One sheep, two sheep. Wait, why are we counting sheep again? Counting sheep to fall asleep is a method that seems to be as old as time. But have you ever stopped to think about why they’re sheep? Why not cats? Or dogs?
While the origin of why people count sheep to fall asleep has no exact root, there’re a few guesses. The most popular belief, according to Mental Floss, has to do with shepherds in Britain in Middle Ages. Apparently, if shepherds used communal grazing land (公共牧场), they were responsible to keep a headcount of their sheep each night So before going to sleep, they counted their sheep to ensure they were all accounted for.
But at least one book claims the link between sheep and sleep goes back even further, reports Mental Floss. “A chapter in Disciplina Clericalis suggests that counting sheep has already been part of certain cultures for centuries.”
So does counting sheep to fall asleep actually work? Apparently, you might want to seek other options first. “Involving the brain in a relaxing, repetitive task slows the mind, and stops our racing stressful thoughts from taking over,” says Hilary Thompson, a health consultant. “Unfortunately, counting sheep isn’t one of these helpful tasks. Researchers at Oxford University put it to the test and discovered that subjects who pictured running waterfalls and rivers could fall asleep more quickly.”
In addition to picturing something relaxing, breathing techniques also tend to be very effective sleeping aids. “I prefer to teach patients the breath work,” says Dr Elizabeth Trattner. “Breath in through the nose for a count of 4, hold for 7 and make a whooshing noise out for the count of 8. This breathing technique resets the body, and lowers both stress and anxiety.”
1. Before going to bed, why did shepherds count sheep?| A．To learn to count numbers. |
| B．To help fall asleep quickly. |
| C．To make all sheep were there. |
| D．To play games with other shepherds. |
| A．Counting sheep has a long history. |
| B．The book was written for a long time. |
| C．Counting sheep was quite interesting. |
| D．The book describes life of shepherds. |
| A．It is helpful to sleep. | B．It doesn’t work very well. |
| C．It increases sleep time. | D．It makes mind relaxing. |
| A．Listening to soft music. | B．Picturing water running. |
| C．Imagining relaxing things. | D．Applying breathing techniques. |
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【推荐1】AI In the Future Workplace
Artificial Intelligence is making its way into business. As our special report this week explains, firms of all types are exploiting AI to forecast demand, hire workers and deal with customers. In 2017 companies spent around $22 billion on AI-related mergers and acquisitions, about 26 times more than in 2015. The McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank within a consultancy, claims that just applying AI to marketing, sales and supply chains could create economic value, including profits and efficiencies, of $2.7 billion over the next 20 years.
Such forecasts fuel anxiety as well as hope. Start with the benefits. AI ought to improve productivity. Humanyze collects data from employees' calendars and e-mails to work out, say, whether office layouts favor teamwork.
Yet AI's benefits will come with many potential drawbacks. Algorithms (计算程序) may not be free of the prejudices of their programmers.
| A．They can also have unintended consequences. |
| B．Some people are better placed than others to stop employers going too far. |
| C．These numbers are so impressive that we can't help feeling afraid of the power of AI. |
| D．However, some small companies may not have enough money to be equipped with AI technology. |
| E．Slack, a workplace messaging app, helps managers assess how quickly employees accomplish tasks. |
| F．Google's boss has gone so far as to declare that AI will do more for humanity than fire or electricity. |
【推荐2】Lee hyun-seok grew up in South Korea addicted to Japanese manga (漫画) series such as “Dragon Ball” and “Slam Dunk”. As soon as he could, he migrated to Tokyo to build a successful career as a manga artist and editor. Then in the early 2000s came “webtoons”, a South Korean cartoon innovation optimized for smartphones. Mr. Lee was at first unimpressed. Compared with manga’s inventive graphic styles and profound plots, he found webtoons just the opposite.
Yet Japanese manga is being eclipsed by Korean webtoons. Last year the manga print market shrank by 2.3% to ¥265bn ($1.9bn). The size of the global webtoons market was meanwhile valued at $3.7bn. Manga is going digital slowly, in part because it is still designed for print, so awkward to read on smartphones. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Mr. Lee abandoned manga for the webtoon industry in 2014.
