【推荐1】Human beings are the most intelligent of all animals because we are gifted with the ability to think and reason logically. Scientists and even common people with special intelligence have made a lot of inventions and contributions to modern lifestyle in the past. “Houses” have been the most popular area for discoveries and inventions in the past and even now.

Many household items have been the result of inventions of people who desired better functioning of the existent products. Every individual has intelligence and if it is used properly for the right purpose, it leads to invention of a new tool or device. Many new household inventions are made almost every day and there are specific companies, which particularly keep a record of all these inventions.

A lot of inventions have been made recently in the household field. These products are patented and have trade mark licenses. The patented sliding cinch is a very simple but effective method to prevent shoulder stress and injury for those who work before computers all day long. Vanity PC is a type of computer furniture that specifically hides all the computer wires and keeps a clean and good look. All the outdoor dust, mud and snow can be kept out of the house by fixing the dirt drain (排水管)at the entrance of the door. Another important invention is the automatic toilet night-light, in which a small light starts when the lid of the toilet seat is opened and closes as soon as the lid is closed.

These are some of the new household inventions invented mostly by common people. Thus, a variety of new household items are invented every day, which helps in a better functioning of household chores and in a more useful manner.

1. The first paragraph is intended to______________

A．stress the importance of inventions

B．introduce the topic of the article

C．show the advantages of modern lifestyle

D．tell the differences between human beings and animals

2. According to the passage, people make household inventions to ___________

A．earn more money and gain awards

B．accumulate their wealth

C．improve the present living conditions

D．meet the new demands of new science

3. It can be inferred that the sliding cinch is used to ___________

A．prevent your shoulder from being over-pressured

B．keep your shoulder safe and sound when you are in an accident or an operation

C．help you practice your shoulder more often and reduce shoulder pains

D．cover your shoulder and make it stronger to resist the outside strike

4. Common people can also make good inventions because___________

A．wisdom and inspiration sometimes come from everyday life

B．some inventions are easy to make and can be mastered by them

C．common people have a strong desire to do something for science research

D．success is often connected with hardship and bitter experience of common people

5. The passage mainly talks about____________

A．the correct use of household facilities

B．different ideas about household inventions

C．the history of household inventions

D．household inventions and their influence

【推荐1】If someone created a flying machine capable of tracking you down by listening for your voice, you might be terrified. But what if you were trapped in ruins after a natural disaster and first responders couldn’t locate you? Maybe then a human-seeking drone wouldn’t be such a terrible idea. That concept is the focus for engineers at Germany’s Fraunhofer FKIE Institute, who’ve built a drone to find people by discovering human screams.

“The human-seeking drone would be ideal for post-disaster situations, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and wildfires,” said Macarena Varela, one of the lead engineers. “They could hover over an area that rescuers have difficulty getting to and locate exactly where people may be trapped.”

Locating people by sound presents its share of challenges. An auditory（听觉的）system would need to tell human cries from sounds that often happen in nature, such as animal calls and wind. It might also need to recognize patterns associated with kicking, clapping or other ways people try to get the attention of rescue teams.

Engineers took those situations into consideration when building out their concept drone. They recorded themselves screaming, tapping and creating other noises that might be a sign of people in trouble. Then, they analyzed each sound frequency to find common characteristics and used those to train artificial intelligence software. They also worked to remove the noise created by the drone and other environmental sounds.

Once the software part was complete, the team placed tiny digital microphones under the drone and used signal processing techniques that enabled them to track where human noises are coming from. The microphones also enhanced(改善）the volume and clarity of the speech. So far, they have conducted successful open field experiments, finding that the drone can estimate(估计) a victim’s location within a few seconds of picking up sound.

Next, they would like to add a higher frequency microphone to a drone to get more audio sound signals. “The idea is to pick up noises from hundreds of meters away,” Varela said. In the real world, victim’s location data might one day be sent wirelessly to emergency workers carrying a tablet PC.

1. What is the advantage of the human-seeking drone over rescuers?

A．Its easy access to disaster scene.

B．Its long working hours.

C．Its high speed of flying.

D．Its quick estimation of data.

2. What can the auditory system do?

A．Send victim’s location data to a tablet PC.

B．Pick up sounds from far away.

C．Recognize human cries.

D．Improve the quality of human screams.

3. Why did engineers analyze each sound frequency?

A．To remove the noise.

B．To find shared features.

C．To record the screams.

D．To enhance the volume.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．Flying machines can track rescuers.

B．Rescuers use drones to locate disaster survivors.

C．Human-seeking drones will replace rescuers.

D．Engineers ensure drones to give better rescue performance.

【推荐2】Robots have certain advantages compared to humans. They are efficient, tireless, can be repaired when damaged and they never get sick. The last quality has made them the star during our fight against the COVID-19(新冠肺炎). While thousands of medical workers have fallen ill dealing with this highly infectious virus and a lot more have to stay at home for fear of getting the disease, this isn’t a problem for robots. This is why the COVID-19 outbreak is seen as the “tipping point” for robots to start to replace humans in certain jobs.

In hospitals, robots are used to perform high-risk tasks. In China, for example, a hotel in Hangzhou employed a robot to deliver food to people under quarantine(隔离). In Spain, robots are about to be used to test people for the coronavirus(冠状病毒).

In non-medical companies, robots are also replacing human employees since they don’t have the problem of the social distancing and will never take sick leave. Fast-food chains like McDonald’s are not only delivering food with robots in some areas, but also looking to use them as cooks and servers. Walmart and Amazon, for example, where robots are already used in packing and shipping, are planning to increase the number of robots in these areas.

