If we look around us at the things we have bought at some point in our lives， we would no doubt notice that not everything we own is being put to good use：the thick woolen coat which we thought looked fashionable despite the fact that we live in a tropical(热带的) country， the smartphone that got put away when we bought ourselves the newest model， or even the guest room in our house that somehow got turned into a storeroom.
Those underutilized things may seem useless to some， but could be useful to others. With the coming of the Internet， online communities have figured out a way to generate profit from the sharing of those underused things. Using websites and social media groups that facilitate(促进) the buying and selling of second-hand goods, it is now easier than ever for sharing activities to take place. And this is known as the sharing economy.
These online platforms are providing a chance for people to make a quick buck or two. To give an example, busy parents e previously might not have bothered with setting up a stall(货摊) at the local market or car boot sale to sell their children's old stuff， but with online marketplaces， parents are now able to sell on those hardly worn baby clothes that their children have outgrown and the expensive pushchairs and baby stuff they have bought, so as to put some cash back into their pockets.
Businesses have also caught on to the profitability of the sharing economy and are seeking to gain from making use of those underutilized resources. A business model that has rapidly risen in popularity sees companies providing an online platform that puts customers in contact with those who can provide a particular product or service. Companies like Airbnb act as a middleman for people to cash in on their unused rooms and houses and let them out as profitable accommodation （住所）. Another example is Uber, encourages people to use their own personal cars as taxis to make some extra cash in their free time.
This move towards a sharing economy is not without criticisms. Unlike businesses, unregulated individuals do not to follow certain rules and this can lead to poorer and inconsistent quality od goods and services and a higher risk of cheating. Nevertheless, in the consumerist society we live in today, the increased opportunities to sell on our unwanted and underused goods can lead to a lesser impact on environment.
1. What does the underlined word “underutilized” in Paragraph 2 probably mean____.| A．Not being fashionable. | B．Used. |
| C．Not being used enough. | D．Worn out. |
| A．The latest smartphone. |
| B．The storeroom in our house. |
| C．A thick coat in a cold country. |
| D．Clothes our babies don't or can't wear anymore. |
| A．they have to follow certain rules |
| B．they like to criticize their buyers |
| C．they don't have a business permit |
| D．they might sell lower-quality products |
| A．The Consumerist Society |
| B．Parents Who Need Money |
| C．The Rise of the Sharing Economy |
| D．Why We Buy Things We Don’t Need |
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【推荐1】Mr. Fang is now the owner of 36 greenhouses producing organic vegetables in the Gobi desert in Northwest China’s Gansu province. He is one of the beneficiaries of the Gobi Farming Program of Gansu province that is building rows of greenhouses in the desert to help transform local farming and alleviate poverty.
Grain production in Gansu is greatly affected by the climate and the output is unstable. Agricultural production there relies heavily on rivers, oases and groundwater irrigation. If traditional extensive agricultural production continued, it could gradually narrow the living space.
In 1995, a local entrepreneur ventured to use Israeli technologies to build greenhouses for vegetables growing in the desert. Such individual pilot projects encouraged the Gansu government to launch a provincial-level Gobi farming program in 2017 with a target to build up a controlled-environment agriculture of about 20,000 hectares by 2022. Some cities in the province, which include Fang’s village, have already been experimenting with Gobi farming for several years.
Despite the harsh environment, farming in the Gobi desert has its advantages: the extended amount of sunlight provides adequate energy for crops, a significant temperature difference between day and night helps crops accumulate nutrients and the Gobi’s hot and dry air means fewer pests and crop diseases. The Gobi greenhouses popping up in Gansu use drip and spray irrigation, which can cut water consumption by almost 50 percent compared to a normal farm. The greenhouses are also eco-friendly, as they use substrates for soilless cultivation recycled from rotten leaves, straw and cow and sheep feces.
With the greenhouses, Fang earns around 70,000 yuan annually. Data from Suzhou. district of Jiuquan showed the greenhouse program has helped bring an average revenue of about $ 72,300 per hectare to local farmers. Large scale greenhouse farming is an investment-intensive project and cannot be sustained only by government financial support. Therefore, the local government has been encouraging villagers such as Fang to take the lead to rent greenhouses or build their own.
