hour period and will be publicly accessible (可得到的). “The ALEPH project aims to make the science and engineering behind growing life on the moon open to people. And we hope to get everyone involved (参与的) and listen to their opinions. If you’re interested in the project, you can get all the necessary information from our website,” said Lauren Fell, the director of Lunaria One.
1. What does the second paragraph mainly tell us?| A．The methods of growing plants in space. | B．The challenges of growing plants after disasters. |
| C．The value of growing plants on the moon. | D．The need to grow food for a growing population. |
| A．It can produce young plants fast. | B．It can live with little water. |
| C．It is the most common grass in Australia. | D．It can naturally wake up from a sleeping state. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Shocked. | C．Negative. | D．Worried. |
| A．Plants are on the moon for the first time |
| B．How to care for plants in extreme environments? |
| C．Why can this Australian native grass grow in space? |
| D．A space project aims to grow plants on the moon |
5 . Robotics/Artificial Intelligence (AI) Competitions for High School Students
Robotics and AI competitions are a great way for high schoolers to dive into modern technologies. Here are four of them.
MATE ROV Competition
Location: Houston, Texas
Awards: VR headsets
Competition Date: March to June
MATE ROV Competition challenges students to design and build remotely operated vehicles, and its purpose is to see who can design a vehicle that will help monitor ocean health, provide clean energy, or just help keep our oceans healthy for the future.
RoboRave
Location: Lorrach, Germany
Awards: Small cash prizes
Competition Date: November
RoboRave is a robotics competition that welcomes participants to compete in various challenges like firefighting. The competition’s unique aspect lies in its international reach, bringing together enthusiasts from around the world to celebrate robotics education and hands-on learning.
Agorize AI Challenge
Location: Virtual for initial phases, then in Paris, France for the final award ceremony
Awards: A trip to the destination of your choice, iPad, Apple TV
Competition Date: September
In this project, you can work in teams of 2-5 people to present an idea for how we can use AI-technologies to impact a specific field, like marketing, healthcare, etc. You’ll send in your initial application in a 3-5 slides presentation, and if your team makes it pass this phase, you’ll have the opportunity to include more information about your product features.
OpenCV AI Competition
Location: Online
Awards: Certificates, cash, free courses
Competition Date: December
In your project, you can either work individually or in teams of three using computer vision technologies. OpenCV AI Competition suggests project ideas related to robotics, agriculture or education, but you’re not limited to these areas.
1. Which of the following mainly welcomes the entries for oceanic conditions?| A．RoboRave. | B．MATE ROV Competition. |
| C．Agorize AI Challenge. | D．OpenCV AI Competition. |
| A．It is held every month. | B．It offers online training. |
| C．It is a global competition. | D．It promises a national tour. |
| A．They allow teamwork. | B．They provide free courses. |
| C．They fund their winners. | D．They need presentations at first. |
6 . In January 2020, I left for a mission, along with a 75-person crew. I had got to know everyone quite well, which made me feel confident that everything would run smoothly. The main goal of the mission was to voyage through the water, identifying boats and aircraft with our sensors while remaining undetected. We were the eyes and ears of the French navy, 300 metres under the ocean.
Being in a submarine (潜水艇) is a bit like being in a spaceship. Letters from family were allowed to keep crew members motivated, but for safety and caution, all communication from the crew’s families was seen first by navy staff who removed any content that could cause panic on board.
In February 2020, as Covid-19 started to emerge in Europe, the navy began to block all Covid-19-related news in our life. Throughout March and April, we had no idea that Covid-19 was even a thing, let alone that France was under strict lockdown.
The day finally came when we were set to come back. The radio channels on the submarine announced the news: “There is a deadly virus, and the country is locked down.” Actually, the information didn’t make any sense to me at that time. “Lockdown” was a new word to me. I didn’t know what to expect.
When I got out of the submarine. I got my phone back and received weeks’ worth of panicked messages. I took a train back to Paris, where my family lives, and was completely lost. People had masks and gloves on. I put over my mouth a fireproof mask that had been given to me by the navy. I just thought, everyone is hiding their mouths, so I’ll do it, too, even though I didn’t know why.
