单选题 Researchers for Cornell University and Intel produced a chip called Loihi that reportedly makes computers think like biological brains, according to Daily Mail. The researchers created the circuit on the chip, mirroring organic circuits found in the olfactory bulbs (嗅球) of a dog's brain, which is how they process their sense of smell. The Loihi chip can identify a specific odor on the first try and even tell other background smells, said Intel, according to Daily Mail. The chip can even detect smells humans emit when sick with a disease—which vary depending on the illness—and smells linked to environmental gases and drugs. The key to sniffer dogs isn't their olfactory system alone, but their incredible ability to remember—this is why they're trained. Similarly, the artificial intelligence of the chip is trained to identify different smells and remember them, so that next time, it knows. The chip processes information just like mammal brains by using electrical signals to process smells. When a person smells something, the air molecules interact with nasal receptors that forward signals to the olfactory bulb in the brain. Then the brain translates the signals to identify which smell it's experiencing, based on memories of previous experiences with the specific smell. 'We are developing a method for Loihi to mimic (模仿) what happens in your brain when you smell something,' said Senior Research Scientist in Intel's Lab, Nabil Imam, in a statement, according to Daily Mail. Imam added that the work 'demonstrates Loihi's potential to provide important sensing capabilities that could benefit various industries.' So far, the researchers have trained it on ten harmful smells. It can be installed on robots in airports to help identify hazardous objects, or integrated with sensors in power plants or hospitals to detect dangerous gases. Similar biotechnology has seen the implementation in grasshoppers recently outfitted with computer chips to sniff-out bombs. However, this negatively affects their lifespan, limiting their use. While sniffer dogs might one day be out of a job, the circuits using AI to mimic the process of smell bring us one step closer to recreating the human sensory system in artificial intelligence.

单选题 For anyone who is set on a career in fashion it is not enough to have succeeded in college. The real test is whether they can survive and become established during their early 20s, making a name for themselves in the real world where business skills can count for as much as flair (天赋) and creativity... Fashion is a hard business. There is a continuous amount of stress because work is at a constant breakneck speed to prepare for the next season's collections. It is extremely competitive and there is the constant need to cultivate good coverage in newspapers and magazines. It also requires continual freshness because the appetite for new ideas is insatiable (不知不足的). 'We try to warn people before they come to us about how tough it is', says Lydia Kemeny, the Head of Fashion at St. Martin's School of Art in London, 'and we point out that drive and determination are essential.' This may seem far removed from the popular image of trendy and dilettante (业余艺术爱好的) young people spending their time designing pretty dresses. That may well be what they do in their first year of study but a good college won't be slow in introducing students to commercial realities. 'We don't stamp on the blossoming flower of creativity but in the second year we start introducing the constraints of price, manufacturability, marketing and so on.' Almost all fashion design is done to a brief. It is not a form of self-expression as such, although there is certainly room for imagination and innovation. Most young designers are going to end up as employees of a manufacturer or fashion house and they still need to be able to work within the characteristic style of their employer. Even those students who are most avant-garde (先锋派) in their own taste of clothes and image may need to adapt to produce designs which are right for the mainstream Marks and Spencer type of market. They also have to be able to work at both the exclusively expensive and the cheap end of the market and the challenge to produce good design inexpensively may well be more demanding than where money is no object.

单选题 Americans spend billions of dollars each year trying to change their weight with diets, gym memberships and plastic surgery. Trying to live up to the images of 'perfect' models and movie heroes has a dark side: anxiety, depression, as well as unhealthy strategies for weight loss or muscle gain. It also has a financial cost. Having an eating disorder boosts annual health care costs by nearly US$2,000 per person. Why is there both external and internal pressure to look 'perfect'? One reason is that society rewards people who are thin and healthy-looking. Researchers have shown that body mass index is related to wages and income. Especially for women, there is a clear penalty at work for being overweight or obese. Some studies have also found an impact for men, though a less noticeable one. While the research literature is clear that labor market success is partly based on how employers and customers perceive your body image, no one had explored the other side of the question. Does a person's own perception of body image matter to earnings and other indicators of success in the workplace? Our recently published study answered this question by tracking a large national random sample of Americans over a critical time period when bodies change from teenage shape into adult form and when people build their identities. As in other research, women in our sample tend to over-perceive their weight—they think they're healthier than they are—while men tend to under-perceive theirs. We found no relationship between the average person's self-perception of weight and labor market outcomes, although self-perceived weight can influence self-esteem (自尊心), mental health and health behaviors While the continued gender penalty in the labor market is frustrating, our finding that misperceived weight does not harm workers is more heartening. Since employers' perception of weight is what matters in the labor market, changing discrimination laws to include body type as a category would help. Michigan is the only state that prohibits discrimination on the basis of weight and height. We believe expanding such protections would make the labor market more fair and efficient.

