【推荐1】How to Retain More of Every Book You Read

In recent years, I have focused on building good reading habits and learned how to read more. For most people, the final goal of reading a nonfiction book is to actually improve their life by learning a new skill, understanding an important problem, or looking at the world in a new way.     1     With that in mind, I’d like to share three reading comprehension skills that I use to make my reading more productive.

Make all of your notes searchable. Having searchable book notes is important for returning to ideas easily.    2     An idea is only useful if you can find it when you need it. There is no need to leave the task of reading comprehension merely up to your memory.

    3     When you go to the library, all of the books will be divided into different categories. In the real world, of course, knowledge is not separated into neatly defined boxes.    4     For that reason, I try to consider how the book Fm reading is connected with all of the ideas that are already inside my head. Whenever possible, I try to combine the lessons Fm learning with previous ideas.

Summarize the book in one paragraph.    5     It forces me to review my notes and consider what is really important about the book. In many cases, I find that I can usually get just as much useful information from reading my one-paragraph summary and reviewing my notes as I would if I read the entire book again.

A．Combine thoughts as you read.

B．All knowledge is interconnected.

C．Describe the book to your friends.

D．Read widely if you want to practice the skills.

E．It increases the chances that you will apply what you read in real life.

F．Once I finish a book, I challenge myself to conclude the text in just three sentences.

G．It’s important to read books, but it is just as important to remember what you read and use it.

【推荐2】How to Build a Natural Swimming Pool

Whether you like to practice your dolphin dives or idle away the day on a raft, swimming is one of summer’s perfect pleasures. With a minimum of materials, you can create a cooling summer retreat in your backyard.

Though common in Europe, natural swimming pools, are in their early stage in the United States. You can ask most American swimming-pool contractors (承包商) to build a backyard pool.    1    It may include rebar (钢筋), gunite (压力喷浆), fiberglass, and a filtration (过滤) system.

But in recent years, a few builders and a growing number of homeowners have learned how to build pools.    2    They’ve found it’s possible to construct pools that are more about building with nature and blending into the natural landscape. Natural swimming pools use stone and clay in place of concrete or fiberglass, and aquatic plants instead of harmful chemicals and complicated mechanical filtering systems.    3    They also support beneficial bacteria that consume potentially harmful organisms, and give habitat to frogs, dragonflies, and other water life.    4    A natural pool can be built for as little as $2,000 if you do it yourself, while conventional pools can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Natural swimming pools require no harmful chemicals, are fairly low-tech.    5    You won’t have to drain the pool each autumn. Except for topping it off now and then, you’ll fill the pool only once.

A．The plants enrich the pool with oxygen.

B．Chances are that they will roll out a long list of goods.

C．You can make your pool as shallow or as deep as you want.

D．And once established, they call for only a bit of management.

E．It is the most ecological and economic way to build a conventional pool.

F．They don’t rely on a mass of manufactured materials and chemical additives.

G．The result is an ecological system that is relatively inexpensive to construct.

【推荐1】You can’t choose friends for your child, but you can help him learn to choose friends wisely.     1     Here are a few ways to help your child make friends.

Build your child's self-confidence.

When he succeeds or has made a great choice, tell him you are proud of him.     2    Your middle school student is going through many changes and may feel like he isn't “good enough”. Building his self-confidence will help him feel more confident and will make it easier for him to form healthy friendships.

    3    

Give him your full attention when he talks, and really listen to what he has to say.

Discuss the qualities in a friend with your child.

Discuss with your child the qualities that matter most, such as being reliable and kind, and making good choices when it comes to avoiding alcohol and cigarettes.

Get to know your child's friends.

    4     It’s more important to talk with them and find out what they like to do. Allow your child to invite his friends over and get to know them better.

    5    

After-school clubs and sports programs are good places for meeting new people. Be open to exploring different activities with your child to find something that he enjoys.

A．When he does not succeed, help him feel better and keep trying.

B．You can teach him ways to find friends who will have a positive influence on him.

C．There are many types of friends and we should be careful when making our choices.

D．Introduce your child to new groups of people.

E．Friends are very important for us.

