单选题 Domestic Service Robots A. When Takanori Shibata began working on robots in the early 1990s, he had something practical in mind, perhaps to help the elderly with their daily chores. But he soon realized that robots were not really able to do anything useful, so he decided to make a robot that did not even try—but that could nevertheless deliver real benefits. B. The result of his labors, Paro, has been in development since 1998. It is 57cm long and looks like a baby seal. Thanks to an array of sub-skin sensors, it responds amiably to stroking; and though it cannot walk, it can turn its head at the sound of a human voice and tell one voice from another. It is a comforting and gentle presence in your arms, on your lap or on a table top, where it gives the impression of following a conversation. The best thing about it is that it seems to be helping in the care of people with dementia (痴呆) and other health problems. C. You could see Paro as a very well-designed $5,000 pet that will never turn on the person holding it, and will never be hurt if its master flies into a rage. It is as happy on one lap as the next, needs no house-training, can be easily washed and will not die. This makes it much more practical for a nursing home or hospital than a live pet. It is used in such homes in Japan, in parts of Europe and in America. D. Paro can also act as a source of reassurance and calm. People with Alzheimer's often suffer from 'sun-downing'—a distressed urge to wander that comes on towards the end of the afternoon. Mr. Shibata has found that a seal in the arms tends to reduce such wandering, which means fewer falls. Experience in Italy, Denmark and America indicates that care homes equipped with Paro need less medication for their residents. Larger trials now under way in Australia should establish whether this and other benefits can be provided simply by a soft toy, or whether Paro's ability to interact with the world makes a clinical difference. E. If Paro proves to be more useful than a plush (毛绒) animal, there is a huge market for it. Akifumi Kitashima, who works on Japan's robotics strategy at the Ministry for the Economy, Trade and Industry, points out that in 2025 Japan will have 10.7 million more elderly people than it did in 2005. Though Japan is ageing particularly quickly, a lot of the rest of the world is on a. similar course. F. Looking after old people in homes might become easier with robots, be they mood enhancers like Paro or something more practical that can help careworkers lift and reposition their charges (受照料者). Yoshiyuki Sankai, perhaps Japan's best-known robotics entrepreneur, has set up a company called Cyberdyne to make wearable systems that help people walk and lift things by adding artificial strength to their limbs. G. Robots may also make it possible for old people to stay independent in their own homes for longer. Mr. Angle says this is iRobot's 'long-term guiding star', towards which the Roomba—a cleaning robot—is a small step. Mr. Gupta at the National Science Foundation thinks that general-purpose home-help robots would be a big advance which could be achieved in a couple of decades. Another robotics expert Mr. Ng points out that if you get a graduate student to teleoperate (远程操控) a PR2 robot, it can already do almost everything a home-help robot might be required to do, so all that is needed is better software and more processing power, both of which are becoming ever more easily available. H. Cloud robotics can probably provide much of the required software. Mr. Pratt says that if there were dramatic performance improvements in the finals of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, he would expect them to come from the cloud. I. But specific robot hardware will need upgrading, too. No robot hand yet comes close to the utility of the human hand. Tasks that require feedback in terms of force and fit—like putting a plug into a socket—remain particularly hard for robots, and there are a lot of such tasks around a house. General technological progress will not help; the only way to find a solution to this sort of problem is to work specifically on it. J. Even more important will be interfaces (界面) to tell the robots what to do. Take-me-by-the-wrist Baxter, stroke-me Paro and the film-enabling mechanical arms of Bot Dolly all show that interfaces can matter just as much as any other technological advance. Tobias Kinnebrew, of Bot Dolly, thinks that new interfaces could open up markets and applications of robotics in all sorts of fields, and might do so surprisingly quickly. K. Voice would be an obvious choice, but it has its drawbacks: the user will think a robot with a voice is smart. An interface that allows the robot to be dumb and the user not to care might be preferable. Indeed, small errors or needing help with something can be endearing. People do not resent Paro's need to be stroked; it is one of the things they like about it. CoBot's need for help with the lifts at Carnegie Mellon makes people warm to it, though being troubled for help by random robots in offices and shopping malls would probably not work so well. But if the interface is properly designed, teaching a home-help robot to do the job better might make it more welcome. L. It may also be a good idea to let the robots turn for help to people other than those they are working for. As Mr. Goldberg at Berkeley points out, the cloud does not just contain computers; it provides access to a lot of humans, too. One of the things that make Aethon's Tugs a success in hospitals is that the company's headquarters has a staffed help desk which deals with queries from robots. If one gets stuck or lost, a remote operator can look through its eyes, check its logs and sort things out before the hospital even becomes aware that anything is wrong. If similar support could be provided for robot home helps, the occasional mistake might not matter. M. If the robot can call on a help desk, it can communicate with other people too, perhaps providing a way for friends and relatives to stay in touch. Some home-automation products already allow a degree of monitoring, notes Oz Chambers of Carnegie Mellon, but what they offer leaves much to be desired. It makes the adult offspring feel greater responsibility—which they often cannot exercise—rather than giving them reassurance. The elderly, for their part, can feel snooped (窥探) upon. A robot with a defined presence in the house might make a better intermediary. N. What matters, as iRobot and other practically minded companies have learned, is not so much having robots but having a business model that does a job, be it washing the dishes, checking that medication is being taken or providing telepresence (远程监控). Producing something reliable and likeable that can be sold in large numbers and does not get its makers sued may prove a lot more difficult than simply developing the required robotic skills, but not impossible. O. To be sure, robots will not spread as quickly as mobile phones have done. Over a decade they may not achieve much. Over a century, though, they could turn everyday life upside down.