1. What can we know about the mission?| A．It lasted for 3 months. | B．75 persons participated in it. |
| C．It served for the French navy. | D．Its main task was to explore the ocean. |
| A．His grandfather passed away. | B．His mother came across an accident. |
| C．His girlfriend would break up with him. | D．His son was elected captain of the soccer team. |
| A．Cellphone access. | B．Submarine sensors. |
| C．Calls from families. | D．Radio channels broadcast. |
| A．Confused. | B．Relaxed. | C．Excited. | D．Panicked. |
7 . Even if you haven’t held a conversation with Siri or Alexa, you’ve likely encountered a chatbot online. They often appear in a chat window that pops up with a friendly greeting: Thank you for visiting our site.How can I help you today? Depending on the site, the chatbot is programmed to respond accordingly and even ask follow-up questions.
Chatbots are a form of conversational AI designed to simplify human interaction with computers. They are programmed to simulate human conversation and exhibit intelligent behavior that is equivalent to that of a human.
Chatbots communicate through speech or text. Both rely on artificial intelligence technologies like machine learning and natural language processing (NLP), which is a branch of artificial intelligence that teaches machines to read, analyze and interpret human language. This technology gives chatbots a baseline for understanding language structure and meaning. NLP, in essence, allows the computer to understand what you are asking and how to appropriately respond.
With developments in deep learning and reinforcement learning, chatbots can interpret more complexities in language and improve the dynamic nature of conversation between human and machine. Essentially, a chatbot tries to match what you’ve asked to an intent that it understands. The more a chatbot communicates with you, the more it understands and the more it learns to communicate like you and others with similar questions. Your positive responses reinforce its answers, and then it uses those answers again.
From customer service chatbots online to personal assistants in our homes,chatbots have started to enter our lives. In almost every industry, companies are using chatbots to help customers easily navigate their websites, answer simple questions and direct people to the relevant points of contact. Personal assistants like Siri and Alexa are designed to respond to a wide range of scenarios and queries, from current weather and news updates to personal calendars, music selections and random questions.
1. Why does the author mention Siri and Alexa in Paragraph 1?| A．To explain how a chatbot works. | B．To show where to find a chatbot. |
| C．To give examples of chatbots. | D．To compare different chatbots. |
| A．Language study. | B．Data transmission. |
| C．Social interaction. | D．Natural language processing. |
| A．Inspire. | B．Strengthen. | C．Organize. | D．Match. |
| A．The future trend of chatbots. | B．The author’s predictions. |
| C．The effects of chatbots. | D．The applications of chatbots. |
8 . Recently, as a journalist, I have published many stories about social media, privacy and artificial intelligence (AI), among other things. So when ChatGPT told me that my output may have influenced its responses to other people’s prompts (提示), I rushed to wipe my data from its memory. As I quickly discovered, however, there is no delete button. AI-powered chatbots never forget what they have learned, because they are trained on data sets including vast numbers of websites and online articles. As long as they exist on the Internet, they get to be remembered.
That means the likes of ChatGPT are possible to let out sensitive personal information, if it has appeared online, and that the companies behind these AIs will struggle to make good on “right-to-be-forgotten” regulations, which force organizations to remove personal data on request. It also means we are powerless to stop hackers (黑客) controlling AI outputs by planting misinformation or ill instructions in training data. All of these explain why many computer scientists are busy to teach AIs to forget. While they are finding that it is extremely difficult, “machine unlearning” solutions are beginning to appear. And the work could prove vital beyond addressing concerns over privacy and misinformation.
The new generation of AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, which produce text in response to our prompts, are underpinned by large language models. These are trained on mountains of data, most of which is scraped from the Internet. From this, they learn to spot statistical patterns, which means they can predict the likeliest next word in a sentence, producing fluent answers to our every question.
The trouble is that the way AI chatbots work means that when they learn something, it can’t be unlearned. This creates a significant problem when it comes to privacy, as Dr. Zhang made clear in recent research. He highlighted how difficult it will be for AI companies to obey the “right to be forgotten”, which the European Union declared a human right back in 2014.
1. Why can chatbots store what it has learned forever?| A．Lack of a delete button. | B．Manual code entry. |
| C．Strong review ability. | D．The way they are trained. |
| A．Because AI has many security risks. | B．Because AI stores limited information. |
| C．Because AI needs to be updated regularly. | D．Because AI imitates humans completely. |
| A．Chatbots can answer 90% of the questions. |
| B．Chatbots’ data comes from the designer’s software. |
| C．Chatbots produce the answers based on the prompts. |
| D．Chatbots can predict your problems in advance. |
| A．Controlled. | B．Adjusted. | C．Boosted. | D．Supported. |
9 . The next generation of robots will be able to see objects, will have a sense of touch, and will make critical decisions.
