【推荐2】There are a growing number of pet owners who feed their pets on raw foods, which mean “uncooked” meat and bones. William Burk, a pet food specialist from the Food and Drug Administration(FDA),believes that feeding raw meat to pets is against its goal of protecting the public from health dangers, and that raw meat and bones do not have all the required nutrition that a pet needs every day.

Recognising how popular these foods are, the FDA has provided guidelines for producers of pet foods which contain uncooked meat for dogs, cats and other pets. The guidelines give rules to protect pet owners and pets from dangers about food safety and lack of nutrition.

Pet owners who feed raw meat and bones to their pets should deal with these products very carefully to protect themselves against possible dangers, says Burk. Just as when you are preparing foods for human beings, use hot water and soap to wash your hands, containers, and surfaces that come into contact with the food. Don’t put your hands near your mouth until you have washed them, and don’t allow your pet to touch your face right after it has eaten raw meat.

“If pet owners choose to feed bones to their pets, they should watch their pets carefully when they are eating bones,” Burk says.“If a pet eats a big piece of bone that won’t pass through its digestive system(消化系统),it is likely to kill the pet.”

1. What does William Burk think of feeding pets on raw meat?

A．It’ll make the pet owners sick.

B．It’ll keep the pets’ wild nature.

C．It’s against the policy of the FDA.

D．It’s dangerous and lack of nutrition.

2. The FDA has provided guidelines for producers of pet foods with raw meat because ________.

A．pet safety is a serious problem

B．most pets lack nutrition

C．feeding pets on raw foods is popular

D．the quality of pet foods is dropping

3. Pet owners should do some necessary cleaning when________.

A．preparing raw meat for pets	B．touching the food containers
C．taking their pets out for a walk	D．washing the clothes

4. What suggestion is given to pet owners in the last paragraph?

A．Pets should be forbidden to eat raw bones.

B．Pets should be kept away from the raw meat.

C．Pets should be checked on their digestive system.

D．Pets should be watched carefully while eating bones.

【推荐3】The color of food might affect just how much you want to eat them，but what about the birds in your neighborhood？Would they care what color their food is？Try this out for a science fair project，or just to learn something new while making your local birds happy.

Begin this experiment with the question“What color of birdseed（鸟食），if any，will birds like the most?”, and then make a hypothesis (假设) based on your question. An example might be“Birds will eat more green birdseed than other colors of birdseed.”

You should get several bird feeders. Purchase birdseed that is very light in color. To color the birdseed, pour it into a bowl and then add food coloring that you can purchase from the store. Mix them up well with a spoon and continue to add coloring until all the seed is colored. You should sample at least a few colors and have one feeder with seed that has not been colored—this is called the control and it will give you something to compare your results to. Now just hang them up outside in the same location，and wait for your feathered friends to show up. This works best in an area where birds are used to feeding from a feeder—it can take birds over a week to find new feeders.

Observe your bird feeders whenever possible，and keep track of how much seed is in each bird feeder each day. A ruler is helpful for this. You might also want to take pictures of the feeders and keep track of what kind of birds visit each feeder. Over time，you should be able to see if one color of seed gets eaten more than others.

Once your experiment is done，you will be able to go back to your hypothesis and see if it is correct. Remember, it’s not bad if your hypothesis was wrong. The main thing is that you’ve learned something from your experiment，and hopefully you had some fun doing it.

1. What’s the purpose of this experiment?

A．To see what color birds like most.

B．To make local birds happy.

C．To see if the color of food affects birds.

D．To find how local birds feed themselves.

2. What’s the second step for this experiment?

A．Observing bird feeders.	B．Raising a question.
C．Collecting all the data.	D．Making a hypothesis.

3. The underlined words“feathered friends”in Paragraph 3 refer to       .

A．feeders	B．birds
C．neighbors	D．locals

4. What is the most important about the bird feeders?

A．They are filled with some water.	B．They are placed in secret places.
C．They are painted in different colors.	D．They are all the same size and type.

【推荐2】Wearable sensors (传感器) could one day interpret the gestures in sign language and translate them into English，providing a high­tech solution to communication problems between deaf people and those who don't understand sign language.

Engineers at Texas A & M University are developing a wearable device that can sense movement and muscle activity in a person's arms. The device works by figuring out the gestures a person is making by using two sets of sensors：one that responds to the motion of the wrist and the other to the muscular movements in the arm. A program then wirelessly receives this information and changes the data into the English translation. “Most of the technology was based on vision­based or camera­based solutions,” said study lead researcher Roozbeh Jafari，an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Texas A & M University.

These existing designs, Jafari said，are not enough，because often when someone is talking with sign language，he or she is using hand gestures combined with specific finger movements.“I thought maybe we should look into combining motion sensors and muscle activation，”Jafari told Live Science. “And the idea here was to build a wearable device.”

The researchers have built a system that can recognize words that people use most commonly in their daily conversations. Jafari said that once the team starts expanding the program，the engineers will include more words that are less frequently used，in order to build up a more substantial vocabulary.

One drawback of it is that the system has to be “trained ” to respond to each individual that wears the device，Jafari said. This training process involves asking the user to repeat or do each hand gesture a couple of times，which can take up to 30 minutes to complete.

1. How does the new device work?

A．By figuring out gestures from fingers.

B．By connecting the wrist and the fingers.

C．By linking the arm and the fingers.

D．By collecting information from the wrist and the arm.