单选题 Books are not Nadia's thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows interest. Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer. She checks her e-mail and reads messages or posts updates on her mood. But she spends most of her time reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies. Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among education policymakers and reading experts around the world. As teenagers' scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading—diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write. Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read Pride and Prejudice for fun. And those who prefer staring at a television or pushing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs. Some Web evangelists say children should be evaluated for their proficiency on the Internet just as they are tested on their print-reading comprehension. Starling next year, some countries will participate in new international assessments of digital literacy. Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a argot that vexes teachers and parents. Zigzagging through a great abundance of words, pictures, videos and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best. Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, can be more enriching than reading one book. It may take a long time to read a 400-page book, but in a 10th of the time, the Internet allows a reader to cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view. Some literacy experts say that reading itself should be redefined. Interpreting videos or pictures may be as important a skill as analyzing a novel or a poem.

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled On School Violence. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words following the outline given below. 1．校园暴力事件时有发生 2．分析产生这种现象的原因 3．应该如何解决校园暴力问题

单选题Directions:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessaybasedonthepicturebelow.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthendiscusstheimportanceofpositiveattitude.Youshouldgivesoundargumentstosupportyourviewsandwriteatleast150wordsbutnomorethan200words.

单选题 Competition for admission to the country's top private schools has always been tough, but this year Elisabeth Krents realized it had reached a new level. Her wake-up call came when a man called the Dalton School in Manhattan, where Krents is admission director, and inquired about the age cut off for their kindergarten program. After providing the information (they don't use an age cut off), she asked about the age of his child. The man paused for an uncomfortably long time before answering. 'Well, we don't have a child yet,' he told Krents. 'We're trying to figure out when to conceive a child so the birthday is not a problem.' School obsession is spreading from Manhattan to the rest of the country. Precise current data on private schools are unavailable, but interviews with representatives of independent and religious schools all told the same story: a glut of applicants, higher rejection rates. 'We have people calling us for spots two years down the road,' said Marilyn Collins of the Seven Hills School in Cincinnati. 'We have grandparents calling for pregnant daughters.' Public-opinion poll after poll indicates that Americans' No. 1 concern is education. Now that the long economic boom has given parents more disposable income, many are turning to private schools, even at price tags of well over $10,000 a year. 'We're getting applicants from a broader area, geographically, than we ever have in the past,' said Betsy Haugh of the Latin School of Chicago, which experienced a 20 percent increase in applications this year. The problem for the applicants is that while demand has increased, supply has not. 'Every year, there are a few children who do not find places, but this year, for the first time that I know, there are a significant number of children who don't have places,' said Krents, who also heads a private-school admission group in New York. So what can parents do to give their 4-year-old an edge? Schools know there is no foolproof way to pick a class when children are so young. Many schools give preference to siblings or alumni children. Some use lotteries. But most rely on a mix of subjective and objective measures: tests that at best identify developmental maturity and cognitive potential, interviews with parents and observation of applicants in classroom settings. They also want a diverse mix. Children may end up on a waiting list simply because their birthdays fall at the wrong time of year, or because too many applicants were boys. The worst thing a parent can do is to pressure preschoolers to perform—for example, by pushing them to read or do math exercises before they're ready. Instead, the experts say, parents should take a breath and look for alternatives. Another year in preschool may be all that's needed. Parents, meanwhile, may need a more open mind about relatively unknown private schools—or about magnet schools in the public system. There's no sign of the private-school boom letting up. Dalton's spring tours, for early birds interested in the 2001-2002 school year, are filled. The wait list? Forget it. That's closed, too.

