【推荐1】Consumers who value their privacy (隐私) can limit what they post on Facebook and adjust settings on sites such as Instagram. But Internet service providers (ISPs) have the best advantage point on what consumers do online, and there’s much less you can do about it. After all, your ISP is the conduit (中转机构) for everything you read, view, or shop for while you’re accessing the web at home.

New rules governing the way ISPs can use consumers’ data were adopted in 2016 and scheduled to go into effect this December. But they were rejected by Congress this spring That leaves the future of broadband (宽带) privacy practices unsettled. Consumers say they want more, not less, regulation of broadband privacy. In a nationally representative survey of 1,008 Americans conducted in early May for the Consumer Reports National Research Center, 80 Percent of respondents told us that ISPs should need to get permission before sharing consumers’ data. Six out of 10 didn’t think ISPs should be allowed to sell or share this information at all. Eighty-five percent of respondents said the data rightfully belongs to them.

Under the recently defeated rules，broadband providers would have faced a new login requirement, forcing them to get permission before using data such as web browsing histories. Opponents of the rules said it was unfair to hold ISPs to stricter standards than Internet companies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook, which are regulated more loosely.

Going forward, state laws could pick up some of the conflict. By the end of May, more than a dozen states had proposed some laws mentioning the issue. Privacy protection bills were also being discussed in Washington, D. C. But privacy experts don’t expect much from the bills. After all, this is the same Congress that voted to roll back the existing privacy protections.

1. What do the new rules focus on?

A．Keeping the Internet steady.

B．Settling broadband practices.

C．Forbidding ISPs to use consumers’ data.

D．Protecting Internet consumers’ privacy.

2. What is the third paragraph mainly about?

A．Regulations on ISPs using consumers’ data.

B．A survey of privacy conducted by Congress.

C．Consumers, opinions about broadband privacy.

D．The argument about who owns consumers’ data.

3. What does the underlined part “Opponents of the rules” in Paragraph 3 refer to?

A．Broadband providers.	B．Internet companies.
C．Internet consumers.	D．Survey representatives.

4. What can we learn from the text?

A．The future of broadband privacy will be clear.

B．Internet companies rejected the rules together with ISPs.

C．Privacy experts have a negative attitude to the privacy protection bills.

D．Consumers will go on arguing with Congress about the Internet privacy.

【推荐2】Artificial intelligence, or AI, has slowly begun to influence higher education around the world. Now, one new AI tool could change the way university students evaluate their professor. The tool is called Hubert, a teacher evaluation tool that appears as an AI-powered chatbot. Instead of filling out a form, students use a chat window to give feedback (反馈) on the course and their professor. Afterwards, Hubert categorizes the students’ comments for the professor to review.

Hubert is free for educators to use. More than 600 teachers have used it already. The goal of the new Hubert program is to improve education by giving teachers detailed, organized feedback from students.

Viktor Nordmark, from Sweden, started the company in 2015, with several friends. Before creating Hubert, the founders asked teachers what would improve their teaching skills. The answer, Nordmark said, was qualitative (定性的) feedback from their students. In other words, teachers wanted students to write detailed answers to open-ended questions about their experiences in class.

Qualitative feedback is different from the survey responses, which students are often asked to provide at the end of a class. “This kind of data takes a lot of time for professors to collect and analyze,” Nordmark said. And for the students, it can also be “really boring to fill out.” So Nordmark and his friends designed Hubert as a compromise between a traditional survey and a personal interview. “You can reach a really large crowd, but you can also get really qualitative data back,” Nordmark said.

Now, when Hubert receives comments from students, it compares them with the information already in its system to organize the data. Nordmark says that Hubert will continue to get smarter as it receives more comments in the future. Nordmark says he and his co-founders have plans to make Hubert more flexible and accurate. They hope to give teachers the possibility of selecting their own evaluation questions.

1. What can be learned about Hubert from the passage?

A．It enables professors to evaluate their students by giving feedback.

B．It helps its inventor make money from professors pay fees.

C．It is to help teachers improve their teaching skills more effectively.

D．It collects data from students who fill out forms after class.

2. According to Viktor Nordmark, Hubert           .

A．still needs improving	B．is already perfect
C．is really boring to use	D．offers survey responses

3. What is the text mainly about?

A．The characteristics of qualitative feedback.

B．A new AI-powered tool of teacher evaluation.

C．The changes in the way teachers are evaluated.

D．A potential revolution in the educational system.

【推荐1】This month, Germany’s transport minister, Alexander Dobrindt, proposed the first set of rules for autonomous vehicles (自主驾驶车辆). They would define the driver’s role in such cars and govern how such cars perform in crashes where lives might be lost.

