Stanley thought that ______ was to blame for the cities' collapse in the middle of the eig
This year's crop of 23 entrants were offered an even greater incentive—a $2m prize for the winner. That, plus the intervening 18 months, seems to have done the trick. This time, five vehicles finished the 211 km course. The winner, a modified Volkswagen Touareg dubbed Stanley by its makers, a team from Stanford University, did it in a mere six hours and 54 minutes.
Stanley was, of course, specially hardened by its designers for the rough terrain of the Nevada desert. The clever bit, however, was the vehicle's brain. This was designed and built by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL).
Stanley's brain consists of six top-of-the-range Pentium chips wired collaboratively together. It is programmed with special software that is able to learn from its mistakes. This software mastered the tricks of collision-avoidance in a series of desert test runs conducted before the race started.
Like all brains, Stanley's has a range of sensory inputs to process. A global positioning system (GPS) receiver tells it where on the Earth's surface it is. Television cameras, radar and four laser based distance monitors tell it what its surroundings are like. By comparing its GPS location with its pre-programmed destination (announced only a few hours before the race began), it knew which way it wanted to go. And, by studying its surroundings, it could work out what looked like the safest route that was also in approximately the right direction.
Although Stanley carried off the laurels, the other four finishers did respectably. Sandstorm managed a time just ten minutes behind the winner while her sister vehicle Highlander came in ten minutes after that. GrayBot and TerraMax, the other two course-completers, came in at seven hours 30 minutes and 12 hours 51 minutes, respectively.
So smart, autonomous vehicles can, indeed, find their way across several hundred kilometres of desert. The question is, what next? DARPA's answer, of course, will be to go down the military route. But this sort of technology has obvious civilian applications as well, as Sebastian Thrun, the head of both SAIL and the Stanford racing team, is keen to emphasize.
Dr. Thrun thinks that it could lead to self-driving road vehicles within 30 years and—more immediately—to greatly improved collision-avoidance systems. Whether the freeways of California will prove as easy to navigate as the gulches of Nevada, though, remains to be seen.
The purpose of holding a robot race is to
A.adventure through the Nevada desert.
B.delevop unpiloted vehicles for military use.
C.win a $lm jackpot.
D.keep American troops unharmed.
For a smarter baby, experts say it's not all in the books--emotional development plays a big role in raising intelligent kids. "We really need to change that historic dichotomy of cognition on the one hand, emotions on the other hand, and realize that our emotions are the fuel that gives rise to social behavior. but also to different levels of intelligence," says Dr. Stanley Greenspan, a child development researcher at George Washington University medical school. Genetics also plays a role, but Greenspan says a baby's future is not written in his DNA. "Regardless of the history of IQ tests in the family, if I see nurturing, warm, interactive people who read emotional signals well and interact well, usually I see happy, competent and bright children," Greenspan says.
Besides parent-child interaction, there are other ways to increase baby brain power that have been in the spotlight recently: Breast-feeding is good for a baby--and most experts say they believe it's also good for a baby's developing brain. Those who had been breast-fed for seven to nine months scored higher on IQ tests than those breast-fed for one month or less, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May. Listening to music was once thought to enhance math skills. A 1999 Harvard medical school analysis of more than a dozen studies doesn't support this claim, but music and dancing can be excellent ways to inter act. Other research shows infants can learn basic sign language even before they speak. These infants appear to grow up a little smarter, but some experts say they think the benefit is due to increased parent-child interaction.
Baby reading lessons are growing in popularity. The makers of video, books and flash cards aimed at the very young claim to sometimes have 2-year-olds reading simple children's books by themselves. Some experts support these programs, while others oppose them. "If you do a little bit of looking at books with your children and inspire them to be curious about the pictures and what the word means, but don't get into very structured systematic teaching at too early an age," Greenspan says, "and you also interact emotionally and have fun with pretend play.., then you have the best of both worlds."
Dr. Stanley Greenspan thinks that ______.
A.cognition and emotions are independent of each other in children's development
B.a baby's future is written in his DNA
C.parent-child interaction is important for children's mental development
D.some babies are born smart, while others not
A.Vera Schlakman and Stanley Buder are authors.
B.Vera Schlakman and Stanley Buder are investors.
C.Vera Schlakman and Stanley Buder are social workers.
D.Vera Schlakman and Stanley Buder are factory workers.
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
When executives at Google went looking for Wall Street investment bankers to underwrite the company's massive initial public offering, they laid down strict terms of engagement: bring us new ideas on how to sell the deal to investors and save the usual political gamesmanship. But with such a huge payday at stake—an estimated $100 million in fees for handling the offering—would you expect all the big firms to play by the Google rules? Of course not. Just ask Goldman Sachs.
To win a chunk of the Google business, Goldman, the nation's premier investment bank, set free its CEO, Hank Paulson, to pull some strings. Paulson is one of Wall Street's best "call men", who can wave a Palm PDA full of connections when it's crunch time to bring home a deal. But News week has learned that Paulson tried to sidestep Google's orders by reaching out to one of Google's largest investors, Kleiner Perkins, the powerful venture-capital firm that was an early Google backer. The move helped doom Goldman's efforts to win the lead underwriting spot, which went instead to Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley.
Paulson thought his best shot was John Doerr, one of Kleiner's top partners. Bad move. When word of Paulson's misstep got back to Google's top executives, Goldman was quickly bumped from the top of the short list. "The people at Google were such enthusiasts about the rules," said one executive who works at a rival Wall Street firm. "When they heard about this, they went ape." None of the parties involved—Google, Goldman Sachs or Doerr—would comment.
The two winners, CSFB and Morgan Stanley, managed to keep a low profile. John Mack, CSFB's famously well-connected chief executive, purposely stayed out of the bidding process for fear that he might tip the scales to another player, people with knowledge of the matter say. Meanwhile, new rules for Wall Street research analysts appear to have prevented Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley's top Internet analyst, from playing a direct role, even though she and Doerr have done business together for years.
Goldman, meanwhile, can't blame its loss just on Paulson. People close to the deal say bankers for the firm bragged to Google about the Goldman name, and didn't generate enough ideas about how to sell shares to investors through an auction. "Their lack of marketing wit may have hurt them more than Paulson," said the executive from a rival firm. Sometimes, it really does pay to play by the rules.
What can be inferred from the first paragraph?
A.Google followed the rules of Wall Street.
B.Goldman Sachs disobeyed Google's rules.
C.Goldman Sachs followed Google's rules.
D.Big firms in Wall Street are afraid of Google.
(1) Stanley now weighs twice what he weighed when he turned 18.
(2) Stanley is now twice the age he was when he turned 18.
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