【推荐1】Protecting Yourself Against COVID-19

You’re probably really worried about the new COVID-19 coronavirus, especially if there are confirmed cases near you. Fortunately, you can take action to protect yourself and your family from the infection.     1    

Stay away from people who are coughing or sneezing (喷嚏) .

Since COVID-19 is a respiratory (呼吸) infection, coughing and sneezing are common symptoms (症状).     2    They may increase your risk of infection. Keep your distance from people who appear to have such symptoms.

Wash your hands with soap and water to reduce your infection risk.

The best way to prevent COVID-19 is to wash your hands as often as possible. Wet your hands with warm water, and then apply a little soap. Work the soap into lather (泡沫) for 20-30 seconds.     3    This is about how long it takes to sing the “Happy Birthday” song to yourself twice, so pretend you’re celebrating someone’s birthday.

Keep your hands away from your eyes, nose, and mouth.

    4    When this happens, the virus can stay on your hands, so you can easily infect yourself if you touch your face with dirty hands. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth in case the virus is on your skin.     5    

Unfortunately, people who are infected with COVID-19 may spread the illness even if they aren’t showing symptoms.

A．Clean surfaces that people often touch.

B．Here are some simple things that can help you stay well

C．Then wash your hands clean under warm running water.

D．Always wash your hands before you eat or drink anything.

E．You may touch coronavirus on a surface like a door handle.

F．Don’t shake hands with people, whether they show symptoms or not.

G．Additionally, coughing and sneezing both send the virus into the air.

【推荐2】We need to fail—failure is how we learn. If we never fail at anything, we probably haven't learned all that life has to teach us.     1    

Don't criticize yourself for trying and never stop trying.

Trying or learning something new is often half the battle. Babies don't give up until they learn to walk. If you really want to change some behavior or learn to do something new, don't give up trying.     2    , although you may get depressed by the lack of progress sometimes.

Understand the power of optimism.

While optimism is the ‘new happiness’, there is a certain power in optimistic thinking whether you believe it or not. Putting yourself in a more optimistic mindset(心态) can open you up to more possibilities.

Learn to rely on yourself first, then others.

Those who are self-reliant are also usually more resilient—meaning they can bounce back from problems, stress and heartbreak more quickly than those who aren't.     3    —just become your own best friend, do everything that you can possibly do for yourself, and learn what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Don't look back.

    4    . But in fact, there's nothing back there to see. Spend just 10 percent more of your time looking forward to what life holds for you in the future, and I suspect you'll find yourself in a better position.

Failure is a normal and natural pan of life that is neither good nor bad---it's just how we learn.    5    , but how quickly you can accept your failure, learn something from it and try again.

A．We should cherish today

B．But how can we avoid failure?

C．But what can help us when we fail?

D．So the question is not whether you fail or not

E．If you give up, your progress will come to an end

F．Becoming more self-reliant is easier than it sounds

G．We spend too much of our adult lives looking back.

【推荐3】Food labels already indicate how good or bad a product is for you. But good or bad for the planet? That’s often much less clear. Now a growing number of brands are labeling their products to show their climate impact.

Swedish food company Felix is one of them. For two days in October, Felix opened a pop-up store in Stockholm, where all items were priced based on their carbon footprint. The bigger their emissions, the higher the price. The idea was to demonstrate how easy it is for shoppers to make climate-friendly choices when products are clearly labeled.

“We know that the numbers alone don’t make sense to consumers,”says Sjöberg, Felix’s marketing manager, “To give the figures meaning, we have created a climate scale that clearly shows the current average and which climate footprint is low.”

Evaluating a food’s true carbon footprint isn’t easy and brands are teaming up with specialist platforms that deal with data using complex calculation tools to work out emissions across the whole production chain.

Oatly calculates the footprint of its oat-based drinks, from the agricultural processes all the way to the grocery store, with the help of CarbonCloud, a startup spun out of research at Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden. “We have developed a web platform that allows the food producers to perform detailed climate assessments without them needing to understand any of the science or the mathematics behind it,”explains CarbonCloud CEO David Bryngelsson.

Companies like Oatly input information including their ingredients, energy use, waste production and how products are shipped, and CarbonCloud's web tool does the rest.

CarbonCloud has done assessments for hundreds of products and brands including Estrella, Nude and Naturli, and says interest is increasing rapidly.

At the moment the food industry doesn’t have a standardized approach to calculating carbon figures, but Sjöberg says the most important thing is to give consumers the information that⁹s currently available.

“In the future, hopefully we will see a common ground for how we calculate and how we label products,” he says. “But as for right now, the climate can’t wait.”

1. What is special about the products in the pop-up store in Stockholm?

A．They are climate- friendly.

B．They are good for people's health.

C．They are priced based on carbon emissions.

D．They are labeled to show nutrition contents.

2. Which company is mainly responsible for calculating carbon footprint?

A．Felix.

B．Oatly.

C．Estrella.

D．CarbonCloud.

3. What is Sjöberg’s attitude towards calculating carbon figures?

A．Supportive.