The proposal attempts to deal with what some call the “death valley” of autonomous vehicles: the grey area between semi-autonomous and fully driverless cars that could delay the driverless future.

Dobrindt wants three things: that a car always chooses property (财产) damage over personal injury; that it never distinguishes between humans based on age or race; and that if a human removes his or her hands from the driving wheel — to check email, say — the car’s maker is responsible if there is a crash.

“The change to the road traffic law will permit fully automatic driving,” says Dobrindt. It will put fully driverless cars on an equal legal footing to human drivers, he says.

Who is responsible for the operation of such vehicles is not clear among car makers, consumers and lawyers. “The liability(法律责任) issue is the biggest one of them all,” says Natasha Merat at the University of Leeds, UK.

An assumption behind UK insurance for driverless cars, introduces earlier this year, insists that a human “ be watchful and monitoring the road” at every moment.

But that is not what many people have in mind when thinking of driverless cars. “When you say ‘driverless cars’, people expect driverless cars.”Merat says. “You know — no driver.”

Because of the confusion, Merat thinks some car makers will wait until vehicles can be fully automated without operation.

Driverless cars may end up being a form of public transport rather than vehicles you own, says Ryan Calo at Stanford University, California. That is happening in the UK and Singapore, where government-provided driverless vehicles are being launched.

That would go down poorly in the US, however. “The idea that the government would take over driverless cars and treat them as a public good would get absolutely nowhere here,” says Calo.

1. What does the phrase “death valley” in Paragraph 2 refer to?

A．A place where cars often break down.

B．A case where passing a law is impossible.

C．An area where no driving is permitted.

D．A situation where drivers’ role is not clear.

2. The proposal put forward by Dobrindt aims to __________.

A．stop people from breaking traffic rules

B．help promote fully automatic driving

C．protect drivers of all ages and races

D．prevent serious property damage

3. What do consumers think of the operation of driverless cars?

A．It should get the attention of insurance companies.

B．It should be the main concern of law makers.

C．It should not cause deadly traffic accidents.

D．It should involve no human responsibility.

4. Driverless vehicles in public transport see no bright future in __________.

A．Singapore

B．the UK

C．the US

D．Germany

5. What could be the best title for the passage?

A．Autonomous Driving: Whose Liability?

B．Fully Automatic Cars: A New Breakthrough

C．Autonomous Vehicles: Driver Removed

D．Driverless Cars: Root of Road Accidents

【推荐1】It was an autumn day, and 1 was standing in the kitchen, hanging my head over the counter and trying to figure out how many calories were in a bowl of homemade yogurt and fruit. And I felt annoyed.

I was 16, and my best friend and I had gone to our first Weight Watchers meeting. It was the trend in the mid-1980s，and even though I was an athlete, like many teen girls, I didn't necessarily like what I saw in the mirror. But after a week or so of recording every meal and snack and calculating the calories, I had had enough. I went back to my routine of chowing whatever I wanted, running and skiing, and let that be that. And it's still pretty much what I do; as long as the workouts are regular and the food is whole and balanced, my body's set point hasn't varied for years.

The weight loss trend of three decades ago−full of scales and counting calories−has fallen away. Now fasting is popular. The ways to keep fit vary: on the 5:2 diet a person eats for five days and fasts for two days each week, while the 18:6 refers 10 fasting for 18 hours and then eating within a six-hour window each day.

In this issue, Associate Editor Mark Barna tries to understand the science behind the fasting plans. Researchers have found that animals like monkeys age more slowly after years of eating less, and in the lab in humans, they saw improvements in a number of signs that indicate risk of some hard to cure diseases. The hope for healthy weight loss isn’t over yet, but at least now the calculators don’t have to be out at every meal.

1. What made the author annoyed?

A．Her body was not as strong as an athlete’s.

B．There were too many calories in the yogurt and fruit.

C．The Weight Watches meeting was not necessary for her.

D．She had to work out the calories in every meal and snack.

2. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “chowing”?

A．Eating.

B．Doing

C．Cooking.

D．Choosing.

3. How do people keep fit now?

A．They limit the calories they take in.

B．They lose weight only.

C．They fast daily or weekly.

D．They eat enough every day.

4. What do we know about the researchers’ finding in this passage?

A．People grow more slowly if they eat less.

B．People are healthier if they eat less.

C．People have stopped losing weight now.

D．People calculate their food for every meal.

