It’s known to all that coffee can make you feel more awake, and now it seems that coffee may also improve your maths skills. And the best news is that you don’t even need to drink it to see the improvements — you just need to smell it. Coffee is actually very healthy. It is loaded with antioxidants (抗氧化物) and beneficial nutrients that can improve your health. The studies show that coffee drinkers have a much lower risk of developing several serious diseases.
A new study by researchers from Stevens Institute of Technology has revealed that the aroma of coffee may help your maths skills. Professor Adriana Madzharov, who led the study, said: “It’s not just that the coffee-like scent helped people perform better on analytical tasks, which was already interesting. But they also thought they would do better, and we proved that this expectation was at least partly responsible for their improved performance.”
In the study, 100 business students took a 10-question algebra (代数) test. Half the group took the test in the presence of a coffee-like scent, while the other half took the test in an unscented room. The results revealed that the group in the coffee-smelling room scored significantly higher on the test than those in the unscented room.
In a follow-up study, the researchers quizzed 200 new participants on their belief about various scents and their effects on human performance. Their answers showed that they believed they would feel alert (警觉的) in the presence of a coffee scent. This suggests that their expectations about performance may have influenced their improved skills.
The researchers believe that the findings could have major effects on the real world. Professor Madzharov added: “Olfaction is one of our most powerful senses. Employers, architects, building developers, retail space managers and others can use subtle scents to help shape employees’ or occupants’ experience with their environment. It’s an area of great interest and potential.”
1. Which of the following best explains “aroma” underlined in Paragraph 2?| A．Smell. | B．Nutrient. | C．Taste. | D．Calorie. |
| A．Summarize the previous paragraphs. | B．Provide some evidence for the findings. |
| C．Add some background information. | D．Introduce a new topic for discussion. |
| A．200 new participants took a 10-question maths test. |
| B．100 business students felt more alert with a coffee scent. |
| C．The new participants performed better after drinking coffee. |
| D．50 business students scored higher in the maths test with coffee than those without. |
| A．Coffee is of great benefit to health. |
| B．The new function of coffee is being tested. |
| C．The new findings of coffee will affect the world. |
| D．The scent of coffee may help one’s maths skills. |
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【推荐1】This morning, my ten-year-old admitted being nervous about his upcoming math test. “The thing is, Mummy,” he explained, “I’m not good at math. I try to make an educated guess.
At my son’s age, we had a daily times table test — if we got less than 15 out of 20, we had to write the whole lot out. I was writing my tables out every night for a good six months.
My husband is no better, despite having a master’s in economics. He gets frustrated with our children’s inability to understand what to him are basic concepts, while I hover on the side, comprehending the pain perfectly.
The absolute worst is when the homework isn’t even knowledge-based but asks you to, for example, research information and create a slideshow about the life cycle of an egg.
Salvation (救赎), thankfully, has recently arrived with changes of school for our two younger children. My middle son now does his homework at school. My youngest is at a primary that has decided that homework is unnecessary,
| A．Well, I also struggle with math |
| B．It usually ends in everyone’s tears |
| C．Despite that, it doesn’t seem to have stuck |
| D．In fact, homework should never be for parents to do |
| E．Ignorance, thank goodness, is once again a blessing |
| F．But sometimes I just don’t know what the answer should be |
| G．Part of the problem is that the schools teach things differently now |
【推荐2】For decades, the homework standard has been a "10-minute" rule, which suggests a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level.
But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot（试点的）program for the coming school year, extending the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. "We really want kids to go home at 4 o'clock, tired," Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said. "We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice."
New solutions to homework differ by community. These local debates aren't easily understood by the fact that even education experts disagree about what's best for kids.
The most all-round research on homework so far comes from an analysis（分析）by Duke University professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence（证据）of a positive relationship between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. Cooper's analysis focused on how homework influences test scores. The relationship was stronger for older students-in 7th through 12th grade-than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.
