DIRECTIONS

Read this story. Then answer questions 1 through 7.

Friends Tom and Yolanda, who is also called Yo, created SwiftBot-1, a basketball-playing robot.

Excerpt from The Robot Olympics

by Victor Appleton

1 - SwiftBot-1 gleamed beneath the LED lights overhead. His silver-metallic body was about my height, roughly five feet ten inches, and mimicked your basic humanoid design: two arms, two legs, one head, and so on. Jointed arms gave him a standing reach of over seven feet. Inside his lightweight, carbon-fiber exterior was an array of integrated circuits, servos, optical sensors, wires, and batteries. His smiling steel face was just for show, except for the pair of glowing infrared sensors that served as his eyes. . . .

2 - “Your ball.” I tossed the bright orange sphere over to SwiftBot-1, which caught it with both hands. This part of my private lab had been converted into a half-court playing area for testing the robot’s hoop skills one-on-one. “Play offense.”

3 - Voice-recognition software let him respond to my verbal command. He dribbled the ball against the floor, keeping it close to his body for better control. Titanium-alloy muscles flexed smoothly as he went into action. Looks good, I thought, nodding in approval. Teaching a robot to dribble hadn’t been easy. My friend Yolanda and I had spent hours trying to get the programming and mechanics right. . . .

4 - SwiftBot charged toward the free-throw lane while I scooted to keep between him and the hoop. Pausing right at the edge of the paint, he went into the classic triple-threat stance: feet spread, knees apart, elbows in. Like a human athlete, SwiftBot could either shoot, pass, or dribble from this posture. Of course, with no one to pass to in this one-on-one match, the robot’s options were reduced to either dribbling or taking a shot. I couldn’t wait to see what he’d do next. . . .

5 - Sure enough, SwiftBot went airborne the next second. Foam rubber springs in the soles of his feet gave him extra lift as he pushed off the floor. Metallic fingers held the ball poised above his head, ready to go. At the very top of his jump, SwiftBot released the ball from his fingers. He was going for it!

6 - I jumped, too, hoping to block his shot, but he had too much altitude on me. For a second, I kicked myself for making his arms so long. Eyes wide, I watched the ball arc over my head, just beyond my fingertips. SwiftBot had calculated its trajectory perfectly. The ball passed right through the hoop without even grazing the rim. . . .

7 - He landed easily back onto the floor, the springs in his feet doubling as shock absorbers. I was stoked to see him stick the landing so well. The first couple of times we’d played against each other, he had lost his balance after every other jump. I winced at the memory of SwiftBot toppling over onto the floor. He still had trouble getting up if he landed flat on his back, but, thanks to a new-and-improved internal gyroscope, he didn’t fall down as much anymore, thank goodness. I was tired of hammering out the dents in his outer casing. . . .

8 - Dribbling the ball against the floor, I darted to the right of the free-throw lane. The sound of the orange leather ball bouncing against the hardwood echoed throughout the lab. Adrenaline rushed through my veins as I rushed toward the low post, keeping my eyes on the hoop. My own sneakers were equipped with sensors, microchips, and a motor and cabling system that allowed the shoes to adjust to my gait on the fly. I felt like I was running on air. . . .

9 - The higher I dribbled, the quicker I could move, so I really let the ball bounce as I sprinted to the left of SwiftBot and took my shot. I put a bit of backspin on the ball as it left my fingers, wishing for the hundredth time that I could engineer a way for SwiftBot to do the same. That was just too subtle a move for the robot’s mechanical fingers to master, however. His tactile¹ sensors weren’t that precise. . . .

10 - But SwiftBot wasn’t beaten yet. My heart leaped as the robot sprang into the air at a forty-five-degree angle. His right arm stretched out above his head, intercepting the spinning ball in midair. Leather smacked against a carbon-fiber palm as SwiftBot batted the ball back at me. . . .

