1、大学英语六级改革适用（阅读）模拟试卷 68及答案与解析 Section B 0 Wireless Charging May Take Place of Wired Charging A)Last month, it was revealed that Toyota had plans to release a plug-in electric Prius in 2016 that needed no plug at all to recharge, thanks to wireless technology from a U.S. company called WiTricity. The n
2、ext day, Intel announced plans to release a completely wire-free personal computer by 2016 no power cord, no monitor cable, nothing. Nine days later, Starbucks announced that it would begin installing Duracell Powermat wireless charging pads in tables and counters in its stores across the United Sta
3、tes. B)For wireless charging technology, the news headlines in June were, well, rather electric.(This is the part where you groan.)Look more closely, though, and youll notice that wireless charging tech is poised to break through in the next few years, dramatically changing our relationship with our
4、 increasingly mobile, but still tethered, electronic devices. Thoratec, a healthcare company, is working with WiTricity on a wireless way to charge heart pumps and other medical equipment. Lockheed Martin, the aerospace and defense giant, is working on a laser-based system to recharge drones in mid-
5、flight. The list goes on. C)The wireless power market is expected to explode from a $216 million in 2013 to $8.5 billion in 2018 globally, according to IHS Technology, a market research firm. Why, then, are most of us still wrestling with a pile of cords at home? “The reality is that the overall wir
6、eless charging market for consumer electronics is in the very early stages,“ says Kamil Grajski, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm and the founding president of the Alliance for Wireless Power, or A4WP for short, one of three groups working on the development of wireless charging technologie
7、s. D)Induction, the technology behind wireless charging, isn t new it s been around for well over a hundred years. Heres how it works: an induction coil creates an electromagnetic field(on a charging dock of some kind)that comes in contact with another induction coil(attached to the device to be cha
8、rged), transferring electricity to it. It s the same process used to juice up your electric toothbrush in its charging stand, Grajski says. E)But induction technology has limitations that have limited its mainstream appeal. It only allows for a single device to be charged per coil, making it clunky
9、and relatively inefficient in todays multi-device world, and it requires precise placement of the device to be charged so that the coils are aligned in order to initiate and sustain the charging process. F)Proponents of inductive technology like Ran Poliakine, chief executive of Powermat, believe th
10、e key to increasing adoption of wireless charging lies not in figuring out the fastest or most efficient connection, but in making the technology available to people where they need it most. “The issue we are trying to address is how we keep consumers charged throughout the day,“ he says. “The barri
11、er to entry was relevancy. Where do we put the charging spots?“ He added: “The place you mostly need this service is outside your home and your office.“ G)He has a point. Placing charging stations in Starbucks locations is one way to do that, saving customers from the inevitable outlet search that c
12、omes with a drawn-out session at the cafe. Placement in airports and hotels, also in the works at Powermat, are two more ways.(One thing people may not know about Powermat s charging stations: when used in conjunction with a cloud-based management system the company provides, a retailer can monitor
13、who is at which station and for how long. Which means Starbucks could either give you the boot for squatting for six hours or beam you a coupon for a free refill to keep you there.) H)Another reason for the technologys slow adoption? A good old-fashioned standards war between industry groups. The Po
14、wer Matters Alliance, or PMA, backs one type of induction standard and counts Duracell, Procter & Gamble, Qualcomm, and WiTricity as members. The Wireless Power Consortium, or WPC, backs an induction standard called Qi(pronounced chee)and counts Hitachi, IKEA and Verizon as members. Some companies,
15、such as Microsoft and Samsung, are members of both groups. I)The two standards use what is essentially the same technology but apply it with different specifications, creating problems for the companies that must embed the technology in their products. According to John Perzow, vice president of mar
16、ket development for WPC, 63 phones on the market today support the Qi standard, including those from Nokia, Google, and Sony. Meanwhile, Google Nexus and LG phones, among others, will have Powermat compatibility built into them. J)To up the ante, Powermat has plans to give away free “charging rings,
17、“ similar to those made by the Finnish firm PowerKiss it acquired last year, to Starbucks customers to encourage them to use in-store chargers.(It plans to sell them at retail for less than $10.)Meanwhile, the PMA struck a deal with A4WP in February to support its Rezence standard, which uses anothe
