China is betting on its successful hybrid rice varieties to fight food shortage in Africa.
“We’re no longer suffering from hunger,” 55-year-old Georges Ranaivomanana, a Madagascan farmer who took the lead in planting Chinese hybrid rice in his town of Mahitsy. Georges told Xinhua that he hoped that all Madagascan farmers would use the seeds to raise their living standards.
China has been helping African countries develop productive rice farming for years with its hybrid rice. For farmers on the continent like Ranaivomanana, they are “very grateful” to the Chinese as the hybrid rice is the key to better food security and higher incomes.
In May, the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Centre opened a research centre in Madagascar to select hybrid rice varieties based on the island nation’s diverse ecological environment, in an effort to find more productive crops for a continent long troubled by insufficient grain output.
In the northwestern Nigerian state of Kebbi, Chinese expert Wang Xuemin stood in a rice field, surrounded by green rice plants. “This year, we are using a new technology,” he said, adding that “it can significantly reduce labor and other costs.” “The land, climate and rice farming methods in Nigeria are very different from those in China. We had a lot of problems at the beginning,” said the 51-year-old who has been in Nigeria for 16 years.
In 2006, after Wang and his colleagues had sown the seeds, their field management techniques and large-scale farming equipment could not adapt to the operating environment, and hundreds of hectares of rice fields were almost completely taken over by weeds. “We came to realize that blindly copying the Chinese model is not feasible (可行的). It is necessary to constantly innovate our techniques to fit the local situation in Africa,” he said.
After more than ten years of research and innovation, the Nigerian farm now becomes a major training and mechanized production centre in the country, training more than 1,000 farmers and agricultural machinery management staff.
1. What’s the attitude of African farmers about Chinese hybrid rice?| A．A little skeptical. | B．Much disappointed. |
| C．Full of gratitude. | D．Extremely curious. |
| A．35 years old. | B．51 years old. |
| C．55 years old. | D．67 years old. |
| A．Chinese technology of hybrid rice can’t be applied in Africa. |
| B．Different technologies should be applied to different areas. |
| C．Chinese experts contribute to raising African living standards. |
| D．Chinese technology of hybrid rice wastes more labor and costs. |
| A．Chinese Hybrid Rice Research Has Not Been Open in Africa |
| B．The Sowing of Hybrid Rice Should Vary from Country |
| C．China’s Hybrid Rice Sows Hope for Africa |
| D．Africans Fight Food Shortage with Chinese |
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【推荐1】Video games sometimes have a bad name because they keep people indoors playing them instead of talking and playing with others face to face. However, a new study says that they might be good for young people’s brain development.
Scientists from the University of Vermont used data from the ABCD project, which is a study of brain development and health of children in the US as they move into adulthood. The results ware taken from 2,217 children aged nine or ten. They were divided into two groups.The first group never play video games while the second group play them for three or more hours a day.
The young people were set two tasks. The first one measured their reaction(反应) time by seeing how quickly they could press buttons that matched images on a screen. The second test tested their memory. They were show pictures of people’s faces and later were shown more and had to say if any of the faces were the same. During the tests, their brains were scanned with fMRI to measure brain activity.
The people who played video-games were better at the two tasks, and the fMRI scans showed that they show more brain activity in memory and attention. However, researchers don’t know if gaming improved their memory and reactions, or if they already had good memories and reactions and therefore enjoyed gaming.
The scientists hope to carry on studying the same young people as they get older to track the effects of gaming. The team could also find out in future if particular types of video games affect people’s brain activity differently.
The lead scientist on the study, Bader, said that too much screen time isn’t good for people’s mental or physical health. Although playing video games may get the brain more active than just going through videos on YouTube, it’s important to spend time outdoors in the fresh air, taking exercise and having fun with friends and family.