单选题 长期以来，京剧界面临的一个重要问题就是如何让更多人尤其是年轻人认识京剧、了解京剧、喜爱京剧。高速发展的现代社会为人们带来了更多娱乐选择，在电影、电视、网络等冲击下，年轻一代大多数没有意愿也少有机会真正感受京剧的魅力。现有的京剧专家很多已步入中老年，不擅长用年轻人喜欢的语言和方式与他们沟通；而年轻一代中又极少有人既懂得京剧又愿意花费时间和精力去介绍京剧。

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. You should write a short essay entitled Free Admission to Museums? 写作导航 1.引出话题：博物馆对公众免费开放的利与弊；2.具体阐述博物馆对公众免费开放的好处以及带来的一些问题；3.提出自己的想法。

单选题 Fight Unhealthy Food, Not Fat People A. It's hardly breaking news that junk food is bad for us. But just how bad—and just how much food companies know about the addictive (添加剂) components of certain foods, and just how much they deliberately target the most vulnerable consumers knowing they are doing damage—is still being discovered. The New York Times offers the latest installment in this weekend's magazine with an article about the science of junk food addiction. B. Nearly everything written about food in the mainstream media relies on the same narrative: Obesity is bad. That kind of reporting is part of what's keeping us sick. There's no denying the fact that the American public has gotten larger in recent decades. Along with getting fatter, we've also seen a rise in illnesses like heart disease and certain cancers. Instead of focusing on how our health is hurting, most of the media coverage uses the term 'obesity', making the story more about weight than about health—to the point where it's become an accepted truth that 'fat' equals 'unhealthy'. C. That's not actually the case, though. While 'the obesity epidemic' may be a convenient catch-all for the illnesses and health problems related to our food chain, it's a lazy term and an inaccurate one. Are we actually worried about public health? Or are we offended by fat bodies that don't meet our thin ideals? In all seriousness: What good does a focus on body size actually do? D. If we're actually concerned about health, then we should focus on health. The addictive qualities of our food, the lack of oversight (监督), the high levels of chemicals and the government subsidies to make prices lower making the worst foods the most accessible should concern us and spur us to action. Nutrient-deficient (营养缺乏的) chemically-processed 'food' in increasingly larger sizes is bad for all of our bodies, whether we're fat or thin or somewhere in between. So is the culture in which fast food is able to thrive. Americans work more than ever before; we take fewer vacation days and put in longer hours, especially since the recession hit. The US remains the only industrialized country without national paid parental leave and without compulsory annual vacation time; we also have no federal law requiring paid sick days. 85% of American men and 66% of women work more than 40 hours per week. In Norway, for comparison, 23% of men work more than 40-hour weeks, and only 7% of women. E. Despite all this work, American income levels remain remarkably divided into the poorest and the richest, with the richest few controlling nearly all of the wealth. In one of the wealthiest countries on earth, one in seven people rely on federal food aid, with most of the financial benefits going to big food companies who are also able to produce cheap, nutritionally questionable food thanks to agricultural subsidies. The prices of the worst foods are artificially depressed, the big food lobbies have enormous power, and the biggest loser is the American public, especially low-income folks who spend larger proportions of their income on food but face systematic impediments (妨碍) to healthy eating and exercise. F. With demanding work days, little time off and disproportionate amounts of our incomes going toward things like health insurance and childcare that other countries provide at a lower cost, is it any surprise that we eat fast-food breakfast on our laps in the car and prefer dinner options that are quick and cheap? G. Reforming our food system requires major structural changes, not just saying no to put down that bag of chips. We need to push back against corporate interests. Food companies are incredibly good at positing themselves as crusaders (拥挤者) for personal choice and entities simply dedicated to giving the public what it wants. Somehow, big food companies have convinced us that drinking a 32oz soda is a matter of personal liberty, and that the government has no place in regulating how much liquid sugar can be sold in a single container. H. In fact, we know—and they certainly know—that human beings are remarkably bad at judging how much we're eating. Food companies use that information to encourage over-consumption, and to target certain consumers who tend to have less disposable income to invest in healthy food—poor people, people of color, kids. I. Food is a social justice issue that has disproportionately negative impacts on groups already facing hardship. That should be an issue for every socially conscious person. But when looking at the large number of problems caused not only by our big food industry but by the policies that enable them and our cultural norms that incentivize poor health choices, too many people simply turn 'obesity' into the boogeyman (鬼怪). Doctors even blame fatness for all sorts of medical conditions and people don't get proper treatment. Fat women go to the doctor less often for routine cancer screenings, and patients report doctors focusing on their weight and ignoring real medical problems like broken bones and asthma (哮喘). J. On the policy side, promoters of laws that incentivize health or push back on corporate food interests such as Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative, bans on extra-large sodas, and extra SNAP benefits at farmer's markets inevitably target 'obesity' in their campaigns. That strategy has the effect of maligning (诽谤) the beauty of certain bodies instead of encouraging everyone to be healthier and countering the enormous influence of big companies. As a result, many people who should be the natural allies of health-promoting initiatives are put off by the shaming fat language. K. 'Obesity epidemic' language has also fed into the idea of body size and eating habits as social group. Thinner kale-eating elite liberals in the Northeast are trying to force-feed cabbage to heavier real Americans in the South and Midwest. No one wins with that kind of cultural polarization. L. Yes, let's push back against big food companies and question their outsized influence in Washington and in our daily lives, and let's focus on making healthy food more widely accessible. Let's realize that the challenges extend beyond just what we eat. Let's fight for the humane (仁爱的) work policies that will make us all healthier. M. But let's do that because public health is all of our concern, not because it's culturally easy to point the finger at fat people. Giving every member of a society the chance to be as healthy as possible is a moral good. It saves money and it saves lives. So let's do it the right way and the most effective way without lazily relying on the word 'obesity'.