Though webtoons such as “Itaewon Class” and “Solo Levelling” have become popular among Japanese consumers, most Japanese publishers have stuck stubbornly to manga. “The Japanese industry is very conservative,” sighs Mr. Lee. The manga industry’s business model, in which stories are first published in weekly magazines and then in books, has hardly changed since the 1960s. Webtoons have grown so fast, in part because they can be read more easily. Other recent South Korean exports, such as the Netflix sensation “Squid Game” and BTS, a boy band, have taken the world by storm thanks to the same combination of innovation and smart marketing behind webtoons.
Some are concerned about the future. Japan’s manga fans are, like all its population, ageing. The average reader of the Weekly Shonen Magazine, a manga for children launched in 1989, is now over 30. “Manga could end up as old people’s culture,” warns Mr Lee. “Children these days are viewing through webtoons on their smartphones. Why not make something that suits their taste?”
1. What did Mr Lee think of “webtoons” in the early 2000s?| A．He considered it as inventive. | B．He considered it as attractive. |
| C．He considered it as original. | D．He considered it as shallow. |
| A．Ruined. | B．Outweighed. | C．Replaced. | D．Copied. |
| A．Japanese manga can be read more easily. |
| B．Since the 1960s, the manga has grown so fast. |
| C．The manga industry is unwilling to transform. |
| D．“Squid Game” was adopted from Japanese manga. |
| A．Worried. | B．Aggressive. | C．Confident. | D．Annoyed. |
【推荐3】Like most of us, I try to be mindful of food that goes to waste. The arugula (芝麻菜)was to make a nice green salad, rounding out a roast chicken dinner. But I ended up working late. Then friends called with a dinner invitation. I stuck the chicken in the freezer. But as days passed, the arugula went bad. Even worse, I had unthinkingly bought way too much; I could have made six salads with what I threw out.
In a world where nearly 800 million people a year go hungry, “food waste goes against the moral grain,” as Elizabeth Royte writes in this month’s cover story. It’s jaw-dropping how much perfectly good food is thrown away — from “ugly” (but quite eatable) vegetables rejected by grocers to large amounts of uneaten dishes thrown into restaurant garbage cans.
Producing food that no one eats wastes the water, fuel, and other resources used to grow it. That makes food waste an environmental problem. In fact, Royte writes, “if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world.”
If that’s hard to understand, let’s keep it as simple as the arugula at the back of my refrigerator. Mike Curtin sees my arugula story all the time — but for him, it's more like 12 bones of donated strawberries nearing their last days. Curtin is CEO of DC Central Kitchen in Washington, D.C., which recovers food and turns it into healthy meals. Last year it recovered more than 807,500 pounds of food by taking donations and collecting blemished (有瑕疵的) produce that otherwise would have rotted in fields. And the strawberries? Volunteers will wash, cut, and freeze or dry them for use in meals down the road.
Such methods seem obvious, yet so often we just don’t think. “Everyone can play a part in reducing waste, whether by not purchasing more food than necessary in your weekly shopping or by asking restaurants to not include the side dish you won’t eat,” Curtin says.
1. What does the author want to show by telling the arugula story?| A．We pay little attention to food waste. | B．We waste food unintentionally at times. |
| C．We waste more vegetables than meat. | D．We have good reasons for wasting food. |
| A．Moral decline. | B．Environmental harm. |
| C．Energy shortage. | D．Worldwide starvation. |
| A．It produces kitchen equipment. | B．It turns rotten arugula into clean fuel. |
| C．It helps local farmers grow fruits. | D．It makes meals out of unwanted food. |
| A．Buy only what is needed. | B．Reduce food consumption. |
| C．Go shopping once a week. | D．Eat in restaurants less often. |
【推荐1】We use what is known as inner speech, where we talk to ourselves, to evaluate situations and make decisions. Now, a robot has been trained to speak aloud its inner decision-making process, giving us a view of how it responds to contradictory demands.
Arianna Pipitone and Antonio Chella at the University of Palermo, Italy, programmed a humanoid robot named Pepper, with software that models human cognitive(认知的)processes, which allowed Pepper to retrieve (检索)relevant information from its memory and find the correct way to act based on human commands, as well as a text — to — speech processor. It allowed Pepper to voice its decision-making process while completing a task, "With inner speech, we can better understand what the robot wants to do and what its plan is," says Chella.
