江苏省苏州市2020届高三上学期英语期初调研考试试卷（含小段音频）

— _____ it work out, I am sure, your products may go all over the world.

—______.

    Clara Daly was seated on an Alaska Airlines flight when a flight attendant asked a(n) 1question over the loudspeaker, "Does anyone on board know American Sign Language?"

    Clara, 15 at the time 2 the call button. The flight attendant came by and 3 the situation. "We have a passenger on the plane who's 4 and deaf." she said. The passenger seemed to want something, but he couldn't 5 his message.

    Clara 6 to have been studying ASL for the past year and knew she'd be able to finger spell into the man's palm. So she 7 her seat belt and walked toward the seat of Tim Cook, then 64.

    8 taking his hand  she 9, "Are you OK?" Cook asked for some water.

    When it arrived, Clara returned to her seat. She came by again a bit later because he wanted to know the time. On her third 10, she stopped and stayed a while.

    "He didn't need anything. He was lonely and wanted to 11." Clara says.

    So for the next hour, that's what they did. She talked about her plans for the future. Cook told Clara12 he had gradually become blind over time and 13 stories of his days as a traveling salesman. Even though he couldn't see her, she "looked 14 at his face with such kindness," a passenger reported, "We can see she smiled with happiness, 15 she made a difference in someone's life."

    "Clara was amazing." a flight attendant told Alaska Airlines in a blog interview. "You could tell Tim was very 16 to have someone he could speak to, and she was such a(n) 17."

    Cook's 18, "Best trip I've ever had."

    Learned a lot. The best thing for 19 is to learn something. Learning is the only thing that never 20.

    TRAIL SAFE! is a unique safety training program designed specifically for National Park Service (NPS) Trail Volunteers, but is useful to everyone! It's based upon NPS Operational Leadership Training, where the human factor of safety is explored. TRAIL SAFE! captures (捕捉) the core learning objectives of the 16-hour Operational Leadership course while allowing volunteers to learn from their own homes online.

    The TRAIL SAFE! series includes eight video lessons, each ranging in length from 18 to 40 minutes long. Watch them over the course of multiple days, or "binge watch" the entire series in three hours—it's up to you—but please watch them in order from Lesson 1 through Lesson 8. After viewing the lessons, send your training verification (验证) emails to register your participation. When you have viewed and registered for all eight individual lessons, each participant will receive a TRAIL SAFE! pin and a SPE/GAR card in the mail for use in the field. Thank you for helping to make Sleeping Bear Dunes one of the safest work environments for NPS Trail Volunteers like yourself.

    Ready to start?

    Click on this link to access all TRAIL SAFE! videos: https://www.nps.gov/iatr/trail-safe.htm

    If you require Audio Descriptive versions of TRAIL SAFE! the link to those videos is also available on the Ice Age Trail site.

    Record your participation

    In order to receive credits for your participation, please fill in your answers to the following questions and email to: Matthew mohrmannps.gov.

    Which video lesson did you just complete viewing?

    Name of the Trail where you volunteer.

    Your name and full mailing address, so we may send your course completion materials to you.

    Names and addresses of others if you are viewing this lesson in a group setting.

    Optional: Please let us know any comments or suggestions you have about this lesson.

    Upon registering your completion for the entire eight lesson series, you'll receive your TRAIL SAFE! pin and risk assessment card via mail.

    In the classic marriage vow (誓约), couples promise to stay together in sickness and in health. But a new study finds that the risk of divorce among older couples rises when the wife－not the husband－becomes seriously ill.

    "Married women diagnosed with a serious health condition may find themselves struggling with the impact of their disease while also experiencing the stress of divorce." said researched Amelia Karraker.

    Karraker and co-author Kenzie Latham analyzed 20 years of data on 2,717 marriages from a study conducted by Indiana University since 1992. At the time of the first interview, at least one of the partners was over the age of 50.

    The researchers examined how the onset (发生) of four serious physical illnesses affected marriages. They found that, overall, 31% of marriages ended in divorce over the period studied. The incidence of new chronic (慢性的) illness onset increased over time as well, with more husbands than wives developing serious health problems.

    "We found that women are doubly weak when their marriage breaks up in the face of illness," Karraker said. "They're more likely to be widowed, and if they're the ones who become ill, they're more likely to get divorced."

