【推荐2】Nowadays, more and more employers and employees work online either full-time or part-time, and that number is continuing growing. It’s believed that flying around the world for face-to-face company meetings is a waste of time and money. An effective choice to get rid of it is to use web meetings.

A large number of group presentations, training classes and meetings are done online without losing the face-to-face experience. Web meetings are online meetings where an organiser invites attendees to listen to or watch an online presentation by presenters. Besides, web meetings can be recorded for later use.

Presenters can take real-time surveys to study how to hold a successful meeting. Some web meeting software programmes can monitor the users’ desktop behaviour to see if they become distracted from the presentation and begin working on other documents. If so, the programme can tell presenters when the listeners lose their attention, and how long the distraction lasts. In this way, the presenters will know which parts of their meetings need improving.

Web meetings can work well because they’re hosted on a server (服务器). Images from the presenter’s desktop are taken, uploaded to a server and then downloaded by people who have access to the server, web meetings require a powerful server to deal with several images a second and “serve” them back to thousands of users at the same time.

Companies have two choices when it comes to these servers. They can either buy a special web meeting server to host their meetings on-site, or they can pay for a web meeting service every time and let the off-site provider worry about hosting the meetings. The choice depends on how frequently the company holds web meetings, the average number of people attending the meetings, and the quality of engineering and information technology.

Web meetings are an excellent example of how technology is changing the way we do business. With all the technologies today, the traditional office might soon be a thing of the past.

1. The purpose of this passage is 　　　.

A．to advertise servers used in web meetings

B．to persuade companies to hold web meetings

C．to introduce the benefits of using web meetings

D．to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of web meetings

2. In what way do some web meeting software programmes help improve the meetings?

A．By tracking the users’ state.

B．By giving useful suggestions.

C．By sharing detailed technical data.

D．By providing other presenters’ videos.

3. It is better for a company to buy a web meeting server if it 　　　.

A．relies little on the quality of IT

B．holds web meetings twice a week

C．doesn’t have so many employees

D．has branches in the same city or province

4. What can we infer about web meetings?

A．Web meetings help presenters stay focused.

B．Web meetings work without the help of a server.

C．Web meetings determine the quality of engineering.

D．Web meetings are likely to be widely used.

【推荐3】The AlphaGo program’s victory is an example of how smart computers have become. But can artificial intelligence (AI) machines act ethically(合乎道德地), meaning can they be honest and fair?

One example of AI is driverless cars. They are already on California roads, so it is not too soon to ask whether we can program a machine to act ethically. As driverless cars improve, they will save lives. They will make fewer mistakes than human drivers do. Sometimes, however, they will face a choice between lives. Should the cars be programmed to make a sudden turn to avoid hitting a child? What if the only risk is damage to the car itself not to the passengers?

Perhaps there will be lessons to learn from driverless cars, but they are not super-intelligent beings. Teaching ethics to a machine even more intelligent than we are will be the bigger challenge.

About the same time as AlphaGo’s victory, Microsoft’s ‘chatbot’ took a bad turn. The software, named Taylor, was designed to answer messages from people aged 18-24. Taylor was supposed to be able to learn from the messages she received. She was designed to slowly improve her ability to handle conversations, but some people were teaching Taylor racist ideas. When she started saying nice things about Hitler, Microsoft turned her off and deleted her ugliest messages.

AlphaGo’s victory and Taylor’s defeat happened at about the same time. This should be a warning to us. It is one thing to use AI within a game with clear rules and clear goals. It is something very different to use AI in the real world.

Eric Schmidt is one of the bosses of Google, which owns AlphoGo. He thinks AI will be positive for humans. He said people will be the winner, whatever the outcome. Advances in AI will make human beings smarter, more able and “just better human beings.”

1. What’s the second paragraph mainly about?

A．Whether AI machines are capable to predict possible risks.

B．What AI machines will do to save human lives.

C．Whether AI machines can make ethical decisions.

D．What AI machines will do to avoid damages to themselves.

2. What is said to be the bigger challenge facing humans in the AI age?

A．How to prevent AI machines doing harm to humans.

B．How to avoid being over-dependent on AI machines.