Although there is the weak relationship between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn't be doing no homework.
However, Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University Missouri-St. Louis, thinks there is not enough evidence that homework is helpful for students in elementary school, "Relationship is not a cause," she said "Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?" Vatterott thinks there should be more stress on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to ban homework for younger kids.
1. What will Kelly Elementary School have in the new term?| A．No homework. | B．Some football practice. |
| C．"10-minute" homework. | D．More physical education classes. |
| A．Younger students in all grades with no homework. |
| B．Younger students in lower grades with no homework. |
| C．Older students in lower grades with more homework. |
| D．Older students in higher grades with more homework. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Unknown. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Is homework good for students? | B．How much homework is proper? |
| C．Does high-quality homework work? | D．Do students really hate homework? |
【推荐3】According to a recent study by Keith Robinson, children’s school grades may be brought down by their parents who help their children with homework. Other forms of parental involvement (参与), including volunteering at school and watching a child’s class carefully, also fail to help, according to the most recent study on the topic.
The findings challenge a key principle of modern parenting (养育子女) where schools expect them to act as partners in their children’s education. Previous generations concentrated on getting children to school on time, fed, dressed and ready to learn.
Keith Robinson, the author of the study, said, “I really don’t know if the public is ready for this but there are some ways parents pay too much attention to their kids’ education, which leads to declines (下降) in their performance at school. One of the things that was consistently not beneficial was parents’ help with homework.” Robinson suggested that may be because parents themselves struggle to understand the tasks. “They may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learn it themselves, but they’re still offering advice.”
Robinson assessed parental involvement performance and found one of the most damaging things a parent could do was to punish their children for poor marks. In general, about 20% of parental involvement was positive, about 45% negative and the rest statistically insignificant.
Common sense suggests it was a good thing for parents to get involved because “children with good academic success do have involved parents”, admitted Robinson. But he argued that this did not prove parental involvement was the root cause of that success. “A big surprise was that Asian-American parents whose kids are doing so well in school are hardly involved. In a more reasonable way, they made their children know how success at school could improve their lives.”
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To present the finding of a recent study. |
| B．To discuss how to improve children’s grades. |
| C．To tell what kind of parenting is good. |
| D．To show different parenting involvements. |
| A．Partners. |
| B．Trainers. |
| C．Monitors. |
| D．Standers-by. |
| A．Modern parents raise children in a more scientific way. |
| B．Parental involvement is not so beneficial as expected. |
| C．Punishing kids for bad marks is mentally damaging. |
| D．Parents are not able to help with children’s homework. |
| A．Children with good academic success do not have involved parents. |
| B．Parental involvement was the root cause of academic success. |
| C．Parents should let children know the importance of success at school. |
| D．Asian-American parents are hardly involved in children’s education. |
Tardigrades, which are known as space bears, are able to survive for up to 30 years without food or water, and endure temperature extremes of up to 150 degrees Celsius, the deep sea and even the frozen space.
Researchers found that their astonishing abilities would protect them from disasters which would wipe out all life on Earth. In fact, the only forces capable of harming tardigrades, such as an exploding star or a deadly gamma ray burst, will not happen before our own Sun dies.
“Life on this planet can continue long after humans are gone,” said Dr. Rafael of the Department of Physics, tardiprades are as close to indestructible as it gets on Earth, but it is possible that there are other resilient (有承受力的) species examples elsewhere in the universe. In this context, there 1S a real case for looking for life on Mars and in other areas of the solar system in general, If tardigrades are earth’s most resilient species, who knows what else is out there.”
The micro animals living In water can live for up to 60 years, and grow to a maximum size of 0.5mm. The only real threat to their existence would be from a destructive event which would cause Earth’s oceans to boil away. But the scientists discovered that there are only a dozen known asteroids (小行星) and dwarf planets with enough mass to cause the oceans to boil if they struck the Earth and none are on a collision course with our planet. Smaller space rocks would not harm tardigrades.
