To what degree can a computer achieve intelligence ? The answer to this question may lie in a newly-developed US computer program called Smarter Child and the Internet .
If you ran into Smarter Child online , you would be surprised at this kid’s huge memory .It can recite many facts . For example , Smarter Child knows every baseball player in every team this season .
He 
knows every word in the dictionary and the weather in every major city areas across the US. However , if you ask Smarter Child other questions , you get stranger answers . A question about Smarter Child’s age returns . “One year , 11 days , 16 hours , 7 minutes , and 47 seconds!” Asking where he lives gets , “In a clean room in a high-tech building in California.”
Smarter Child uses the vast information on the World W
ide Web as his memory bank . To answer questions about spelling , for instance , Smarter Child goes to American Heritage Dictionary online . For the weather , he visits www.intellicast.com.
Some scientists believe that by joining the many systems of the Internet , an artificial being with the combined knowledge of , say , Albert Einstein, Richard Nixon and Britney Spears could be born. However if Smarter Child wants to think and learn on his own like the boy-computer David in the movie A. I. , Artificial Intelligence , he must overcome two problems .
The first is that computers find it difficult to read web pages because the files are labeled in different ways . That’s why programmers need to tell Smarter Child where to look for the weather . It would be a much more difficult task to let him find it himself .
Another problem is that while Smarter Child can process (处理) information more exactly and faster than any human , he lacks common sense—a basic grounding of knowledge that is obvious to any young child .From the text we can infer that www.intellicast.com is a website .
| A．which is specially designed to help Smarter Child . |
| B．where we people can find Smarter Child |
| C．where weather forecasts are made |
| D．which is about artificial intelligence |
It is probably most difficult for Smarter Child to .
| A．tell us how to spell a difficult word |
| B．tell us show the American government is run |
| C．provide us with a famous poem by Shakespeare |
| D．learn the ability to tell right behaviors from wrong ones . |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the text ?
A．Smart Child has his own memory bank big enough for all kinds of information .
B．A.I. Artificial Intelligence is probably the name of a film about a boy-computer .
C．Smart Child can recognize different files and find information needed on his own .
D．We have similar product now which ahs the knowledge of Einstein , Nixon and Spears.Which of the following is the bet title for the passage ?
| A．A New Web Child | B．Smarter Child |
| C．The Future of Internet | D．Intelligence Development |
Tayka Hotel De Sal
Where: Tahua, Bolivia
How much: About $95 a night
Why it’s cool: You’ve stayed at hotels made of brick or wood, but salt? That’s something few can claim．Tayka Hotel de Sal is made totally of salt—including the beds (though you’ll sleep on regular mattresses (床垫) and blankets)．The hotel sits on the Salar de Uyuni, a prehistoric dried-up lake that’s the world’s biggest salt flat．Builders use the salt from the 4,633-square-mile flat to make the bricks, and glue them together with a paste of wet salt that hardens when it dries．When rain starts to dissolve the hotel, the owners just mix up more salt paste to strengthen the bricks.
Green Magic Nature Resort
Where: Vythiri, India
How much: About $240 a night
Why it’s cool: Ridding a pulley(滑轮)-operated lift 86 feet to your treetop room is just the start of your adventure．As you look out of your open window—there is no glass!—you watch monkeys and birds in the rain forest canopy．Later you might test your fear of heights by crossing the handmade rope bridge to the main part of the hotel, or just sit on your bamboo bed and read．You don’t even have to come down for breakfast—the hotel will send it up on the pulley-drawn “elevator”.
Dog Bark Park Inn B&B
Where: Cottonwood, Idaho
How muc
h: $92 a night
Why it’s cool: This doghouse isn’t just for the family pet．Sweet Willy is a 30-foot-tall dog with guest rooms in his belly．Climb the wooden stairs beside his hind leg to enter the door in his side．You can relax in the main bedroom, go up a ffew steps ot the loft in Willy’s head, o
r hang out inside his nose．Cotta “go”(想要方便一下)? Although you have a full private bathroom in your quarters, there is also a toilet in the 12-foot-tall fire hydrant outside.
Gamirasu Cave Hotel
Where: A
yvali, Turkey
How much: Between $130 and $475 a night.
Why it’s cool: This is caveman cool! Experience what it was like 5,000 years ago, when people lived in these mountain caves formed by volcanic ash．But your stay will be much more modern．Bathrooms and electricity provide what you expect from a modern hotel, and the white volcanic ash, called tufa, keeps the rooms cool, about 65℉in summer．(Don’t worry—there is heat in winter.)Which of the following about Tayka Hotel de Sal is true?
| A．The hotel is the cheapest among the four mentioned. |
| B．Everything in the hotel is made of salt. |
| C．It is on an island in the Pacific Ocean. |
| D．It is located on a prehistoric lake. |
What is the similarity of the four hotels?
| A．Being expensive. | B．Being beautiful. | C．Being natural. | D．Being unique. |
What does the underline part “Sweet Willy” refer to?
A．The building of Dog Bark Park Inn B&B.
B．The name of a pet dog of the hotel owner.
C．The name of the hotel.
D．The name of the hotel owner.Which of the hotel makes you have a feeling of living in the far past
?
| A．Tayka Hotel De Sal | B．Green Magic Nature Resort |
| C．Dog Bark Park Inn B&B | D．Gamirasu Cave Hotel |
What may be the purp
ose of the writer writing th
e passage?
| A．To show his wide knowledge. | B．To introduce some inte resting hotels. |
| C．To develop business in tourism. | D．To attract attention from the readers. |
It is believed that it took about 800 thousand to 1 million years for the earth's population to reach the 250 million total which existed at the end of the first century AD. For some time after that, disease, famine(饥饿) and war kept the population increase down to a rate of 1 percent a year so that more than 15 centuries passed before the population reached 500 million. But in the next 250 years, up to 1850, the population of the world shot to 1 billion and today it has reached 3.5 billion. Scientists say that in the next 35 years the population of the world will double, reaching almost 7 billion by the year 2010.
