We live in a world of countless reminders, and constant push notifications (通知). Every service seems to be competing for our attention all the time. As it turns out, all this distraction may come at a massive cost, but you don’t even realize it.
The findings from new research at Ohio State University were published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Dozens of participants were given a simple-sounding task. Look at a screen of four colored squares. One will be outlined in white-pay attention to that one. After these squares flash on the screen for a mere tenth of a second, pick the color that you remember from a color wheel.
Despite the rapid speed of such work, the human brain excels (擅长) at this task. “People are quite good at this, surprisingly good!” says Julie Golumb, associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University.
They got quite good at it, to a point. Researchers threw a wrench by introducing an intentional distractor. Of the four squares, one would be outlined in white, but then another — the distractor — would be surrounded in white dots. Despite being instructed to ignore the distractor, subjects just couldn’t help it. Most of the time, they still recalled the color. But about20% to 30% of the time, they actually reported the distractor color as the correct one, unaware of the error.
As Golumb emphasizes, findings like these are a big deal. We’ve long known balancing too many tasks can slow down our thinking. But the fact that it can literally recolor our memories should give us pause, because there’s not a fundamental difference between colored squares and real versus fake news headlines on social media．
“If you’re trying to pay attention to multiple things, you’re not going to be as good at if it were one at a time,” she says. “We’ve known for a long-time multitasking might slow you down, but our research shows, it’s not just you might be slowed down; it might affect what you’re perceiving in the moment.”
1. What task were the participants given?| A．Distinguish different colors of squares. |
| B．Put the squares of a color into groups. |
| C．Pick out the square color outlined in white. |
| D．Figure out what you remember from a color wheel. |
| A．Assessed the experiment. |
| B．Added the difficulty. |
| C．Overturned the result. |
| D．Discovered the truth. |
| A．Making a comparison. |
| B．Giving examples. |
| C．Following time order. |
| D．Making classifications. |
| A．Suspicious. | B．Unconcerned. | C．Optimisti | D．Negative. |
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【推荐1】We’ve learned bees can understand zero and do basic math. Now a new study shows their tiny insect brains may be able to connect symbols to numbers.
Adrian Dyer, a professor in the RMIT University, said the research showed brains far smaller than humans’ could know numbers. “Humans learn numbers as children, but being able to recognize what numbers really represent needs a certain level of cognitive (认知的) ability,” Dyer says, “Studies have shown primates (灵长类动物) and birds have this ability, but this is the first time we’ve seen this in insects.”
It’s important for humans to do the research. There are 86 billion neurons (神经元) in humans’ brains. Bees only have less than a million. If bees have the ability to learn something difficult to understand like human-made symbolic language, this will open up exciting new paths for future communication between humans and animals.
Studies have shown that a number of animals have been able to learn symbols of numbers, including parrots and monkeys. Monkeys were taught Arabic numbers and could order them correctly. An African grey parrot called Alex was able to learn numbers and could do simple calculation.
Understanding how tiny brains of bees manage information opens paths to technology, which is good for the future design of computing (计算) systems.
1. What does Adrian Dyer say about the research?| A．The finding of the research is first seen in insects. |
| B．Humans’ brains are the biggest on the earth. |
| C．Birds can be as clever as primates. |
| D．Bees are cleverer than birds. |
| A．Humans may find a new path to communicate with animals. |
| B．Bees have more neurons than monkeys. |
| C．Insects have the ability to communicate with humans. |
| D．Bees can solve basic math problems. |
| A．A child. | B．A monkey. |
| C．An expert. | D．A parrot. |
| A．Bees can communicate with other animals. |
| B．Bees can attach symbols to numbers. |
| C．Some animals can do math problems. |
| D．Bees can make communication with humans. |
【推荐2】City trees grow faster and die younger than trees in rural forestry, a new study finds. Over their lifetimes,then, urban trees will likely absorb less CO2 from the air thah forest trees.
