First aid may be defined as the immediate and temporary care given to a victim of an accident or serious illness until the supersedes of a physician can be obtained. First aid commences with the steadying effect upon the stricken person when he realizes that competent hands will help him. The emergency situation often causes confusion in the mind of the victim, things seem unreal and remote, and he often cannot think clearly and rationally for some time. The emotional reaction which results from a serious accident takes time to subside. Therefore, first aid is more than the physical attention dressing his injuries or making him comfortable. It is the general mental effect that the well-selected word of encouragement, the expression of willingness to help, the uplifting effect of the first aider's evident capability can be given. The thoughtful for suggestions made to solve immediate problems, the information given concerning nearby physicians and hospitals, the telephone call to summon medical help or an ambulance or to notify a relative, these too are first aid. The good first aider deals with the whole situation, the person and the injury. He knows what not to do as well as to do. Thus, he avoids the error so commonly made through well meant but misguided efforts. He confines his procedures to what is necessary, keeping the handling of injured parts to a minimum.
Which statement is true about first aid?
A. It usually makes the services of a doctor unnecessary.
B. It is usually done by someone who is not a doctor.
C. It is usually done by a doctor.
D. It is usually done by the victim himself.
Is it possible to persuade mankind to live without war? War is an ancient institution which has existed for at least six thousand years. It was always bad and usually foolish, but in the past the human race managed to hive with it. Modern ingenuity has changed this. Either Man will abolish war, or war will abolish Man. For the present, it is nuclear weapons that cause the most serious danger, but bacteriological or chemical weapons may, before long, offer an even greater threat. If we succeed in abolishing nuclear weapons, our work will not be done. It will never be done until we have succeeded in abolishing war. To do this, we need to persuade mankind to look upon international questions in a new way, not as contests of force, in which the victory goes to side which is most skillful in killing people, but by arbitration in accordance with agreed principles of law. It is not easy to change very old mental habits, but this is what must be attempted.
There are those who say that the adoption of this or that ideology would prevent war. I believe this to be a big error. All ideologies are based upon dogmatic statements which are, at best, doubtful, and at worst, totally false. Their adherents believe in them so fanatically that they are willing to go to war in support of them.
The movement of world opinion during the past few years has been vary largely such as we can welcome. It has become a commonplace that nuclear war must be avoided. Of course very difficult problems remain in the world, but the spirit in which they are being approached is a better one than it was some years ago. It has begun to be thought, even by the powerful men who decide whether we shall live or die, that negotiations should reach agreements even if both sides do not find these agreements wholly satisfactory. It has begun to be understood that the important conflict nowadays is not between different countries, but between Man and the atom bomb.
This passage implies that war is now ______.
A. worse than in the past
B. as bad as in the past
C. not so dangerous as in the past
D. as necessary as in the past
How many lounges are provided on a ship?
A. 6
B. 12
C. 8
D. 10
In the 1950s, the pioneers of artificial intelligence (AI) predicted that, by the end of this century, computers would be conversing with us at work and robots would be performing our housework. But as useful as computers are, they're nowhere close to achieving anything remotely resembling these early aspirations for human like behavior. Never mind something as complex as conversation: the most powerful computers struggle to reliably recognize the shape of an object, the most elementary of tasks for a ten-month-old kid.
A growing group of AI researchers think they know where the field went wrong. The problem, the scientists say, is that Al has been trying to separate the highest, most abstract levels of thought, like language and mathematics, and to duplicate them with logical, step-by-step programs. A new movement in AI, on the other hand, takes a closer look at the more roundabout way in which nature came up with intelligence. Many of these researchers study evolution and natural adaptation instead of formal logic and conventional computer programs. Rather than digital computers and transistors, some want to work with brain cells and proteins. The results of these early efforts are as promising as they are peculiar, and the new nature-based AI movement is slowly but surely moving to the forefront of the field.
Imitating the brain's neural (神经的) network is a huge step in the right direction, says computer scientist and biophysicist Michael Conrad, but it still misses an important aspect of natural intelligence. "People tend to treat the brain as if it were made up of color-coded transistors", he explains, "but it's not simply a clever net work of switches. There are lots of important things going on inside the brain cells themselves." Specifically, Conrad believes that many of the brain's capabilities stem from the pattern recognition proficiency of the individual molecules that make up each brain cell. The best way to build an artificially intelligent device, he claims, would be to build it around the same sort o{ molecular skills.
Right now, the option that conventional computers and software are fundamentally incapable of matching the processes that take place in the brain remains controversial. But if it proves true, then the efforts of Conrad and his fellow AI rebels could turn out to be the only game in town.
The author says that the powerful computers of today ______.
A. are capable of reliably recognizing the shape of an object
B. are close to exhibiting humanlike behavior
C. are not very different in their performance from those of the 50's
D. still cannot communicate with people in a human language