SAN FRANCISCO—A phone app(应用程序)in San Francisco gives information about open parking spots.City officials in San Francisco introduced the app to try to reduce traffic jams in the city, but some say it raises safety concerns.

In this city, drivers searching for parking spots lead to 30 percent of all downtown jams, city officials think.Now San Francisco has found a solution — a phone app for spot-seekers that shows information about areas with available spaces.The system, introduced last month, relies on wireless sensors(感应器)fixed in streets and city garages that can tell within seconds if a spot has opened up.

But the system could come with serious consequences.Some people say that drivers searching for parking could end up focusing on their phones, not the road.“It could be really distracting(使分心的),” said Daniel Simons, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois.

City officials admitted the hidden problem.They are urging drivers to pull over before they use the city’s iPhone app, or to do so before they leave home. Nathaniel Ford, executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said safety could actually improve if drivers quickly found a spot instead of circling and getting frustrated.

San Francisco has put sensors into 7,000 parking spots and 12,250 spots in city garages.If spaces in an area open up, the sensors communicate wirelessly with computers that in turn make the information available to app users within a minute, said Mr. Ford, of the transportation agency.On the app, a map shows which blocks have lots of places(blue)and which are full(red).

More than 12,000 people have downloaded San Francisco’s app, which is available now only for the iPhone.

1.What is the phone app mentioned in the text mainly aimed at?

A. Benefiting iPhone users.

B. Preventing traffic accidents.

C. Making the traffic flow smoothly.

D.Making full use of the parking spots.

2.According to the text, San Francisco city officials ________.

A. don’t consider the app distracting.

B. are aware of the app’s disadvantages.

C. advise drivers to park cars slowly.

D. believe more parking spots are needed.

3.The phone app mentioned in the text ________.

A. is a bit slow in reacting

B. hasn’t been put into service

C. was introduced several years ago

D. can’t be downloaded to all phones

4.What’s the main idea of the passage?

A. A phone app has been introduced to relieve the pressure on traffic in the city.

B. Safety concerns are voiced about a phone app aimed at helping drivers find parking spots.

C. Looking for parking spots contributes greatly to downtown traffic jams.

D. Drivers’ attention is distracted in one way or another when they are driving.

Expensive perfumes (香水) come in tiny bottles, but many hide a whale-sized secret.

To perfect a particular smell, perfume-makers often use an ingredient that comes from sperm whales, called ambergris (龙涎香). But using ambergris, which helps a perfume last longer, is strongly opposed by many people who think it is wrong to kill whales just so we can smell sweet. Joerg Bohlmann is neither a perfumer nor a whale expert. He's a plant biologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada. But his discovery of a new plant gene (基因) might push whales out of the perfume business.

The gene comes from fir trees, found throughout North America and commonly used as Christmas trees. The trees produce a chemical that can be used in perfume in place of ambergris-but with a catch. "There's a problem that many people wouldn't consider. In the tree, the chemical is mixed with many others. That makes separation a challenge," Bohlmann says. "lt's like trying to isolate sugar from a biscuit. "

This is where science becomes useful. When Bohlmann learned that fir trees produce the ambergris-like chemical, he decided to use his gene know-how to find the instructions for how to make the ambergris-substitute.

Bohlmann found that gene and took it out of the tree cells. Then he did something that might sound strange to someone who doesn't work in genetics: Bohlmann put the gene from the tree into yeast (酵母) cells.

Yeast may sound familiar because it's used to make things like bread, wine and beer. Biologists like to work with yeast because it easily adopts new genes and changes its features and behaviour. When Bohlmann put the fir tree gene into the yeast, the yeast started making the same chemical that had been produced by the tree.

Perfumers pay big money for ambergris because it is a fixative, which means it holds a smell in place on a person's body.

"Cheap perfumes smell good in the first hour or so and then everything is gone," explains Bohlmann. "But expensive perfumes are much more stable. Their smell lasts much longer, for hours or even a day after you apply them. "

The new chemical, made from the tree genes, can be used as a fixative, too. And using yeast to make it is far cheaper than acquiring ambergris.

Bohlmann admits he never thought he'd get into the perfume business. But now, he says, producers have been calling to find out how to use his technology in new perfumes.

1. It can be inferred from the passage that if a perfume contains ambergris, .

A. its user probably supports whale hunting

B. it is probably very expensive

C. its smell will last for about an hour

D. there will be a whale symbol on the bottle

2.The underlined expression "with a catch" in Paragraph 3 means____.

A. being difficult to hold

B. being too similar

C. having a hidden problem

D. needing further testing

3. According to the passage, why are yeast cells often used in genetic research?

A. They're much cheaper to use than ambergris.

B. They can reproduce much faster than other cells.

C. They share some of the qualities of plant genes.

D. They can take on the characteristics of other genes.

4.What can we learn about Joerg Bohlmann from the passage?

A. He is opposed to whale hunting.

B. He made his discovery during Christmas.

C. He has worked in the perfume industry for many years.

D. He has previously done genetic research.

违法和不良信息举报电话:027-86699610 举报邮箱:58377363@163.com

精英家教网