As we all know, the earth would be freezing or burning hot without CO2. However, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps energy from the sun as/heat. That makes temperatures near the ground rise. Human activities, especially the widespread burning-of fossil(化石）fuels，have been sending extra greenhouse gases into the air. This has led to a rise in average temperatures across the globe.
Studies had shown forests readily absorb CO2，but there hadn’t been much data on whether city trees grow， die and absorb CO2 at the same rate as forest trees do. So some researchers decided to find out.
To figure out how quickly trees were growing, researchers tracked their diameters (the width of their trunks) between 2005 and 2014. A tree’s diameter increases as it grows, just as a person’s waist size increases as they gain weight. About half the weight of a tree is carbon, research has shown. Most of the rest is water. Over the nine years’ tracking, the researchers found city trees absorbed four times as much carbon from the air as forest trees. However, they were twice as likely to die. So over the lifetime of each type of tree, forest trees actually absorbed more CO2.
City trees grew faster because they had less competition for light from their neighbors. In a forest，trees tend to grow close together，shading their neighbors. Street trees also benefit from higher levels of nitrogen (氮）in rainwater. Nitrogen helps plants grow. Waste gases from gas-burning cars also contain nitrogen, thus enriching city air with nitrogen. Later, rainwater may wash much of it to the ground. Some street trees may also have better access to water than trees in the country because the underground water pipes can leak.
1. What can he known about CO2 from paragraph 2?| A．It is one of the side effects of greenhouses. |
| B．It greatly accelerates the process of global warming. |
| C．It results from the widespread burning of fossil fuels. |
| D．It prevents the earth from becoming unsuitable to live on. |
| A．To know about their growth rates. |
| B．To find out how much they weigh. |
| C．To check whether they were healthy. |
| D．To assess the carbon amounts in them. |
| A．They are more likely to access growth promoters. |
| B．They can enjoy more water coming from the air. |
| C．They can enjoy more shade from neighbors. |
| D．They are better at competing for light. |
| A．How urban trees can live longer. |
| B．Why city living makes trees die young. |
| C．How trees respond to dry soil conditions. |
| D．Why faster-growing trees absorb more CO2. |
【推荐3】When I was a kid, I used to spend hours listening to Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew Pinsky on their Sunday night radio show Loveline. I listened so often that I began to use one of their well-known phrases — “good times” — in my daily conversations. Scientists have a name for this phenomenon: behavioral mimicry.
You’ve probably experienced this before: after spending enough time with another person, you might start to pick up on his or her behavior or speech habits. You might even start to develop your friend’s habits without realizing it. There is a large body of literature concerning this sort of phenomenon, and it regularly happens for everything from body gesture to accents to drink patterns (模式). For example, one study found that young adults were more likely to drink their drink directly after their same-sex drinking partners, than for the two individuals to drink at their own paces.
And the effect isn’t limited to real-life face-to-face activities. Another study found that the same you-drink-then-I-drink pattern held even when watching a movie! In other words, people were more likely to take a drink of their drinks in a theater after watching the actors on the screen enjoy a drink. At least I don’t feel so strange anymore, having picked up on Adam Carolla’s “good times”.
New research published today in the journal PLOS ONE indicates that the same sort of behavioral mimicry is responsible for social eating, at least among university-age women of normal weight. That’s right: the young women were more likely to adjust their eating according to the eating pace of their same-sex dining companion.
As with most experiments, these results raise a whole new set of questions. However, the finding that behavioral mimicry may at least partly explain eating behavior is important, and has real effects on health. The researchers note that “as long as people don’t fully recognize such important influences on intake (eating), it will be difficult to make healthy food choices and keep a healthy diet, especially when people are exposed to the eating behavior of others”.
