阅读理解
阅读理解
Do you want to live another 100 years or more Some experts say that scientific advances will one day enable humans to last tens of years beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life span. "I think we are knocking at the door of immortality (永生), "said Michael Zey, a Montclair State University business professor and author of two books on the future. "I think by 2075 we will see it and that’s a conservative estimate (保守的估计)."
At the conference in San Francisco, Donald Louria, a professor at New Jersey Medical School in Newark said advances in using genes as well as nanotechnology (纳米技术) make it likely that humans will bye in the future beyond what has been possible in the past. "There is a great push so that people can live from 120 to 180 years," he said. "Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could live to 200 or 300 or 500 years." However, many scientists who specialize in ageing are doubtful about it and say the human body is just not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with healthier lifestyles and less disease, they say failure of the brain and organs will finally lead all humans to death.
Scientists also differ on what kind of life the super aged might live. "It remains to be seen if you pass 120, you know; could you be healthy enough to have good quality of life" said Leonard Pooh, director of the University of Georgia Gerontology. Centre. "At present people who could get to that point are not in good health at all./
A:people can live from 120 to 180 B:it is still doubtful how long humans can live C:the human body is designed to last past about 120 years D:it is possible for humans to live longer in the future
Passage Two
Compared with the robot, the human worker is undoubtedly superior. He is capable of performing a wider variety of work.
Moreover, he is able to adapt his working pattern in order to cope with changing situations which the robot cannot do. On the other hand, the human worker is relatively weak and cannot tolerate work in extreme conditions such as extremely high or low temperatures.
Consequently, we find humans and robots working together in many areas of work. Robots are used to perform dangerous tasks so that their human operators need not risk their lives. To handle harmful radioactive materials, such as uranium (铀), robots in the form of machined arms are used so the human operators can stay from the fatal rays.
Another advantage of the robot is that it never complains about long working hours or that it is boring. It works around the clock and performs equally well in any situation. It needs little servicing and absolutely no holidays. That is why many of them are used to replace human workers for simple and repetitive jobs. The car manufacturers, for example, were amongst the first to use robots to replace workers working on the assembly line. They take over such boring tasks as tightening nuts and screws and spraying paint. Released from these unrewarding tasks, the human worker can be trained for more fulfilling posts, where he can make full use of his ability and get satisfaction from them. The management, on the other hand, will also benefit from these "human pretenders" as they form a new work force which is able to produce more at a lower cost.
Looking to the future, we can expect tomorrow’s robots to be even more "intelligent" than those of today.
A:although robots can do much dangerous and tiring work, humans are superior B:although humans are superior, robots can do much better in many areas of work C:robots will replace humans in more and more fields D:robots are superior to humans because they can do much work that humans can't do
Do you want to live another 100 years or more Some experts say that scientific advances will one day enable humans to last tens of years beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life span. "I think we are knocking at the door of immortality (永生), "said Michael Zey, a Montclair State University business professor and author of two books on the future. "I think by 2075 we will see it and that’s a conservative estimate (保守的估计)."
At the conference in San Francisco, Donald Louria, a professor at New Jersey Medical School in Newark said advances in using genes as well as nanotechnology (纳米技术) make it likely that humans will bye in the future beyond what has been possible in the past. "There is a great push so that people can live from 120 to 180 years," he said. "Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could live to 200 or 300 or 500 years." However, many scientists who specialize in ageing are doubtful about it and say the human body is just not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with healthier lifestyles and less disease, they say failure of the brain and organs will finally lead all humans to death.
Scientists also differ on what kind of life the super aged might live. "It remains to be seen if you pass 120, you know; could you be healthy enough to have good quality of life" said Leonard Pooh, director of the University of Georgia Gerontology. Centre. "At present people who could get to that point are not in good health at all./
Donald Louria’s attitude towards long living is that______.
A:people can live from 120 to 180 B:it is still doubtful how long humans can live C:the human body is designed to last past about 120 years D:it is possible for humans to live longer in the future
Do you want to live another 100 years or more Some experts say that scientific advances will one day enable humans to last tens of years beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life span. "I think we are knocking at the door of immortality (永生), "said Michael Zey, a Montclair State University business professor and author of two books on the future. "I think by 2075 we will see it and that’s a conservative estimate (保守的估计)."
At the conference in San Francisco, Donald Louria, a professor at New Jersey Medical School in Newark said advances in using genes as well as nanotechnology (纳米技术) make it likely that humans will bye in the future beyond what has been possible in the past. "There is a great push so that people can live from 120 to 180 years," he said. "Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could live to 200 or 300 or 500 years." However, many scientists who specialize in ageing are doubtful about it and say the human body is just not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with healthier lifestyles and less disease, they say failure of the brain and organs will finally lead all humans to death.
Scientists also differ on what kind of life the super aged might live. "It remains to be seen if you pass 120, you know; could you be healthy enough to have good quality of life" said Leonard Pooh, director of the University of Georgia Gerontology. Centre. "At present people who could get to that point are not in good health at all."
