单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay entitled Man and Artificial Intelligence by commenting on the saying, 'The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.' You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

单选题According to a paper to be published in Psychological Science this has an interesting psychological effect. A group of researchers, led by Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago, found that people judge the distance of events 24 , depending on whether they are in the past or future. The paper calls this the 'Temporal Doppler Effect'. In physics, the Doppler effect describes the way that waves change frequency depending on whether their 25 is traveling towards or away from you. Mr. Caruso argues that something similar happens with people's perception of time. Because future events are associated with diminishing distance, while those in the past are thought of as 26 , something happening in one month feels psychologically 27 than something that happened a month ago. This idea was tested in a series of experiments. In one, researchers asked 323 28 and divided them into two groups. A week before Valentine's day, members of the first were asked how they planned to celebrate it. A week after February 14th the second group reported how they had celebrated it. Both groups also had to describe how near the day felt on a 29 of one to seven. Those describing forthcoming plans were more likely to report it as feeling 'a short time from now', while those who had already 30 it tended to cluster at the 'a long time from now' end of the scale. To account for the risk that recalling actual events requires different cognitive functions than imagining ones that have not yet happened, they also asked participants to 31 the distance of hypothetical events a month in the past or future. The asymmetry (不对称) remained. Mr. Caruso speculates that his research has 32 for psychological well-being. He suspects that people who do not show this bias—those who feel the past as being closer—might be more 33 to rumination (沉思) or depression, because they are more likely to dwell on past events. A. advancing B. apparently C. available D. closer E. differently F. evaluate G. experienced H. implications I. prospect J. rate K. receding L. scale M. source N. subject O. volunteers

单选题 1．大学破格录取人才的现象越来越普遍 2．人们对其意见不一 3．我认为……

单选题 Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-Textbook Adoption A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors' lectures. 'It's not that I didn't want to buy,' he says. 'Sometimes, I just didn't have the money for a $200 book.' VSU knows Martin isn't the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks. B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with 'open' content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. 'That's nothing. It's what I put in my gas tank,' says Martin, who participated in the trial. 'If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone.' C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features. D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out. E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for 'digital destruction,' biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs. Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm. Print still rules F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn't the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they're available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye- straining to read. G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. 'You can't highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble,' she says. However, digital books aren't necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they're often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn't sell the book back after the class ended. H. Despite e-textbooks' shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don't generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one. I. 'This is an industry that's failing everyone—-parents, authors, professors, and students,' says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can't be resold, at least, not legally. 'We'd prefer that all of it to go digital,' says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. 'There isn't a secondary market for e-books.' Seeking market niche (商机) J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what's next? Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry's key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. 'Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform,' says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher. K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to write directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. 'Tablet was a needed development,' says Kno's founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which runs 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform. Publishers not on sidelines L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage's executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides 'a learning path' that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing. M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website—meaning students can access information wherever there's an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall. N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically '60% to 70%' cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.