But this sudden boom in robot demand doesn’t mean that they can replace humans successfully in every aspect. According to Bill Smart, a roboticist at Oregon State University, the human contact between doctors and patients is still important. Doctors comfort the patients and guide them through hard decisions while robots are only doing daily tasks, like cleaning and giving tests.

It might be true that robots have certain advantages over humans, but they are still secondary to human’s communication and emotion.

1. Which of the following is not the advantage of robots over human beings?

A．They never fall ill.

B．They can offer emotion support.

C．They are efficient in work.

D．They can be repaired when damaged.

2. Why does the author take McDonald’s and Walmart as examples?

A．To explain robots are more intelligent than humans.

B．To prove robots have social ability wherever they are.

C．To explain how robots replace humans in non-medical companies.

D．To prove McDonald’s and Walmart are famous companies in the world.

3. What’s the meaning of the underlined part “sudden boom” in Paragraph 4?

A．Sharp increase.	B．Low supply.
C．Short explosion.	D．Excellent performance.

4. What’s the best title of this passage?

A．The Efficient Tireless Robots	B．Robots Will Replace Humans
C．Robots Aid in Coronavirus Fight	D．The demand For Robots Increase

【推荐1】How is it that siblings (兄弟姐妹) can turn out so differently? One answer is that in fact each sibling grows up in a different family. The firstborn is, for a while, an only child, and therefore has a completely different experience of the parents than those born later. The next child is, for a while, the youngest, until the situation is changed by a new arrival. The mother and father themselves are changing and growing up too. One sibling might live in a stable and close family in the first few years; another might be raised in a family crisis, with a disappointed mother or an angry father.
Sibling competition was identified as an important shaping force as early as in 1918. But more recently, researchers have found many ways in which brothers and sisters are a lasting force in each others’ lives. Dr. Annette Henderson says firstborn children pick up vocabulary more quickly than their siblings. The reason for this might be that the later children aren’t getting the same one-on-one time with parents. But that doesn’t mean that the younger children have problems with language development. Later-borns don’t enjoy that much talking time with parents, but instead they harvest lessons from bigger brothers and sisters, learning entire phrases and getting an understanding of social concepts such as the difference between “I” and “me”.
A Cambridge University study of 140 children found that siblings created a rich world of play that helped them grow socially. Love-hate relationships were common among the children. Even those siblings who fought the most had just as much positive communication as the other sibling pairs.
One way children seek more attention from parents is by making themselves different from their siblings, particularly if they are close in age. Researchers have found that the first two children in a family are typically more different from each other than the second and third. Girls with brothers show their differences to a maximum degree by being more feminine than girls with sisters. A 2003 research paper studied adolescents from 185 families over two years, finding that those who changed to make themselves different from their siblings were successful in increasing the amount of warmth they gained from their parents.
1. The underlined part “in a different family” (in Para. 1) means “_______”.

A．in a different family environment

B．in a different family tradition

C．in different family crises

D．in different families

2. In terms of language development, later-borns ________.

A．get their parents’ individual guidance

B．learn a lot from their elder siblings

C．experience a lot of difficulties

D．pick up words more quickly

3. What was found about fights among siblings?

A．Siblings hated fighting and loved playing.

B．Siblings in some families fought frequently.

C．Sibling fights led to bad sibling relationships.

D．Siblings learned to get on together from fights.

4. The word “feminine” (in Para. 4) means “_______”.

A．having qualities of parents

B．having qualities of women

C．having defensive qualities

D．having extraordinary qualities

【推荐2】The word “inquiry” (or enquiry) comes from the Latin words “in”, or “inward”, and “quaere”, which is the verb “to question”. So inquiry is not just asking questions, it is questioning into something. It has the quality of getting into something, going deeper, so you can see what you haven’t been able to see before.

When you begin an inquiry, you are deliberately setting out to search for what you don’t know. You have to have the confidence to say that you might be able to figure it out for yourself. And in that process, you get a sense of real excitement and energy. That energy is both part of, and contributes to, what we often call “engagement(参与)”. But in order to use inquiry to answer your question, you have to become good at knowing what you don’t know. I would argue that that’s exactly the opposite of what happens in schools. Classrooms focus on what you do know (or are supposed to know) and leave you unprepared to deal with the things you don’t know.

In some ways, we are all surrounded by a bubble(气泡) of the known. When you “know” something, you identify how your model of the world fits with and explains what you see. Living in the bubble of the known is comfortable and comforting. You see what you know, and you know what you see. But to do inquiry, you have to get good at always looking for the boundaries of your knowledge, and at the limitations and contradictions within what is known. That is what scientists do. They are always looking for the limits, the boundaries and the points at which their theories fail to explain the world. Scientists, basically, are always looking for that “door” from the known to the unknown, where they can press forth and push and, in a sense, expand the bubble of the known. Inquiry is the action you take when you deliberately challenge the limits of your knowledge.

1. What does the writer want to tell us?

A．The meaning of inquiry.	B．The way to make an inquiry.
C．The method of classroom teaching.	D．The limitation of classroom teaching.

2. From the first paragraph, we can see the word “inquiry”

A．has different meanings	B．comes from the English language
C．has little to do with asking questions	D．means exploring deeper into something

3. To be good at inquiry, you should be good at ___.

A．asking for help from others	B．knowing what you don’t know
C．staying focused in the classroom	D．understanding what is taught to you

4. What does the underlined word “where” refer to?

A．The door to the unknown.	B．Within the bubble.
C．In the real world.	D．In the world of the unknown.