If you happened to find yourself in 17th-century Naples, you were in for a rough time. The Plague (瘟疫) of 1656 was in full swing. If you were one of the unlucky ones to come down with the disease, a visit from the plague doctor may have been in your future.
The plague doctors’ uniform didn’t exactly inspire a sense of calm. They wore a head-to-toe leather overcoat paired with leather gloves, boots, and a wide-brimmed hat. The whole outfit was modeled after a soldier’s suit of armor (盔甲). Fitting, when you consider that far more people died of plague than combat in the 17th century.
By far the most frightening part of the costume was the long-beaked mask, which marks an important moment in the history of the medical mask. The mask had thick glasses and two small holes in the beak (喙). The beak, stuffed with straw and aromatic herbs, was developed by the French medical doctor Charles de Lorme. It was among the first face coverings designed to reduce the spread of illness. Charles de Lorme developed the beaked mask based upon the theory of miasma (瘴气), an idea dating back to ancient Greece. The theory held that bad smells like that from rotting animal bodies or food, caused disease.
People in the 18th century understood that breathing in certain airborne particles and dust could be harmful. This eventually led Prussian mining official Alexander von Humboldt to invent a miners’ respirator in 1799.
Throughout the 19th century, doctors continued to go without masks while workers in factories were encouraged to use them to help filter (过滤) particle-ridden air. In an Irish flax-spinning factory, workers were said to have worn a “crape mask”. But when the British physician and writer Benjamin Ward Richardson visited the factory, he did not see a mask in sight. “Science…is conquered by free will,” he wrote, noting that until people “realize its usefulness”, the face mask “will have to wait”. And so, the face mask waited.
1. What was a plague doctor’s uniform like in 17th-century Naples?| A．Light and casual. | B．Soft and stylish. |
| C．Clumsy and scary. | D．Lasting and convenient. |
| A．A medical herb. | B．An ancient theory. |
| C．A soldier’s armor. | D．A Greek philosopher. |
| A．Its value was not fully recognized. | B．It became popular with the doctors. |
| C．It was widely used in mines and factories. | D．It was not effective due to its poor quality. |
| A．By listing examples. | B．By following space order. |
| C．By following time order. | D．By making comparisons. |
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【推荐1】Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness (荒野). But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.
Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warming. An avalanche (雪崩) once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.
But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go — to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City — its present population is 762.
1. What attracted the early settlers to New York City?| A．Its business culture. | B．Its small population. |
| C．Its geographical position. | D．Its favourable climate. |
| A．Two-thirds of them stayed there. |
| B．One out of five people got rich. |
| C．Almost everyone gave up. |
| D．Half of them died. |
| A．They found the city too crowded. |
| B．They wanted to try their luck elsewhere. |
| C．They were unable to stand the winter. |
| D．They were short of food. |
【推荐2】To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil (邪恶的). So when Columbus brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the too obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell (地狱). What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the mandrake were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known farmer wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father’s house had been the “introduction of this wonderful new fruit---or is it a vegetable?” As late as the twentieth century, some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an “evil fruit”.
But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. “What are you afraid of ?” he shouted. “I’ll show you fools that these things are good to eat!” Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.
1. The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because ________.| A．it was religiously unacceptable | B．it was the apple of Eden |
| C．it came from a forbidden land | D．it made Christian evil |
| A．The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down. |
| B．The tomato was still refused in most western countries. |
| C．There was little progress in the study of the tomato. |
| D．Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato. |
| A．To make himself a hero. |
| B．To persuade people to buy products from his factory. |
| C．To speed up the popularity of the tomato. |
| D．To remove people’s fear of the tomato. |
| A．To present the change of people’s attitudes to the tomato. |
| B．To give an explanation to people’s dislike of the tomato. |
| C．To challenge people’s fixed concepts of the tomato. |
| D．To show the popularity of the tomato in Europe |
【推荐3】About 6 million children and 14 million adults in the United States suffer from asthma. Asthma is the leading long-term disease among American children.
Even though the number of people with asthma is increasing, it is not a new disease for humans.
One radical(激进的)treatment for asthma that was tried in the 1940s was a parentectomy.
| A．And the book was written in 2600 BC! |
| B．Seek medical help when you show signs of asthma. |
| C．History records asthma cases thousands of years ago. |
| D．For a long time people didn't know what caused the disease |
| E．Some doctors believed that family stress led to childhood asthma. |
| F．So it’s very likely that you or one of your classmates suffer from asthma. |
| G．Over the centuries doctors left behind medical texts about asthma and their treatments. |
【推荐1】Do you walk out of a room with an idea in your head, only to discover moments later that it's gone? If so, don't worry: it's a very common experience, and one that scientists believe they can explain. In fact, when you know why it happens, you can do some very simple things to stop it! The problem is often caused by “event boundaries（界限）”. These are cues your memory uses to stop remembering, in the belief that a particular mental task is over. When you walk out of a room, you create such an event boundary, signaling to your brain that it can put anything not firmly fixed in place. Tests have proved that we're much more forgetful when we move from one location to another. But the same happens when we go from one activity to another, too. It's because anything that seems like the end of a task—closing a study book, finishing a phone call, taking a cake out of the oven—can have the same effect. Within seconds, the information you revised, the arrangements you made with your friend, or the new recipe（食谱）you just used, has disappeared.