Dr. David, Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Physics at Oxford University said: “To our surprise, we found that although large asteroid impacts would be disastrous for people, tardigrades could be unaffected. Therefore it seems that life, once it gets going, is hard to wipe out entirely. Huge numbers of species, or even entire genera may become extinct, but life as a whole will go on.”
In highlighting the resilience of life in general, the research broadens the scope of life beyond Earth, within and outside of this solar system.
Professor Abraham, chair of the Astronomy Department at Harvard University, said the research proved that life could survive in even the harshest environment. “Organisms with similar tolerances to radiation and temperature as tardigrades could survive long term below the surface in these condition.”
1. What does “this planet” in paragraph 3 refer to?| A．Sun. | B．Earth. | C．Mars. | D．The dwarf planet. |
| A．There may exist more resilient species in other planets. |
| B．Na other species are stronger than tardigrades on the earth. |
| C．Tardigrades can be found in other areas of the solar system. |
| D．Tardigrades will be destroyed by space rocks hitting the earth. |
| A．life will continue however bad the situation is |
| B．it is necessary to explore beyond the solar system |
| C．surviving below the surface s harder than imagined |
| D．asteroid impacts may cause the destruction of tardigrades |
| A．To explore a study method. |
| B．To introduce a new research finding. |
| C．To provide a possible way 10 live in outer space. |
| D．To offer new means to survive tough environment. |
【推荐2】Human speech contains more than 2,000 different sounds, from the common “m” and “a” to the rare clicks of some southern African languages. But why are certain sounds more common than others? A ground-breaking, five-year study shows that diet-related changes in human bite led to new speech sounds that are now found in half the world’s languages.
More than 30 years ago, the scholar Charles Hockett noted that speech sounds called labiodentals, such as “f” and “v”, were more common in the languages of societies that ate softer foods. Now a team of researchers led by Damián Blasi at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has found how and why this trend arose.
They discovered that the upper and lower front teeth of ancient human adults were aligned (对齐), making it hard to produce labiodentals, which are formed by touching the lower lip to the upper teeth. Later, our jaws changed to an overbite structure (结构), making it easier to produce such sounds.
The team showed that this change in bite was connected with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic period. Food became easier to chew at this point. The jawbone didn’t have to do as much work and so didn’t grow to be so large.
Analyses of a language database also confirmed that there was a global change in the sound of world languages after the Neolithic age, with the use of “f” and “v” increasing remarkably during the last few thousand years. These sounds are still not found in the languages of many hunter-gatherer people today.
This research overturns the popular view that all human speech sounds were present when human beings evolved around 300,000 years ago. “The set of speech sounds we use has not necessarily remained stable since the appearance of human beings, but rather the huge variety of speech sounds that we find today is the product of a complex interplay of things like biological change and cultural evolution,” said Steven Moran, a member of the research team.
1. Which aspect of the human speech sound does Damián Blasi’s research focus on?| A．Its variety. | B．Its distribution. | C．Its quantity. | D．Its development. |
| A．They had fewer upper teeth than lower teeth. |
| B．They could not open and close their lips easily. |
| C．Their jaws were not conveniently structured. |
| D．Their lower front teeth were not large enough. |
| A．Supporting evidence for the research results. |
| B．Potential application of the research findings. |
| C．A further explanation of the research methods. |
| D．A reasonable doubt about the research process. |
| A．It is key to effective communication. | B．It contributes much to cultural diversity. |
| C．It is a complex and dynamic system. | D．It drives the evolution of human beings. |
【推荐3】We’ve known that sitting for long periods of time every day has countless health consequences, like a higher risk of heart disease. But now a new study has found that sitting is also bad for your brain.
A study published last week, conducted by Dr. Prabha Siddarth at the University of California, showed that sedentary（久坐的）behavior is associated with reduced thickness of the medial temporal lobe（中颞叶）, a brain area that is critical to learning and memory.
