【推荐1】The more hours young children spend in child care, the more likely they are to turn out aggressive and disobedient by the time they are in kindergarten, according to the largest study of child care and development ever conducted. Researchers said this correlation(相关性) held true regardless of whether the children came from rich or poor homes, were looked after by a relative or at a center, and whether they were girls or boys.

What is uncertain, however, is whether the child care actually causes the problem or whether children likely to turn out aggressive happen to be those who spend more hours in child care. It also remains unclear whether reducing the amount of time in child care will reduce the risk that a child will turn into a mean person. What's more, quality child care is associated with increased skills in intellectual ability such as language and memory, leading some academics to suggest that child care turns out children who are "smart and naughty".

The government-sponsored research, which has tracked more than 1,300 children at 10 sites across the country since 1991, is bound to cause the debate over child care again: How should people balance work and family? And how should parents, especially mothers, resolve the demands that are placed on them to be both breadwinners and supermoms?

That debate was already on display at a new briefing yesterday, where researchers themselves had different opinions about the data and its implications（含义）. "There is a constant relationship between time in care and problem behavior, especially those involving aggression and behavior," said Jay Belsky of Birkbeck College in London, one of the lead investigators of the study who has previously annoyed women's groups because of his criticisms of child care. "On behalf of fathers or mothers?" interrupted Sarah Friedman, a developmental psychologist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and one of the other lead scientists on the study. "On behalf of parents and families," responded Belsky.

"NICHD is not willing to get into policy recommendations," said Friedman, contradicting her colleague. "There are other possibilities that can be entertained. Yes it is a quick solution—more hours in child care is associated with more problems. The easy solution is to cut the number of hours but that may have implications for the family that may not be beneficial for the development of the children in terms of economics." In an interview after the briefing, Friedman said that asking parents to work fewer hours and spend more time with their children usually meant a loss of family income, which adversely（不利地）affects children.

Scientists said that the study was highly reliable. But the researchers said they had no whether the behavioral difficulties persisted as the children moved to higher grades.

1. Children who spend more time in quality child care will ________.

A．develop greater ability in language

B．be easy to manage and less naughty

C．possess great risk-taking spirit

D．be greedy and mean to their classmates

2. What is still unknown about higher level of aggressiveness in kindergarten children?

A．Whether higher level of aggressiveness can be avoided with longer child care.

B．Where longer child care equally affects children from different families.

C．Whether aggressiveness is a direct result of longer child care.

D．Whether longer child care improves intellectual ability in children.

3. In the fifth paragraph the word "it" probably mean “________”.

A．NICHD is unwilling to give parents recomme ndations

B．NICHD is willing to give policy advice concerning child care

C．the number of hours in child care should be reduced significantly

D．parents should discipline the behavior of their children more strictly

【推荐2】University Room Regulations

Approved and Prohibited Items

The following items are approved for use in residential (提供住宿的) rooms: electric blankets, hairdryers, personal computers, radios, televisions and DVD players. Items that are not allowed in student rooms include: candles, ceiling fans, fireworks, waterbeds, sunlamps and wireless routers (路由器). Please note that any prohibited items will be taken away by the Office of Residence Life.

Access to Residential Rooms

Students are provided with a combination (组合密码) for their room door locks upon check-in. Do not share your room door lock combination with anyone. The Office of Residence Life may change the door lock combination at any time at the expense of the resident if it is found that the student has shared the combination with others. The fee is $25 to change a room combination.

Cooking Policy

Students living in buildings that have kitchens are only permitted to cook in the kitchen. Students must clean up after cooking. This is not the responsibility of housekeeping staff. Kitchens that are not kept clean may be closed for use. With the exception of using a small microwave oven to heat food, students are not permitted to cook in their rooms.

Pet Policy

No pets except fish are permitted in student rooms. Students who are found with pets, whether visiting or owned by the student, are subject to an initial fine of $100 and a continuing fine of $50 a day per pet. Students receive a written notice when the fine goes into effect. If, one week from the date of the written notice, the pet is not removed, the student is referred to the Student Court.

1. Which of the following items are allowed in student rooms?

A．Wireless routers and radios.	B．Hairdryers and candles.
C．Ceiling fans and waterbeds.	D．TVs and electric blankets.

2. What do we know about the cooking policy?

A．A microwave oven can be used.

B．Cooking in student rooms is permitted.

C．A housekeeper is to clean up the kitchen.

D．Students are to close kitchen doors after cooking.

3. If a student keeps a cat in his room for a week after receiving the written notice, he will face ________.

A．a fine of $350	B．parent visits
C．the Student Court	D．a final warning

4. This text is most probably taken from a ________.

A．textbook	B．newspaper
C．admission note	D．fashion magazine

【推荐1】Anyone can be late a handful of times, but to be the person who is always late—that’s an art, a frustrating art. Or, a side effect of your personality, scientists have found.

So what is it that causes some people to constantly miss trains, make it to the wedding just after the bride’s shown up and regularly annoy their friends? And why is it so hard for us to fix it? “There are allsorts of punishments for being late, but we are still late even when those punishments and consequences exist.” said Justin Kruger, a social psychologist at New York University.

One of the commonest reasons why people are frequently late is that-they fail to accurately judge how long a task will take—something known as the planning fallacy. Research has shown that people on average underestimate the tune to complete a task by a significant 40 percent.

Besides, forever-late-comers are more likely to be multitaskers. A 2023 study found that out of 181subway operators in New York City, those who preferred multitasking were more often late for their job. This is because multitasking makes it harder to have the awareness of what you’re doing. It’s also discovered there is a personality type that’s more likely to be late. While highly nervous, achievement-oriented Type A individuals arc more possible to be punctual, Type B individuals, however, who are calmer and more relaxed, have a higher chance to be late.