The researchers asked Pepper to set a dinner table according to etiquette (礼仪)rules they had programmed into the robot. Inner speech was either enabled or disabled to see how it affected Pepper's ability to do what was instructed.
When instructed to place a napkin on a fork with its inner speech enabled, Pepper asked itself what the etiquette required and concluded that this request went against the rules it had been given. It then asked the researchers if putting the napkin on the fork was the correct action. When told it was, Pepper said, "OK, I prefer to follow your desire," and explained how it was going to place the napkin on the fork.
When asked to do the same task with inner speech disabled, Pepper knew this contradicted etiquette rules, so it didn't perform the task or explain why.
With the potential for robots to become more common in the future, this type of programming could help the public understand their abilities and limitations, says Sarah Sebo at the University of Chicago. "It maintains people's trust and enables cooperation and interactions between humans and robots," she says. However, this experiment only used a single human participant, says Sebo. "It's unclear how their approach would compare across a wide range of human participants," she says.
1. Why does the author mention how people make decisions in the first paragraph?| A．To introduce the topic. | B．To make comparisons. |
| C．To provide an example. | D．To support his argument. |
| A．It failed to complete the task. | B．It followed the etiquette rules. |
| C．It made a random decision. | D．It communicated with the researchers. |
| A．It was creative but worthless. |
| B．It was a good try but the result was a failure. |
| C．It was inspiring but needed further evidence. |
| D．It was carefully designed but poorly performed. |
| A．Robot Taught To Be Polite |
| B．Robot Can Explain Its Decision |
| C．Robot Making Decisions: No Longer A Dream |
| D．Robot-Human Communication: No Longer A Problem |
【推荐2】Plastic is everywhere in our modern world. Its toughness makes it an extremely useful material from household items to vehicle parts, but that same toughness makes it hard to break down for recycling or disposal (处理). However, Japanese scientists at the University of Tokyo have developed a new plastic material that can be broken down more easily and can self-heal and remember past shapes.
Based on a kind of plastic called an epoxy resin vitrimer, which is brittle (脆性的), the new plastic boasts a huge range of advantages. Once scratched with a knife, it can completely patch itself up after being heated to 150 ℃ for just 60 seconds. When shaped into the shape of a crane, then flattened, it can fold itself back into the crane shape by being heated up. It does all of this much faster than others of its type.
The new plastic can also break down easier. Even if it’s discarded (丢弃) into the environment, it still poses less of a, problem than other kinds of plastic, which the team demonstrated by placing it in seawater for 30 days. It biodegraded by 25% and released molecules (分子) that are essential food for marine life.
The new plastic is more resistant to breaking. It can also repair itself, and can recover its original memorized shape. It even biodegrades safely in a marine environment, according to Shota Ando, a researcher of the study.
The material can be used in a variety of applications, “Infrastructure materials for roads and bridges are often composed of epoxy resins mixed with compounds such as concrete and carbon,” said Ando. “By using the new plastic, these would be easier to maintain as they would be stronger and healable using heat. Unlike conventional epoxy resins, this new material is hard but stretchable, so it could also be expected to strongly bond materials of different hardness and stretch.”
1. What is the author’s purpose in writing paragraph 1?| A．To introduce the topic of the text. | B．To show the disadvantages of plastic. |
| C．To highlight the importance of plastic. | D．To indicate his views on previous plastic. |
| A．Change itself. | B．Shape itself. | C．Repair itself. | D．Burn itself. |
| A．It is safe for animals in the ocean. | B．It can provide nutrition for animals. |
| C．It can change its shape when frozen. | D．It is more brittle than previous plastic. |
| A．Research Of New Molecules | B．An Interesting Scientific Study |
| C．The Widespread Application Of Plastic | D．A New Environmentally Friendly Plastic |
【推荐3】It is well known that male humpback whales(座头鲸)are skilled singers.Their songs are thought to attract females in high frequency sounds while to compete with other males in low frequency sounds.Research led by the Wildlife Conservation Society has now made a new discovery.
