Researchers are placing robotic dogs in the homes of lonely old people to determine whether they can improve the quality of life for humans．Alan Beck, an expert in human-animal relationship, and Nancy Edwards, a professor of nursing, are leading the animal-assisted study concerning the influence of robotic dogs on old people's depression, physical activity, and life satisfaction．“No one will argue that an older person is better off being more active, challenged, or stimulated（刺激）,” Edwards points out．“The problem is how we promote that, especially for those without friends or help．A robotic dog could be a solution．”
In the study, the robot, called AIBO, is placed for six weeks in the houses of some old people who live alone．Before placing AIBO in the home, researchers will collect baseline data for six weeks．These old people will keep a diary to note their feelings and activities before and after AIBO．Then, the researchers will review the data to determine if it has inspired any changes in the life of its owner．
“I talk to him all the time, and he responds to my voice,” says a seventy-year-old lady．“When I'm watching TV, he'll stay in my arms until he wants down．He has a mind of his own．”
The AIBOs respond to certain orders．The researchers say they have some advantages over live dogs, especially for old people．Often the elderly are disabled and cannot care for an animal by walking it or playing with it．A robotic dog removes exercise and feeding concerns．
“At the beginning, it was believed that no one would relate to the robotic dog because it was metal and not furry,” Beck says．“But it's amazing how quickly we have given up that belief．”
“Hopefully, down the road, these robotic pets could become a more valuable health helper．They will record their masters’ blood pressure, oxygen levels, or heart rhythms．AIBOs may even one day have games that can help stimulate older people's minds．”
The purpose of Beck and Edwards’ study is to______．
| A．understand human-animal relationship |
| B．find the causes of old people’s loneliness |
| C．make lonely old people’s life better |
| D．promote the animal-assisted research |
In the research, the old people are asked to______．
| A．note the activities of AIBOs |
| B．keep AIBOs at home for 12 weeks |
| C．analyze the collected information |
| D．record their feelings and activities |
What is the advantage of AIBO over live dogs?
| A．It can watch TV with its owner |
| B．It can help the disabled people |
| C．It responds to all the human orders |
| D．It is easier to keep at home |
The author seems to suggest that the future robotic dogs may______．
| A．keep old people active |
| B．cure certain diseases |
| C．change people's beliefs |
| D．look more like real dogs |
A study involving 8,500 teenagers from all social backgrounds found that most of them are ignorant when it comes to money. The findings, the first in a series of reports from NatWest that has started a five-year research project into teenagers and money, are particularly worrying as this generation of young people is likely to be burdened with greater debts than any before.
University tuition feesare currently capped at £3,000 annually, but this will be reviewed next year and the Government is under enormous pressure to raise the ceiling.
In the research, the teenagers were presented with the terms of four different loans but 76 per cent failed to identify the cheapest. The young people also predicted that they would be earning on average £31.000 by the age of 25, although the average salary for those aged 22 to 29 is just £17,815. The teenagers expected to be in debt when they finished university or training, although half said that they assumed the debts would be less than £10.000. Average debts for graduates are £12,363.
Stephen Moir, head of community investment at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group which owns NatWest, said. "The more exposed young people are to financial issues, and the younger they become aware of them, the more likely they are to become responsible, forward-planning adults who manage their finances confidently and effectively."
Ministers are deeply concerned about the financial pressures on teenagers and young people because of student loans and rising housing costs. They have just introduced new lessons in how to manage debts. Nikki Fairweather, aged 15, from St Helens, said that she had benefited from lessons on personal finance, but admitted that she still had a lot to learn about money.
Which of the following can be found from the five-year research project?
| A．Students understand personal finances differently. |
| B．University tuition fees in England have been rising. |
| C．Teenagers tend to overestimate their future earnings. |
| D．The students' payback ability has become a major issue. |
The phrase "to raise the ceiling" in paragraph 2 probably means "______".
| A．to raise the student loans | B．to improve the school facilities |
| C．to increase the upper limit of the tuition | D．to lift the school building roofs |
According to Stephen Moir, students _______.
| A．are too young to be exposed to financial issues |
| B．should learn to manage their finances well |
| C．should maintain a positive attitude when facing loans |
| D．benefit a lot from lessons on personal finance |
What can we learn from the passage?
| A．Many British teenagers do not know money matters well |
| B．Teenagers in Britain are heavily burdened with debts. |
| C．Financial planning is a required course at college. |
| D．Young people should become responsible adults. |
Celebrity (名人) has become one of the most important representatives of popular culture. Fans used to be crazy about a specific film, but now the public tends to base its consumption on the interest of celebrity attached to any given product. Besides, fashion magazines have almost abandoned the practice of putting models on the cover because they don’t sell nearly as well as famous faces. As a result, celebrities have realized their unbelievably powerful market potential, moving from advertising for others’ products to developing their own.
