Ever wondered how your cat or dog sees the world? Now you can look through their eyes with the first 3D game that recreates the vision of different species based on scientific evidence. The online simulation, created by the French 3D design company Dassault Systèmes, with the guidance of veterinary ophthalmologist (眼科专家) Didier Schmidt-Morand, mimics (模仿) the vision of five animals—cats, dogs, rats, hawks and bees—as a player steers them through Place Vendme in Paris. Due to differences in field of view, colour perception and night vision, for example, sight can be drastically different from species to species. "In terms of performance, eyes are as variable as different models of cars," says Schmidt-Morand. The game was created by using existing virtual models of the square then applying effects based on descriptions of each animal's vision. Dassault's 3D software allows a scene to be modified by adding blur or changing the colours, angle of vision and depth of field. Although it was easy to recreate vision inferior to that of humans—cats and dogs, for example, have trouble distinguishing shades of red—replicating features that we are unable to see was a challenge. Hawks have more detailed vision than ours, whereas dogs are better at seeing movement and have a wider field of view. "We used virtual cameras to precisely simulate larger viewing angles but the result made people nauseous (令人作呕的)," says Schmidt-Morand. "So we tweaked (微调) the model to give a sense of the wider view without sticking to reality." The rat's view also departs from reality: because they are near-sighted, everything more than 15 centimetres away is a blur, so they typically move close to walls to help them navigate. "A rat would never throw itself into the middle of an open area," says Schmidt-Morand. The simulation for this animal is supplemented with a map in the top right corner to help determine the rat's position: because of their limited eyesight, most landmarks are obscured. The game is intended as an educational resource and players can discuss their experience with others through community features on the website. If there is interest from schools and zoos, the team hopes to recreate the vision of more animals.
1. The game developed by Dassault Systèmes is the first 3D game recreating the vision of different species.
1 Earth is warming. Sea levels are rising. There's more carbon in the air, and Arctic ice is melting faster than at any time in recorded history. Scientists who study the environment to better gauge (评估) Earth's future climate now argue that these changes may not reverse for a very long time. 2 People burn fossil fuels like coal and oil for energy. That burning releases carbon dioxide, a colorless gas. In the air, this gas traps heat at Earth's surface. And the more carbon dioxide released, the more the planet warms. If current consumption of fossil fuels doesn't slow, the long-term climate impacts could last thousands of years—and be more severe than scientists had been expecting. Climatologist Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii at Manoa offers this conclusion in a new paper. 3 Most climate-change studies look at what's going to happen in the next century or so. During that time, changes in the planet's environment could nudge (推动) global warming even higher. For example, snow and ice reflect sunlight back into space. But as these melt, sunlight can now reach—and warm—the exposed ground. This extra heat raises the air temperature even more, causing even more snow to melt. This type of rapid exaggeration of impacts is called a "fast feedback". 4 Zeebe says it's important to look at fast feedbacks. However, he adds, they're limited. From a climate change perspective, "This century is the most important time for the next few generations," he told Science News. "But the world is not ending in 2100." For this new study, Zeebe now focuses on "slow feedbacks". While fast feedback events unfold over decades or centuries, slow feedbacks can take thousands of years. Melting of continental ice sheets and the migration of plant life—as they relocate to more comfortable areas—are two examples of slow feedbacks. 5 Zeebe gathered information from previously published studies investigating how such processes played out over thousands of years during past dramatic changes in climate. Then he came up with a forecast for the future that accounts for both slow and fast feedback processes. Climate forecasts that use only fast feedbacks predict a 4.5 degree Celsius (8.1 degree Fahrenheit) change by the year 3000. But slow feedbacks added another 1.5℃—for a 6℃ total increase, Zeebe reports. He also found that slow feedback events will cause global warming to persist for thousands of years after people run out of fossil fuels to burn.
1. Paragraph 2 ______ A. Rising of Sea Levels B. Impact of Burning Fossil Fuels C. Fast Feedbacks D. Slow Feedbacks E. Unpredictability of Feedback Processes F. A Prediction of Future Climate Change
5. Arctic ice has never been melting so fast in ______. A. the exposed ground B. a very long time C. the extra heat D. recorded history E. previously published studies F. rapid exaggeration of impacts
