【推荐1】In 1959, when Jean Harper was in the third grade, her teacher gave the class an assignment to write a report on what they wanted to be when they grew up. She poured her heart into her report and expressed her dream of becoming an airline pilot. Her paper came back with an "F" on it. The teacher told her it was a "fairy tale". Jean was heartbroken and ashamed. As the years went by, Jean was beaten down by the discouragement and negativity she encountered whenever she talked about her dream. "Girls can't become airline pilots; never have, never will. You're crazy. That's impossible. "Finally Jean gave up.
In her senior year of high school, her English teacher was a Mrs. Dorothy Slaton, a demanding teacher with high standards. One day Mrs. Slaton asked this question: "If you had unlimited finances, unlimited access to the finest schools, unlimited talents and abilities, what would you do?" Jean felt a rush of the old enthusiasm, and with excitement she wrote down the very old dream.
The next thing that Mrs. Slaton said changed the course of Jean's life. The teacher leaned forward over her desk and said, "I have a little secret for you. You do have unlimited abilities and talents. When you leave school, if you don't go for your dreams, no one will do it for you. You can have what you want if you want it enough."
The hurt and fear of years of discouragement disappeared all of a sudden. Jean felt thrilled and told her about her dream of becoming a pilot. Mrs. Slaton slapped the desk top. "Then do it!" she said.
So Jean did. It didn't happen overnight. In her l0 years of hard work, even facing varieties of laugh, frustration and opposition, she never gave up her dream. Instead, she went on doing everything her third-grade teacher said was fairy-tale.
Eventually, Jean Harper became a Boeing 737 captain for the United Airline Company.
1. Jean’s third-grade teacher thought her dream to be ____________.

A．great	B．impossible
C．challenging	D．reasonable

2. Mrs. Slaton may hold the view that _____________.

A．only some of her students have great potential

B．her students are good enough to be admitted to the best schools

C．belief contributes to realizing a dream

D．Jean was to have her dream realized

3. According to the passage, we can infer that___________.

A．Jean’s dream was always in her deep heart

B．Jean owed her success to all her teachers

C．most people around Jean approved of her dream

D．Jean achieved her dream with ease

4. Which is the best title of the passage?

A．A Respectable Teacher	B．How to Realize a Dream
C．Hard Work Pays off	D．Reach for the Sky

【推荐2】七选五。根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

Get a Thorough Understanding of OneselfIn all one’s life time it is oneself that one spends the most time being with or dealing with.    1    When you are going upwards in life you tend to overestimate (高估) yourself. It seems that everything you seek for is within your reach.    2    It’s likely that you think it wise for yourself to stay away from the outer world. Actually, you may keep the following tips in mind.Gain a correct view of oneself.You may look forward hopefully to the future but be sure not to expect too much, for dreams can never be fully realized. You may be brave to meet challenges but it should be clear to you where to direct your efforts.    3    Self-appreciate.Whether you compare yourself to a tall tree or a piece of grass, a high mountain or a small stone, you represent a state of nature.    4    If you sincerely admire yourself you’ll have a real sense of self-appreciation.    5    In time of anger, do yourself a favor by releasing it in a quiet place; in time of sadness, do yourself a favor by sharing it with your friends; in time of tiredness, do yourself a favor by getting a good sleep.

A．It has its own value.

B．Do oneself a favor when it’s needed.

C．Do yourself a favor when you meet with the attack of illness.

D．But it is precisely oneself that one has the least understanding of.

E．Especially if it is well within your reach, you are just too blind to see it.

F．When you are going downhill you tend to underestimate yourself for not being qualified.

G．So long as you have a perfect knowledge of yourself, there won’t be difficulties you can’t overcome.

【推荐3】We live in a material world whose main quality is inertia (惯性), which is also one of our main qualities. Our physical bodies, as well as our personalities, naturally obey the law of inertia—we’re lazy, more or less.

When there is nothing to push us forward, as pain does, we can sink deep into the quicksand of slackness (懒散). It’s our nature and we must not blame ourselves for that. As a consequence, a painful experience arising from that quicksand of our inactivity pushes us ahead. Thanks to these shocks and injuries, we have gained depth of personality. Therefore, our wounds are blessings, too.

However, those painful experiences can leave deep scars in our mind. They inevitably influence our whole life in defeating and limiting ways. They produce negative beliefs, bad habits, wrong decisions, painful emotions, and so on. Although they have enabled us to mature and grow up, it’s obvious that we have to restore them.

