One evening in February 2007, a student named Paula Ceely brought her car to a stop on a remote road in Wales. She got out to open a metal gate that blocked her path .That’s when she heard the whistle sounded by the driver of a train. Her Renault Clio was parked across a railway line. Seconds later, she watched the train drag her car almost a kilometre down the railway tracks.
Ceely’s near miss made the news because she blamed it on her GPS (导航仪). She had never driven the route before. It was dark and raining heavily. Ceely was relying on her GPS, but it made no mention of the crossing. “I put my complete trust in the device and it led me right into the path of a speeding train,” she told the BBC.
Who is to blame here? Rick Stevenson, who tells Ceely’s story in his book When Machines Fail Us, points the finger at the limitations of technology. We put our faith in digital devices, he says, but our digital helpers are too often not up to the job. They are filled with small problems. And it’s not just GPS devices: Stevenson takes us on a tour of digital disasters involving everything from mobile phones to wireless keyboards.
The problem with his argument in the book is that it’s not clear why he only focuses on digital technology, while there may be a number of other possible causes. A map-maker might have left the crossing off a paper map. Maybe we should blame Ceely for not paying attention. Perhaps the railway authorities are at fault for poor singalling system. Or maybe someone has studied the relative dangers and worked out that there really is something specific wrong with the GPS equipment. But Stevenson doesn’t say.
It’s a problem that runs through the book. In a section on cars, Stevenson gives an account of the advanced techniques that criminals use to defeat computer-based locking systems for cars. He offers two independent sets of figures on car theft; both show a small rise in some parts of the country. He says that once again not all new locks have proved reliable. Perhaps, but maybe it’s also due to the shortage of policemen on the streets. Or changing social circumstances. Or some combination of these factors.
The game between humans and their smart devices is amusing and complex. It is shaped by economics and psychology and the cultures we live in. Somewhere in the mix of those forces there may be a way for a wiser use of technology.
If there is such a way, it should involve more than just an awareness of the shortcomings of our machines. After all, we have lived with them for thousands of years. They have probably been fooling us for just as long.
1.What did Paula Ceely think was the cause of her accident？
A. She was not familiar with the road.
B. It was dark and raining heavily then.
C. The railway workers failed to give the signal.
D. Her GPS device didn’t tell her about the crossing.
2.The phrase “near miss” (Paragraph 2) can best be replaced by______.
A. close hitB. heavy loss
C. narrow escape D. big mistake
3.Which of the following would Rick Stevenson most probably agree with?
A. Modern technology is what we can’t live without.
B. Digital technology often falls short of our expectation.
C. Digital devices are more reliable than they used to be.
D. GPS error is not the only cause for Ceely’s accident.
4.In the writer’s opinion, Stevenson’s argument is _______.
A. one-sided B. reasonable
C. puzzling D. well-based
5.What is the real concern of the writer of this article?
A. The major causes of traffic accidents and car thefts.
B. The relationship between human and technology.
C. The shortcomings of digital devices we use.
D. The human unawareness of technical problems.
“I’ve never met a human worth cloning,” says cloning expert Mark Westhusin from his lab at Texas A&M University. “It’s a stupid endeavor.”
That’s an interesting choice of adjective, coming from a man who has spent millions of dollars trying to clone a 13-year-old dog named Missy. So far, he and his team have not succeeded, though they have cloned two cows and a cat.
They just might succeed in cloning Missy soon — or perhaps not for another five years.
Westhusin's experience with cloning animals leaves him upset by all this talk of human cloning. In three years of work on the Missy project, using hundreds upon hundreds of dog's eggs, the A&M team has produced only a dozen or so embryos carrying Missy's DNA. None have survived the transfer to a surrogate（代孕的）mother. The wastage of eggs and the many spontaneously aborted(流产，发育不全) fetuses（胎）may be acceptable when you're dealing with cats or bulls, he argues, but not with humans. “Cloning is incredibly inefficient, and also dangerous,” he says.
Even so, dog cloning is a commercial opportunity, with a nice research payoff. Ever since Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996, Westhusin's phone has been ringing with people calling in hopes of duplicating their cats and dogs, cattle and horses. “A lot of people want to clone pets, especially if the price is right,” says Westhusin. Cost is no obstacle for Missy's mysterious billionaire owner; he's put up $3.7 million so far to fund A&M's research.
Contrary to some media reports, Missy is not dead. The owner wants a twin to carry on Missy's fine qualities after she does die. The prototype（原型；雏形）is, by all accounts, athletic, good-natured and super-smart. Missy's master does not expect an exact copy of her. He knows her clone may not have her temperament（气质、性情）. In a statement of purpose, Missy's owner and the A&M team say they are “both looking forward to studying the ways that her clones differ from Missy.”
