【推荐1】Different photoreceptors (视细胞) in the eyes can affect how we see the world around us. Animals including bees and some birds can see ultraviolet light (紫外线) that human eyes cannot see. By reconstructing the colors that we know animals can see, scientists can learn more about how they communicate and find their position. Getting an accurate view of what animals are seeing has been a challenge, but a camera system developed by scientists at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom and George Mason University in Virginia could help ecologists and filmmakers create videos that closely copy the colors that different animals see in their natural environments.

The camera system builds on the current technique called spectrophotometry. By using this technique, images are taken at specific wavelength ranges that are typically beyond what humans can see. However, using the method can be time-consuming, produce false colors, require specific lighting conditions, and can’t always capture (拍摄) something that is moving. To overcome some of these limitations, the team developed a camera and software system that captures animal-view videos of moving objects under natural lighting conditions.

One of the cameras records videos in four different color channels at the same time: blue, green, red, and UV. That data is then processed into perceptual units using a popular programming language called Python. This generates a more accurate video of how animals see those colors. The team tested this new system against the traditional spectrophotometry methods and their new system predicted the perceived colors with an accuracy of over 92 percent. “Our project was quite involved, and we had many surprises along the way,” says Daniel Hanley, a leading researcher. “The most surprising thing that we discovered was how much clouds can impact an observed color. We didn’t tend to notice these shifts, but they were notable.”

“We plan to apply the camera system as broadly as possible. Currently, we are exploring a range of applications,” says Hanley. “Our hope is that through community engagement our designs can improve and we will gather many novel observations about colors in nature.”

1. For what do researchers study animal vision?

A．To try out the newly-developed camera system.	B．To improve the animals’ natural environments.
C．To see the effect of ultraviolet light on animals.	D．To understand animal communication more effectively.

2. What is an advantage about the new camera and software system?

A．It changes the way colors look.	B．It requires no specific lighting conditions.
C．It allows users to capture smaller objects.	D．It can transform images in different wavelength ranges.

3. What surprises the researchers most during the experiment?

A．The new system is rather accurate.	B．Clouds will affect how animals see the world.
C．Animals are more sensitive to colors than humans.	D．The camera can record videos in four color channels.

4. What can be the best title for the text?

A．The Strange Ways That Animals See the World

B．Researchers Study the Development of Animal Vision

C．New Camera System Reveals World Through Animals’ Eyes

D．Some Animals See World That’s Completely Invisible to Our Eyes

【推荐2】The classic nightmare of suddenly realizing you are naked in public could soon get a futuristic twist: it might involve the horror of losing not just your modesty but also your pass codes. Scientists recently created magnetic garments that they say can store data, automatically unlock doors or control a nearby smartphone with gesture.

The concept of interactive “smart clothing” has drawn attention in the past couple of years. For example, Google and Levi’s created a touch-sensitive jacket that can operate a smartphone. This and other smart garments are made with conductive thread and usually require an attached electronic device.

To eliminate the need for such peripheral gear, researchers at the University of Washington recently took advantage of what is a previously untapped property of conductive thread: its ability to be magnetized. “Using magnetic instead of electric properties of the thread may seem like a small difference, but it is what makes this work interesting and exciting,” says Chris Harrison, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not part of the research. The new technique allowed the researchers to do something they say is unique among wearables: turn them into storage devices.

The Washington team magnetized a patch of fabric embroidered with conductive thread, giving different parts of the cloth a north or south orientation that correspond to binary 1’s or 0’. This step allowed the researchers to store up to 33 million different combinations—such as pass codes for doors—on a shirt sleeve. They also created magnetic gloves that could control a nearby smartphone with gestures. The team described its findings last October at a meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery.

The garments still stored data after washing, drying and ironing, but they could not escape time’s eraser; after about a week, the threads’ magnetic fields had weakened by around 30 percent. The researchers suggest that using custom-made thread designed to hold stronger magnetic fields might work longer. But for now the clothes may be best suited for storing temporary codes, such as those found on hotel key cards or clothing tags in stores. Harrison says that it is “very unlikely you are ever going to achieve a comparable density to magnetic hard drives” with data-storing fabric, however.

