Robots have proved to be valuable tools for soldiers, surgeons and homeowners hoping to keep the carpet clean. But in each case, they are designed and built specifically for the job. Now there is a movement under way to build multipurpose machines—robots that can move about in changing environmentssuch as offices or living rooms and work with their hands.
All-purpose robots are not, of course, a new idea. "It's been five or 10 years from happening for about 50 years, " says Eric Berger, co-director of the Personal Robotics Program at Willow Garage, a Silicon Valley organization. The delay is in part because even simple tasks require a huge set of capabilities. For a robot to fetch a mug, for example, it needs to make sense of data gathered by a variety of sensorslaser scanners identifying potential blocking objects, cameras searching for the target, force feedback in the fingers that grasp the mug, and more. Yet Berger and other experts are confident that real progress could be made in the next decade.
The problem, according to Willow Garage, is the lack of a common platform for all that computational effort. Instead of enlarging the capabilities of a single machine, everyone is designing robots and the software to control them, from the ground up. To help change this, Willow Garage is currently producing 25 copies of its model PR2 (for "Personal Robot 2"), a two-armed, wheeled machine that can switch off the electricity, open doors and move through a room. Ten of the robots will stay in house, but 10 more will go to outside research groups, and everyone will share their advances. This way, Berger says, if you want to build the robotic equivalent (等同物) of a Twitter (推特网站), you won't start by constructing a computer. "You build the thing that's new."The robots are mentioned to do some specific jobs EXCEPT in __________.
| A．battle fields |
| B．operation room |
| C．people's houses |
| D．wild fields |
The multipurpose robot may be identified as a machine that __________.
| A．can move about in changing environments and work with their hands |
| B．can make sense of data gathered by a variety of sensors |
| C．has a huge set of abilities to finish all the simple tasks |
| D．has identifying laser scanners, searching cameras and force feedback |
According to Willow Garage, we will make realprogress in building all-purpose robots if __________.
| A．everyone is designing robots and the software to control them |
| B．they can produce 25 copies of its model PR2 |
| C．people can enlarge the capabilities of a single machine |
| D．people can start by constructing a computer |
Tomorrow was his girlfriend’s birthday and the young man was having a difficult time deciding on a present for her. She already had more clothes than she knew what to do with them, so he couldn’t get any kind of apparel. She never ate sweets, so candy was out of the question. What then? He had a very special reason for wanting to impress her with just the right gift,for tomorrow he was going to make an offer of marriage to her. He finally decided on perfume(香水). All girls liked perfume. That raised another problem, however. What kind did she prefer? He couldn’t ask her because that would ruin the surprise.
At last the young man hit upon a brilliant idea. That afternoon, pretending to take his girlfriend’s fox terrier(小猎狗),Fritz, for a walk, the young man and the dog went directly to the perfume counter of the town’s biggest department store. Good! There was a large array(长列)of perfume. He beckoned(招呼)a clerk, asking her to open a large number of bottles and wave the stoppers （塞子）under the dog’s nose. Nestled(依偎于) in the young man’s arms, the terrier began to be restless and bored as this seemingly meaningless game went on. Then Fritz suddenly became frisky, wiggling in the young man’s arms and barking excitedly, as the clerk waved one stopper under its nose.
“I’ll take that one,” said the young man to the clerk. The price was high, but it was worth it, he thought.
“ My favorite perfume!” said the delighted girl the next evening as she unwrapped the package. “ How did you know?” she asked, dabbing（轻擦）some perfume behind each ear.
“ Intuition(直觉), I guess.”said the young man, deciding that it wasn’t exactly wrong to tell a lie at that time. One day, after they were married, he would admit that his intuition had really been the little dog named Fritz. Which of the following words best describes the young man in the story?
| A．Kind-hearted | B．Curious | C．Creative | D．Mean |
The underlined word “ frisky” (in Paragraph 4) means “_______”
| A．lively | B．angry | C．uneasy | D．puzzled |
According to the story, the birthday present for the girl was actually decided on by_______.
| A．the young man | B．the store clerk | C．the man’s intuition | D．the dog Fritz |
Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the story?
| A．The young man wanted to give his girlfriend a pleasant surprise. |
| B．The pet dog Fritz knew what the young man wanted very well. |
| C．The kind of perfume the young man chose was expensive. |
| D．The young man told a white lie about his final choice of the perfume. |
Weighed down by study? Pushed to the limit by the fast pace of life ? Frightened by the possible war ? Well, you’re not alone. Men and women in France are seeking relief using the world’s best medicine-----laughter.