11 - Taking advantage of my human speed, I dashed around SwiftBot, dribbling the ball with my right hand. My plan was to make a close-range shot on the run before the robot could get into position to block me again. I scrambled toward the hoop until I was only about six feet from the basket. Without coming to a halt, I lifted off on my left foot and with my right hand aimed for the upper-right corner of the white targeting box painted on the clear SwiftGlass backboard. My eyes tracked the ball as I dropped toward the floor. Had I made the layup?

12 - Too late to stop my shot, SwiftBot rushed in front of me, hoping to snag the rebound just in case my shot missed. His metal arms shot up to box me out.

13 - It was good strategy, but a wasted effort in this case. The ball hit the backboard right where it was supposed to. With a resounding boom, the ball banked off the SwiftGlass into the net. Swish!

14 - “Game over,” I announced, but SwiftBot’s computerized brain had already calculated the score as well. His arms dropped to his sides and he came to a halt. He knew that my eleven points meant that I had won the match. Fortunately, Yo had programmed him to be a good loser. . . .

15 - SwiftBot stood quietly upon the court. If nothing else, he looked less tired than I felt. Breathing hard, I retrieved the ball and strolled over to the sideline, where I dropped down onto a bench. A bottle of cold water was waiting for me, and I gulped down the liquid eagerly. SwiftBot didn’t have to worry about getting dehydrated, but I did.

¹tactile: anything related to the sense of touch

Directions

Read this article. Then answer the questions.

Reasoning Like a Raven

by Charles C. Hofer

1 - When Aesop first told his famous fable some 2,500 years ago, the crow and its close cousin, the raven, were already well known around the world for their crafty smarts. In one ancient Greek myth, the god Apollo used a raven as a messenger. Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest depicted the crow as a wise trickster. And the Norse god Odin kept two ravens as sneaky spies.

2 - Crows and ravens belong to a family of birds known as corvids, a group that also includes jays, magpies, jackdaws, and rooks. Corvids have gained respect because of their unique intelligence, a type of creative smarts like no other in the animal kingdom. For starters, corvids are known to solve complex problems, use tools to obtain food, play in a social environment, cache food (or hide it for later), and recognize the faces of human friends and enemies.

THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

3 - Ravens, crows, and other corvids need to be intelligent in order to survive. Corvids mostly eat foods other animals leave behind. As scavengers, they help clean ecosystems by consuming what others don’t want.

4 - To be a successful scavenger, one also needs a special kind of brains. A scavenger must first identify a food source and then problem-solve to figure out how to obtain that food—without getting into trouble. A raven can’t just fly into a pack of wolves that’s devouring an elk. The raven has to think, be patient, and wait for an opportunity to sneak in and steal food from the hungry wolves.

5 - The corvids’ unique intelligence has allowed these birds to flourish in our modern world as well. Crows, ravens, and jays have found great success living among humans in cities and towns across the globe. Stealing from picnics, opening trash bins for food, and picking at roadkill are just a few examples of their successful adaptation to modern life.

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

6 - In general, intelligence can be thought of as the application of knowledge. In other words, it means taking what you’ve learned and putting it to use. In this sense, all animals are intelligent to some degree. A creature might know how to find food or how to build a nest for shelter. But what if that food supply disappears? What if there are no more good trees in which to nest? The ability to adapt to a changing environment is what sets corvid intelligence apart from other animals. “Intelligent animals are able to figure out and learn solutions to novel¹ problems,” says Emily Faun Cory, who studies raven behavior and intelligence at the University of Arizona. “Corvids show remarkable learning ability, creativity, and behavioral flexibility, with an ability to take advantage of other species.”

7 - The animal kingdom is full of intelligent animals. Dolphins, monkeys, parrots, and your pet dog are just a few examples. But corvids have a creative intelligence like no other animal. Well, actually, there is one animal with a similar kind of creative intelligence: Homo sapiens.

BIG BRAINS

8 - To understand how corvids and humans think alike, we need to look a little closer at our brains. Animal intelligence largely depends on a rule that scientists call the “brain-to-body ratio.” This rule states that animals with larger brains compared to the rest of their bodies are generally more intelligent.