Besides cloning a great dog, the project may contribute insight into the old question of nature vs. nurture. It could also lead to the cloning of special rescue dogs and many endangered animals.
However, Westhusin is cautious about his work. He knows that even if he gets a dog pregnant, the offspring, should they survive, will face the problems shown at birth by other cloned animals: abnormalities like immature lungs and heart and weight problems~ “Why would you ever want to clone humans,” Westhusin asks, “when we're not even close to getting it worked out in animals yet?”
1.By “stupid endeavor”, Westhusin means to say that ________.
A. human cloning is a foolish undertaking
B. animal cloning is absolutely impractical
C. human cloning should be done selectively
D. animal cloning is not worth the effort at all
2.What does the second paragraph tell us about Westhusin's dog cloning project?
A. Its success is already in sight.
B. It is progressing smoothly.
C. It is doomed to utter failure.
D. Its outcome remains uncertain.
3.By cloning Missy, Mark Westhusin hopes to ________.
A. study the possibility of cloning humans
B. search for ways to modify its temperament
C. find out the differences between Missy and its clones
D. examine the reproductive system of the dog species
4.We learn from the passage that animal clones are likely to have ________.
A. a bad temper
B. defective（有缺陷的、有毛病的）organs
C. immune deficiency
D. an abnormal shape
5.What’s the best title of the passage?
A. Cloning of Missy
B. Scientist Says ‘No’ to Human Cloning
C. Human Cloning Is Dangerous .
D. Westhusin Is Cautious about Cloning
Researchers at the University of Bedforshire have developed a new technique for powering electronic device（装置）. The system, developed by Professor Ben Allen at the Centre for Wireless Research, uses radio waves as power.
Believed to be a world first, the team claims it could eventually eliminate (or get rid of) the need for conventional batteries. The university has now filed a patent application to secure the only rights to the technique.
Professor Allen and his team have created a system to use medium wave frequencies to replace batteries in small everyday devices like clocks and remote controls.
The new technique uses the “waste” energy of radio waves and has been developed as part of the university’s research into “power harvesting”. Professor Allen said that as radio waves have energy---like light waves, sound waves or wind waves---in theory, these waves could be used to create power.
“The emerging（新兴的）area of power harvesting technology promises to reduce our reliance on conventional batteries,” he said. “It’s really exciting way of taking power from sources other than what we would normally think of.”
The team is now waiting for the results of the patent application to secure recognition of the technique. Professor Allen said that the team’s achievements had all been done in their “spare time”. “Our next stage is to try and raise some real funds so that we can take this work forward and make a working prototype（模型）and maybe partner up with the right people and take this to a full product in due course,” he said.
“Power harvesting has a really important part in our future, because, just in this country, we dispose of somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 tones of batteries in landfill（垃圾填理）sites every single year－that is toxic chemicals going into the ground.”
He added that development of the product could also be “commercially beneficial”. “The market for this is several billion pounds. We’ve seen market predictions for 2020 which have these kinds of figures, so there’s a lot of commercial potential in this area,” he said.
Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Bedfordshire, Professor Carsten Maple, said, “This type of work is a reflection of the university’s growing reputation and experience in conducting innovative（创新的）research.”
1.From the text we know the new technique for powering electronic devices_____.
A. can be applied to all electronic devices.
B. uses radio waves to create power.
C. has replaced conventional batteries.
D. produces many toxic chemicals.
2.According to Professor Allen, power harvesting technology______.
A. makes every use of radio waves.
B. takes power from usual sources.
C. reduces our dependency on conventional batteries.
D. aims at huge commercial benefits.
3.What can we learn about Professor Allen and his team from the text?
A. They have made use of radio waves in their daily life.
B. They have raised a big fund to support their research.
C. They have gained a patent for their new technology.
D. They mainly did their research in their spare time.
4.What is Professor Carsten Maple’s attitude toward the new technique?
A. Critical.B. Favorable.
C. Conservative.D. Negative.
5.What is the text mainly about?
A. A new technique to create power.
B. A crisis concerning conventional batteries.
C. Some special sources of power.
D. The development of power harvesting.
An experiment was carried out at British school into the performance of new pupils. At the start of the year, the pupils were each given a rating, ranging from “excellent prospect” to “unlikely to do well”. These were totally untrue ratings and did not reflect how well the pupils had previously performed. However, these ratings were given to the teachers. At the end of the year, the experimenters compared the pupils’ performance with the ratings. Despite their real abilities, there was an astonishingly high connection between performance and ratings. It seems that people perform as well as we expect them to.
