【推荐1】While dogs openly show joy or displeasure through different expressions, judging a cat’s feelings from its face is often hard, even for its owners. Now, researchers from Canada’s University of Guelph declare that cats also express emotions (心情) on their faces — one just has to learn how to interpret them!

For their study, Professors Lee Niel and Georgia Mason recruited (招募) 6300 people from 85 countries. The participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire and watch 20 short cat videos, obtained mostly from YouTube. Each video highlighted just the cat’s face — its eyes, nose, and mouth — and gave no clues to its surroundings or circumstances. The viewers did not have to determine the cat’s exact emotion, but just decide whether it was in a positive state or a negative state.

The researchers, who published their findings in the November 2019 issue of Animal Welfare, found that only 13 percent, or 819 participants, were able to read the cats’ emotions accurately over 75 percent of the time. Further research showed that the so-called “ cat whisperers ” were primarily women. Younger adults also seemed to be able to read the expressions better than older individuals.

“ The fact that women generally scored better than men is consistent with previous research that has shown that women appear to be better at understanding non-verbal displays of emotion, both in humans and dogs, ” said Mason. And the answer to both results lies in the fact that they are gifted in doing these. Surprisingly, being a cat owner did not help study participants, indicating that a strong attachment to the animal did not necessarily mean better understanding of its emotions.

Fortunately, all is not lost for cat owners who are unable to tell their pet’s emotions. The researchers believe the skills are not inborn but learned over time. “ This is important to be able to do because it could help strengthen the bond between owners and cats, and so improve cat care and welfare, ” said Niel.

1. What were participants required to do after watching cat videos?

A．Decide the cat’s emotion state.	B．Judge the cat’s exact emotion.
C．Analyse the cat’s living conditions.	D．Determine the cat’s personality.

2. Who will be the best cat whisperer?

A．An old man.

B．A middle-aged man.

C．A young woman.

D．A cat owner.

3. Why did women perform better than men in the study?

A．Women have more time to spend with pets.	B．Women have a talent for understanding emotions.
C．Women have strong affection for animals.	D．Women have a strong will to understand animals.

4. What’s the researchers’ opinion on becoming a cat whisperer?

A．It can be obtained through studying.	B．It is necessary for those raising pet cats.
C．It is difficult especially for cat owners.	D．It improves the owner’s social bond.

【推荐2】For reasons that are deeply rooted in culture and tradition, men significantly outnumber （比... 多）women in mathematics-based careers. As students progress through the mathematics courses, girls and boys show little difference in ability, effort, or interest in mathematics until adolescent years when course and career choices begin influencing school effort. Then, as social pressure increases and career goals are formed, girls' decisions to reduce effort in the study of mathematics progressively cut them off from many professional careers in the future.

Many girls drop mathematics in high school or in the transition to college. Others drop out later. Women perform virtually as well as men in college mathematics courses, but beyond the bachelor’s degree women drop out of mathematics at   twice the rate of men. Women now enter college nearly as well prepared in mathematics as men, and 46 percent of mathematics baccalaureates （学士学位）go to women. Despite this record, only 35 percent of the master's degrees and 17 percent of the Ph. D degrees in the mathematical sciences are earned by women.

Overall, women receive approximately one third of university degrees in science and engineering. The highest percentages of women are found in those sciences with the least mathematical prerequisite： psychology, biology, and sociology. The lowest percentages of women enter fields requiring the most mathematics, namely, physics, engineering, economics, geo- science ,and chemistry. Evidence from many sources suggest that it is differences in course patterns rather than lack of ability that matter most in limiting women's access to careers in mathematically intensive sciences.

Widely reported studies concerning the high percentage of boys among mathematical prodigies （天才）---those who at age 12 perform at the level of average college students-often convey the impression that gender differences in mathematics are biologically determined. But evidence from the vast majority of students shows almost no difference in performance among male and female students who have taken equal advantage of similar opportunities to study mathematics. Inferences from very exceptional students——child prodigies—mean little about the performance of the general population.