单选题 Questions13-16 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题 College Kids Should Major in Leisure A. One of the stranger ironies of language is that our word 'school' comes from the ancient Greek skhole, which means 'leisure' or 'free time'. Leisure, of course, is the last thing that students balancing difficult courses with sports, clubs, or internships associate with school. Yet extravagant spending by colleges to finance movie theaters, climbing walls, and even a moving ice cream truck does seem designed to support a certain sort of leisure. So what exactly is the connection between school and leisure? B. The link isn't just a coincidence of Greek. 'Liberal arts' comes from the Latin artes liberales, which referred to the subjects citizens studied in their free time. Leisure is inherent in the very words 'school' and 'liberal arts', and it's unsurprising that leisure-enabling wealth was a precondition for school in ancient times. The connection between wealth and educational attainment is still strong. 50 percent of American children from households with a total income of more than $90,000 will earn a college degree by age 24. Roughly 6 percent of children from families earning less than $35,000 will finish college by the same age. Many other statistics suggest that leisure enables school, yet two key questions are rarely asked: What is the role of leisure during school, and for what sort of leisure do we want education to prepare us? C. When students approach breaks and vacations, it's common to hear them anticipate extremely happy vegetation (呆板单调的生活): sleeping late, eating well, lounging about, and generally doing as little as possible. After recovering a bit, they might hit the climbing wall for some Frisbee golf. This is a model of leisure as recreation and amusement. Its imagery and fantastic words flood advertising and college brochures, and after a busy semester filled with work, the impulse for such relaxation is perfectly understandable. D. Yet there is something unsettling about the idea of extending vacation activities indefinitely. A brief refreshing rest is appealing, but imagine a lifetime of amusements and entertainment and you enter realms of dystopian (反乌托邦) fiction as varied as Pixar's WALL-E and Huxley's Brave New World. E. For this reason, professors and teachers often want to impart a model of leisure based on the enjoyment of intellectual activity for its own sake. Aristotle articulated precisely such a vision of education in his Politics: 'There are branches of learning and education which we must study merely with a view to leisure spent in intellectual activity, and these are to be valued for their own sake.' Most professors agree with Aristotle. They love the thought of former students reading philosophy, science, mathematics, or literature in their free time simply for the pleasure of doing so. Yet if this is a valuable aspiration, it's worth considering whether our current educational culture prepares students 'to be in leisure well', as Aristotle puts it. F. It's wonderful to hear teachers emphasize the intrinsic interest and beauty of a subject, but students also need to experience skhole while still in school. It's one thing to be told how fascinating a subject is, but without the leisure to actually experience this, many students are essentially being told 'this is interesting, really, take my word for it! Now go read 300 pages before next class.' However engaging those pages might be, if students simply lack the time to appreciate and contemplate the material, they will enjoy the subject less than they would at a leisurely pace of work. Growing to love a subject is like falling in love with someone: it's nice to linger over the details, and feeling rushed and pressured tends to ruin things. G. Enjoyment of school isn't just a luxury; it's an essential part of becoming good at something. Aristotle makes this point best: 'It is those who enjoy geometrical (几何学的) thinking that become geometers and grasp the various propositions better, and, similarly, those who are fond of music or of building, and so on, make progress in their proper function by enjoying it.' H. How we study a subject, in other words, affects both how accomplished we become and whether we ever voluntarily return to it in our leisure time. So, are American students learning to love and master the subjects they study? I. More than 500 colleges use a test called the Collegiate Learning Assessment to measure academic progress. The results are discouraging: 36 percent of students make absolutely no improvement in writing, complex reasoning, or critical thinking during four years of college. If Aristotle is right that enjoyment drives accomplishment, then this stunning lack of progress suggests that many students don't enjoy school at all. And it's likely that even those who do show improvement would realize larger gains if they enjoyed school more. J. This is not to say that teachers should assign no homework and simply hope that students will magically discover the delights of a subject with their leisure time. But the best homework does not feel like homework. It feels like a sufficiently meaningful and enjoyable activity that you might pursue it in your leisure time. By giving brief but meaningful homework, teachers can allow enjoyment to replace efficiency as a guiding value for students. Excessive quantities of homework, however meaningful, stress and overwhelm