D
[解析] 根据第一段第三句“...recorded history.”可知，空格处应填D项。
6. Melting of snow and ice enables sunlight to reach ______.
A
[解析] 根据第三段第四句“...exposed ground.”可知，空格处应填A项。
7. Zeebe came up with his future climate prediction by analyzing ______.
E
[解析] 根据第五段第一句“...previously published studies...”可知，空格处应填E项。
8. After fossil fuels are used up, global warming will continue for ______.
B
[解析] 根据文章最后一句“...thousands of years...”可知，空格处应填B项。“a very long time”是对“thousands of years”的同义转换。
第4部分：阅读理解 下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题。请根据短文内容，为每题确定1个最佳选项。
第一篇
The Northern Lights
The sun is stormy and has its own kind of weather. It is so hot and active that even the Sun's gravity cannot hold its atmosphere in check! Energy flows away from the Sun toward the Earth in a stream of electrified particles that move at speeds around a million miles per hour. These particles are called plasma (等离子体), and the stream of plasma coming from the Sun is called the solar wind. The more active the Sun, the stronger the solar wind. The solar wind constantly streams toward the Earth, but don't worry because a protective magnetic field surrounds our planet. The same magnetic field that makes your compass point north also steers the particles from the Sun to the north and south poles. The charged particles become trapped in magnetic belts around the Earth. When a large blast of solar wind crashes into the Earth's magnetic field, the magnetic field first gets squeezed and then the magnetic field lines break and reconnect. The breaking and reconnecting of the magnetic field lines can cause atomic particles called electrons trapped in the belts to fall into the Earth's atmosphere at the poles. As the electrons fall to the Earth, they collide with gas molecules in the atmosphere, creating flashes of light in the sky. Each atmospheric gas glows a different color. Oxygen and nitrogen glows red and green and nitrogen glows violet purple. As these various colors glow and dance in the night sky, they create the Northern Lights and the Southern Lights. Watching auroras (北极光) is fun and exciting, but normally you can only see them in places far north like Alaska and Canada. The movement of the aurora across the sky is usually slow enough to easily follow with your eyes but they can also pulsate (跳动), flicker (闪烁), or even move like waves. During solar maximum, 5 auroras are seen as far south as Florida, even Mexico! Auroras often seem to be very close to the ground, but the lowest aurora is still about 100 kilometers above the ground, a distance much higher than clouds are formed or airplanes can fly. A typical aurora band can be thousands of kilometers long, a few hundred kilometers high, but only a few hundred meters thick. We hope you are able to travel to far north places like the Arctic Circle and see the Northern Lights at least once during your lifetime. We know you will never forget it!
1. The solar wind comes into being as a result of ______.
Eye-tracker Lets You Drag and Drop Files With a Glance
Bored of using a mouse? Soon you'll be able to change stuff on your computer screen—and then move it directly onto your smartphone or tablet (平板电脑)—with nothing more than a glance. A system called EyeDrop uses a head-mounted eye tracker that simultaneously records your field of view, so it knows where you are looking on the screen. Gazing at an object—a photo, say—and then pressing a key, selects that object. It can then be moved from the screen to a tablet or smartphone just by glancing at the second device, as long as the two are connected wirelessly. "The beauty of using gaze to support this is that our eyes naturally focus on content that we want to acquire," says Jayson Turner, who developed the system with colleagues at Lancaster University, UK. Turner believes EyeDrop would be useful to transfer an interactive map or contact information from a public display to your smartphone or tablet for sharing photos. A button needs to be used to select the object you are looking at otherwise you end up with the "Midas touch" (点石成金) effect, whereby everything you look at gets selected by your gaze, says Turner. "Imagine if your mouse clicked on everything it pointed at," he says. Christian Holz, a researcher in human-computer interaction at Yahoo Labs in Sunnyvale, California, says the system is a nice take on getting round this fundamental problem of using gaze-tracking to interact. "EyeDrop solves this in a slick (灵巧的) way by combining it with input on the touch devices we carry with us most of the time anyway and using touch input as a clutching mechanism," he says. "This now allows users to seamlessly (无缝地) interact across devices far and close in a very natural manner." While current eye-trackers are rather bulky, mainstream consumer devices are not too far away. Swedish firm Tobii is developing gaze-tracking technology that can be installed in laptops and tablets and is expected to be available to buy next year. And the Google Glass headset is expected to include eye-tracking in the future. Turner says he has also looked at how content can be cut and pasted or drag-and-dropped using a mix of gaze and taps on a touchscreen. The system was presented at the Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia in Sweden, last week.
1. The eye-tracker technology enables us to ______.
D.How to cut and paste content from a public display.
A B C D
A
[解析] 根据文章最后一段第一句“Turner say he has also looked at how content can be cut and pasted or drag-and-dropped using a mix of...”可知，Turner下一步的研究方向是探索怎么使用目光和按键剪切和粘贴文件，所以选择A项。选项B和D的内容文章没有提及。从Turner的话语中可以看出，选项C的内容并不是他研究的重点，所以不选C项。
第三篇
A New Strategy to Overcome Breast Cancer
Post-menopausal (绝经后的) women who walk for an hour a day can cut their chance of breast cancer significantly, a study has suggested. The report, which followed 73,000 women for 17 years, found walking for at least seven hours a week lowered the risk of the disease. The American Cancer Society team said this was the first time reduced risk was specifically linked to walking. UK experts said there was more evidence that lifestyle influenced cancer risk. A recent poll for the charity Ramblers found a quarter of adults walk for no more than an hour a week, but being active is known to reduce the risk of a number of cancers. This study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, followed 73,615 women out of 97,785 aged 50 -74 who had been recruited by the American Cancer Society between 1992 and 1993, so it could monitor the incidence of cancer in the group. They were asked to complete questionnaires on their health and on how much time they were active and participating in activities such as walking, swimming and aerobics (有氧运动) and how much time they spent sitting watching television or reading. They completed the same questionnaires at two-year intervals between 1997 and 2009. Of the women, 47% said walking was their only recreational activity. Those who walked for at least seven hours per week had a 14% lower risk of breast cancer compared to those who walked three or fewer hours per week. Dr. Alpa Patel, a senior epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, Georgia, who led the study, said: "Given that more than 60% of women report some daily walking, promoting walking as a healthy leisure-time activity could be an effective strategy for increasing physical activity amongst post-menopausal women. We were pleased to find that without any other recreational activity, just walking one hour a day was associated with a lower risk of breast cancer in these women." "More strenuous (紧张的) and longer activities lowered the risk even more." Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive of Breast Cancer Campaign, said: "This study adds further evidence that our lifestyle choices can play a part in influencing the risk of breast cancer and even small changes incorporated into our normal day-to-day activity can make a difference." She added: "We know that the best weapon to overcoming breast cancer is the ability to stop it occurring in the first place. The challenge now is how we turn these findings into action and identify other sustainable lifestyle changes that will help us prevent breast cancer."