1. Males and females probably have great difference in the learning abilities of in mathematics when they.

A．enter high school	B．acquire   their bachelor’s degree
C．enter college	D．acquire   their master's degree

2. Of the following degrees, the highest percentage of degree earned by women is

A．master’s degree in economics	B．doctor's degree in economics
C．master’s degree in biology	D．doctor's degree in biology

3. We can infer from the high percentage of boys among mathematical prodigies that

A．boys and girls usually lake unequal advantage of opportunities to study mathematics

B．boys are cleverer in mathematics than girls

C．gender differences in mathematics are biologically determined

D．boys work harder than girls

4. Which one doesn't belong to the reasons why men significantly outnumber women in mathematics based careers?

A．Many girls decide to reduce effort in the study of mathematics as social pressure increases.

B．Course pattern is the factor that limits women's access to careers in mathematically intensive sciences.

C．Women's less interest in mathematics limits their access to some careers.

D．More women drop out of mathematics than men beyond the bachelor’s degree.

【推荐3】Sitting down in front of the television with a meal or snack after a long day is a very popular recreational pastime. But is it sloth that keeps us chewing, or something else? Is it possible the experience of watching TV can stimulate our appetite?

According to the Cleveland Clinic, television isn’t so much an appetite stimulant as it is an appetite distraction. When we watch TV, we’re engaged in the program, which means we’re paying less attention to the cues that tell us we’re getting full. Instead of taking note of how we’re eating, we’re engaged in somewhat passive consumption.

In 2015, a study surveying 591 undergraduates at the University of Houston showed that the more students watched, the more they snacked. The study also found evidence that increased television viewing was associated with a “fatalistic” view of healthy food intake and poor nutritional knowledge.

Combining television and snacking also creates a cognitive association in your brain that may prompt you to consider the two activities intertwined. In other words, you might reach for some pizza or chips not because you’re all that hungry, but because you’ve come to identify television with eating. You might even eat more depending on the length of a program. If you’re watching Friends, a half-hour sitcom, you might eat less than if you were watching a super-sized episode of a drama like Mad Men.

That’s not to say the content of a program isn’t influential. In 2013, a study in the journal Appetite looked at a group of 80 subjects, half of whom were told to watch a cooking program and half who were told to watch a nature show. Both groups were presented with equal amounts of chocolate-covered candies, cheese curls, and carrots. Researchers found that viewers of the cooking show tended to eat more chocolate-covered candies than the nature show viewers.

So is snacking while watching television that bad? Like most things, is OK in moderation. Eating meals away from the TV can encourage mindful eating, which directs your attention to the food in front of you. You’ll be able to pick up on satiety cues when you’re not fully focused on your screen. Better yet, you won’t have to struggle to hear your favorites how over all that chewing.

1. How does television affect our appetite?

A．By stimulating our appetite.

B．By distracting our attention on eating.

C．By making us realize the signal of being full.

D．By engaging us in positive food consumption.

2. What does the underlined word “fatalistic” mean?

A．Predetermined.

B．Contemporary.

C．Ambiguous.

D．Controversial.

3. Which of the following TV viewers snack more?

A．Those watching a nature show.	B．Those watching a half-hour sitcom.
C．Those watching a super-sized drama.	D．Those eating snacks away from the TV.

4. What’s the main idea of the text?

A．Watching TV makes you hungrier.	B．TV programs influence your appetite.
C．Watching TV does good to your health.	D．The length of programs relates to snacking.

【推荐2】It’s nothing unusual for people to multitask nowadays. But the ability to do a number of things at the same time could be different between the two sexes.

A team of UK researchers recently compared the performances of 120 women and 120 men in a computer test about switching(转换) between tasks of counting and shape recognition.

Men equalled women when tasks were done one at a time. But when the tasks were mixed up, there was a clear difference. According to the paper published in the journal BMC Psychology, both women and men slowed down and made more mistakes as the switching became more rapid. But men were slower, taking 77 percent longer to answer, while women took 69 percent longer.

To make the experiment more connected to day-to-day life, researchers tried a second test. A group of women and men were given eight minutes to complete a series of everyday tasks, such as finding restaurants on a map, doing simple math problems, answering a phone call, or deciding how they would search for a lost key in a field.

Once again, women performed better than men in the test, especially in the key-searching task.