The researchers asked a group of 35 healthy people, ages 45 to 70, about their activity levels and the average number of hours each day spent sitting and then scanned their brains. They found that the subjects who reported sitting for longer periods had the thinnest medial temporal lobes. It means that the more time you spend in a chair the worse it is for your brain health, resulting in possible damage to learning and memory.
What is also interesting is that this study did not find a significant association between the level of physical activity and thickness of this brain area, suggesting that exercise, even severe exercise, may not be enough to protect you from the harmful effects of sitting.
It then surprisingly turned out that you don’t even have to move much to enhance cognition（认知）; just standing will do the trick. For example, two groups of subjects were asked to complete a test while either sitting or standing. Participants are presented with conflicting stimuli（刺激）, like the word “green” in blue ink, and asked to name the color. Subjects thinking on their feet beat those who sat by a 3-milicond margin.
The cognitive effects of severe physical exercise are well known. But the possibility that standing more and sitting less improves brain health could lower the bar for everyone.
I know, this all runs counter to received ideas about deep thought, from our grade school teachers, who told us to sit down and focus, to Rodin’s famous “Thinker,” seated with chin on hand.
They were wrong. You can now all stand up.
1. What can we infer from Paragraphs 3 and 4?| A．Severe exercise can lessen the damage of sitting. |
| B．Severe exercise can greatly improve our brain health. |
| C．Sedentary behavior will possibly damage our brain. |
| D．Brain health has nothing to do with sedentary behavior. |
| A．blank. | B．edge. |
| C．decrease. | D．difference. |
| A．Sitting more is good for our mental health. |
| B．Sitting is better when we think. |
| C．Exercise more can improve our cognition. |
| D．We should stand while thinking. |
| A．people tend to sit while thinking |
| B．standing more can make our brain healthier |
| C．physical exercise can improve our brain health |
| D．sedentary behavior leads to countless health problems |
【推荐1】“Doppelgänger” is a German word which means “double-goer”, a person who looks exactly like you but has no relationship with you. Luckily, the math says that it’s just about impossible and that you are unique.
If we are talking about measurements of the face, there is a small chance that 2 or more people will match one another on 8 measurements of the face, which include ear length and the space between the centers of the right and left eyes. However, if we look at measurements of the body, the chance is even lower. This is because these measurements are larger. Two people may look very similar at first sight, but when you start the measurement they will not match each other.
Many of us have had the experience of being greeted by a stranger and asked if we were someone we weren’t. It’s easy for us to believe in the possibility of doppelgängers. It’s more possible that you’ll see a doppelgänger of an acquaintance than your mom. You know your mom really well and you can find the difference quickly, but for an acquaintance, it’s not the case.
The result that doppelgängers aren’t really a thing doesn’t mean that researchers will stop their research into body features any time soon. In fact, the differences in human features are becoming more important and measurements of the body are more unique than those of the face. Many wrongdoers who are caught on camera cover their faces, so we need to find out if we can use the body in the same way as the face is used.
1. What can be learnt from Paragraph 2?| A．Measurements of the face are not exact. |
| B．There are no similar people in the world. |
| C．People are more similar in body measurements. |
| D．People are less alike in body measurements. |
| A．They don’t believe in face measurements. |
| B．There are many twins around the world. |
| C．They don’t know the “doppelgängers” so well. |
| D．There were doppelgängers in German history. |
| A．They are helpful. | B．They are popular. |
| C．They are against the law. | D．They are difficult to make. |
| A．You can be measured mathematically | B．You are the only one in the world |
| C．Who can be your doppelgänger? | D．Why are there doppelgängers? |
【推荐2】They say everything is bigger in Texas. While that may be true, some of the best things in Texas are quite small. Case in point: tiny Mount Vernon, a town of just under 3,000 people. But if you do come across Mount Vernon, you might just get an intention to stay. That happens a lot around here, and it’s worth noting how remarkable that is.