The source of our pain is our attachment to countless experiences. Our attachments can be positive or negative, i. e. those experiences that we want to have, or those that we try to avoid. When we cannot gain what we need, or when we cannot avoid what we fear, we suffer. Painful life experiences usually gather within our mind into numerous aspects of personality, such as limiting beliefs, bad decisions, basic negative emotions and so on. They all have huge impact on our lives.

There are only two paths ahead of us: either we will continue to gain the depth of our being through suffering, or we will continue with our growth by dealing with suffering. The latter is much more pleasurable, faster and effective. But it still requires effort and continual work. The decision is up to us only.

1. When we are in the quicksand of slackness, what can push us forward?

A．Our nature.	B．Our slackness.
C．Our complaints.	D．Painful experiences.

2. What does the underlined word “inevitably” in the third paragraph mean?

A．Accidentally.	B．Unavoidably.
C．Positively.	D．Completely.

3. What is the fourth paragraph mainly about?

A．The roots of pain.	B．The meaning of pain.
C．The positive function of pain.	D．The ways to deal with painful experiences.

【推荐2】“New and improved. “These words are put in so many marketing campaigns that we tend to accept them as linked. But many new drugs aren’t an improvement over the best existing drug for a given condition, and the fast drug-approval processes in recent years have added to the uncertainty about their advantages.

A recent report in the British Medical Journal, “New Drugs: Where Did We Go Wrong and What Can We Do Better? “Analyzed the issue. The authors looked at 216 drugs approved between 2011 and 2017:152 were newly developed, and 64 were existing medicine approved for new uses. Only 25%offered a major advantage over the established treatment, and fully 58%had no confirmed added benefit to reduce symptoms or improve health-related quality of life.

“This doesn’t mean there’s no added benefit, “lead author Wissler said. “It just means we have no positive proof. Either we have no studies or have studies not good enough. “Wissler and her co-authors work for a German institute which evaluates new treatments and advises on whether the country’s health care system should pay a premium(补贴)for them. Such organizations, known as health technology assessment(HTA)agencies, work a little differently in the US, says Sean Tunisia researcher in Baltimore: “If payers think a new drug isn’t better than an existing drug, these agencies will require that hospitals try the cheaper drug first.”

Germanys HTA demands trials to prove that a new treatment beats the existing standard. This isn’t always practical. For one thing, such studies can be expensive and time-consuming, with no guarantee of success. Secondly, it can discourage companies from attempting to develop new alternatives. This is already happening. Drug developers are increasingly focused on areas where there are no good treatments to compete with, such as rare diseases.

This lack of meaningful data to guide patients is a major point of Wissler’s paper. With accelerated approval, there are more products approved, with a greater amount of uncertainty about risks and benefits. But there are other solutions besides drug trials. One idea is to require postmarked studies to track the effectiveness of newly approved drugs—a step too often neglected.

1. What message does the recent report convey?

A．Improved drugs have advantages over old ones.

B．Many new drugs have no improved advantages.

C．Before 2017 no improvement was made to drugs.

D．The approval processes for new drugs are too fast.

2. What will US HTA agencies do when no advantage is found in new drugs?

A．Get hospitals to use the cheaper drugs.

B．Remove government premium on them.

C．Arrange financial support for the patients.

D．Put new drugs on further trials and studies.

3. What’s the disadvantage of Germany’s HTA trial demands?

A．Getting patients to depend on the government for support.

B．Making drug companies think of illegal ways to cut cost.

C．Holding companies back from improving existing drugs.

D．Pushing companies to try alternatives for existing drugs.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．The Advantage of Existing Drugs

B．A Dilemma with New Drug Alternatives

C．Misunderstanding of New and Old Drugs

D．People’s Preference for New or Old Drug

【推荐3】Roughly the size of a soda can, sitting on a bookshelf, a relatively harmless device may be turning friends away from your home. The elephant in your living room is your Internet-connected camera, a device people are increasingly using for peace of mind in their homes. But few stop to think about the effect these devices may have on house guests. Should you tell your friends, for instance, that they’re being recorded while you all watch the big game together?

“It’s certainly new territory (领地), especially as home security cameras become easier to fix,” says Lizzie Post, president of the Emily Post Institute, America’s distinguished manners advisors. “I think it will be very interesting to see what manners appear in terms of whether you tell people you have a camera or not, and whether guests have a right to ask that it be turned off, if it’s not a security issue.” Post wants to make clear that she’s not talking about legal rights, but rather personal preference.

