Recently I rolled into a local restaurant to try an Impossible Burger, an all-plant meat-like pie invented by the Silicon Valley company Impossible Foods. It’s famous for having a weirdly chewy, even bloody, meat-like quality, a surprising verisimilitude (逼真) that has made it “perhaps the country’s most famous burger,” as New York magazine recently wrote. One bite into its gorgeous, smoky flavor, and I was convinced.
This is good news, because the time has come to mass-produce fake meat, fast. Why? Because in the fight to ease climate change, meat replacement is one of the lowest-hanging fruits.
Meat production chews up land and lets out methane(沼气) by the kiloton, accounting for about two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. A University of Oxford study recently found that, to keep global warming below 2 degrees this century, we need to be eating 75 percent less beef and 90 percent less pork globally. “Without concentrated change, we really risk going beyond key environmental limits,” Marco Springmann, one of the Oxford researchers, warns me.
Diets are culturally enshrined(神圣的), so changing them will be hard. Fake meat can help camouflage(掩饰) that dramatic transformation with slight adjustment.
Still, even the most exceptional substitutes for meat face a huge challenge if they’re going to replace 75 to 90 percent of beef and pork. The first taste of an Impossible Burger-a moment when low expectations work a powerful magic in the product’s favor-is one thing. But how do you keep meat-eaters asking for more after their sixth, and their 26th?
Fortunately, the science here is playing an important role. Impossible Foods owes much of its appeal to a bioengineering process that turns out big, blood-red tanks of “heme,” a crucial molecule that gives veggie(素食主义者) meat “that slightly metallic bloody flavor,” as David Lipman, chief science officer of Impossible Foods, tells me. Meanwhile, “cultured meat,” created by growing actual animal cells in a basin, is becoming a reality. In New York, the scientists at Ocean Hugger Foods have engineered a process to transform tomatoes into mock tuna. And over in the Netherlands, a company called The Vegetarian Butcher is developing a Nespresso-style device: You pour in a bag of vegetable protein and out pops fake meat. The company aims to release it in two years.
To get to true mass adoption, fake meat will need to compete favorably with the real thing on multiple fronts. Impossible Foods’ goal is to drive the price of its product below that of Safeway’s 80/20 hamburger meat, at which point people will simply vote with their wallets. The new industry also wants to improve on animal flesh in various ways. Fake meat will outcompete traditional meat because “you won’t need to refrigerate it if you’re making it as you go,” co-founder Niko Koffeman says. That’d give unmeat an enormous advantage for energy-poor developing regions. Plus, fake meat could provide more choices. “You could have very soft and tender meat for elderly people,” Koffeman adds. “You could have a custom meat for whatever you need.”
We could speed this dietary shift with smart public policy too. Beginning in 2006, New York City cut the number of adults consuming one or more sugary drinks per day by 35 percent by running appealing public service campaigns and requiring the labeling of their high calorie counts in fast-food restaurants. Imagine similar measures promoting fake meat: “Save the planet, bite by bite.” Save your health too. Speaking of your conscience, industrial-scale animal farming is ethically unpleasant.
You can tell the world is shifting this way, because the ranchers (牧场主) are nervous. Last year, the US Cattlemen’s Association asked the government to define “meat” as a product “obtained directly from animals.” That anxiety, which is no doubt caused by science, goes to show that this grand shift isn’t impossible.
1.The author was convinced by the Impossible Burger because .
A.it looks like a traditional meat burger
B.it contains no meat but tastes like meat
C.its flavor is different from that of normal ones
D.more vegetables are used in the burger
2.What does the author mean by saying “lowest hanging fruits” in paragraph 2?
A.A task that is difficult to fulfill. B.An approach that is economical.
C.A goal that is easy to achieve. D.A product that is environment-friendly.
3.The author is most likely to agree that .
A.fake meat cannot change people’s dietary habits
B.fake meat is worthy of investment for its great potential
C.a decline in meat consumption can relieve global warming
D.fake meat will replace real meat because of its lower price
4.Fake meat has an advantage over traditional meat in that .