单选题 Questions12-14 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题Small communities, with their distinctive character—where life is stable and intensely human—are disappearing. Some have 27 from the face of the earth, others are dying slowly, but all have 28 changes as they have come into contact with an 29 machine civilization. The merging of diverse peoples into a common mass has produced tension among members of the minorities and the majority alike. The Old Order Amish, who arrived on American shores in colonial times, have 30 in the modern world in distinctive, small communities. They have resisted the homogenization 31 more successfully than others. In planting and harvest time one can see their bearded men working the fields with horses and their women hanging out the laundry in neat rows to dry. Many American people have seen Amish families, with the men wearing broad-brimmed black hats and the women in long dresses, in railway or bus 32 . Although the Amish have lived with 33 America for over two and a half centuries, they have moderated its influence on their personal lives, their families, communities, and their values. The Amish are often 34 by other Americans to be relics of the past who live a simple, inflexible life dedicated to inconvenient out-dated customs. They are seen as abandoning both modern 35 and the American dream of success and progress. But most people have no quarrel with the Amish for doing things the old-fashioned way. Their conscientious objection was tolerated in wartime, for after all, they are good farmers who 36 the virtues of work and thrift. A. accessing I. progress B. conveniences J. respective C. destined K. survived D. expanding L. terminals E. industrialized M. undergone F. perceived N. universal G. practice O. vanished H. process

单选题 低碳生活 倡导低碳生活，提高公民节能减排意识是应对全球变暖的重要措施。低碳生活并非什么难事，只要人人都树立绿色环保意识，坚持从我做起、从身边小事做起，那么就一定能促成共享低碳生活。共享低碳生活，要让绿色环保理念深入人心。要把绿色环保活动融入工作生活的方方面面；要有针对性地开展低碳生活的知识培训；要积极倡导志愿者活动，全面宣传节能减排、环境保护等方面的知识，提高全社会的低碳环保意识。

单选题 随着人们生活水平的提高，孩子们有更多的机会外出就餐，他们无法抵制美食的诱惑，结果不可避免地胖起来。

单选题 话题：要勇于面对挑战We should face challenges bravely Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on facing challenges by referring to the saying 'You cannot change what you refuse to confront.' You can give examples to illustrate your point and then explain how you will react to challenges in your life. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