When it comes to security cameras, Post says it’s a host’s responsibility to make sure guests feel comfortable within their home. If the host casually acknowledges that there is a camera in the room by telling a story about, it that may be enough to provide an opening for a guest to say if they are uncomfortable.

However, if a contractor (合约工) is working in your home, you don’t need to tell them that there are cameras watching. Then again, the camera can also work in contractors’ favor. “If anything does go wrong while they’re in the house, they don’t want to be blamed for it,” she says. “In fact, the camera could be the thing that proves that they didn’t steal the $20, or knock the vase off the table.”

1. What is Lizzie Post mainly discussing about the use of home security cameras?

A．Legal rights.

B．Moral issues.

C．The possible impact on health.

D．Likes and dislikes of individuals.

2. According to Post, what is a host’s responsibility concerning the security camera?

A．Indicating its position.

B．Turning it on all the time.

C．Making their guests feel at ease.

D．Having a casual talk with guests.

3. How can the home security camera help contractors working in your home?

A．It can prove their innocence.

B．It can record their working progress.

C．It can prevent the accidents happening.

D．It can make their work more enjoyable.

4. What’s the author’s attitude towards the security camera?

A．Negative.	B．Pessimistic.
C．Favorable.	D．Objective.

【推荐1】Scientists studying honeybees in Vietnam have discovered an unusual trick used by Asian honeybees to drive away giant hornets(大黄蜂).

Like bees in much of Asia, these bees were constantly being attacked by hornets. They can target hives(蜂巢) with precision, cutting off the heads of the bees and using younger bees for food. The honeybees there have developed some ways of fighting back. For example, by gathering around the hornets and beating their wings very quickly, the bees can raise the temperature high enough to kill the hornets.

Now scientists found something completely new. After the bees were attacked by giant hornets, the bees began collecting small bits of animal poop(粪便) from many kinds of animals, including pigs, cows and chickens, with their mouths and sticking it near the entrance to the hive. The scientists and beekeepers recorded over 300 giant hornet attacks on the beehives. They learned that the more poop there was near the hive entrance, the less likely the hornets were to attack. The poop also made the hornets 94% less likely to chew on the hive to make the entrance larger — something they have to do to get inside.

When the giant hornets attack a hive, they mark it with a special chemical. To see if the bees were using poop in response to the hornets, the scientists marked a hive with this special chemical, and they found the bees soon began to spot the entrance with poop. The scientists don’t know why the poop works to keep the hornets away. It could be that the poop smell hides the normally sweet smell coming from the hive. It’s also possible that the smell drives them away.

Asian honeybees have developed methods for fighting giant hornets. But that’s not true in North America. Recently, the first Asian giant hornets were discovered in North America, which are a close relative of the giant hornets that the researchers studied. Scientists are now working hard to wipe them out. Otherwise, honeybees there could be in trouble.

1. Which word best describes hornets’ attacking Asian honeybees?

A．Aimless.	B．Rare.
C．Risky.	D．Unwilling.

2. What is the scientists’ statement about the honeybees based on?

A．Field research.	B．Relevant reports.
C．Published statistics.	D．Beekeepers’ descriptions.

3. What makes scientists confused about Asian hornets?

A．Why they find the hives easily.	B．How they are affected by the poop.
C．How they get a special chemical.	D．Why they attack hive entrances.

4. What can be inferred about the honeybees in North America?

A．They aren’t able to deal with the hornets.

B．They are learning from Asian honeybees.

C．They’re close relatives of Asian honeybees.

D．They follow the hornets to move into Asia.

【推荐2】AIDS may be one of the most undesirable diseases in the world. Luckily, there is now hope for AIDS patients.

According to a recent paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine，Chinese scientists have successfully used CRISPR technology -a method of gene editing-to treat a patient with HIV. While it may not have cured the patient fully, it still represents a huge step forward in fighting the disease.

The patient was a 27-year-old Chinese man who was diagnosed with both AIDS and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (淋巴母细胞白血病), a type of blood cancer. Despite his bleak situation, doctors offered him a little hope: a bone marrow (骨髓) transplant to treat his cancer and an experimental treatment for his HIV. They used this chance to edit the DNA in bone marrow stem cells (干细胞) from a donor before transplanting the cells into the patient.

Specifically, the treatment involved using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to delete a gene known as CCR5, which encodes (给…编码) a protein that HIV uses to get inside human cells. Without the gene, HIV is unable to enter cells. Talking about the gene, lead scientist Deng Hongkui told CNN, “After being edited, the cells and the blood cells they produce have the ability to resist HIV infection.” Nineteen months after the treatment, the patients leukemia was in complete remission( 缓 解 ) and donor cells without CCR5 remained, according to the research paper.

