【推荐1】Honeybees rely heavily on flower patterns not just colors when searching for food, new research shows.

A team led by the University of Exeter tested bee behaviour and built bee’s-eye-view simulations (模拟装置) to work out how they see flowers.

Honeybees have low resolution vision, so they can only see a flower’s pattern clearly when they are within few centimeters. However, the new’ study shows bees can very effectively distinguish between different flowers by using a combination of colour and pattern.

In a series of tests, bees rarely ignored pattern, suggesting colour alone does not lead them to flowers. This may help to explain why some colours that are visible to bees are rarely produced by flowers in nature.

“We studied a large amount of data on plants and bee behaviour,” said Professor Natalie Hempel, from Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour. “By training and testing bees using man-made patterns of shape and colour, we found they relied flexibly on their ability to see both of these elements. Showing how insects see colour and learn colour patterns is important to understand how pollinators (传粉者) may, or may not, create evolutionary ‘pressures’ on the colours and patterns that flowers have evolved (进化). Our findings suggest that flowers don’t need to evolve too many different flower colours, because they can use patterns to vary their displays so bees can tell them apart from other flowers.”

One typical feature identified in the study is that the outside edges of flowers usually contrast strongly with the plant’s leaves while the centre of the flower does not have such a strong contrast with the leaf colour. This could help bees quickly identify colour differences and find their way to flowers.

While flowers may be beautiful to humans, Professor Hempel stressed that understanding more about bees and the threats they face meant we need to see the world “through the eyes of a bee and the mind of a bee.”

1. What does the new research focus on?

A．The source of bees’ food supply.	B．The evolution of bees’ behavior.
C．The effect of bees’ poor eyesight.	D．The way of bees finding flowers.

2. What aspect of research into bees did Hempel highlight?

A．Research data.	B．Research methods.
C．Research objects.	D．Research frequency.

3. According to the passage, which statement is true?

A．Bees an see a flower’s pattern clearly from a distance.

B．After some training, bees can identify both colors and shapes.

C．Flowers try to produce colors visible to bees.

D．Professor Hempel stressed we need to see the world with a bee’s eyes.

4. What does Hempel think of flowers trying to evolve more colours?

A．It’s not a must.	B．It’s a pressing need.
C．It’s beyond belief.	D．It’s a temporary solution.

5. What’s paragraph 6 mainly about?

A．An explanation of the research intention.

B．Dramatic changes in the research strategy.

C．Conflict between different research outcomes.

D．Supporting evidence for the research findings.

【推荐2】Eat less and exercise more — it has long been a magic word for reducing extra weight. But now it seems that all the hard work may have been useless.

Scientists say there are ten other reasons why people just keep getting bigger. They say that sleeping habits, central heating, medicines and even some pollutants can play a role in weight gain.

Traditionally, people have focused on diet and exercise to solve the problem. However, the scientists from top US and Canadian universities say that other things must be considered.

Less sleep could be partly the reason. In recent years, the average night’s sleep has dropped from nine hours to just seven. Sleep shortage changes levels of the hormones (激素) that control food intake and body fat and increase hunger and appetite. If it is too hot or too cold, we burn calories to cool down or heat up. But if the temperature is just right, the calories may be turned into body fat instead.

Those who take medicine to control their blood pressure can often put on weight. Similarly, studies have shown that going on taking the pill can add to a woman’s weight.

The nature of a mother may also be the reason, with our body shape partly inherited (经遗传获得). The overweight are also more likely to look for partners of a similar size. And their children are more likely to be overweight.

And the use of pollutants is on the rise, say the researchers. The man-made chemicals can lead to weight gain.

Your mother’s age and your weight at birth are also important, with older women more likely to have overweight children and underweight babies having a bigger chance of being overweight in later life.

We also tend to put on weight as we get older. Giving up smoking can also help pile on the pounds.

The scientists from Yale, Cornell and Johns Hopkins University said there was some evidence supporting poor diet and lack of exercise as the main causes of gaining weight.

1. Which is commonly thought to be effective in losing weight?

A．To keep away from pollutants.	B．To take pills and avoid fatty food.
C．To sleep less to burn more calories.	D．To have less food and take more exercise.

2. Which of the following doesn’t lead to an overweight problem?

A．Regular and enough sleep.	B．Taking medicine to control blood pressure.
C．Not enough physical exercise.	D．Harmful man-made chemicals.

3. Which of the following statements would the author agree to?

A．Less sleep leads you to take in more food.

B．Unpleasant weather helps you to put on weight.