A:people can live from 120 to 180 B:it is still doubtful how long humans can live C:the human body is designed to last past about 120 years D:it is possible for humans to live longer in the future
第三篇 Archive Gallery: The Best of Bionics （仿生学） Humans might be the most highly-evolved species on the planet, but most animals possess skills we can only dream of having. Imagine how much electricity we could save if we could see in the dark the way cats do. Imagine leaping from tree to tree like a monkey. Giraffes（长颈鹿）, which are otherwise calm and good-natured, sleep only 4.6 hours a day. We realized a long, long time ago that nature provides the best blueprint（蓝图） for invention. We’ve borrowed canals from beavers（河狸） and reflectors from cat’s eyes. Although the words "bionics" became popular only after the 1960s, history shows that nature has always provided ideas on solving everyday problems. Our archives（档案） don’t go back to the time of Leonardo da Vinci and his bird-like flying machines, but we can take you to the late 19th century, where we applied those same principles for building our first practical airplanes. To prepare for their flight at Kitty Hawk, the Wright brothers studied the movements of pigeons to figure out how they stayed high up when they were heavier than air. Their success inspired scores of successors to improve on the airplane by studying various aspects of nature. One of Orville Wright’s pupils caught and stuffed seagulls to examine their wingspan. Meanwhile, two French inventors examined spinning sycamore (梧桐) seeds in an effort to apply those same motions, reversed, to a helicopter. Some examples are more obvious than others. The outside of the airplane designed by the Wright brothers looks like a minimalistic（简单抽象艺术） structure. On the other hand, Barney Connett’s fish submarine（潜水艇） actually looks like a fish. Some bio-inspired concepts have yet to be invented. In the 1960s, the US Army commissioned several university professors to conduct research on the motor skills of animals in hope of applying those same abilities to tanks. Tanks that run like horses or jump like grasshoppers（蚂蚱）- sounds shocking, doesn’t it? But imagine how life would change if we could achieve that. "Cats", "monkeys" and ’giraffes" mentioned in paragraph 1 are examples to illustrate
A:they are highly-evolved species as humans. B:animals have skills that humans do not possess. C:humans can learn animals’ skills. D:they are skillful in different ways.
第一篇Active Gallery: The best of Bionics(仿生学) Humans might be the most highly-evolved species on the planet, but most animals possess skills we can only dream of having. Imagine how much electricity we could save if we could see in the dark the way cats do. Imagine leaping from tree to tree like a monkey. Giraffes(长颈鹿), which are otherwise calm and good-natured, sleep only 4.6 hours a day. We realized a long, long time ago that nature provides the best blueprint(蓝图)for invention. We’ve borrowed canals from beavers(河狸)and reflectors from cat’s eyes. Although the words “bionics” became popular only after the 1960s, history shows that nature has always provided ideas on solving everyday problems. Our archives（档案）don’t go back to the time of Leonardo da Vinci and his bird-like flying machines, but we can take you to the late 19th century, where we applied those same principles for building our first practical airplanes. To prepare for their flight at Kitty Hawk, the Wright brothers studied the movements of pigeons to figure out how they stayed high up when they were heavier than air. Their success inspired scores of successors to improve on the airplane by studying various aspects of nature. One of Orville Wright’s pupils caught and stuffed seagulls to examine their wingspan. Meanwhile, two French inventors examined spinning sycamore(梧桐) seeds in an effort to apply those same motions, reversed, to a helicopter. Some examples are more obvious than others. The outside of the airplane designed by the Wright brothers looks like a minimalistic (简单抽象艺术) structure. On the other hand, Barney Connett’s fish submarine (潜水艇) actually looks like a fish. Some bio-inspired concepts have yet to be invented. In the 1960s, the US Army commissioned several university professors to conduct research on the motor skills animals in hope of applying those same abilities to tanks. Tanks that run like horses or jump like grasshoppers(蚂蚱)-sounds shocking, doesn’t it? But imagine how life would change if we could achieve that. “Cats”, "monkeys" and “giraffes” mentioned in paragraph 1 are examples to illustrate
A:they are highly-evolved species as humans. B:humans can learn animals’ kills. C:they are skillful in different ways. D:animals have skills that humans do not possess.
Eat More, Weigh Less, Live Longer
Clever genetic detective work may have found out the reason why a near-starvation diet prolongs the life of many animals.
Ronald Kahn at Harvard Medical School in Boston, US, and his colleagues have been able to extend the lifespan (寿命) of mice by 18 per cent by blocking the rodent’s (啮齿动物) increase of fat in specific cells. This suggests that thinness—and not necessarily diet—promotes long life in "calorie (热量卡) restricted" animals.
"It’s very coal work," says aging researcher Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California, San Francisco. "These mice eat all they want, lose weight and live longer. It’s like heaven."
Calorie restriction .dramatically extends the lifespan of organisms as different as worms and rodents. Whether this works in humans is still unknown, partly because few people are willing to submit to such a strict diet.
But many researchers hope they will be able to trigger the same effect with a drug once they understand how less .food leads to a longer life. One theory is that eating less reduces the increase of harmful things that can damage cells. But kahn’s team wondered whether the animals simply benefit by becoming thin:
To find out, they used biology tricks to disrupt the insulin (胰岛素) receptor (受体) gene in lab mice—but only in their fat cells. "Since insulin is needed to help fat cells store fat, these animals were protected against becoming fat," explains Kahn.
This slight genetic change in a single tissue had dramatic effects. By three months of age, Kahn’s modified mice had up to 70 per cent less body fat than normal control mice, despite the fact that they ate 55 per cent more food per gram of body weight.
In addition, their lifespan increased. The average control mouse lived 753 days, while the thin rodents averaged a lifespan of 887 days. After three years, all the control mice had died, but one-quarter of the modified rodents were still alive.
"That they get these effects by just manipulating the fat cells is controversial," says Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who studies calorie restriction and aging..
But Guarente says Kahn has yet to prove that the same effect is responsible for increased lifespan in calorie-restricted animals. "It might be the same effect or there might be two routes to long life," he points out, "and that would be very interesting./
A:humans, worms and rodents are different. B:most people are not willing to be put on a strict diet. C:the effect is not known. D:genetic changes in tissues can not be performed on humans.
According to the passage, we do not know whether humans will benefit from taking in fewer calories partly because
A:humans, worms and rodents are different. B:most people are not willing to be put on a strict diet. C:the effect is not known. D:genetic changes in tissues can not be performed on humans.
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