The study looked at the songs of two humpback whale populations, based on sound recordings collected from 2013 to 2018.One group was based in the South Atlantic, off the coast of Gabon, and the other in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar.Analysis of the recordings showed that the two groups picked up musical ideas from each other and borrowed phrases and themes into their latest song.This suggested that the males from the two groups came into contact with each other over the five years and shared songs.
To uncover this musical cooperation, researchers recorded the songs and transcribe them into more than 1,500 individual sounds and patterns, or song units.They found that the units were composed into larger phrases, which were then repeated to form themes.These themes were sung for hours at a time, or even days.By 2018, both populations have been singing largely the same songs.
"This similarity in the songs shows that these two populations come into closer contact than other southern populations, explains Dr Melinda Rekdahl, leading author of the study.As well as being an interesting phenomenon, she explains that those songs allow even greater insight into the workings of the humpback whale populations.
1. What do people usually think of the purpose of male humpback whales' songs?| A．To have fun. |
| B．To attract other fish. |
| C．To increase the population of their group. |
| D．To attract females and compete with other males. |
| A．They were born with those songs. |
| B．The researchers composed similar songs for them. |
| C．The male whales from the two groups learned singing from each other. |
| D．The male whales taught the females songs from the other group. |
| A．Change. | B．Describe. |
| C．Create. | D．Enjoy. |
| A．A Kind of Magic Whales. | B．Male Humpback Whales Share Songs. |
| C．The Biggest Ocean Animals. | D．The Workings of Humpback Whale Populations. |
【推荐1】Where did you buy your last book? Chances are that you bought it on the Internet. But if you did, you missed the unusual experience of browsing in a real bookstore. These days bookstores offer lots of great books and plenty more.
Taipei’s Eslite Dunnan Store
Time magazine once named Eslite Dunnan Store in Taipei "Asia's best bookstore!". One visit to the store tells you why. The store, spreading across five floors, offers a combination of restaurants, music and over 200,000 books. With its comfortable reading spots, visitors sometimes say it's like a library. Others have called it the “7-Eleven of bookstores” because it's open 24hours a day.
Saraiva Bookstore
Rio de Janeiro's Saraiva Bookstore might be the world's most colorful bookstore. The visible upper level is lined with books all ranged by their colors. This rainbow effect provides a colorful greeting for shoppers as they arrive. A rainbow path also leads young readers into the children's section.
Book Garden
The world's biggest bookstore is Tehran, Iran's Book Garden with 700,000 square feet of space. In addition to restaurants and a theater, the Book Garden features a park on the roof.
Libreria Acqua Alta
Venice, Italy, is a city surrounded by water. It seems only right then that one of its most interesting bookstores is Libreria Acqua Alta. Its books are displayed in all things related to water such as boats, bathtubs and more.
Whether you enjoy reading inside or outside, there is always an interesting bookstore to be discovered.
1. What do you know about Taipei's Ealite Dunnan Store?| A．It is a five-storeyed library with 200,000 books in it. |
| B．People can visit this bookstore at any time of the day. |
| C．People can read books, have meals, and enjoy plays there. |
| D．Time magazine thought it was the best bookstore in the world. |
| A．Book Garden. | B．Saraiva Book store. |
| C．Libreria Aequa Alta. | D．Taipei's Eslite Dunnan store. |
| A．To introduce some interesting bookstores. |
| B．To ask people to read books inside or outside. |
| C．To encourage people to go to the real bookstore. |
| D．To call for more creative bookstores to be opened. |
【推荐2】A tiny Alaska village has experienced a boom in tourism in recent years as polar bears spend more time on land than on Arctic sea ice.
More than 2,000 people visited the northern Alaska village of Kaktovik in 2018 to see polar bears in the wild. The far north community lies in an area where increasingly higher temperature has sped up the movement of sea ice, the primary habitat(栖息地)of polar bears. As ice has gradually moved to deep water beyond the continental shelft more bears are remaining on land to look for food.
Polar bears have always been a common sight on sea ice near Kaktovik, but villagers started noticing a change in the mid-1990s and reported to the local government. More bears seemed to stay on land, and researchers began taking note of more female bears making homes in the snow on land instead of on the ice to raise their babies. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists began hearing reports of the increasing number of polar bears in the area in the early 2000s. As more attention was given to the plight (困境)of polar bears about a decade ago, more tourists started heading to Kaktovik.