【推荐2】The human face is a remarkable piece of work. The astonishing variety of facial features helps people recognize each other and is important to the formation of complex societies. So is the face’s ability to send emotional signals, whether through an unconscious reddening of face or a false smile. People spend much of their waking lives, in the office and the courtroom as well as the bar and the bedroom, reading faces, for signs of attraction, trust and cheat. They also spend plenty of time trying to dissimulate.

Technology is rapidly catching up with the human ability to read faces. In America, facial recognition is used by churches to track prayers’ attendance; in Britain, by shopkeepers to spot past thieves. This year Welsh police used it to arrest a suspect outside a football game. In China, it verifies the identities of ride-hailing (网约车) drivers, permits tourists to enter attractions and lets people pay for things with a smile. Apple’s new iPhone is expected to use it to unlock the home screen.

Compared with human skills, such applications might expand steadily in scale. Some breakthroughs, such as flight or the Internet, obviously transform human abilities; facial recognition seems merely to encode them. Although faces are peculiar to individuals, they are also public, so technology does not, at first sight, intrude on something that is private. And yet the ability to record, store and analyse images of faces cheaply, quickly and on a vast scale promises one day to bring about major changes to our understanding of privacy, fairness and trust.

Start with privacy. One big difference between faces and other biometric (计量生物学的) data, such as fingerprints, is that they work at a distance. Anyone with a phone can take a picture for facial-recognition programs to use. FindFace, an app in Russia, compares snaps of strangers with pictures on VKontakte, a social network, and can identify people with a 70% accuracy rate. Even if private firms are unable to join the dots between images and identity, the state often can. Photographs of half of America’s adult population are stored in databases that can be used by the FBI. Law-enforcement agencies now have a powerful weapon in their ability to track criminals, but at enormous potential cost to citizens’ privacy.

1. What does the underlined word “dissimulate” in Paragraph 1 mean?

A．Hide emotions from others.

B．Make known to the public.

C．Act in disregard of laws.

D．Become friends with others.

2. What does the underlined word “them” in Paragraph 3 refer to?

A．Applications.

B．Breakthroughs.

C．Human abilities.

D．Human skills.

3. What kind of changes might be discussed in the following paragraphs?

A．Safety and first aid.

B．Social services.

C．Finance and trade.

D．Fairness and trust.

4. What’s the best title for the passage?

A．Benefits resulting from facial breakthrough

B．Facial Recognition: nowhere to hide

C．The power of human faces

D．Technologies concerning facial recognition

【推荐3】Round and Round They Go

Space is becoming more crowded. On December 3, a Falcon 9 rocket made by Space X thundered into the sky. On board were 64 small satellites, more than any American company had launched before in one go. They have a variety of uses, from space-based- radar to the monitoring of radio-frequency- emissions.

These objects are part of the latest breed of low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. This launch is just taste of what is planned. Space X and One Web, a communications firm, plan to launch satellites in their thousands, not hundreds. The pair are set to double the total number of satellites in orbit by 2027.

That promises to change things dramatically on Earth. LEO satellites can bring internet connectivity to places where it is still unavailable or unaffordable. This will also be a lasting source of new demand for the space economy. Morgan Stanley, a bank, projects that the space industry will grow from $350 billion in 2016 to more than $1. I trillion by 2040. New internet satellites will account for a half this increase.

For that to happen, however, three worries must be overcome. Debris(碎片)is the most familiar concern. As long ago as 1978, Donald Kessler, a scientist at NASA, proposed situation in which, when enough satellites were packed into low-Earth orbits, any collision could cause a chain reaction which would eventually destroy all space craft in its orbital plane(平面). The syndrome which bears Mr. Kessler's name weighs heavily on the minds of executives at the new satellite firms. Debris could cause entire tracts(广阔的一片) of space to be unusable for decades.

Solutions exist. One is to grab malfunction satellites and pull them down into Earth's atmosphere. Another is to monitor space more intensively for debris; a US Air Force program me called Space Fence is due to start in 2019. But technology is only part of the answer. Rules are needed to govern the safe disposal(清除) of old satellites from low-Earth orbit. The United States' Federal Communications Commission is revising its regulations with this in mind. Other countries should follow suit.

Cyber-security is a second, long-standing worry. Hackers could take control of a satellite and seal intellectual property, redirect data flows or cause a collision. The satellite industry has been slow to respond to such concerns. But as more of the world's population comes to rely on the infrastructure of space for access to the internet, the need for action intensifies.

