英语高考阅读真题(2022年高考英语全国乙卷)

In 1916, two girls of wealthy families, best friends from Auburn, N. Y. - Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood - traveled to a settlement in the Rocky Mountains to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. The girls had gone to Smith College. They wore expensive clothes. So for them to move to Elkhead, Colo. to instruct the children whose shoes were held together with string was a surprise. Their stay in Elkhead is the subject of Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden, who is a magazine editor and Dorothy Woodruff's granddaughter.

1916年，两个来自纽约州奥本富裕家庭的女孩，好朋友——多萝西·伍德拉夫和罗莎蒙德·安德伍德来到落基山脉的一个定居点，在只有一间教室的校舍里教书。女孩们毕业于史密斯学院，服饰昂贵。因此，对她们来说，搬到科罗拉多州埃尔克黑德教那些用绳子将鞋绑在一起的孩子们让人惊讶。她们在埃尔克黑德的逗留是《无所畏惧：两个社会女孩在西部的意外教育》一书的主题，作者多萝西·威肯登是一名杂志编辑，也是多萝西·伍德拉夫的孙女。

Why did they go then? Well, they wanted to do something useful. Soon, however, they realized what they had undertaken.

她们为什么要去？她们想做些有意义的事。然而，她们很快意识到了要承担的责任。

They moved in with a local family, the Harrisons, and, like them, had little privacy, rare baths, and a blanket of snow on their quilt when they woke up in the morning. Some mornings, Rosamond and Dorothy would arrive at the schoolhouse to find the children weeping from the cold. In spring, the snow was replaced by mud over ice.

她们搬进了当地的哈里森一家，和他们一样，几乎没有隐私，很少洗澡，早上醒来时被子上覆盖着一层雪。有几个早上，罗莎蒙德和多萝西来到学校，发现孩子们因寒冷而哭泣。春天，雪成了混着冰水的泥。

In Wickenden's book, she expanded on the history of the West and also on feminism, which of course influenced the girls' decision to go to Elkhead. A hair-raising section concerns the building of the railroads, which entailed drilling through the Rockies, often in blinding snowstorms. The book ends with Rosamond and Dorothy's return to Auburn.

在威肯登的书中，她提及了西部历史和女权主义，这些影响了女孩们去埃尔克黑德的决定。令人恐惧的一部分涉及到铁路建设，需要在落基山脉钻探，常常是在暴风雪中。这本书以罗莎蒙德和多萝西回到奥本结束。

Wickenden is a very good storyteller. The sweep of the land and the stoicism of the people move her to some beautiful writing. Here is a picture of Dorothy Woodruff, on her horse, looking down from a hill top: "When the sun slipped behind the mountains, it shed a rosy glow all around them. Then a full moon rose. The snow was marked only by small animals: foxes, coyotes, mice, and varying hares, which turned white in the winter."

威肯登很会讲故事，大地的辽阔和人们的坚忍让她写出了一些美丽的作品。这是一张多萝西·伍德拉夫骑着马从山顶往下看的照片：“当太阳下山后，它的周围发出玫瑰色的光芒。然后，满月升起。雪地上只有小动物：狐狸、郊狼、老鼠和各种各样的野兔，冬天一片白色

Can a small group of drones guarantee the safety and reliability of railways and, at the same time, help railway operators save billions of euros each year? That is the very likely future of applying today's "eyes in the sky" technology to making sure that the millions of kilometres of rail tracks and infrastructure worldwide are safe for trains on a 24/7 basis.

一小群无人机可以保证铁路的安全和可靠性，同时帮助铁路运营商每年节省数十亿欧元吗？这就是应用当今“空中之眼”技术确保全世界数百万公里的铁路轨道和基础设施全天候安全的未来。

Drones are already being used to examine high-tension electrical lines. They could do precisely the same thing to inspect railway lines and other vital aspects of rail infrastructure such as the correct position of railway tracks and switching points. The more regularly they can be inspected, the more railway safety, reliability and on-time performance will be improved. Costs would be cut and operations would be more efficient across the board.

无人机已经被用来检查高压电线。它们可以做同样的事情来检查铁路线路和铁路基础设施的其他重要方面，如铁路轨道和变轨点的正确位置。越是定期检查，铁路的安全性、可靠性和准时性就越高。全面削减成本，提高运营效率。

That includes huge savings in maintenance costs and better protection of railway personnel safety. It is calculated that European railways alone spend approximately 20 billion euros a year on maintenance, including sending maintenance staff, often at night, to inspect and repair the rail infrastructure. That can be dangerous work that could be avoided with drones assisting the crews' efforts.

这可以节省大量维护成本，更好地保护铁路人员安全。据计算，仅欧洲铁路维护每年就要花费约200亿欧元，包括派遣维护人员（通常在夜间）检查和维修铁路基础设施。这是件危险的工作，无人机协助工作人员则可以避免。

By using the latest technologies, drones could also start providing higher-value services for railways, detecting faults in the rail or switches, before they can cause any safety problems. To perform these tasks, drones for rail don't need to be flying overhead. Engineers are now working on a new concept: the rail drones of the future. They will be moving on the track ahead of the train, and programmed to run autonomously. Very small drones with advanced sensors and AI and travelling ahead of the train could guide it like a co-pilot. With their ability to see ahead, they could signal any problem, so that fast-moving trains would be able to react in time.

通过使用最新技术，无人机还可以开始为铁路提供更高价值的服务，在铁路或道岔出现任何安全问题之前检测出故障。为了执行这些任务，铁路无人机不需要在头顶飞行。工程师们现在正在研究一个新概念：未来的轨道无人机。它们将在列车前方的轨道上移动，编制好程序自动运行。配备先进传感器和人工智能的微型无人机可以像副驾驶一样引导列车前行。凭借它们的前瞻能力，它们可以发出任何问题的信号，以便快速行驶的列车能够及时做出反应。