题目内容
Charles Andrews thinks that the best training involves ______.
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Activities in environments that pose great danger to humans, such as locating sunken ships, cleanup of nuclear waste, prospecting for underwater mineral deposits, and active volcano exploration, are ideally suited to robots. Similarly, robots can explore distant planets. NASA's Galileo, an unpiloted space probe, traveled to Jupiter in 1996 and performed tasks such as determining the chemical content of the Jovian atmosphere.
Robots are being used to assist surgeons in installing artificial hips, and very high-precision robots can assist surgeons with delicate operations on the human eye. Research in telesurgery uses robots, under the remote control of expert surgeons that may one day perform. operations in distant battlefields.
Robotic manipulators create manufactured products that are of higher quality and lower cost. But robots can cause the loss of unskilled jobs, particularly on assembly lines in factories. New jobs are created in software and sensor development, in robot installation and maintenance, and in the conversion of old factories and the design of new ones. These new jobs, however, require higher levels of skill and training. Technologi cally oriented societies must face the task of retraining workers who lose jobs to automation, providing them with new skills so that they can be employable in the industries of the 21st century.
Automated machines will increasingly assist humans in the manufacture of new products, the maintenance of the world' s infrastructure, and the care of homes and businesses. Robots will be able to make new highways, construct steel frameworks of buildings, clean underground pipelines, and mow lawns. Prototypes of systems to perform. all of these tasks already exist.
One important trend is the development of micro-electromechanicai systems, ranging in size from centimeters to millimeters. These tiny robots may be used to move through blood vessels to deliver medicine or clean arterial blockages. They also may work inside large machines to diagnose impending mechanical problems.
The author wants to tell us in the Para. 1-3______.
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. At the end of each news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions.
听力原文： The use of mobiles on planes flying in European airspace has been given approval by UK regulator Ofcom. It has issued plans that will allow airlines to offer mobile services on UK-registered aircraft. The decision means that mobiles could be used once a plane has reached an altitude of 3,000m or more. The decision to offer the services now falls to individual airlines. However, there are other regulatory hurdles to overcome before the technology is considered to be fully approved. The European Aviation Safety Agency needs to approve any hardware that would be installed in aircraft to ensure that it did not interfere with other flight systems. In addition, said a spokesman for the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), airlines would need to develop operating procedures to ensure cabin crew were trained in the proper use of the systems. The services could stop working once the aircraft leave European airspace.
What is the main idea of the news item？
Trade unions expressed anger that the announcement by two foreign-owned utilities, London Electricity and Eastern Electricity, came during the period immediately before Christmas. They noted that it arrived on the back of nearly.1,300 other job losses in this sector since early October.
Half of the 160,000 jobs in the electricity sector have gone since, privatization in 19881
More than 2,000 redundancies have also been announced recently by water companies, and more are expected from United Utilities as they, too, seek to meet tougher regulatory targets.
Not everyone in the industry is convinced that the current spate of job cuts in the utility sector is justified.
One leading industry executive, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: "I am very concerned that companies are using the regulators' price cut as an excuse for carrying out general cuts that they have wanted to do for some time. It is causing disquiet among utilities customers."
If regulatory approval is given London Electricity — a unit of Electricite de France — and Eastern Electricity, controlled by American conglomerate Texas Utilities, will form. a joint venture from April 1, 2000, which will run their respective electricity distribution businesses.
The companies will continue to compete on the supply and billing side of their operations but hope the new alliance will be able to win third party business, whether in electricity or other sectors such as gas.
The 800 job losses mean a quarter of the jobs affected by the joint venture will be lost within 18 months, and that the remaining positions will be dependant on the general level of business activity.
The two companies plan to achieve cost savings through fewer workers, having a single information system, smaller number of buildings and buying more in hulk.
Phil Turbeville, chief executive of Texas Utilities' TXS Europe subsidiary, said: "It is the responsible management response to the challenges of the tough price control while delivering further improvements in customer service."
He added that customers would benefit because lower costs meant more money available for new investment, and denied that the decision could have been made at a better time or would have been different if it had not been a foreign-owned group.
"Whether we told staff just before Christmas or just after it would have been the same. There is no good time to make redundancies. As you can see from what Scottish-based utilities have been doing, this is nothing to do with Paris or Texas. It is just prudent management," Mr. Turbeville said.
The phrase "gathered pace" in the first paragraph most probably refers to______.
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文：With me today is Charles Andrews from Wisconsin University. Welcome] Charles.
C: Thank you.
I: Charles, you recently started a large research study on training in small businesses. What made you focus on small businesses？ After all, most of your experience bas been with the huge multinational Cleantex. And in fact you eventually ran their training department, didn't you？
C: Well, you am partly right. You see, when I joined the university a year ago they wanted me to start a training program for small businesses. I'd just sold my own small business, which I'd started when I left Cleantex. The 8 years I ran ray own business taught me more about training than all my years with Cleantex. But I felt I couldn't base a training program on my experience alone. So I decided to do research first.
I: And how much training did you find in most small companies？ Can they afford to do much training？
C: Well, firstly small businesses are often accused of not doing enough training. But that is the opinion of big businesses of course. It's true that the government is encouraging small firms to increase their training bud- gets. They're trying to introduce financial assistance for this. But I have to say I find lots of training going on. The real problem is that most small businesses don't always know how much training they're providing or how much it's actually costing them.
I: But surely businesses have budgets and training records.
C: Unfortunately must small companies don't set aside a specific training budget. It's not that they don't want to spend the money but that they operate differently. You see, things change very quickly in small firms and it's impossible to predict the training needs. An employee can be moved to a new project very suddenly and then training has to be organized within days. And most small businesses prefer to use their experienced staff to do any training on the job.
I: Did you manage to work out the costs of training？
C: Well, it took time to work out the indirect costs. You see, most small business managers don't include these costs in their calculations. Most of them keep records of obvious expenses, like, many expenses like external courses, travel, training manual, and videos, etc. But not many firms have specific training accounts and they don't include the time managers spend on training, waste of materials, loss of productivity and so on. I spent hours with company accountants trying to see where these hidden costs were.
I: How much are small firms spending on training？
C: More than haft of the businesses I surveyed spent at least 1% of their annual salary bill on training. And some of these spent up to 5% of their pay roll. In fact smaller firms are investing on average over 10% more on training per employee than larger firms.
I: How good is that training？
C: As I said, small firms usually get so experienced employee to show new staff how to do that job. This can be useful ff the person is carefully selected and well-trained himself. But it's not really enough. The trainee needs to do the Job with the experienced employee on hand for guidance and feedback. This gets trainees much better skills than any packaged courses.
I: And has your study helped you plan new courses for small businesses？
C: Definitely. I now understand what they want and how they want it delivered. I now know that small firms were only investing in training ff it immediately helped their enterprise. But most formal training focuses on long-term business needs. Most small businesses can't plan far ahead. They want direct results from training in skills t
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