The third issue follows from the first two. If a simple mistake or a cyber-attack can cause a chain reaction which wipes out hundreds of billions of dollars of investment, who is liable? Underwriters(保险商) are studying the plans of firms that wish to operate large numbers of satellites. But there is a long way to go before the risks are well understood, let alone priced.

As space becomes more commercialized mind-bending prospects open up: packages moved across the planet in minutes by rocket rather than by plane, equipment sent to other small planets, passengers launched into orbit and beyond. All that and more may come, one day. But such activities would raise the same questions as LEO satellites do. They must be answered before the space economy can truly develop.

1. What can we learn about LEO satellites from the passage?

A．They are supposed to limit the space economy.

B．They are expected to increase in large numbers.

C．They are designed to move beyond the Earth as far as possible.

D．They are mainly intended to bring internet connectivity to remote areas.

2. To deal with debris in space, the author suggests________.

A．depending entirely on the modern technology

B．monitoring the movement of spaceships carefully

C．strengthening rules to remove old satellites safely

D．destroying all the satellites with problems instantly

3. What does the underlined word “intensify” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Measure.

B．Increase.

C．Spread.

D．Repeat.

4. Which of the following can be classified as the third worry?

A．Lack of satellite regulations.

B．Loss of intellectual property.

C．Crisis of confidence in the field.

D．Slow response of satellite industry.

5. What is the author's attitude toward the launch of LEO satellites?

A．It should be further confirmed for its ownership.

B．It should be continued because of its advantages.

C．It should be done carefully to avoid potential risks.

D．It should be stopped in face of the space economy.

【推荐1】Are we getting more stupid? According to Gerald Crabtree, a scientist at Stanford University in the US, we are.

You may not want to hear this, but Crabtree believes that human intelligence reached its peak more than 2,000 years ago and ever since then has been going downhill. “If an average Greek from 1,000 BC were transported to modern times, he or she would be one of the brightest among us,” Crabtree told The Guardian.

At the heart of Crabtree’s thinking is a simple idea. In the past, intelligence was critical for survival when our ancestors had to avoid dangerous animals and hunt for food. The difference of being smart or stupid is often life or death. However, after the spread of agriculture when our ancestors began to live in dense farming communities, the need to keep their intelligence in peak-condition gradually reduced.

This is not hard to understand. Most of the time, pressure is what keeps us going—you need the pressure from your teachers to finish your homework the pressure of looking pretty encourages you to lose weight when summer comes. And the same is also true of our intelligence-if we think less, we become less smart.

These mutations (变异) are harmful to our intelligence and they were all developed in the past 3,000 years. The other evidence that Crabtree holds is in our genes. He found that among the 2,000 to 5,000 genes that we have that determine human intelligence, there are two or more mutations in each of us.

However, Crabtree’s theory has been criticized by some who say that early humans may have better hunting and surviving abilities, but people today have developed more diverse intelligence. For example, spearing (用矛刺) a tiger doesn’t necessarily require more brainpower than playing chess or writing a poem. Moreover, the power of modern education means lot more people have the opportunity to learn nowadays.

“You wouldn’t get Stephen Hawking 2,000 years ago. He just wouldn’t exist,” Thomas Hills of the University of Warwick, UK, told Live Science. “But now we have people of his intellectual capacity doing things and making insights (洞察力) that we would never have achieved in our environment of evolutionary adaptation (进化适应).”

1. What is Crabtree’s recent finding according to the article?

A．The Greeks from 1,000 BC could have been the smartest in human history.

B．Our ancient ancestors had no better surviving abilities than we do nowadays.

C．Mutations in genes that decide human intelligence have affected the development of intelligence.

D．Humans have been getting steadily more intelligent since the invention of farming.

2. According to Crabtree, ancient humans ________.

A．had much more genes that determine human Intelligence

B．were forced to be smart due to natural selection pressures

C．relied more on group intelligence than individual intelligence

D．developed a diverse intelligence to adapt to the hard realities

3. Some argue that Crabtree’s theory is false because they think ________.

A．people today are under much more pressure than early humans

B．it’s unreasonable to compare hunter’s and a poet’s intelligence

C．modern education is far more advanced than ancient education

D．human intelligence nowadays is different from that of the distant past

4. What is Thomas Hill’s attitude toward Crabtree’s theory?

A．He is for Crabtree’s theory.

B．He is against Crabtree’s theory.

C．He is worried about Crabtree’s theory.

D．He is confused about Crabtree’s theory.

【推荐2】Never Talk to Strangers?

