【推荐1】Certain aspects of music have the same effect on people even when they live in very different societies, a new study reveals.
Researchers asked 40 Mbenzele Pygmies in the Congolese rainforest to listen to short clips of music. They were asked to listen to their own music and to unfamiliar Western music.
The same 19 selections of music were also played to 40 amateur or professional musicians in Montreal. Musicians were included in the Montreal group because Mbenzele Pygmies could be considered musicians as they all sing regularly for ceremonial purposes, the study authors explained.
Both groups were asked to rate how the music made them feel using emoticons, such as happy, sad or excited faces.
There were significant differences between the two groups as to whether a specific piece of music made them feel good or bad. However, both groups had similar responses to how exciting or calming they found the different types of music.
"Our major discovery is that listeners from very different groups both responded to how exciting or calming they felt the music to be in similar ways," Hauke Egermann, of the Technical University of Berlin, said in a news release from McGill University in Montreal. Egermann conducted part of the study as a postdoctoral fellow at McGill.
The Montreal participants felt a wider range of emotions as they listened to the Western music than the Pygmies expressed when listening to either their own or Western music. This may be due to the different roles music plays in the two cultures.
"Negative emotions are felt to disturb the harmony of the forest in Pygmy culture and are therefore dangerous," Nathalie Fernando, of the University of Montreal's faculty of music, said in the news release. "If a baby is crying, the Mbenzele will sing a happy song. If the men are scared of going hunting, they will sing a happy song — in general, music is used in this culture to evacuate all negative emotions, so it is not really surprising that the Mbenzele feel that all the music they hear makes them feel good," she explained.
1. Why could Mbenzele Pygmies be regarded as musicians?

A．They are crazy about music.

B．They major in music at school.

C．They can play musical instruments well.

D．They often sing songs on ceremony.

2. The study mainly finds that ________.

A．music is universal across cultures

B．music varies among different countries

C．western music results in negative emotions

D．music makes people happy

3. The underlined word “evacuate” probably means ________.

A．set off

B．benefit from

C．get rid of

D．account for

4. The examples mentioned in the last paragraph are to show that ________.

A．music plays different roles in the two cultures

B．music plays the same role in the two cultures

C．negative music disturbs the harmony of the forest

D．happy music is welcomed everywhere

【推荐3】阅读下面待选人的信息，然后匹配他／她所选的活动：

1    1    Wang Lin: Wang Lin is a university student who studies music. He hopes to hear some live examples of foreign music from a western band.

2    2    Simon: Simon is interested in Chinese literature, so he came to China with his parents. During his stay in Beijing, he wants to learn more about Chinese contemporary Literature.

3    3    Li Hua: Li Hua is an eighteen-year-old boy. He is studying in a high school. After many months of hard studying, he is tired of his lessons. He would like to experience something adventurous.

4    4    Alice: Alice is an American girl who studies art at Beijing University. She has no classes on September 14. She hopes to enjoy some wonderful oil paintings.

5    5    Victoria: Victoria is fond of Chinese music. She hopes to listen to various songs performed by different bands. She doesn't care what kinds of songs they are.

A．An Acrobatic (杂技) Soul To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the China Acrobatic Troupe will present "The Soul of China", where the seemingly impossible is made real. Chills will run down your spine as you watch breathlessly as performers take their art and their bodies to the edge. Time: 7:30pm, September 13-19 Place: the Capital Theatre, 22 Wangfujingdajie Street, Dongcheng District

B．Exhibitions Joint Show A group ink painting exhibition is running at the ltuangshicheng Art Gallery in Beijing. About 50 works by 25 young artists including Ge Yun and Yu Yang are on display. Time: 9am-5pm until September 10 Place: Huangshicheng Gallery, 136 Nanchizi Road, Dongcheng District

C．Oil Paintings The Wanfang Art Galley will host a joint show of oil paintings by 10 young and middle-aged artists. On display are more than 30 of their latest works, which capture the wonderful variety of life in unique styles. Time: 9am-4pm until September 15 Place: 136 Nanchizi Street, Dongcheng District

D．Literature Museum The National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature offers a study of the evolution of Chinese contemporary literature from 1919 to 1949. Time: 9am-4pm, daily Place: 45 Anyuandonglu Road, Chaoyang District (Shaoyaoju area)