Where do women get the ability to keep organized under pressure better than men? Researchers believe that it has its origins in evolution(进化). In ancient times, women had to keep an eye on children while cooking meals. Meanwhile, men only needed to focus on hunting.

However, as with all studies, the results don’t necessarily apply to every single person in the world. “We don’t mean that men can’t multitask, or that only women can,” researcher Keith Laws of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, told BBC News. “We are saying that the average woman is better able to organize her time and switch between tasks than the average man.”

1. In the tests, researchers found that ________.

A．women were better at switching between tasks than men

B．women made more mistakes than men when multitasking

C．men were better at counting and shape recognition than women

D．men completed a series of daily tasks more quickly than women

2. What is the main purpose of paragraph 6?

A．To give advice on how to improve the ability to multitask.

B．To show how men and women think and respond otherwise.

C．To compare the roles of men and women in human communities.

D．To explain why men and women perform differently in multitasking.

3. Which of the following would Keith Laws most probably agree with?

A．All women are born to be good at multitasking.

B．Some men are as good at multitasking as women.

C．Men shouldn’t do jobs that call for multitasking skills.

D．Every woman is better able to multitask than every man.

【推荐3】Teachers are conditioned to tolerate a lot of bad treatment — it’s a professional suffering — but what teachers at Sir G.E. Cartier Elementary School in London went through last spring seems beyond the call of duty: a few of them agreed to be tied to a rail in the gym while students hit them in the face with cream pies. Why on earth would they do that? To raise $3,000 — enough cash for an interactive whiteboard, the most desirable piece of educational technology on the market right now. These Internet-age boards are essentially giant computer touchscreens, and they are all the fashion in schools. But with little room for them in school budgets, many educators are doing whatever it takes to raise the money themselves. “We are a desperate breed, aren’t we?” says Sharon Zinn, one of three teachers who volunteered for Cartier Elementary’s whipped- cream-flavored activity.

At schools fortunate enough to have them, interactive-white boards are a blessing for educators struggling to attract a generation of students who got accustomed to using the Web from the early age. In the UK — where 70 percent of all primary and secondary classrooms have interactive whiteboards, compared with just 16 percent in the United States — students in those classrooms made the equivalent of five months’ additional progress in math. So far, the data on the efficacy (有效性) of touchscreens in US classrooms is inconclusive, but promising. Multiple recent studies suggest that the devices advance attendance rates and classroom participation. Ever since Dorchester School District 2 in Summerville installed 1,200 interactive boards in its classrooms, disciplinary incidents are cut down. “Students were bored” before the touchscreens arrived, says Superintendent Joe Pye.” Trips to the principal’s office are almost nonexistent now.”

But for some teachers, learning to use the device is not easy, and a generation gap has opened with teachers who are still used to writing lesson plans with a pen and paper. Many older educators are terrified by the boards, says Peter Kornicker, a media specialist in Harlem, where despite a student poverty rate of 98 percent, all 35 classrooms are equipped with touchscreens.”As always, it comes back to the ability of teachers to master this technology,” says Andy Rotherham of Education Sector in Washington, D.C. “We have to train them to use it. Otherwise, it’s just another underused, expensive thing.”

1. How does the author view the deed of some teachers at Sir G.E.Cartier Elementary School?

A．It is what most teachers are going through.

B．It is something worth praise.

C．It is too much for most teachers to tolerate.

D．It is due to the conflict between teachers and students.

2. Which of the following is true about the present generation of students?

A．They are heavily influenced by the Web.

B．They don’t respect teachers and observe disciplines.

C．They are bored with the way teachers teach.

D．They are only good at mathematics.

3. What can we know about the situation in the US?

A．A high percentage of schools are using touchscreens.

B．The effectiveness of touchscreens has been proved.

C．Touchscreens promote attendance and classroom participation.

D．All teachers are receiving training to use touchscreens.

4. What is the most important to make the touchscreens a success in classrooms?

A．To get enough financial budget to equip classrooms with touchscreens.

B．To give up the traditional way of writing lesson plans with a pan and paper.

C．To familiarize more students with the use of interactive touchscreens.

D．To train teachers to master and use the modern device.