1. What does the ABCD project do?| A．It deals with adult brain development. |
| B．It studies the development of young brains. |
| C．It explores the harm of video games on teens. |
| D．H focuses on the importance of communication. |
| A．They showed fewer problems in memory. |
| B．They already had better memory ability. |
| C．They showed better ability in attention. |
| D．They showed more attention problems. |
| A．Track the effects of video games on them. |
| B．Separate bad video games from good ones. |
| C．Find ways to stop people from video games. |
| D．Find a safe time limit on playing the games. |
| A．The benefit of video games should be recognized. |
| B．YouTube videos are less harmful than video games. |
| C．There’re many better things to do than video games. |
| D．The young should be taught to stay off video games. |
【推荐2】Have you ever imagined that your simple T-shirt could cool you down by up to 5℃ on hot summer days? Thanks to a recent discovery, the possibility is getting closer. The amazing invention aims to offer real relief for people eager to feel comfortable and fresh in the outdoors on extremely hot days.
Its inventors, engineers Ma Yaoguang of Zhejiang University and Tao Guangming of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, took a completely innovative approach. They designed a special textile(纺织物)that can absorb body heat and re-emit(重发出)its energy into space as mid-infrared radiation (MIR))This textile cools both the objects and their surroundings through a technique known as radiative cooling. This means that even when it looks like you are wearing a regular shirt, you are actually wearing a device that works like a mirror.
Research conducted at Stanford University in 2017 had already managed to cool the wearer by 3℃, but this previous trial was limited. So researchers still need to test the new approach to determine how effectively the new fabric cools while the wearers are standing or walking, and not directly facing the sky, like in their trials.They also need to examine and measure how well it works when T-shirts are not in close contact with the skin.
Inventors Yaoguang and Guangming are now looking out for textile manufacturers and clothing brands that are interested in using their fabric. They estimate that the new material will increase clothing manufacturing costs by just 10 percent.“We can make it with mass production which means everybody can get a T-shirt and the cost is basically the same as their old stuff,” Yaoguang said.
So if you are an athlete or simply someone that has to deal with the extremely high temperatures, be patient because your days of feeling hot and bothered may be coming to an end!
1. What is the purpose of the new invention?| A．To adjust the wearers’ temperature. | B．To change people's body temperature. |
| C．To cool people off in the hot weather | D．To protect clothes from becoming wet |
| A．By sending out absorbed heat. | B．By turning sunlight into energy |
| C．By keeping heat out completely | D．By using light colors to reflect sunlight |
| A．The invention needs further testing. | B．The previous studies lack evidence |
| C．The new fabric has a good cooling effect. | D．The new fabric applies to various situations |
| A．Barking up the wrong tree. | B．Robbing Peter to pay Paul. |
| C．Putting the cart before the horse. | D．Killing two birds with one stone |
【推荐3】Since time immemorial, people have been searching for the fountain of youth. Surprisingly, the dream of human immortality is, according to some scientists, not so far out of reach.
Professor Brian Cox, Google’s Ray Kurzweil, and Tesla head Elon Musk all agree on not only the possibility of human immortality but also that it is not too far away. The solution, they say, is something called the “technological singularity”
The singularity is a combination of humankind with computers, namely uploading the contents of one’s brain onto a hard drive. In that way, a person’s consciousness can stay alive after a physical body gets worse. This is based on the idea that a human brain is simply a machine, and there is, according to Professor Cox, “no reason at all why we cannot simulate (模拟)human intelligence,” using a computer.
Although Professor Cox did not say when the singularity would occur, Google’s Ray Kurzweil predicts that the singularity will happen as early as 2045. By 2100, he says, human body parts will be replaceable by machine parts. Further, by uploading our brains onto a computer, we will be able to toy with it, and become “able to expand the scope of our intelligence a billion fold.
Elon Musk agreed with the assessments of the other scientists, even going so far as saying that the chances that we are not in a computer simulation right now are “one in billions”.
Google is preparing for a future where you can download personalities onto robots. For example, you might be able to download onto your robot a celebrity personality, or of the personality of your deceased grandmother. The search engine giant filed a patent for this download process recently. So they definitely believe that the singularity is just around the corner. All you have to do is hold on until 2045, and soon you can effectively live in the cloud.
