出自:2023年初级学期期末统一考试英语机考
Do you prefer coffee or tea? The answer to that question might in part be down to your genes, research suggests. Scientists say a genetic predisposition to perceiving the bitterness of particular substances appears to nudge us towards one beverage or the other. The study, published in the Scientific Reports journal, involved two sets of data. The ?rst was a large twin study which showed that, at least in those of European ancestry, particular genetic variants are linked to the strength of perception of different tastes: one speci?c variant was associated with slightly higher ratings of bitterness for caffeine, another to greater bitterness for quinine and a third to greater bitterness for a drug known as propylthiouracil, or prop. The team found people with a greater genetic predisposition to perceiving the bitterness of caffeine drank a little more coffee, but an increased perception of the bitterness of quinine and prop were linked to a small reduction in coffee drinking. “While the effect of perception on your daily coffee intake might be relatively small—only a 0.15 cup per day increase—from a normal caffeine taster to a strong caffeine taster, it actually makes you 20% more likely to become a heavy drinker— drinking more than four cups per day,” said Jue Sheng Ong, ?rst author of the research from QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia. “Our taste genes partially play a role in how much coffee, tea or alcohol we drink,” he said. “The preference towards tea can be seen as a consequence of abstaining from coffee, because our genes might have made coffee a little too bitter for our palates to handle.”
1-1、According to this passage, the answer to the question “Do you prefer coffee or tea? ” might in part be down to your genes.
A、√
B、×
My mother fought breast cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. My children never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.We often speak of “Mommy.s mommy”, and they asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer. My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much as I could. My own process began on Feb. 2 with a procedure known as a “nipple delay”, which rules out disease in the breast ducts behind the nipple and draws extra blood flow to the area. This causes some pain and a lot of bruises, but it increases the chance of saving the nipple. Two weeks later I had the major surgery, where the breast tissue is removed and temporary fillers are put in place. The operation took eight hours. Nine weeks later, the final surgery is completed with the reconstruction of the breasts with an implant. On April 27, I finished the three months of medical procedures that the mastectomies involved. I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don.t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer. The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women. Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.
1-1、Angelina Jolie never have the chance to know her mother and experience how loving and gracious she was.
A、√
B、×
Would a robot serving you coffee in bed make waking up easier on weekday mornings?Could a household robot help an elderly relative who is living alone? How would you like to climb into a robotic car and eat breakfast with the kids while you.re all driven to school and work? These scenarios may sound like science fiction, but experts say they.re a lot closer to becoming reality than you probably think. Brown University roboticist Chad Jenkins expects a near-term robot revolution that will echo the computing revolution of recent decades. And he says it will be driven by enabling robots to learn more like humans do—by watching others demonstrate behaviors and by asking questions. “The robots you.re seeing now mostly are analogous to the mainframe computers of the 1970s,” Jenkins said. “But you.re starting to see things develop. The vacuum cleaners, the drones, those are the initial steps,” he said, referring to iRobot.s Roomba vacuum cleaner, which has autonomously cleaned millions of homes since its 2002 debut. “And these platforms are going to get cheaper while becoming more capable and more compact,” he added. And entrepreneurs like Dmitry Grishin, founder of a major Russian Investment firm dedicated to personal robotics, have taken notice. He says the industry could be worth $18 billion by 2015. But to really transform, roboticists say, robots will have to evolve from machines that can perform only the tasks they.re programmed to do into automatons that can truly learn. That.s because it.s impossible to preprogram a robot for everything it will encounter in the ever-changing real world. “If you look at where robots are successful right now, it.s primarily in applications where the environment is very controlled, like an assembly line where everything is the same, or in the hands of experts with PhDs, where we see them on Mars,” said Chernova. “To really get them to handle the complexities of our real world,” she said, “they are going to have to be customized onsite. It.s not going to happen tomorrow, but it.s very close.” Such a leap could help bring robots into the mainstream.
1-1、According to the passage, a robot in the future can_____ .
A、build houses for homeless people
B、serve you coffee in the bed
C、pick up your children from school
D、give you a massage
Something else could be coming soon to a vehicle near you: more technology, the kind that could help your car talk to others around it.Unlike some proposed cars of the future, it would not actually do the driving for you. But it could warn you about what other drivers are doing. The U.S. government may require this feature in the future, but it would add to the cost of the car. Vehicles of the future could be cars that talk to the driver and each other. The U.S. government wants them on the road soon, pushing for technology that would warn drivers of danger coming from any direction. It.s called vehicle-to-vehicle technology. Cars would send wireless messages to each other within about 300 yards, communicating information like speed, direction and GPS position ten times per second. When cars share this information, they can account for all the vehicles around them, which means they are able to identify possible crashes. The technology sees around corners, over hills and through other vehicles. For example, my car will tell me that there are five cars just ahead of me, and I can slow down beforehand while the vehicle ahead sends my car a message giving me enough time to react. 33,000 Americans are killed and 2.3 million injured in car crashes every year. The Department of Transportation (DoT) predicts, talking cars could prevent up to 80 percent of crashes involving sober drivers. Five major car companies have been working with DoT on developing and testing the technology. 3,000 cars are already using it as part of a government pilot test. Sometime after 2016, the U.S. government hopes your car will be able to communicate with you. While DoT hopes to make this technology the rule by 2016, it will still need the public to weigh in before anything is finalized. Now, as for privacy, the government says that data sent between cars doesn.t record personal information, so your privacy should not be compromised.
1-1、According to the text, the future vehicles can let the drivers see the area behind the car.
A、√
B、×