9 - For example, the human brain is enormous compared to the rest of our body. Our brain weighs up to three pounds (1.4 kilograms) and accounts for nearly 2 percent of our total body weight. Therefore, humans have a very high brain-to-body ratio. Now consider the blue whale, the largest animal on Earth. The blue whale brain can weigh over 16 pounds (7.3 kilograms)! But the blue whale’s brain-to-body ratio is very low. That huge brain accounts for less than 0.01 percent of the whale’s total body weight. That tiny ratio doesn’t make for an especially smart whale.

10 - Like humans, corvids have high brain-to-body ratios. The New Caledonia crow lives on a small group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean and is widely regarded as the smartest of all corvids. Its brain accounts for about 2.4 percent of its body weight. That’s huge! The New Caledonia crow has a brain-to-body ratio similar to that of a small monkey, another animal with high intelligence.

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE

11 - Besides the brain-to-body ratio, human and corvid brains don’t have much else in common. The structure of each brain is very different. However, both brains function in similar ways.

12 - So how did humans and corvids both get so smart? The answer can be found in something called convergent evolution. This is when unrelated animals take different evolutionary routes to reach the same result. Look at insects, birds, and bats. These distinctly different animals are all capable of self-powered flight. However, each took a different evolutionary path to be able to fly.

13 - The same rule of convergent evolution can be applied to the similarities between the human brain and the corvid brain. “Birds and mammals are very different from each other,” says Cory. “The brains are also built very differently. But animals from both groups seem to approach problems in the same manner and remember information in much the same ways.”

14 - Although human and corvid intelligence evolved independently, they have important similarities today. Scientists believe that understanding the corvid brain may actually tell us about the intelligence of alien life forms.

15 - Whether or not we will discover intelligent aliens still remains to be seen. But if our two worlds do meet some day, will we understand one another? Or will we be just two intelligent life forms cawing at each other?

¹novel: never seen before

Directions

Read this story. Then answer the questions.

A Japanese immigrant family arrives in Brazil for the first time.

Excerpt from Brazil-Maru

by Karen Tei Yamashita

1 - It was 1925. São Paulo, Brazil. I stuck my head out the window, straining to see the beginning and the end of the train as it chugged slowly up the side of the mountain. The tepid heat of the port of Santos below rose around us in a soft cloud that silently engulfed my view of the now distant port and the ship and the shimmering ocean beyond. The creeping altitude and the rocking train seemed to lull the minds of the passengers so recently stunned by our first impressions. I had seen it myself from the ship below—the sheer green wall lifting into a mass of shifting clouds, daring us to scale it.

2 - How many other Japanese immigrants had already witnessed this scene? Since 1908, they had arrived at this same port in shipload after shipload until there were thousands of Japanese, the majority laboring on coffee plantations in the state of São Paulo.

3 - I had stumbled down the gangway clutching a bundle entrusted to me. My mother was carrying little Yōzo on her back. Eiji clutched her dress with one hand, and Hiro held on to Eiji. My father lumbered down with our heavy bags. Although I was only nine years old, I was still the oldest and had to take care of myself. I saw the scholar Shūhei Mizuoka already on the dock struggling with his bags loaded with books. For a moment I sensed a need to look back at the ship we were leaving, and there at the top of the plank was Grandma Uno still standing transfixed, staring at this idea we all had traveled so far to see, this Brazil. . . .

4 - The din of this activity pitched about us, but we were oddly silent, dumbfounded upon seeing what two months of dreams aboard a plodding ship upon the sea had brought. The dank humidity pressed upon us. I saw Grandma Uno’s shoulders stoop; perhaps her old heart hesitated. Her grandson Kantaro nudged her at her elbow. “What is it?” he asked. She looked up at him, so tall and handsome and so anxious to step onto this land.

5 - “Ichiro!” my mother called back to me. I hurried on, but not before I saw Grandma Uno push Kantaro aside and walk purposely down alone to land.