单选题 Stiletto heels could be banned from the workplace because of health and safety reasons, according to British Trade Union bosses. The Trade Union Congress, predominantly male, has proposed a motion arguing that high heels are disrespectful to women while they also contribute to long term injuries. They propose instead that women wear 'sensible shoes' with an inch heel limit in an attempt to avoid future foot and back pain as well as injuries. The motion is due to be debated at next month's conference. The motion states: 'Congress believes high heels may look glamorous on the Hollywood catwalks but are completely inappropriate for the day-to-day working environment.' 'Feet bear the main burden of daily life, and for many workers long-time standing, badly fitted footwear, and in particular high heels can be a hazard. Around two million days a year are lost through sickness as a result of lower limb disorders.' 'Wearing high heels can cause long-term foot problems and also serious foot, knee and back pain and damaged joints.' 'Many employers in the retail sector force women workers to wear high heels as part of their dress code. ' 'More must be done to raise awareness of this problem so that women workers and their feet are protected.' Nadine Dorries, the Tory Member of Parliament, however criticised the motion and said the extra height heels give women can help them when in the workplace. 'I'm 5 ft 3 in and need every inch of my Christian Louboutin heels to look my male colleagues in the eye,' she said. 'If high heels were banned in Westminster, no one would be able to find me. The Trade Union leaders need to get real, stop using obvious sexist methods by discussing women's very high thin heels to divert (转移) tension away from Labour chaos.' Michelle Dewberry, a former winner of The Apprentice, said the motion was patronising (自认为高人一 等的). 'This is absolutely ridiculous and I think these union officials should be spending their time dealing with more important issues', she said. 'I'm at work in five-inch heels and perfectly able to do my job. Heels are sexy, they boost your confidence and make women feel that they are in control of their life. I can't imagine these officials debating a motion about how tightly men should wear their ties. Wearing heels is a personal choice.'