When experts are asked what are the most effective measures that can stop over population, they reply that at least three measures can be considered.
(A) Increasing sources and supply of food for under-developed countries.
(B) Increasing the industrialization of under- developed countries.
(C) Controlling birth.
The experts add, however, that none of the above measures can be effective by itself, and that all must be combined into one whole program. They also agree that without controlling of births, any other measures are doomed (注定) to failure.The population _______ because of disease, famine and war.
| A．didn't increase | B．became less |
| C．increased slowly | D．still increased very fast |
The population of the world doubled between the year _______.
| A．1850 and today | B．100 and the year 1400 |
| C．100 and the year 1600 | D．1 and the year 100 |
Which of the following is true?
| A．the richer the country is, the faster the population increase. |
| B．Birth control is the most important way to control the growth of population. |
| C．the population in the developed countries is increasing faster than that in the underdeveloped countries. |
| D．It is impossible to control the increase of the population. |
The passage was written in ________.
| A．1850 | B．1936 | C．2001 | D．1975 |
Some English words are made up of the same part and have different beginnings and different endings, such as import, export, report and transport. All these words, you can see, have the same "port", which come from the Latin word, meaning "to carry" or "to move" from one place to another. And according to the bit at the beginning, which we call the prefix the meaning changes. "Import" means "to carry in" or "to bring into a country", "export", "ex" means "out of", so this word means "to carry out of the country", "re" means "back", so the "report" means "to tell somebody, to bring back information to somebody", "transport", "trans" means "across" and it means "to carry across one place to another".
Let's look at the following words: supporter, reporter, importer and exporter. You can see that in this case these words are nouns which are made up of the verbs plus a suffix, thus meaning a person who completes the verb. So supporter means somebody who supports. A reporter is somebody who reports. Importer is somebody who imports and exporter is somebody who exports, and so on. In the first sentence the word "part" means _______.
| A．different beginnings and different endings |
| B．the same part that has several meanings |
| C．the root of the word |
| D．the same root that has different meanings |
By adding a prefix or a suffix to a root, we can get a word which has _______.
| A．the meaning of a Latin word | B．a different meaning |
| C．the meaning of "in" or "out of" | D．a lot of meanings |
We can get a noun _______.
| A．just by adding "er" to verbs | B．by changing a prefix |
| C．only by adding "er" to a root | D．by adding a suffix to a verb |
According to the passage, if we talk about a man of refinement, you may guess that he must be _______.
| A．a man having good manners and education |
| B．a person who should be educated |
| C．somebody having bad manners |
| D．a person punished by somebody else |
The World's Largest Insect
This giant insect can be used as a toy.
A child ties one end of a string to a stick and the other end around the "neck" of an insect. Holding the stick, the child lets the insect go. With a loud whirring sound, the insect takes off, pulling the string in a large curve over the child's head. The child laughs as the stick jumps around. The child is African, and the toy is the African Goliath beetle, the largest insect in the world.
The Goliath is a true insect because it has six legs and a body that is divided into three parts. Like all beetles, it has two pairs of wings. The front pair are thick and stiff and protect the back pair, which are soft. It is these soft back wings that make the beetle fly forward. They also cause the loud whirring sound the beetle makes when it flies. To steer, the beetle twists and turns its legs the same way you steer a bike by turning its front wheel.
African children often use the Goliath beetle as a toy. Although it is over 15 centimeters long, it is quite harmless. The African Goliath beetle is _______.
| A．the world's largest insect |
| B．a toy used in many parts of the world |
| C．the only insect found in Africa |
| D．the world's smallest insect |
What made the whirring sound that the child heard?
| A．The curved string. | B．The beetle's soft wings. |
| C．The beetle's six legs. | D．The beetle's body. |
We know the Goliath beetle is a true insect because it _______.
| A．makes a whirring sound when it flies | B．has both soft and hard wings |
| C．has six legs and a body with three parts | D．can fly |
When flying, the Goliath steers by_______.
| A．turning its soft back wings |
| B．twisting and turning its hard front wings |
| C．twisting and turning its legs |
| D．twisting and turning its whole body |
Here is a question I have often asked at dinner parties:
You're on an island with only one other person, your best friend. He's dying of cancer. In his final days, he tells you, "I have 100,000 dollars in a bank back home. When I die, make sure my son goes to medical school." Then he dies. But his son is a no-good playboy who has no interest in going to medical school and will waste that money away in a very short time. But your son is entering college, and he is willing to become a doctor. Which one do you give the money to for medical school?
I've asked this question of everyone from the president of a famous university to an ordinary young soldier, and it has never failed to get a discussion going. Everyone has an opinion, most of them different, but all of them correct. Sometimes this one topic lasts the whole evening.Which of the following is TRUE to the passage?
| A．Only the clever people can answer the question rightly. |
| B．Some people refuse to answer such a silly question. |
| C．Everyone at the dinner party seems to be interested in the question. |
| D．Most of the people have the same answer. |
What the writer often says at dinner parties is _______.
| A．not a true story | B．a true story |
| C．a strange story | D．just a joke |
Why does the writer often ask people such a question? Because ______.
| A．he wants to find the answer for a research |
| B．he is interested in such a question |
| C．he likes to make fun of people at parties |
| D．he wants to offer people a topic in which everyone could say something |
Which of the following decisions is most likely NOT correct?
| A．You give the money to your friend's son. |
| B．You give the money to your son for medical school. |
| C．You keep the money for your future medical care. |
| D．You keep the money for your friend's son. |