But here's how to fight back. First, stop telling your brain that its work is done. This can be as simple as leaving a book open instead of putting it back on the shelf. Second, create clues to carry with you across any unavoidable event boundary. If possible, say the key points out loud: the job you're walking off to do in the next room. And picture the details you want to keep, because memory depends on imagery.
Every day you're faced with event boundaries that make you fail to do your recall. But by avoiding them when you can, and disguising（伪装）them when you can't, you'll find that much less of your learning gets lost.
1. When are people more forgetful according to Paragraph 1?| A．When they close a study book. | B．When they walk out of a room. |
| C．When they revise the information. | D．When they stop to do another thing. |
| A．Talk to yourself loudly. | B．Carry a notebook to take notes. |
| C．Memorize details in form of image. | D．Close the book and place it in place. |
| A．Positive. | B．Unclear. | C．Doubtful. | D．Favorable. |
| A．Health. | B．Nature. | C．Education. | D．Entertainment. |
【推荐2】If you are home-alone, or live alone, and somebody comes to the door, shout out “I got it” so that it seems like someone else is there with you and you are not alone. But actually before that, there are lots of preventive(预防的) actions to take.
Give your apartment a safety check
It’s a good idea to give your apartment a once-over for safety concerns—ideally before you even move in. Complete this safety checklist.
Can any of your valuables be seen from the street?
Can you see who’s at the door without opening it?
Do you have all your mail held at the post office when you travel?
Have all the locks of your doors been changed since you moved in?
Become friends with your neighbors
If you’re shy, then you’d probably prefer anything else to chatting with neighbors. But make an effort to be friendly. In one way or another, your neighbors will be more willing to lend a hand to a friend than they are to help out a stranger in times of trouble.
Be smart about spare keys
Thieves and other illegal types know exactly where to check for spare keys.
So don’t think you’re being clever by hiding them in the mailbox, or underneath a carpet. Instead, you had better leave them to a friend or trusted neighbor.
Always lock the door
Lock your doors, every single time. Even if you’re just going to the garbage dumpster(垃圾大铁桶) quickly, or only stepping inside to catch something you forgot.
It may seem like overkill — especially if you live in a relatively safe district. But it only takes that one moment for someone to steal in.
1. Why does the author advise you to shout “I got it” in Paragraph 1?| A．To protect yourself. | B．To answer the door. |
| C．To call out loudly. | D．To welcome the guests. |
| A．Hide spare keys in the mailbox. |
| B．Take all the keys with you if possible. |
| C．Leave the keys to someone you trusted. |
| D．Have your keys ready as you leave. |
① Never change the locks.
② Close the door in time.
③ Make friends with neighbors.
④ Put spare keys under the carpet.
⑤ Keep valuables seen from the street.
⑥ Have a safety check about the apartment.
| A．①②④ | B．②③⑤ |
| C．③④⑥ | D．②③⑥ |
【推荐3】Companies that have invested heavily in big data want to know how to make smart investments that will distinguish them from the competition and enable the best possible return before making the decision to go all in. In the past, not all enterprises’ big data plans went as planned. These failures are not usually published, but the big data failure rate is unusually high.
According to Gartner, only 15% of businesses make it past the experimental stage of these projects. Our fear, as leaders of technology companies, is that with so much attention surrounding AI, the pressure is on for us to apply the technology without first setting clear business goals and understanding the differences between AI and ML (machine learning) and how they should be applied, thus risking falling behind the many decision-makers who are adopting the technology.
It’s easy to get caught up in the great expectations of artificial intelligence as it’s promoted, including breakthroughs like deep learning, but those who want to make an outsized influence should instead focus on good old-fashioned machine learning — or “cheap learning”.
The distinction is simple: Cheap learning is about using basic machine learning techniques on straightforward data sets in different parts of a company to produce a large number of small, gradual improvements. Deep learning, on the other hand, is a specific part of machine learning. Deep learning is a collection of advanced machine learning approaches that make business decisions based on highly complex data sets possible.
For tasks of analyzing raw data, such as images and voice recordings, deep learning is best. But when it comes to working on simplified, structured types of data, we’ve found cheap machine learning will do the trick. When you consider that the majority of data flowing through enterprises fall into this second category, it’s clear which tool makes the most sense.
1. What do we know about investment in big data from the first paragraph?| A．It’s risky. | B．It’s safe. | C．It’s secret. | D．It’s fruitful. |
| A．Understanding AI and ML. | B．Wasting too much time on AI. |
| C．Falling behind other companies. | D．Acting with unclear business goals. |
| A．A strong influence. | B．Big breakthroughs. |
| C．Cheap learning. | D．Deep learning. |
| A．Companies should invest in big data. |
| B．Knowing the difference bewteen AI and ML matters. |
| C．Deeping learning or cheap learning depends on the nature of tasks. |
| D．Deep learning is always better than cheap learning. |
