| A．devoted to doing | B．devoted to do |
| C．devoting to do | D．is devoted to doing |
| A．because of your being overweight | B．because you are overweight |
| C．you are so overweight | D．your being overweight |
Artificial—intelligence systems like Grammarly, an automated grammar—checker, are trained with data. for instance, translation software is fed sentences translated by humans, Grammarly's training data involve a large number of standard error—free sentences and human—corrected sentences.
But grammar is the real magic of language, joining words into structures, joining those structures into sentences, and doing so in a way that maps onto meaning.
| A．Grammarly can seem to miss more errors than it marks. |
| B．One Grammarly feature that works fairly well is feeing analysis. |
| C．To correct such writing requires knowing what the writer intended. |
| D．Grammarly has some obvious strengths in understanding meaning or intentions. |
| E．Computers outpace humans at problems that can be solved with pure maths. |
| F．Developers also add certain rules to the patterns Grammarty has taught itself. |
| G．In this decisive structure—meaning connection, machines are no match for humans. |
A new commodity brings about a highly profitable, fast-growing industry, urging antitrust(反垄断) regulators to step in to check those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants(巨头) that deal in data, the oil of the digital age. The most valuable firms are Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft. All look unstoppable.
Such situations have led to calls for the tech giants to be broken up. But size alone is not a crime. The giants’ success has benefited consumers. Few want to live without search engines or a quick delivery. Far from charging consumers high prices, many of these services are free (users pay, in effect, by handing over yet more data). And the appearance of new-born giants suggests that newcomers can make waves, too.
But there is cause for concern. The internet has made data abundant, all-present and far more valuable, changing the nature of data and competition. Google initially used the data collected from users to target advertising better. But recently it has discovered that data can be turned into new services: translation and visual recognition, to be sold to other companies. Internet companies’ control of data gives them enormous power. So they have a "God’s eye view" of activities in their own markets and beyond.
This nature of data makes the antitrust measures of the past less useful. Breaking up firms like Google into five small ones would not stop remaking themselves: in time, one of them would become great again. A rethink is required — and as a new approach starts to become apparent, two ideas stand out.
The first is that antitrust authorities need to move from the industrial age into the 21st century. When considering a merger(兼并), for example, they have traditionally used size to determine when to step in. They now need to take into account the extent of firms’ data assets(资产) when assessing the impact of deals. The purchase price could also be a signal that an established company is buying a new-born threat. When this takes place, especially when a new-born company has no revenue to speak of, the regulators should raise red flags.
The second principle is to loosen the control that providers of on-line services have over data and give more to those who supply them. Companies could be forced to reveal to consumers what information they hold and how much money they make from it. Governments could order the sharing of certain kinds of data, with users’ consent.
Restarting antitrust for the information age will not be easy. But if governments don’t want a data economy controlled by a few giants, they must act soon.
1．Why is there a call to break up giants?| A．They have controlled the data market. |
| B．They collect enormous private data. |
| C．They no longer provide free services. |
| D．They dismissed some new-born giants. |
| A．Data giants’ technology is very expensive. |
| B．Google’s idea is popular among data firms. |
| C．Data can strengthen giants’ controlling position. |
| D．Data can be turned into new services or products. |
| A．kill a new threat |
| B．avoid the size trap |
| C．favour bigger firms |
| D．charge higher prices |
| A．Big companies could relieve data security pressure. |
| B．Governments could relieve their financial pressure. |
| C．Consumers could better protect their privacy. |
| D．Small companies could get more opportunities. |
Once there was a girl named Vivian who was the only child of her father. Her father was a big and successful businessman who owned seven star restaurants. He did everything only for his daughter.
Vivian was sent to the best university abroad. Although she had everything, the only thing she never owned was respect of other people.
When Vivian came back after her graduation and her father asked her to join his company as an accountant, she was naturally not happy with that. She wanted to work in a higher post but her father wanted her to start as an ordinary girl.
“Dad, I studied in the most outstanding university abroad and got a better education than any of the employees who work under you. Still, you want me to work under them?" said Vivian unhappily.
Vivian's father looked at her with a smile on his face. Vivian was annoyed by her father's reaction but she agreed to work as an accountant in the end.
After some months, there was an emergency situation in the company.One of the restaurants was short of employees because of a sudden resignation (辞职），so they were short on people to do other chores around the place and cook food fast. Vivian's father asked her to help that restaurant with him and the other employees.
When she entered the restaurant, she was hit by the air of tension around the employees. Everybody was busy doing something or other and there was a mess around the restaurant. When she went in the back of the kitchen, she saw a tower of unwashed dishes.
Her father neared her in a hurry and asked her, “Vivian, thank goodness, you are here. Darling, will you please help us and do the dishes?" He patted her on her shoulder and left her to do the dishes.
She looked at the dirty plates and spoons that were piled up before her.
“I didn't study my whole life and come first in everything to do this!”Vivian thought.
Vivian's father picked up the gloves, put them on and started doing the dishes himself.
Tiny microbes(微生物) are at the heart of a new agricultural technique to manage harmful greenhouse gas. Scientists have discovered how microbes can be used to turn carbon dioxide into soil-enriching limestone(石灰石), with the help of a type of tree that grows in tropical areas, such as West Africa.
Researchers have found that when the Iroko tree is grown in dry, acidic soil and treated with a combination of natural fungi(霉菌) and other bacteria, not only does the tree grow well, it also produces the mineral limestone in the soil around its root.
