C. the importance of making boys and girls equal D. the varieties of toys for children to choose from
60.The underlined word “opt” in Paragraph 5 is closes in meaning to ___________. A. hesitate B. prefer C. pretend D. refuse
61. Which of the following would Lann Hornscheidt most probably agree with? A. Both men and women should wear pink clothes to show equality. B. Kids and adults will stay equal if they both use the word “hen”. C. Sweden has taken the lead in advocating the real gender equality. D. There are no biological gender differences between men and women. 62. What is the purpose of the passage?
A. To seek a new solution to gender inequality. B. To introduce a new development in gender equality.
C. To stress the significance of Sweden’s gender neutral movement. D. To compare Sweden’s education with that of other European countries. C
By 2050, a completely new type of human evolve as a result of extremely new technology, behavior, and natural selection. This is according to Cadell Last, a researcher at the Global Brain Institute, who claims mankind is undergoing a major “evolutionary transition”.
In less than four decades, Mr. Last claims we will live longer, have children in old age and rely on artificial intelligence to do ordinary and boring tasks. This shift is so significant, he claims, it is comparable to the change from monkeys to apes, and apes to humans. “Your 80 or 100 is going to be so radically different than your grandparents,” Mr. Last says, who believes we will spend much of our time living in virtual reality. Some evolutionary scientists believe this age could be as
high as 120 by 2050.
Mr. Last claims humans will also demonstrate delayed sexual maturation, according to a report by Christina Sterbenz in Business Insider. This refers to something known as life history theory which attempts to explain how natural selection shapes key events in a creature’s life, such as reproduction. It suggests that as brain sizes increase, organisms need more energy and time to reach their full potential, and so reproduce less.
Instead of living fast and dying younger, Mr. Last believes humans will live slow and die old. “Global society at the moment is a complete mess,” he told MailOnline. “But in crisis there is opportunity, and in apocalypse (启示) there can be transformation. So I think the next system humanity creates will be far more sophisticated, fair, and abundant than our current civilization.” “I think our next system will be as different from the modern world, as our contemporary world is from the medieval (中世纪的) world. The biological clock isn't going to be around forever,” he added, and said that people could pause it for some time using future technology.
The change is already happening. Today, the average age at which a woman in Britain has her first baby has been rising steadily stands at 29. 8. In the US, just one percent of first children were born to women over the age of 35 in 1970. By 2012, that figure rose to 15 percent.
“As countries become socio-economically advanced, more and more people, especially women have the option to engage in cultural reproduction,” Mr. Last added. And as well as having more child-free years to enjoy leisure time, he believes artificial intelligence will make up the need for low-skill jobs. We may also spend a large amount of time living in virtual reality. “I’m not quite sure most people have really absorbed the implications of this possibility,” Mr. Last said. His views are detailed in a paper, titled “Human Evolution, Life History Theory, and the End of Biological Reproduction\
63. According to Cadell Last, a completely new type of human will appear because of _____. ① artificial intelligence ② new technology ③ natural selection ④ mundane tasks ⑤ behavior
A. ②③⑤ B. ①②③ C. ③④⑤ D. ①②⑤
64. Which statement is compared by Mr. Last to the change from monkeys to apes, and apes to humans?
A. We have diseases and die young.
B. We give birth to a child when we are young. C. We spend less time in virtual reality.
D. We use intelligent robots to do everyday housework.
[来源学科网Z,X,X,K]65. The underlined words in the third paragraph most probably mean “_____”.
A. Organisms need more energy and time to ripen. B. Natural selection shapes key events. C. Reproduction. D. Reproduce less. 66. In the next system Mr. Last explained we can infer that _____.
A. women are engaged in careers or hobbies instead of giving birth to babies B. women are engaged in playing computer games rather than working C. women are engaged in cultural reproduction in place of men D. women are engaged in living in virtual reality without options D
Six people have kept themselves inside a white dome in Hawaii to have an eight-month test of how their mental health might experience during a mission to Mars.
The NASA-funded project involves three men and three women who have no access to fresh food and limited access to Internet that requires 20-minute intervals between click and response,
as it might be in deep space.
They are allowed to step outside their igloo-like enclosure — which measures 11 meters in diameter and six meters tall — only if wearing a space suit.
“We are surrounded by basaltic lava(玄武岩火山石) and living on the slopes of Mauna Loa where there is little evidence of plant or animal life,” wrote crew member Jocelyn Dunn, a doctor at Purdue University’s School of Industrial Engineering, after her first day in the dome on October 17. “The training wheels are coming off as our new reality is setting in,” Dunn wrote on her blog, http://fivestarview.blogspot.com, which she plans to update throughout the mission. NASA is spending $1.2 million on a series of three such projects known as Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) to determine the potential risks of sending people together to spend long periods on a distant planet.
NASA is aiming for a human mission to Mars by the 2030s, but experts are still not sure if humans can with-stand the radiation that the journey would involve.
It could take eight months to reach the Red Planet, not to mention time spent on it with a thin atmosphere and no known food source, followed by an attempt at returning to Earth.
One recent study found that with the current limits of technology, adventurers to Mars would start dying in 68 days. Another study this week said the risk of radiation-induced cancer would limit any trip to one year.
NASA considers it just as important to study whether people’s mental states could hold up under the pressure of a Mars journey, said principal investigator Kim Binsted.
Both crew psychology and radiation are considered “red risks” for Mars, “which means essentially, until we solve these problems, we are not going,” Binsted told AFP. Binsted is coordinating the experiment from the outside the dome. Those inside are healthy, educated