单选题 To most people the human face is a compelling object fraught with meaning. But for autistic children, who can't get a read on other people's emotions, eye contact is terrifying. When they do look at faces, they tend to stare at the mouth. Fortunately, researchers now think that technology can help overcome the barrier that isolates these kinds. Software that enables robots to respond to a child's feelings a little bit—but not too much—can help train him or her to interact more freely with people. "The beauty of a robot or software is that it's not human," and therefore not as intimidating, says Stephen Porges, an autism expert at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Computer-generated faces are already having an impact in the classroom. Psychologist Dominic Massaro at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has created Baldi, a lively computer character, as a stand-in for human teachers. For three years, Baldi and his female counterpart, Baldette, have been giving autistic kids in the Bay School in Santa Cruz lessons in vocabulary and in understanding facial expressions. The character has been so successful that he's spawned imitators—Baldini in Italian, Baldir in Arabic and Bao in Chinese. Porges thinks that the real role of cartoon personas is not so much to teach patients as to calm them. Autistic kids live in a state of hyperalertness, as if they were constantly suffering stage fright. If technology can put them at ease, Porges argues, social skills will develop naturally. In a recent study, Porges exposed 20 autistic people, ranging from 10 to 21 years old, to engineered speech and music. He removed low frequency sounds, which the body tends to interpret as indicating danger, and exaggerated vocal intonations, much as people dramatize emotions when speaking to infants. After 45 minutes, all but one of the subjects began looking at the eyes of a person on a video screen just as a normal viewer would. The improvement persisted at least a week, but had faded after six months. Porges is now developing headphones that reduce low frequencies. He also hopes to test whether ongoing exposure to the engineered sounds can lead to long-term improvement. Other technology may be effective for less severely autistic children. Whereas normal babies learn from caretakers to mirror emotions—smile at a smile, frown at a frown—autistic children often lack this basic skill. Cognitive scientists Javier Movellan and Marian Stewart Bartlett at the University of California, San Diego, have built a robot that can "read" faces. They hope that playing with the robot and watching it interact with others will inspire autistic children to return the smiles of humans. Commercial emotion-reading software about to hit the market could be a boon for some high functioning autistic and Asperger's patients in dealing with social situations. Affective Media, a firm near Edinburgh, Scotland, has created a prototype phone that "hears" the emotion in voice messages and conveys it explicitly to the owner. A person checking messages would hear something like this: "You have two bored calls, one surprised call, and one angry call." "Three years ago this was science fiction," says Christian Jones, co-founder of Affective Media. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built a similar voicemail system, called Emotive Alert, that evaluates a caller's intonation, speed and volume. It identifies whether a call sounds urgent, informal or formal, and whether the speaker was happy or sad. Emotion-reading software might improve the way we all interact with machines. Computers at call centers may soon be able to alert employees to an irate caller who might need special handling. Scientists at Affective Media, Stanford and Toyota are developing a system for cars that responds to cues in the driver's voice and face, perhaps turning on appropriate music if a driver seems sad. It's another barrier emotionally adept software might help overcome.

单选题 Directions: In this part of the test there will be some short talks and conversations. After each one, you will be asked some questions. The talks, conversations and questions will be spoken ONLY ONCE. Now listen carefully and choose the right answer to each question you have heard and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.

单选题As Philadelphia grew from a small town into a city in the first half of the eighteenth century, it became an increasingly important marketing center for a vast and growing agricultural hinterland. Market days saw the crowded city even more crowded, as farmers from within a radius of 24 or more kilometers brought their sheep, cows, pigs, vegetables, cider, and other products for direct sale to the townspeople. The High Street Market was continuously enlarged throughout the period until 1736, when it reached from Front Street to Third. By 1745 New Market was opened on Second Street between Pine and Cedar. The next year the Callowhill Market began operation. Along with market days, the institution of twice-yearly fairs persisted in Philadelphia even after similar trading days had been discontinued in other colonial cities. The fairs provided a means of bringing handmade goods from outlying places to would-be buyers in the city. Linens and stockings from Germantown, for example, were popular items. Auctions were another popular form of occasional trade. Because of the competition, retail merchants opposed these as well as the fairs. Although governmental attempts to eradicate fairs and auctions were less than successful, the ordinary course of economic development was on the merchants" side, as increasing business specialization became the order of the day. Export merchants became differentiated from their importing counterparts, and specialty shops began to appear in addition to general stores selling a variety of goods. One of the reasons Philadelphia"s merchants generally prospered was because the surrounding area was undergoing tremendous economic and demographic growth. They did their business, after all, in the capital city of the province. Not only did they cater to the governor and his circle, but citizens from all over the colony came to the capital for legislative sessions of the assembly and council and the meetings of the courts of justice.

