【推荐3】There is a saying, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (奉承).” This may be true, but in the art world fakes are unaccepted, to say the least. _______, selling fake art can be a criminal offense. When a painting is discovered that might have been painted by one of the great masters, it causes a sensation in the art world. However, for every great work, there are many fakes. There are also _______ imitations, paintings that were created in the style of a master painter and later _______ attributed to the master himself. Scientists are working on new technology that may aid art _______ in answering the question: Masterpiece or masterful imitation?

Most master painters have had their works imitated over the years, and even the experts have been _______ by some of these imitations. The National Gallery of Scotland once reportedly had an exhibit of five paintings of the same subject, all attributed to Leonardo. It turned out that at least three of the works were _______. Today, by some estimates, 15 percent of the art sold at auction houses may not be authentic.

Art historians, with their knowledge of the works of a particular artist, are often asked to authenticate art. _______ their knowledge of the subject, these scholars use science and technology to _______ if a work of art was created by a particular artist. The materials used in the painting are often _______ and X-rayed. Now, art historians may have another technological tool to help their process.

Scientists have developed a new authentications technique that analyzes and classifies paintings based on a digital analysis of the artist’s style. The process works by finding the consistency and ________ in an artist’s work. In an experiment, the model automatically identified the authenticated works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ________ them from five imitations. Stuart Fleming, author of Authenticity in Art, thinks the technology could “revolutionize ________ of many sincere imitations.”

Nonetheless, some art historians are ________ about the new technique. “It’s an interesting idea. But before curators and art historians will jump in and use this, I think a much larger sample of work has to be tested,” said the curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

For now, museum curators and auction houses don’t seem as interested in the technology as the scientists are. There may be a(n) ________ reason for that. “If you spent 80 million dollars to buy a painting, I don’t think you’d be eager to know that it’s a fake,” Farid said. “It’s a dirty little secret that a lot of paintings are not ________.”

【推荐1】Human beings have somehow managed to engineer the night to receive us by filling it with light. This kind of control is no different from the feat ( 壮 举 ) of damming a river. Its benefits come with_________ — called light pollution — whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design. _________ lighting washes out the darkness of night, altering light levels and light rhythms to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have_________. Wherever man-made light spills into the natural world, some aspects of life-migration, reproduction, feeding-is affected.

For most human history, the phrase “light pollution” would have_________. Imagine walking towards London on a moonlit night around 1800, when it was Earth’s most populous city. Nearly a million people lived there, _________ candles, torches and lanterns, as they always had. Only a few houses were lit by gas, and there would be no public gaslights in the streets or squares for another seven years. From a few miles away, you would have been more likely to_________ London than to see its dim collective glow.

We’ve lit up the night as if it were a(n) _________ country. As a matter of fact, among mammals (哺乳动物) alone, the number of species active at night is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet attracting them to it. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being_________ by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms, circling and circling in the thousands until they drop.

It was once thought that light pollution only affected astronomers, who need to see the night sky in all its glorious clarity. Unlike astronomers, most of us may not need a_________ view of the night sky for our work. __________, like most other creatures, we do need darkness. __________ darkness is pointless. It is as essential to maintaining our biological welfare as__________ itself; the price of modifying our internal clockwork means it doesn’t operate as it should, causing various physical discomforts. So fundamental are the regular rhythms of waking and sleep to our being that__________ them is similar to altering our center of gravity.

In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to__________ our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best__________ against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way — the edge of our galaxy — arching overhead.

【推荐2】Teachers and parents usually call attention to the pictures when reading storybooks to preschool children. But a new study suggests that calling attention to print – the words and letters on the page may lead to _________readers.

The two-year study_________children aged 3 to 5 who were divided into two groups.The teachers helped each group to read in two different ways. Over three hundred students were considered to be likely to_________reading problems in future life, and they were_________ in a classroom setting. After reviewing the recorded lessons, the researchers found that those students whose teachers most often_________the print showed clearly higher skills in reading, spelling and understanding.

Professor Shayne Piasta, the study's author, says most teachers would find this method_________because it needs only a small change in the way they teach. They already read storybooks in class. The only_________ in the new method would be increased attention to the print.

Ms.Piasta says if adults can_________children in the stories and get them to pay attention to letters and words, it is certain that they will do better at_________recognition.But few parents and teachers do this in a(n)__________way by starting first with letters, then__________moving to words, sentences and paragraphs.__________,they habitually turn to the attractive pictures first, thus misleading the children.

Teachers and parents can point to a letter and outline its shape with a finger. They can point to a word and__________"This is 'dog'". They can discuss the meaning of the print to find how the words are combined to tell the story. And they can talk about the__________of the print, for example, how words are written from left to right. By__________ training in this way, the teachers will definitely raise the students’ ability to read.