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高中英语人教版(新课程标准)2017-2018学年高二下册选修七Unit 2 Robots同步练习3

阅读理解

    A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older and younger people have a varying preference for what they would want a personal robot to look like. And they change their minds based on what the robot is supposed to do.

    Participants were shown a series of photos, either robotic, human or mixed human-robot faces, and were asked to select the one that they would prefer for their robot's appearance. Most college-aged adults in the study preferred a robotic appearance, although the others were also generally open to them. However, nearly 60 percent of older adults said they would want a robot with a human face, and only 6 percent of them chose one with a mixed human-robot appearance.

    "We found that participants, both younger and older, will assign emotional traits to a robot based on its face, which will determine what they are most comfortably interacting with," Akanksha Prakash, a psychology graduate student at Georgia Tech who led the study, said in a statement. So when participants were told the robot was helping with personal care, chores, social interaction or helping to make decisions, something interesting happened.

    Preference was less strong for helping with chores, although the majority of older and younger participants chose a robot with a robotic face. But for decision-making tasks, such as getting advice on where to invest money, younger participants tended to select a mixed human-robot appearance. A robotic face was their least favored choice for this task. Older adults generally preferred a human face. Personal care tasks such as bathing caused the most divisive preferences within both age groups. Those who chose a human face did so because they associated the robot with human-like care capabilities — such as nursing — and trustworthy traits. Many others didn't want anything looking like a human to bathe them due to the private nature of the task.

    Based on this early research, the researcher says that if a robot is designed to help only with a specific task, its appearance should fit in with the task. For instance, if the robot is designed to specifically assist the user with critical decisions, the robot should be given an intelligent look instead of a funny one. However, if the robot is tasked with a variety of jobs in the home, allowing for appearance customizability(可定制性) might be the best option.

    The researcher next plans to expand the study to other age groups and people with more diverse educational backgrounds.

(1)、What does the underlined word "them" in Paragraph 2 refer to?
A、college-aged adults B、all participants C、older adults D、younger participants
(2)、What happened when participants were offered robots handling different tasks?
A、They tended to choose one with a human face. B、They didn't care about robotic appearance any more. C、They were into one with decision-making skills most. D、Their preference for robotic appearance changed accordingly.
(3)、Which robots lead to the biggest gap in people's preference for robotic appearance?
A、Those with personal care skills. B、Those with decision-making skills. C、Those with housekeeping skills. D、Those with social interaction skills.
(4)、What's the best title of the passage?
A、Deciding what robots suit you best contains many tricks B、Determining what robots should look like varies with age C、How robots with a human face benefit people? D、Why people have a preference for robots?
举一反三
根据短文理解,选择正确答案。

    Retirement (退休) should be time of joy and freedom. However, for some people retirement comes with feelings of depression (沮丧), which makes life difficult for them.

    Retirement is a major life change. Even good changes usually involve some kinds of loss. When you retire, you find yourself lacking whatever working used to provide. That could include, for example, 1. knowing you're working for society, 2. getting admiration from your skills, 3. having “aha” moments when you solve problems, 4. having people to socialize with, and 5. simply having a place to go and a reason to get out of bed every day. For most people, there's a financial loss, too. Also, retirement age is a time when a lot of people have to deal with losing their parents or having serious health problems of their own.

    Because of all these, retirees are more likely to get depressed.

    Depression is very harmful. First, depression can make physical health problems worse. Second, it takes a toll on relationships, because it can make people angry. Third, it's hard to get  much done when you're depressed.

    What can we do to overcome (克服) the feelings of depression? First, do all the things that help depression in general: drink enough water, exercise, talk to friends, have a hobby, laugh, and spend time in nature. If you feel depressed more often than not, it's probably time to talk to a doctor about your feelings. Second, it's important to keep busy and get out of the house when you can. Make specific plans with friends. Take a class Volunteer. Or just make sure you start each day with some kind of goal. Third, try to focus on what you've gained by retiring. Think about what you may have now that you wished you had before you were able to retire. For example, days that are less stressful, a chance to rest and take better care of your body, more time for your family and yourself. To write, to start a hobby and to learn something new are all new possibilities. Finally, tell your story. You've lived a long time and you become an oral historian each time you talk with someone about your experiences. You can also write in a journal or make a video recording of your memories. Telling your stories can help you look back on your life and career with a sense of wholeness and achievements.

阅读理解

    The insects are important to farmers. When a honeybee lands on a flower in plant, pollen (花粉) sticks to its legs. When the bee lands on another flower, some of the pollen falls off and fertilizes the second plant.

    The act of spreading pollen is responsible for many fruits, vegetables, nuts and other crops. Yet about 30 percent of honeybees in the United States and other areas have died in recent years.

    Mike Leggett is a researcher at the University of Maryland. He wants to learn why so many bees are dying. “The number of colonies (蜂群) that die every winter has been one in three. So on average 30 percent of the colonies have died every winter over the last six winters. And that's a huge number.” His research team examined the pollen that honeybees carried to their homes. They found that the pollen contained high levels of 35 different pesticides (杀虫剂), which are chemicals used to protect plants. “Pesticides are used, and have been used, pretty widely, for centuries, to protect plants from diseases,” says Mr Leggett.

