What is life？Like most great questions，this one is easy to ask but difficult to answer. The reason is simple：we know of just one type of life and it's challenging to do science with a sample size of one. The field of artificial life﹣called ALife for short﹣is the systematic attempt to spell out life's fundamental principles. Many of these practitioners，so﹣called ALifers，think that somehow making life is the surest way to really understand what life is.
So far no one has convincingly made artificial life. This track record makes ALife a ripe target for criticism，such as declarations of the field's doubtful scientific value. Alan Smith，a complexity scientist，is tired of such complaints. Asking about "the point" of ALife might be，well，missing the point entirely，he says. "The existence of a living system is not about the use of anything." Alan says. "Some people ask me，'So what's the worth of artificial life？'Do you ever think，'What is the worth of your grandmother？'"
As much as many ALifers hate emphasising their research's applications，the attempts to create artificial life could have practical payoffs. Artificial intelligence may be considered ALife's cousin in that researchers in both fields are enamoured by a concept called open﹣ended evolution（演化）.This is the capacity for a system to create essentially endless complexity，to be a sort of "novelty generator". The only system known to exhibit this is Earth's biosphere. If the field of ALife manages to reproduce life's endless "creativity" in some virtunl model，those same principles could give rise to truly inventive machines.
Compared with the developments of Al，advances in ALife are harder to recognise. One reason is that ALife is a field in which the central concept﹣﹣life itself﹣is undefined. The lack of agreement among ALifers doesn't help either. The result is a diverse line of projects that each advance along their unique paths. For better or worse，ALife mirrors the very subject it studies. Its muddled（混乱的）progression is a striking parallel（平行线） to the evolutionary struggles that have shaped Earth biosphere.
Undefined and uncontrolled，ALife drives its followers to repurpose old ideas and generated novelty. It may be，of course，that these characteristics aren't in any way surprising or singular. They may apply universally to all acts of evolution. Ultimately ALife may be nothing special. But even this dismissal suggests something：perhaps，just like life itself throughout the universe，the rise of ALife will prove unavoidable.
（1）Regarding Alan Smith's defence of ALife，the author is
| A． |
supportive |
| B． |
puzzled |
| C． |
unconcerned |
| D． |
doubtful |
（2）What does the word "enamoured" underlined in Paragraph 3 most probably mean？
| A． |
Shocked. |
| B． |
Protected. |
| C． |
Attracted. |
| D． |
Challenged. |
（3）What can we learn from this passage？
| A． |
ALife holds the key to human future. |
| B． |
ALife and AI share a common feature. |
| C． |
AI mirrors the developments of ALife. |
| D． |
AI speeds up the process of human evolution. |
（4）Which would be the best title for the passage？
| A． |
Life Is Undefined. Can AI Be a Way Out？ |
| B． |
Life Evolves. Can AI Help ALife Evolve，Too？ |
| C． |
Life Is Undefined. Can ALife Be Defined One Day？ |
| D． |
Life Evolves. Can Attempts to Create ALife Evolve，Too？ |
Advertising is as old as story-telling itself. For as long as people have wanted to persuade others to buy their goods, give them their vote or lay down their lives, they have used the methods of advertising. Of course, methods have changed over the years. At first, word of mouth was the only means of communicating, but after the invention of the first printing press and the arrival of the first newspaper, the camera, the television, and the home video recorder, the persuasive methods of the advertising industry have become much more sophisticated.
Advertising appeals more to our emotions than to our minds and therefore uses persuasive techniques which, though not misleading, are certainly biased towards its products. Advertisements have some basic features.
·They are fast and short. They deliver their message in minimum time and space.
·They are concentrated. Their language and images are extremely dense.
·They appeal to consumers’ emotions rather than to their logic.
·They entertain. That entertainment may be in the form of a jazzy melody or a photograph or a clever joke, but it always draws attention to itself because advertisements have to compete against every other competitor for consumers’ attention.In the past, people used methods of advertising when they wanted others to .
| A．buy their products and lay down |
| B．vote for them and give up their lives |
| C．support them and lie down |
| D．buy their products and give them tickets |
How can advertisements attract people?
| A．By showing reasonable prices of the products. |
| B．By showing fabulous pictures of the products. |
| C．By reminding people to think before deciding to buy the products. |
| D．By persuading people in the form of music, pictures and so on. |
The writer implied in the passage that .
| A．advertisers only present good points of their products |
| B．advertisers try to cheat consumers |
| C．advertisers are not sure about their products |
| D．advertisers are competing with each other. |
“Itself” in the last sentence of the passage refers to .
| A．photograph |
| B．entertainment |
| C．joke |
| D．jazzy melody |
Students and Technology in the Classroom
I love my blackberry—it’s my little connection to the larger world that can go anywhere with me . I also love my laptop computer ，as it holds all of my writing and thoughts .Despite this love of technology ,I know that there are times when I need to move away from these devices（设备） and truly communicate with others.
On occasion, I teach a course called History Matters for a group of higher education managers. My goals for the class include a full discussion of historical themes and ideas .Because I want students to thoroughly study the material and exchange their ideas with each other in the classroom ,I have a rule —no laptop ,iPads ,phones ,etc .When students were told my rule in advance of the class, some of them were not happy .
Most students think that my reasons for this rule include unpleasant experiences in the past with students misusing technology . There’s a bit of truth to that. Some students think that I am anti-technology . There’s no truth in that at all . I love technology and try to keep up with it so I can relate to my students.
The real reason why I ask students to leave technology at the door is that I think there are very few places in which we can have deep conversions and truly engage complex ideas. Interruptions by technology often break concentration and allow for too much dependence on outside information for ideas . I want students to dig deep within themselves for inspiration and ideas. I want them to push each other to think differently and make connections between the course the material and the class discussion .
