单选题For years there have been endless articles stating that scientists are on the verge of achieving artificial intelligence, that it is just around the corner. The truth is that it may be just around the corner, but they haven't yet found the right clock. Artificial intelligence aims to build machines that can think. One immediate problem is to define thought, which is harder than you might think. The specialists in the field of artificial intelligence complain, with some justification, that anything that their machines do is dismissed as not being thought. For example, computers can now play very, very good chess. They can't beat the greatest players in the world, but they can beat just about anybody else. If a human being played chess at this level, he or she would certainly be considered smart. Why not a machine? The answer is that the machine doesn't do anything clever in playing chess. It uses its blinding speed to do a brute-force search of all possible moves for several moves ahead, evaluates the outcomes and picks the best. Humans don't play chess that way. They see patterns, which computers don't. This wooden approach to thought characterizes machine intelligence. Computers have no judgment, no flexibility, no common sense. So-called expert systems, one of the hottest areas in artificial intelligence, aim to mimic the reasoning processes of human experts in a limited field, such as medical diagnosis or weather forecasting. There may be limited commercial applications for this sort of thing, but there is no way to make a machine think about anything under the sun, which a teenager can do. The hallmark of artificial intelligence to date is that if a problem is severely restricted, a machine can achieve limited success. But when the problem is expanded to a realistic one, computers fall flat on their display screens. For example, machines can understand a few words spoken individually by a speaker that they have been trained to hear. They cannot understand continuous speech using an unlimited vocabulary spoken by just any speaker.

单选题Why can’t they meet on Thursday?

单选题The most frightening words in the English language are, "Our computer is down. " You hear it more and more when you are on business. The other day I was at the airport waiting for a ticket to Washington and the girl in the ticket office said, "I'm sorry, I can't sell you a ticket. Our computer is down. " "If your computer is down, just write me out a ticket. " "I can't write you out a ticket. The computer is the only one allowed to do so. " I looked down on the computer and every passenger was just standing there drinking coffee and staring at the black screen. Then I asked her, "What do all you people do?" "We give the computer the information about your trip, and then it tells us whether you can fly with us or not. " "So when it goes down, you go down with it. " "That's good, sir. " "How long will the computer be down?" I wanted to know. "I have no idea. Sometimes it's down for 10 minutes, sometimes for two hours. There's no way we can find out without asking the computer, and since it's down it won't answer us. " After the girl told me they had no backup computer, I said. "Let's forget the computer. What about your planes? They're still flying, aren't they?" "I couldn't tell without asking the computer. " "Maybe I could just go to the gate and ask the pilot if he's flying to Washington, " I suggested. "I wouldn't know what gate to send you to. Even if the pilot was going to Washington, he couldn't take you if you didn't have a ticket. " "Is there any other airline flying to Washington within the next few hours?" "I wouldn't know, " she said, pointing at the dark screen. "Only 'IT' knows. It can't tell me. By this time there were quite a few people standing in lines. The word soon spread to other travelers that the computer was down. Some people went white; some people started to cry and still others kicked their luggage.

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单选题In a family where men and women share tasks and decisions, the children will ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Greenspace facilities are contributing to an important extent to the quality of the urban environment. Fortunately it is no longer necessary that every lecture or every book about this subject has to start with the proof of this idea. At present it is generally accepted, although more as a self-evident statement than on the base of a closely-reasoned scientific proof. The recognition of the importance of greenspaces in the urban environment is a first step on the right way, this does not means, however, that sufficient details are known about the functions of greenspace in towns and about the way in which the inhabitants are using these spaces. As to this rather complex subject I shall, within the scope of this lecture, enter into one aspect only, namely the recreative function of greenspace facilities. The theoretical separation of living, working, traffic and recreation which for many years has been used in town-and-country planning, has in my opinion resulted in disproportionate attention for forms of recreation far from home, whereas there was relatively little attention for improvement of recreative possibilities in the direct neighbourhood of the home. We have come to the conclusion that this is not right, because an important part of the time which we do not pass in sleeping or working, is used for activities at and around home. So it is obvious that recreation in the open air has to begin at the Street-door of the house. The urban environment has to offer as many recreation activities as possible, and the design of these has to be such that more obligatory activities can also have a recreative aspect. The very best standard of living is nothing if it is not possible to take a pleasant walk in the district, if the children cannot be allowed to play in the streets, because the risks of traffic are too great, if during shopping you can nowhere find a spot for enjoying for a moment the nice weather, in short, if you only feel yourself at home after the street-door of your house is closed after you.

