Passage 1

       In 1982, Hugh Herr and a friend set out on a climbing expedition in New Hampshire, but partway through the hike they found themselves in the middle of a fierce blizzard. They soon lost their__21__. in the storm, and ended up wandering through the woods for three days and nights. Exposed to the elements, the climbers became weak and gradually began to lose__ 22.__   in their limbs. 

       Hugh and his friend were eventually rescued and taken to safety, but doctors were unable to __23.__ Hugh’s legs. Hugh had to replace his legs with a pair of prosthetics. It took many __24.__   surgeries before Hugh could even walk on his prosthetic limbs. But still Hugh wanted to climb. So, he constructed a number of prosthetic legs specially __25.__ for climbing. Instead of __26.__  his ability to climb, Hugh’s new legs gave him some advantages over other climbers.
 Hugh had discovered a new passion. He earned his PhD in biophysics and now designs advanced prosthetics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is developing ways to allow the brain to directly __27.__ a prosthesis. If Hugh’s ideas are __28.__ successfully, they could represent a revolution in the field of prosthetics.

 By the time Genghis Khan died in 1227, he had fathered__29.___  children by several wives, but it was his son Ogodei who was chosen to rule his empire as Great Khan. Under Ogodei, who ruled from 1229 to his death in 1241, the __30.__ of the already immense Mongol Empire stretched into Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and China. Ogodei proved that he and his armies were just as __31.__ as those of his father, killing great numbers of enemies without mercy. Ogodei loved food and drink. He built a palace in the Mongol capital which had a(n) __32.__ silver fountain decorated with animals. Instead of water, the fountain poured out wine and other strong drinks. In fact, some believe it was his excessive drinking that killed him.

         King Khufu was the leader, or pharaoh, of Egypt who governed his country from 2589 to 2566 B.C. He ordered the building of the largest structure in the world at that time, the Great Pyramid at Giza. It is almost 150 meters tall and was completed around 2560 B.C. Experts say that it is made up of about 2.3 million stone blocks. No one is absolutely sure, but apparently it took about 23 years to complete. It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that is still standing today. It was also the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years.

        The United States believes that it has the safest food in the world. Maybe so, maybe not. Each year one in four citizens suffers from a food-related illness, and some 5,000 people die from something they ate. From field to kitchen, risks crop up everywhere.

        The chief topics of discussion one midsummer afternoon in a conference room at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are ground beef, eggs, salad, a kind of nut called an almond, and a green plant called cilantro used to flavor dishes. This is not a conversation about the lunch menu, but a review of nationwide occurrences of disease caused by food. At the table are 26 epidemiologists – medical detectives charged with investigating the mysterious links between contaminated foods and the illnesses they trigger.

        The stories are not those you might expect to hear, of people getting sick from drinking raw milk or eating food left too long in the hot sun at a picnic. Instead, they are accounts of people made sick by eating ordinary fruits and vegetables such as oranges and tomatoes, or from consuming carefully-prepared foods such as salads, hamburgers, and chicken dishes. The problem foods were served in kitchens, restaurants and nursing homes, and at churches, temples, family gatherings and child-care centers. They were distributed to many towns, in many states nationwide.

        On the face of it, you would not associate the word 'risk' with eating, an essential part of life. However, in recent years we've been presented with troubling information about a wide variety of the dangerous substances found in our food supply. For example, chemicals used to kill pests remain on our fruits and troubling amounts of poisonous metals appear in our fish. Although skeptics point out that some of them shown were to be false shortly after being announced, most of us of find it hard to be optimistic about the safety of our food supply. A revolution in the way our food is produced and prepared has led to a compromise in food safety (and some say nutrition), where problems could start even before the foods have reached the supermarket. You may think you know enough about safe eating. You may be diligent about buying safe foods and cleaning and cooking them properly. You know which dishes to order in restaurants and which to avoid. But the food safety experts and the epidemiologists at the CDC may not agree with you. They want you to rethink the way you view food and make safe food practices an integral part of your everyday life. People who grew up in the last century may remember how delicious home-baked cookies are. They also probably remember eating cookie dough, that sweet, melting mix of butter, brown sugar, and raw eggs. They probably licked the bowl frequently over the years with no ill effect, the wisdom being that one should avoid only raw eggs with broken shells which might allow poisons in.