C．Overweight parents are not likely to have fat children.

D．Medicine for blood pressure helps you lose weight.

4. What would a woman prefer to do to have healthy children?

A．To have only one child.	B．To marry at an older age.
C．To marry a strong husband.	D．To have children at a younger age.

【推荐3】What we know of pre­birth training makes all this attempt made by a mother to influence the character of her unborn child by studying poetry, art, or mathematics during pregnancy seem totally impossible. How could such extremely complex influences pass from the mother to the child？There is no connection between their nervous systems. Even the blood vessels of mother and child do not join directly. An emotional shock to the mother will affect her child, because it changes the activity of her glands(腺) and the chemistry of her blood. Any chemical change in the mother's blood will affect the child for better or worse. But we cannot see how a looking for mathematics or poetic genius can be dissolved(溶解) in blood and produce a similar liking or genius in the child.

In our discussion of instincts(本能) we saw that there was reason to believe that whatever we inherit(继承) must be of some very simple sort rather than any complicated or very definite kind of behavior. It is certain that no one inherits a knowledge of mathematics. It may be, however, that children inherit more or less of a rather general ability that we may call intelligence. If very intelligent children become deeply interested in mathematics, they will probably make a success of that study.

As for musical ability, it may be that what is inherited is an especially sensitive ear, a special structure of the hands or the vocal(发声的) organs connections between nerves and muscles. If these factors are all organized around music, the child may become a musician. The same factors, in other circumstance, might be organized about some other center of interest.

The rich emotional equipment might find expression in poetry. The capable fingers might develop skill in surgery. It is not the knowledge of music that is inherited, then nor even the love of it, but a certain bodily structure that makes it comparatively easy to acquire musical knowledge and skill. Whether that ability shall be directed toward music or some other fields may be decided entirely by forces in the environment in which a child grows up.

1. What can we learn from the first paragraph？

A．A mother can't help her child become a talented poet just by studying poems during pregnancy.

B．A pregnant mother needn't have pre­birth training because of no nervous connection with her child.

C．Mothers' pre­birth training is totally unlikely to influence the character of unborn children.

D．An emotional shock to the mother has little effect on her unborn child for their unconnected vessels.

2. It can be concluded from the passage that a child may not inherit from mother.

A．sensitive ears

B．capable fingers

C．a knowledge of maths

D．intelligence

3. Which of the following can be the best title of the passage？

A．Inherited Talents

B．Role of the Environment

C．An Unborn Child

D．Role of Inheritance

【推荐1】In the space of just two years, the app Douyin, created by Beijing-based company ByteDance, has gathered more than half a billion users—around 40%of them outside China—who share short videos of themselves lip-syncing( 假唱), cooking, dancing or just being silly. What sets ByteDance apart is its success in the social media category, which is controlled by Facebook, Twitter and Snap—all Western companies.

ByteDance calls itself an artificial intelligence company. It uses machine learning and algorithms ( 算法) to figure out what people like most and give them more of what they want to see. On Douyin, people can edit and beautify 15-second videos before posting them online. The app has even made a phrase to describe people glued to their customized feeds: “shua Douyin” or “scrolling through Douyin”. Last year, the company released TikTok, the overseas version of Douyin. ByteDance’s growing video empire has made it the world’s fifth biggest app maker. ByteDance says TikTok and Douyin together have more than 500 million monthly active users.

Investors like ByteDance because its hundreds of millions of users attract a lot of advertising money. The video apps are lucrative because they attract a lot of users in their teens and 20s, who are more generous with the money. ByteDance also makes money through income sharing deals. People on TikTok, for example, can buy digital coins to give to other people on the app—like throwing money in a performer’s tip jar. ByteDance takes a cut of those earnings.

ByteDance’s founder and CEO is Zhang Yiming, a 35-year-old former Microsoft employee. People who have worked with Zhang describe him as someone who thinks deeply about technology and spends much of his free time writing code.

Like Facebook and Twitter, ByteDance is also battling fake news and inappropriate content. ByteDance promises to add thousands more employees to review content on Douyin.

1. What makes ByteDance so special?

A．It is the biggest artificial intelligence company on the earth.

B．Its app challenges similar companies’ rule in Western world.

C．It invented the social media app initially in the world.

D．It has controlled Facebook, Twitter and Snap.

2. Why is Douyin so popular?

A．It is a new generation hi-tech product.

B．It has both home and overseas version.

C．It meets the demand of people individually.

D．It is easy and totally free to operate online.

3. How does Byte Dance make a profit?

A．By charging the users.

