备战2022年中考英语专题复习——阅读理解（科普环保类）

Computers, smart phones, and other machines are the perfect servants. They always do what they are "told". We usually "tell" them to do things by using a mouse or keyboard. But what if we could just talk to them normally and tell them what to do in our daily life?

This type of technology, known as voice control or voice recognition(声音识别), has been shown in films and TV shows since the 1960s.And real-world voice recognition is used for more everyday tasks. You might be familiar with Siri and Alexa, two examples of voice recognition software made by Apple and Amazon. They can be asked to do many things, from setting alarms and playing music to placing online shopping orders and controlling household appliances (家用电器)

One of the nice things about voice recognition is that it can be used when we're on the go. When you're driving a car or walking down the sidewalk, it can be inconvenient or even dangerous to pick up your smart phone and type away on the keyboard. Voice recognition allows you to focus on (专注于)whatever you're doing at the moment while still doing other tasks. What's more, people with hearing disabilities can also benefit(获益), as speech recognition software can be used to "listen" to spoken words and turn them into text that deaf people can read.

Many people dream of traveling into outer space. However, spending too much time in space may cause health problems, according to NASA. That's why astronauts shouldn't spend more than six months on the International Space Station (ISS) at a time.

Muscle (肌肉) and bone loss

In a weightless environment, astronauts don't need to use their muscles to support themselves. Therefore, their muscles start shrinking (萎缩). To keep their muscles strong, astronauts need to exercise about 2 hours each day on the ISS.

The weightless environment also causes astronauts' bones to lose minerals, with density(密度) dropping at over 1 percent per month. The rate of bone loss for elderly people on Ear this 1 to 1.5 percent per year.

Sleep disorder(混乱)

ln space, the sun rises every 90 minutes. It is hard for astronauts to get used to this light-dark cycle when they sleep. Also, they need to sleep in a sleeping bag that is fixed to a wall, which is uncomfortable.

Astronauts now have individual sleeping pods (分离仓) that help shut out some of the light. Still, studies have found that most astronauts only sleep about six hours each night, even though they should have eight and a half hours.

Brain changes

Scientists have found that the position of the brain changes during spaceflight. It shifts upward within the skull (头骨). This can affect how the brain deals with how we see, stay balanced and move around. That's why some astronauts can't control their movement and balance after returning to Earth. Scientists have also found that astronauts may get used to this change after going on more spaceflights. But they still need to do more research.

"Do you want to have a talk with aliens？What do they look like？Where do they live？…" People are always wondering whether there is intelligent life on other planets. For many years, scientists said "no" or "we don't know". But today this is changing. Seth Shostak and Alexandra Barnett are astronomers(天文学家). They both believe intelligent life exists(存在)somewhere in the universe. They think we will soon contact these beings as well.

Why do Shostak and Barnett think intelligent life exists on other planets？The first reason is time. According to the careful research, scientists believe the universe is about 12 billion years old. "This is long enough for other planets to have intelligent life," say the two astronomers—Shostak and Barnett. The second important reason is size—the universe is huge. "Tools like the Hubble Telescope(哈勃望远镜)have shown us that there are at least 100 billion galaxies, " says Shostak. "And our galaxy, the Milky Way, has at least 100 billion stars. Some planets going around these stars might be similar to Earth. "

In the past, it was hard to look for signs of intelligent life in the universe. But as time goes by, powerful telescopes allow scientists to discover some smaller planets—the size of Mars or Earth in other solar systems. These planets might have intelligent life.

Have beings from space already visited our Earth？"Probably not, " says Shostak. "It's a long way away. However, intelligent beings may contact us in other ways, such as radio signals(信号). In fact, they may be trying to communicate with us now, but we don't have the right tools to receive their messages. However, this is changing. By 2025, we could make contact with other life forms in our universe and we might help each other. "

Food miles How well­traveled is your food?

The Issue

Next time you sit down for dinner, make a list of all the foods on your plate. Make a survey on where those foods have come from. You could be in for a big surprise.

Has your rice come from Thailand? Have your oranges come from America?

"Food miles" is a term(术语)that describes the distance food travels between where it is grown, caught or processed and your dinner table.

Why should we worry about it？It is important because the further food travels, the more fuel(燃料) is needed to carry it and the more greenhouse gases are created.

Research has found that the contents of the average family shopping basket have traveled a surprising 70, 000 kilometers.

Everyone can make a difference. If you care about the future, reduce your food miles and your impact on the environment.

Comments

The negative health influences of plastic on both wildlife and humans have been well-known. However, the material, which is used for everything from shopping bags to drink bottles to food packaging, is hard to avoid. What's worse, the small percentage of recycled plastic is of lower quality and can only be used a few times before it has to be thrown away.

Now, French company Carbios wants to help solve the problem with a plastic-eating enzyme (酶) that digests plastic and turns it into its chemical building blocks. The resulting material can be used to create anything and, more importantly, can be endlessly recycled.

"Traditional method of recycling plastic is limited," explains Carbios CEO Martin Stephan. "And you cannot recycle it infinitely (无限). After six or seven cycles of recycling, the plastic might only be good enough to use for item like clothing or carpets, and eventually, it will have to be discarded entirely. So it's not a solution for the end of life of plastics, while our solution is an infinite recycling solution."

