【推荐2】

It’s common knowledge that the woman in Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting seems to look back at observers, following them with her eyes no matter where they stand in the room. But this common knowledge turns out wrong.

A new study finds that the woman in the painting is actually looking out at an angle that’s 15.4 degrees off to the observer’s right—well outside of the range that people normally believe when they think someone is looking right at them. In other words, said the study author, Horstmann, “She’s not looking at you.” This is somewhat ironic, because the entire phenomenon of a person’s gaze (凝视) in a photograph or painting seeming to follow the viewer is called the “Mona Lisa effect”. That effect is absolutely real, Horstmann said. If a person is illustrated or photographed looking straight ahead, even people viewing the portrait from an angle will feel they are being looked at. As long as the angle of the person’s gaze is no more than about 5 degrees off to either side, the Mona Lisa effect occurs.

This is important for human interaction with on-screen characters. If you want someone off to the right side of a room to feel that a person on-screen is looking at him or her, you don’t cut the gaze of the character to that side—surprisingly, doing so would make an observer feel like the character isn’t looking at anyone in the room at all. Instead, you keep the gaze straight ahead.

Horstmann and his co-author were studying this effect for its application in the creation of artificial-intelligence avatars when Horstmann took a long look at the “Mona Lisa” and realized she wasn’t looking at him.

To make sure it wasn’t just him, the researchers asked 24 people to view images of the “Mona Lisa” on a computer screen. They set a ruler between the viewer and the screen and asked the participants to note which number on the ruler intersected Mona Lisa’s gaze. To calculate the angle of Mona Lisa’s gaze as she looked at the viewer, they moved the ruler farther from or closer to the screen during the study. Consistently, the researchers found, participants judged that the woman in the “Mona Lisa” portrait was not looking straight at them, but slightly off to their right.

So why do people repeat the belief that her eyes seem to follow the viewer? Horstmann isn’t sure. It’s possible, he said, that people have the desire to be looked at, so they think the woman is looking straight at them. Or maybe the people who first coined the term “Mona Lisa effect” just thought it was a cool name.

1. It is generally believed that the woman in the painting “Mona Lisa”________.

A．attracts the viewers to look back

B．seems mysterious because of her eyes

C．fixes her eyes on the back of the viewers

D．looks at the viewers wherever they stand

2. The experiment involving 24 people was conducted to________.

A．confirm Horstmann’s belief

B．create artificial-intelligence avatars

C．calculate the angle of Mona Lisa’s gaze

D．explain how the Mona Lisa effect can be applied

3. What can we learn from the passage?

A．Horstmann thinks it’s cool to coin the term “Mona Lisa effect”.

B．The Mona Lisa effect contributes to the creation of artificial intelligence.

C．Feeling being gazed at by Mona Lisa may be caused by the desire for attention.

D．The position of the ruler in the experiment will influence the viewers’ judgement.

【推荐2】Fear gets a bad rap(评价). It is certainly true that pure fear doesn’t feel good, but that is very important. Fear tells us to get out of it. Fear developed over millions of years to protect us from danger. So, yes, fear is a feel-bad emotion, but also, perhaps on the contrary, the engine in a whole range of pleasurable activities and behaviors--which inspire what we can call recreational(娱乐) fear.

Once you start looking for it, you’ll find recreational fear everywhere. From a very early age, humans love being jump-scared by caregivers and being hurtled(猛冲) into the air (and caught). They get older and take great pleasure in chase-play and hide-and-seek. They are drawn to scary stories about monsters, witches and ghosts. As they grow a little older, they get together for horror(恐怖)movie nights, stand patiently in line for roller coasters, and play horror video games. Indeed, most of us never quite lose our odd attraction to recreational fear.

One theory is that recreational fear is a form of play behavior, which is widespread in the animal kingdom and universal among humans. When an organism(生物) plays, it learns important skills and develops strategies for survival. Playfighting cats train their ability to hold their own in a hostile encounter(敌对遭遇), but with little risk and low cost, compared to the real thing. It’s the same with humans. When we join in recreational fear activities, from hide-and-seek to horror movie watching, we play with fear, challenge our limits, and learn about our own physical and mental responses to stress.