6 - We had borne the heavy humidity of the port of Santos along with all our worldly possessions from the ship to the waiting train, and now we were climbing upward with our burdens, struggling against our better senses to gain the plateau. There was some relief as we climbed; the shadowed air filtered through the dense vegetation but so did the smell. We had traded the salty taste of the sea and the fragrance of coffee and bananas for this other smell. It had flooded the car somewhere below us as we passed through what seemed to be a black swamp of rotting vegetation that had dropped off in disintegrating pieces from the great green wall. We had captured the odor of that putrid rot within the confines of the rocking train. I had not felt seasick those many days at sea, but now suddenly I was overcome with nausea. . . .

7 - “Well, Ichiro,” my father said. “What do you think? It’s beyond my imagination,” my father answered himself. “So here we are.” We looked around at my brothers huddled around and in my mother’s lap. They were all sleeping in a big heap. My father looked at me and smiled, “Ichiro, somehow I knew you’d be awake for this.”

8 - The train came to a stop at what seemed to be a rural way station. It was also a marketplace of sorts. Vendors sat with their produce spread on mats or makeshift stands. A few peddlers ran along the train shushing through the windows. They had wares in baskets: dried meats, fresh fish, cakes and sweets, strange fruits like bananas and papayas, and birds—some dead, some alive. A great wall of chickens squawked from their cages. I ran out the open door of the car, finally overcome by my sickness, and heaved the contents of my poor stomach onto the new land. My relief was sudden, but my attention was easily diverted by a boy who ran toward me chasing a squealing piglet. He caught the piglet, but it squirmed away and ran off, knocking me to the ground. It had jumped on my chest and over my head, leaving its dirty prints and sour smell behind. I felt an indescribable disgust and joy all at once urging me to join the boy in his chase, scurrying after the slippery pig and running toward that great wall of chickens. Just as it was about to slip between the cages, I dove upon the squealing pig, pinning it beneath my chest. I looked up at cages teetering above to see the face of the pig’s young owner, a mixture of relief and gratitude and comedy glowing in his features. For a short moment that boy and I were locked in some middle space where our two curious minds stared at the unknown.

9 - I remember that face as if it were yesterday, the golden sun-bleached burnish at the tips of his curly brown hair, the dark olive skin beneath a healthy glow of sweat, the richness of his deep brown eyes. The boy spoke in a language I could not understand, and yet, I was sure from that moment on that I would soon understand everything. Over the years, I have thought from time to time that I had caught a glimpse of that very boy again, but of course, it would never be the same boy. If he is indeed alive today, he must be, like me, another old man with memories.

Directions

Read this article. Then answer the questions.

Excerpt from Villages in the Sky

by Ellen Garin

Lost and Found!

1 - One December morning in 1888, Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law, Charles Mason, were riding along a mesa in the mountains of southwestern Colorado searching for lost cattle. Their breath turned to vapor in the cold December morning air, and the snow on the ground crunched under their horses’ hooves.

2 - The cowboys followed the cattle tracks until they heard the lowing of their cattle. After they had counted the herd, they looked around at the spectacular views. As they looked across the vast canyon, something caught their attention. There, nestled high up under an overhanging cliff on the other side of the canyon, was something quite amazing. The cowboys rode around to the other side of the canyon, dismounted, and climbed down the cliff on foot to get a closer look. They were about to make an important discovery.

The Cliff Dwellings at Mesa Verde

3 - Wetherill and Mason had discovered a large cliff dwelling that had been abandoned hundreds of years ago by ancient Pueblo people. It had been built into an alcove where chunks of sandstone had fallen off the cliff, creating an overhang. The overhang protected the cliff dwelling from the weather, which is why it was intact hundreds of years later.

4 - Cliff dwellings like the one discovered by Wetherill and Mason were constructed of sandstone. Builders filled in the spaces where the stone bricks fit together with smaller stones, mud, and wood pieces.

