“停课不停学”：2020高考英语时事热点拓展阅读(十六)

2020

年高考英语时事热点拓展阅读

(

十六

)

Passage1

< br>《科学美国人》：中学生作弊被神经网络捕获。

词数

285

建议阅读时间

4

分钟

The

English

-

language

version

of

Wikipedia

has

almost

six

million

articles.

And

if

you're

a

cheating

student, that's six million essays already written for you,

footnotes

and

all

.

Except

plagiarism

isn't

really

an

effective tactic—just plug the text into a search engine

and game over.

But

what

about

having

a

ghostwriter

at

a

paper

mill compose your final essay?

Stephan Lorenzen, a data analyst at the University of Copenhagen. In Denmark, where he's

based, ghostwriting is a growing problem at high schools. So Lorenzen and his colleagues created

a program called Ghostwriter that can detect the cheats.

At its core is a neural network trained and tested on 130,000 real essays from 10,000 Danish

students. After reading through tens of thousands of essays labeled as being written by the same

author or not, the machine taught itself to tune into the characteristics that might tip off cheating.

For

example,

did

a

student's

essays

share

the

same

styles

of

punctuation?

The

same

spelling

mistakes? Were the abbreviations the same?

By scrutinizing inconsistencies like those, Ghostwriter

was able to

pinpoint a cheated essay

nearly

90

percent

of

the

time.

The

team

presented

the

results

at

the

European

Symposium

on

Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning.

And

there's

one

more

aspect

here

that

could

help

students.

Your

high

school

essays

presumably get better over time as you learn to write—and the machine can detect that.

idea is to detect students who are

at risk

because their development in writing style isn't as you'd

expect.

Teachers could thus give extra help to kids who really need it, while

sniffing out

the cheaters

too.

重点讲解：

1. and all

等等；甚至包括；

He dropped his sausage on the pavement and someone's dog ate it, mustard

and all

.

他把香肠丢在人行道上，不知是谁家的狗将香肠甚至连带芥末都吃个了精光。

2. be able to do sth.

可以

…

的，能够

…

< br>的；

It must be better to

be able to

offer them love and

security

.

要是能给予他们关爱和安全感肯定会更好。

3. at risk

处境危险；有风险的；在危险中；

The report underlined his concern that standards were

at risk

.

报告强调了他对道德水准可能会受影响所表示的关注。

4. sniff out

发现；找到；

Journalists are good at

sniffing out

a

scandal

.

Passage2

西尼罗病毒

West Nile is a tropical disease that begins in birds, which pass it on to mosquitoes that then

go on to infect human beings with a bite. Most people who contract West Nile do not experience

any symptoms at all

，

but, if they do, symptoms typically develop between 3 to 14 days after a

mosquito bite. About 1 in 5 persons suffers fever

，

headaches, and body aches, usually lasting a

week

or

so.

A

far

less

lucky

1

in

150

experiences

high

fever

，

tremors,

paralysis,

and

coma.

Some—especially the elderly and those with weak immune systemsdie.

That is what made the major outbreaks of West Nile in the U.S. in the summer of 2012 so

scary. The situation was particularly bad in Dallas, Texas

，

where the West Nile virus killed 10

people

and

sickened

more

than

200.

The

city

declared

a

state

of

emergency

and

began

aerial

spraying

of

a

pesticide

to

kill

the

mosquitoes,

even

though

residents

argued

that

the

pesticide

could be more dangerous than the disease.

Why was the summer of 2012 so hospitable to the West Nile virus and the mosquitoes that

carry

it?

Blame

the

weather.

An

extremely

mild

winter

allowed

more

mosquitoes

than

usual

to

survive, while the unusually high temperatures in that scorching summer further increased their

number

by

speeding

up

their

life

cycle.

The

economic

crisis

may

have

also

played

a

role:

Homeowners who were not able to pay their bank loans were forced to abandon their properties,

sometimes leaving behind swimming pools that made excellent mosquito breeding grounds.

The severity of tropical diseases is also a matter of whether governments are capable

—

and

willing—to defend their populations against infections. Dallas County was not doing some of the

key things to slow the spread of West Nile, such as testing dead birds and setting mosquito traps to

test

for

the

presence of

the disease. Tropical

infections are

thus

as

much

related

to government

inaction as they are to climate.

1. What is this passage mainly about?

A. West Nile and methods to fight it.

B. West Nile and governmental efficiency.

C. West Nile and its relation to tropical diseases.

D. West Nile and the conditions its virus spreads rapidly in.

2. Which of the following statements is true about West Nile?

A. Its symptoms usually appear within two weeks.

B. It is spread through air and water in tropical areas.

C. Over 20% of people who contract it will suffer severe symptoms.

D. It comes from direct human contact with birds infected with the virus.

3. What did Dallas County do to fight off West Nile?