F．Talk with your child every day and listen to his concerns.

G．Try not to judge your child's friends according to how they dress.

【推荐2】For many of us, good friends are the next closest thing to family. According to a new study, good friends are actually the next closest thing to family from the aspect of genes (基因).

U.S. researchers have found that we are more genetically similar to our friends than to any stranger. The study suggested that genes may affect how we choose our friends, reports the BBC.

The study looked at the gene information of nearly 2,000 people, who were chosen from a small U.S. town as part of a larger heart study. Nearly half a million single-letter markers from the genome (基因组) were studied, showing that friends share about 0.1 percent more DNA, on average, than strangers do. While that might not sound like much, it’s as if they shared a great-great-great-grandparent in common.

Except for providing DNA information, participants (参与者) in the study were also asked who their closest friends were. Because all of the participants were chosen from such a small community, it made this group particularly suitable for such studies.

However, the fact that all of the study was based on such a small community has also led to argument. Friendships in small communities might be more likely to be genetically related, because such communities have fewer types of genes in general.

“I wonder whether the methods used in the study can fully explain the causes known to drive friendships,” said Oxford’s Dr. Rory Bowden.

There was one interesting finding from the study. Some of the genes that friends are most likely to have in common are about smell. “You may really love the smell of coffee. And you’re drawn to a place where other people have been drawn because they love the smell of coffee too,” Fowler explained. “And so that might be the opportunity space for you to make friends. You’re all there together because you love coffee and you make friends because you all love coffee.”

1. What did the participants do in the study?

A．They named their closest friends.

B．They made friends from a small community.

C．They changed the methods of making friends.

D．They provided DNA information of their friends.

2. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

A．Coffee helps strangers come together.

B．Good friends will love the smell of coffee.

C．Genes about smell among friends are similar.

D．Smell may influence people in making friends.

3. What is the text mainly about?

A．A study on the relationship between making friends and genes.

B．The methods of carrying out different studies.

C．A way to choose participants in a study.

D．The similar genes between good friends.

【推荐3】An American study of 10,000 students found that if you make more friends than the average person at school, you’ll receive a higher salary in later life. People need good social skills at work to work in a team successfully.     1    

On average, teenagers aged between 15 and 17 have 500 “friends” on their favorite social networking sites. Adults have 130. So if you believe this research, you might be very rich.

    2     Dunbar, a professor from the University of Oxford, studied the number of messages between users of a popular social networking website, each of whom had between 200 and 2,000 friends. He found that they always communicate with a maximum of 150 people.

Among these 150, around 5 people are close friends.     3     They are probably old friends and you share all your good and bad experiences with them. Then there are 10 more friends. Although they’re close to you, you may not keep in touch with them every week. Next there are 35 people who you might spend time with because of a shared interest.     4     You see or speak to these people at least once a year, but you don’t know them well. Beyond this number, Dunbar says, it’s impossible to make any relationship meaningful.

If you have a lot of online “friends”, try this experiment: First take away anyone you haven’t been in touch with for a year. Then remove those you cannot remember and, finally, take away friends who you wouldn’t mind losing touch with. How many have you left? How many of these people are actually good friends?     5    

A．You are not close to them.

B．And finally, there’s a large group of 100.

C．You’ve most likely known them for long.

D．However, it probably won’t make any difference.

E．These are the same skills we use to make friends at school.

F．They’ve found that having good friends can help you live longer.

G．According to the research, these are the only people that really matter.

【推荐1】Ford is turning McDonald’s coffee waste into headlights

Ford is recently including coffee chaff (谷壳) that comes off during the roasting process—into the plastic headlights housing (大灯外壳) used in some cars. It has asked McDonald’s, which doesn’t roast its own coffee, to connect it with suppliers.

In recent years, as consumers feel more concern for plastic pollution and carbon emissions, companies have made full commitments to reduce their influences on the environment. They’ve also been developing new, sustainable materials to build consumer products.