Engineering skilled and computer technology are developing artificial vision for robots. With the ability to “see”, robots can identify and inspect one specific class of objects out of a pile of different kinds of materials. One robot vision system uses of electronic digital cameras containing many rows of lights sensitive materials measure the intensity of light and convert the light rays into a range of numbers. The numbers are part of a gray-scale system in which brightness is measured in a range of values. One scale ranges from 0 to 15, and another from 0 to 255. The 0 is represented by black. The highest number is white. The numbers in between represent different shades of gray. The computer then makes the calculations and converts the numbers into a picture that shows an image of the object in question. It is not yet known whether robots will one day have vision as good as human vision. Technicians believe they will, but only after years of development.
Engineers working on other advances are designing and experimenting with new types of articulated (有关节的) metal hands and fingers, giving robots a sense of touch. Other engineers are writing new programs allowing robots to make decisions such as whether to abandon defective parts in finished products. To do this, the robot will also have to be capable of identifying those perfect and defective parts.
These future robots, assembled (装配，组合) with a sense of touch and the ability to see and make decisions, will have plenty of work to do. They can be used to prospect for minerals on the ocean floor or in deep areas of mines too dangerous for humans to enter.
They will work as gas station attendants, firefighters, house-keepers, and security personnel. The robot business will continue to grow also. Financial analysts believe this business will soar from a $ 100 million-industry at the start of the 1980s to a $5-billion industry by the early 2010s. Anyone wanting to understand the industry of the future will have to know about robots.
1. Why is it so important for robots to be able to “see”?| A．Because they can criticize human factory personnel. |
| B．Because they can make critical decisions. |
| C．Because they can work as human beings. |
| D．Because they have a strong desire. |
| A．Because robot-business will grow rapidly. |
| B．Because robots will be very useful. |
| C．Because robots will become very popular in industry. |
| D．For they can make a lot of money. |
| A．Having a noticeable or desire effect. |
| B．Unquestionable and undoubted. |
| C．Imperfect, having serious errors. |
| D．Not enough in quantity. |
| A．Future Robots Will Have Plenty of Work to Do. |
| B．Future Robots Will See, Touch, and Think. |
| C．Engineers Care Designing New Types of Robots. |
| D．Future Robots Will Have Visions as Good Human Vision. |
10 . Russia is launching a new module (舱), Nauka, for the International Space Station (ISS) after over a decade of delays. The ISS comprises modules and equipment from different space agencies including Europe, Japan and Canada. Still, the main part of the station is composed of two main sections: a Russian segment (部分) and a US segment.
The Nauka module is set to lift off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on top of a Proton-M rocket at around 1500 GMT, along with a new robotic arm for the station created by the European Space Agency. At 13 metres long and weighing more than 20 tonnes, Nauka, also called the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, will be among the largest in Russia’s half. After launch, Nauka will take eight days to reach the ISS. Once attached, it will act as a new hub for the Russian segment of the station.
“Nauka is a science laboratory, and it also provides a lot of important service systems, including a new toilet and sleeping compartments for the crew,” says Anatoly Zak, editor of RussianSpaceWeb.com. “It’s a step in making the Russian segment more independent (from the US segment).”
The launch of Nauka has been a long time coming, with construction of the module beginning in the 1990s. Technical and supply issues since then have seen development stumble(绊倒). “It’s much more complex than anything the Russian space programme has tried to build in the last few years,” says Zak.
1. What does paragraph 2 mainly talk about?| A．The history and task of the ISS. |
| B．The mission and role of Nauka. |
| C．The function of the new robotic arm. |
| D．The difficulties of launching a module. |
| A．It serves as the new center of the ISS. |
| B．It has a relatively comprehensive system. |
| C．It pushes Russia to build a separate space station. |
| D．It takes the lead in space exploration in the world. |
| A．It takes great time and effort to develop Nauka. |
| B．There is so much to explore and discover in space. |
| C．Russia still needs America’s help in space technology. |
| D．Nauka is the fruit of long-term cooperation between countries. |
| A．Sports and health. |
| B．Education and culture. |
| C．Nature and geography. |
| D．Science and technology. |