A.fake meat will not be necessarily stored in a refrigerator
B.the price of fake meat will be one-fourth of the traditional meat’s
C.fake meat will win over the older people thanks to its quality
D.fake meat has a bloody flavor that is not found in traditional meat
5.What can be inferred from the last paragraph?
A.The US government doesn’t give enough support to ranchers.
B.The world will probably accept the idea of fake meat.
C.People don’t like to eat meat produced by the ranchers now.
D.The definition of meat has been revised because of fake meat.
6.Which is probably the suitable title for the passage?
A.Fake meat or traditional meat, must we choose? B.Traditional meat, an environment killer.
C.Let’s speed up the dietary shift. D.Let’s welcome the fake meat.
高三英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析
You’re walking down a quiet street and suddenly you hear some footsteps. Undoubtedly, it means that there’s someone around. But have you ever wondered why it occurs to us that it’s someone else’s footsteps, not ours?
According to a new study published in the journal Nature in September, this phenomenon arises from a function in our brain to ignore the noise we make ourselves.
In order to explore how our brain does this, a group of scientists carried out an experiment with mice at Duke University. The research entered on an intuition-that we are usually unaware of the sound of our own footsteps-as a vehicle for understanding larger neural phenomena; how this behavior reveals the ability to monitor, recognize, and remember the sound of one’s own movements in relation to those of their larger environments.
In the experiment, research controlled the sounds of a group of mice could hear, reported Science Daily. During the first several days, the mice would hear the same sound each time they took a step. This was just like “running on a tiny piano with each key playing exactly the same note”, senior study author Richard Mooney, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University, told Live Science.
Scientists found that their auditory cortex (听觉皮层) – the area of the brain that processes sound –became active at first but decreased its response to the sound after two or three minutes when the mice became familiar with it.
“ It’s almost like they were wearing special headphones that could filter (过滤) out the sound of their own movements.” David Schneider, an assistant professor at the Center for Neutral Science at New York University, told HuffPost.
But once the sound changed, their auditory cortex became active again. This suggests that the “sensory filter” in a mouse’s brain could help it detect new sounds or abnormal noise in the environment easily after tuning out familiar sounds.
“For mice, this is really important,” said Schneider. “They are prey animals, so they really need to be able to listen for a cat creeping up on them, even when they’re walking and making noise.
Being able to ignore the sounds of one’s own movements is likely important for humans as well. But the ability to predict the sounds of our own actions is also important for more complex human behaviors such as speaking or playing an instrument.
“When we learn to speak or to play music, we predict what sounds we are going to hear – such as when we prepare to strike keys on a piano – and we compare this to what we actually hear, “explains Schneider. “We use mismatches between expectation and experience to change how we play – and we get better over time because our brain is trying to minimize these errors.”
1.What can be discovered about mice in the experiment?
A.Their brain responds inactively to the familiar sounds
B.They are able to detect sounds other animals don’t notice.
C.They cannot identify different sounds except their own footsteps.
D.Different areas of their brain are responsible for different sounds.
2.What’s the function of the sensory filter?
A.Ignoring the sounds made by our companions.
B.Getting used to abnormal or unfamiliar sounds.
C.Identifying the sounds from a larger environment.
D.Being sensitive to the sounds of our own movement.
3.Why can a good symphony conductor immediately recognize it when a wrong note is played?
A.He has the ability to match the wrong note with the instrument player.
B.He has an intuition that he should ignore the sound of his own movement.
C.He has a low expectation and knows where players are likely to make errors.
D.He has a good prediction of how each note should be played in the orchestra.
4.What can be inferred from the passage?
A.Noise-filtering ability ensures us a quiet and undisturbed environment.
B.The ability to ignore familiar noises helps to detect potential dangers.
C.The activeness of auditory cortex determines our activity performance.
D.Sound-predicting ability seems not so important for humans as for animals.
高三英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析
He must have been out of sense when he did that, he?
A.hasn’t B.mustn’t C.didn’t D.wasn’t
高三英语单项填空困难题查看答案及解析
—What did you say you were reluctant to risk just now?
—_________ to high levels of radiation.