Traditionally, Ford uses plastic and talc(滑石粉) to make its headlights housing. The coffee version is more sustainable because it’s lighter and doesn’t use the talc which, as a mineral, isn’t renewable. Coffee chaff, on the other hand, is widely available, and much of it goes to waste. Eventually, Ford hopes to use the material for more parts.

Ford decided to work with coffee chaff a few years ago. But it’s been experimenting with organic materials for over a decade. The auto company has been using soy-based foam(泡沫) in its cushions since 2011. It also uses waste from wheat, coconut, tomato and other plants in its cars in order to help meet some of its sustainability goals, which include using more renewable materials. Once the Ford team figured out how coffee chaff could be used to build car parts, it reached out to McDonald’s because of the restaurant chain ‘s scale and its sustainability goals. Like Ford, McDonald’s also wants to bring renewable and recycled materials into its products. The partnership between Ford and McDonald’s is an example of how brands with different projects can work together.

“We’ve conventionally thought of cooperation as within the food industry,” said Lan Olson, senior director of Global Sustainability at McDonald’s. “The Ford partnership can help McDonald’s see what kind of larger impacts are possible when it works with a company in another field. This is just scratching(划开) the surface of trying to understand what’s possible,” Olson said.

1. Why is Ford applying coffee chaff to headlights housing?

A．To work with McDonald’s.	B．To do experiments in the lab.
C．To save resources and money.	D．To reduce environmental pollution.

2. What makes Ford choose McDonald’s as its partner?

A．Coffee of McDonald’s is so popular and has great potential.

B．Ford wants to cooperate with one in the food industry.

C．They have the same sustainability goals.

D．Different brands with different projects can work together.

3. What can we learn from Olson’s words?

A．Cooperation between the two brands just begins.

B．The cooperation is only on the surface.

C．Ford has a large influence on McDonald’s.

D．Only cooperation within the food industry is welcomed.

4. In which section of a newspaper may this text appear?

A．News.

B．Business.

C．Science.

D．Entertainment.

【推荐1】Low-Cost Gifts for Mother's Day
Gift No. 1
Offer to be your mother's health friend. Promise to be there for any and all doctor's visits whether a disease or a regular medical check-up. Most mothers always say “no need，” but another set of eyes and ears is always a good idea at a doctor's visit. The best part? This one is free.
Gift No. 2
Help your mother organize all of her medical records, which include the test results and medical information. Put them all in one place. Be sure to make a list of all of her medicines and what times she takes them.“Having all this information in one place could end up saving your mother's life，”Dr Marie Savard said.
Gift No. 3
Enough sleep is connected to general health conditions. “Buy your mother cotton sheets and comfortable pillows to encourage better sleep，” Savard said. “We know that good sleep is very important to our health.”
Gift No. 4
Some gift companies such as Presents for Purpose allow you to pay it forward this Mother's Day by picking gifts in which 10 percent of the price you pay goes to a charity. Gift givers can choose from a wide variety of useful but inexpensive things—many of which are “green”—and then choose a meaningful charity from a list. When your mother gets the gift, she will be told that she has helped the chosen charity.
1. What are you advised to do for your mother at doctor's visits?

A．Take notes.	B．Be with her.
C．Buy medicine.	D．Give her gifts.

2. What can be a gift of organization for your mother?

A．Keeping her medical information together.

B．Buying all gifts for her from one company.

C．Making a list of her medical check-ups.

D．Storing her medicines in a safe place.

