单选题Ever since the early days of modem computing in the 1940s, the biological metaphor has been irresistible. The first computers—room-size behemoths—were referred to as "giant brains" or "electronic brains," in headlines and everyday speech. As computers improved and became capable of some tasks familiar to humans, like playing chess, the term used was "artificial intelligence". DNA, it is said, is the original software. For the most part, the biological metaphor has long been just that—a simplifying analogy rather than a blueprint for how to do computing. Engineering, not biology, guided the pursuit of artificial intelligence. As Frederick Jelinek, a pioneer in speech recognition, put it, "airplanes don"t flap their wings." Yet the principles of biology are gaining ground as a tool in computing. The shift in thinking results from advances in neuroscience and computer science, and from the push of necessity. The physical limits of conventional computer designs are within sight—not today or tomorrow, but soon enough. Nanoscale circuits cannot shrink much further. Today"s chips are power hogs, running hot, which curbs how much of a chip"s circuitry can be used. These limits loom as demand is accelerating for computing capacity to make sense of a surge of new digital data from sensors, online commerce, social networks, video streams and corporate and government databases. To meet the challenge, without gobbling the world"s energy supply, a different approach will be needed. And biology, scientists say, promises to contribute more than metaphors. "Every time we look at this, biology provides a clue as to how we should pursue the frontiers of computing," said John E. Kelly, the director of research at I. B. M. Dr. Kelly points to Watson, the question—answering computer that can play "Jeopardy!" and beat two human champions earlier this year. The I. B. M. "s clever machine consumes 85,000 watts of electricity, while the human brain runs on just 20 watts. "Evolution figured this out," Dr. Kelly said. Several biologically inspired paths are being explored by computer scientists in universities and corporate laboratories worldwide. One project, a collaboration of computer scientists and neuroscientists begun three years ago, has been encouraging enough that in August it won a $21 million round of government financing. In recent months, the team has developed prototype "neurosynaptic" microprocessors, or chips that operate more like neurons and synapses than like conventional semiconductors.

单选题选出下面读音不同的选项。

单选题Both of them are ______ They both live in

单选题Science is a dominant theme in our culture. Since it touches almost every facet of our life, educated people need at least some acquaintance with its structure and operation. They should also have an understanding of the subculture in which scientists live and the kinds of people they are. An understanding of general characteristics of science as well as specific scientific concepts is easier to attain if one knows something about the things that excite and frustrate the scientist. This book is written for the intelligent student or lay person whose acquaintance with science is superficial; for the person who has been presented with science as a musty storehouse of dried facts. The book can be used to supplement a course in any science that attempts to provide a better understanding of science. We hope this book will lead readers to a broader perspective on scientific attitudes and a more realistic view of what science is, who scientists are, and what they do. In addition, readers may learn to appreciate the relationship between scientific views and some of the values and philosophies that are pervasive in our culture. We have tried to present in this book an accurate and up-to-date picture of the scientific community and the people who populate it. That population has in recent years come to comprise more and more women. This increasing role of women in the scientific subculture is not an unique incident but, rather, part of the trend evident in all segments of society as more women enter traditionally male-dominated fields and make significant contributions. In discussing these changes and contribution, however, we are faced with a language that is implicitly sexist, one that uses male nouns or pronouns in referring to unspecified individuals. To offset this built-in bias, we have adopted the policy of using plural nouns and pronouns whenever possible and, when absolutely necessary, alternating he and she. This policy is far from being ideal, but it is at least an acknowledgment of the inadequacy of our language in treating half of the human race equally. We have also tried to make the book entertaining as well as informative. Our approach is usually informal. We feel, as do many other scientists, that we shouldn"t take ourselves too seriously. As the reader may observe, we see science as a delightful pastime rather than as a grim and dreary way to earn a living.

单选题"High tech" and "state of the art" are two expressions that describe very modern technology. High tech is just a shorter way of saying high technology. And high technology describes any invention, system of device that uses the newest ideas or discoveries of science and engineering. What is high tech? A computer is high tech. So is a communications satellite. A modern manufacturing system is surely high tech. High tech became a popular expression in the United States during the early 1980's. Because of improvements in technology, people could buy many new kinds of products in American stores, such as home computers, microwave ovens, etc. "State of the art" is something that is as modern as possible. It is a product that is based on the very latest methods and techn01ogy. Something that is "state of the art" is the newest possible design or product of a business or industry. A state of the art television set, for example, uses the most modern electronic design and parts. It is the best that one can buy. "State of the art" is not a new expression. Engineers have used it for years, to describe the best and most modern way of doing something. Millions of Americans began to use the expression in the late 1970's. The reason was the computer revolution. Every computer company claimed that its computers were "state of the art". Computer technology changed so fast that a state of the art computer today might be old tomorrow. The expression "state of the art" became as common and popular as computers themselves. Now all kinds of products are said to be "state of the art".

