【推荐1】Co-authored by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Texas A&M, the paper looked at nearly50 years of data testing whether facial expressions can lead people to feel the emotions related to those expressions.

“Traditional wisdom tells us that we can feel a little happier if we simply smile, or that we can get ourselves in a more serious mood if we glare, and frowning makes us feel sadder.” said Nicholas Coles, UT Ph.D. student in social psychology and leads researcher on the paper. “But psychologists have actually disagreed about this idea for over 100 years.” These disagreements became more pronounced in 2016, which are more evident especially when 17 teams of researchers failed to replicate(复制) a well-known experiment demonstrating that the physical act of smiling can make people feel happier.

“Some studies have not found evidence that facial expressions can influence emotional feelings,” Coles said.

“But we can’t focus on the results of any one study. Psychologists have been testing this idea since the early 1970s so we wanted to look at all the evidence.”

Using a statistical technique called meta-analysis, Coles and his team combined data from 138 studies testing more than 11,000 participants from all around the world.

According to the results of the meta-analysis, facial expressions have a small impact on feelings. “We don’t think that people can smile their way to happiness,” Coles said. “But these findings are exciting because they provide a clue about how the mind and the body interact to shape our conscious experience of emotion.” “We still have a lot to learn about these facial feedback effects, but this meta-analysis put us a little closer to understanding how emotions work.” Coles added.

1. Which of the following best explains “pronounced” underlined in paragraph 3?

A．Obvious.

B．Professional.

C．Extreme.

D．Heated.

2. What do words in paragraph 5 and 6 suggest?

A．All the evidence has already been found by researchers.

B．We need to use a statistical technique called meta-analysis.

C．Facial expressions have a huge influence on feelings.

D．Research should be comprehensive and in-depth.

3. Why do the results arouse excitement in researchers?

A．They encourage people to keep a positive attitude.

B．They show people can smile their way to happiness.

C．They offer a slight indication to help with the research.

D．They support the general conventional accepted belief.

4. What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A．Coles’ research about facial feedback effects will still continue.

B．Studies exactly proved facial expressions influence our feelings.

C．The interaction of the body and the mind leads to real happiness.

D．The meta-analysis lets us fully understand how emotions work.

【推荐2】According to new research from the University of Cambridge in England, sheep are able to recognize human faces from photographs.

The farm animals, who are social and have large brains, were previously known to be able to recognize one another, as well as familiar humans. However, their ability to recognize human faces from photos alone is novel.

The recent study, the results of which were published in the journal Royal Society showed that the woolly creatures could be trained to recognize still images of human faces, including those of former President Barack Obama and actress Emma Watson.

Initially, the sheep were trained to approach certain images by being given food rewards. Later, they were able to recognize the image for which they had been rewarded. The sheep could even recognize images of faces shown at an angle, though their ability to do so declined by about 15 percent - the same rate at which a human’s ability to perform the same task declines.

“Anyone who has spent time working with sheep will know that they are intelligent, individual animals who are able to recognize their handlers,” said Professor Jenny Morton, who led the Cambridge study. “We’ve shown with our study that sheep have advanced face-recognition abilities, comparable with those of humans and monkeys.”

Recognizing faces is one of the most important social skills for human being, and some disorders of the brain, including Huntington’s disease, affect this ability.

“Sheep are long-lived and have brains that are similar in size and complexity to those of some monkeys. That means they can be useful models to help us understand disorders of the brain, such as Huntington’s disease, which develops over a long time and affects cognitive abilities. Our study gives us another way to monitor how these abilities change.” Morton said.

1. According to the new research, what’s unusual about sheep?

A．They have large brains.

B．They can recognize their owners.

C．They can recognize human faces from photograph.

D．They can tell animals from humans.

2. How did the researchers train the sheep?

A．By giving food rewards.

B．By showing photos of humans and monkeys by turns.

C．By guiding them to follow their handlers.

D．By showing photos of famous people.

3. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．Sheep have a higher face-recognition ability than monkeys.

B．The sheep’s face-recognition ability may prevent some disorders of the brain.

C．The sheep’s face-recognition ability says the same when shown photos at any angle.

D．The new discovery is beneficial to the study of cognitive ability changes.