2. The researchers eventually decided on a wearable device to ________.

A．make it easier to monitor the gestures when people are talking

B．make the translation process faster

C．compete with existing designs

D．make it user­friendly

3. We can replace the underlined word in Paragraph 4 by “ ________ ”.

A．necessary	B．influential
C．extensive	D．essential

4. What can we infer from the text?

A．The device has greatly increased in sales.

B．The device still requires much improvement.

C．We should work out of 30 minutes.

D．We should be trained to respond quickly.

【推荐1】Over the past decade, drug-resistant diseases have appeared as a major health threat. But where do they develop the drug resistance? One surprising theory: they may have developed the resistance on farms, and not in hospitals.

The crop protection products farmers use to control many plant diseases are almost the same as the drugs doctors use to treat infections, including fungi(真菌). Fungi are continually mutating(变异), and with a life cycle measured in days or weeks, they mutate quickly. When a mutation produces resistance to a chemical-killing fungi, fungi will jump to any host that provides a welcoming environment, such as a human body. And if the treatment for the fungal infection involves a drug similar to the fungicide encountered on the farm, fungi may develop quickly in the human body---just as they did in the field.

An obvious solution is to use less fungicide in the field. Reducing fungicide use would not only slow the development of the drug resistance, it would help restore diversity to the fungal world. Fungicides are a must in the farming community. Plant diseases pose a major problem for farmers globally--in some crops, disease can reduce harvests by more than 70 percent--and failure to deal with the problem can mean financial ruin.

Just like fungi---or, indeed, any living thing---plants continually evolve. This is how natural gene editing (基因编辑）works, and without it, we'd all still be single cells in a salty soup. Through natural selection, almost any plant will eventually produce resistance to fungi. But this can take centuries, so we don't have the time to wait.

On the other hand, advances in genetics have given us an understanding of nature's gene editing process in plants, helping us develop resistance to a disease. Gene editing techniques can then enable us to produce disease resistance---just as nature would do, if given enough time.

1. What can we infer about fungi from Paragraph 2?

A．They can treat infection sometimes.

B．They don't stop developing new forms.

C．A human body is their favorite place.

D．There are no fungi in the fields now.

2. What does the writer indicate in Paragraph 3?

A．Using fungicide leads to a win-win situation

B．Stopping using fungicide is a cure-all in agriculture.

C．Reducing fungicide helps farmers making more money.

D．Using fungicide is in a dilemma between drug resistance and crop harvest.

3. What makes a plant produce resistance to fungi?

A．The survival of the fittest.

B．Advances in technology.

C．The use of farm chemicals.

D．A welcoming environment.

4. What can we learn from “natural gene editing”?

A．Developing drug resistance.

B．Making advances in genetics.

C．Finding ways to evolve ourselves.

D．Curing all kinds of diseases by editing genes.

【推荐2】Enlightening, challenging, stimulating, fun. These were some of the words that Nature readers used to describe their experience of art-science cooperations in a series of articles on partnerships between artists and researchers. Nearly 40% of the roughly 350 people who responded to an accompanying poll (调查) said they had cooperated with artists; and almost all said they would consider doing so in future.

Such an encouraging result is not surprising. Scientists are increasingly seeking out visual artists to help them communicate their work to new audiences. “Artists help scientists reach a broader audience and make emotional connections that enhance learning.” One respondent said.

One example of how artists and scientists have together rocked the senses came last month when the Sydney Symphony Orchestra performed a reworked version of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. They reimagined the 300-year-old score by using the latest climate prediction data for each season—provided by Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub. The performance was a creative call to action ahead of November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, UK.

But a genuine partnership must be a two-way street. Fewer artists than scientists responded to the Nature poll; however, several respondents noted that artists do not simply assist scientists with their communication requirements. Nor should their work be considered only as an object of study. The alliances are most valuable when scientists and artists have a shared stake in a project, are able to jointly design it and can critique each other’s work. Such an approach can both prompt new research as well as result in powerful art.

More than half a century ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology opened its Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) to explore the role of technology in culture. The founders deliberately focused their projects around light—hence the “visual studies” in the name. Light was a something that both artists and scientists had an interest in, and therefore could form the basis of collaboration. As science and technology progressed, and divided into more sub-disciplines (学科分支), the centre was meanwhile looking to a time when leading researchers could also be artists, writers and poets, and vice versa (反之亦然).

Nature’s poll findings suggest that this trend is as strong as ever, but, to make a cooperation work, both sides need to invest time, and embrace surprise and challenge. The reach of art-science tie-ups need to go beyond the necessary purpose of research communication, and participants must not fall into the trap of stereotyping each other. Artists and scientists alike are involved in discovery and invention, and challenge and comment are core to both, too.

1. According to Paragraph 1, art-science cooperations have ______.

A．caught the attention of critics	B．received favorable responses
C．promoted academic publishing	D．sparked heated public disputes

2. The reworked version of The Four Seasons is mentioned to show that ______.

A．art can offer audiences easy access to science

B．science can help with the expression of emotions

C．public participation in science has a promising future

D．art is effective in facilitating scientific innovations

3. Some artists seem to worry about in the art-science partnership ______.

A．their role may be underestimated	B．their reputation may be impaired
C．their creativity may be inhibited	D．their work may be misguided

4. What does the author say about CAVS?

A．It was headed alternately by artists and scientists.

B．It exemplified (作为...的典范) valuable art-science alliances.

C．Its projects aimed at advancing visual studies.

D．Its founders sought to raise the status of artists.

5. In the last paragraph, the author holds that art-science collaborations ______.

A．are likely to go beyond public expectations

B．will strengthen interdisciplinary (跨学科) competition

C．should do more than communicating science

D．are becoming more popular than before