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Travel Across Africa
For six hours we shot through the barren（荒芜的）landscape of the Karoo desert in
South Africa. Just rocks and sand and baking sun. Knowing our journey was ending,Daniel and I just wanted to remember all we had seen and done. He used a camera. I used words. I had already finished three notebooks and was into the fourth,a beautiful leather notebook I'd bought in a market in Mozambique.
Southern Africa was full of stories and visions.We were almost drunk on sensations,the roaring（咆哮）of the water at Victoria Falls, the impossible silence of the Okavango Delta in Botswana.
And then the other things:dogs in the streets,whole families in Soweto living in one room,a kilometre from clean water.
As we drove towards the setting sun,a quietness fell over us. The road was empty一we hadn't seen another car for hours.And as I drove,something caught my eye,something moving close enough to touch them,to smell their hot breath. I didn't know how long they had been there next to us.
I shouted to Dan:“Look!”But he was in a deep sleep,his camera lying useless by his feet. They raced the car for a few seconds,then disappeared far behind us,a memory of he- roic forms in the red landscape.
When Daniel woke up an hour later I told him what had happened.
”Wild horses?”he said.”Why didn't you wake me up,Sophia?”
”I tried. But they were gone after a few seconds.”
”Are you sure you didn't dream it?”
”You were the one who was sleeping!”
”Typical”,he said.”The best photos are the ones we never take.”
We checked into a dusty hotel and slept the sleep of the dead.
Daniel and Sophia saw a lot of wonderful things.
A: Right
B: Wrong
C: Not mentioned

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Water一the Issue of This Century
The world is running short of freshwater. Populations are growing bigger and thirstier （渴的）,with the result that freshwater is becoming increasingly scarce（缺乏）.Half the world's wetlands have disappeared during the last century,while estimates suggest that wa- ter use will rise by 50% in the next 30 years.
The World Bank report estimates that as much as half of the world's population,concentrated in Africa,the Middle East and south Asia,will face“severe water shortages”by 2025.Local water conflicts and the loss of freshwater ecosystems appear large in some re- gions.
A similar picture emerges from the globe's salt water regions. Three-quarters of the world's people may live within 100km of the sea in 2025,putting even more pressure on stretched coastal ecosystems. Two thirds of fisheries（渔业）are exploited at or beyond their sustainable limits, and half the world's coral reefs（珊瑚礁）may perish in 100 years. Almost 60% of coral reefs and 34% of fish species are at risk from human activities,the Bank says.
The report concludes that there is ample evidence to justify immediate and coordinated action to safeguard supplies and use water more efficiently.
Fresh water consumption is rising quickly,and the availability of water in some regions is likely to become one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century.
A third of the world's popu1ation一around two billion people一live in countries that are experiencing moderate to high water shortages.That proportion could rise to half or more in the next 30 years unless institutions（制度）change to ensure better conservation and alloca- tion of water.
China is one country where the portents（征兆）are gloomy. The most waterstressed country in East Asia,China is exploiting 44%of its usable water,a figure projected to rise to6O%by 2020.Primary withdrawal of water of more than 60%is widely considered by water experts to exceed the environmental carrying capacity of a river basin system. Although
China's total use appears still to be reasonable,it has several basins that are severely stressed environmentally.
Withdrawals exceed environmental limits in Afghanistan and Pakistan,and will exceed them in India by 2020.In the Middle East and North Africa,only Morocco has unexploited water resources.The rest have exceeded environmental limits and many are mining aquifers （蓄水层）一bodies of water-bearing rock一the report says.
It is estimated that water use will rise by 50% in the next 30 years.
A: Right
B: Wrong
C: Not mentioned

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The Robot Man
According to Hans Moravec,universal robots will take over all the physical activities that we engage in,leaving us with little to do.Moravec sees four generations on the road to true universal robots. The first generation will be here by 2010 and will consist of free-ranging robots that can navigate by building an internal mental map of their surroundings.In new situations they'll be able to adapt,unlike today's mobile industrial robots.These robots will have the computing power to cope with simple speech and text recognition,and will be used for tasks such as domestic clean-ing.
The second generation will arrive around 2020 and will be distinguished by the ability to learn .Second generation robots are programmed with sets of primitive tasks and with feedback that provide"pleasure"and"pain"stimuli .For example,a collision provokes a negative response,a completed task would be positive.
Move forward another ten years to 2030 and you get to generation three.This robot can build internal simulations of the world around it. Before beginning a task,it can imagine what will happen in order to predict problems.If it has a free moment,it can replay past experiences and try variations in order to find a better way of如ing things next time .It could even observe a person or another robot performing a task and learn by imitation.For the first time,we have here a robot that can think.
By the time we get to generation four in 2040,Moravec predicts that robots will be able to: match human reasoning and behaviour;generalise abstract ideas from specific experience;and, conversely,compile detailed plans of action from general commands such as"earn a living"or "make more robots".
The Moravec manifesto（宣告）runs something like this. As robots start to become useful in generation one,they'll begin to take on many tasks in industry.Driven by the availability of this cheap and tireless labour force,the economy will boom and the demand for robots will grow so rapidly that they will soon become lowcost commodity items.So much so that they'll move into the home,where the domestic robot will relieve us of many chores.
With increasing automation in generations two and three,the length of the average working day will plummet,eventually to near zero. Most people will be unemployed as robots take over not just primary industry,but the service economy too.Moravec sees the fourth generation as an opportunity to surpass our human limitations.
These future machines will be our"mind children".Like biological children of previous generations,they will embody humanity's best hope for a long-term future.
The author's main purpose is to______.
A: describe the life of Hans Moravec
B: support the view that robots will play a major role in our life
C: make fun of the views of Hans Moravec
D: get people prepared for the threat of future robots