students, leading them to focus only on finishing as quickly as possible. This deprives them of the leisure necessary to appreciate and enjoy the contemplation of a subject, and those who have never experienced the pleasures of a subject are unlikely to spend future leisure time pursuing it. K. If we want students to enjoy intellectual activity for its own sake, compelling them to learn material for the next assignment, midterm, or test is often counterproductive. Student motives matter. Instead of administering yet another quiz or test, teachers might ask themselves: How many of my students would want to learn and study this even if it were not on a test? L. The solution is not to eliminate all tests and evaluations, but rather to clarify what they reveal. If a deeper purpose of a class is to enable sufficient mastery to later enjoy a subject in leisure time, then a low grade on a test just indicates that a precondition for this sort of rich enjoyment has not yet been achieved. A high grade is not the goal itself; it simply shows a level of command that makes possible a certain kind of activity in leisure. M. The prospect of structuring leisure into courses demands better teaching. If teachers can't motivate students to pay attention with the old standby of proclaiming that the material will be on the test, they have to think about what makes a subject interesting and convey this persuasively. N. Inevitably some students will just text, chat, or blissfully vegetate if given more leisure. But there is also a pedagogical (教学法的) cost to minimizing free time. The stress and anxiety that accompany frantic busyness and frequent evaluations not only make learning more difficult, they cause students to associate these negative emotions with the very subjects in which professors hope to interest them. One result is that it's rare to overhear students eagerly anticipating the time they'll have over break to cozy up with Euclid's Elements or the novels of Dostoyevsky. O. Aristotle himself was fortunate to experience school in the original sense of the word; he spent roughly 20 years as a student at Plato's Academy in Athens. The value of leisure was one subject on which both teacher and pupil agreed. In the Republic, after rushing through an argument and missing a key step, Plato's Socrates has a moment of self-insight that still echoes: 'In my haste to be done I was making less speed.'

单选题 How to Cure Jet Lag A. Jet lag is exhausting, disorientating, and can even make you lose your appetite. B. According to Air Space magazine the term 'jet lag' may have been first coined in February 1966. 'If you're going to be a member of the Jet Set and fly off to Katmandu for coffee with King Mahendra,' wrote Horace Sutton in the Los Angeles Times, 'you can count on contracting Jet Lag, a debility like a hangover. Jet Lag derives from the simple fact that jets travel so fast they leave your body rhythms behind.' C. It's only in the last few decades that humans have been able to jump time zones, and we've yet to find a way to adapt. But what actually happens to our bodies when we leap across time zones and how is research helping us understand how to ease the effects? D. Jet lag is the result of a disruption in our body's internal clocks. Our biological clocks drive our circadian rhythms (生理节奏), which anticipate dawn and dusk, and controls everything from blood pressure to how hungry we are. The system is a 'master clock' in our brain that is sensitive to our exposure to light coordinates all the body clocks within our organs and tissues. E. It takes most people a few days to fully adjust, depending on not only how many time zones have been crossed, but also the direction of travel. Adjusting to eastward travel is harder because of the way our internal body clock functions. As this clock follows a period of just over 24 hours, our bodies compensate every day by contracting this to keep up with the regular 24-hour sun cycle. When you travel west, you gain several hours, and so your body has extra time to make this adjustment. Travel east, though, and your day is shortened, which makes the adjustment more difficult. Shift work F. So how possible is it to fool our biological clocks? 'There is no silver bullet—so far—to treat jet lag,' says Horacio de la Iglesia, professor of biology at the University of Washington. 'Typically, the best way involves a combination of strategies that include restricting light exposure to specific times, restricting rest and meals, as well as activities such as walking and running to specific times.' Simon Archer from Surrey University agrees, at least in principle. 'A combined approach can be helpful, but in practice it may be difficult to get all the timings right—it may be very difficult not to be exposed to light at an inappropriate time.' G. All these strategies are aimed at speeding up the adjustment of our multiple clocks to the new time zone. Work over the past 15 years has led to an amazing increase in our understanding of the circadian clock, light input and jet lag, says Stuart Peirson of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology at Oxford University. H. Together with his team, he has been studying how light changes the expression of clock genes in the SCN. Increased expression of certain clock genes effectively moves the molecular 'hands' of the clock to the correct time, says Peirson—but there seems to be a limit on how much the clock can be shifted: it's just one hour per day. 