单选题We can learn from the Kimberly case that ______.

单选题The words "prior to" (Para. 2)probably mean ______.

单选题 There was one thought that air pollution affected only the area immediately around large cities with factories and heavy automobile traffic. At present, we realize that although these are the areas with the worst air pollution, the problem is literally worldwide. On several occasions over the past decade, a heavy cloud of air pollution has covered the east of the United States and brought health warnings in rural areas away from any major concentration of manufacturing and automobile traffic. In fact, the very climate of the entire earth may be infected by air pollution. Some scientists consider that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the air resulting from the burning of fossil fuels (coal and oil) is creating a "greenhouse effect"—conserving heat reflected from the earth and raising the world's average temperature. If this view is correct and the world's temperature is raised only a few degrees, much of the polar ice cap will melt and cities such as New York, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans will be in water. Another view, less widely held, is that increasing particle matter in the atmosphere is blocking sunlight and lowering the earth's temperature—a result that would be equally disastrous. A drop of just a few degrees could create something close to a new ice age, and would make agriculture difficult or impossible in many of our top farming areas. Today we do not know for sure that either of these conditions will happen, though one recent government report drafted by experts in the field concluded that the greenhouse effect is very possible. Perhaps, if we are lucky enough, the two tendencies will offset each other and the world's temperature will stay about the same as it is now. Driven by economic profits, people neglect the damage on our environment caused by the "advanced civilization". Maybe the air pollution is the price the human beings have to pay for their development. But is it really worthwhile?

单选题The word "immortality" in the first paragraph most probably means ______.

单选题According to the passage, dreams seem to be mainly caused by ______.

单选题Whatisthecurrenttimeintheconversation?A.3:40PM.B.4:15PM.C.4:30PM.D.4:45PM.

单选题{{I}} Questions 14-16 are based on the conversation you’ve just heard.{{/I}}

单选题 IQuestions 15-18 are based on the following dialogue:/I

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} As regards social conventions, we must say a word about the English class system. This is an embarrassing subject for English people, and one they tend to be ashamed of, though during the present century class-consciousness has grown less and less. But it still exists. Broadly speaking, it means there are two classes, the "middle class" and the "working class" (We shall ignore for a moment the old "upper class", since it is extremely small in numbers; but some of its members have the right to sit in the House of Lords, and some newspapers take a surprising interest in their private life.) The middle class consists chiefly of businessmen and professional people of all kinds. The working class consists chiefly of manual and unskilled workers. The most obvious difference between them is in their accent. Middle-class people use slightly varying kinds of "received pronunciation" which is the kind of English spoken by BBC announcers and taught to overseas pupils. Typical working-class people speak in many different local accents which are generally felt to be rather ugly and uneducated. One of the biggest barriers of social equality in England is the two-class education system. To have been to a so-called "public school" immediately marks you out as one of the middle class. The middle classes tend to live a more formal life. Their midday meal is "lunch" and they have a rather formal evening meal called "dinner", whereas the working man's dinner, if his working hours permit, is at midday, and his smaller, late-evening meal is called supper. It has been government policy to reduce class distinctions. Working-class students commonly receive a university education and enter the professions, and working-class incomes have grown so much recently. However, regardless of one's social status, certain standards of politeness are expected of everybody, and a well-bred person is polite to everyone he meets, and treats a laborer with the same respect he gives an important businessman. Servility inspires both embarrassment and dislike. Even the word "sir", except in school and in certain occupations (e.g. commerce, the army etc.) sounds too servile to be commonly used.

单选题Questions 22 to 25 are based on the following passage.

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