1 . Chinese speakers have got a new thing to be proud of. The language they are speaking is more difficult than English.
Understanding Chinese requires both sides of the brain, but English speakers listen with only half their minds on the job, UK scientists say.
UK psychologist Sophie Scott and researchers from hospitals in Oxford and London performed brain scans on volunteers as they listened to their native languages. When English speakers heard the sound of their language, the left parts of their brains lit up on screen. When Chinese speakers heard their native tongue, there was an action in both the right and left sides.
“We were very surprised to discover that people who speak different sorts of languages use their brains to decode speech in different ways.” said Scott.
The left side is normally connected with putting sounds together into words; the right with processing melody (音调) in music and speech, so this part “lights up” when English speakers hear music. The researchers do not yet know whether the right side is active in English speakers when they hear Chinese.
In Chinese, a different intonation (语调) delivers a different meaning, the syllable (音节) “ma”, for instance, can mean mother, hemp (麻), horse or scold according to its musical sound.
“Speech really is a complex sound,” said Scott. “As well as understanding words, the brain uses the way in which words are spoken, such as intonation and melody, to turn spoken language into meaning.”
“We think Chinese speakers interpret intonation and melody in the right sides of their brains to give correct meaning to the spoken words.”
The study suggests that language itself might affect the way the brain develops in a young child. It could explain why native speakers of English find it so extraordinary hard to learn Chinese.
1. What does the underlined “volunteers” in paragraph 3 refer to?| A．Chinese speakers. | B．English speakers. |
| C．People who speak different languages. | D．Researchers and Chinese and English speakers. |
| A．Music. | B．Meanings. |
| C．Intonation and melody. | D．The way the brain develops. |
| A．The left sides of their brains are not used for language. |
| B．They can hardly understand words when there is music. |
| C．The right sides of their brains are never used in childhood. |
| D．They can hardly understand words in the right side of the brain. |
| A．How the Brain Responds to Music |
| B．How the Brain Responds to Chinese |
| C．The Brain Responds to Languages Differently |
| D．The Two Sides of the Brain Work Differently |
2 . Have you ever imagined the life in space? The following will show you the astronauts’ daily life.
Eating in space
If you go camping for more than a week with some friends, you will make sure you have plenty of foods and keep them properly. At the end of your camping trip, you would deal with your rubbish properly before the ride home.
Astronauts almost do the same thing when they go to space. Preparation changes with the food type. Some foods can be eaten in their natural forms, such as chocolate cakes and fruits. Other foods require adding water, such as cheese. Of course, an oven is provided at the space station to heat the food. But there are no fridges, so space food must be kept properly.
Sleeping in space
After a long day at work, nothing is better than a good night’s sleep! Just like on the earth, in space astronauts go to bed at a certain time, then get up and prepare for work again. When going to sleep, they have to attach themselves, so they don’t float (漂浮) around or hit their bodies against something. They usually use sleeping bags located in small crew cabins (乘员舱). Each crew cabin is just big enough for one person. Generally, astronauts have an eight-hour sleep each day when they finish their task.
Doing sports in space
Exercise is an important part of every astronaut’s daily life to prevent muscle loss (肌肉萎缩). Usually, astronauts exercise two hours every day. Lifting 200pounds on the earth may be a lot of work. But lifting that same object in space would be much easier. That means the things for exercise need to be specially designed, so astronauts can receive the exercise needed.
Living in space is not just all work and no play. Astronauts have fun, too. They like to look out the window and play with their food. Fun plays an important role in the quality of their life.
1. Which food can’t be brought to the space?| A．Apples | B．Chocolate cakes |
| C．Ice-cream | D．Cheese |
| A．To have fun | B．To keep healthy |
| C．To sleep well | D．To prevent muscle loss. |
| A．The life in space | B．The food in space |
| C．The work in space | D．The sports in space |
3 . In looking through your social media, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed pictures accompanied by texts. The pictures are likely made possible by a text-to-image program called DALL-E. For example, Twitter user posted a tweet with the text, “To be or not to be, rabbi holding avocado, marble sculpture.” Then a matching picture appears below.
The AI models come from Google’s Imagen software as well as OpenAI. a start-up backed by Microsoft. On its website, OpenAI calls DALL-E “a new Al system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.” But most of what’s happening in this area is coming from a relatively small group of people sharing their pictures. That’s because Google and OpenAI have not made the technology broadly available to the public.
The text-to-picture services identify the most important parts of a user’s text and then guess the best way to picture those terms. There’s generally a text box, a button to start the generation process and an area below to display images. To indicate the source. Google and OpenAI add watermarks in the bottom right comer of images from DALL-E and Imagen.
Engineers trained the models on various collections of words and pictures from the web. OpenAI recognizes the potential for harm that could come from a model. To avoid the risk, employees removed violent content from training data, and there are filters（筛选）stopping DALL-E from producing images if users submit（提交）violent or illegal content.
Boris Dayma, a developer from Texas spelled out the problems in an explanation of their software. Despite the risks, Dhariwal, a research scientist at OpenAI, said it could open up creative opportunities for individuals and could help with commercial applications for dressing up websites. Results should continue to improve over time.
| A．Beautifying pictures at users’ request. |
| B．Producing pictures from human words. |
| C．Changing pictures into vivid descriptions. |
| D．Providing pictures for users to choose from. |
| A．Its users’ rights. | B．Its operating conditions |
| C．Its working process. | D．Its company’s prospect. |
| A．All images come from a unified model. |
| B．The training data is selected beforehand. |
| C．Improper requests can’t be submitted. |
| D．Filters remove the unhealthy description. |
| A．Positive. | B．Objective. | C．Uncertain. | D．Worried. |