C．How to ensure that super-intelligent AI machines act ethically.

D．How to make super-intelligent AI machines share human feelings.

3. What do we learn about Microsoft’s ‘chatbot’ Taylor?

A．She could not tell good from bad.

B．She could turn herself off when necessary.

C．She was not made to handle new situations.

D．She was good at performing routine tasks.

4. What is Eric Schmidt’s attitude towards artificial intelligence?

A．negative	B．unconcerned
C．positive	D．doubtful

【推荐2】Health insurance can be very expensive. Some working people do not make enough money to pay for it. In the US there is a program called Healthy Families. This program offers people health insurance at a low cost.

Families are charged about $7.00 a month for every child, and $10.00 for every adult. It costs much less than any other kind of health insurance. Having health insurance is very important. With this insurance, people can see a doctor when they are sick or hurt.

The program is not expensive at all, but many people are still not enrolling (登记) in it. People say that it still costs too much money. They need all of their money to pay for things like food and rent.

It would be great if everyone could have health insurance. People are working hard to come up with ways to make this happen. One idea is to make the Healthy Families Program free for some people.

It is important for people to see a doctor when they need to. The Healthy Families Program makes it possible for more people to do this. Many ideas are being considered. Hopefully some of them will allow even more families to get health insurance.

The Healthy Families Program is made to help those who don’t have welfare (社会保障金) and cannot earn enough to pay for private health insurance. It is an important program, but officials say that too many people are signing up for it and then dropping out (退出) because of the Healthy Families Program’s cost.

1. The aim of the Healthy Families Program is to ____________.

A．help people earn more and pay for the program

B．make it free for people to see a doctor

C．help more families get health insurance

D．help families pay for private health insurance

2. If a couple have two children, how much would health insurance cost every month?

A．$34.

B．$40.

C．$28.

D．$24.

3. Why is it very important for people to have health insurance?

A．They can see a doctor free of charge.

B．They can get special medical care.

C．They can afford to see a doctor when it is needed.

D．They can see a doctor free of charge.

4. In the passage we can learn all of the following EXCEPT that __________.

A．health insurance is very important for ordinary people

B．people should make more money to pay for private health insurance

C．the program is still too expensive for many people

D．many people don’t make enough money to pay for health insurance

【推荐3】   

In general(一般来说) people talk about two groups of colours: warm colours and cool colours.Scientists think that there are also two groups of people: people who prefer warm colours and people who prefer cool colours.

The warm colours are red, orange and yellow.Where there are warm colours and a lot of light, people usually want to be active. People think that red example is exciting sociable(善交际的) people. Those who like to be with others like red. The cool colours are green, blue and purple. These colours unlike warm colours, are relaxing. Where there are cool colours, people are usually quiet. People who like to spend time alone often prefer blue.

Red may be exciting but one scientist says that time seems to pass more slowly in a room with warm colours than in a room with cool colours. He suggested that a warm colour such as red or orange, is a good colour for a living room or a restaurant.

People who are relaxing or eating don’t want time to pass quickly. Cool colours are better for offices of factories as the people who work there want time to pass quickly. Scientists don’t know why people think some colours are warm and other colours are cool.

However, almost everyone agrees that warm colours remind (使想起) people of warm days and cool colours remind them of cool days. Because in the north the sun is low during winter, the sunlight appears quite blue.Because the sun higher during summer, the hot summer sunlight appears yellow.

1. The people who like warm colours ________．

A．are very hard to get on with others

B．are very easy to get on with others

C．like to stay at home by themselves

D．don’t like to be with others

2. Which of the following is NOT true?

A．Time seems to pass more slowly in a room with warm colours than in a room with cool colours.

B．The persons who are relaxing don’t want time to pass slowly.

C．Maybe warm colours make people think of warm days.

D．The writer thinks cool colours are good for offices of factories.

3. Which is the best title of the passage?

A．Two Groups of Colours	B．Cool Colours
C．Warm Colours	D．Colours and People

4. When people talk about two groups of people, they mean those that ________．

A．like warm colours and like cool colours

B．are yellow, red and orange

C．are warm colours and cool colours

D．are green, blue and purple