A. Being exposed B. Having been exposed
C. To be exposed D. Exposed
高三英语单项填空困难题查看答案及解析
_____ you may have, you should gather your courage to face the challenge.
A.However a serious problem B.What a serious problem
C.However serious a problem D.What serious a problem
高三英语单项填空困难题查看答案及解析
The disappearance of dinosaurs is not necessarily caused by astronomical incidents. But _______ explanations are hard to find.
A.alternative B.aggressive
C.ambiguous D.apparent
高三英语单项填空困难题查看答案及解析
请阅读下面文字,并按照要求用英语写一篇150词左右的文章。
The boom of live-streaming video and e-commerce platforms in China has attracted many social influencers, or Internet celebrities (名人), to advertise certain brands and products. The number of influencers and their fans is increasing. In 2018, sales based on live-streaming marketing amounted to more than 100 billion yuan ($14.3 billion), up by almost 400 percent year on year. Influencer marketing is making itself a force that can't be ignored.
However, a growing number of cases of influencers making fools of themselves while advertising products are shedding light on a pressing issue. While earning huge profits, some influencers are turning a blind eye to the quality of the products they are pitching For example, an online celebrity, who once sold 15,000 lipsticks within five minutes and was dubbed ''the king of lipsticks'', met his Waterloo in a recent live stream when promoting a non-stick pan. The audience could see that the fried egg was firmly sticking to the pan. This and other incidents of Internet celebrity marketing have sparked heated discussions online and in many media outlets.
Some people believe that in the era of the Internet celebrity and fan economy, influencer marketing is actually not to blame, but there must be a bottom line for what can and cannot be done. Some others view this incident and the sensation it has caused as an opportunity for this business to be standardized.
(写作内容)
1. 用约30词概括上述信息的主要内容;
2. 用约120词发表你的观点,内容包包括:
(1)谈谈你对“网络名人营销”这一现象的看法(至少两点);
(2)如何规范网络名人的营销行为?简要说说你的意见或建议(至少两点)。
(写作要求)
1. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句;
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称;
3. 不必写标题。
(评分标准)
内容完整,语言规范,语篇连贯,词数适当。
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
高三英语读写任务困难题查看答案及解析
My younger daughter, age 5, made a failed attempt during a recent school-night bedtime routine. In retaliation (报复) for my insistence that she actually stay in bed, she uttered the classic pint-sized revolutionary cry: ''You're not in charge of me! ''
''I am, actually, '' I replied as I gently guided her back into bed. ''I am in charge of keeping you safe and also helping you thrive (茁壮成长), which means making sure you get a good night's sleep and a whole lot more. ''
I knew what I meant by ''more'' even if she didn't. I made a personal, unwritten covenant (契约) with my daughters, and even society, to do my part to raise two happy, virtuous, inspirational adults. And that requires teaching a good deal of life wisdom, role modeling and, at times, imposing behavior.
We are the boss. We can also be our kids' friend, sometimes. And we are always their teacher and coach. And don't forget lifeguard.
But we're in charge, even if we don't want to be. And it seems a lot of parents don't want to be.
I've noticed that for various reasons (trying to be cool/nice/laid back, maybe laziness, maybe in opposition to being raised with too many rules themselves) , many parents let their children call too many shots. I'm talking about screen time, bedtime, purchases, meal options and all the rest of it.
Letting kids decide these matters usually leads to poor outcomes for the kids themselves. A permissive parenting style leads to impulsive behavior, egocentrism (唯我主义) and poor social skills, according to Diana Baumrind, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Baumrind, one of the leading researchers on this topic, described the ideal parenting style as ''authoritative, '' neither too permissive nor too controlling. An authoritative parent has clear rules and high expectations while being warm and supportive and valuing in dependence. If we can do that for our children, her research showed, they will have greater self-esteem, social skills and academic performance.
The ideal, in other words, is a Buddhist Middle Way where we are in control but foster (培养) independence.
But independence is not the same as giving them what their little id (本我) brains want all the time. Children may seem happy about getting their way, but it's actually an insecure world for them to inhabit where adults don't seem fully in charge.