    Keith Oh linger, a farmer and beekeeper in Maryland, has watched many of his bees die every winter. Mr Ohlinger thinks widespread bee death is caused by several things happening at once. But he does not feel sure that pesticides are a part of the problem, “I felt it was the result of a lot of little things. I didn't feel that there was probably one smoking gun. But there's a division (分歧) there, some people feel that it is just one thing.”

    Honeybees are important to agriculture. This makes the search for an answer to their death very important for Mr Leggett's team. As he knows, one in every three bites of food we eat is somehow pollinated by honeybees.

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    Look and listen, and that concert poster just might be singing. Engineers have designed antennas(天线)that can turn everyday objects, from posters to clothing, into radio stations. Anyone walking or driving by can tune in and hear what's on. The devices use radio waves, but they don't generate their own. They hijack(劫持)the same waves that carry music and news to your smartphone.

    Vikram Iyer co-led the project with Anran Wang, a graduate student in computer science and engineering. The two got the idea for their invention by paying attention to what was already around them. “It's the ideal way to minimize the power consumption for any kind of communication,” notes Iyer. Their research had focused on new types of wireless communications that won't require much energy. They wanted something that would work outdoors in a city. Then they realized the air is already filled with wireless communications in the form of radio stations.

    Radio waves carry energy at the speed of light from tall transmission towers to radios in cars, phones and homes. These waves of the antennas take in existing radio waves and change them slightly. Those changes add new sound information. The changed waves are then sent back out into the world where people can listen in. So the device only needs enough power to change the waves, not to generate them.

    The scientists tested their device with a poster. It advertised a Seattle concert by Simply Three. People standing almost 4 meters away from the poster could use FM receivers on smartphones to listen to all songs of the band's music. Those in cars as far as 18 meters away could use car radios to pick up some parts of the songs

    The technology could even extend to clothes. Iyer, Wang and their team turned the shirt into an antenna. It let the shirt talk to the wearer's smartphone. If a sensor in the shirt tracked a person's heart rate during exercise, for instance, the antenna could transmit those data to the wearer's phone.

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    Unemployment in the United States is still high at 6.7%. But for job seekers, especially those with college educations, researchers say finding a job can be as easy as logging(登录)on to a computer. It used to be that looking for a job meant hurrying around, knocking on doors and turning to ads. But that's changing, thanks to the Internet. A new report says, for college graduates, looking for a job is getting easier. More than 80 percent of the jobs are available online.

    At the height of the depression(萧条), in the U. S. the highest unemployment rate was 10%, just a little more than two million jobs were being posted each month. But as the recovery takes hold, the job picture looks increasingly bright.

    That's great news for Hamilton. Only once has he ever applied in person for a job at a shopping mall. He said, "I think my generation—the idea of going door to door, out knocking and saying, hey are you hiring? —like that—doesn't exist anymore…those days are gone. Just go online.''

Kim Dancy recently graduated with a master's degree in Public Policy. She found her dream job as an education policy researcher. But she says finding the perfect job online takes a lot of perseverance. She said, "It can be really frustrating and it takes a long time, but if you applied for enough positions and really do your homework you will get somewhere.

    The report's findings suggest careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math provide the greatest opportunities, with salaries that range between $30 to $45 an hour. But for maximum income and satisfaction, workers must be prepared to move and change jobs at least every five years.

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    US inventor Thomas Alva Edison once said: "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." He was not exaggerating. Perspiration, indeed, plays a very important role in Chinese scientist Tu Youyou's success.

    Tu was given the Nobel Prize in Physio logy or Medicine in 2015 for discovering a new drug for malaria, a deadly disease caused by the bite of some types of mosquito. She is the first Chinese citizen to win a Nobel Prize in science. "It is the pride of the whole Chinese science community, which will inspire more Chinese scientists," China Daily noted.

    Malaria is a disease that infects around 200 million people and k ills about half a million people each year, according to the Economist. Tu's discovery has saved millions of lives, especially in the developing world. According to the World Health Organization, by 2013 malaria deaths had fallen by 47 percent compared with 2000.

    But the road to this achievement was a tough one to travel. In the late 1960s, during the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976), Tu joined a government project on which she began research on a new malaria drug.

    In the beginning, Tu read a lot of old folk remedies(药方), searched texts that w ere hundreds or thousands of years old and traveled to remote places.

    Over several months, Tu and her team collected over 600 plants and created a list of almost 380 possible remedies.

    "This w as the most challenging stage of the project," Tu told The Beijing News. "It was a very labor-demanding and dull job, in particular when you faced one failure after another."

    But the hard work and the dullness failed to break the team's spirit. In the following months, she and her team tested the remedies on malaria- infected mice and they found that an extract(提取物)from the plant qinghao seemed to work w ell.

    Not that the work was easier after that. The fact that the extract didn't always work against malaria discouraged some of her teammates. But Tu was ambitious to make a contribution to the world and so she encouraged her teammates to keep going. They decided to start again from the beginning.

    In 1971, they were rewarded for their efforts. After nearly 200 failures, Tu finally made an extract that was 100 percent effective  against malaria parasites.The extract was called "Artemisin in"(青蒿素).

    Thanks to decades of hard work, Tu and her team had "provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people every year," said the Nobel Prize Committee. "It has greatly improved human health and reduced suffering."

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