E．Concerts Beijing rocks: "The Fashion Night of Chinese Rock" is set to bring rock fans out next month. Nine Chinese rock bands will perform at the concert, including older generation bands, middle generation and some recent arrivals. Audiences will be given a chance to decide what songs they want to hear, which is sure to bring a crowd. Time: September 16 Place: The Olympic Center

F．Belgium Orchestra La Petite Band, the Baroque Orchestra of Belgium, will perform in Beijing at Grand Theatre of the Cultural Palace of Nationalities as part of activities across the world to commemorate(纪念) the 250th anniversary of Bach's death. Time: 7:30pm, September 11-14 Place: Grand Theatre of the Cultural Palace of Nationalities

【推荐2】Fear may be felt in the heart as well as in the head, according to a study that has found a link between the cycles of a beating heart and the chance of someone feeling fear.
Tests on healthy volunteers found that they were more likely to feel a sense of fear at the moment when their hearts are contracting（收缩）and pumping blood around their bodies, compared with the point when the heartbeat is relaxed. Scientists say the results suggest that the heart is able to influence how the brain responds to a fearful event, depending on which point it is at in its regular cycle of contraction and relaxation.
Sarah Garfinkel at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School said: “Our study shows for the first time that the way in which we deal with fear is different depending on when we see fearful pictures in relation to our heart.”
The study tested 20 healthy volunteers on their reactions to fear as they were shown pictures of fearful faces. Dr Garfinkel said, “The study showed that fearful faces are better noticed when the heart is pumping than when it is relaxed. Thus our hearts can also affect what we see and what we don’t see and guide whether we see fear.”
To further understand this relationship, the scientists also used a brain scanner（扫描仪）to show how the brain influences the way the heart changes a person’s feeling of fear.
“We have found an important mechanism by which the heart and brain ‘speak’ to each other to change our feelings and reduce fear,” Dr Garfinkel said.
“We hope that by increasing our understanding about how fear is dealt with and ways that it could be reduced, we may be able to develop more successful treatments for anxiety disorders, and also for those who may be suffering from serious stress disorder.”
1. What is the finding of the study?

A．Fear is a result of one’s relaxed heartbeat.

B．One’s heart affects how he feels fear.

C．Fear has something to do with one’s heart health.

D．One’s fast heartbeats are likely to cause fear.

2. The conclusion was drawn by analyzing           .

A．volunteers’ heartbeats when they saw terrible pictures

B．the time volunteers saw fearful pictures and their health conditions

C．volunteers’ reactions to horrible pictures and data from their brain scans

D．different pictures shown to volunteers and their heart-brain communication

3. Which of the following is closest in meaning to “mechanism” in Paragraph 6?

A．Order	B．Treatment
C．Machine	D．System

【推荐1】Everyone knows that if a dog’s ears are up and its tail is wagging vigorously, it is definitely pleased to see you. but now scientists using a robot have found that the way dogs use their tails is more complicated than we thought, and that dogs which wag them to the left may he more friendly. The animal psychologists discovered that when real dogs approached a life-sized robot dog, they were less cautious about it when it was wagging its tail to the left, while if it was wagging its tail to the right, far fewer dogs approached it in a confident manner.

In the first experiments, 56 percent of the animals approached the model without hesitation when the tail was wagged to the left, while only 21 percent did so in the other situation. When the researchers excluded (排除) owners from being present, the result were: 31 percent of the dogs approached continuously when the tail was wagging to the left, while only 18 percent did so when it was on the right.

Animal psychologist Roger Mugford said it added to the growing evidence that does were even more complicated communicators than the animals more closely related to man such as monkeys. He said, “We know that dogs, in a sense, have languages, but it is more complicated because it is not just them wagging their tails, but also giving out chemical displays.”

He adds, “The research confirms earlier studies suggesting that dogs, like humans, had a left-side preference. If you are going to present a signal to a dog, it is sensible to put it on your left-hand side because that is where dogs, unlike most other animals, tend to look. It is another example of the similarity between dogs and humans. They are a lot more human than we give them credit for.”

1. What does it tell us if a dog wags its tail to the right?

A．It was very energetic.	B．It was in a bad mood.
C．It might be unfriendly.	D．It must be confident.

2. What can be inferred from the second paragraph?

A．Some dogs approach the robot dog confidently.

B．Most dogs were afraid to approach the robot dog.

C．Some dogs lack confidence with their owners present.