    While the study didn't assess why divorce is more likely when wives but not husbands become seriously ill, Karraker offers a few possible reasons. "Gender roles and social expectations about caregiving may make it more difficult for men to provide care to sick spouses." Karraker said. "And because of the imbalance in marriage markets, especially in older ages, divorced men have more choices among potential partners than divorced women."

    Given the increasing concern about health care costs for the aging population, Karraker believes policymakers should be aware of the relationship between disease and risk of divorce.

    "Offering support services to spouses caring for their other halves may reduce martial stress and prevent divorce at older ages." she said. "But it's also important to recognize that the pressure to divorce may be health-related and that sick ex-wives may need additional care and services to prevent worsening health and increased health costs."

    The new social robots, including Jibo, Cozmo, Kuri and Meccano M.A.X., bear some similarities to assistants like Apple's Siri, but these robots come with something more. They are designed to win us over not with their smarts but with their personality. They are sold as companions that do more than talk to us. Time magazine cheered for the robots that "could fundamentally reshape how we interact with machines." But is reshaping how we interact with machines a good thing, especially for children?

    Some researchers in favor of the robots don't see a problem with this. People have relationships with many kinds of things. Some say robots are just another thing with which we can have relationships. To support their argument, roboticists sometimes point to how children deal with toy dolls. Children animate (赋予…生命) dolls and turn them into imaginary friends. Jibo, in a sense, will be one more imaginary friend, and arguably a more intelligent and fun one.

    Getting attached to dolls and sociable machines is different, though. Today's robots tell children that they have emotions, friendships, even dreams to share. In reality, the whole goal of the robots is emotional trickery. For instance, Cozmo the robot needs to be fed, repaired and played with. Boris Sofman, the chief executive of Anki, the company behind Cozmo, says that the idea is to create "a deeper and deeper emotional connection ... And if you neglect him, you feel the pain of that." What is the point of this, exactly? What does it mean to feel the pain of neglecting something that feels no pain at being neglected, or to feel anger at being neglected by something that doesn't even know it is neglecting you?

    This should not be our only concern. It is troubling that these robots try to understand how children feel. Robots, however, have no emotions to share, and they cannot put themselves in our place. No matter what robotic creatures "say", they don't understand our emotional lives. They present themselves as empathy machines, but they are missing the essential equipment. They have not been born, they don't know pain, or death, or fear. Robot thinking may be thinking, but robot feeling is never feeling, and robot love is never love.

    What is also troubling is that children take robots' behavior to indicate feelings. When the robots interact with them, children take this as evidence that the robots like them, and when robots don't work when needed, children also take it personally. Their relationships with the robots affect their self-esteem (自尊). In one study, an 8-year-old boy concluded that the robot stopped talking to him because the robot liked his brothers better.

    For so long, we dreamed of artificial intelligence offering us not only simple help but conversation and care. Now that our dream is becoming real, it is time to deal with the emotional downside of living with robots that "feel".

    The market for products designed specifically for older adults could reach $30 billion by next year, and startups (初创公司) want in on the action. What they sometimes lack is feedback from the people who they hope will use their products. So Brookdale, the country's largest owner of retirement communication, has been inviting a few select entrepreneurs just to move in for a few days, show off their products and hear what the residents have to say.

    That's what brought Dayle Rodriguez, 28, all the way from England to the dining room of Brookdale South Bay in Torrance, California. Rodriguez is the community and marketing manager for a company called Sentab. The startup's product, Sentab TV, enables older adults who may not be comfortable with computers to access email, video chat and social media using just their televisions and a remote control.

    "It's nothing new, it's nothing too complicated and it's natural because lots of people have TV remotes." says Rodriguez.

    But none of that is the topic of conversation in the Brookdale dining room. Instead, Rodriguez solicits residents' advice on what he should get on his cheeseburger and how he should spend the afternoon. Playing cards was on the agenda, as well as learning to play mahjong(麻将).

    Rodriguez says it's important that residents here don't feel like he's selling them something. "I've had more feedback in a passive approach." he says. "Playing pool, playing cards, having dinner, having lunch, all work better than going through a survey of questions. When they get to know me and to trust me, knowing for sure I'm not selling them something—there'll be more honest feedback from them."