18、r kind of wireless charging technology called magnetic resonance. K)Both industry groups look to magnetic resonance technology as the likely second-generation standard for wireless charging, thanks to its ability to transfer larger quantities of energy and therefore support larger devices such as ki
19、tchen appliances.(The WPC says it is working on its own version of the tech.)The wireless PC that Intel demonstrated at Computex last month you can see it in a video here uses the Rezence standard. L)Magnetic resonance technology relies on resonant magnetic coupling, which creates a magnetic field a
20、round each coil that transfers power without having to align coils precisely. It can charge a device across small distances(about two inches)rather than requiring near-direct contact a table can be retrofit with a charging pad attached underneath it instead of embedded in its surface. M)Magnetic res
21、onance also allows more than one device to be charged at the same time. The Rezence standard uses the Bluetooth connection already present in many mobile electronics to detect the presence of a compatible charger. The technology is not yet on the market, but Grajski anticipates products using Rezenc
22、e could be seen in stores as soon as this year. “Some of the barriers are just getting the right players in industry to adopt the technology and make it available at a reasonable price,“ he says. N)Still, two inches is two inches. What about beaming power across a room? Thats where WiTricity comes i
23、n. Born out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007, the company continues to develop what Kaynam Hedayat, vice president of product management and marketing, calls “highly resonant wireless power transfer“ technology. O)Imagine an opera singer who can break glass with her voice thats h
24、ow the technology works, Hedayat says. “Objects have a certain frequency by which they start vibrating,“ he says. Tune a receiver and a device to the same frequency and they begin communicating with each other. “The energy is only transferred to devices that are tuned to that frequency,“ he says. Th
25、is allows electricity to transfer over distances of up to four feet. “With that, a lot of possibilities open up,“ he adds. Such as charging vehicles or medical equipment wirelessly. “Wires in hospitals are a big issue because you have to sterilize every device,“ Hedayat says. P)Or use in military ap
26、plications, where robots in the field can be recharged while in position. Wireless charging tech could also help soldiers cut down on the nearly 40 pounds of battery that many soldiers carry on their backs, Hedayat says. And charging sensors on submarines would enable battery charging in deep-sea co
27、nditions, where it s unsafe to run wires. Q)For now, the wireless charging standards war rages on, and the technology remains a novelty at best. But it cant go on forever. Just as Wi-Fi became the standard protocol for wireless data exchange between computers, so shall one wireless charging standard
28、 emerge as the winner. Only then will we see what wireless charging is capable of. “In four or five years, there will be one standard for wirelessly charging devices,“ Hedayat says. “You will forget about different adapters and connecters. You will find a hotspot and it s just going to work.“ 1 The
29、magnetic resonance technology can transfer larger quantities of energy so that support larger devices. 2 The working principle of induction is the same with the principle of the charging stand of electric toothbrush. 3 Wireless charging stations can be set up in Starbucks locations, airports and hot
30、els, and in the works at Powermat. 4 The standards of PMA and WPC adopt the same technology but different specifications. 5 Wireless charging technology can be used in deep-sea conditions because its not safe to run wires in the sea. 6 Making the technology available to people where they need it mos
31、t is the key to increasing adoption of wireless charging. 7 Although our electronic devices are becoming more and more mobile, they will not function without electric wire. 8 Rezence adopts the Bluetooth connection in many mobile electronics to search for a compatible charger. 9 The standards war be
32、tween PMA and WPC is a reason for the induction technologys slow adoption. 10 The induction technology is inconvenient and inefficient for today because per electromagnetic coil can power for only a single device. 10 Design the Prospective Patient Room A)There s very little that s sexy about the hea
33、lth care industry. Within the tangled threads connecting government regulation, opaque insurance policies, and the actual work of patient care itself, theres not a lot of room for glitz or style, and certainly very little time for those working within the health care machine to step back, take inven
