【推荐2】Children's Games in Ancient China Unlike the children nowadays, the children during ancient times didn't have smart phone, iPad or computer to entertain themselves.    1    Let's take a look.

Kicking stone balls

During the Qing Dynasty, kicking a stone ball around was a popular sport in the northern part of China, and it was often played in the winter to keep warm. Stones were carved into small balls and kicked along with feet.

Flying kites

Kites have quite a long history. The earliest kites were made of wood, instead of paper. Nowadays, the three most famous kites are the Beijing kite, Tianjin kite and Weifang kite.     2    . For example, the swallow-shaped kite is a well-known Beijing style.

Playing hide-and-seek

Hide-and-seek is a traditional game for children, popular around the nation. Even nowadays, many children like playing it. There are two ways to play. One way is covering a child's eyes while other kids run around to tease him.     3    

    4    

The closest thing to watching a film or television for entertainment during ancient times was going to see a shadow play. Folk artists manipulate puppets behind the screen, narrating stories and accompanied by music.

Setting off firecrackers

Firecrackers have a history of more than 2,000 years. It is said that there was a beast named Nian in ancient China.    5    After gunpowder was invented, it gradually replaced the bamboo joint cracker. Crackers are still set off during Spring Festival to symbolize auspiciousness.

A．Watching shadow plays.

B．Each of them has distinctive features.

C．Different materials are used to make the kite.

D．Shadow plays were the popular entertaining form in ancient times.

E．And to scare off the beast, people burnt bamboo joints to make it blast.

F．More commonly, participants hide and one child must try to find them.

G．Instead, they came up with interesting games to play in their childhood.

【推荐1】Tennis great Billie Jean King is a great athlete and a pioneer in sport and she won four singles titles at the US Open between 1967 and 1974. Now, the same tennis officials with whom she often competed with have paid her a special honor. US Open organizers named their venue (会场) the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at the beginning of this year’s championship. The decision came as a surprise to the star.

Billie Jean King had her first tennis lesson at the age of 11, and became interested in it. Six years later she made herself known winning the first of 20 titles at Wimbledon in the doubles championship. King went on to become the first female athlete to earn $100,000 in a year. But her greatest achievements may have been off the game. She devoted herself to fighting for equal status (地位) for women and women in sports that went far away from tennis.

A unique chance arrived and it proved a perfect way for King to further change the place of women in sports in 1973. She was challenged to play a man-tennis great Bobby Riggs. The men organizing the event expected it would provide great fun and the event was reported by sportscaster (体育评论员) Howard Cosell. But King found he focused on her appearance, never mentioning her athletic achievements. King saw it as a crossroad in her fighting for women’s equality in sports. She did win, further opening chances for girls in sports.

But some young female athletes now don’t take these chances seriously. When asked what they knew about Billie King, they looked puzzled. “They’ve got many chances to play and it’s a good thing. However, we still have a long way to go for girls and women in sports and that’s what I want-- I want the dream to be equal” She said.

1. Billie Jean King fought with tennis officials for ______.

A．better pay for herself	B．more chances to compete
C．the equality (平等) for women in sports	D．a special honor from them

2. Billie King first won her fame through ______.

A．her competition with Bobby Riggs in 1973

B．being the first athlete to get a yearly income of $100,000

C．the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center

D．her victory in the doubles championship

3. Why was the event with Bobby Riggs organized in 1973?

A．To attract more audience for the interests of the organizer.

B．To increase Billie King’s fame in the sports field.

C．To make the sport tennis popular:

D．To further open chances for women in sports.

4. From the passage, we can learn that Billie King.

A．has always been respected and honored in sports from the start

B．thinks that the status women have got in sports is high enough

C．is disappointed at not being recognized by young female athletes

D．thinks inequality between men and women in sports still exists

5. That sportscaster Howard Cosell focused on her appearance shows that ______.

A．beautiful female athletes were not quite common

B．women athletes were looked down upon at that time

C．Billy King remained unknown at that time

D．he didn’t know much about Billie King.

【推荐2】Why play games? Because they are fun, and a lot more besides, following the rules, planning your next move, acting as a team member…. These are all “game” ideas that you will come across throughout your life.

Think about some of the games you played as a young child, such as rope-jumping and hide-and-seek. Such games are entertaining and fun. But perhaps more importantly, they translate life into exciting dramas that teach children some of the basic rules they will be expected to follow the rest of their lives, such as taking turns and cooperating.

Many children’s games have a practical side. Children around the world play games that prepare them for work they will do as grown-ups. For instance, some Saudi Arabian children play a game called bones，which sharpens the hand-eye coordination(协调)needed in hunting.

Many sports encourage national or local pride. The most famous games of all, the Olympic Games, bring athletes from around the world together to take part in friendly competition. People who watch the event wave flags, knowing that a gold medal is a win for an entire country, not just the athlete who earned it. For countries experiencing natural disasters or war, an Olympic win can mean so much.