Celebrity clothing lines aren’t a completely new phenomenon, but in the past they were typically aimed at the ordinary consumers, and limited to a few TV actresses. Today they’re started by first-class stars whose products enjoy equal fame with some world top brands. The most successful start-ups have been those by celebrities with specific personal style. As celebrities become more and more experienced at the market, they expand their production scale rapidly, covering almost all the products of daily life.
However, for every success story, there’s a related warning tale of a celebrity who overvalued his consumer appeal. No matter how famous the product’s origins is, if it fails to impress consumers with its own qualities it begins to resemble an exercise in self-promotional marketing. And once the initial (最初的）attention dies down, consumer interest might fade, loyalty returning to tried-and-true labels.
Today, celebrities face ever more severe embarrassment. The pop-cultural circle might be bigger than ever, but its rate of turnover has speeded up as well. Each misstep threatens to reduce a celebrity’s shelf life, and the same newspaper or magazine that once brought him fame has no problem picking him to pieces when the opportunity appears. Still, the ego’s (自我的）potential for expansion is limitless. Having already achieved great wealth and public recognition, many celebrities see fashion as the next frontier to be conquered. As the saying goes, success and failure always go hand in hand. Their success as designers might last only a short time, but fashion — like celebrity — has always been temporary.Fashion magazines today ________.
| A．seldom put models on the cover |
| B．no longer put models on the cover |
| C．need not worry about celebrities’ market potential |
| D．judge the market potential of every celebrity correctly |
A change in the consumer market can be found today that _______.
| A．price rather than brand name is more concerned |
| B．producers prefer models to celebrities for achievements |
| C．producers prefer TV actresses to film stars for advertisements |
| D．quality rather than the outside of products is more concerned |
The underlined sentence in Paragraph 4 indicates that any wrong step will possibly ______.
| A．decrease the popularity of a celebrity and the sales of his products |
| B．damage the image of a celebrity in the eyes of the general public |
| C．cut short the artistic careen of a celebrity in show business |
| D．influence the price of a celebrity’s products |
The passage is mainly about _______.
| A．celebrity and personal style |
| B．celebrity and market potential |
| C．celebrity and fashion design |
| D．celebrity and clothing industry |
Googlefight is a simple service available on the Internet which offers you the chance to compare two different items and see how many hits they get on the Google search engine. The seemingly simple device has proved invaluable to users, especially to help win arguments.
For example, imagine that you and your friends are arguing about who are the most popular music or movie stars, you can decide the argument by writing the names in the Googlefight boxes. Let’s say that you are arguing about Jackie Chan and Jet Li. You will quickly discover that Jet Li is mentioned 16 million times on Google pages, whereas Jackie Chan is mentioned a mere 12 million times! In this unscientific way, you can claim victory for one Star over another.
But teachers have come up with ways of using Googlefight which are much more useful from an academic point of view, particularly when it comes to studying languages. You can, for example, find out the frequency of two words with the same meaning, and deduce (推断) from the answers which one is more common. For example, let’s take the words “buy” and “purchase”, which mean the same thing (although “buy” is only a verb and “purchase” is both a verb and a noun). It is immediately clear from Googlefight that “buy” is much more commonly used, with a massive three and a half billion hits, compared to only one billion occurrences for the more formal word.
But the real value of Googlefight to the language learner is in determining which is the more common of two phrases. For example, “raining cats and dogs” is an old-fashioned English expression about the weather. Do English speakers still use it? Or are they more likely to say “pouring down”? Googlefight suggests the latter. “Pouring down” has 898,000 Google hits, whereas “raining cats and dogs” only has 326,000.
With phrases, it’s important to remember that you need to use quote marks to make the search more accurate. For example, if you type in the similar phrases “look after” and “take care of “ without quote marks, the second phrase seems to be more common, but with quote marks, the result is reversed.What is Googlefight?
| A．A fight between two people on Google. |
| B．A way to make sure you win an argument. |
| C．A website showing how many hits two different things have. |
| D．A list of all the websites on Google. |
Language teachers find it useful because _______.
| A．there are a lot of words on Googlefight |
| B．it can tell them which of the two words with the same meaning appears more often |
| C．some words mean the same thing |
| D．common words have a billion hits |
What must you remember to do if you are checking phrases by Googlefight?
| A．Make sure they mean be same thing. |
| B．Make sure they are different. |
| C．Remember to put quote marks round the phrase. |
| D．Don’t put quote marks round the phrase. |
Which statement is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．Googlefight is effective to determine the more common of two phrases. |
| B．Googlefight is a scientific way to decide an argument. |
| C．Quote marks can make the search more accurate. |
| D．Googlefight is invaluable to help win arguments. |
Simply by analyzing a drop of blood, a doctor will be able to diagnose a birth defect or even cancer when it is in the early stage; using new technology, a material lighter but much stronger than steel can be produced.