1. What does the underlined word “immortality” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Being perfect. | B．Being wealthy. |
| C．Living forever. | D．Continuous improvement. |
| A．By listing data. | B．By presenting quotations. |
| C．By doing experiments. | D．By making comparisions. |
| A．Computers are much smarter than humankind. |
| B．Computers can never surpass humankind at all. |
| C．Computers and humankind are quite different. |
| D．Computers can be another version of humankind. |
| A．Physically and intelligently. | B．Individually and corporately. |
| C．Psychologically and spiritually. | D．Emotionally and materially. |
【推荐1】It is presently harvest season for Christian Nacht Wey, who operates an apple farm, or orchard, in the western German town of Gelsdorf. Besides apples, Nacht Wey’s farm also produces a second harvest: electricity. Many of the farm’s trees grow under solar panels(太阳能电池板)that have been producing power during this year’s unusually sunny summer. Putting solar equipment on the same land as crops is becoming increasingly popular in Europe and North America. Farmers are finding that this method can make the most of their land, while creating a second way to earn money.
But getting the right mix of crop and solar is difficult. Most fruit requires specific growing conditions. Even small changes in the environment can harm crops and cause money losses. Even if the fruit survives, it might turn the wrong color or be less sweet and may be difficult to sell.
For these reasons, Nacht Wey is working with researchers to test which kinds of apples do well under a solar cover. For testing purposes, Nacht Wey covered some of his trees with a traditional netting material. It is normally used to protect sensitive crops from serious weather events.
Juergen Zimmer is an expert with the area’s agricultural services department. He told the AP that apples grown under the solar covers were a little less sweet this year than those under the nets. But almost no solar-shaded apples got damaged in the strong sunlight that hit the area on July 24. In the non-shaded group, about 18 percent of apples suffered sun damage that day, Zimmer said. Researchers hope the tests will show that fruit crops perform well under solar panels. This could help prevent renewable energy production from competing for valuable agricultural land. That competition has become an increasing question as the need for renewable energy increases to fight climate change and rising food prices.
1. What does the author try to tell us in Paragraph 2?| A．The method of the test. | B．The disadvantage of solar panels. |
| C．The importance of solar panels. | D．The difficulty of growing crops under solar panels. |
| A．Speed up the growth of apples. |
| B．Test what apples are suitable for a solar cover. |
| C．Examine why some crops are sensitive to heat. |
| D．Keep some crops from being damaged by terrible weather. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Supportive. |
| C．Unclear. | D．Uncaring. |
| A．German Farmer Grows Fruit Under Solar Power Equipment |
| B．Researchers Find Out New Way to Produce Renewable Energy |
| C．Solar Energy Could Play Big Part in Valuable Agricultural Land |
| D．Increasingly Popular Way of Operating Orchard Among German Farmers |
【推荐2】It was a ruling that had consumers seething with anger and many a free trader crying foul. On November 20th the European Court of Justice decided that Tesco, a British supermarket chain, should not be allowed to import jeans made by America’s Levi Strauss from outside the European Union and sell them at cut-rate prices without getting permission first from the jeans maker. Ironically, the ruling is based on an EU trademark directive that was designed to protect local, not American, manufacturers from price dumping. The idea is that any brand-owning firm should be allowed to position its goods and segment its markets as it sees fit: Levi’s jeans, just like Gucci handbags, must be allowed to be expensive.
Levi Strauss persuaded the court that, by selling its jeans cheaply alongside soap powder and bananas, Tesco was destroying the image and so the value of its brands-which could only lead to less innovation and, in the long run, would reduce consumer choice. Consumer groups and Tesco say that Levi’s case is specious. The supermarket argues that it was just arbitraging the price differential between Levi’s jeans sold in America and Europe-a service performed a million times a day in financial markets, and one that has led to real benefits for consumers. Tesco has been selling some 15,000 pairs of Levi’s jeans a week, for about half the price they command in specialist stores approved by Levi Strauss. Christine Cross, Tesco’s head of global non-food sourcing, says the ruling risks “creating a Fortress Europe with a vengeance”.