So, there is pleasure from these activities, but are there any other benefits? In several past and ongoing studies of the psychological(心里的) and social effects of engagement with recreational fear, we’ve seen it improve people’s ability to deal with stress and anxiety. For instance, one study found that people who watch many horror movies showed better psychological resilience(适应力) during the first COVID-19 lockdown than people who stay away from scary movies.

With research findings such as these in mind, we should maybe think twice about protecting kids and young people too eagerly from playful forms of fear. They’ll end up in the real world sooner or later, and they will be better equipped if they’ve at least pretended to be there before.

1. What’s recreational fear in the author’s eyes?

A．Another greedy emotion.

B．A lifelong attraction to humans.

C．A remote memory at an early age.

D．A good inspiration for brave behaviors.

2. How does play behavior benefit animals and humans?

A．By attracting them to activities with little risk.

B．By providing guidance on how to play with fear.

C．By offering chances to improve their ability to survive.

D．By showing them importance of challenging their limits.

3. Why does the author mention COVID-19 lockdown?

A．To show it is another example of recreational fear.

B．To prove scary movies affect people.

C．To indicate protective measures against it are necessary.

D．To prove the experiences of recreational fear are beneficial.

4. What does the author mean by saying “we should maybe think twice” in the last paragraph?

A．We should allow kids to experience more recreational fear.

B．We shouldn’t ignore kids’ needs for more time to play.

C．We should stop kids from recreational fear activities.

D．We should be careful in planning playful activities for kids.

【推荐3】A new study, which was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found that heavy use of platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat was associated with feelings of being separated from society among young adults—basically the opposite of what we are led to believe.

Study co-author Brian Primack and his team surveyed 1,787 U. S. adults aged 19 to 32 and asked them about their usage of 11 social media platforms. They also asked participants questions related to social isolation, such as how often they felt left out. The participants who reported spending the most time on social media—over two hours a day—had twice the odds of perceived（感知到的）social isolation than those who said they spent a half-hour per day or less on the same sites.

According to Tom Kersting, psychotherapist and author of Disconnected, the key to understanding these results lies in our understanding of “connections.” “Humans are social —emotional beings, meaning that it is in our DNA to be connected, face-to-face, with other humans,” he told Reader’s Digest. “Although people think being on social media all the time makes them ‘connected’ to others, they are actually ‘disconnected,’ because the more time one spends behind a screen, the less time one spend face-to-face.”

“Part of the issue of loneliness is that the majority of people who use social media aren’t just posting, they are also viewing,” Kersting continued. “They are spending a lot of time looking at everyone else’s posts, where they are and what they are doing. The constant exposure to everyone else’s ‘perfect’ life experiences causes feelings of being left out.”

So what’s the answer? It’s simple, says Kersting. “The solution to this is resisting the temptation to look at everyone else’s life. Just focus on your own life, where you’re going, what you are grateful for, and what you want to accomplish in this world.”

1. What is the finding of the new study?

A．Humans are social-emotional beings.

B．Social media platforms are overused by the young.

C．Social media strengthens interpersonal relationship.

D．Heavy use of Social media can lead to loneliness.

2. How did the team conduct their research?

A．By asking questions.	B．By experimenting.
C．By distributing forms.	D．By media reporting.

3. Who might have a strong feeling of social isolation?

A．Those who use a single social media platforms.

B．Those who spend three hours a day on social media.

C．Those who don’t spend time on social media.

D．Those spending a half-hour per day on social media.

4. What does Kersting suggest people do to avoid feelings of social isolation?

A．Never compare with others.	B．Make more fiends on the internet.
C．Choose a travel destination.	D．Set up a clear goal for the future.

