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哈尔滨工业大学

贯穿我们整个历史，我们一直在考察星星，思考人类是否是唯一的高级生命，还是也许在黑暗的夜空某一处，还有其他生命，宇宙中同辈思想家，也和我们一样在思考和在怀疑。这类生命可能不同于我们看待他们自己和宇宙。那里也许会有异乎寻常的生物学、技术和社会。在这人们难以想象的广袤而古老的宇宙苍穹中，我们是有点孤寂，我们思考着我们小而精微的蓝色星球的最终意义，假如有意义的话。探索来自外星的信息就是为人类探索能接受的宇宙渊源背景。从深层意义上说，探索外星的信息就是探索我们自己。随着人们越来越投身于这一严肃的探索事业，一个稍带否定含义但很有趣的音符出现了。最近，有一些科学家提出一个难以解释的问题：如果外星来的信息量很大，那我们为什么没有看出其表现的形式呢？

无比强大的科技很快就将完全改变我们的生活。这可能会产生危险的后果，尤其是因为我们可能不懂背后的基础科学。我们的科技能力和对科学的基本理解之间的差距愈发加大。我们借助于未来科技可以从事非常巧妙的事情，而不必理解基本的科学，这是很危险的。未来的一百年中特别危险的技术是纳米技术、人工智能和生物技术。它们带来的好处不容置疑，但它们潜在的危险很大。在人工智能领域，到2010年比人脑聪明500亿倍的东西原型设计已经出现。电影《终结者》（Terminator）中唯一不可能实现的事是人类获胜。假如你在和比自己聪明得多的技术对抗，你可能不会取胜。我们都听说过灰色粘质（grey goo）问题，能自我复制的纳米技术装置不停地复制，直到世界沦为黏糊糊的质体（sticky goo）。无疑在生物技术方面，我们真的有个大问题，因为它在与纳米技术合流。一旦把纳米技术和有机体相结合，就有了纳米技术制造的细菌，我们能够比《星际迷航》中的博格飞船（the Borg in Star Trek）旅行得更远，但那些超人生物体可能对我们并不太友好。我们所处的世界科学与商业日益结盟。在全球自由贸易体制的环境中，技术正在发展，这种体制认为技术的传播与商业结合实质上是件好事。我们应该做好准备，迎接围绕新兴技术而展开的前所未有的争论。

Modern science has opened up the path for the progress of production techniques and determined the direction of their development. Many new instruments of production and technological processes first see the light of day in the scientific laboratories. A series of newborn industries have been founded on the basis of newly-emerged disciplines of science and technology， of course, there are, and there will be, many theoretical research topics with no practical application in plain sight for the time being. However a host of historical facts have proved that once a major breakthrough is scored in theoretical research, it means tremendous progress for production and technology sooner or later.Contemporary natural sciences are being applied to production on an unprecedented scale and at a higher speed than ever before. This has given all fields of material production an entirely new look. In particular, the development of electronic computers and automation technology is raising the degree of automation in production. With the same amount of manpower and in the same number of work-hours, people can turn out scores or hundreds of times more products than before. How is it that the social productive forces have made such tremendous advances and how is it that labor productivity has increased by such a big margin? Mainly through the power of science, the power of technology. Therefore, we maintain that the development of modern science and technology has linked science and production even closer together. As part of the productive forces, science and technology are coming to play an even greater role than ever before.

Even the automobile industry, which has remained largely unchanged for the last seventy years, is about to feel the effects of the computer revolution.The automobile industry ranks as among the most lucrative and powerful industries of the twentieth century. There are presently 500 million cars on earth, or one car for every ten people. Sales of the automobile industry stand at about a trillion dollars, making it the world’s biggest manufacturing industry.The car, and the roads it travels on, will be revolutionized in the twenty-first century. The key to tomorrow’s “smart cars” will be sensors. “We’ll see vehicles and roads that see and hear and feel and smell and talk and act,” predicts Bill Spreitzer, technical director of General Motors Corporation’s ITS program, which is designing the smart car and road of the future.Approximately 40,000 people are killed each year in the United States in traffic accidents. The number of people that are killed or badly injured in car accidents is so vast that we don’t even bother to mention them in the newspapers anymore. Fully half of these fatalities come from drunk drivers, and many others from carelessness. A smart car could eliminate most of these car accidents. It can sense if a driver is drunk via electronic sensors that can pick up alcohol vapor in the air, and refuse to start up the engine. The car could also alert the police and provide its precise location if it is stolen.

Studies of the Weddell seal in the laboratory have described the physiological mechanisms that allow the seal to cope with the extreme oxygen deprivation that occurs during its longest dives, which can extend 500 meters below the ocean’s surface and last for over 70 minutes. Recent field studies, however, suggest that during more typical dives in the wild, this seal’s physiological behavior is different.In the laboratory, when the seal dives below the surface of the water and stops breathing, its heart beats more slowly, requiring less oxygen, and its arteries become constricted, ensuring that the seal’s blood remains concentrated near those organs most crucial to its ability to navigate underwater. The seal essentially shuts off the flow of blood to other organs, which either stop functioning until the seal surfaces or switch to an anaerobic (oxygen-independent) metabolism. The latter results in the production of large amounts of lactic acid which can adversely affect the pH of the seal’s blood but since the anaerobic metabolism occurs only in those tissues which have been isolated from the seal’s blood supply, the lactic acid is released into the seal’s blood only after the seal surfaces, when the lungs, liver, and other organs quickly clear the acid from the seal’s blood-stream.Recent field studies, however, reveal that on dives in the wild, the seal usually heads directly for its prey and returns to the surface in less than twenty minutes. The absence of high levels of lactic acid in the seal’s blood after such dives suggests that during them, the seal’s organs do not resort to the anaerobic metabolism observed in the laboratory, but are supplied with oxygen from the blood. The seal’s longer excursions underwater, during which it appears to be either exploring distant routes or evading a predator, do evoke the diving response seen in the laboratory. But why do the seal’s laboratory dives always evoke this response, regardless of their length or depth? Some biologists speculate that because in laboratory dives the seal is forcibly submerged, it does not know how long it will remain underwater and so prepares for the worst.36. The passage provides formation to support which of the following generalizations?37. The passage suggests that during laboratory dives, the pH of the Weddell seal’s blood is not adversely affected by the production of lactic acid because ______.38. Which of the following best summarizes the main point of the passage?39. The author cites which of the following as characteristic of the Weddell seal’s physiological behavior during dives observed in the laboratory?I. A decrease in the rate at which the seal’s heart beats.II. A constriction of the seal’s arteries.III. A decrease in the levels of lactic acid in the seal’s blood.IV. A temporary halt in the functioning of certain organs.40. The passage suggests that because Weddell seals are forcibly submerged during laboratory dives, they do which of the following?

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