I’ve been teaching my history class in this way for many years and the evaluations reflect student satisfaction with the environment that I create .Students realize that with deep conversation and challenge , they learn at a level that helps them keep the course material beyond the classroom .
I’m not saying that I won’t ever change my mind about technology use in my history class, but until I hear a really good reason for the change ,I’m sticking to my plan. A few hours of technology-free （没有科技）dialogue is just too sweet to give up. Some of the students in the history class were unhappy with____
| A．the course material |
| B．others’ misuse of technology |
| C．discussion topics |
| D．the author’s class regulations |
According to the author ,the use of technology in the classroom may ____
| A．keep students from doing independent thinking |
| B．encourage students to have in-depth conversations |
| C．help students to better understand complex themes |
| D．affect students’ concentration on course evaluation |
It can be inferred from the last paragraph that the author ____
| A．is quite stubborn |
| B．will give up teaching history |
| C．will change his teaching plan soon |
| D．values technology-free dialogues in his class |
I grew up in a house where the TV was seldom turned on and with one wall in my bedroom entirely lined with bookshelves, most of my childhood was spent on books I could get hold of. In fact, I grew up thinking of reading as natural as breathing and books unbelievably powerful in shaping perspectives (观点) by creating worlds we could step into, take part. in. and live in.
With this unshakable belief, I, at. fourteen, decided to become a writer. Here too, reading became useful. Every writer starts off knowing that he has something to say, but being unable to find the right ways to say it. He has to find his own voice by reading widely and discovering which parts of the writers he agrees or disagrees with, or agrees with so strongly that it reshapes his own world. He cannot write without loving to read, because only through reading other people's writing can one discover what works, what doesn't and, in the end, together with lots of practice, what voice he has.
Now I am in college, and have come to realize how important it is to read fiction (文学作品)．As a. law student, my reading is in fact limited to subject matter-the volume (量) of what I have to read for classes every week means there is little time to read anything else. Such reading made it all the clearer to me that I live in a very small part in this great place called life. Reading fiction reminds me that there is life beyond my own. It allows me to travel across the high seas and along the Silk Road, all from the comfort of my own armchair, to experience, though secondhand, exciting experiences that I wouldn't necessarily be able to have in my lifetime. What can be inferred about the author as a child?
| A． He never watched TV. |
| B． He read what he had to. |
| C． He found reading unbelievable. |
| D． He considered reading part of his life |
The underlined word "voice" in the second paragraph most probably means "_______".
| A． an idea |
| B． a sound quality |
| C． a way of writing |
| D． a world to write about |
What effect does reading have on the author?
| A． It helps him to realize his dream. |
| B． It opens up a wider world for him. |
| C． It makes his college life more interesting. |
| D． It increases his interest in worldwide travel. |
Which of the following can be the best title of this text?
| A． Why do I read? |
| B． How do I read? |
| C． What do I read? |
| D． When do I read? |
Young adult filmmakers all hope to show their works in international festivals like Sundance and Toronto. But what about really young filmmakers who aren’t in film school yet and aren’t, strictly speaking, eve adults?
They are at the heart of Wingspan Arts Film Festival tomorrow, in a setting any director might envy: Lincoln center. Complete with “red carpet” interviews and various awards, the festival has much in common with events for more experienced moviemakers, except for the age of the participants: about 8 to 18.
“What’s really exciting is that it’s film for kids by kids,” said Cori Gardner, managing director of Wingspan Arts, a nonprofit organization offering youth arts programs in the New York area. This year the festival will include films not only from Wingspan but also from other city organizations and one from a middle school in Arlington, Virginia. “We want to make this a national event,” Ms. Gardner added.
The nine shorts to b shown range from a Claymation biography of B.B. King to a science fiction adventure set in the year 3005. “Ａlot of the material is really mature,” Ms. Gardner said, talking about films by the New York branch of Global Action Project, a media arts and leadership-training group. “The choice is about the history of a family and Master Anti-Smoker is about the dangers of secondhand smoke.” Dream of the Invisibles describes young immigrants’ (移民) feelings of both belonging and not belonging in their adopted country.
The festival will end with an open reception at which other films will be shown. These include a music video and a full-length film whose title is Pressure. Wingspan Arts Kids Film Festival _____________.
| A．is organized by a middle school |
| B．is as famous as the Toronto Festival |
| C．shows films made by children |
| D．offers awards to film school students |
Which of the following is true of Wingspan Arts?
| A．It helps young filmmakers to make money. |
| B．It provides arts projects for young people. |
| C．It’s a media arts and leadership-training group. |
| D．It’s a national organization for young people. |
The underlined word “shorts” in Paragraph 4 refers to _________.
| A．short trousers |
| B．short kids |
| C．short films |
| D．short stories |
Movies to be shown in the festival ______________.
| A．cover different subjects |
| B．focus on kid’s life |
| C．are produced by Global Action Project |
| D．are directed by Ms. Gardner |
At the end of this film festival, there will be __________.
| A．various awards |
| B．“red carpet” interviews |
| C．an open reception |
| D．a concert at Lincoln Center |
A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.
“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.
They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.
While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.
Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.” The difficulty the team of engineers met with while making the robotic fly was that __________.
| A．they had no model in their mind |
| B．they did not have sufficient time |
| C．they had no ready-made components |
| D．they could not assemble the components |
Which of the following can be learned from the passage?
| A．The robotic flyer is designed to learn about insects. |
| B．Animals are not allowed in biological experiments. |
| C．There used to be few ways to study how insects fly. |
| D．Wood’s design can replace animals in some experiments. |
Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
| A．Father of Robotic Fly |
| B．Inspiration from Engineering Science |
| C．Robotic Fly Imitates Real Life Insect |
| D．Harvard Breaks Through in Insect Study |
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