In the past year, more than 15 laughter clubs have been set up across the country. People of all ages go to release their stress with an hour group laughs. “People telephoned me and said they have forgotten what it is to laugh. They want to find a place where they can escape all their problems for a while. So they come,” said 40—year—old Jocelyne Le Moan. She usually takes a class of around 60 people through a series of laughter techniques.
Her pupils range from teenagers to 70 years old, but most are middle---aged white collars seeking 60 minutes of relaxation at the end of a busy day. Le Moan takes them through the “Lion Laugh”and the “Laugh Contest”, where participants “speak”to each other in different ways. And instead of talking, they break into fits of laughter. At the end there are 15 minutes of “meditation”, when they lie on their backs and let the laughs burst out of their mouths.
“I love it. It’s an experience that has changed my life. Through it I rediscovered the child’s laugh inside me,”Said Romain Jouffroy, 24. “US President George W. Bush should give it a try. He has lost his laugh,”she joked . Like Jouffroy, many laughter club members find themselves changed into children again, and why not ? The average preschooler laughs up to 400 times a day.
The average adult only a day seven to 15.
The physical benefits of laughter are already well—recognized. Doctors say the act of laughing releases good chemicals into the blood—stream, while the quick breathing that accompanies it helps massage（按摩）the digestive organs and strengthens the heart.
“A full hour is like having your inside go jogging！One finishes out of breath, but feels revitalized（产生新活力. And on top of that , you’ve had a laugh,”said doctor Alexisd’ Estaing.And many participants in Paris also emphasize the psychological benefits. They believe that laughter is a way of making oneself feel more confident.Which of the following is not included among the benefits of laughing?
| A．It can make people rediscover their children’s laugh. |
| B．It can release good chemical into blood streams. |
| C．It can make you feel self—confident. |
| D．It can cure the illness of people. |
The writer suggested that you should_____________.
| A．take the world’s best medicine. |
| B．talk to each other about what troubles you. |
| C．learn series of laughter techniques. |
| D．have a good laugh after a busy day. |
From the passage , we can conclude the following but___________.
| A．Jocelyne Le Moan is a teacher of the club. |
| B．the members are mostly middle---aged white collars. |
| C．people always need some way to relax in life. |
| D．laugh freely and everything goes well. |
Which of the following is not the reason why so many people join the laughter clubs ?
| A．Those members feel too much pressure on them. |
| B．They want to find a place to relax themselves. |
| C．Laughters help massage the digestive organs. |
| D．The members don’t know how to laugh. |
Imagine a classroom missing the one thing that’s long been considered a necessary part to reading and writing---paper. No notebooks, no textbooks, no test papers. Nor are there any pencils or pens, which always seems to run out of ink at the critical moment. A “paperless classroom” is what more and more schools are trying to achieve .
Students don’t do any handwriting in this class . Instead , they use palm size , or specially—designed computers. The teacher downloads texts from Internet libraries and sends them to every student’s personal computer. Having computers also means that students use the Web. They can look up information on any subject they’re studying from maths to social science.
High school teacher Judy Herrell in Florida, US, described how her class used the Web to learn about the war in Afghanistan over one year ago. We could touch every side of the country through different sites from the forest to refugee camps, she said .“Using a book that’s three or four years old is impossible.”And exams can go on line too. At a high school in Tennessee, US, students take tests on their own computers. The teacher records the grades on the network for everyone to see and then copies them to his own electronic grade book. A paperless classroom is a big step towards reducing the waste of paper. High school teacher Stephanie—Sorrell in Kentucky,US, said she used to give about 900 pieces of paper each week to each student.
“Think about the money and trees we could save with the computers,”she said .But, with all this technology, there is always the risk that the machines will break down. So , in case of a power failure or technical problems, paper textbooks are still widely available for these hi—tech students. What does the part of the last sentence in the first paragraph “run out of ink at the critical moment” mean ?
| A．Pens may not write well at the critical moment. |
| B．Pens get lost easily , so you may not find them at the critical moment. |
| C．Pens may have little or no ink at the critical moment |
| D．Pens use ink, while pencils don’t. |
The high school teacher, Judy Herrell, used the example of her class to show that ________.
| A．the Web could take them everywhere |
| B．the Web taught them a lot. |
| C．the Web is a good tool for information. |
| D．the Web , better than the textbooks ,can give the latest and comprehensive information. |
The paperless classroom will benefit _________ the most.
| A．students | B．teachers | C．trees | D．computers |
What does the phrase in the last paragraph “break down ”mean ?
| A．Break into pieces | B．Stop working | C．Fall down | D．Lose control |
In South Korea, children get used to the Internet at an early age. A survey last year by the Ministry of information and Communication showed that nearly half of children between the age of 3 and 5 use the internet.