The village had fewer than 50 visitors annually before 2011, said Jennifer Reed, of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "Today we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of visitors, many from around the world each year," Reed said. Most tourists visit in the fall, when bears are forced toward land because sea ice is farthest away from the shore, Bruce Inglangasak, a local hunter who sometimes offers wildlife-viewing tours, said he had been offering polar bear tours since 2004. Most of his clients(客户)are from China and Europe, as well as from the lower 48 U. S. states. Many tourists stay several days in the village, which has two small hotels. The villagers have benefited a lot from that. In turn, they provide more effective protection for polar bears with financial support from tourism development.
1. What causes more polar bears to stay on land in Kaktovik?| A．Food shortage. | B．Climate change. |
| C．Habitats' movement to shore. | D．Their preference for land. |
| A．Excited. | B．Indifferent. | C．Concerned. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Hotels in Kaktovik are in demand in autumn. |
| B．Kaktovik has about 50 visitors annually. |
| C．Inglangasak makes a living as a tour guide. |
| D．Tourism affects the balance of nature. |
| A．The fittest can survive. | B．After a storm comes a calm. |
| C．A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. | D．Every coin has two sides. |
【推荐3】As Artificial Intelligence(AI) becomes increasingly sophisticated, there are growing concerns that robots could become a threat. This danger can be avoided, according to computer science professor Stuart Russell, if we figure out how to turn human values into a programmable code.
Russell argues that as robots take on more complicated tasks, it’s necessary to translate our morals into AI language.
For example, if a robot does chores around the house, you wouldn’t want it to put the pet cat in the oven to make dinner for the hungry children. “You would want that robot preloaded with a good set of values, ” said Russell.
Some robots are already programmed with basic human values. For example, mobile robots have been programmed to keep a comfortable distance from humans. Obviously there are cultural differences, but if you were talking to another person and they came up close in your personal space, you wouldn’t think that’s the kind of thing a properly brought-up person would do.
It will be possible to create more sophisticated moral machines, if only we can find a way to set out human values as clear rules.
Robots could also learn values from drawing patterns from large sets of data on human behavior. They are dangerous only if programmers are careless.
The biggest concern with robots going against human values is that human beings fail to so sufficiently test and they’ve produced a system that will break some kind of taboo.
One simple check would be to program a robot to check the correct course of action with a human when presented with an unusual situation.
If the robot is unsure whether an animal is suitable for the microwave, it has the opportunity to stop, send out beeps, and ask for directions from a human. If we humans aren’t quite sure about a decision, we go and ask somebody else.
The most difficult step in programming values will be deciding exactly what we believe in moral, and how to create a set of ethical rules. But if we come up with an answer, robots could be good for humanity.
1. What does the author say about the threat of robots？| A．It may constitute a challenge to computer progranmers. |
| B．It accompanies all machinery involving high technology. |
| C．It can be avoided if human values are translated into their language. |
| D．It has become an inevitable peril as technology gets more sophisticated. |
| A．They are aggressive. | B．They are outgoing. |
| C．They are ignorant. | D．They are ill-bred. |
| A．By interacting with humans in everyday life situations. |
| B．By following the daily routines of civilized human beings. |
| C．By picking up patterns from massive data on human behavior. |
| D．By imitating the behavior of property brought-up human beings. |
| A．Determine what is moral and ethical. | B．Design some large-scale experiments. |
| C．Set rules for man-machine interaction. | D．Develop a more sophisticated program. |
“We need carbohydrates, protein and fat — they are like the wood in the fireplace．The vitamins and minerals are like the match, the spark, for the fuel,” she explains．“We need them all, but in a very different proportions．And if the fuel isn’t there, the spark is useless.”