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单选题Alice was about to ______, when she suddenly found an answer to the question. [A] make up [B] look up [C] turn up [D] give up

单选题Civil-liberties advocates reeling from the recent revelations on surveillance had something else to worry about last week: the privacy of the billions of search queries made on sites like Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. As part of a long-running court case, the government has asked those companies to turn over information on its users" search behavior. All but Google have handed over data, and now the Department of Justice has moved to compel the search giant to turn over the goods. What makes this case different is that the intended use of the information is not related to national security, but the government"s continuing attempt to police Internet pornography. In 1998, Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), but courts have blocked its implementation due to First Amendment concerns. In its appeal, the DOJ wants to prove how easy it is to inadvertently stumble upon porn. In order to conduct a controlled experiment—to be performed by a UC Berkeley professor of statistics—the DOJ wants to use a large sample of actual search terms from the different search engines. It would then use those terms to do its own searches, employing the different kinds of filters each search engine offers, in an attempt to quantify how often "material that is harmful to minors" might appear. Google contends that since it is not a party to the case, the government has no right to demand its proprietary information to perform its test. "We intend to resist their motion vigorously," said Google attorney Nicole Wong. DOJ spokesperson Charles Miller says that the government is requesting only the actual search terms, and not anything that would link the queries to those who made them. (The DOJ is also demanding a list of a million Web sites that Google indexes to determine the degree to which objectionable sites are searched.) Originally, the government asked for a treasure trove of all searches made in June and July 2005; the request has been scaled back to one week"s worth of search queries. One oddity about the DOJ"s strategy is that the experiment could conceivably sink its own case. If the built-in filters that each search engine provides are effective in blocking porn sites, the government will have wound up proving what the opposition has said all along—you don"t need to suppress speech to protect minors on the Net. "We think that our filtering technology does a good job protecting minors from inadvertently seeing adult content," says Ramez Naam, group program manager of MSN Search. Though the government intends to use these data specifically for its COPA-related test, it"s possible that the information could lead to further investigations and, perhaps, subpoenas to find out who was doing the searching. What if certain search terms indicated that people were contemplating terrorist actions or other criminal activities? Says the DOJ"s Miller, "I"m assuming that if something raised alarms, we would hand it over to the proper [authorities]." Privacy advocates fear that if the government request is upheld, it will open the door to further government examination of search behavior. One solution would be for Google to stop storing the information, but the company hopes to eventually use the personal information of consenting customers to improve search performance. "Search is a window into people"s personalities," says Kurt Opsahl, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney. "They should be able to take advantage of the Internet without worrying about Big Brother looking over their shoulders. "

单选题 Let children learn to judge their own work. A child learning to talk does not learn by being corrected all the time: if corrected too much, he will stop talking. He notices a thousand times a day the difference between the language he uses and the language those around him use. Bit by bit, he makes the necessary changes to make his language like other people's. In the same way, children learning to do all the other things they learn to do without being taught—to walk, run, climb, whistle, ride a bicycle—compare their own performances with those of more skilled people, and slowly make the needed changes. But in school we never give a child a chance to find out his mistakes for himself, let alone correct them. We do it all for him. We act as if we thought that he would never notice a mistake unless it was pointed out to him, or correct it unless he was made to. Soon he becomes dependent on the teacher. Let him do it himself. Let him work out, with the help of other children if he wants it, what this word says, what the answer is to that problem, whether this is a good way of saying or doing this or not. If it is a matter of right answers, as it may be hi mathematics or science, give him the answer book. Let him correct his own papers. Why should we teachers waste time on such routine work? Our job should be to help the child when he tells us that he can't find the way to get the right answer. Let's end all this nonsense of grades, exams, marks. Let us throw them all out, and let the children learn what all educated persons must some day learn, how to measure their own understanding, how to know what they know or do not know. Let them get on with this job in the way that seems most sensible to them, with our help as school teachers if they ask for it. The idea that there is a body of knowledge to be learnt at school and used for the rest of one's life is nonsense in a world as complicated and rapidly changing as ours. Anxious parents and teachers say, "But suppose they fail to learn something essential, something they will need to get on in the world?" Don't worry! If it is essential, they will go out into the world and learn it.

单选题Questions 27-30

单选题Which of the following is NOT implied in the sentences "Men are, of course, going through the same dimensional change. They are not, however, encountering, or inviting, the same confusion"?