单选题It has been justly said that while "we speak with our vocal organs we (1) with our whole bodies. " All of us communicate with one another (2) , as well as with words. Sometimes we know what we're doing, as with the use of gestures such as the thumbs-up sign to indicate that we (3) . But most of the time we're not aware that we're doing it. We gesture with eyebrows or a hand, meet someone else's eyes and (4) . These actions we (5) are random and incidental. But researchers (6) that there is a system of them almost as consistent and comprehensible as language, and they conclude that there is a whole (7) of body language, (8) the way we move, the gestures we employ, the posture we adopt, the facial expression we (9) , the extent to which we touch and distance we stand (10) each other. Body language serves a variety of purposes. Firstly it can replace verbal communication, (11) with the use of gesture. Secondly it can modify verbal communication. Loudness and (12) of voice is an example here. Thirdly it regulates social interaction: turn taking is largely governed by non-verbal (13) . Fourthly it conveys our emotions and attitude. This is (14) important for successful cross-cultural communication. Every culture has its own body language, and children absorb its nuances (15) with spoken language. The way an Englishman crosses his legs is (16) like the way a male American does it. When we communicate with people from other cultures, the body language sometimes help make the communication easy and (17) , such as shaking hand is such a (18) gesture that people all over the world know that it is a signal for greeting. But sometimes the body language can cause certain misunderstanding (19) people of different cultures often have different forms of behavior for sending the same message or have different (20) towards the same body signals.

单选题All the off-shore oil explorers were in high spirits as they read ______ letters from their families.

单选题Which of the following was NOT true at the time Roosevelt was elected?