D．Dog owners may influence the behaviour of their pets.

3. What can we learn from animal psychologist’s experiments?

A．Dogs can communicate more than human beings.

B．Dogs have more complicated emotions than monkeys.

C．Dogs’ tail-wagging conveys more information than previously believed.

D．Dogs’ intelligence can be much higher than any other kind of animal.

4. What can we infer from Roger Mugfords words?

A．The Left-side preference should be studied further.

B．Dogs have more in common with humans than we think.

C．No other animals show the left-side preference except dogs.

D．Dogs have a more complicated language than we people do.

【推荐2】The documentary Blood Lions shows South Africa's cruel "canned' lion hunting industry. In canned hunts, lions are raised by humans and kept in enclosed spaces on private hunting areas. Hunters can get trophy （战利品）easily in exchange for fees of up to $50, 000. There are about 8,000 ranch lions in South Africa. So the country’s hunt operators can make a fortune.

Ian Michler was a lead character in the film. He talked about Blood Lions last July when it was shown in Durban, South Africa. The film has since been viewed in 185 countries. More than 50 screenings have been held at film festivals and in meetings of special interest groups. This year, Blood Lions will be shown at every major tourism conference in Europe and Africa.

Outside the film, Michler and the team are running a global campaign. They are aiming at ending canned hunts and other cold-blooded activities involving lions and other animals.

Australia became the first country, in February 2015, to forbid imports of lion trophies. It was followed by France in November, That month, Blood Lions was shown in the European Parliament. As a result, the government of Finland, Italy, and Spain decided to hold their own screenings. There are a number of other countries likely to do the same.

At the same time, at the end of last year, the world's leading group of African lion researchers offered an important suggestion They advised that any analysis of the present state of wild lions in South Africa should not include its thousands of ranch lions. Wild lions in South Africa now number some 3, 000. There are around 20,000 wild lions in Africa.

"The great majority of lion populations in Africa have been reduced,” says Hans Bauer, lion researcher at Oxford University Wildlife Conservation Research Unit. 'It's important to stress that South Africa's ranch lions are horror that has nothing to do with lion protection. These lions should never be taken into account in any serious analysis of the state of lions in Africa."

1. What do we learn about the documentary Blood Lions?

A．It has an international influence.	B．It has attracted many tourists.
C．It tell the story of a lion fighter.	D．It has brought the producer lots of money

2. Michler and his team’s campaign       .

A．was first started in Australia	B．has won little support in Europe
C．has achieved noticeable effects	D．aims to save endangered animals

3. What can we infer about Hans Bauer?

A．He suggests analyzing lions properly.

B．He has seen an increase of African wild lions

C．He maybe a strong supporter of trophy hunting.

D．He hopes that there will be more ranch lions in Africa.

4. What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To explain the main idea of a new film.

B．To report an animal protection campaign

C．To encourage fanners lo raise ranch lions.

D．To advertise South Africa's hunting industry.

【推荐3】The Ebro Delta, in Spain, famous as a battleground during the Spanish Civil War, is now the setting for a different contest, one that is making rice farmers fight against two enemies: the rice-eating giant apple snail, and rising sea levels. What happens here will have a bearing on the future of European rice production and the overall health of southern European wetlands.

Located on the Mediterranean, just two hours south of Barcelona, the Ebro Delta produces 120 million kilograms of rice a year, making it one of the continent’s most important rice-growing areas. As the sea creeps into these fresh-water marshes, however, rising salinity (盐度) is hurting rice production. At the same time, this sea-water also kills off the greedy giant apple snail, an introduced pest that feeds on young rice plants. The most promising strategy has become to play one enemy off against the other.

The battle is currently being waged on land, in greenhouses at the University of Barcelona. Scientists working under the banner “Project Neurice” are seeking varieties of rice that can withstand the increasing salinity without losing the absorbency that makes European rice ideal for traditional Spanish and Italian dishes.

“The project has two sides,” says Xavier Serrat, Neurice project manager and researcher at the University of Barcelona, “the short-term fight against the snail, and a mid- to long-term fight against climate change. But the snail has given the project greater urgency.”

Originally from South America, the snails were accidentally introduced into the Ebro Delta by Global Aquatic Technologies, a company that raised the snails for fresh-water aquariums (水族馆) but failed to prevent their escape. For now, the giant apple snail’s presence in Europe is limited to the Ebro Delta. But the snail continues its march to new territory, says Serrat. “The question is not whether it will reach other rice-growing areas of Europe, but when.”