单选题Questions 15—18

单选题Questions 6～10 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; for the person who sees the chief objective of science as the production of gadgets; and for the person who views the scientists as some sort of magician. The book can be used to supplement a course in any science, to accompany any course that attempts to give an understanding of the modern world, of-independently of any course—simply 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. It will give them an awareness and understanding of the relationship between science and our culture and an appreciation of the roles science may play in our culture. 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Questions 1～5 Writing articles about films for The Front Page was my first proper job. Before then I had done bits of reviewing—novels for other newspapers, films for a magazine and anything I was asked to do for the radio. That was how I met Tom Seaton, the first arts editor of The Front Page, who had also written for radio and television. He hired me, but Tom was not primarily a journalist, or he would certainly have been more careful in choosing his staff. At first, his idea was that a team of critics should take care of the art forms that didn't require specialized knowledge: books, TV, theatre, film and radio. There would be a weekly lunch at which we would make our choices from the artistic material that Tom had decided we should cover, though there would also be guests to make the atmosphere sociable. It all felt a bit of a dream at that time: a new newspaper, and I was one of the team. It seemed so unlikely that a paper could he introduced into a crowded market. It seemed just as likely that a millionaire wanted to help me personally, and was pretending to employ me. Such was my lack of self-confidence. In fact, the first time I saw someone reading the newspaper on the London Underground, then turning to a page on which one of my reviews appeared, I didn't know where to look. Tom's original scheme for a team of critics for the arts never took off. It was a good idea, but we didn't get together as planned and so everything was done by phone. It turned out, too, that the general public out there preferred to associate a reviewer with a single subject area, and so I chose film. Without Tom's initial push, though, we would hardly have come up with the present arrangement, by which I write an extended weekly piece, usually on one film. The space I am given allows me to broaden my argument—or forces me, in an uninteresting week, to make something out of nothing. But what is my role in the public arena? I assume that people choose what films to go to on the basis of the stars, the publicity or the director. There is also such a thing as loyalty to "type" or its opposite. It can only rarely happen that someone who hates westerns buys a ticket for one after reading a review, or a love story addict avoids a romantic film because of what the papers say. So if a film review isn't really a consumer guide, what is it? I certainly don't feel I have a responsibility to be "right" about a movie. Nor do I think there should be a certain number of "great" and "bad" films each year. All I have to do is put forward an argument. I'm not a judge, and nor would I want to be.

单选题Questions 19～22

单选题Questions 11-14

单选题 {{B}}Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.{{/B}}

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单选题 Jamie Stephenson has seen firsthand what modem genetic science can do for a family. When her son David was 2 years old, a pediatrician noticed developmental delays and suspected fragile syndrome, a hereditary form of mental retardation. A lab test confirmed the diagnosis, and the Stephensons spent several years learning to live with it. When David was 6, he visited a neurologist, who scribbled "fragile X" on an insurance-company claim form. The company responded promptly—by canceling coverage for the entire family of six. There is no medical treatment for fragile X, and none of David's siblings had been diagnosed with the condition. "The company didn't care," Stephenson says. "They just saw a positive genetic test and said, 'You're out'. " From the dawn of the DNA era, critics have worried that genetic testing would create a "biological underclass"—a population of people whose genes brand them as poor risks for employment, insurance, even marriage. The future is arriving fast. Medical labs can now test human cells for hundreds of anomalous genes. Besides tracking rare conditions, some firms now gauge people's susceptibility to more common scourges. By unmasking inherited mutations in p53 ( main story) and other, genes, the new tests can signal increased risk of everything from breast, colon and prostate tumors to leukemia. Many of the tests are still too costly for mass marketing, but that will change. And as the Stephensons' story suggests, the consequences won't all be benign. "This is bigger than race or sexual orientation," says Martha Volner, health-policy director for the Alliance of Genetic Support Groups. "Genetic discrimination is the civil-rights issue of the 21st century." No one would argue that genetic tests are worthless. Used properly, they can give people unprecedented power over their lives. Prospective parents who discover they're silent carriers of the gene for a disease can make better-in formed decisions about whether and how to have kids. Some genetic maladies can be managed through medication and lifestyle changes once they're identified. And while knowing that you're at special risk for cancer may be an emotional burden, it can also alert you to the need for intensive monitoring. Jane Gorrell knows her family is prone to colon cancer. Her father developed hundreds of precancerous polyps back in the 1960s, and both she and her sister had the same experience during the '70s. Their condition, has since been linked to a mutation in the p53 gene—and Gorrell has learned, that one of her two children inherited it. Though the child has suffered no symptoms, she gets frequent colon exams and is helping researchers test a drug that could help save lives. The catch is that no one can guarantee the privacy of genetic information. Outside of large group plans, insurance companies often scour people's medical records before extending coverage. And though employers face some restriction, virtually any company with a benefits program can get access to workers' health data. So can schools, adoption agencies and the military. Employees of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL), a large research institution owned by the Department of Energy and operated by the University of California, recently discovered that the organization had for three decades been quietly testing new hires blood and urine samples for evidence of various conditions. "I can't say the information was put to some incredibly harmful use, because we don't know what happened," says Vicki Laden, a San Francisco lawyer who has tried unsuccessfully to sue the lab for civil fights violations. LBL recently stopped the testing.

