课时作业15 The world of science-（课时作业）【红对勾讲与练】2024版新高考英语大一轮复习全新方案（外研版）

必修第三册　 3 课时作业 15　 The world of science Ⅰ. 阅读理解 " (2023·福建莆田一模) The Curb-cut Effect (路缘坡效应) refers to the fact that supporting small groups of people often ends up helping much larger ranges of society. Curb cuts: Easing the walking In the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of World War Ⅱ soldiers returned home with disabilities. Disappointed by the difficulties they faced, Jack Fisher of Kalamazoo, Michigan, as one of them, asked his city government to build an experimental curb cut—a gentle slope that brings the end of a sidewalk down to meet the level of the street—at the corners of several blocks downtown. A few months later, Fisher reported that even residents without wheelchairs were enjoying the impact of the little slopes. Reading machines: Getting the message In 1976, technologist Ray Kurzweil invented a machine for the blind and visually damaged to change images into text that it then read aloud. Smart speakers with those voices are now in roughly one-quarter of US homes. By detecting street signs and house numbers, it is helping build the maps that self-driving cars use to navigate the world. Closed captions ( 字 幕 ): Following the conversation Sears launched the first TV with a built-in equipment that allowed deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers to read along with their favorite programs in 1980. In the 1990s, text became increasingly common as DVDs and, later, streaming services added the ability to switch the words on at will. A 2006 survey found that only around 20 percent of the people using captio