'Our work in this area has identified a natural brake—a protein called SIK1—that is activated by light and actively prevents the clock shifting. Normally it would take five or six days to adjust to a six-hour shift in time zone. 'When this [SIK1] mechanism is blocked, it enables mice to shift their clocks much more quickly—shifting six hours in two-to-three days,' says Peirson. Be prepared I. Some scientists are looking at how we can avoid jet lag by preparing for it in advance. 'We believe it is important for many people to start the process of shifting your internal rhythms before the flight, so that you arrive with little or no jet lag,' says Charmane Eastman at Rush University in Chicago, Illinois. 'Most recommendations and computer-based programs only make recommendations for what to do after landing in the new time zone.' J. Together with colleagues, Eastman has been investigating how people could reset their body clocks before flying. Speed shift K. There might also be ways to adjust the body clock without drugs. Another group of scientists has designed an app called Entrain that uses mathematical modelling to determine how our body can shift from one time zone to another in the quickest way possible. If users type in the timezone they are travelling to, the app calculates a schedule that tells the user when they should expose themselves to light. L. The researchers say it's probably easiest for travellers to divide their day into two parts, one where they seek as much light as possible and another where they should try to be in darkness—essentially corresponding to dawn and dusk. The software 'should allow an individual to get over jet lag in less than half the time than if one use other well-known recommendations,' says Daniel Forger of the University of Michigan, a co-author of the study. M. The schedules themselves haven't been tested in controlled environments; the data people submit will be used to test the efficacy of the recommendations in the real world—and the team says they have data from over 5,000 people so far. 'Hopefully our schedules can be integrated into more devices so that they become easier to follow,' says lead developer of Entrain, mathematician Olivia Walch at the University of Michigan. 'Maybe hotels could offer 10,000lux lights so that people can get bright daylight when they need it to push their clocks in the right direction.' N. You can start to fill in the new time zone by altering their habits of rest and and meals gradually. For example, you may sleep earlier and ensure the room where you sleep is totally dark and quiet. You can also eat a bit earlier or late and eat some snacks just to make your body adjust to the new rhythm. O. Though by far there is no solution to solve this problem completely, scientists said we can still adjust our bodies with those means mentioned above which can greatly lighten the unpleasant feeling caused by jet lag.

单选题 The Price of Oil and the Price of Carbon A. Fossil fuel prices are likely to stay 'low for long.' Notwithstanding important recent progress in developing renewable fuel sources, low fossil fuel prices could discourage further innovation in, and adoption of, cleaner energy technologies. The result would be higher emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. B. Policymakers should not allow low energy prices to derail the clean energy transition. Action to restore appropriate price incentives, notably through corrective carbon pricing, is urgently needed to lower the risk of irreversible and potentially devastating effects of climate change. That approach also offers fiscal benefits. C. Oil prices have dropped by over 60% since June 2014. A commonly held view in the oil industry is that 'the best cure for low oil prices is low oil prices.' The reasoning behind this saying is that low oil prices discourage investment in new production capacity, eventually shifting the oil supply curve backward and bringing prices back up as existing oil fields—which can be tapped at relatively low marginal cost—are depleted. In fact, in line with past experience capital expenditure in the oil sector has dropped sharply in many producing countries, including the United States. The dynamic adjustment to low oil prices may, however, be different this time around. D. Oil prices are expected to remain lower for longer. The advent of new technologies has added about 4.2 million barrels per day to the crude oil market, contributing to a global over-supply. In addition, other factors are putting downward pressure on oil prices: change in the strategies behavior of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the projected increase in Iranian exports, the scaling-down of global demand (especially from emerging markets), the long-term drop in petroleum consumption in the United States, and some displacement of oil by substitutes. These likely persistent forces, like the growth of shale(页岩) oil, point to a 'low for long' scenario. Futures markets, which show only a modest recovery of prices to around $60 a barrel by 2019, support this view. E. Natural gas and coal—also fossil fuels—have similarly seen price declines that look to be long-lived. Coal and natural gas are mainly used for electricity generation, whereas oil is used mostly to power transportation, yet the prices of all these energy sources are linked. The North American shale gas boom has resulted in record low prices there. The recent