The Self-fulfilling Effect is also known as the Pygmalion Effect. This comes from an old Greek story. The story was also the basis of George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion”, later turned into the musical “My Fair Lady”. In Shaw’s play, Professor Henry Higgins claims he can turn a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle into a duchess. But, as Eliza herself points out to Higgins’ friend Pickering, it isn’t what she learns or does that determines whether she will become a duchess, but how she’s treated.
The implication (含义) of the Pygmalion Effect for leaders and managers is massive. It means that the performance of your team depends less on them than it does on you. The performance you get from people is no more or less than what you expect, which means you must always expect the best. As Goethe said, “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.”
1.The underlined word “rating” in Paragraph 1 can be replaced by “_________”.
A. programB. regulation
C. correction D. classification
2.What’s the passage mainly about?
A. A new scientific experiment.
B. The Self-fulfilling Effect.
C. Shaw’s play “Pygmalion”.
D. An improved teaching method.
3.The experiment was made in order to _________.
A. try out a new teaching method
B. pick out the most excellent pupils
C. learn if expectations affect performance
D. give each pupil a proper rating
4.What made Eliza change into a duchess according to Eliza herself?
A. Strict training from Higgins.
B. Her own strong will and hard work.
C. The proper way she was regarded
D. Warm encouragement from Pickering.
5.According to the Pygmalion Effect, if you want a man to finish a hard task in a short time, you should say, “_________”.
A. I’m sure you can make it
B. I will help you any time
C. It is as easy as pie
D. It doesn’t matter if you fail
When very small dinosaur bones were found in a Germany mine, people thought they were from baby dinosaurs. ___1._ Martin Sander's work shows that they were probably fully __2.__ (grow) and belong to the smallest giant dinosaur species ever found.
Growth marks on dinosaur bones are similar __3.__ growth rings on trees. The rings are far apart while the animal is young and growing quickly. __4.__ get closer as growth slows. "It is _5.__ (exact) these tight ring marks that we found in the fossil bones," says Sander. So the fossils must have been from adult animals.
__6.__ was this German dinosaur so much smaller than other giant dinosaurs, which grew up to 45 metres long and weighed as much as a thousand humans?
150 million years ago, most of Germany was underwater. Scientists think that __7.__ water levels rose, there was less and less land and food available. The dinosaur _【小题8__ (force) to adapt and evolved into a smaller animal __8.__ (need) less space and food.
Since 1998, scientists have dug up more than 1,000 dinosaur fossils in the mine. It is one of the few places in the world __9._ the bones and footprints of dinosaurs have been found together.
阅读下面的短文, 然后按照要求写一篇150词左右的英语短文。
In 1882 a baby girl caught a fever that was so fierce that she nearly died. She survived but the fever left its mark ― she could no longer see or hear. Because she could not hear, she also found it very difficult to speak. So how did this child, blinded and deafened at 19 months old, grow up to become a world-famous author and public speaker?
The fever cut her off from the outside world, depriving her of sight and sound. It was as if she had been thrown into a dark prison cell from which there could be no release. Luckily Helen was not someone who gave up easily. Soon she began to explore the world by usin
g her other senses.
Just before her seventh birthday, the family hired a private tutor ― Anne Sullivan. Anne was careful to teach Helen especially those subjects in which she was interested.
Helen proved to be a remarkable scholar, graduating with honours from Radcliffe College in 1904. She had phenomenal powers of concentration and memory, as well as a dogged determination to succeed. While she was still at college she wrote “The Story of My Life”. This was an immediate success and earned her enough money to buy her own house.
She toured the country, giving lecture after lecture. Many books were written about her and several plays and films were made about her life. Eventually she became so famous that she was invited abroad and received many honours from foreign universities and monarchs. In 1932 she became a vice-president of the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the United Kingdom.
【写作内容】
1. 概括短文的内容要点, 该部分的字数大约30词;
2. 就“残疾人需要我们的关心”这个主题发表你的看法, 至少包含以下的内容要点, 该部分的大约120词:
a) 以你认识或了解的残疾人为例, 简述残疾人面临的困难及其取得的成就;
b) 举例说明人们是怎样关心和帮助残疾人的, 还存在哪些不足之处;
c) 呼吁大家都来关心和帮助残疾人。
【写作要求】
可以使用实例或其它论述方法支持你的论点，也可以参照阅读材料的内容，但不得直接引用原文中的句子。
【评分标准】
概括准确、语言规范、内容合适，篇章连贯。