Though the transplant didn't cure the man’s HIV, it still showed the effectiveness of gene-editing technology, as there was no indication of any unintended genetic changes-a major concern with past gene-editing treatment experiments. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in the United States, who was not involved in the study, praised the treatment. “They did a very creative experiment, and it was safe,” he told Live Science. “It should be viewed as a success.”

Deng believes gene-editing technology could “bring a new dawn” to blood related diseases such as AIDS and sickle-cell anaemia ( 镰 状 细 胞 贫 血 ). “Thanks to this new technology, the goal of a functional cure for AIDS is getting closer and closer,” he said.

1. The underlined word “bleak” in Paragraph3 probably means “______”.

A．hopeless

B．unstable

C．embarrassing

D．unique

2. How did the treatment fight against HIV?

A．By identifying and killing HIV.

B．By changing the structure of HIV.

C．By preventing HIV entering cells.

D．By removing a protein HIV feeds on.

3. What is the result of the treatment?

A．Gene-edited cells are able to resist HIV infection.

B．The number of cells infected by HIV has decreased.

C．CCR5 and other genes in the patient's cells are changed.

D．Unintended genetic changes have taken place in the patient's cells.

4. What can we know about the experiment?

A．It pointed out the problems of gene treatment.

B．It provided a new way to cure AIDS patients fully.

C．It could offer a safe treatment for blood-related diseases.

D．It was the first example to use gene-editing tool to treat AIDS.

【推荐3】With the electronics industry developing, electronic products have become ubiquitous （无处不在的）in today’s life. Meanwhile, there are more and more abandoned electronic products, commonly called e-waste. It’s estimated that the number will grow to more than 60 million tons by 2021.

What contributes to the sharp rise in e-waste? Technology is developing rapidly, covering almost every aspect of our lives. Meanwhile, the lifespan of devices is getting shorter—many products will be thrown away once their batteries die. Companies intentionally plan the obsolescence （淘汰）of their goods by updating the design or software and discontinuing support for older models, so that it is usually cheaper and easier to buy a new product than to repair an old one.

What can we do about the growing e-waste problem? Recycling is very important and essential. As more people buy electronic equipment, producers are facing shortages of the raw materials, needed to make their products, so recycling and reusing e-waste makes economic and environmental sense.

Recycling e-waste is practiced both formally and informally. Formal e-waste recycling usually involves taking apart the electronics, sorting the materials and cleaning them. Companies must obey health and safety rules to reduce the health and environmental harm of handling e-waste by using: pollution-control technologies. All this makes formal recycling expensive. Informal recycling is typically, unlicensed and uncontrolled. At informal recycling workshops, people recover valuable materials burning devices to melt away non-valuable materials. Usually they do not wear protective equipment and lack any awareness that they are handling dangerous materials.

With the flood of e-waste growing around the world, recycling alone will not be enough to solve the problem. In order to reduce e-waste, producers need to design electronics that are safer, and more long-lasting, repairable and recyclable. The best thing we can do is to resist buying a new device until we really need it. Try to get our old product repaired if possible and, if it can't be fixed, resell or recycle it responsibly and correctly.

1. What is the main idea of paragraph 2?

A．The causes of devices' price dropping.

B．The results of updating devices.

C．The methods of recycling e-waste.

D．The reasons for more and more e-waste.

2. Why is recycling e-waste necessary according to the text?

A．To improve the poor quality of e-devices.

B．To lower the costs of technology innovation.

C．To relieve producers’ lack of materials.

D．To increase the variety of electronic products.

3. What can we know about formal recycling workshops?

A．There are many rules and steps to follow.

B．They aim to get valuable materials by burning devices.

C．It is convenient for them to recycle e-waste.

D．They are unaware of the danger while handling e-waste.

4. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．E-waste is easy to deal with by ourselves.

B．Producers should be mainly responsible for reducing e-waste.

C．Everyone should shoulder responsibility to help reduce e-waste.

D．Fixing a device could cause more pollution than buying a new one.