Admittedly, knowing all of this doesn’t necessarily help fix the problem. But scientists are starting to work on strategies that can slowly improve our punctuality. For people who constantly underestimate tasks, breaking down an activity into detailed steps can help people estimate how long something will take more accurately. As for your personality type, unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do to change that. But accepting that you need to struggle for it may just help. Acceptance, after all, is the first step to change.

1. What does the underlined word “fallacy” mean in paragrqph3?

A．A reasonable argument.	B．A mistaken belief.
C．A modest expectation.	D．A realistic idea.

2. Which of the following is a feature of forever- late-comers?

A．They tackle more than one task at a time.

B．They plan to spend longer time on a task.

C．They suffer from concentration difficulties.

D．They have high expectations for achic’vcments.

3. What is a possible way to help those who are always late?

A．Learning to accept who you are.	B．Changing your personality type.
C．Keeping to the timetable accurately.	D．Divide a task into smaller ones.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．Late comers should be severely punished.

B．Time management contributes to success.

C．The habit of being late is related to character.

D．Accepting your personality improves punctuality.

【推荐2】We can picture a future world where machines will enlarge our human abilities and help us make better life choices, from health to wealth, as we live longer and longer and technology continues its rapid development. Through our dialogue and digital pieces, AI (人工智能) will understand our life goals and wishes, our duties and limitations. It will help us plan different life events, so we can spend more time enjoying life’s moments.

The ability for AI to understanad the complexities (复杂性) and slight differences of human conversation is, however, one hurdle (障碍). There are several thousand known living languages in the world today. Adding to the difficulties are the varied ways words are shared and used across different cultures, including grammar, levels of education and styles of the speakers. Google Duplex, the technology supporting Google Assistant, which places phone calls using a natural-sounding human voice instead of a robotic one, is an early attempt to address such challenges in human communications. But these are just initial whispers in voice of AI’s long journey.

Beyond making reservations and conducting simple dialogues, virtual assistants will need to become far more useful and further fit into the parts of our everyday lives. Not only will they need to foresee what we need before we ask, they also need to understand the context of our conversations and react accordingly. Imagine a snow day when school is canceled for the kids. Knowing that you must now stay at home with your children, your phone would remind you, asking if you’d like your meetings moved to the following day. Or imagine how much more pleasant your journey home from a business trip would be if your phone could automatically arrange for a ride waiting to pick you up at the airport, based on your travel plan, location, and habits. The possibilities are endless.

1. What do we know about AI?

A．It narrows our abilities.	B．It limits our better choice.
C．It helps us enjoy life better.	D．It doesn’t know our limitations.

2. What makes it hard for AI to understand what humans say?

A．Imperfection of AI.	B．Low level of speakers.
C．Similarities between languages.	D．Varieties of languages and cultures.

3. Which word can best describe the author’s attitude towards AI?

A．Doubtful.

B．Approving.

C．Negative.

D．Critical (批判的).

4. Which of the following can be the best title of the text?

A．AI Will Replace Humans	B．AI Will Set Goals for Us
C．AI Will Meet Challenges	D．AI Will Be Part of Our Daily Lives

【推荐3】Don’t like seeds in your tomatoes? You might be pleased to know that seedless ones have been created by gene editing.

This could create a wide range of seedless fruits, but few may ever be seen in the supermarket if regulators decide to treat gene-edited crops in the same way as genetically engineered ones.

Several seedless fruits, from bananas to grapes, are already available, but have mostly come about by luck rather than design. And although there are a few seedless varieties of tomatoes, they’ve taken researchers many years to create.

Now it can be done very quickly, as Keishi Osakabe at Tokushima University in Japan has shown. His team used the CRISPR gene editing technology to make fruits develop even though no seeds had begun to form. “We haven’t tasted them yet, but in theory they should taste the same,” says Osakabe.

There have been a few efforts to create seedless tomatoes using earlier genetic-engineering techniques. These methods take longer time compared with CRISPR.

Some “seedless” fruits just have very small seeds, and still require pollination (授粉). But completely seedless fruits like the edited tomato do not require pollination at all. Such plants could improve food security by reducing our reliance on smaller bee populations, says Saul Cunningham at the Australian National University. Many fruit growers buy bees to pollinate their crops.

There is a deficiency for farmers, however. Seedless plants usually have to be grown from cuttings, which involves more labor than planting seeds.

CRISPR could be used to develop other types of fruit that don’t require pollinator, as well as introduce beneficial mutations (突变), says Osakabe.

But to make it on to the supermarket, gene-edited plants may have to meet the same standards as genetically engineered plants, which would greatly increase costs. Some argue chat since gene editing is used to introduce mutations already found in some of the plants we eat, it should not require such strict regulations.

1. What has been the problem with tomatoes created in the past?

A．Their taste was not very good.	B．They still had a few big seeds.
C．Their genes could not be recognized.	D．They took quite a long time to create.

2. What did Keishi Osakabe’s team do?

A．They edited tomatoes’ genes.

B．They changed the taste of tomatoes.

C．They made seedless bananas and grapes.

D．They created genetically engineered tomatoes.

3. Why is CRISPR better than previous methods?

A．It will still require pollination.

B．It will remain unaffected without bees.

C．It will reduce people’s reliance on food security.

D．It will make many growers buy bees for pollination.

4. What does the underlined word “deficiency” in Paragraph probably mean?

A．Danger.	B．Disadvantage.
C．Benefit.	D．Solution.