One more reason not to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that,unlike the rises in the 1970s,it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economists commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%,and in 1979 by almost 30%.
1. The main reason for the latest rise of oil price is .
[A]global inflation. [B]reduction in supply.
[C]fast growth in economy. [D]Iraqs suspension of exports.
2. It can be inferred from the text that the retail price of petrol will go up dramatically if .
[A]price of crude rises. [B]commodity prices rise.
[C]consumption rises. [D]oil taxes rise.
3. The estimates in Economic Outlook show that in rich countries .
[A]heavy industry becomes more energy-intensive.
[B]income loss mainly results from fluctuating crude oil prices.
[C]manufacturing industry has been seriously squeezed.
[D]oil price changes have no significant impact on GDP.
4. We can draw a conclusion from the text that .
[A]oil-price shocks are less shocking now.
[B]inflation seems irrelevant to oil-price shocks.
[C]energy conservation can keep down the oil prices.
[D]the price rise of crude leads to the shrinking of heavy industry.
5. From the text we can see that the writer seems .
[A]optimistic. [B]sensitive. [C]gloomy. [D]scared.
参考答案:
1.B 2.D 3.D 4.A 5.A
Since the dawn of human ingenuity,people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous,boring,burdensome,or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in robotics—the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction,they have begun to come close.
As a result,the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robot-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics,there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy—far greater precision than highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone.
But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility,they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves—goals that pose a real challenge."While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error,"says Dave Lavery,manager of a robotics program at NASA, "we can't yet give a robot enough common sense to reliably interact with a dynamic world." Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010,researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries.