1. The author takes his own example of using “good times” to_______.| A．show the influence of the hosts’ words | B．express his love for radio shows |
| C．prove the popularity of the show | D．introduce the topic of the passage |
| A．behavioral mimicry is beneficial to our health |
| B．behavioral mimicry decides our eating behavior |
| C．people have realized the effect of behavioral mimicry on our health |
| D．It’s impossible to keep a healthy diet without knowing behavioral mimicry |
| A．To introduce behavioral mimicry and its influence. |
| B．To appeal to readers not to fall into others’ habits. |
| C．To advocate healthy food choices among readers. |
| D．To draw readers’ attention to popular radio shows. |
【推荐1】It was a cold Saturday night in February. Some 200 New Yorkers carefully made their way to the reservoir (水库) in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the magical snowy owl, who had touched down in the park the week before in what was reported as the first visit there by the species in more than 130 years.
Except for a few excited screams from children, people were quiet — patiently awaiting the owl’s arrival at the reservoir’s north gatehouse. The snowy owl did not disappoint. She flew down from the darkness and surveyed the water and the people holding phones and cameras before taking off into the night to the applause of her many fans. They simply wanted to see this lovely creature whose improbable appearance seemed to signify hope after the lockdown.
New Yorkers who had long taken Central Park for granted felt a renewed love for this rectangle of green in the heart of the big city and, of course, its amazing wildlife. That the park is a beautiful and essential refuge is something that humans have only come to fully appreciate during these recent times of uncertainty.
Central Park was originally planned and constructed during another difficult time in the nation’s history — in the years before and during the American Civil War. Unlike many European parks that had originally been built for the aristocracy (贵族), Central Park was designed as a public space. In its chief architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s words, the poor and rich alike could “easily go there after their day’s work is done” and “stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the noise of the streets.”
As spring turns into summer, we see people sitting on the grass or benches — catching some sun, having family picnics, or tapping away on their laptops and iPads. Just being in proximity to other people in Central Park gave us a sense of community — the sense that we would somehow persevere.
1. What did people do in Central Park on that Saturday night?| A．They cheered for each other. | B．They paid their first visit. |
| C．They came for a rare sight. | D．They appreciated a water event. |
| A．Give some examples. | B．Make a comparison. |
| C．Introduce a new opinion. | D．Add background information. |
| A．close to | B．free from |
| C．at a distance from | D．in comparison with |
| A．Find Refuge in Central Park |
| B．Take Your Breath by Snow Owl |
| C．Trace Central Park to difficult times |
| D．Meet an improbable “visitor” in person |
【推荐2】A vast majority of people usually argue that cycling can make a significant contribution to our world. In reality, there is a gap between desired and actual numbers. In Germany, for instance, only 20% of the everyday short-distance trips are covered by bicycle. When enquiring about the causes, researchers found one point repeatedly tops the list: the perceived or potential risk on the bike routes used. Increasing the share of cycling trips thus depends crucially on well-developed bike paths.
However, designing efficient bike path networks is a complex task that involves balancing a variety of limitations while meeting overall demand. In addition, many districts are confronted with a shortage of funds available for improving the infrastructure. Researchers propose a new approach to generating efficient bike path networks. This considers demand distribution and the route option of cyclists based on preferences for secure outings. Typically, minimizing the travel distance is far from the solely goal. Aspects such as attractiveness of a route are also taken into account.
Under real conditions, a bike path network is created by constantly adding bike paths to more streets. This time, researchers start with an ideal, complex network, in which all streets in a city are equipped with a bike path. In a virtual process, they gradually remove less used bike path sections from this network. The route selection of cyclists is continuously updated. Thus, a series of bike path networks is created and is always adapted to the current usage. Each stage of it corresponds to a variant that could be carried out with less financial support.
“We illustrate the applicability of this demand-driven planning for crowded urban areas of Dresden and Hamburg,” explains researcher Christoph Steinacker. “We are approaching a real-life issue here using the theoretic toolbox of network dynamics and compare efficient bike path networks under different conditions.”
