机器人
机器人

Robots are common in today's world. They manufacture cars, work in space, explore oceans, clean up oil spills (漏油)and investigate dangerous environments. And now, scientists at the University of Manchester are using a robot as a laboratory partner.

The researchers at the university created the robot in 2009 and named it Adam. Despite the name, Adam is not a humanoid robot. It is about the size of a car. Adam was built to do science and make discoveries. Ross King is the leader of the University of Manchester research team. He says the robot made a discovery about yeast, a kind of fungus (真菌)used in science as a model for human cells.

Adam's success as a scientist led to the creation of another robot scientist named Eve. Researchers developed Eve to design and test drugs for tropical and neglected(疏忽) diseases. These diseases kill and infect millions of people each year.

Drug development is slow and costly. Experts say it can take more than 10 years and about $1 billion to discover and develop new medicines. Drug manufacturers are unlikely to get their investment money back.

So the University of Manchester developed a low-cost test that shows whether or not a chemical is likely to be made into an effective medicine. Mr. King says that other drug testing methods were not very effective.

Mr. King says that Eve is different because the robot learns as it tests different compounds(化合物). He says the robot is designed to ignore compounds that it thinks unlikely to be good. It will only test the compounds which have a good chance of working.

Mr. King says he hopes to completely automate the drug testing process with robots like Eve to create and test new chemicals. But he says humans remain in control of the manufacturing process.


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1.Before robot Adam, robots can do the following except ___.

A manufacturing cars

B working in space

C doing experiments

D investigating dangerous environments

解析:选C。C。细节理解题。因为文章第1段中提到选项A、B、D的内容,所以C答案是最新的机器人会做的事就是像科学家一样的做实验。

2.What is Adam’s success?

A Being created in 2009.

B Discovering a kind of fungus.

C Using the laboratory.

D Creating another robot Eve.

解析:选B。B。细节理解题。 根据文章第3段the robot made a discovery about...这里the robot指Adam.可知答案。

3.What will robot Eve not do?

A Kill and infect people.

B Discover new medicines.

C Develop new medicines.

D Design and test drugs.

解析:选A。A。推理判断题。因为科学家设计Eve的目的是让它能‘设计和检测’新的药品,不会让它来残害人类。

4.The usual methods of drug development are ___.

A slow and costly

B effective

C costly but effective

D quick but costly

解析:选A。A。细节理解题。因为通常的药物开发时间慢长,耗资大。所以用机器人Eve就是要解决此问题。

5.Which of the following statements about robot Eve is correct?

A It will completely do the work by itself.

B It will create low-cost medicines.

C It will work but still under human control.

D It will control the process of manufacturing new medicines.

解析:选C。C。推理判断题。因为Eve的自动化强,所以仍将在人类的控制之下工作。