    Rodriguez is just the seventh entrepreneur to move into one of Brookdale's 1,100 senior living communities. Other new products in the program have included a kind of full-body blow dryer and specially designed clothing that allows people with disabilities to dress and undress themselves.

    "First and foremost, the residents love it." says Smith. "It also provides Brookdale the opportunity to learn about and experience new technologies quickly and inexpensively and to make sure that we understand what residents want and need."

    Mary Lou Busch, 93, agreed to try the Sentab system. She tells Rodriguez that it might be good for someone, but not for her.

    "I have the computer and FaceTime, which I talk with my family on." she explains. She also has an iPad and a smart phone. "So I do pretty much everything I need to do."

    Rodriguez takes it pretty well.

    "I'm not going to lie to you, I would've liked a more positive response." he says. But "if people don't need it or want it, it's up to us to change, adapt it or make it more useful."

    To be fair, if Rodriguez had wanted feedback from some more technophobic (害怕技术的) seniors, he might have ended up in the wrong Brookdale community. This one is located in the heart of Southern California's aerospace corridor. Many residents have backgrounds in engineering, business and academic circles.

    But Rodriguez says he's still learning something important by moving into this Brookdale community: "People are more tech-skilled than we thought."

    And besides, where else would he learn to play mahjong?

Is Cash Becoming Outdated?

    When he rolls into a gas station to fill his tank, Barkhad Dahir doesn't get out of his car. He pushes a few buttons on his cellphone and within seconds he has paid for the fuel. With the same quick pushes on his phone, he pays for virtually everything he needs: groceries at the supermarket, a few oranges from a market stall, or a cup of sweet milky tea from a café. Mr. Dahir boasts, "Even lying in bed, you can be paying your bills."

    Electronic payments offer consumers convenience, provide revenue for banks, credit card companies and payment processors, and offer merchants improved cash flow and convenience. "I don't even carry money any more," says Adan Abokor, a democracy activist. "I haven't seen cash for a long time. Almost every merchant, even hawker (小贩) on the street, accepts payment by cellphone. There's no waiting for it and no counting of cash."

    The system is impressively simple and secure. Purchases are made by dialing a three-digit number, entering a four-digit PIN, and then entering the retailer's payment number and the amount of money. Both customers and merchants receive text messages to confirm the payment.

    Clearing up cash payments has several advantages as well. The printing and handling of money is expensive. Cash payments can be anonymous and hard to track criminal activities to be conducted in secret. Many governments favor reducing cash dealings in order to better monitor and understand the activities of their citizens. The Swedish government has been discussing the removing of cash since 2010.

    However, some people doubt what members of a cashless society do when the power goes off. Do they choose to barter (物物交换) and rob? Do they sit at home and wait? What happens to people who rely on their cellphones to process money dealings when cell service and the Internet are interrupted? A world affected by terrorism and increasingly violent weather may not yet be ready to abandon currency. "Ironically, the day after the largest bank in Norway, DNB, proposed ending all cash dealings, I went to my local grocery store and when I tried to pay by phone, I was told that I needed to go to the ATM to get cash because the system was broken." said an interviewee.

    Other people fear that electronic payments may create security and fraud risks and enable dealings to be tracked and reported. Privacy, security and convenience are all important factors in the adoption of electronic payment technology. New technologies which balance and address these factors may enable people to remove cash.

    On Sina Weibo, the issue of trash sorting in Shanghai has attracted more than 50,000 posts and 70 million views, but enforcement of the regulation has sparked mixed feelings among the public.

    Some people praised Shanghai for being a role model to solve the trash problem, while others complained about the inconvenience the regulation had brought to their daily lives, and made jokes about sorting their trash.

    One of the most popular jokes goes, "Think about pigs before sorting your trash—things pigs can eat go to kitchen waste, things pigs don't eat are residual waste, things pigs might die from while eating them are risky, and things that can be sold for money to buy a pig belong to recyclables."

    Xiao Guiyu, deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, said, "Although it's a joke, it sums up the principle of trash sorting in a simple way that everyone can understand." As for the complaints about inconvenience, the legislator stressed that the new regulation is a law, and just like traffic regulations, people have to learn to obey it as long as they live in Shanghai.

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