The Iroko tree makes a mineral by combining Ca from the earth with CO2 from the atmosphere. The bacteria then create the conditions under which this mineral turns into limestone. The discovery offers a new way to lock carbon into the soil, keeping it out of the atmosphere. In addition to storing carbon in the trees’ leaves and in the form of limestone, the mineral in the soil makes it more suitable for agriculture.
The discovery could lead to reforestation(重新造林) projects in tropical countries, and help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the developing world. It has already been used in West Africa and is being tested in Bolivia, Haiti and India.
The findings were made in a three-year project involving researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Granada, Lausanne and Delft University of Technology. The project examined several microbiological methods of locking CO2 as limestone, and the Iroko-bacteria way showed best results. Work was funded by the European Commission under the Future&Emerging Technologies(FET) scheme.
Dr Bryne Ngwenya of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, who led the research, said:“By taking advantage of this natural limestone-producing process, we have a low-tech, safe, readily employed and easily operating way to lock carbon out of the atmosphere, while improving farming conditions in tropical countries.”
1．The passage is mainly introducing ________.| A．some useful natural fungi and bacteria |
| B．a new way to deal with greenhouse gas |
| C．a newly-found tree in West Africa |
| D．the soil-enriching limestone created by scientists |
| A．Most tiny microbes like living in dry, acidic soil. |
| B．CO2 can be broken down by natural fungi and bacteria. |
| C．The more greenhouse gas is, the more active tiny microbes become. |
| D．Tiny microbes get along well with the Iroko tree in special soil. |
| A．Carbon dioxide. |
| B．Carbon. |
| C．Soil. |
| D．Limestone. |
| A．The action of the tiny microbes can increase the oxygen in the earth. |
| B．Researchers have done the experiment on trees in Africa for three years. |
| C．Researchers tend to use natural power to solve their problem. |
| D．West Africa is one of the most polluted areas all over the world. |
| A．can be used to improve the farming land |
| B．can save a lot of seriously destroyed woods |
| C．has been popularized in Bolivia, Haiti and India |
| D．should be spread all around the world in the future |
Founded in 1880, the journal Science nowadays continues to publish the very best in research across the sciences. It is
“Readers must have
Asked whether any particular papers had
Giovanni Parmigiani, a bio-statistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group, says he
Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data.
| A．announcing | B．adding | C．promoting | D．advertising |
| A．resulting from | B．putting forward | C．calling on | D．leading to |
| A．confidence | B．motivation | C．suspicion | D．justice |
| A．rejected | B．appointed | C．transported | D．blamed |
| A．considerate | B．remote | C．outside | D．indirect |
| A．gather | B．review | C．compare | D．qualify |
| A．stimulated | B．revolutionized | C．judged | D．resisted |
| A．fortunately | B．negatively | C．broadly | D．automatically |
| A．evaluation | B．drive | C．fuel | D．trick |
| A．permitted | B．forced | C．ordered | D．expected |
| A．thoughtless | B．amusing | C．fresh | D．profitable |
| A．model | B．record | C．donate | D．exchange |
| A．Furthermore | B．Instead | C．However | D．Consequently |
| A．deeper | B．tougher | C．farther | D．thinner |
| A．remove | B．inform | C．adjust | D．identify |
Love the way you walk
Listen carefully to the footsteps in the family home, and you can probably work out who is walking about. The features most commonly used to identify people are faces, voices and fingerprints. But the way they walk is also a giveaway.
Researchers have used video cameras and computers to analyze people’s gaits, and are now quite good at it. But translating such knowledge into a practical identification system can be tricky. Cameras are often visible, are difficult to set up, require good lighting and may have their view blocked by other people. A team led by Dr. Ozanyan and Dr. Scully have been looking for a better way to recognize gait. Their answer: pressure-sensitive mats.
Such mats are nothing new. They have been part of security systems. But Ozanyan and Scully use a complicated version that can record the amount of pressure applied in different places as someone walks across it. These measurements form a pattern unique to the walker. The researchers turned to an artificial-intelligence system to recognize such patterns, and it seemed to work. In a study in 2018, they tested the system on a database of footsteps of 127 people. They found its error rate in identifying who was who was a mere 0.7%. And Scully says even without a database of footsteps to work with, the system can determine someone’s sex and, with reasonable accuracy, a subject’s age.
One application of the mat-based gait-recognition system might be in health care, particularly for the elderly. A mat placed in a nursing home or an old person’s own residence could monitor changes in an individual’s gait that indicates certain illnesses. That would provide early warning of someone being at greater risk of falling over.
Gait analysis might also be used as a security measure in the workplace, monitoring access to restricted areas, such as parts of military bases, server farms or laboratories dealing with dangerous materials.
Perhaps the most interesting use of the mats, though, would be in public places, such as airports. For that to work, the footsteps of those to be recognized would need to have been stored in a database, which would be harder to arrange than the collection of photographs and fingerprints that existing airport security systems rely on. Many aircrew or preregistered frequent flyers would welcome anything that speeded up one of the most tiresome parts of modern travel.
1．What is mainly talked about in Paragraph 2?| A．Research equipment. | B．Research findings. |
| C．Research assumption. | D．Research background. |
| A．collect data | B．ensure safety |
| C．determine age | D．analyse pressure |
| A．monitor security work progress | B．detect potential health problems |
| C．keep track of travelling frequency | D．warn passengers of possible dangers |
| A．compare and educate | B．examine and assess |
| C．discuss and persuade | D．explain and inform |
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