The debate will rage on, and has implications well beyond casual clothes (Levi Strauss was joined in its lawsuit by Zino Davidoff, a perfume maker). The question at its heart is not whether brands need to control how they are sold to protect their image, but whether it is the job of the courts to help them do this. Gucci, an Italian clothes label whose image was being destroyed by loose licensing and over-exposure in discount stores, saved itself not by resorting to the courts but by ending contracts with third-party suppliers, controlling its distribution better and opening its own stores. It is now hard to find cut-price Gucci anywhere.
Brand experts argue that Levi Strauss, which has been losing market share to hipper rivals such as Diesel, is no longer strong enough to command premium prices. Left to market forces, so-so brands such as Levi’s might well lade away and be replaced by fresher labels. With the courts protecting its prices, Levi Strauss may hang on for longer. But no court can help to make it a great brand again.
1. Which of the following is not true according to Paragraph 1?| A．Consumers and free traders were very angry. |
| B．Only the Levi’s maker can decide the prices of the jeans. |
| C．The ruling has protected Levi’s from price dumping. |
| D．Levi’s jeans should be sold at a high price. |
| A．responsible for oneself | B．having too many doubts |
| C．not as it seems to be | D．raising misunderstanding |
| A．Gucci has successfully saved its own image. |
| B．It has changed its fate with its own effort. |
| C．Opening its own stores is the key to success. |
| D．It should be the court’s duty to save its image. |
| A．Hie rivals are competitive |
| B．it fails to command premium prices |
| C．market forces have their own rules |
| D．the court fails to give some help |
| A．biased | B．indifferent |
| C．puzzling | D．objective |
【推荐3】“Some of the worst human tragedies happening in the world today go on because we don’t really see them. We rarely make eye communication with people who are suffering, so we act sometimes as if the people don’t exist.”
The speaker is Bill Gates, the world’s richest man. At a gathering in Seattle, he is talking not as the Microsoft chairman but as a partner in a strong personal duty. For Gates and his wife, Melinda, making less inequality in global health and domestic education has become a life’s goal.
Having set up their foundation with close to $29 billion, the Gates are on track to become history’s greatest philanthropists (慈善家). But they do more than just give money out. Experts praise the couple for their wisdom and their ability to gather others: “Even with this great contribution,” says Susan Schwab, president and CEO of the University System of Maryland Foundation, “they know they can’t solve these problems alone.”
Their devotion came from different sources. For Melinda, it was a vacation to Zaire, where she was struck by meeting women in being extremely poor. For Bill, it was reading that millions of children die every year from preventable diseases. “Melinda and I had assumed that if there were medicines and treatments that could save lives, government would be doing everything they could to get them to…people,” Bill said at the World Health Assembly in Geneva. “We couldn’t escape the cruel conclusion that…some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not.”
From shock came action. They focused on the simple message that one life is worth no more or less than another. Frances Hesselbein, chairman of the non-profit Leader to Leader Institute, says: “Sometimes people give in a very fair way, but there is something about what they are doing…that is the opposite of that. It is very difficult to understand and very personal.”
Both Gateses read scientific books and travel extensively in developing countries. So far, the Gateses have developed $9 billion to global health. They share a sense of urgency. “We’re not doing enough in developing countries to give out the treatments and practices we know are effective in fighting diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV,” the couple told U.S. News.
1. Which of the following does Bill Gates think is not correct?| A．We act sometimes as if the people suffering don’t exist. |
| B．They can’t solve these problems alone. |
| C．Some lives are worth saving and others are not. |
| D．Government would be doing everything to help people. |
| A．hit | B．impressed | C．attacked | D．hurt |
| A．They have had great influence on global health. |
| B．They are limited to the area in Africa. |
| C．They only focus on medical treatment. |
| D．They are carried out without government’s support. |
| A．praise Bill and Melinda Gates for their kindness | B．raise more money for the foundation |
| C．explain to people how the projects work | D．convince more people of helping others |