“In south Korea, the Internet has become a babysitter, said Lee Kyong Ko, a professor at Duksing, Women’s University in Seoul.
Online role-playing games, where participants make friends and band together, have a strong appeal to Koreans,“One problem with those games is that you build your online person through countless hours of battles, and you develop a huge emotional attachment to your game character,”said Chang Woo Min, a one-time online gamer.
Parents report that their children steal money and do not come home for days and even weeks, practically living in Internet Cafes, and sometimes they refuse to look for jobs and play games all night and sleep during the day.
The authorities require Internet cafes to keep their distance from schools, and they open camps for teenage addicts and distribute booklets(小册子) on the dangers of game addiction. In addition, they are training hundreds of counselors, who visit schools and Internet Cafes.
In the 28,000 Internet Cafes in South Korea, persons under 18 are banded from entry after 10 p.m.. The authorities have even discussed reducing the points of gamers who play for more than three consecutive (连续的) hours, But such talks have produced no agreement, amid concerns that such restrictions would put a high-growth industry in danger and worse the problem of teenagers stealing adult online identification numbers,“Sooner or later we will be able to announce our measures,”the minister of Information and Communication, Rho Jun Hyoung, said at a news conference in May.“Since South Korea is one of the most active and developed countries in the Internet, the world is paying great attention to What policy we will adopt on this problem.”According to the passage, in order to solve the Internet problem, the authorities of South Korea took the following measures EXCEPT
| A．demanding the Internet Cafes to be far away from schools |
| B．telling the students about the dangers of game addiction |
| C．training counselors to visit schools and cafes |
| D．banning all the people from entering the Internet after 10 p.m. |
We can learn that from the passage.
| A．most children under 6 in the South Korea use the Internet |
| B．some parents hope their children use the Internet only at home |
| C．all kinds of measures are not supported by all the people |
| D．the authorities in the South Korea believe that it is most active and developed country in the Inter |
In paragraph 2,the underlined sentence “the Internet has becomes a babysitter”means .
| A．children are well looked after on the Internet |
| B．children likes sitting in the Internet Cafes |
| C．children can earn money working as a babysitter in Internet Cafes |
| D．Internet has become a place where children are looked after while their parents are not there |
The passage is written to tell us_________________.
| A．the Internet problems in South Korea | B．the bad effects of the Internet |
| C．the measures of the authorities | D．teenagers like going surfing in South Korea |
Researchers questioned nearly 9,800 people over the age of 50 about their lives and found women were happier than men and enjoy life more in old age.
Dr Elizabeth Breeze, one of the researchers, said that women could become happier as they get older as they no longer have to worry about looking after their families.
She said:“There is a difference between the way men and women view their quality of life and they are influenced by slightly different things. Women are affected negatively by caring for someone else or if they are not in employment but if they see their children and family more they are positively affected.”
“A strange thing happens to male actors, especially movie stars, in my experience,” said Helen Mirren, a 62-year-old Hollywood actress.“A young male actor feels that all the girls want him-he’s a star. As actors get older they bad-tempered for they have lost that sense of being in control of their destiny(命运).”
Wealth also helps you live longer with the poorest people more than twice as likely to die earlier than the richest, researchers at University College London discovered. In some age groups. the difference was even greater. The poorest women between 60 and 74 are six times more likely to have died than the richest women of the same age.
According to the study, you have more chances of living longer if you are married, educated to certain degree or a professional. single people are twice as likely to die early as those who are married or living with a partner.What may be the best title of the passage ?
| A．Why Women Are Happier Than Men in Old Age . |
| B．How to Live Longer. |
| C．Women Happier Than Men in Old Age. |
| D．The Difference between Women and Men in Old Age |
What can we know from the passage？
| A．Men should not worry about looking after their family any more in old age |
| B．Male actors, especially movie stars are easy to get bad—tempered when they get older and older. |
| C．The poorest women about the age of 50 can’t live longer than the richest women at the same age. |
| D．Education has nothing to do with happy life in people’s old age. |
What may be talked about if there is another paragraph as the ending ?
| A．Things that the old should do to be happier. |
| B．The disadvantage of being actors. |
| C．We should earn money as much as we can. |
| D．How to become a professional. |
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