1. Why do people rarely cycle?| A．They think of cycling as inefficient. | B．They usually take long-distance trips. |
| C．They’re concerned about the security. | D．They’re unable to find special bike roads. |
| A．Tight budgets. | B．Complex routes. |
| C．Maximized travel distance. | D．Decreasing cycling demand. |
| A．It will be updated once in a while. | B．It is contrary to the real-life design. |
| C．It ensures every street has a bike path. | D．It serves as a model for other districts. |
| A．Good Planning Gets the Bike Rolling | B．A good Network Benefits More People |
| C．Cycling Paths Change Crowded Urban Areas | D．A New Concept Contributes to a Better World |
The interview had been going on for about 20 minutes and everything seems to be going well. Then, suddenly, the interviewer asks an unexpected question, “Which is more important, law or Dove?”
Job applicants in the West increasingly find themselves asked strange questions like this. And the signs are that this is beginning to happen in China.
Employers want people skilled, enthusiastic and devoted. So these are the qualities that any reasonably intelligent job applicants will try to show no matter what his or her actual feelings are. In response, employers are increasingly using questions which try and show the applicant’s true personality.
The question in the first paragraph comes from a test called the Keirsey Personality Sorter. It is an attempt to discover how people solve problems, rather than what they know. This is often called an aptitude test (能力倾向测验).
According to Mark Baldwin many job applicants in China are finding this type of questions difficult. When a Chinese person fills out an aptitude test he or she will think there is a right answer and they may fail because they try to guess what the examiner wants to see.
This is sometimes called the prisoner’s dilemma. Applicants are trying to act cleverly in their own interest. But they fail because they don’t understand what the interviewer is looking for. Remember that in an aptitude test, the correct answer is always the honest answer.
1. The writer wrote the passage to________.| A．give you a piece of advice on a job interview | B．tell you how to meet a job interviewer |
| C．describe the aptitude test | D．advice you how to find a job |
| A．They want to discover what the interviewees know. |
| B．They are curious about the answers. |
| C．They try to discover the ability of the interviewees solving problems. |
| D．They just ask questions without thinking much. |
| A．not tell the truth | B．learn to tell what they really think |
| C．be more enthusiastic | D．try to find out what the examiner really want to know |
| A．job applicants are always asked such questions |
| B．more Chinese applicants fail to find a job |
| C．applicants should not act as reasonably as a prisoner |
| D．the aptitude test is becoming popular worldwide |
【推荐1】People in Japan tend to live longer and stay healthier in their later years, with an increasing number of old people living alone. Japan is on a fast track to “ultra-age” with people aged 65 or above accounting for 28 percent of its total population in 2019；it was 26.7 percent in 2017. On the other hand, the number of births in 2019 fell to its lowest (about 941,000) since records began in 1899.
Demand for care services for elderly people has increased. A shrinking (缩小) working population means fewer able-bodied adults are available to look after the elderly. State-provided facilities for the elderly are not enough, which causes elderly people to turn to private ones but they are expensive.
The country will be short of 380,000 of health nurses by 2025. The government has to turn to advanced robots to meet the shortage. A study found that using robots encouraged one third of the people to become more active and independent. Yet there is no robot that can provide the emotional support to the elderly.
Japan provides a case study for China, which is also faced with a fast aging population. 17.23 million babies were born in China in 2019, about 630,000 fewer than in 2018. People aged 60 accounted for 17.3 of China’s population in 2019. With a shortage of elderly care facilities and unbalanced supply, China may find it hard to deal with the rapidly increasing number of senior citizens.
To meet the challenge, the Chinese government should make policy changes, which Japan is unwilling or unable to do or even consider. China should pay attention to the signals its aging population is sending and take proper and timely action.
1. What do we learn about the old Japanese?| A．More and more old Japanese prefer to live on their own. |
| B．A lot of old Japanese have to continue working at old age. |
| C．Some old Japanese remain active with the help of robots. |
| D．Japanese aged 65 or above make up one third of its population. |
| A．They are expensive. | B．They are inconvenient. |
| C．They are affordable. | D．They are fashionable. |
| A．They hire foreign health nurses. |
| B．They employ advanced robots. |
| C．They set up more nursing schools. |
| D．They train the elderly to tend themselves. |
| A．Japan has to take action to deal with the aging population. |
| B．Robots can’t provide emotional support to the elderly. |
| C．China is now faced with a fast aging population. |
| D．Japan’s aging population issue is a timely lesson for China. |
【推荐2】What comes to mind when you think about chocolate? A candy bar at Halloween? Ice cream on a hot day?