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Come out, or I 'll bust the door down.
A: shut
B:break
C: set
D:beat

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Wide World of Robots
Engineers who build and program robots have fascinating jobs. These researchers tinker（修补）with ma-
chines in the lab and write computer software to control these devices."They're the best toys out there,"
says Howie Choset at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.Choset is a roboticist,a person who designs,
builds or programs robots.
When Choset was a kid,he was interested in anything that moved-cars,trains,animals.He put motors
on Tinkertoy cars to make them move.Later,in high school,he built mobile robots similar to small cars.
Hoping to continue working on robots,he studied computer science in college.But when he got to
graduate school at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,Choset's labmates were working on
something even cooler than remotely controlled cars:robotic snakes.Some robots can move only forward,
backward , left and right. But snakes can twist（扭曲）in many directions and travel over a lot of different
types of terrain（地形）."Snakes are far more interesting than the cars,"Choset concluded.
After he started working at Carnegie Mellon,Choset and his colleagues there began developing their own
snake robots.Choset'5 team programnied robots to perform the same movements as real snakes,such as
sliding and inching forward.The robots also moved in ways that snakes usually don't,such as rolling.
Choset's snake robots could crawl（爬行）through the grass ,swim in a pond and even climb a flagpole.
But Choset wondered if his snakes might be useful for medicine as well. For some heart surgeries,the
doctor has to open a patient' s chest ,cutting through the breastbone. Recovering from these surgeries can be
very painful. What if the doctor could perform the operation by instead making a small hole in the body and
sending in a thin robotic snake?
Choset teamed up with Marco Zenati,a heart surgeon now at Harvard Medical School ,to investigate the
idea. Zenati practiced using the robot on a plastic model of the chest and they tested the robot in pigs.
A company called Medrobotics in Boston is now adapting the technology for surgeries on people.
Even after 15 years of working with his team's creations,"I still don't get bored of watching the motion
of my robots,"Choset says.
Snake robots could move in only four directions.
A: Right
B: Wrong
C: Not mentioned

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The Weight Experiment
Nicola Walters has been taking part in experiments in Scotland to discover why humans gain and lose weight. Being locked in a small room called a“ calorimeter”（热量测量室）is one way to find out.
1 .The signs above the two rooms read simply“Chamber One”and“Chamber Two”.These are the calorimeters:4m by 2m white-walled rooms where human volunteers are locked up in the name of science .Outside these rooms another sign reads“Please do not enter work in progress” and in front of the rooms advanced machinery registers every move the volunteers make.Each day,meals measured to the last gram are passed through a hole in the wall of the calorimeter to the resident volunteer.
2 .Nicola Walters is one of twenty volunteers who,over the past eight months,have spent varying periods inside the calorimeter. Tall and slim,Nicola does not have a weight problem,but thought the strict diet might help with her training and fitness programme.As a self-employed community dance rorker,she was able to fit the experiment in around her work.She saw an advert for volun- teers at her local gym and as she is interested in the whole area of diet and exercise,she thought she would help out.
3. The experiment on Nicola involved her spending one day on a fixed diet at home and the next in the room.This sequence was repeated four times over six weeks.She arrived at the calorimeter at8:30 am on each of the four mornings and from then on everything she ate or drank was carefull) measured .Her every move was noted too,her daily exercise routine,timed to the last second. At regular intervals,after eating,she filled in forms about how hungry she felt and samples were taken for analysis.
4 .The scientists help volunteers impose a kind of order on the long days they face in the room. “The first time,I only took one video and a book,but it was OK because I watched TV the rest of the time,”says Nicola. And twice a day she used the exercise bike. She pedaled（踩踏板） for half an hour,watched by researchers to make sure she didn't go too fast.
5 .It seems that some foods encourage you to eat more,while others satisfy you quickly.Volunteers are already showing that high-fat diets are less likely to make you feel full.Believing that they may now know what encourages people to overeat,the researchers are about to start testing a high-protein weight-loss diet. Volunteers are required and Nicola has signed up for further sessions.
Nicola Walters had time for the experiments________.
A: the volunteers do
B:.because she does not have a weight problem
C: because the life there can be very boring
D: make people overeat
E: because she was her own boss
F:after passing a high-protein test

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