1. What does the underlined sentence (1^st paragraph) imply?

A．People would soon change their views on being naked in public.

B．There is no way to stop the decline of privacy right now.

C．People would lose privacy to a considerable degree.

D．The classic nightmare of losing pass codes could never come true.

2. According to Chris Harrison, using magnetic conductive thread is interesting and exciting because ________.

A．it will gradually eliminate the need for attached devices

B．it will turn any common wearables into storage devices

C．it is such an abstract idea that giant companies have made attempts at it

D．it brings scientists new challenges and makes their work out of the ordinary

3. Which of the following is NOT a feature of garments with new technology？

A．It is portable and can interact with electronic devices wirelessly.

B．it is sustainable and doesn’t need further maintenance.

C．It is washable and can endure high temperature.

D．It can store huge amounts of information.

4. What does Harrison imply in the last paragraph？

A．Magnetic hard drivers will never lose their position to fabrics in storage.

B．Cloth and fabric as a storage medium have replaced magnetic hard drives.

C．Data-storing fabric can be as efficient as a traditional storage medium now.

D．In the short term, fabric used to store data cannot overcome its weakness.

【推荐1】We now live in an age of instant images and emoji, when 10,000 copies of a picture can be spread around the world in seconds by sliding a finger half an inch across a phone screen. This would have been unbelievable and unimaginable 20 years ago. But it is in the world of hand-copied manuscripts (手稿) 1,000 years old or more that the digital revolution has had some of its most profound and obvious beneficial effects. What may have taken three years to write out can today be printed out in three seconds. There are now tens of thousands of once unique documents which have been digitized and placed online for anyone to access all around the world, and this is a vast, democratizing wonder.

Take the Parker Library in Cambridge, which contains the scholarly works during the Reformation (宗教改革时期) and collected by Matthew Parker. It has been digitized in a project with Stanford University, and in 2018 the site was opened to all comers to browse after 10 years behind scholarly paywalls. What is astonishing is not just the texts themselves, but the pictures: the illuminations (插图) on some of the manuscripts show off the fertility and vividness of the medieval imagination.

Digitized collections of these sorts cannot entirely substitute for real libraries. To touch with your own hand a parchment (羊皮纸) from a medieval monk is an experience no screen can offer, but it is one which must always be restricted to a lucky few. There are some things so old and fragile that even being looked at may damage them. The caves at Lascaux had to be closed to protect the paintings from the breath of tourists and replaced by a virtual display.

Yet in some ways these copies are better than the originals. Reproductions of a high enough quality make obvious de tail that’s invisible to the native eye. What’s more, digital collections can be gathered on one screen from across the globe. The International Dunhuang Project reunites on screen tens of thousands of Buddhist scrolls and artifacts in western China. What is possible with this one collection should fairly soon be possible with all the scholarly digitized manuscripts of the world. The hope is to bring them under one system of classification so that they can quickly be searched and sorted no matter where they came from and where they now are stored.

The world may always prefer cat gifs to ancient manuscripts, but the translation from parchment to pixels (像素) reminds us of the humanistic optimism with which the web came into the world, and shows that much of it was not misplaced at all.

1. By mentioning the Parker Library, the author intends to _______.

A．condemn the behavior of Matthew Parker as immoral

B．demonstrate the worth and value of its distinctive documents

C．describe the measures and effects of digitizing the manuscripts

D．display the fertility and vividness of the medieval imagination

2. According to Paragraph 3, the purpose of closing the caves at Lascaux is to _______.

A．prevent the paintings from being damaged	B．carry on the restoration of the paintings
C．show the wonder effect of virtual display	D．reduce the number of tourists

3. Classifying the digitized manuscripts in one system is beneficial to _______.

A．collecting much more valuable materials	B．quickly finding and sorting documents
C．consulting materials from all over the world	D．saving time and energy of searching documents

4. Which would be the best title of the passage?

A．The Impact of Digital Revolution Era

B．The New Era of Traditional Manuscripts

C．Accessibility of Old Manuscripts All Around the World

D．Digital Revolution Brings Manuscripts To life

【推荐1】Many of us are lucky enough to have some degree of choice over what we eat But are the decisions we make about our diet as free as we like to think? What if there are some factors influencing what we eat?