“Never talk to strangers.” Many children are taught this simple rule as a caution against abduction(诱拐). In June, 2005, an 11-year-old boy was lost in the Utah wilderness for four days. During that time, he stayed on the path. He saw people searching for him but hid from them, afraid someone might “steal” him. Eventually, the unfortunate game of hide-and-seek ended and he was found. According to the Canada Safety Council, this alarming incident shows how unwise it is to instill(灌输) a fear of strangers in children. The “stranger danger” message can prevent children from developing the social skills and judgment needed to deal effectively with real-life situations. In a difficult situation, a stranger could be their lifeline to safety.

To have a child go missing is a parent’s worst nightmare. The threat of abduction by a stranger is minimal when compared with other possible reasons for a disappearance. In 2004, there were 67,266 missing-children cases in Canada. Only 31 involved abduction; in most of those cases the abductor was a relative, friend, or person known to the family. There were 671 cases of children wandering off, and 332 cases of abductions by a parent. Almost 80 percent of all cases were runaways. These statistics cast doubt on the idea that children should never talk to strangers. Wandering off is more common - but a lost children may have to call upon a stranger for help, and must develop the ability to judge what kind of people to approach. The “never talk to strangers” rule does not protect children in the situations they are most likely to face. On top of this, it can be confusing. Adults do not model the behavior; they often talk to strangers. A child may not know how to tell who is a stranger, and who is not.

For young children, nothing replaces close supervision(监管). Pre-schoolers do not understand risk and tend to act without thinking. Children need to develop habits and attitudes that will protect them from the real threats and dangers they may face. The Canada Safety Council encourages parents to give their children age-appropriate positive messages about safety, bearing in mind how youngsters may understand their world.

1. Which of the following statements is true about the 11-year-old boy?

A．He practiced the “never talk to strangers” rule.

B．He hid from the rescuers just as he was told.

C．He eventually showed up when the game ended.

D．He went somewhere else to avoid being found.

2. Among the possible reasons for the missing-children cases in Canada, which one is the most frequent?

A．Being abducted by a parent.	B．Wandering off.
C．Being abducted by strangers.	D．Running away.

3. The “never talk to strangers” rule is confusing to children because __________.

A．a friendly and attractive person may be dangerous

B．adults do not act upon the rule and strangers are hard to tell

C．the rule does not protect children in the situation of abducting

D．a lost child may have difficulty in communicating with a stranger

4. Which would the author agree with about the “never talk to strangers” rule?

A．It is not well recognized by parents.

B．It is not effective in keeping kids safe.

C．It is easy enough for children to follow.

D．It is practical as a safety tip in daily life.

【推荐3】For much of the 20th century, milk was a simple part of daily life in the U.S., as farmers raised cows, milkmen delivered bottles and children drank it at school. But those days are fading. On January 5 Borden Dairy, the milk processor with a cheery Elsie the cow on its label, announced to be filing for bankruptcy (破产) protection. Borden Dairy, which said it was affected by “market challenges facing the milk industry,” follows Dean Foods, America’s largest milk producer, which filed for bankruptcy protection in November.

America has fallen out of love with drinking milk, as there are more lower-calorie options and people are preferring water bottles to milk cartons (盒子). Americans each drank about 146 lb. of fluid milk-a category that includes products from skim to creamin 2018, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service. That may sound like a lot, but it’s down 26% just since 2000.

The downturn has been tough on milk processors like Borden and Dean, which buy fresh milk from farms and use techniques to create a consumer-safe drink with a longer shelf life. For the past five years, thanks to technology that increased milk production, fresh-milk prices were relatively low, which meant processors could break even although there was shifting demand. But prices went up again last year, squeezing the processors’ already tight profits. “Declining sales in a business with small profit is not a good recipe for success” says Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin.

Milk processors are also facing competition from big retailers (零售商), which have set up their own processing plants. In 2018, Walmart opened a milk-processing plant in Indiana to serve hundreds of stores in the Midwest, taking away approximately 95 million gal. of milk-processing business from Dean Foods.

1. What can we learn about American milk industry?

A．Consumers favor bottled milk.

B．Milk producers have cows on their labels.

C．Processed milk is losing its popularity.

D．Borden Dairy is the largest milk producer.

2. What does the underlined part “break even”，in paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Have no loss.	B．Upgrade technology.
C．Go bankrupt.	D．Produce large quantities of goods.

3. What’s Mark Stephenson’s attitude towards the milk industry?

A．Positive.	B．Concerned.
C．Ambiguous.	D．Prejudiced.

4. Why have some big retailers brought a challenge to milk processors?

A．They open stores abroad.	B．They lower the price of milk.
C．They process milk by themselves.	D．They won’t offer fresh milk to processors.