34、tory of the larger system, and reflect on what s working, what s not, and what could be better if only someone would stop and think through certain problems. This aspect of health care ensures that virtually nobody in the industry has the time or the inclination to dwell on the role of design. B)Acc
35、ording to a small group of architects and designers, this lack of design-thinking is precisely why the health care industry struggles to deliver on so many levels. Design, after all, isnt just about form. Its about function. “We think that design has the power to revolutionize industries, just as it
36、 has in electronics, in cars, in everything else,“ Salley Whitman says. “But in health care we havent tapped into that in a systematic way.“ C)Whitman is the Executive Director of NXT Health, a non-profit health care design organization that she describes as something like the research and developme
37、nt shop that the health care industry has always lacked. NXT Health got its start back in 2006 via a Department of Defense grant asking the organization to lead a design collaboration in producing the hospital room of the future not a futuristic operating theatre or a suite of new treatment technolo
38、gies, but a patient room that could improve health care outcomes at the individual level. The room itself and the design principles underpinning it have undergone some changes and alterations in the interim, but fundamentally the objective has remained the same: to create better patient care strictl
39、y through better design no game-changing technological breakthroughs or federal legislation required. D)The final product of that effort christened Patient Room 2020 was unveiled this month at the DuPont Corian Design Studio in New York City. On its face the differences between the patient room of t
40、he present and the patient room of the future might appear largely cosmetic. But the NXT Health team and its collaborators more than 30 industry partners kicked in technology, materials, and know-how to produce the prototype insist that Patient Room 2020 not be taken at, well, face value. E)The stre
41、amlining and packaging of disparate technologies for patient and caregiver use might seem like obvious solutions, the redesign of the bathroom, a nice aesthetic touch. But what this really represents, the team says, is a wholesale rethinking of the patient environment, which has remained largely unc
42、hanged for decades. F)“The health care industry itself is really at a crossroads, its really being turned upside down from a clinical perspective,“ says Andrew Quirk, senior vice president for the Health Care Centre of Excellence at the U.S. outpost of global construction firm Skanska(SKBSY), a coll
43、aborator on the Patient Room 2020 project. “So when you turn to the built environment, you cant expect to deliver health care in the future the same way and in the same space as you did in the last few decades.“? G)What drew him to the project, Quirk says, was the idea that for the first time in the
44、 history of modern health care, a team of designers was being seriously challenged to integrate technology and architecture into a seamless environment rather than retrofit a handful of pre-existing health care technologies into a pre-existing space. “Every other time Ive heard, this is the patient
45、room of the future, theres nothing new about it,“ Quirk says. “This project really took a leap of faith in integrating technology and architecture and really incorporating all of the activities that will typically go on in a patient room into the design.“ H)Patient Room 2020 is indeed a highly integ
46、rated orchestration of technologies, materials, and plug-and-play capabilities, encompassing the customary technologies one would expect to find in a hospital room as well as wholly new ones aimed at enhancing patient comfort and care or caregiver efficiency. For instance, the so-called patient ribb
47、on wraps all the way around the bed, from headwall to ceiling to footwall. The headwall contains the necessary machinery for capturing vital signs as well as any oxygen tanks or other hardware that might be necessary. I)The overhead panel contains patient-controlled lighting, while the footwall cont
48、ains a display that can be used for everything from video-consulting with doctors to pulling up hospital information to viewing entertainment(all controlled from the bed via tablet computer). Caregiver tech in the room includes a hand-washing station, built-in RFID tech for tracking instruments, and
49、 simulated UV sanitation of workstations to cut down on the risk of hospital-acquired infection. J)The underlying technologies were provided by more than two dozen companies large and small Osram Sylvania provided some of the lighting, fabrics-maker Milliken customized antibacterial textiles for linens and scrubs, Duracell chipped in charging technology and largely packaged up in DuPont s(DD)Corian, a non-porous surface material selected by the design team for its ease of cleaning and the fact that it is thermoformable, leaving few