【推荐2】Nowadays more and more people are talking about genetically modified foods ( GM foods). GM foods develop from genetically modified organisms (有机体), which have had specific changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering techniques. These techniques are much more precise where an organism is exposed to chemicals to create a non­specific but stable change. For many people, the high­tech production raises all kinds of environmental, ethical, health and safety problems. Particularly in countries with long farming traditions, the idea seems against nature.
In fact, GM foods are already very much a part of our lives. They were first put on the market in 1996. A third of the corn and more than half the cotton grown in the U. S. last year was the product of biotechnology, according to the Department of Agriculture. More than 65 million acres of genetically modified crops will be planted in the US this year. The genetic genie is out of the bottle.
However, like any new product entering the food chain, GM foods must be subjected to careful testing. In wealthy countries, the debate about biotech is not so fierce by the fact that they have a large number of foods to choose from, and a supply that goes beyond the needs. In developing countries desperate to feed fast­growing and underfed populations, the matter is simpler and much more urgent: do the benefits of biotech outweigh the risks?
The statistics on population growth and hunger are disturbing. Last year the world's population reached 6 billion. The UN states that nearly 800 million people around the world are unhealthy. About 400 million women of childbearing age don' t have enough iron, which means their babies are exposed to various birth defeats.As many as 100 million children suffer from vitamin A deficiency, a leading cause of blindness.
How can biotech help? Genetic engineering is widely used to produce plants and animals with better nutritional values. Biotechnologists have developed genetically modified rice and they are working on other kinds of nutritionally improved crops. Biotech can also improve farming productivity in places where food shortages are caused by crop damage attributable to drought, poor soil and crop viruses.
1. The passage mainly talks about________.

A．the world's food problem

B．the development in biotech

C．the genetically modified foods

D．the way to solve food shortages

2. According to the passage, GM foods________.

A．will replace naturally grown foods

B．are far better than naturally grown foods

C．may help to solve the problem of poor nutrition

D．can cause serious trouble in developing countries

3. The underlined sentence “The genetic genie is out of the bottle.” in Paragraph 2 probably means that________.

A．GM foods are available everywhere

B．the technology in producing GM foods is advanced

C．genetic technology may have uncontrollable powers

D．genetic technology has come out of laboratories into markets

4. What's the writer's attitude towards GM foods?

A．Enthusiastic.	B．Cautious.
C．Disapproving.	D．Unbelievable.

【推荐3】Teenagers who talk on the cell phone a lot, and hold their phones up to their right ears, score worse on one type of memory test. That’s the finding of a new study. That memory impairment（损伤） might be one side effect of the radiation (放射线) that phones use to keep us connected while we’re on the go.

Nearly 700 Swiss teens took part in a test of figural memory. This type helps us remember abstract symbols and shapes, explains Milena Foerster. The teens took memory tests twice, one year apart. Each time, they had one minute to remember 13 pairs of abstract shapes. Then they were shown one item from each pair and asked to match it with one of the five choices. The study volunteers also took a test of verbal memory. That’s the ability to remember words. The two memory tests are part of an intelligence test. The researchers also surveyed the teens on how they use cell phones. And they got call records from phone companies. The researchers used those records to figure out how long the teens were using their phones. This allowed the researchers to work out how big a radiation exposure (接触) each person could have got while talking.

A phone user’s exposure to the radiation can differ widely. Some teens talk on their phones more than others. People also hold their phones differently. If the phone is close to the ear, more radiation may enter the body, Foerster notes. Even the type of network signal that a phone uses can matter. Much of Switzerland was using an older “second-generation” type of cell phone networks, the study reports. Many phone carriers (通讯公司) have moved away from such networks. And more companies plan to update their networks within the next few years.

The teens’ scores in the figural memory tests were roughly the same from one year to the next. But those who normally held their phones near the right ears, and who were also exposed to higher levels of radiation, scored a little bit worse after a year. No group of teens showed big changes on the verbal memory test. Why might one type of memory be linked to cell phone use, but not another? Foerster thinks it could have to do with where different memory centers sit in the brain. The site that deals with the ability to remember shapes is near the right ear.

1. What can we infer from Paragraph 3?

A．Phone users can make more money with new networks.

B．Radiation levels are affected by the cell phone network types.

C．The cell phone network type has little to do the cell phone use.

D．How people hold their phones has no effect on their bodies.

2. According to the study, teens who use their phones to their right ears a lot do worse in ________.

A．matching numbers	B．reading signals
C．remembering shapes	D．learning words

3. What might be the best title for the text?

A．Cell phone use and safety warnings

B．Facts about cell phone use at school

C．Dangerous levels of cell phone use among teens

D．Teen’s cell phone use linked to memory problems