【推荐2】The car was invented just a century ago. You may know all kinds of cars’ names, but many people don’t know who was the inventor of the first car. The first car was invented not by an English man, but by an American. His name was Henry Ford.

Henry was born in a poor family. He was the eldest of the six children. When he was a boy, he became interested in watches and machines. When he was twelve years old, his mother died. Soon he had to work in a machine shop for two dollars and fifty cents a week. In the evenings he repaired watches for another dollar a week. The hard life made him strong and able.

At that time, there was another interest in the life of the young Ford. He wished of making a machine. It could run without horses, so named horseless carriage. He overcame a lot of difficulties and in April 1893, the ‘‘horseless carriage” was invented at last. It was the first car. Later Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company. He was really the first inventor of the car in the world.

1. Who really invented the car first?

A．A Chinese.

B．An Englishman.

C．A Russian.

D．An American.

2. How many dollars did young Ford get every week?

A．2.5 dollars.

B．3.5 dollars.

C．5 dollars.

D．1.5 dollars.

3. From this story we can know the car was invented ________.

A．only one hundred years ago	B．less than one hundred years ago
C．more than one hundred years ago	D．long long ago

4. “horseless carriage” means ________.

A．a carriage with a horse	B．a carriage with one or two horses
C．a carriage without a horse	D．a carriage with a man and without a horse

5. Henry Ford must have ________.

A．five brothers and sisters	B．six brothers and sisters
C．five younger brothers	D．five younger sisters

【推荐3】Although most empty plastic bottles are thrown, there are actually many other ways you can reuse them other than drinking.     1    . Here are some interesting tips to use with empty plastic bottles.

Cut off the biscuits

When making biscuits, did you just realize you didn’t have any tools to cut them? You just need a small or large plastic bottle depending on your needs. First cut the bottle into half.     2    .

Separate eggs

Do you find it challenging to separate eggs?    3    . Break the eggs into a bowl. Remove the lid, press the bottle, put the ends into the egg yolk (蛋黄) and stop the pressure. This way, the egg yolk will be taken into the bottle while the egg white will remain on the plate. In this way, separating eggs isn’t a challenging problem.

    4    

Want to remove flies in your garden safely? Use plastic bottles. Cut the bottle into half and place a sweet syrup (糖浆) at the bottom. Then place the top in the bottom so that the bottle mouth faces down. The fly will be attracted to the smell and fly into the bottle hole. Once in the bottle, the fly will climb through a narrow opening without thinking about how to get out and eventually dies.

Air conditioner

Sometimes, the fan removes hot air and does not cool the room but now we have a solution!     5     Then, place the bottle with ice on the floor for a high fan. Put the fan behind the bottle and the fan will blow the cold air as the bottle with ice causes the temperature to be lower.

A．The trap

B．The harm of flies

C．Pour the water out from the large bottles

D．You can solve this problem with plastic bottles

E．Fill two large bottles with water and turn into ice

F．And then you just take one of two parts to cut the cookies

G．They allow you to recycle creatively for a variety of purposes

【推荐1】For years, the Colorado State Fair has held its fine art competition under little media coverage. But when its judges picked an artificial intelligence-generated work “Théȃtre D’opéra Spatial” as a winner in August, 2022, this event immediately received different comments.

“Théȃtre D’opéra Spatial” is an example of AI-generated content (AIGC), created with a text-to-art generator program. Several other AI-driven art-generating programs have also appeared in 2022, and the variety reflects a wide range of artistic styles. Stable Diffusion, for instance, is focused on western-style artwork, while Baidu’s ERNIE-ViLG produces images influenced by Chinese art. Meanwhile, AIGC can also include articles, videos, and various other media offerings such as voice synthesis, which can be applied in voice navigation for digital maps.

As AIGC becomes increasingly common, it could make content creation more efficient by getting rid of repetitive tasks for creators. For instance, filmmakers have long had to pay money for countless hours of video editing. AIGC may soon make that unnecessary.

Besides increasing efficiency, AIGC could also increase business growth in content creation and demand for personalized digital content. Insight SLICE forecasts that the global digital creation market will on average grow 12% annually between 2020 and 2030. AI has the potential to meet this massive demand at a tenth of the cost.

AIGC can also serve as an educational tool by helping children develop their creativity. StoryDrawer, for instance, is an AI-driven program designed to improve children’s creative thinking. When a child describes an imaginary picture to the system, it then generates an image while providing prompts to inspire the child to expand on the image.

As with every new technology, it’s anybody’s guess how AIGC will develop. But just as past technologies have helped expand art, AIGC is set to put the power of creativity into the hands of more people.

1. Why does the author mention the Colorado State Fair?

A．To advertise the art competition event.	B．To introduce the artificial intelligence painting.
C．To help present the concept of AIGC.	D．To criticize the unfair result of this year’s contest.

2. Which is an advantage of AIGC?

A．Doing all the work of traditional filmmakers.	B．Enriching the variety of art styles.
C．Increasing the demand for digital content.	D．Helping develop children’s creativity.