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

A．A Wonderful Scientist	B．How Sheep Recognize Each Other
C．A New discovery about Sheep	D．The Life of Sheep

【推荐3】The science of papermaking addresses the methods, equipment, and materials used to make paper and cardboard, these being used widely for printing, writing, and packaging. Today almost all paper is produced using industrial machinery.    1    .

The method of manual (手工的) papermaking changed very little over time, despite advances in technologies.    2    . Separate the useful fibre from the rest of raw materials. Beat down the fibre into pulp (纸浆). Adjust the colour, chemical, biological, and other properties of the paper. Screen (筛) the resulting liquid. Press and dry to get the actual paper.

    3    . It is made of stainless materials and set in a wooden frames similar to that of a window. Then completely bathe it in the liquid and draw it out. Water is removed and the wet mat of fibre is laid on top of a damp cloth. The fairly damp fibre is then dried. Finally, the paper is then cut to the desired shape and packed.

The wooden frame is called a “deckle” (定纸框).    4    . The “deckle edges” are one of the indications that the paper was made by hand. Deckle-edged paper is occasionally imitated today to create the impression of old-fashioned luxury.

    5    . It is also used in paper factories to check the quality of the production process. The “handsheets” made according to TAPPI Standard T205 are tested for paper characteristics such as brightness, strength and degree of sizing.

A．Screening the fibre involves using a special net.

B．The process of papermaking is really complicated.

C．It leaves the edges of the paper slightly irregular and wavy.

D．Handmade paper is prepared in laboratories to study papermaking.

E．However, traditional papermaking in Asia uses the inner skin fibres of plants.

F．The process of manufacturing handmade paper can be generalized into five steps.

G．But handmade paper is still appreciated for its distinctive uniqueness and the skilled craft.

【推荐2】For the first time in its history, the International Olympic Committee has allowed a team of refugees to compete at the Games. All of the team’s members were forced to leave their home countries. Now they’ve come together to compete under the Olympic flag instead.

Making it to the Olympics is something eighteen-year-old swimmer Yusra has always dreamed of. But just last year, she was swimming for her life. She and her sister were forced to leave their home in Syria because of the war there. They were trying to get to Greece in a rubber dinghy (橡皮艇) with eighteen other refugees, when their boat broke down and began filling with water. Most of the people on board couldn’t swim, so she and her sister jumped in to help push it to shore.

Three hours later, they made it to safety, and eventually to Germany as refugees. Refugees are people who have left their home country because their lives are threatened by war, bad treatment or violence---often because of their race, gender or beliefs. Around the world, more than 60 million people are in this situation. And some of them, like Yusra, are elite athletes who have trained all their lives to compete at the highest level, only to have that chance taken away.

Now, a team of ten, including swimmers, runners, and judokas from Syria, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Congo have been given the chance to compete at the Games under the Olympic flag. They’ve also been given their own coaches, officials, uniforms and a chef, all paid for by the IOC. And in the past few months they’ve been training hard. The IOC says it wants the team to inspire and give hope to other refugees, and draw attention to the issues millions of other around the world are facing. And these guys say they are up to the task whether they win gold or not.

“These refugee athletes will show the world that despite the unimaginable tragedies that they have faced, anyone can contribute to society through their talent, skills and strength of the human spirit,” the statement continues.

1. What does the underlined sentence mean?

A．She trained all her life.

B．She swam for the glory of life.

C．She swam to escape being drowned.

D．She swam to escape from other refugees.

2. Where do Yusra and her sister live as refugees now?

A．Syria

B．Germany

C．Congo

D．Ethiopia

3. Which of the following is NOT a reason why the refugees are threatened to their country?

A．Race

B．Violence

C．Religion

D．Nationality

4. The IOC allowed a team of refugees to complete in the Olympic Games in order to ________.

A．help the refugees to fulfill their dreams of winning the Olympic gold medal.

B．offer the refugees a chance to earn bread by themselves.

C．light a candle of hope for all the refugees in the world.

D．curse the darkness of the society by forcing them to pay attention to the life of refugees.

【推荐1】Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new method that doesn't require any special equipment and works in just minutes to create soft, flexible,3D-prnted robots.

The innovation comes from rethinking the way soft robots are built : instead of figuring out how to add soft materials to a rigid robot body, the UC San Diego researcher started with a soft body and added rigid features to key components. The strictures were inspired by insect exoskeletons,which have both soft and rigid parts — the researchers called their creations

“flexoskeletons (柔性外骨骼）”.The new method allows for the construction of soft components for robots in a small bit of the time previously needed and for a small bit of the cost.

