BMany of the jobs humans would like robots to perform, such as packing items in warehouses, or aiding soldiers on the front lines, aren’t yet possible because robots still don’t recognize and easily handle common objects. People generally have no trouble folding socks or picking up water glasses, because we’ve gone through “a big data collection process” called childhood, says Stefanie Tellex, a computer science professor at Brown University. For robots to do the same types of routine tasks, they also need access to tons of data on how to grasp and manipulate objects. Where does that data come from? Typically, it has come from painstaking programming. But ideally, robots could get some information from each other.That’s the theory behind Tellex’s “Million Object Challenge.” The goal is for research robots around the world to learn how to spot and handle simple items from bowls to bananas, upload their data to the Cloud, and allow other robots to analyze and use the information.Tellex’s lab in Providence, Rhode Island, has the air of a playful preschool. On the day I visit, a Baxter robot, an industrial machine, stands among oversized blocks, scanning a small hairbrush. It moves its right arm noisily back and forth above the object, taking multiple pictures with its camera and measuring depth with a sensor. Then, with its two-pronged gripper, it tries different grasps that might allow it to lift the brush. Once it has the object in the air, it shakes it to make sure the grasp is secure. If so, the robot has learned how to pick up one more thing.Tellex and her team have gathered and are now sharing data on roughly 200 items. Other scientists can contribute their robots’ own data, and Tellex hopes that together they will build up a library of information on how robots should handle a million different items. Eventually, robots facing a crowded shelf will be able to “identify the pen in front of them and pick it up.”Projects like this are possible because many research robots use the same standard framework for programming, known as ROS. Once one machine learns a given task, it can pass the data on to others—and those machines can upload feedback that will in turn refine the instructions given to subsequent machines.Such progress might seem incremental now, but in the next 5 to 10 years, we can expect to see “an explosion in the ability of robots,” says Saxena, now CEO of a startup company called Brain of Things. As more researchers contribute to and refine Cloud-based knowledge, he says, “robots should have access to all the information they need, at their fingertips.”To do some routine tasks, robots need to _____.
A. start with picking up water glasses
B. have a childhood like human beings
C. know how to grasp and manipulate objects
D. understand how to program by themselves
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CGrowing a human being can be huge. The body goes through a massive physical transformation, and the changes don’t end there. A research team led by neuroscientist Elseline Hoekzema performed brain scans on first-time mothers before and after pregnancy and found significant gray matter changes in brain regions related to social cognition and theory of mind.One major change during pregnancy is an enormous increase in sex steroid hormones such as progesterone (孕酮) and estrogen (雌激素). The only other occurrence of such change happens during puberty (adolescence), when these hormones cause dramatic structural and organizational changes in the brains. Teenagers lose gray matter as the unnecessary brain connections are pruned, and their brains are sculpted into their adult form.Very little research has focused on anatomical (解剖的) brain changes during pregnancy, however. Hoekzema and her colleagues performed brain scans on first-time mothers soon after their pregnancy and two years after their childbirth. Men and women who were not trying to have a child as well as first-time fathers were also scanned. The researchers also performed brain scans on the new mothers while they looked at photos of their infants.The scientists, using a standard scale to rate the attachment between mother and infant, found that the new mothers experienced gray matter reductions that lasted for at least two years after birth. Such loss was not seen in new fathers or nonparents. However, it is not necessarily a bad thing. It occurred in brain regions involved in social cognition, which had the strongest response when mothers looked at photos of their infants. These brain changes could also be used to predict how mothers scored on the attachment scale. In fact, these researchers were able to use computers to identify who were new mothers based only on their patterns of gray matter loss.It is unclear why this is happening, but Hoekzema thinks it may be because their brains are becoming more specialized to help them adapt to motherhood and respond to the needs of their babies. Although the present study focuses primarily on documenting brain changes during pregnancy, the study also offers some preliminary evidence to support this idea. Hoekzema expects follow-up work to tackle more applied questions such as how brain changes relate to postpartum depression (产后抑郁).Mel Rutherford, an evolutionary psychologist, is enthusiastic about the study. “The most exciting thing is that they have the longest-term evidence that we’ve seen of changes in the brain after pregnancy.” Rutherford has done a similar research on cognitive changes during pregnancy, only from an evolutionary perspective. “As a parent, you have different priorities and different tasks, and so your brain changes,” he explains.Which of the changes do women go through during pregnancy, according to the passage?
A. Weight gains.
B. Attachment decreases.
C. Estrogen increases.
Depression reduction.
DCultureEskimo art in carved stone did not fully develop until the end of the 20th century, thanks to trade with Italy, Brazil, and the province of Québec, which allowed sculptors to reach steatite, a stone that is easy to carve. Irish music became popular again in the 60s with many changes like the introduction of the Greek bouzouki and the African or Jamaican wood for its famous flutes. There are many such examples, and they can be observed around us every day.The problem is, therefore, not the supposed destruction of local specificities (独特性). Indeed, they have never spread so widely throughout the world, and have never been as improved as they are today because of the openness offered by the varieties of exchanges. The problem for people disliking free market is owing to its variety, the freedom of choice offered to all: Chinese restaurants flourish everywhere around the globe, Irish pubs are filled with the sound of traditional music sessions, and African and Latin dance classes are big successes in many countries. The free market has led to cosmopolitanism (世界主义).With freedom of choice, everyone seeks out what fascinates him, that which matches his values and tastes, and each creates his own identity. You can go to the local festivals, sing in the village choir, and dance to Brazilian music. No one is forced to make a choice.At the same time, citizens seek a local specificity linked to their land and their community of life. This powerful dynamic (动力) of reinforcement of cultural specificity is especially evident in places where patriotism (爱国主义) is really strong like Northern Ireland, Brittany of France, Bayern of Germany, etc.False accusations are made against the free market. They intend to shape the tastes of others to their personal ideas. They blame an economic system based on freedom of choice for creating a world different than their dreams.Strangely, it is because of globalization that people have invested so much in their local culture and have greatly improved it. Do not aim to destroy the exchanges that have created specific cultures. Conservatives should praise the free market, welcome the spread of their culture around the world, and continue to commit to improving it. Similarly, the “progressives” should stop blaming the conservatives for their patriotism; it is also an engine of creativity. Cross-cultural engagement is a core foundation of cultural enrichment, and only freedom offers genuine incentives (激励) for this.The word “they” in the second sentence of Paragraph 2 refers to _____.
A. global cultures
B. local specificities
C. regional problems
D. universal examples
If only I’d taken _____ from my mother, I wouldn’t be in such a difficulty now.
A. heart
B. council
C. account
D. counsel
I finally made _______ with her in Paris.
A. contract
B. conduct
C. contact
D. construct