Young kids' brains are not up to the task of making the best decisions anyway. From age 2 until 7, according to the pioneering child developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, a child naturally engages in egocentrism and ''magical thinking''—believing that they can affect the world with their thoughts—but not critical thinking. From about age 8 to 11, kids tend to actively seek rules, limits and boundaries―but from parents and teachers, not from themselves; they want adults to draw the lines they can safely color in.
Typically, after age 11, critical thinking emerges. Real involvement in rules and limits can effectively begin then, but even teenagers need the assurance that you will always steer them in the right directions.
We also know that real life is full of rules—legal, societal, ethical (moral) or just politeness—and either we teach them or they will eventually be set straight in less-loving environments such as the playground, the principal's office, in front of a judge or in a professional boss’ office.
And being in charge doesn't mean we need to micromanage behavior or be unkind. We should build in plenty of personal freedom and remain motivated by deep love and affection. But we must also be on top it, guiding them toward success.
Be a great boss to your kids. Mentor them. Give them opportunities to develop and shine. Always have their backs. Never fire them. Show them who's boss in the most caring of ways.
1.Many parents let their children call too many shots probably because ________.
A.they are cool and indifferent to their children
B.they want children to live with fewer rules
C.they are busy with meal options and so on
D.they believe it will lead to good outcomes
2.The psychologist Baumrind believes that ________.
A.children are definitely to be ruined by permissive parenting style
B.rules are absolutely prior to anything in authoritative parenting
C.authoritative parents have to let children live independently
D.an ideal way means giving children-controlled independence
3.From age 2 to 11, children usually ________.
A.do not have the ability to make decisions yet
B.have no idea of rules, limits or boundaries at all
C.need parents and teachers to draw lines for them
D.know how to steer themselves in right directions
4.To be a great boss to his/her children, a parent needs to ________.
A.micromanage everything or be unkind sometimes
B.guide children to success on the basis of deep love
C.win as many opportunities as possible to shine
D.let children know ''who is the boss'' in every way
5.What is the author's attitude towards parent's being in charge of children?
A.Supportive. B.Critical.
C.Ambiguous. D.Indifferent.
6.What can we learn from this passage?
A.Ideal parents arc those neither too permissive nor too controlling.
B.Children under age 11 should not be allowed to make decisions.
C.Psychologists show children's self-esteem is from independence.
D.Adults are responsible to teach children all the rules in real life.
高三英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析
Like most robots, social robots use artificial intelligence to decide how to act on information received through cameras and other sensors. The ability to respond in ways that seem lifelike has been informed by research into such issues as how perceptions (知觉) form, what constitutes social and emotional intelligence, and how people can infer others’ thoughts and feelings. Advances in Al have enabled designers to translate such psychological and neuroscientific insights into algorithms that allow robots to recognize voices, feces and emotions; interpret speech and gestures; respond appropriately to complex verbal and nonverbal cues; make eye contact; speak conversationally; and adapt to people’s needs by learning from feedback, rewards and criticisms.
A 47-inch humanoid (类人物) called Pepper (from SoftBank Robotics) recognizes faces and basic human emotions and engages in conversations via a touch screen in its “chest,” About 15,000 Peppers worldwide perform such services as hotel check-ins, airport customer service, shopping assistance and fast-food checkout. Temi (from Temi USA) and Loomo (Segway Robotics) are the next generation of personal assistants—like Amazon Echo and Google Home but mobile, providing a new level of functionality. Loomo, for instance, is not only a companion but can also transform on command into a scooter (小型摩托车) for transport.
Social robots have particular appeal for assisting the world’s growing elderly population. The PARO Therapeutic Robot (developed by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), which looks like a seal, soft and cute, is meant to stimulate and reduce stress for those with Alzheimer’s disease and other patients in care facilities: it responds to its name by moving its head, and it cries for petting. Mabu (Catalia Health) engages patients, particularly the elderly, as a wellness aide, reminding them to take walks and medication and to call family members. Social robots are also gaining popularity with consumers as toys. Early attempts to include social behavior in toys, such as Hasbro’s Baby Alive and Sony’s AIBO robotic dog, had limited success. But both arc resurging (复活), and the most recent version of AIBO has advanced voice and gesture recognition, can be taught tricks and develops new behaviors based on previous interactions.