1. From the first paragraph we know that working women .
| A．think cooking is especially complicated |
| B．do not share the same views with registered dietitians |
| C．are busy and not interested in cooking |
| D．are likely to eat healthfully |
| A．it contains only a small percentage of real juice |
| B．it is natural, nutritious and prepared from real oranges |
| C．it is largely orange-colored sugar water |
| D．it produces nothing but calories |
| A．an effort with no results |
| B．a search for a diet without fruits |
| C．a research on fruitless diet |
| D．a diet serving as medicine |
【推荐2】Belly fat（stomach fat） has long been thought to be especially bad for your heart, but now, a new study adds more evidence to the idea that it may also be bad for your brain.
The study, from the United Kingdom, found that people who were overweight and had a high waist — to — hip ratio （a measure of belly fat） had slightly lower brain volumes （容量），on average, compared with people who were just over weight or had a healthy weight. Specifically, belly fat was connected with lower volumes of gray matter, the brain tissue （组织）that contains nerve cells.
“Our research looked at a large group of people and found obesity （肥胖）,specifically around the middle， may be linked with brain shrinkage （萎缩），” lead study author Mark Hamer, a professor at Loughborough University, said in a statement.
Lower brain volume， or brain shrinkage， has been linked with a higher risk of memory recession， which leads to being forgetful.
The new findings, published on Jan. 9 in the journal Neurology ， suggested that the combination of obesity （as measured by body mass index, or BMI） and a high waist—to—hip ratio may cause brain shrinkage.
However, the study found only a connection between belly fat and lower brain volume, but couldn't prove that belly fat actually caused brain shrinkage. It could be that people with lower volumes of gray matter in certain brain areas are at a higher risk of obesity. Future studies are needed to find out the causes for the connection.
1. What can we infer about belly fat from the new study?| A．Belly fat may have a bad influence on our brain. |
| B．Belly fat can help increase brain volumes. |
| C．Belly fat affects people's diet. |
| D．Belly fat is bad for our eyes. |
| A．A tall and thin man. |
| B．A man with too much belly fat. |
| C．A short and thin man. |
| D．A man with normal body weight. |
| A．Going ahead. | B．Getting poor. |
| C．Getting active. | D．Going around. |
| A．The real cause of getting obesity. |
| B．The danger of getting too much fat. |
| C．The bad effect caused by belly fat and brain shrinkage. |
| D．The reasons for the connection between belly fat and brain shrinkage. |
【推荐3】The coronavirus（冠状病毒）outbreak has sparked panic buying of toilet paper and cleaning products in countries across the world, but one UK businessman is determined to spread some happiness among the anxiety and confusion.
Rob Braddick, 48, who owns Braddick’s Holiday Park in Westward Ho, Devon, in the southwest of England, has filled the toy grabber machines in his amusement park with two of the country’s most sought-after cleaning products.
Customers could previously try their hand at grabbing “Frozen 2” or “Peter Rabbit” toys from the machines, but no more. “They got removed this morning,” Braddick said of the toys, replacing them with toilet roll and hand sanitizer (洗手液). Visitors can now pay 50p for three goes on the toilet roll grabber, or ?1 a go for Carex, which Braddick described as the “Rolls- Royce of hand sanitizers.”
Braddick said that his decision was born of a desire to make people feel less stressed in uncertain times. “It’s a bit of light relief with everything that’s going on,” he said. “Hopefully it will raise a smile, which I think everybody needs.”
Around the world, travel plans have been severely affected, and tens of millions of people remain at home as part of global efforts to fight against coronavirus. Supermarkets have seen shortages of toilet paper and hand sanitizer as anxious consumers stockpile the products.
Braddick said the family business, which has been running since 1932, has received more than a dozen calls from potential customers who say they don’t want to travel abroad for their holidays and would rather stay in the UK. As for his own measures against coronavirus, Braddick said staff have been told to wash their hands every half hour, which is particularly important for those handling money.
1. What does the underlined word “sought-after” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Practical | B．Amusing |
| C．Popular | D．Confusing |
| A．Price for a try. |
| B．Prizes of the game. |
| C．New practice of the game. |
| D．People’s love for grabbing toys. |
| A．To make higher profits. |
| B．To ease people’s anxiety. |
| C．To support his family business. |
| D．To attract more people to play the game. |
| A．Tourism may fall into a decline. |
| B．Braddick’s business is experiencing a hard time. |
| C．Cleaning products will be in shortage for a long time. |
| D．Everyone in the park is told to wash their hands every half hour. |