3. What does the underlined word “prompts” mean in paragraph 5?

A．clues

B．methods

C．images

D．platforms

4. What is the author’s attitude toward the future of AIGC?

A．Hopeful.

B．Worried.

C．Critical.

D．Cautious.

【推荐1】It can be a bit of a puzzle for bird lovers. If you feed birds, will that make them unwilling to search for food elsewhere? Each year, millions of people feed birds, driving a $4 billion industry based on bird food, feeders, etc. Bird feeding is especially popular in northern countries during winter, when cold, stormy weather and minimal daylight reduce the time that birds have for locating natural foods.

Bird feeding has positive effects, such as enhanced body conditions and increased reproductive output of birds. On the negative side, it can facilitate disease transmission and change bird migration. A recent mysterious illness, for example, has been blinding and killing birds in several states.

According to Rivers, a scholar of wildlife ecology, not much is known about whether birds become reliant on the feeders. “The only experiment to test that, using the black-capped chickadee (黑冠山雀), was 30 years ago,” he said. “It found no reduction in apparent survival after the removal of bird feeders that had provided extra food for 25 years, leading to the conclusion that bird feeding did not promote feeder dependency.”

Rivers studied the bird feeder using habits of 67 black-capped chickadees subjected to one of three flight-feather-clipping (翼羽修剪) treatments: heavy clipping, light clipping, or no clipping. The birds were tagged with RFID chips (射频识别芯片), and 21 bird feeders along a 3.2-km riverside zone were filled with sunflower seeds and equipped with chip readers to measure feeder visits by the tagged birds.

It turned out that the feather-clipped chickadees did not increase their rates of visits to the feeders. Instead, the feather-clipped birds actually decreased their feeder use for a couple of weeks, possibly to reduce exposure to being hunted. But after that they used the feeders to the extent similar to the unclipped birds’. The findings suggested that foods in the environment were sufficiently available to allow birds to cut back on feeder use.

“Many people are concerned that if we don’t fill our feeders up before big storms, birds can be in trouble. I don’t think so,” Rivers says. “We’re not going to be harming birds and birds aren’t going to starve just because we don’t fill up our feeders. Besides, this can prevent diseases spreading among them.”

1. What’s the main driving force behind bird feeding in northern countries?

A．The expansion of the related industry.

B．The tough weather conditions for birds.

C．The officials’ appeal for wildlife protection.

D．The reduction in birds’ reproductive output.

2. What can be inferred about bird feeding according to Paragraph 2?

A．It’s a double-edged sword.	B．It makes an unnecessary move.
C．It does more good than harm.	D．It’s challenging but worthwhile.

3. What do the previous experiment and Rivers’ experiment have in common?

A．Both observed the birds for many years.

B．Both proved no feeder dependency of birds.

C．Both cut flight feathers of birds to test them.

D．Both used hi-tech chips to measure birds’ visits to the feeders.

4. What is probably Rivers’ attitude to the removal of bird feeders?

A．Concerned.

B．Negative.

C．Favorable.

D．Indifferent.

【推荐3】A lot of people think Scotland is a part of England, but, as any Scotsman will tell you, it certainly is not. In fact, until the eighteenth century, Scotland was an independent country, with a parliament of its own. The English had tried many times over many centuries to bring Scotland under their rule. They succeeded at last in 1707, and some Scots have never forgiven them.

Scotland is now governed from London, but in some ways it is still a separate nation. It has its own capital city (Edinburgh), its own law, and its own stamps, it even has a language of its own, spoken now by only a few people in the islands.

In some ways Southern Scotland is like England, with his good farmland and low green hills. Central and Northern (the Highlands) have high mountains and deep valleys, fast rivers and cold lakes. These days, of course, there are good roads and railways all through Scotland. Aberdeen, the northeast city where the oil from the North Sea comes to land, is especially easy to reach. But it can still be quite different to travel in the winter when the hills are covered with snow. It always takes a long time to visit the beautiful but far-off islands on the west coast. One reason why Scotland has stayed so different from England is the wildness of the land. It has always been difficult to get around there.

1. From the history of the Great Britain we can know Scotland_____________.

A．had been an independent country by the 19th century

B．had been a dependent country by the 18th century

C．was a separate country before the 18th century

D．was a dependent country before 18th century

2. The first paragraph tells us ______________.

A．the Scots used to fight against the rules from England many times

B．the Scots defeated the English at all the battles

C．the Scots never defeated the English at all the battles

D．it was quite easy for the English to occupy Scotland

3. Scotland has a language of its own, ______________.

A．which is spoken by all the Scots	B．which not many people speak now
C．which is almost the same as English language	D．which the English prevent from being spoken

4. From the third paragraph we can infer ______________.

A．there are no good roads in Scotland because of high mountains

B．there are no railways in Scotland because of deep valleys

C．England has not any rivers and lakes in the center and the north

D．England has good farmland and low green hills