1. All of the following factors relating to cancer risk were mentioned in the passage EXCEPT ______.
Wrongly Convicted Man and His Accuser Tell Their Story
NEW YORK, NY, January 5, 2010. St. Martin's Press has announced the release of the paperback edition of Picking Cotton, a remarkable true story of what novelist John Grisham calls an "account of violence, rage, redemption (救赎), and, ultimately forgiveness". The story began in 1987, in Burlington, North Carolina, with the rape of a young white college student named Jennifer Thompson. During her ordeal, Thompson swore to herself that she would never forget the face of her rapist, a man who climbed through the window of her apartment and assaulted her brutally. 1 When the police asked heir if she could identify the assailant (袭击者) from a book of mug shots, she picked one that she was sure was correct, and later she identified the same man in a lineup. Based on her convincing eyewitness testimony, a 22-year-old black man named Ronald Cotton was sentenced to prison for two life terms. Cotton's lawyer appealed the decision, and by the time of the appeals hearing, evidence had come to light suggesting that the real rapist might have been a man who looked very like Cotton, an imprisoned criminal named Bobby Poole. 2 Jennifer Thompson looked at both men face to face, and once again said that Ronald Cotton was the one who raped her. Eleven years later, DNA evidence completely exonerated (证明……清白) Cotton and just as unequivocally (明确地) convicted Poole, who confessed to the crime. 3 "The man I was so sure I had never seen in my life was the man who was inches from my throat, who raped me, who hurt me, who took my spirit away, who robbed me of my soul," she wrote. "And the man I had identified so surely on so many occasions was absolutely innocent. " 4 Remarkably both were able to put this tragedy behind them, overcome the racial barrier that divided them, and write a book, which they have subtitled "Our memoir of injustice and redemption". Nevertheless, Thompson says, she still lives "with constant pain that my profound mistake cost him so dearly. 5 " A. Jennifer Thompson decided to meet Cotton and apologize to him personally. B. Many criminals are sent to prison on the basis of accurate testimony by eyewitnesses. C. I cannot begin to imagine what would have happened had my mistaken identification occurred in a capital ease. D. Another trial was held. E. Thompson was shocked and devastated. F. During the attack, she made an effort to memorize every detail of his face, looking for scars, tattoos (纹身), or other identifying marks.
American scientists say musical training seems to improve communication skills and language retardation (延迟). They found that developing musical skill involves the 1 process in the brain as learning how to speak. The scientists believe that could 2 children with learning disabilities. Nina Krauss is a neurobiologist at Northwestern University in Illinois. She says musical training 3 putting together different kinds of information, such as hearing music, looking at musical notes, touching an instrument and watching other musicians. This 4 is not much different from learning how to speak. Both involve different senses. She further explains musical training and learning to 5 each make us think about what we are doing. She says speech and music 6 through a structure of the nervous system called the brain stem. The brain stem 7 our ability to hear. Until recently, experts have thought the brain stem could not be developed or changed. 8 Professor Krauss and her team found that musical training can improve a person's brain stem activity. The study involved individuals with different levels of musical 9 . They were asked to wear an electrical device that measures 10 activity. The individuals wore the electrode while they watched a video of someone speaking and a person playing a musical instrument—the cello (大提琴). Professor Krauss says cellos have sound qualities similar 11 some of the sounds that are important with speech. The study found that the more years of training people had, the more 12 they were to the sound and rhythm of the music. Those who were involved in musical activities were the same people in whom the 13 of sensory events was the strongest. It shows the importance of musical training to children with learning 14 . She says using music to improve listening skills could mean they 15 sentences and understand facial expressions better.
1.
A.unique
B.different
C.same
D.strange
A B C D
C
[解析] 前一句提到音乐训练可以提高沟通技巧和改善语言障碍，可见他们发现的应该是提升音乐技能与学习说话有着相同的(same)大脑活动过程。the same as...与……相同。unique独特的；different不同的；strange奇怪的。
me in Paris.
深色：已答题 浅色：未答题