Actually, we’re hugely influenced by other people — especially those closest to us. Research has found that the closer and stronger two peopled connection, the more influence they have on each other’s food choices.

“A lot of our cues (暗示) from face-to-face interactions are linked with who we’re with,” says Solveig Argeseanu, associate professor of global health at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, US. This can mean these social cues generally encourage us to eat more, Argeseanu adds. Being around healthy eaters may encourage you to eat healthier, too, according to research.

What’s more,our eating habits are also influenced by what we see. ‘There is some evidence that, if you see pictures of food, they stimulate you to eat,” says Suzanne Higgs, professor in the psychobiology of appetite at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Besides, social media is another factor that influences our food choices. It is one place where visual and social cues meet. If friends in your social network post regularly about particular types of food, it could lead you to copy them, for better or for worse.

“If all your friends on social media are posting pictures of themselves consuming fast food,it’s going to set a norm(标准)that eating fast food is what people do,” says Higgs. One study estimated that children and adolescents see marketing for fast food between 30 and 189 times per week on social media apps. Therefore, social media with no doubt influences them a lot.

1. What’s the purpose of writing the first paragraph?

A．To present a phenomenon.

B．To show the author’s summary.

C．To introduce the topic of the text.

D．To give readers a vivid description.

2. What does Solveig Argeseanu probably agree with?

A．Healthy food should be a good choice.

B．Face-to-face talking is important to us.

C．We should interact more with strangers.

D．We can be influenced by those close to us.

3. What does the underlined word “stimulate” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Select.

B．Encourage.

C．Invite.

D．Command.

4. Why does the author refer to “between 30 and 189 times per week” in the last paragraph?

A．To describe the large number of online children.

B．To stress the importance of conducting the study.

C．To show the times of children downloading the apps.

D．To emphasize the influence of social media on children.

【推荐3】Hotter, drier conditions over the past four decades have been decreasing the rainforest birds’ body size while lengthening their wings, a study published in the journal Science Advances said on Friday. “This maybe an adaptation to hotter temperatures. Even in the middle of the primitive Amazon rainforest, we are seeing the global effects of climate change caused by people,” said Vitek Jirinec, lead author on the study.

The scientists have studied measurements and weigh-ins of 77 different bird species in the Amazon rainforest since the early 1980s. Nearly all of the bird species have gotten lighter as time goes on. On average, most species became about 2% lighter every decade. These birds don’t vary that much in size,” said co-author Philip Stouffer, a professor of conservation biology at Louisiana State University. “But when everyone in the population is a couple of grams smaller, it’s significant.”

The researchers found that bird species living in higher parts of the forest—as opposed to closer to the forest floor —saw the most pronounced changes in terms of body composition. Those are the species most exposed to high temperatures. Longer wings and smaller bodies mean that birds have to useless energy to move around, helping them stay cool.

Brian Weeks of the University of Michigan in 2019 researched the average sizes of 52 species of migratory birds in North America from 1978 to 2016. He also found all of them had smaller bodies and longer wings in 2016. This is another example of climate change-human actions globally—affecting a fundamental thing such as the size and shape of the birds. The same effect is likely to be true of other species across the world living in extreme environments.

1. What does the new study find about the birds in the Amazon rainforest?

A．They are flying much higher.	B．They have been physically longer.
C．They are more flexible than adaptable	D．They have got smaller and longer-winged.

2. How did researchers conduct their study?

A．By analyzing the collected data.	B．By referring to historical records.
C．By observing birds in the forests.	D．By cooperating with other research groups.

3. What made the birds living in higher parts of the forest change most?

A．Less food available.	B．Decreased forest area.
C．Most exposure to the heat.	D．Inadequate shelter from storms.

4. What is the function of the last paragraph?

A．To introduce a new topic.

B．To further stress bad effects of humans.

C．To popularize some knowledge about birds.

D．To tell the difference between the two studies.