单选题 Set Your Body's Time Clock Our Body Operates Like a Clock A. As the first rays of sunlight filter over the hills of California's Silicon Valley, Charles Winget opens his eyes. It is barely 5a.m., but Winget is raring (渴望) to go. Meanwhile, his wife pulls up the covers and buries her face under the pillow. 'For the past fifteen years,' says Winget, 'We've hardly ever gotten up together.' B. The Wingets' situation is not uncommon. Our bodies operate with the complexity of clocks, and like clocks, we all run at slightly different speeds. Winget is a morning person. His wife is not at her best until after nightfall. C. Behavioral scientists long attributed such differences to personal eccentricities or early conditioning. This thinking was challenged in the late 1950s by a theory labeled chronobiology by physician-biologist Franz Halberg. In a Harvard University laboratory, Dr. Halberg found that certain blood cells varied predictably in number, depending on the time of day they were drawn from the body. The cell count was higher at a given time of day and lower 12 hours later. He also discovered that the same patterns could be detected in heart and metabolic rates and body temperature. D. Halberg's explanation: instead of performing at a steady, unchanging rate, our systems function on an approximately 25-hour cycle. Sometimes we are accelerating, sometimes slowing down. We achieve peak efficiency for only a limited time each day. Halberg dubbed these bodily cadences 'circadian rhythms'. E. Much of the leading work in chronobiology is sponsored today by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Charles Winger, a NASA research physiologist and authority on circadian rhythms, says that circadian principles have been applied to astronauts' work schedules on most of the space-shuttle flights. F. The space-age research has many useful applications here on earth. Chronobiologists can tell you when to eat and still lose weight, what time of day you're best equipped to handle the toughest challenges, when to go to the dentist with your highest threshold of pain and when to exercise for maximum effect. Says Winget, 'It's a biological law of human efficiency: to achieve your best with the least effort, you have to coordinate the demands of your activities with your biological capacities.' How to Figure Out Your Body's Patterns G. Circadian patterns can be made to work for you. But you must first learn how to recognize them. Winger and his associates have developed the following approach to help you figure out your body's patterns. H. Take your temperature one hour after getting up in the morning and then again at four-hour intervals throughout the day. Schedule your last reading as close to bedtime as possible. You should have five readings by the end of the day. I. Now add your first, third and fifth readings and record this total. Then add your second and fourth readings and subtract this figure from the first total. That number will be an estimate of your body temperature in the middle of the night—consider it your sixth reading. J. Now plot all six readings on graph paper. The variations may seem minuscule (极小的)—only one-tenth of a degree in some cases—but they are significant. You'll probably find that your temperature will begin to rise between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., reaching a peak sometime in the late morning or early afternoon. By evening the readings start to drop. They will steadily decline, reaching their nadir (最低点) at around 2 a.m. Learn to Use Your Body's Pattern K. Of course, individual variations make all the difference. At what hour is your body temperature on the rise? When does it reach its highest point? Its lowest? Once you have familiarized yourself with you patterns, you can take advantage of chronobiology techniques to improve your health and productivity. L. We do our best physical work when our rhythms are at their peak. In most people, this peak lasts about four hours. Schedule your most taxing (费力的) activities when your temperature is highest. M. For mental activities, the timetable is more complicated. Precision tasks, such as mathematical work are best tackled when your temperature is on the rise. For most people, this is at 8 or 9 a.m. By contrast reading and reflection are better pursued between 2 and 4 p.m., the time when body temperature usually begins to fall. N. Breakfast should be your largest meal of the day for effective dieting. Calories burn faster one hour after we wake up than they do in the evening. During a six-year research project known as the Army Diet Study, Dr. Halberg, chronobiologist Robert Sothern and research associate Erna Halberg monitored the food intake of two groups of men and women. Both ate only one 2000-calorie meal a day, but one group ate their meal at breakfast and the other at dinner. 'All the subjects lost weight eating breakfast,' states Sothern. 'Those who ate dinner either maintained or gained weight.' O. If foods are processed differently at different times of day, certainly caffeine, alcohol and medicines will be too. Aspirin compounds, for example, have the greatest potency (力量) in the morning, between 7 and 8. (So does alcohol.) They are least effective between 6 p.m. and midnight. Caffeine has the most impact around 3 in the afternoon. Charles Walker, dean of the College of Pharmacy at Florida A M University, explains, 'Stimulants are most effective when you are normally active, and sedatives (镇静物) work best when you're naturally sedate or asleep.' P. Knowing your rhythms can also help overcome sleep problems. Consult your body-temperature chart. Your bedtime should coincide with the point at which your temperature is lowest. This is between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. for most people. Q. Dr. Michael Thorpy of the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City offers other circadian sleep tips: go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning, even on weekends. 'Irregularity in sleep and waking times is the greatest cause of sleep problems,' Dr. Thorpy says. The best way to recover from a bad night's sleep is simply to resume your normal cycle. Beware of sleeping pills. 'Most sleeping pills won't work for periods longer than two weeks,' warns Dr. Thorpy. And there is real danger of drug accumulation in the blood. R. Visit a doctor or dentist as early in the day or as late in the evening as possible, since your highest pain threshold is between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. S. Winget and fellow NASA chronobiologist Charles DeRoshia also offer advice to diminish the debilitating effects of jet lag: a week or so before departure begin adjusting your daily activities so that they coincide with the time schedule of your destination. Eat a small, high-protein, low-carbohydrate meal just before your trip. Get plenty of sleep in the days before your trip. In flight, eat very little, drink lots of water and avoid alcohol and caffeinated drinks. When you arrive, walk around, talk to people, try to adapt to your environment. Before retiring, have a light meal, high in carbohydrates. Take a warm bath. T. Knowing your body's patterns is no guarantee of good health. But what chronobiology reveals is the importance of regularity in all aspects of your life and of learning to act in synchronization with your body's natural rhythms.

单选题 Questions6-9 are based on the conversation you have just heard.