The recycling process, which is currently in its pilot stage, will be tested on a larger scale in France. The company has already signed up several large customers, who are all eager to reduce their ecological (生态) footprint. "Our goal is to bring this technology on the market by 2024 at large industrial scale," said Stephan.

However, Stephan believes we can only win the battle if people make sure that plastic waste doesn't end up in the environment or in landfills. So next time you use a plastic bottle or container, be sure to make the extra effort to place it in a recycling bin.

It should be easy for you to recognize faces of your family and friends. But can you remember faces that you've only seen once? You might think it is very difficult.

However, studies have found a small number of people have amazing face recognisation skills. They are the so-called "super recognisers (识别器)", who can remember at least 80 percent of faces they've seen. It is unknown how many people truly have these skills.

But studies show that at least one in 50 people are super recognisers, reported the Daily Mail. Bournemouth University of UK recently carried out a study, trying to find whether super recognisers have a different way to deal with faces. They found that when these people look at faces, they spend more time looking at the person's nose. Researchers also found that these people are not particularly smarter than others. Their super ability is limited only to face recognisation. Another important finding is that there are subtypes (子类型) of super recognisation. Some super recognisers never forget faces. But for some, if you present pairs of faces to them at the same time, they can quickly decide whether the faces are of the same person or two different people.

In fact, many super recognisers say they are good at "spotting" faces in a crowd. These subtypes of super recognisation could be applied to many areas of life. For example, the skills could be very useful at a passport control checkpoint. Super recognisers could help match faces in CCTV footage. They could also help police spot known troublemakers, bad people or even missing people in crowds.

Most people suffer from "Just-me-ism". What is that? Well, say you leave the tap running while you brush your teeth, leave a light on when you go out or you drop a piece of litter on the ground. You know that all those things are wrong, but so what? You say to yourself. "There are millions of people in the world and I'm just me. How can it matter if I leave one little tap running, one little light on or leave a little piece of litter on the road? And anyway, no one will know."

Of course, it won't matter if there are just a few people in the world. But all the millions of people may follow suit. That will be very harmful to the environment.

To call on young people to take action for the environment. Roots & Shoots(根与芽) was set up in the early 1990s by Dr. Jane Goodall, a scientist who is the world's best-known expert on wild chimpanzees(黑猩猩).

The organization is called Roots & Shoots because roots move slowly under the ground to make a firm foundation(基础), and shoots seem small and weak, but they can break walls to reach the light. The roots and shoots are you, your friends and young people all around the world. Hundreds and thousands of roots and shoots can work together to solve the problems, change the world and make it a better place to live in.

A scientist goes to a forest to study monkeys. He or she wants to study their habits and behavior. But the problem is: how to know who's who?

In the past, scientists had to make marks on each of the animals to distinguish them. But in the future, they may have a much easier way to tell them apart thanks to facial recognition technology.

A research team from China's Northwest University is using facial recognition technology to identify thousands of snub-nosed monkeys (金丝猴) that live on Qinling Mountain in Shaanxi province.

Similar to human facial recognition, the technology that is used to identify monkeys uses their facial features to create a database that includes every monkey, Xinhua reported.

"When the system is fully developed, we can connect it with cameras set up in the mountains. The system will automatically recognize the monkeys, name them and analyze their behavior," said Zhang He, a member of the research team.

"For each snub-nosed monkey, we have 700 to 800 image samples, and the recognition success rate is 94 percent," Zhang added.

Compared with facial recognition technology for humans, facial recognition technology for monkeys is more complicated because monkeys have hairier faces. The color of their hair causes them to blend into their environment. These factors make it harder for computers to do the job.

"Monkeys do not cooperate with researchers in the same way humans do. It is difficult to take high-quality pictures and videos of them, which are needed to improve the system," said Li Baoguo, leader of the research team.

Currently, there are about 4,000 snub-nosed monkeys living on Qinling Mountain. The team's goal is to successfully identify every monkey that lives there.

    According to a report, over 22,000 plastic bottles are thrown away every second, and the number is still growing. Most plastic bottles end up in the oceans. They break into small pieces. Fish and birds often mistake them for food.

Now Robert Bezeau has come up with an idea. It may not solve the world's plastic woes, but will at least make a difference — He plans to use the plastic bottles to build a village in the jungles of Bocas del Toro, Panama.

Robert Bezeau is a Canadian. He has been living in the Central American country for many years. One day, he noticed there was so much plastic waste on the beautiful beaches. During one year and a half, Bezeau and his volunteers collected over a million plastic bottles!

In 2015, he came up with the idea of using the bottles to build homes, and Plastic Bottle Village was born. So far, only one two-story house has been built. But if Bezeau has his way, there will soon be 90 to 120 homes that will make up Plastic Bottle Village. Depending on the size, each home needs between 10,000 to 25,000 bottles.

Interestingly, the bottles are good insulators (绝缘体) and help keep the home at a comfortable temperature. Even better? The homes are also resistant (抵抗的) to an earthquake.

Recycling plastic bottles is good for our environment — So be sure to do your part!