B．By selling its artificial intelligence.

C．By forcing the users to donate.

D．By charging the advertisement.

4. What’s the meaning of the underlined word “lucrative” in Paragraph 3?

A．expensive	B．profitable
C．popular	D．creative

【推荐2】Scientific experiments can sometimes go wrong and when they do, the results may range from the disastrous to the troubling. One such experiment took place in South America about fifty years ago. Whether its final results will cause serious damage or nothing more than a small trouble still remains to be seen.

The story began in 1956 when an American scientist working in Brazil decided to solve the problem of increasing the productivity of that country’s bees. He imported a very active type of African bee from Tanzania and mated (交配) it with the more easygoing native variety to produce a new kind of bees. The new bees worked harder and produced twice as much honey. It seemed that Professor Kerr, for that was the scientist’s name, had a total success on his hands.

Then things began to go wrong. For some reason as yet unseen, but perhaps as a result of something in their environment, the new bees began to develop extremely attacking personalities. They became bad-tempered and easy to be angry, attacked the native bees and drove them from their living places.

But worse was to follow. Having taken over the countryside, the new bees, with their dangerous stings (刺), began to attack its neighbours—cats, dogs, horses, chickens and finally man himself. A long period of terror began that has so far killed a great number of animals and about 150 human beings.

This would have been bad enough if the bees had stayed in Brazil. But now they are on the move, heading northwards in countless millions towards Central and North America, and moving at the alarming speed of 200 miles a year. The countries that lie in their path are naturally worried because it looks as if nothing can be done to stop them.

1. The results of the South American experiment ________．

A．have caused no trouble

B．have proved to be valuable

C．are not important

D．are not yet certain

2. What was the purpose of the experiment mentioned in this passage?

A．To make Brazilian bees more easygoing.

B．To increase the amount of honey in Brazil.

C．To increase the number of bees in Brazil.

D．To make African bees less active.

3. Which of the following may be the cause of the new bees’ attacking personalities?

A．Their production of honey.

B．Their hard work.

C．Their bad temper.

D．Their living environment.

4. What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A．The bees may bring about trouble in more countries.

B．The bees have been driven to Central and North America.

C．The bees must be stopped from moving north.

D．The bees prefer to live in Brazil.

【推荐3】For some Americans, summertime means visiting the beaches or national parks. For others, it means attending baseball games. And for many, it means cooking, eating, and generally enjoying American barbecue. Barbecue, or BBQ for short, is a style of cooking meat at a low temperature for a long time.

But, not all American barbecue is the same. Mike Sargent recently drove almost 2,500 kilometers from Texas to Washington, D. C., to compete in the National Capital Barbecue Battle. As a Texan, Sargent says his home state makes the best barbecue. But he adds, “The style of barbecue going across the nation is just totally different. And it’s interesting to see, you know, because it’s the culture on what people were raised on.”

Texas is part of America’s so-called “Barbecue Belt.” The area stretches from Texas to the East Coast. Many people divide it into four main styles of American barbecue: Carolina-style, Memphis style, Kansas City-style and Texas-style. Each is named after the state or city where the style was formed.

But American barbecue is not actually that straightforward. Robert F Moss is a barbecue expert and historian. He wrote the book Barbecue. Moss says American barbecue is much more than just the four main styles. He says many areas within the Barbecue Belt have their own styles and flavors. The state of Alabama, for example, has its own special white-colored barbecue sauce. And California, a state far from the Barbecue Belt, has its own barbecue style called Santa Maria.

David Robbins is with Old Town Smokers, a restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia. He says that, for people who come from places where barbecue is popular, there is a lot of regional (地域的) pride. “Usually not because it’s the favorite taste, it’s because it’s the thing they grew up with.”

1. Mike Sargent thinks the difference in barbecue style is interesting because______.

A．it explains why Texas has the best barbecue

B．it makes the barbecue battle more exciting

C．it adds color and fun to summertime

D．it reflects different local food cultures

2. What is the main idea of paragraph 4?

A．There is great diversity in American barbecue style.

B．The concept of “Barbecue Belt” is totally wrong.

C．Robert F. Moss is an expert on American barbecue.

D．The best barbecue is outside the “Barbecue Belt”.

3. What does David Robbins suggest by mentioning “regional pride” in paragraph 5?

A．Grown-ups tend to take more pride in the local barbecue.

B．What matters most about barbecue is usually how it tastes.

C．Barbecue carries people’s love for their hometown.

D．It would be a shame if one had to grow up without barbecue.