B．Skeptical.

C．Carefree.

D．Negative.

4. What’s the text mainly about?

A．A newly-opened food store.

B．A growing trend of labeling food.

C．A new approach to calculating carbon footprint.

D．A climate scale to show current average carbon emissions.

【推荐1】     With 10, 600 bicycles in circulation, Paris city officials are hoping the program will provide people with more environmentally friendly transportation.

          It seems both Parisians and tourists are taking advantage of the program. Since its launch a little over two weeks ago, Vélib has already seen almost half a million rentals. And, with the addition of 10,000 more bikes and 700 more stations in the next 12 months, city officials expect at least 200,000 regular users by year end. Parisian Olivier Bioret has already gone for a spin on one of Vélib’s vehicles and plans to make use of them more often.

   “It’s a real pleasure—when, like me, you don’t have space enough in your flat to have your own bike—to be able to discover, to cross Paris and not have to take the subway. ”he said．

   As a socialist and longtime green activist, Mayor Bertrand Delanoe regards Vélib as just a part of his plan to reduce car traffic and, thus, lower pollution by 2020.

        Apart from its environmental benefits, Vélib is also being praised as a way of collecting money for the city, for all the money from rentals goes to the city government.

Paris is not alone in its attempt to profit from the power of the bicycles.

        Across the globe, cities such as Barcelona, which stated its bike-share program in March with 1,500 vehicles and 100 stations, and New York, which launched a five-day trial program last month, are using bicycles as a way to cut back on both traffic and pollution.

However, it remains to be seen whether people’s acceptance of these programs is simply a passing fashion or whether this movement has the power to take root and transform the face of public transportation around the world.

1. The real purpose of Vélib is________.

A．to help people save money and space

B．to make some money for the city government

C．to provide convenience to both Parisians and tourists

D．to reduce traffic and pollution in the city

2. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．There will be 700 stations in one year’s time .

B．There will be over 20, 000 bikes in use in a year.

C．In the first two weeks there were nearly a million rentals.

D．There will be 200, 000 regular rentals each day by year end.

3. We can know from the passage that_________.

A．other cities also have such programs

B．Parisians can use the bicycles free of charge

C．Paris sets an example to many other cities

D．Paris is the first city to start such a program

4. As to the future of the program，the author is_________.

A．critical

B．optimistic

C．uncertain

D．negative

【推荐2】Traffic Management

Traffic lights are key tools for regulating traffic now.They are not, however, perfect.Drivers exchange the traffic jams that would happen at unmanaged crossings for a pattern of stop-go movement that can still be annoying, and which burns more fuel than a smooth passage would.

Creating such a smooth passage means adjusting a vehicle's speed so that it always arrives at the lights when they are green.That is theoretically possible, but practically hard.Roadside signs wired to traffic lights can help get the message across a couple hundred metres from a crossing, but such signs are expensive, and are not widespread.Margaret Martonosi and Emmanouil Koukoumidis at Princeton University, and Li-Shiuan Peh at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, have an idea that could make the process cheaper and more effective.Instead of a hardwired network of signs, they propose to use mobile-phone applications.The driver must load the team's software, named SignalGuru, into his phone and then put it on a special thing attached to the inside of his car's windscreen, with the camera lens （镜头） pointing forward.SignalGuru is designed to detect traffic lights and track their status as red, yellow or green.It broadcasts this information to other phones in the area that are fitted with the same software, and — if there are enough of them, the phones thus each know the status of most of the lights around town.Using this information, SignalGuru is able to calculate the traffic-light schedule for the area and suggest the speed at which a driver should travel in order to avoid red lights.

Tests in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where five drivers were asked to follow the same route for three hours, and in Singapore, where eight drivers were asked to follow one of two routes for 30 minutes, revealed that SignalGuru was capable of predicting traffic-light activity with an accuracy of 98.2% and 96.3% respectively, in the two cities.This was particularly impressive because in Cambridge the lights shifted, roughly half-way through the test, from their unbusy schedule to their afternoon-traffic schedule, while in Singapore lights are adaptive, using detectors fixed under the road to determine how much traffic is present and thus when a signal   should change.In neither case was SignalGuru fooled.

Fuel consumption fell, too —by about 20%.SignalGuru thus reduces both annoyance and fuel use, and makes going back and forth to work a slightly less horrible experience.

1. Roadside signs wired to traffic lights are not the best way to create a smooth passage because____________.

A．they are too costly and not widely used

B．they are expensive and easily break

C．they are complex and confusing to drivers

D．they are theoretically possible but practically useless

2. SignalGuru is an application used on____________..

A．a camera	B．a computer
C．a mobile phone	D．a GPS system in one's car

3. With the information it collects and processes, SignalGuru is able to____________..

A．help drivers avoid traffic accidents	B．allow drivers to adjust their speed
C．change the traffic lights in advance	D．send information to all cell phones

4. The tests in Cambridge and Singapore were impressive because SignalGuru____________..

A．proved to be unreliable	B．operated at a high speed
C．understood drivers' schedules	D．functioned rather stably