Even though she’s just 5 years old, Cindy Smart speaks five languages. She’s a good reader. She can tell time and do simple math, including multiplication (乘法) and division. Cindy looks like an average doll, with long, blond hair, baby – blue eyes, and a button nose.

But loaded with some devices, Cindy is the first doll that can see, think, and do as she’s told. The eagle – eyed Cindy follows in the path of other breakthrough toys like Sony’s barking Robot Aibo, which was the first to popularize voice command in the late 1990s. Cindy takes Aibo’s innovations (創(chuàng)新) one step beyond: she not only follows instructions but also recognizes shapes, colors and words, and remembers. The effect is a doll that appears to be learning.

The toy company which produced Cindy Smart spent a decade trying to see how much human nature it could breathe into an inanimate (無生命的) object. Its engineers began creating minibots that sense light, sounds, and pressure. However, without the sense of sight, their toys seemed to be lacking in one of the abilities that life – forms use to react to their environments.

So how do the engineers make a doll actually see? In Cindy’s case, it’s a multistep process. When presented a text like “I love you” and asked “Can you read this?” Cindy identifies it as one of 70 preprogrammed commands. Then the inbuilt digital camera scans a 15 – degree radius (半徑) in search of number – or letter – shaped objects. Buried in her stomach, Cindy’s 16 – bit microprocessor compares the text with her database of 700 words. If it’s a match, “I love you,” she says.

1.This passage most likely appears in a         .

      A.medical report      B.classified ad         C.science journal        D.music magazine

2.According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE about Robot Aibo?

       A.It could recognize shapes and colors.

       B.It could respond to spoken commands.

       C.It came onto the market no later than 1990.

       D.It was created much later that Cindy Smart.

3.The underlined “it” in the third paragraph most likely refers to          .

       A.the process          B.the object            C.the doll                D.the company

4.According to the passage, how can Cindy “see”?

      A.She recognizes any text as “I love you”.

       B.She is equipped with a camera to search for text.

       C.She is instructed by an engineer standing next to her.

       D.She makes contact with the shapes of the text with her stomach.

5.What can we infer from this passage?

       A.Cindy can learn exactly like a human.

       B.Cindy has much more human nature than Aibo.

       C.Cindy is the first doll that can see, think, and do as she’s told.

       D.Cindy has no ability to react to her environment.

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Still waiting for little green men to make contact? Don't hold your breath.
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【小題2】Dr Smith concludes there probably aren’t any aliens because other planets _____.
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科目:高中英語 來源:2010-2011黑龍江大慶中學(xué)高一下學(xué)期期中英語試卷 題型:閱讀理解

FU Yuan has been left at home with his grandparents since he was one month old. His mom and dad left to work in Fujian Province. For the past eight years, Fu has only seen his parents three times although they send home 500 yuan every two or three months.
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Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE according to the passage?

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It is implied but not directly stated that    
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C.Many left-behind kids love studying and going to school in spite of many hardships
D.The time that the left-behind kids spend on housework is more than that on study
【小題3】
What’s the exact meaning of the underlined word “renounce”in the second paragraph?
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【小題4】
Which of the following is the best title of the passage?
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