Tom Wilkinson was born in Mount Vernon 87 years ago and moved back after he retired from his career as a college English professor in Dallas. Like many of his neighbors, Wilkinson can track his ancestors back to the pioneers who settled here in the 1870s. And like many, he values the simple life you can’t easily find in big cities. “People are still polite. They hold the door open for you.” he says, “We grow strong roots here!”
Preserving and honoring the past has been key to helping Mount Vernon survive. The residents have restored and reopened some of the empty stores, including the old barbershop, built more than 100 years ago. An old general store was turned into a combination space. Wander in on any given day and you might find a book club discussion, a Coffee Ladies meet-up, or a work session for the local genealogy(家谱) group among the tables of people chatting over cups of coffee and plates of food.
Mount Vernon has the kind of big hearts you tend to find in a small town. For instance, when a local policeman was diagnosed with cancer last year, ten-year-old Lola McKellar set up a lemonade stand to raise money for his treatments. In 2015, when a 350-year flood sent water rushing into local homes, an army of volunteers showed up to get a wheelchair-bound neighbor and his wife to higher ground, and then came back to help rebuild.
1. What does the author think of Mount Vernon?| A．Remote. | B．Wealthy. |
| C．Primitive. | D．Attractive. |
| A．He preferred the simple and natural life. | B．He could continue his language teaching. |
| C．He could live together with his ancestors. | D．He could meet more neighbors of his age. |
| A．It is in danger of extinction. | B．It is quickly changing over time. |
| C．It is conservative but harmonious. | D．It is being disturbed by the outside world. |
| A．The history of Mount Vernon. | B．The humanity of Mount Vernon. |
| C．The volunteers of Mount Vernon. | D．The reconstruction of Mount Vernon. |
【推荐3】From self-driving cars to carebots (care+robots) for elderly people, rapid development in technology has long represented a potential threat to many jobs normally performed by people. But experts now believe that almost 50 percent of occupations existing today will be completely unnecessary by 2025 as artificial intelligence continues to change businesses.
“The next fifteen years will see a revolution in how we work, and a revolution will necessarily take place in how we plan and think about workplaces,” said Peter Andrew, Director of Workplace Strategy for CBRE Asia Pacific.
A growing number of jobs in the future will require creative intelligence, social skills and the ability to use artificial intelligence.
The report is based on interviews with 200 experts, business leaders and young people from Asia Pacific, Europe and North America. It shows that in the US technology already destroys more jobs than it creates.
But the report states: “Losing occupations does not necessarily mean losing jobs — just changing what people do.” Growth in new jobs could occur as much, according to the research.
“The growth of 20 to 40 person companies that have the speed and technological know-how will directly challenge big companies,” it states.
A report by Pew Research found 52 percent of experts in artificial intelligence and robotics were optimistic about the future and believed there would still be enough jobs in the next few years. The optimists pictured “a future in which robots do not take the place of more jobs than they create,” according to Aaron Smith, the report's co-author.
“Technology will continue to affect jobs, but more jobs seem likely to be created. Although there have always been unemployed people, when we reached a few billion people there were billions of jobs. There is no shortage of things that need to be done and that will not change,” Microsoft's Jonathan Grudin told researchers.
1. We can infer from the text that in the future ________.| A．people will face many difficulties |
| B．people will take up more creative jobs |
| C．artificial intelligence will threaten people's lives |
| D．most jobs will be done in traditional workplaces |
| A．people won't necessarily lose jobs |
| B．big companies will face fewer challenges |
| C．small companies will win against big companies |
| D．most people will become interested in technology |
| A．Mixed. | B．Worried. |
| C．Doubtful. | D．Optimistic. |
| A．there will be enough jobs for people |
| B．things will change a lot in a few years |
| C．many people will become unemployed |
| D．technology will totally change future jobs |