“We hope that these flexoskeletons will lead to the creation of a new class of soft robots, ” said Nick Gravish， a mechanical engineering professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the UC San Diego and the paper ’ s senior author. “ We want to make soft robots easier to build for researchers all over the world. ”

The new method makes it possible to build large groups of flexoskeleton robots with little hand assembly (装配）as well as assemble a library of Lego-like components so that robot parts can be easily swapped.

Researchers detail their work in the April 7 issue of the journal Soft Robotics. The team plans to make their designs available to researchers at other institutions as well as high schools.

One flexoskeleton component takes 10 minutes to print and costs less than $1. Flexokeleton printing can be done on most low-cost commercially available printers. Printing and assembling a whole robot takes under two hours.

The final goal is to create an assembly line that prints whole flexoskeleton robots without any need for hand assembly. These small robots could do as much work as one massive robot on its own — or more.

1. What does Paragraph 2 mainly talk about?

A．The origin of the new method.

B．The function of the new method.

C．The advantages of the new method.

D．The cost of the new method.

2. What’s Nick’s attitude towards flexoskeletons?

A．Indifferent.	B．Skeptical.
C．Curious.	D．Hopeful.

3. What will researchers intend to do with flexoskeletons?

A．Benefit moss students.

B．Produce a lot of flexoskeleton robots.

C．Build robots by hand.

D．Create many larger ones.

4. What can be the best title for the text?

A．New Robos Made of Special Equipment and Materials

B．A New Method of Building Giant,Soft and Flexible Robots

C．Flexoskeletons Make Soft Robots Faster and Cheaper to Make

D．Flexoskeletons Create Lots of Soft Robots with Hand Assembly

【推荐2】Never go into a supermarket hungry! This is a good piece of advice. If you go shopping for food before lunchtime, you’ll probably buy more than you plan to. Unfortunately, however, just this advice isn’t enough for consumers these days. Modern shoppers need an education in how and how not to buy things at the store. First, you check the weekly newspaper ads. Find out the items that are on sale and decide if you really need these things. In other words, don’t buy anything just because it’s cheaper than usual! “New and Improved!” or “All Natural” on the front of a package influence you. Instead, read the list of ingredients(contents) on the back. Third, compare prices: that is, you should examine the prices of both different brands and different sizes of the same brand.
Another suggestion for consumers is to buy ordinary items instead of famous brands. Ordinary items in supermarkets come in plain packages. These products are cheaper because producers don’t spend much money on packing or advertising. The quality, however, is usually as good as the quality of well-known name brands. In the same way, in buying clothes, you can often find high quality and low prices in brands that are not famous. Shopping in discount clothing stores can help you save a lot of money. Although these stores aren’t very attractive, and they usually do not have individual dressing rooms, not only are the prices low, but you can often find the same famous brands that you find in high-priced department stores.
Wise consumers read magazine ads and watch TV commercials, but they do this with one advantage: knowledge of the psychology behind the ads. In other words, well-informed consumers watch for information and check for misinformation. They ask themselves questions: Is the advertiser hiding something in small print at the bottom of the page? Is there any real information in the commercial, or is the advertiser simply showing an attractive image? With the answers to these questions, consumers can make a wise choice.
1. All the following statements are true about the phrase “ordinary items” in Paragraph 2 except ____.

A．ordinary items never say “New and Improved” or “All Natural”

B．ordinary products are usually cheaper than famous brands

C．producers spend less money on packaging of ordinary items

D．the quality of ordinary items is usually as good as that of famous brands

2. What does the writer think about ads?

A．They are believable.	B．They are attractive.
C．They are full of misinformation.	D．They are helpful to consumers.

3. One of the author’s suggestions to consumers is ____.

A．to make use of ads

B．not to buy items with words like “New and Improved” or “All Natural”

C．to buy high quality items such as famous brands after lunch

D．to buy any ordinary items instead of famous brands

4. The author implies that ____.

A．going into the supermarket hungry, you may buy more than you plan to

B．the quality of ordinary items is usually high and the prices are relatively low

C．discount clothing stores are good places to go to

D．ads sometimes don’t tell the truth