It is not an easy task, and many villagers still want to wait and see. However, more and more are starting to join in, either to rum their own greenhouses or work as hired workers for greenhouse owners. Starting from managing four greenhouses in 2009, Fang now is also a partner of a greenhouse farming cooperative running 120 greenhouses.
The relatively low cost of large-scale land use in the Gobi desert have also encouraged large firms to start their Gobi farming pilot projects in Gansu. If the Gobi farming proves successful, it could provide experiences for countries in Central Asia linked with Gansu both by the ancient Silk Road as well as its modern version of the Belt and Road Initiative.
1. What affects grain production in Gansu most?| A．Money. | B．Sunlight. | C．Air | D．Water. |
| A．1n 1995. | B．In 2009. | C．In 2017. | D．In 2022. |
| A．The harsh environment is good for crops . |
| B．At first, Fang only ran four greenhouses. |
| C．With the greenhouses, Fang earns around $ 70,000 annually. |
| D．Mr. Fang now owns 120 greenhouses producing organic vegetables. |
| A．The Belt and Road Initiative |
| B．A Great Adventurer — Mr. Fang |
| C．The Gobi Farming Program of Gansu |
| D．The Advantages of Farming in the Gobi Desert |
【推荐2】In less than 2 months, the artificial intelligence (AI) program ChatGPT has become a cultural sensation (轰动). ChatGPT is developed with a technique called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback to train the language model, enabling it to automatically create text based on written prompts. I asked it to rewrite the first scene of the classic American play Death of a Salesman. The output was an amusing conversation. This is certainly fun, but there are serious implications for generative AI programs like ChatGPT in science and academia.
Many concerns relate to how ChatGPT will change education. It certainly can write essays about a range of topics. I gave it both an exam and a final project. It did well finding factual answers, but the scholarly writing still has a long way to go. If anything, the implications for education may push academics to rethink their courses in innovative ways and give assignments that aren’t easily solved by AI. That could be for the best.
More worrisome are the effects of ChatGPT on writing scientific papers. In a recent study abstract created by ChatGPT were submitted to academic reviewers, who only caught 63% of these fakes. That’s a lot of AI-generated text that could find its way into the literature soon.
The text written by ChatGPT is not acceptable. An AI program cannot be an author. Still, according to Editorial Policies, text generated by ChatGPT (or any other AI tools) cannot be used in the work, nor can figures, images, or graphics be the products of such tools. Breaking these policies will be considered scientific misconduct (学术不端) no different from plagiarism (剽窃) of existing works.
The scientific record is ultimately one of the human efforts of struggling with important questions. Machines play an important role, but as tools for the people giving the hypotheses (假设), designing the experiments and making sense of the results. Ultimately the product must come from-and be expressed by-the wonderful computer in our heads.
1. What does the underlined word “implications“ probably mean in Paragraph1?| A．Competitions. |
| B．Incidents. |
| C．Restrictions. |
| D．Effects. |
| A．It could help better the scholarly writing. |
| B．It could write essays about varieties of topics. |
| C．It could be used to design difficult assignments. |
| D．It could urge academics to make improvements. |
| A．It is welcomed by academics. |
| B．It may cause scientific misconduct. |
| C．It is basically useless for scientific research. |
| D．It works greatly to the advantage of education. |
| A．ChatGPT Is Fun, But Not an Author |
| B．ChatGPT Has Become a Cultural Sensation |
| C．ChatGPT Will Change Our Way of Education |
| D．ChatGPT Plays an Important Role in Science |
【推荐3】Scientists Kirsty Graham and Catherine Hobaiter have spent hundreds of hours interpreting the gestures of humans’ closest relatives. In a recently published paper, Graham and Hobaiter provide convincing evidence that humans can make a good guess of the meanings of great ape (猿) gestures.
In the study, 17,000 participants were shown 20 short videos of apes making gestures and asked to decide which of four possible answers described each gesture’s meaning. If people had no idea what the apes were doing, they would be right 25 percent of the time by chance. But when watching videos of wild apes raising an arm or striking various poses, they understood the animals’ language far more often than would be expected by chance. The average score was slightly above 50 percent, a statistically strong result, given the study’s size. The finding suggests that humans still have some grasp of this ancestral vocabulary.