        But now food experts agree that even a perfect egg may not be safe. It may contain Salmonella enteritidis which can cause fever and serious stomach problems, even a life-threatening infection. It can get originate from the chicken itself, infecting her eggs before the shells are formed. It is now compulsory that all eggs sold in the U.S. carry a safe-handling label telling people to keep them in the refrigerator, and to cook all foods containing eggs thoroughly before eating them to diminish the risks of falling ill.

       These precautions notwithstanding, a 1994 case involving contaminated ice cream caused one of the largest occurrences of salmonella poisoning ever recorded. Trucks transporting the premix for Schwan's, a widely distributed brand of ice cream, carried traces of raw eggs contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis. The outbreak sickened an estimated 224,000 people in 48 states. Of course this doesn't mean we should stop eating ice cream or other foods we love. They're just a reminder that we should always think about possible risks in the foods we eat and make wise decisions about what we put in our mouths.

         The field of robotics is booming and scientists are developing ever more complex types of robots. But as machines evolve from being mere devices to possessing artificial intelligence, some scientists are calling for laws to help prevent possible human abuse of robots, as well as potential robot abuse of humans. In fact, the government of South Korea considered this issue so vital that it started drawing up a code of ethics to prevent both types of abuse. South Korea's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy announced that this Robot Ethics Charter would cover standards for robotics users and manufacturers, as well as suggestions for ethical standards to be programmed into robots. "The move anticipates the day when robots, particularly intelligent service robots, could become a part of daily life as greater technological advancements are made," the ministry said in a statement. 

        A group of futurists (people who predict future events and conditions) and a science-fiction writer were chosen to work on the charter. They count among their colleagues Gianmarco Veruggio of the School of Robotics in Genoa, Italy, who is recognized as a leading authority on roboethics, or the moral treatment of robots. "Robotics is a new science with manifold applications that can assist humans and solve many, many problems," he said. "However, as in every field of science and technology, sensitive areas open up, and it is the specific responsibility of the scientists who work in this field to face this new array of social and ethical problems."

        South Korea possesses one of the world's most high-tech societies. The country's Ministry of Information and Communication is working on plans to put a robot in every South Korean home by 2020. The new charter aims to gradually establish some basic rules for human interaction with robots in the future. The main focus of the charter appears to be dealing with social problems they foresee, such as human control over robots and humans who might prefer interacting with robots than with humans.

        The forthcoming document will also provide insight into legal issues, such as the protection of data acquired by robots and establishing clear identification and traceability of the machines. Veruggio talks about how technological advances have introduced new models of human-machine relationships that may bring different ethical challenges. "Think of...military applications of robotics, of robots in children's rooms," he said.

        The South Korean charter is not entirely different from science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics. The laws, familiar to many science-fiction readers, were first put forward by Asimov in his 1942 short story "Runaround": robots may not injure humans or, through inaction, allow humans to come to harm； robots must obey human orders unless they conflict with the first law； robots must protect themselves if this does not conflict with the other laws. On the surface, the laws seem to make sense. Nonetheless, robot researchers say that Asimov's laws---and the South Korean charter---belong to the area of science-fiction and are not yet applicable to their field.

        "While I applaud the Korean effort to establish a robot ethics charter, I fear it might be premature to use Asimov's laws as a starter," said Mark Tilden, the designer of RoboSapien, a robot toy. Current robot intelligence is only a fraction of what they are in Asimov's stories, so assuming today's robots have morals remains a fantasy. Hiroshi Ishiguru of Osaka University, who helped create a female android, a human-like robot, agrees: "If we have a more intelligent vehicle, who takes the responsibility when it has an accident? We can ask the same question of a robot. Robots do not have human-level intelligence. It is rather similar to a vehicle today." Perhaps scientists should  focus on finding a way to reproduce human intelligence and bridge the technology gap first, before considering the issue of robot ethics.