【推荐1】A secretive facial recognition program “could announce the end of public anonymity (匿名),” said Kashmir Hill in The New York Times. While police departments have used facial recognition tools for years, they’ve been limited to searching government-provided images, for example driver’s license photos. Now an app called Clearview AI can remove images of faces “from across the internet”—including social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, employment sites, even Venmo—gathering a database of more than 3 billion photos. “Until now, technology that readily identifies everyone based on his or her face has been forbidden because of its invasion of privacy.” Clearview licenses its technology to more than 600 law implementation agencies. New York City passed on the app after a 90-day test, worried about potential misuse. Clearview’s investors “predict that its app will eventually be available to the public.” Soon, “searching someone by face could become as easy as Googling a name.”

We’ve been building toward this moment for a long time, said Adrian Chen in The California Sunday Magazine. In the late 1800s, the French police officer Alphonse Bertillon devised the first “method for identifying criminals based on their physical features,” using 11 physical measurements. But scale changes everything. The Department of Homeland Security plans to scan “97 percent of all passengers on outgoing international flights.” And the technology has been improved and commercialized to the point where you can search a database and buy scans for as little as “40 cents an image if you opt for Amazon’s facial recognition software plan.”

All this has already led to growing fears about facial recognition, said Janosch Delcker and Cristiano Lima in Politico.com, but “efforts to check its spread are hitting a wall of resistance on both sides of the Atlantic.” A two-party push to limit the government’s use of facial recognition has been delayed in Congress. The European Union (EU) is discussing a five-year temporary ban, but European privacy rules contain “a broad carve-out for public authorities.” And authorities are using it: London’s police just last week enabled live facial recognition for cameras across the city.

Even if some bans on the technology succeed, said Bruce Schneier in The New York Times, we’re still building an “observation society.” Facial recognition is just one identification technology among many. An entirely unregulated data industry is already creating “descriptions of who we are and what our interests are” by tracking our movements, purchases, and interactions. “We are being identified without our knowledge, and society needs rules about when that is permissible.”

1. So far Clearview’s customers are ______.

A．investors of AI apps	B．social media sites
C．small groups of private users	D．government departments

2. By “But scale changes everything.” (paragraph 2), the author means that ______.

A．facial identification technology has gone far beyond its original purpose

B．people should be scanned through more available physical measurements

C．border security inspection has brought commercialization of identification software

D．widespread cheap images are becoming a drawback for facial recognition technology

3. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．Rules concerning anti-invasion of privacy are practicable around the world.

B．Facial recognition technology is too irresistible to set aside for governments.

C．Efforts to stop misuse of facial identification have achieved an initial success.

D．Prohibition on identification technology has gained support from governments.

4. Which of the following is the best title of the passage?

A．Facial recognition is under control	B．Get your facial identification ready
C．Your face is now public property	D．Establish a larger face database

【推荐2】The annual award scheme run by the James Dyson Foundation announced the UK national winners of 2020 edition on Thursday. The Tyre Collective will receive £2,000 in prize money to develop a tool that cuts down on pollution by capturing tyres’ particles(微粒).

Every time a vehicle moves, micro-plastic from tyres is released—small enough to account for up to 50% of PM2.5 pollution from road transport and 10% of all PM2.5 by 2030. The device invented by the team is fitted to the wheel and uses electrostatics(静电学) to collect up to 60% of all particles, which, once captured, can be recycled for new tyres or used for other applications like 3D printing and soundproofing.

A recent research from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research shows that, over 200,000 tons of micro-plastic from tyres end up in oceans and other remote areas of the world each year. “Roads are a very significant source of micro-plastic to remote areas, including the oceans.” lead researcher Andreas Stohl told The Guardian. According to DEFRA, tyre-wear accounts for nearly 50 percent of global road transport particulate emissions(排放物) and it is the second largest micro-plastic pollutant in oceans (after single-use plastic).

The team is made up of students from the Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. “We are passionate about the environment and trying to make a meaningful impact on society.” they said. And Siobhan Anderson, leader of the Tyre Collective, added, “We’re excited about having the backing of such a prestigious award and we’re looking forward to continuing this journey and developing our innovation further.”

1. What do we know about the collected particles?

A．They are polluted.

B．They are soundproofing.

C．They can be used again.

D．They can produce electricity.

2. What contributes to half of global road transport particulate emissions?

A．Plastic from tyres.

B．Factories in remote areas.

C．Poor road conditions.

D．Industrial emissions.

3. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．The members are from the same school.

B．The team will keep working on the invention.

C．The team won the most prestigious award.

D．The leader will take back the award.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．Tyre Production Responsible for Air Pollution

B．Less Tyres’ Particles, Better World

C．Best Invention to Reduce Ocean Pollution

D．Award-Winning Device Reduces Pollution From Tyres