Why humans may understand the ape gestures remains to be discovered. One possibility is that all great apes, including humans, inherit (继承) a common set of gestures. Another is that humans and other great apes share the ability to use body movements as communication tools. A third explanation is that the similarity in body shape among humans and other great apes, combined with humans’ cognitive (认知的) abilities, makes it easy for people to infer meaning from ape movements.
The study itself still has its own value as a teaching tool. Engaging so many people with this research has benefits beyond science. It makes us understand that we are so close to our closest relatives. It’s a win for conservation. It’s a win for showing how important it is to keep these guys in our minds, to protect them and to save them.
1. How did the researches tell whether participants can interpret the ape gestures?| A．By interviewing them. | B．By analysing their accuracy rate. |
| C．By comparing their vocabularies. | D．By observing their guessing process. |
| A．It boosts the popularity of the great apes. | B．It encourages people to get close to nature. |
| C．It promotes the protection of the great apes. | D．It teaches people to use ape gestures as a tool |
| A．Humans Need to Protect the Great Apes. |
| B．Humans Need to Understand the Great Apes. |
| C．Humans Can Use the Ape Gestures to Communicate. |
| D．Humans Can Comprehend the Meaning of the Ape Gestures. |
【推荐1】You don’t need to get in a time-travelling machine to see how technology will reshape our lives,such as the way we shop.Several new technologies that are to change your buying habits already exist.Let’s see what’s in store for your future shopping.
Try it on,virtually (虚拟的).Want to shop online for a new pair of eyeglasses?You don’t need to guess which pair looks best on you — use the eBay Fashion iPhone app (程序) to try a pair of eyewear you’re checking out on a picture of your face.But what if you want to buy something bigger?Thanks to Microsoft Kinect’s motion tracking camera,you can cover clothes on your screen body.You can even choose the background of your virtual fitting room to enrich your shopping experience.
Get a perfect,custom fit.Everyone’s body is shaped differently.To get a perfect fit,you sometimes have to get your clothes changed.But by using 3D scanning technology,all the clothes you buy will fit your body perfectly.Some companies scan your body using high-tech to get the most accurate measurements,so they can make special clothes just for you.
High-tech shopping carts and checkout counters.High-tech shopping carts could,in time,be a common sight in malls and supermarkets.Microsoft Kinect-enabled carts are currently under test.The cart can follow you along the aisles (通道),controlled merely by your movement and your voice.In China,a supermarket chain introduced tablet-equipped carts that guide shoppers around the stores’ aisles.
In the United States,several supermarkets use a device called Scan It that gives buyers the freedom to scan purchases on their own while they shop.While it’s great not having to line up at a checkout counter,we wouldn’t mind it if the store used Toshiba’s new Object Recognition Scanner.The machine identifies a product as soon as it’s placed in front of a camera just by its shape and color,even if it has no bar code.
1. According to paragraph 2,the eBay Fashion iPhone app can .| A．only make pictures of our faces |
| B．help us sell more clothes online |
| C．create us a virtual dressing room |
| D．choose suitable glasses for us |
| A．Object Recognition Scanner. |
| B．The eBay Fashion iPhone app. |
| C．3D scanning technology. |
| D．Microsoft Kinect-enabled carts. |
| A．Checkout counters will disappear from supermarkets in future. |
| B．High-tech shopping carts will be widely used in malls and supermarkets. |
| C．“Scan It” cannot be used by buyers themselves. |
| D．The new technologies are only dreams that are impossible to come true. |
| A．a new time-travelling machine |
| B．the influence of new technologies |
| C．some inventions to change habits |
| D．the ways for future shopping |
What is eBay? The simple answer is that it is a global trading platform where nearly anyone can trade practically anything. People can sell and buy all kinds of products and goods. Including cars, movies and DVDs, sporting goods, travel tickets, musical instruments, clothes and shoes---the list goes on and on.