Worldwide sales of consumer robots reached an estimated $5.6 billion in 2018, and the market is expected to grow to $19 billion by the end of 2025, with more than 65 million robots sold a year. This trend may seem surprising given that multiple well-funded consumer robot companies, such as Jibo and Anki, have failed. But a wave of robots is lining up to take the place of old robots, including BUDDY (Blue Frog Robotics), a big-eyed mobile device that plays games in addition to acting as a personal assistant and providing home automation and security.
1.What does the first paragraph mainly talk about?
A.How social robots receive information.
B.What research has been conducted about social robots.
C.Why social robots can respond in lifelike ways.
D.How designers translate insights into social robots.
2.Examples are used in Paragraph 2 to show that social robots are ________.
A.filling an expanding variety of roles B.getting higher intelligence
C.interacting with people D.learning to respond in lifelike ways
3.According to the passage we know that ________.
A.social robots can have various forms and appearances
B.PARO can interact with people by moving its head like a dog
C.the most recent version of AIBO has achieved as great success as before
D.the sales of consumer robots have been increasing as ever expected
4.What is the best title for the passage?
A.More companies will invest on social robots.
B.Social robots play nicely with human beings.
C.Social robots have great effects on elder people’s life.
D.Artificial intelligence enables social robots to make decisions.
高三英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析
Psycholinguistics is a field at the intersection (交叉) of psychology and linguistics, and one if its recent discoveries is that the languages we speak influence our eye movements. For example, English speakers who hear candle often look at a candy because the two words share their first syllable. Research with speakers of different languages revealed that bilingual speakers not only look at words that share sounds in one language but also at words that share sounds across their two languages. When Russian-English bilinguals hear the English word marker, they also look at a stamp, because the Russian word for stamp is marka.
Even more surprising, speakers of different languages differ in their patterns of eye movements when no language is used at all. In a simple visual search task in which people had to find a previously seen object among other objects, their eyes moved differently depending on what languages they knew. For example, when looking for a clock, English speakers also looked at a cloud. Spanish speakers, on the other hand, when looking for the same clock, looked at a present, because the Spanish names for clock and present—reloj and regalo—overlap at their onset (开始) .
The story doesn't end there. Not only do the words we hear activate other, similar-sounding words—and not only do we look at objects whose names share sounds or letters even when no language is heard—but the translations of those names in other languages become activated as well in speakers of more than one language. For example when Spanish-English bilinguals hear the word duck in English, they also look at a shovel, because the translations of duck and shovel—pato and pala, respectively—overlap in Spanish.
Because of the way our brain organizes and processes linguistic and nonlinguistic information, a single word can set off a domino effect (多米诺效应) that cascades (像洪水般倾泻) throughout the cognitive system. And this interactivity and co-activation is not limited to spoken languages. Bilinguals of spoken and signed languages show co-activation as well. For example, bilinguals who know American Sign Language and English look at cheese when they hear the English word paper because cheese and paper share three of the four sign components in ASL (hand shape, location and orientation but not motion).
What do findings like these tell us? Not only is the language system thoroughly interactive with a high degree of co-activation across words and concepts, but it also impacts our processing in other areas such as vision, attention and cognitive control. As we go about our everyday lives, how our eyes move, what we look at and what we pay attention to are influenced in direct and measurable ways by the languages we speak.
The implications of these findings for applied settings range from consumer behavior (what we look at in a store) to the military (visual search in complex scenes) and art (what our eyes are drawn to). In other words, it is safe to say that the language you speak influences how you see the world not only figuratively (比喻地) but also quite literally, down to the mechanics of your eye movements.
1.What can we learn from Paragraph 3?
A.Languages we know determine our eye movements.
B.The words we hear remind us of similar words.
C.We look at objects even if no language is heard.
D.Translations of words in other languages can be activated.
2.According to Paragraph 4, the ''domino effect'' is caused by ________.
A.American Sign Language B.brain processes
C.oral languages D.co-activation
3.What can we learn from these findings?
A.Words are closely related to concepts in language system.
B.The combination of words and concepts activates language system.
C.The language we speak influences what we pay attention to.
D.What we speak in everyday lives controls how our eyes move.
高三英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析