These may sound like dreams at present. But the dreams may soon come true as research findings in laboratories are being turned into products more rapidly in the new century, according to experts participating in the fourth Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Technomart, a technology exhibition and trade fair in Suzhou.
"Most people think nano-technology（纳米技术）is too far-fetched to be real. But in fact nano-technology has been applied in a wide range of fields, such as medicine. It is coming into our daily life," said Cheng Jiachong from a Hong Kong-based nano-technology firm.
Nano-technology based on the nanometer, the unit of which is a billionth of a meter, enables scientists to have new concepts of disease diagnosis and treatment on a molecular（分子）and atomic scale, Cheng said.
By using nanometer particles, a doctor can separate the fetus cells（胚胎细胞）from the blood of a pregnant woman to see if the development of the fetus is normal. This method is also being used in the early diagnosis of cancer and heart disease, he said.
One of the most significant impacts of nano-technology is at the bio-inorganic materials interface, according to Greg Tegart, executive advisor of the APEC Center for Technology Foresight.
"By combining enzymes（酶）and silicon chips we can produce biosensors. These could be implanted in humans or animals to monitor health and to deliver corrective doses（剂量）of drugs," he told the participants a technology forum during the exhibition.
"Nano-technology could affect the production of nearly every man-made object, from automobiles, tires and computer circuits（电路）, to advanced medicines and tissue replacement, and lead to the invention of objects yet to be imagined," said David Minns, a special advisor to the National Research Council of Canada.
It has been shown that carbon nano-tubes are ten times as strong as steel, with one sixth of the weight, and nano-scale systems have the potential to make supersonic transport cost- effective and to increase computer efficiency by millions of times, he said.
The experts agreed that the APEC technology exhibition and trade fair provided many chances for exchanges of innovative ideas and products.Realization of the dreams mentioned in the first paragraph will mainly base on ________.
| A．APEC | B．Chinese scientist |
| C．the APEC Center for Technology Foresight | D．Nano-technology |
The length of a nanometer equals to ______.
A． meter |
B． meter |
C． meter |
D． meter |
We can imply from what David Minns said that _________.
| A．Nano-technology could only be used to invent new objects. |
| B．Nano-technology could be widely used to produce or invent objects. |
| C．Nano-technology is a money-consuming technology. |
| D．Nano-technology can not be used to improve the service of Internet. |
Compared to steel, carbon nano-tubes are ________.
| A．stronger and lighter | B．lighter but as strong |
| C．stronger but as light | D．poor in quality |
When Jeanne Calment entered the world in 1875, telephones and automobiles still lay in the future. Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso were not yet born. The Eiffel Tower was 14 years from being built. As a teenager, she met Vincent Van Gogh, near her home in Arles, in the south of France. He was “very ugly, ungracious (举止粗俗的), impolite, sick—I forgive him, they called him loco (精神失常的)”, she recalled. When she died last week at age 122, she was the world’s eldest person. (There are others who claimed to the title, but only Calment had the official documents to prove her age.)
Each February 21, her birthday, she would share the secrets of long life. Some years it was “a sense of humour”, others it was “keeping busy”. “God must have forgotten me,” she once explained. The truth probably was that she had good genes: her mother reportedly lived to be 86 and her father 94.
Her life had its sadness: she outlived her husband, her only daughter and her grandson. According to a friend, she was imperturbable. “If you can’t do anything about it,” she reportedly said, “don’t worry about it.”
In her last years she was nearly blind and deaf, but her health remained good. She ate a few bars of chocolate each week and continued smoking until a few years ago, when she could no longer light her own cigarettes. She never lost her sense of humour. On her 110th birthday, she commented, “I’ve only ever had one wrinkle, and I’m sitting on it. “Her longevity made her famous; her spirit made her eternal (永恒的).Why does the author mention Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and the Eiffel Tower?
| A．To show that Calment had seen famous people and things. |
| B．To emphasize that Calment was born a long time ago. |
| C．To indicate that Calment is just as famous. |
| D．To admire the knowledge that Calment had. |
The author believed that Calment’s longevity is mainly due to ______.
| A．a sense of humor | B．being kept busy |
| C．belief in God | D．good genes |
The underlined word “imperturbable” means ________.
| A．calm | B．humorous | C．friendly | D．healthy |
Toward the end of the story, the author seems to be impressed by Callment ’s _________.
| A．spirit | B．religious belief | C．knowledge | D．longevity |
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