The idea came from Peter Omidyar, who was born in Paris and moved to Washington when he was still a child, at high school,he became very interested in computer programming and after graduating from Tuft University in 1988, He worked for the next few years as a computer engineer. In his free time he started Bay as a kind of hobby, at first offering the service free by word of mouth. By 1996 there was so much traffic on the website that he had to upgrade and he began charging a fee to members. Joined by a friend, Peter Skill, and in 1998 by his capable CEO, Meg Whitman, he has never lookedback. Even in the great.com crashes of the late 1990s, eBay has gone from strength to strength. It is now one of the ten most visited online shopping websites on the Internet.
EBay sells connections, not goods, putting buyer and seller into contact with each other. All you have to do is to take an e-photo, write a description, fill out a sales form and you are in business; the world is your market place. Of course for each item sold eBay gets a percentage and that is a great deal of money. Every day there are more than sixteen million items listed on eBay and eighty percent of the items are sold.
1. According to the passage, what is eBay? (no more than 6 words)_________________
2. How does eBay make money from its website? (no more than 10 words)
_________________
3. From the underlined sentence “he has never looked back”, what can we learn about Peter? (no more than 11 words)
_________________
4. What do you need to do if you want to start your business on eBay? (no more than 14 words)
_________________
It’s the dead of winter in Shanghai. Delivery man Liu Jia and his colleagues start the day when most of people are still asleep. Working at a distribution point of a shopping website in Shanghai, they promise to deliver products within three hours of an order being placed. “I buy most of my grocery online, especially the heavy items. It’s convenient and cheap compared to the supermarket in my neighborhood,” Customer Chen Hong said. Orders such as these have increased for the New Year, forcing Liu Jia to work around the clock. “The orders are usually rice, laundry detergent（洗涤剂）, tissue paper and snacks, mostly food and articles for everyday use,” Liu Jia said.
According to an industry report, China’s B2C （Business to Customer） online sales are growing at an annual rate of 25 percent. Competition between online giants like Taobao and Jingdong is now fiercer than ever. “The essence of online shopping is that customers can buy products easily. So the competition is about: firstly, the range of products; secondly, the depth under each category of products; third, the price and user experience,” Pan Biao, vice president of YHD. com, said. E-commerce is one of China’s fastest growing sectors. It’s changed people’s buying habits, and even their living habits. And it’s had a huge impact on the retail industry. To make online shopping more convenient, major sites are investing heavily to build payment systems
and logistics（物流）networks.
On average, a retailer now can deliver goods to the majority of cities within 3 days, and to towns and more remote areas in the country within a week. “Competition will produce a number of good companies, making better products and services that customers need. In the field of E-commerce, we are leading the world in terms of products, services and industry development,” Liu Yinbin, associate professor with Dept of Information Management, Shanghai University, said. Experts also say customers are increasingly making their online purchases from mobile devices, opening up vast new opportunities and competition for retailers.
1. All of the following about Liu Jia are true EXCEPT that ________.
| A．he works as an online store owner in Shanghai |
| B．he has to work around the clock to deliver so many products |
| C．he starts working when most of people are still asleep |
| D．he must deliver products within three hours of an order being placed |
| A．way | B．advantage |
| C．result | D．influence |
| A．Chen Hong buys most of her electronic products online. |
| B．Pan Biao encourages retailers to open up new chances. |
| C．China’s B2C online sales are growing at a rate of 25 percent. |
| D．Liu Yinbin thinks competition will help make better products and services. |
| A．Customers like buying mobile devices. |
| B．Online shopping increases rapidly for Chinese New Year. |
| C．Most customers buy food and articles for everyday use. |
| D．Taobao and Jingdong are competing fiercely. |
【推荐1】Winners Club
You choose to be a winner!
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It’s a club with impressive features for teenagers:
·No account keeping fees!
You’re no millionaire so we don’t expect you to pay large fees. In fact, there are no account keeping or transaction fees!
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You want your money to grow. The Winners Club has a good rate of interest which gets even better if you make at least two deposits without taking them out in a month.
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Teenagers are busy - we get that. You may never need to come to a bank at all. With the Winners Club you can choose to use handy tellers and to bank from home using the phone and the Internet... You can have money directly deposited into your Winners Club account. This could be your pocket money or your pay from your part-time job!
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Along with your regular report, you will receive a FREE magazine full of good ideas to make even more of your money. There are also fantastic offers and competitions only for Winners Club members. The Winners Club is a great choice for teenagers. And it is so easy to join. Simply fill in an application form. You will have to get permission from your parent or guardian (so we can organize that cool key-card) but it is easy. We can’t want to hear from you. It’s the best way to choose to be a winner!
1. The Winners Club is a bank account intended for ______.| A．parents | B．teenagers | C．winner | D．adults |
| A．Special gifts are ready for parents. | B．The bank opens only on work days. |
| C．Services are convenient for its members. | D．Fees are necessary for the account keeping. |
| A．encourage spending. | B．are free to all teenagers. |
| C．are full of adventure stories. | D．help to make more of your money. |
| A．To set up a club. | B．To provide part-time jobs. |
| C．To organize key-card. | D．To introduce a new banking service. |
【推荐2】BEIJING — The Chinese economy has shown positive signs of stabilizing (稳定), but it’s hard to judge what it will be next year, governor of China’s central bank said on Thursday.
Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, made the remarks on a panel discussion with delegates from the financial field to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which opened here on Thursday morning.
China’s economic momentum (推进力) will depend on not only domestic conditions, but also changes brought by the global financial crisis, said Zhou, who is also a CPC delegate to the national congress.
“It has become increasingly clear that the Chinese economy is now moving towards a better direction,” he said.
Due to the impact of the debt crisis in Europe, China’s economy began slowing this year. The Chinese economy expanded only 7. 4 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2012, marking a downturn for seven straight quarters, the National Bureau of Statistics of China said.
As the government adopted a series of fiscal (财政的) and monetary measures and speeded up the approvals of investment projects to spur the slowing economy, the domestic economy has stabilized since September with better indicators, Zhou said.
He said it’s hard to judge how the global financial crisis will continue to affect the Chinese economy because the spreading of the European debt crisis and the so-called fiscal cliff problem in the United States have increased uncertainties of the world economy.
“We need to monitor the effect on our economy of the monetary, easing policies launched recently by the United States and the European Union,” he said.
China is likely to maintain the policy continuity to some extent in 2013, but will leave enough room to make the policy targeted and flexible.
1. What is the attitude of Zhou Xiaochuan towards the Chinese economy at present?| A．Doubtful. | B．Negative. | C．Optimistic. | D．Unknown. |
| A．cause | B．expand | C．decrease. | D．encourage. |
| A．Global financial crisis. |
| B．The debt crisis in Europe. |
| C．Fiscal cliff problem in the US. |
| D．The Chinese economy policy. |
| A．The People’s Bank of China published the economic statistics of China. |
| B．The Chinese economy policy will have a chance of flexibility in 2013. |
| C．The world economy is uncertain. |
| D．The global financial crisis has a great effect on the Chinese economy. |
【推荐3】If a stranger offered you money to keep a suitcase in your spare room, would you accept? How about the other way round: if you had too many belongings, would you consider trusting someone you met online with their safekeeping (保管)? Anthony Paine believed enough of us would answer “yes” to these questions to launch (发起) his own startup (新兴公司), Stash bee. His business links people with space to those who need it.
And it’s just one player in the booming “sharing economy”. All their business models work around one simple word: trust. So, how does Stash bee measure up (合格)? BBC journalist Dougal Shaw decided to try it out for himself. He had some odds and ends to store while decorating his house, and met a host through the site who could keep them for 475 RMB for two months. All relatively smooth and painless.
Stashbee agree that dealing with security concerns is important, but say business success depends more on people overcoming a distrust of strangers we’ve been taught since childhood. They aren’t alone. Companies such as Costockage, Roost and Spacer all run similar storage businesses, and are all relying on a change in consumer attitudes.
Would you try it out? It’s a question of trust.
1. The author put forward two questions at the beginning of the text to________.| A．expect readers to answer them | B．carry out a survey among readers |
| C．start a conversation among readers | D．draw readers attention to the topic |
| A．Experiencing in person. | B．Doing a survey online. |
| C．Analyzing some data. | D．Exchanging his belongings. |
| A．Trust is not well built in childhood education. |
| B．The new startup isn’t concerned about security. |
| C．No company follows the business model of Stashbee. |
| D．Consumer attitudes have changed greatly over time. |