For Ibrahim, a 12-year-old boy from the West African country of Ghana, chocolate is not about sweet treats; it is about bitter work.
To change the harmful practices like this, some farms use an approach called Fairtrade.
Consumers like you can play a role as well. You can buy Fairtrade chocolate if possible, pressure candy companies to change their labour practices, or ask local stores to sell Fairtrade products.
Chocolate has a hidden story that affects children like Ibrahim—children who want a happy future just like you do.
| A．You have the power to change the story. |
| B．The labels on chocolate do not tell his story. |
| C．Fairtrade is a way of doing business that prohibits child labour. |
| D．You can also take action through the Fairtrade Schools network. |
| E．On many farms, children like Ibrahim perform difficult farming tasks. |
| F．Cocoa trees grow in the tropical climates of Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia. |
| G．With more income, farmers can pay adult workers and can send their children to school. |
【推荐3】Edgar Degas, J. M. W. Turner and other painters captured centuries of atmospheric records as they decorated canvases with sunset scenes.
Greek Scientists worked with an artist to confirm that the ratio of red to green in sunset painting, both old and new, increased when particles filled the air, such as after major volcanic eruption（火山喷发）or dust storms. The atmosphere physicists also found a gradual shift in artistic sunset hues over centuries, possibly due to ever-increasing air pollution during the Industrial Revolution.
An earlier study, led by atmospheric physicist Christos Zerefos of the Academy of Athens in Greece, discovered that the amount of red relative to green in sunset descriptions increased after eruptions, including Tambora, Indonesia in 1815, Coseguina, Nicaragua in 1835 and Krakatau, Indonesia in 1883.
Zerefos’ team analyzed 554 paintings created between 1550 and 1990. For up to three years after eruptions, sunsets reddened as sunlight bounced off dust and gas from the volcanoes. The latest study, also by Zerefos, used improved scanning and analysis techniques to confirm the earlier results.
A modern painter, Panayiotis Tetsis, unknowingly repeated the artistic atmospheric observations of classical masters. In the artists’ description of sunsets light over the Greek island of Hydra, the color ratio shifted towards red in paintings done both before（June 19,2010）and after（June 20,2010）a dust cloud from Sahara Desert filtered the sunset’s light.
Zerefos’ team connected the timing of classical paintings’ red shift to other records of the atmosphere trapped in ice cores from Greenland, in the recent study published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The ice cores recorded spikes（尖刺）in sulfur-containing chemicals likely from volcanoes. These spikes corresponded in time to artists’ increasingly dark red sunsets.
The comparison of ice and art also revealed a slow shift in the coloring of the sunset. As the factories of Europe roared into production in the 19th and early 20th century, painting described a steady increase in the red to green ratio. The ice cores recorded a steady rise in airborne particles from industrial pollution during the same time.
1. The underlined word“hues”in the second paragraph probably means_____.| A．angles | B．colors |
| C．locations | D．times |
| A．Both modern and ancient artists describing sunset are involved in the research. |
| B．It confirmed an obvious increase in the ratio of green to red in sunset paintings. |
| C．The shift from green to red also existed in the records of ice cores trapped items. |
| D．The team used traditional techniques to confirm the earlier results of the research. |
| A．By analyzing classical paintings. |
| B．By connecting time to color. |
| C．By comparing art with ice. |
| D．By working with an artist. |
| A．A modern research of ancient art and ice with pollution. |
| B．Art Masterpiece and pollutants trapped in ice cores. |
| C．An increase in the ratio of red to green in paintings. |
| D．Art Masterpiece Recorded Centuries of Pollution. |