Over the next year and a half investigators will test the various strains of salt tolerant rice they’ve bred. In 2018, farmers will plant the varieties with the most promise in the Ebro Delta and Europe’s other two main rice-growing regions along the Po in Italy, and France’s Rhone. A season in the field will help determine which, if any, of the varieties are ready for commercialization.

As an EU-funded effort, the search for salt-tolerant varieties of rice is taking place in all three countries. Each team is crossbreeding a local European short-grain rice with a long-grain Asian variety that carries the salt resistant gene. The scientists are breeding successive generations to arrive at varieties that incorporate salt tolerance but retain about 97 percent of the European rice genome (基因组).

1. Why does the author mention the Spanish Civil War at the beginning of the passage?

A．It has great impact on the lives of Spanish rice farmers.

B．It is of great significance in the records of Spanish history.

C．Rice farmers there are engaged in another kind of battle of similar importance.

D．Rice farmers there are experiencing the hardships of wartime.

2. What may be the most effective strategy for rice farmers to employ in fighting their enemies?

A．Striking the weaker enemy first.	B．Killing two birds with one stone.
C．Eliminating the enemy one by one.	D．Using one evil to fight against the other.

3. What does Neurice project manager say about the giant apple snail?

A．It can survive only on southern European wetlands.

B．It will invade other rice-growing regions of Europe.

C．It multiplies at a speed beyond human imagination.

D．It was introduced into the rice fields on purpose.

4. What is the ultimate goal of the EU-funded program?

A．Cultivating ideal salt-resistant rice varieties.

B．Increasing the absorbency of the Spanish rice.

C．Introducing Spanish rice to the rest of Europe.

D．Popularizing the rice crossbreeding technology.

【推荐1】Boston wants to be smarter. The city has taken advantage of technologies to become more responsive to its residents' needs. But technology alone is not sufficient to make today's cities liveable. Boston has discovered that it also needs to reach the old-fashioned low-tech community and integrate that technology with city life.

Kris Carter rolled out Boston's smart city program in 2014. It started with an App that residents could download to report locations where sidewalks needed repair. The city sorted out those reports and ranked them in a database, which repair crews used to prioritize their work.

The system worked beautifully, except for one problem: most of the alerts(警报) came from wealthier neighborhoods, where the concentration of smartphone - equipped residents was highest. ＂The complaints from the App didn't always correlate with the greatest community need for repairs, " explains Carter.

Carter's group has moved away from the model common to many smart city initiatives of letting tech-savvy(精通技术的）residents drive the process. Instead, they run meetings to find out what problems people in different neighborhoods care about solving. When it came to sidewalks, Boston introduced a second method of collecting repair tips, hiring people to get out and walk the city's 1,700 miles of sidewalks to take notes on their condition.

Whether using low-tech or high-tech approaches, says Carter, to stay smart, a city needs to continually reassess its options to spot opportunities to improve residents' lives. Take the sidewalk repair program, walking on the streets was proved a useful, if inefficient way to prioritize repair needs. But last year the group found that walkers' mobile phones could be tracked as they moved along the streets, and that data could be analyzed to identify sidewalk routes which are most often used by neighborhoods.

“Combined with our other sidewalk information, that gave us an even better way to predict where faster repairs would do the most good," says Carter,"We're really always looking for whatever mix of approaches best solves the problem."

1. What is the first paragraph mainly about?

A．The citizens' life.	B．The city's reputation.
C．The city's management.	D．The benefits of technology.

2. What problem did Kris Carter's team meet when carrying out their program?

A．They faced many technical obstacles.

B．They couldn't serve all residents well.

C．They were not supported by residents.

D．They were annoyed by being short-staffed.

3. Which of the following might Kris Carter most agree with?

A．Maximizing the benefits of technology.

B．Mixing approaches for solving problems.

C．Giving full play to the power of residents.

D．Letting tech companies be a leading role.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．A Smart City: More Than Just Tech

B．A City with Intelligent Facilities

C．Joint-effort in City Construction

D．The Modernization of a City

【推荐2】With the arrival of the ABC(AI, big data, and cloud computing) era, AI is seemingly leading innovation(创新) trends. It’s believed that with the increasing application of deep learning algorithms(计算程序), AI will play a growing role in assisting human beings to complete various tasks in a range of fields.