单选题 Questions 15-18

单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.

单选题 Every summer, the peacocks that roam free within Whipsnade Wild Animal Park in Bedfordshire expose their magnificent trains to the critical and often disdainful gaze of the hens. They re-enact the mystery that tormented Charles Darwin to his dying day. how in this competitive world, where nature—as Tennyson said—is red in tooth and claw, could birds have evolved such an obvious extravagance? How do they get away with it? The zoologist Marion Petrie and her colleagues of the Open University are now exploiting the quasi-wild conditions of Whipsnade to try, a century after Darwin's death, to settle the matter. Darwin argued that living creatures came to be the way they are by evolution, rather than by special creation; and that the principal mechanism of evolution was natural selection. That is, in a crowded and hence competitive world, the individuals best suited to the circumstances—the "fittest"—are the most likely to survive and have offspring. But the implication is that fittest would generally mean toughest, swiftest, cleverest, most alert. The peacock's tail, by contrast, was at best a waste of space and in practice a severe encumbrance; and Darwin felt obliged to invoke what he felt was a separate mechanism of evolution, which he called "sexual selection". The driving mechanism was simply that females liked in his words—"beauty for beauty's sake". But Darwin's friend and collaborator, Alfred Russel Wallace, though in many ways more "romantic" than Darwin, was in others even more Darwinian. "Beauty for beauty's sake" he wanted nothing of. If peahens chose cocks with the showiest trains, he felt, then it must be that they knew what they were about. The cocks must have some other quality, which was not necessarily obvious to the human observer, but which the hens themselves could appreciate. According to Wallace, then, the train was not an end in itself, but an advertisement for some genuine contribution to survival. Now, 100 years later, the wrangle is still unresolved, for the natural behavior of peafowl is much harder to study than might be imagined. But 200 birds at Whipsnade, which live like wild birds yet are used to human beings, offer unique opportunities for study. Marion Petrie and her colleagues at Whipsnade have identified two main questions. First, is the premise correct—do peahens really choose the males with the showiest trains? And, secondly, do the peacocks with the showiest trains have some extra, genuinely advantageous quality, as Wallace supposed, or is it really all show, as Darwin felt? In practice, the mature cocks display in groups at a number of sites around Whipsnade, and the hens judge one against the other. Long observation from hides, backed up by photographs, suggests that the hens really do like the showiest males. What seems to count is the number of eye, spots on the train, which is related to its length; the cocks with the most eye-spots do indeed attract the most mates. But whether the males with the best trains are also "better" in other ways remains to be pinned down. William Hamilton of Oxford University has put forward the hypothesis that showy male birds in general, of whatever species, are the most parasite free, and that their plumage advertises their disease-free state. There is evidence that this is so in other birds. But Dr. Petrie and her colleagues have not been able to assess the internal parasites in the Whipsnade peacocks to test this hypothesis. This year, however, she is comparing the offspring of cocks that have in the past proved attractive to hens with the offspring of cocks that hens find unattractive. Do the children of the attractive cocks grow faster? Are they more healthy? If so, then the females' choice will be seen to be utilitarian after all, just as Wallace predicted. There is a final twist to this continuing story. The great mathematician and biologist R.A. Fisher in the thirties proposed what has become known as "Fisher's Runaway". Just suppose, for example, that for whatever reason—perhaps for a sound "Wallacian" reason—a female first picks a male with a slightly better tail than the rest. The sons of that mating will inherit their father's tail, and the daughters will inherit their mother's predilection for long tails. This is how the runaway begins. Within each generation, the males with the longest tails will get most mates and leave most offspring; and the females' predilection for long tails will increase commensurately. Modern computer models show that such a feedback mechanism would alone be enough to produce a peacock's tail. Oddly, too, this would vindicate Darwin's apparently fanciful notion—once the process gets going, the females would indeed be selecting "beauty for beauty's sake".