单选题 Should Single-Sex Education Be Eliminated? A. Why is a neuroscientist here debating single-sex schooling? Honestly, I had no fixed ideas on the topic when I started researching it for my book. Pink Brain, Blue Brain. But any discussion of gender differences in children inevitably leads to this debate, so I felt compelled to dive into the research data on single-sex schooling. I read every study I could, weighed the existing evidence, and ultimately concluded that single-sex education is not the answer to gender gaps in achievement— or the best way forward for today's young people. After my book was published, I met several developmental and cognitive psychologists whose work was addressing gender and education from different angles, and we published a peer-reviewed Education Forum piece in Science magazine with the pro-vocative title, 'The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Education.' B. We showed that three lines of research used to justify single-sex schooling—educational. neuroscience, and social psychology—all fail to support its alleged benefits, and SO the widely-held view that gender separation is somehow better for boys, girls, or both is nothing more than a myth. The Research on Academic Outcomes C. First, we reviewed the extensive educational research that has compared academic outcomes in students attending single-sex versus coeducational schools. The overwhelming conclusion when you put this enormous literature together is that there is no clear academic advantage of sitting in all-female or all-male classes, in spite of much popular belief to the contrary. I base this conclusion not on any individual study, but on large-scale and systematic reviews of thousands of studies conducted in every major English-speaking country. D. Of course, there're many excellent single-sex schools out there, but as these careful re-search reviews have demonstrated, it is not their single-sex composition that makes them excellent. It's all the other advantages that are typically packed into such schools, such as financial resources, quality of the faculty, and pro-academic culture, along with the family background and pre-selected ability of the students themselves that determine their outcomes. E. A case in point is the study by Linda Sax at UCLA, who used data from a large national survey of college freshmen to evaluate the effect of single-sex versus coeducational high schools. Commissioned by the National Coalition of Girls' schools, the raw findings look pretty good for the funders—higher SAT scores and a stronger academic orientation among women who had attended all girls' high schools(men weren't studied.)However, once the researchers controlled for both student and school attributes—measures such as family income, parents' education, and school resources— most of these effects were erased or diminished. F. When it comes to boys in particular, the data show that single-sex education is distinctly unhelpful for them. Among the minority of studies that have reported advantages of single-sex schooling, virtually all of them were studies of girls. There're no rigorous studies in the United States that find single-sex schooling is better for boys, and in fact, a separate line of research by economists has shown that both boys and girls exhibit greater cognitive growth over the school year based on the 'dose' of girls in a classroom. In fact, boys benefit even more than girls from having larger numbers of female classmates. So single-sex schooling is really not the answer to the current 'boy crisis' in education. Brain and Cognitive Development G. The second line of research often used to justify single-sex education falls squarely within my area of expertise: brain and cognitive development. It's been more than a decade now since the 'brain sex movement' began infiltrating (渗入) our schools, and there are literally hundreds of schools caught up in the fad (新潮). Public schools in Wisconsin, Indiana, Florida and many other states now proudly declare on their websites that they separate boys and girls because 'research solidly indicates that boys and girls learn differently,' due to 'hard-wired' differences in their brains, eyes, ears, autonomic nervous systems, and more. H. All of these statements can be traced to just a few would-be neuroscientists, especially physician Leonard Sax and therapist Michael Gurian. Each gives lectures, runs conferences, and does a lot of professional development on so-called 'gender-specific learning'. I analyzed their various claims about sex differences in hearing, vision, language, math, stress responses, and 'learning styles' in my book and a long peer-reviewed paper. Other neuroscientists and psychologists have similarly exposed their work. In short, the mechanisms by which our brains learn language, math, physics, and every other subject don't differ between boys and girls. Of course, learning does vary a lot between individual students, but research reliably shows that this variance is far greater within populations of boys or girls than between the two sexes. I. The equal protection clause of the U. S. Constitution prohibits separation of students by sex in public education that's based on precisely this kind of 'overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females.' And the reason it is prohibited is be-cause it leads far too easily to stereotyping and sex discrimination. Social Developmental Psychology J. That brings me to the third area of research which fails to support single-sex schooling and indeed suggests the practice is actually harmful: social-developmental psychology. K. It's a well-proven finding in social psychology that segregation promotes stereotyping and prejudice, whereas intergroup contact reduces them—and the results are the same whether you di-vide groups by race, age, gender, body mass index, sexual orientation, or any other category. What's more, children are especially vulnerable to this kind of bias, because they are dependent on adults for learning which social categories are important and why we divide people into different groups. L. You don't have to look far to find evidence of stereotyping and sex discrimination in single-sex schools. There was the failed single-sex experiment in California, where six school districts used generous state grants to set up separate boys' and girls' academies in the late 1990s. Once boys and girls were segregated, teachers resorted to traditional gender stereotypes to run their classes, and within just three years, five of the six districts had gone back to co-education. M. At the same time, researchers are increasingly discovering benefits of gender interaction in youth. A large British study found that children with other-sex older siblings(兄弟姐妹) exhibit less stereotypical play than children with same-sex older siblings, such as girls who like sports and building toys and boys who like art and dramatic play. Another study of high school social networks found less bullying and aggression the higher the density of mixed-sex friendships within a given adolescent network. Then there is the finding we cited in our Science paper of higher divorce and depression rates among a large group of British men who attended single-sex schools as teenagers, which might be explained by the lack of opportunity to learn about relationships during their formative years. N. Whether in nursery school, high school, or the business world, gender segregation narrows our perceptions of each other, facilitating stereotyping and sexist attitudes. It's very simple: the more we structure children and adolescents' environment around gender distinctions and separation, the more they will use these categories as the primary basis for understanding themselves and others. O. Gender is an important issue in education. There are gaps in reading, writing, and science achievement that should be narrower. There are gaps in career choice that should be narrower—if we really want to maximize human potential and American economic growth. But stereotyping boys and girls and separating them in the name of fictitious(虚构的) brain differences is never going to close these gaps.

单选题What competition was carried out recently in Britain?

单选题We'll have to ______ to the idea even though we don't like it.

单选题"Sorry, there are no tickets ______ for tomorrow's performance," the ticket officer said politely.

单选题This film is worth ______twice.

单选题—Was the driving pleasant when you vacationed in Mexico last summer? —No, it______for four days when we arrived, so the roads were very muddy.

单选题 During rush hour, downtown streets are ______ with commuters.

单选题From this passage, we learn that the people ______.

单选题______ kinds of matter in the world. A. There is a few million B. That there are millions C. There are a few million D. It is millions