Domestic internet giant Baidu recently announced that its public welfare Baidu Artificial Intelligence People Searching program successfully reunited more than 10, 000 lost people with their families over the past three years, which is a good example of how technology benefits people. Baidu launched this project using its artificial intelligence(AI) face-recognition technology.

Zhu Guang, senior vice president of Baidu, said, “Baidu has opened up a lot of data processing capabilities in such aspects as voice, picture, video, and natural language processing, which are all beneficial.”

And in cooperation with the Ministry of Civil Affairs(民政部) and nongovernmental organizations, Baidu’s system matches the photographs provided by seekers with those in the population database to achieve highly efficient search results.

After going through 200 million face-training sample photos, Baidu’s AI-based face-recognition technology has achieved a recognition accuracy rate of as high as 99.7 percent. It also supports across-age image comparisons, thus helping parents find their lost children after several years on the basis of their childhood photos.

Many parents whose children were lost at a young age have only their childhood photographs, making the search difficult as features change once a child grows up. But many such lost people have been reunited with their families as AI’s face-recognition technology can match an adult with his/her childhood photograph.

Baidu said it will further improve its program by deepening cooperation with the Ministry of Civil Affairs to cover all the 2,068 grassroots rescue centers, and expand the program to help more people.

This innovative new technology realizes the true goal of technological progress: to make people’s lives better. Applying AI technology for public welfare not only helps people in need, but also improves efficiency and saves costs. It is also a good way for enterprises to demonstrate their corporate social responsibility and contribute to society. It is hoped that more high-tech companies will innovatively apply their technologies to help the public.

1. The first paragraph is mainly to tell us ________.

A．the influence of ABC

B．the importance of AI technology

C．the trend of technology innovation

D．the wide use of Al face-recognition

2. What can we learn about AI face-recognition from text?

A．Its efficiency of search results is not satisfactory.

B．Its accuracy rate greatly needs improving.

C．It has trouble finding lost families only using childhood photos.

D．It’ll help find more children with the support from government.

3. From the passage, we know technological progress is intended to ________.

A．help people accomplish complicated tasks

B．prove the companies’ devotion to society

C．get people to lead a better life

D．offer assistance to the disabled

4. In a newspaper, this text may appear in the section of ________.

A．Science	B．Health
C．People	D．Lifestyle

【推荐3】Two graduates from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom found themselves about to graduate, yet with loans to pay off. The pair decided to begin a strange, year-long project to battle their debt.

The men, Ross Harper and Edward Moyse, set up the website BuyMyFace.com last October as a way to get rid of the £50,000 they shared as student loans. The idea behind the project was to earn money by selling their faces as advertising space every day for a year. Each day, they advertise a different business by painting the brand’s name or logo onto their faces and upload the pictures to the homepage of BuyMyFace.com, adding a link to the advertiser’s website and including a short piece of text about it. After they paint their faces and publish them on the website, Harper and Moyse go out to highly populated areas such as music festivals and theme parks to maximize their faces’ exposure. They hope more people will pay attention to the advertisements on their faces.

At this time, Harper and Moyse have advertised their faces for over four months without skipping a day and they’re more than halfway to their goal. Though they first started charging a minimum of about £1.60 per company, the prices have risen as their popularity increases. For advertising space during the rest of April, they range between £250 and £750. Terri L. Rittenburg, associate professor of marketing at the University of Wyoming, said that she had heard of people tattooing (纹身) logos on themselves before, but this idea is much better. According to her, at first the idea would be new and unusual and attract attention. People are interested in this particular style of advertisement and would like to try what they advertise. But she is unsure how long it would last.

At least for now, companies that have bought Harper and Moyse’s faces have written positive comments on the pair’s website. “We had a three percent increase in website traffic on the very day and for two days more afterwards,” said one of the companies.

1. Harper and Moyse go to highly populated areas to ______.

A．offer their help	B．make more friends
C．show their faces	D．raise more money

2. We can infer from the passage that the two young men ______.

A．get on well with their project	B．work hard except on holidays
C．plan to open their own company	D．may close their website in future

3. Why does the men’s idea of advertising prove to work?

A．Because an expert has highly praised them.

B．Because people find it unique and appealing.

C．Because the products they advertise are reliable.

D．Because they receive great help from businesses.