3. Buying gifts from Presents for Purpose allows mothers to________．

A．enjoy good sleep	B．be well-organized
C．get extra support	D．give others help

【推荐2】Most people watching Jeremy Lin these past two months saw Jeremy Lin, New York Knicks star; but I, watching him, saw someone else. That was my elder brother, Bob, who is athletic and energetic. He could never sit still when he was in second grade; he had to get up every now and then and run around the room. And sure enough, he grew up to be a starting player for an N.C.A.A. championship lacrosse（长曲棍球）team. He was a Nike-endorsed marathoner, too, and reached the top of Mt. Everest, unguided, in his 50s.
And yet my family never watched his lacrosse games. We did watch some of his marathons, but that wasn’t until he was in his 20s. When Bob was in his glory days, our Shanghainese-born parents were bent on getting him into medical school. There was a loving aspect to it: I can remember my father working through math books with him, lesson by lesson, at the big blackboard in the attic. Bob never did become a doctor, though; and neither did I. It wasn’t until my younger sister came along that someone in the family finally wore a white coat.
Bob today could be the fittest 58-year-old on the planet. His doctor estimates his biological age at 35; he’s still climbing big mountains in the Himalayas. And, like Jeremy Lin, he’s charming. No one sees Bob without leaving with a laugh. He sometimes jokes he could be mayor of his building, and it’s true. To know him is to cheer for him.
And yet my parents did not cheer for him. What if my mother had sat on the sidelines with her statistics, like Jeremy Lin’s mother? What if my father had played videos of athletes for my brother to watch and imitate? It’s hard not to wonder.
And how did Jeremy Lin’s parents manage to do these remarkable things? Amy Chua, the tiger mother, recalls her immigrant father beating the kids whenever they mispronounced a Chinese word. How is it that Jeremy Lin’s immigrant father in particular, Gie-Ming Lin, encouraged his son to follow such an untraditional path?
1. Bob’s glory days were those ________.

A．when he was doing well in math

B．when he was in second grade

C．when he was made mayor of his building

D．when he showed his talents in sports

2. From the passage we can tell that Bob is ____________.

A．active and optimistic

B．clever and determined

C．brave and helpful

D．considerate and independent

3. Which of the following statements is probably TRUE?

A．Bob was always ignored by his parents

B．Bob could also have been a sport star.

C．Bob’s parents often watched his games.

D．Nobody in the author’s family was a doctor.

4. From the last two paragraphs we can infer that ___________.

A．parents should always study together with their children

B．parents should know how to educate their children properly

C．children should be punished when they do anything wrong

D．children should try to live up to the hopes of their parents

【推荐3】Scientists have created the world's first living, self-healing robots using stem cells (干细胞) from frogs. Named xenobots after the African clawed frog from which they take their stem cells, the ''machines'' are less than a millimeter wide — small enough to travel inside human bodies. They can walk and swim, survive for weeks without food, and work together in groups. ''These are entirely new life forms, '' said the University of Vermont, which conducted the research with Tufts University's Allen Discovery Center.

The researchers removed living stem cells from frog embryos (胚胎), and left them to hatch. Then, the cells were cut and reshaped into specific ''body forms'' designed by a supercomputer — forms ''never seen in nature''，according to a news release from the University of Vermont.

Xenobots even have regenerative abilities. When the scientists sliced into one robot, it healed by itself and kept moving. They don’t look like traditional robots - they have no shiny clothing or robotic arms. Instead, they look more like a tiny drop of moving pink flesh. The researchers say this is deliberate — this ''biological machine'' can achieve things typical robots of steel and plastic cannot. ''Traditional robots degrade over time and can produce harmful ecological and health side effects, '' researchers said in the study. ''As biological machines, xenobots are more environmentally friendly and safer for human health.''

According to the researchers, these robots could be used to clean up radioactive waste, collect microplastics in the oceans, or even carry medicine inside human bodies. Aside from these immediate practical tasks, they could also help researchers to learn more about cell biology - opening the doors to future advancement in human health and longevity. This sounds like something from a sci-fi movie. Some people even voiced their concern that humans might be taken control of by those xenobots. However, the researchers in the study say there is no need for alarm. They can't reproduce or evolve (进化).

1. What is this passage mainly about?

A．The advantages of a medical robot.

B．The application of robots in biology.

C．The general introduction of a living robot.

D．The medical value of African clawed frogs.

2. The underlined word ''regenerative'' in Paragraph 3 probably means ''________''.

A．living longer	B．growing again
C．replacing old cells	D．defending against attacks

3. What can we know about xenobots?

A．They can do everything that traditional robots can.

B．They can break up steel and plastic while degrading.

C．They are able to cure people of all kinds of diseases.

D．They are harmless to the environment and human health.

4. What is the researchers' attitude to the development of xenobots?

A．Doubtful.	B．Positive.
C．Cautious.	D．Casual.