discovery of the giant Zohr gas field off the Egyptian coast will eventually have impact on pricing in the Mediterranean region and Europe, and there is significant development potential in many other places, notably Argentina. Coal prices also are low, owing to over-supply and the scaling-down of demand, especially from China, which burns half of the world's coal. F. Technological innovations have unleashed the power of renewables such as wind, hydro, solar, and geothermal (地热). Even Africa and the Middle East, home to economies that are heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports, have enormous potential to develop renewables. For example, the United Arab Emirates has endorsed an ambitious target to draw 24% of its primary energy consumption from renewable sources by 2021. G. Progress in the development of renewables could be fragile, however, if fossil fuel prices remain low for long. Renewables account for only a small share of global primary energy consumption, which is still dominated by fossil fuels—30% each for coal and oil, 25% for natural gas. But renewable energy will have to displace fossil fuels to a much greater extent in the future to avoid unacceptable climate risks. H. Unfortunately, the current low prices for oil, gas, and coal may provide little incentive for research to find even cheaper substitutes for those fuels. There is strong evidence that both innovation and adoption of cleaner technology are strongly encouraged by higher fossil fuel prices. The same is true for new technologies for alleviating fossil fuel emissions. I. The current low fossil fuel price environment will thus certainly delay the energy transition from fossil fuel to clean energy sources. Unless renewables become cheap enough that substantial carbon deposits are left underground for a very long time, if not forever, the planet will like be exposed to potentially catastrophic climate risks. J. Some climate impacts may already be discernible. For example, the United Nations Children Fund estimates that some 11 million children in Africa face hunger, disease, and water shortage as a result of the strongest El Niño(厄尔尼诺) weather phenomenon in decades. Many scientists believe that El Niño events, caused by warming in the Pacific, are becoming more intense as a result of climate change. K. Nations from around the world have gathered in Paris for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21, with the goal of a universal and potentially legally-binding agreement reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We need very broad participation to fully address global tragedy that results when countries fail to take into account the negative impact of their carbon emissions on the rest of the world. Moreover, non-participation by nations, if sufficiently widespread, can undermine the political will of participating countries to act. L. The nations participating at COP 21 are focusing on quantitative emissions-reduction commitments. Economic reasoning shows that the least expensive way for each country is to put a price on carbon emissions. The reason is that when carbon is priced, those emissions reductions that are least costly to implement will happen first. The International Monetary Fund calculates that countries can generate substantial fiscal revenues by eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and levying carbon charges that capture the domestic damage caused by emissions. A tax on upstream carbon sources is one easy way to put a price on carbon emissions, although some countries may wish to use other methods, such as emissions trading schemes. In order to maximize global welfare, every country's carbon pricing should reflect not only the purely domestic damage from emissions, but also the damage to foreign countries. M. Setting the right carbon price will therefore efficiently align the costs paid by carbon users with the true social opportunity cost of using carbon. By raising relative demand for clean energy sources, a carbon price would also help align the market return to clean-energy innovation with its social return, spurring the refinement of existing technologies and the development of new ones. And it would raise the demand for technologies such as carbon capture and storage, spurring their further development. If not corrected by the appropriate carbon price, low fossil fuel prices are not accurately signaling to markets the true social profitability of clean energy. While alternative estimates of the damage from carbon emissions differ, and it's especially hard to reckon the likely costs of possible catastrophic climate events, most estimates suggest substantial negative effects. N. Direct subsidies to research and development have been adopted by some governments but are a poor substitute for a carbon price; they do only part of the job, leaving in place market incentives to overuse fossil fuels and thereby add to the stock of atmospheric greenhouse gases without regard to the collateral (附带的) costs. O. The hope is that the success of COP 21 opens the door to future international agreement on carbon prices. Agreement on an international carbon-price floor would be a good starting point in that process. Failure to address comprehensively the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, however, exposes all generations, present and future, to incalculable risks.

单选题 Now listen to the following recording and answer questions17-20.