5 - Like apartment houses today, the dwellings were multilevel, housing many families. People needed to climb up or down ladders to reach lower and upper levels of the cliff dwellings. Living areas in the complex were about six by eight feet. Their ceilings were made of wood planks, and some homes had colorful wall paintings. The low height of the doorways indicates that people then were shorter than they are today.

6 - Below the living area, and reached only by ladder, was a round room called a kiva (KEE-vuh), which was used for ceremonial purposes. . . .

The Ancestral Puebloans

7 - For about 700 years, Mesa Verde was a thriving community of many thousands of Native American people now referred to as Ancestral Puebloans. These people were master builders, skilled craftsmen, and adept farmers of a difficult, dry land. They also traded surplus goods and food with other Native American communities.

8 - The earliest Ancestral Puebloan settlements date back to the year 600. For most of their time in the Mesa Verde area, these people lived in houses and farmed on top of the mesa. Their first villages consisted of homes called pit houses, which were constructed by digging a shallow pit in the ground. A roof was made by crossing poles over the top of the pit and then covering the poles with branches, grass, or tree bark. The walls of the pit house were often lined with clay or stones.

9 - Eventually, the Ancestral Puebloans began building homes above ground that were constructed of adobe and were sometimes two or three stories tall. The people farmed the land on top of the mesa, where they grew crops such as corn, beans, and squash. The mesa got little rainfall and was not easy land to farm. However, the farmers were expert in dryland farming, creating check dams and channels to direct rainwater to their crops. . . .

10 - Then around 1100, these Native Americans mastered the art of masonry.² During the next hundred years they built remarkable cliff dwellings such as Cliff Palace. Now the Ancestral Puebloans no longer lived on top of the mesa. Their homes were built into the side of the cliff. People had to climb up to the mesa using footholds and handholds carved into the side of the cliff to tend their crops or hunt for food.

11 - Around 1270, the Ancestral Puebloans left Mesa Verde, although we are not entirely sure why they left. We do know that these people settled the area that is now the home of the modern Pueblo tribes, including the Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, and Laguna.

12 - The Ancestral Puebloans left behind no written records, so how do we know so much about them? First of all, the magnificent structures Ancestral Puebloans left behind provide archaeologists³ with clues about the way these ancient people lived and indicate that they were skillful builders. The art of the Ancestral Puebloans provides another insight into who they were and how they lived.

13 - Petroglyphs carved on cliff walls and rocks and wall paintings inside the homes tell stories about their everyday lives. . . .

A National Park

14 - As Wetherill and Mason explored Cliff Palace that day in 1888, they counted 150 rooms plus more than 23 underground rooms with fire pits. Over the next 15 months, the Wetherill family found and explored 182 different cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde.

15 - In 1891, the Swedish scientist Gustaf E. A. Nordenskiöld photographed, sketched, and collected artifacts at Mesa Verde. His book, The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, is considered the first scientific study of Mesa Verde. Once word of the cliff dwellings spread, people were curious. Many looters and treasure seekers began visiting the area, too. As early as 1889, and again in 1890, Richard Wetherill’s father wrote letters to the Smithsonian Institution, urging them to protect Mesa Verde.

16 - Finally, on June 29, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt declared Mesa Verde a national park. This meant that the U.S. government would own, protect, and preserve Mesa Verde and all of its treasures. It was the first cultural park in the U.S. National Park System, and it became a UNESCO⁴ World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978. The park covers over 52,000 acres and protects more than 4,000 archaeological sites. . . .

17 - Today, more than 600,000 visitors enjoy the amazing sites at Mesa Verde National Park each year. Standing on top of the mesa, visitors have breathtaking views of steep mountainsides and deep canyons as eagles soar overhead. If they look carefully across the vast canyon, as Wetherill and Mason did so long ago, they can see the remains of villages tucked under cliff overhangs—villages that provide them with a step back in time.

¹alcove: an area that is set back and covered

²masonry: building with stone and bricks

³archaeologists: scientists who study prehistoric cultures

⁴UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization