Summer is a great time to hit the beach, but a few East Coast beach goers have recently had their fun in the sun turned into a nightmare. In July alone, there have been at least five known shark attacks at Carolina beaches. Although shark attacks are actually quite rare, these animals still inspire fear in ocean waters.
Skip feeding time.
You don't need to dump shark repellent（驱鲨剂）into the sea when you swim, but it helps to be less attractive as a target. Since sharks tend to attack individuals, swim or surf in groups. Don't wear brightly colored or high-contrast swimwear that is attractive to sharks, and leave the shiny jewelry at home in case of being mistaken for the scales（鳞片）of a fish.
Fight back.
When a shark wants to eat you, you'll know in advance: It will hunch its back, lower its fins, and rush at you in a zigzag pattern. Use your dive knife or anything else you' re packing to discourage it.
| A．Don't act like dinner. |
| B．Don't go into the water individually. |
| C．Also watch your movement in the water. |
| D．Nevertheless, the following three aspects could help. |
| E．If you have a surfboard or bodyboard, use it as a shield. |
| F．If you actually get trapped, avoid irregular movements and splashing. |
| G．The time of a day has always been a factor in a possible shark attack on humans. |
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【推荐1】A rainforest is an area covered by tall trees with the total high rainfall spreading（扩大） quite equally through the year and the temperature rarely falling below 16°C. Rainforests have a great influence on the world environment because they can take in heat from the sun and adjust the climate.
Without the forest cover, these areas would reflect（反射）more heat into the atmosphere, warming the rest of the world. Losing the rainforests may also influence wind and rainfall patterns，potentially（潜 在地） causing certain natural disasters all over the world.
In the past hundred years, humans have begun destroying rainforests in search of three major resources ： land for crops, wood for paper and other products, land for raising farm animals. This action affects the environment as a whole. For example, a lot of carbon dioxide in the air comes from burning the rainforests. People obviously have a need for the resources we gain from cutting trees but we will suffer much more than we will benefit.
There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, when people cut down trees, generally they can only use the land for a year or two. Secondly, cutting large sections of rainforests may provide a good supply of wood right now, but in the long run it actually reduces the world’s wood supply. Rainforests are often called the world's drugstore. More than 25% of the medicines we use today come from plants in rainforests. However, fewer than 1% of rainforest plants have been examined for their medical value. It is extremely likely that our best chance to cure diseases lies somewhere in the world’s shrinking（减 少）rainforests.
1. Rainforests can help to adjust the climate because they______.| A．reflect more heat into the atmosphere |
| B．bring about high rainfall throughout the world |
| C．rarely cause the temperature to drop lower than 16°C |
| D．absorb（吸收） the heat from the sun, reducing the effect of heat from the sun on the earth |
| A．We will lose much more than we can gain. | B．Humans have begun destroying rainforests. |
| C．People have a strong desire for resources. | D．Much carbon dioxide （二氧化碳）comes from burning rainforests. |
| A．we can get enough resources without rainforests |
| B．there is great medicine potential in rainforests |
| C．we will grow fewer kinds of crops in the gained land |
| D．the level of annual rainfall affects wind patterns |
| A．How to Save Rainforests? | B．How to Protect Nature? |
| C．Rainforests and the Environment. | D．Rainforests and Medical Development. |
【推荐2】There was great excitement on the planet of Venus( 金 星 ) this week. For the first time Venusian scientists managed to land a satellite on the planet Earth, and it has been sending back signals as well as photographs.
The satellite was directed into an area known as Manhattan. Because of excellent weather conditions and extremely strong signals, Venusian scientists were able to get valuable information about the possibility of a manned flying saucer( 飞碟) landing on Earth. A press conference was held at the Venus Institute of Technology.
"We have come to the conclusion, based on last week’s satellite landing, "Prof. Zog said, that there is no life on Earth. "
“How do you know this?" the science reporter of the Venus Evening News asked.
"For one thing, Earth’s surface in the area of Manhattan is composed of solid concrete and nothing can grow there. For another, the atmosphere is filled with carbon monoxide and other deadly gases and nobody could possibly breathe this air and survive.”
“Are there any other sources of danger that you have discovered in your studies?”
“Take a look at this photo. You see this dark black cloud staying over the surface of Earth? We don' t know what it is made of, but it could give us a lot of trouble and we shall have to make further tests before we send a Venus Being there.”
"Over here you will notice what seems to be a river, but the satellite findings indicate it is polluted and the water is unfit to drink.”
“Sir, what are all those tiny black spots on the photographs?”
“We’re not certain. They seem to be metal particles that move along certain paths. They give gases, make noise and keep crashing into each other.”
“Prof. Zog, why are we spending billions and billions of Zilches to land a flying saucer on Earth when there is no life there?"
“Because if we Venusians can learn to breathe in the Earth atmosphere, then we can live anywhere.”
1. What tone did the author use when writing the text?| A．Serious | B．Aggressive | C．Humorous | D．Frustrating |
| A．Over population. | B．Global warming. | C．Damaged forests. | D．Heavy traffic |
| A．To tell us a dream of Venusian scientists. |
| B．To discover the secret of life on other planets. |
| C．To persuade people to try living on the earth. |
| D．To remind people on the earth of some crises.(危机). |
Birgitta and Allan live in Sweden, a country where everyone is expected to lead an orderly life according to rules laid down by the government, which also provides high level of care for its people. This level of care costs money.
People in Sweden pay taxes on everything, so aren’t surprised to find that owning a dog means yet more taxes. Some people are paying as much as 500 Swedish kronor in taxes a year for the right to keep their dog, money that is spent by the government on dog hospitals and sometimes medical treatment for a dog that falls ill. However, most such treatment is expensive, so owners often decided to pay health and even life insurance(保险) for their dog.
In Sweden dog owners must pay for any damage(损坏) their dog does. A Swedish Kennel Club official explains what this means: if your dog runs out on the road and gets hit by a passing car you, as the owner, have to pay for any damage done to the car, even if your dog has been killed in the accident.
1. Birgitta pays taxes for Allan because ____________.
| A．he is her dog | B．he is her child |
| C．he follows her everywhere | D．he often falls ill |
| A．The owner of the car | B．The owner of the dog |
| C．The insurance company (公司) | D．The government |
| A．dogs are welcome in public places |
| B．keeping dogs means asking for trouble |
| C．many car accidents are caused by dogs |
| D．people care much about dogs |
【推荐1】The idea that humans are facing a global extinction of experience of nature is popular, but is it true? To give more light on this issue, the scientists measured how the average distance from an individual’s home to the nearest area with low human impact changed in the last decade.
The scientists found that humans currently live 9.7 kilometers away from a natural area on average, which is 7% further away than in the year 2000. Europe and East Asia have the highest average distance to natural areas, such as 22 kilometers in Germany and 16 kilometers in France. The scientists also showed that tree cover within cities has declined worldwide since 2000, suggesting that the possibility for the urban population to access green spaces is reducing as well.
The scientists also systematically searched for scientific publications assessing a trend in experiences of nature, finding that the number of studies assessing these trends was very low (the number is 18), most of which are about the US, Europe and Japan. This shows that more studies should investigate the claim about the extinction of nature experience, especially in Africa and Latin America. The 18 studies found by the scientists show a decline in visits to nature parks in the US and Japan, a decrease in camping activities in the US, and a decrease in the number of flower species observed by Japanese children. They also find signs of decline in the use of natural elements in novels, songs and cartoons.
Despite these examples of decline, other interactions are increasing. Watching wildlife documentaries or interacting with wild animals in videogames is, for example, more common than a few years ago. “New ways of digitally interacting with nature have certainly emerged or increased in recent years,” says Dr Gladys Barragan-Jason. “But several former studies show that these vicarious interactions have a lesser effect on our sense of connection with nature than exposure to nature, such as visiting nature parks.”
1. How does the author mainly develop the text?| A．By giving examples and making contrast. |
| B．By listing data and classifying them. |
| C．By giving examples and definitions. |
| D．By analyzing data and making comparison. |
| A．the distance between humans and nature |
| B．the connection between humans and wild animals |
| C．reading novels, singing songs and watching cartoons |
| D．tree cover, visits to nature parks and nature presence in the arts |
| A．Positive. | B．Novel. | C．Indirect. | D．Complex. |
| A．Global Extinction of Green Spaces. | B．Decline in Experiences of Nature. |
| C．The Lost Joy in the Natural World. | D．A New Way of Connecting With Nature. |
【推荐2】Early in 2018, a mysterious press release landed in the inboxes of journalists. Black and white, stylized like the “game over” screen from a computer game, it read: “CREATIVITY IS NOT ONLY FOR HUMANS.” The makers were a French art group known as Obvious, and they announced that their artificial intelligence (AI) had managed to “create” art. It was the first of a stream of publicity that announced the auction of a novel portrait. Christie’s had been expecting less than $10,000. In the end, it fetched $430,000.
The portrait was the first piece of AI art to have been sold at auction. Panicked questions began to sound throughout Internet media: Was this art? Who is the artist and the owner here? Are machines now creative too?
All valid questions — but premature. While the event laid bare how confused the public is concerning AI and what it is capable of, today’s technology is nowhere near as advanced as Obvious is implying it is.
In fact, the portrait was just one of numerous similar artworks the AI could produce. It was the team behind Obvious that chose this one because, for whatever reason, they believed it was appropriate. And they intervened at other steps in the process, too. They first programmed the AI, and then they chose 15,000 existing portraits to train it. Signing the painting with a algorithm was a clever bit of marketing, but in no sense did the AI produce the painting on its own. At least, it is not what is called artificial general intelligence-the kind of machine we see in science-fiction movies which is sentient, goal-driven and thinks for itself.
Dozens of artists are using the same techniques as Obvious, but none of the artists are worried about being replaced. They build the machine and work with it every day. They know how limited it is. What interests them is co-creation: the way an AI can allow for them to go beyond their native abilities.
Artists also laugh at the idea that AI is creative. It certainly creates things, sometimes in new and effective ways, but it does so with no intention and with no sense of what is relevant. It is the human who interprets and carefully examines its output. “You make a fire and it produces interesting shapes, but in the end the fire is not creative. AI is a glorified campfire,” said one of the pioneers of using AI in art.
Rather than ask whether a machine can be creative, perhaps we should ask: What would it take for us to believe in the creativity of a machine? The more the machines achieve, the more we understand human creativity. “In the end, competition always forces us to get better,” said the pioneer, “to see what still makes us special as humans.”
1. What does the author think of the panicked questions that were being asked by Internet media?| A．They didn’t make any sense. | B．They were too general to be helpful. |
| C．They were too complicated to answer. | D．They might be meaningful in the future. |
| A．The auction house overestimated the worth of the portrait that was later sold at auction. |
| B．Some artists have long adopted AI technology to push the limits of their native abilities. |
| C．Obvious will soon produce an AI which is sentient, goal-driven and can think for itself. |
| D．Obvious chose just one artwork from among its 15,000 existing portraits to represent its first AI-created piece. |
| A．a glorified campfire is creative and so is AI |
| B．it is the human who makes a fire that is creative |
| C．AI is nowhere near creative because it has no intention when “creating” |
| D．we have to interpret and carefully examine AI’s output to decide whether it is creative or not |
| A．Whether machines can be creative remains to be seen. |
| B．Competition between machines and humans does good to both. |
| C．Creativity is exactly what makes humans different from machines. |
| D．Advancements of AI in art will help us to better understand human creativity. |
【推荐3】Train yourself, save a life
On Friday afternoon, a male passenger with a heart attack on Beijing’s Line 2 subway died about one hour later. That’s the third heart attack death in 10 days that aroused public attention, with the other two being actor Godfrey Gao and Xu Yong, a senior journalist at Xinhua News Agency.
They are only three of the 550,000 people in China who suffer from sudden cardiac (心脏的) shock every year, of which only about I percent are saved. Actually, many more of these victims could have been saved if Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR心肺复苏) are popularized. When someone suffers a heart attack and falls unconscious, people nearby have a good chance of saving him with CPR.
CPR is really not so hard to learn. All one needs is to learn how to observe and decide if a person is unconscious, where to press on the patients chest, and how to blow air through the mouth and into the lungs. Besides that, public facilities such as airports, high-speed railway stations, and big subway stations could install the Automatic External Defibrillator (AED自动体外除颤器), a device that proves effective and easy to use in saving the lives of people suffering heart attacks. All one needs is to pick it up and follow the instructions.
Unfortunately, neither of the two is popular in China. According to data, the total number of AEDs in China is slightly higher than 2,000, of which most are located in metropolises, such as Beijing and Shanghai. On CPR, less than I percent of adults can master the skill, while many have never heard of it.
Both need improvements to save those 550,000 lives every year. The cost of installing AEDs might be high, and it does take time and resources to train more people in CPR, but it is really worth the effort because every life counts and should be saved in an emergency. It’s time to train everyone and equip more public facilities to save more lives.
1. What’s the major function of the first paragraph?| A．To introduce the background of a story. |
| B．To lead in the topic of the passage. |
| C．To describe a social phenomenon. |
| D．To arouse the reader’s interest. |
| A．CPR is hard to learn |
| B．installing an aed does not cost much |
| C．CPR and AEDs are paid little attention to |
| D．more people suffer from sudden cardiac shock now |
| A．Big cities. | B．Public places. |
| C．Hospitals. | D．Subway stations. |
| A．Some knowledge about CPR. |
| B．More examples of the victims of sudden death. |
| C．The measures to be taken to solve the problem. |
| D．More reasons why learning CPR and Installing AEDs is necessary. |