Sports are also an event that unites people. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. People on all continents play it—some for fun and some for a living. Nicolette Iribarne, a Californian soccer player, has discovered a way to spread hope through soccer. He created a foundation to provide poor children with not only soccer balls but also a promising future.

Next time you play your favorite game or sport, think about why you enjoy it, what skills are needed, and whether these skills will help you in other aspects of your life.

1. Through playing hide-and-seek, children are expected to learn to .

A．be a team leader

B．act as a grown-up

C．obey the basic rules

D．predict possible danger

2. The underlined part in Paragraph 2 most probably means that games can .

A．describe life in an exciting way

B．turn real-life experiences into a play

C．change people’s views of sporting events

D．make learning life skills more interesting

3. According to the passage, why is winning Olympic medals so encouraging?

A．It proves the exceptional skills of the winners.

B．It inspires people’s deep love for the country.

C．It helps the country out of natural disasters.

D．It earns the winners fame and fortune.

4. Iribarne’s goal of forming the foundation is to .

A．bring fun to poor kids

B．provide soccer balls for children

C．give poor kids a chance for a better life

D．appeal to soccer players to help poor kids

【推荐3】Win $ 50 in the Coolest Gadget of the Week
Look at what’s the coolest gadget (vote for a chance to win $ 50).

Cryo S: A Cool Netbook Cooler
Like the other devices of NZXT, the Cryo S was designed to provide a competitive advantage at PC gaming. It has two adjustable(可调节的) 120mm fans(风扇) that provide powerful cooling.
The full post(帖子) can be found on _______.

Starry Night Bed
Are you having trouble getting that good nights sleep that you’re needing? Well, not any more. Why not take a look at the Starry Night Bed? The Starry Night Bed is a great new invention which will revolutionize the way in which you sleep. Not only is this bed fashionable and comfortable but it’s also a gadget heaven. With this bed you get many added gadgets including anti-snore technology, movie projector with speakers, temperature control and many more.
The full post can be found on ______.

Fugoo—talking gadgets
Fugoo gets all your appliances(装置，设备) talking to each other so your alarm clock could first wake you up and then tell the coffee machine to start working while checking traffic conditions online to tell you how long it will take you to get to work.
The full post can be found on _________.
Vote   What is this week's coolest gadget?
〇 A Cool Netbook Cooler
〇 Starry Night Bed
〇 Fugoo—talking gadgets
1. Where can you find the full post of the “Cryo S”?

A．Tech Styling.

B．Super Cool Pets.

C．Decide What to Buy.

D．Trends Updates.

2. If you buy a Starry Night Bed, you can get all the following gadgets EXCEPT ___________.

A．temperature control	B．movie projector
C．adjustable fans	D．anti-snore technology

3. From this passage, we learn that Fugoo can_________.

A．check traffic conditions

B．wake you up

C．take you to work

D．make coffee

4. Where does this advertisement probably come from?

A．A magazine.

B．A website.

C．A newspaper.

D．A textbook.

【推荐1】Clothes were once used until they fell apart-repaired and sewed to be re-used, ending their lives as dishcloths. Not today. Clothing, footwear and upholstered furniture are increasingly frequently bought, thrown away and replaced with new fashions, which are themselves soon abandoned and replaced.

‘Fast fashion’ is so called partly because the fashion industry now releases new lines every week, when historically this happened four times a year. Today, fashion brands(品牌)produce almost twice the amount of clothing that they did in 2000. But incredibly, more than 50 billion clothes are deserted within a year of being made.

The trend is having an astonishing environmental impact. Take water. The fashion industry, one of the world’s largest users of water, consumes anywhere from 20 trillion to 200 trillion litres every year. Besides, plastic fibres are released when we wash polyester(聚酯纤维)and other polymer-based textiles(纺织物), and make up between 20% and 35% of the microplastics choking the oceans. Added to this are specific chemicals used to make fabrics dirt resistant and the pesticides required to protect crops such as cotton.

Change is badly needed, but will require the fashion industry to work harder to embrace more of what is known as the circular economy. That will involve at least two things: refocusing on making things that last, and so encouraging reuse; and more rapidly expanding the technologies for sustainable manufacturing(制造)processes, especially recycling. There is work to be done for researchers on improving and expanding textiles recycling. Most used textiles go to landfill(废物填埋场), in part because there are relatively few systems that collect, recycle and reuse materials. Such recycling requires the manual separation of fibres, as well as buttons and zips. Different fibres are not easy to identify by eye, and overall such manual processes are time-consuming. Machinery is being developed that can help. Technologies also exist to recycle used fibres chemically and to create high-quality fibres that can be reused in clothing. But these are nowhere near the scale(规模)needed. Another challenge for researchers is to work out how to get consumers and manufacturers to change their behaviour.

Small steps are good, but big changes are needed. The shameful environmental cost of a new cupboard needs to be tackled immediately, at scale, with style.

1. What are the first two paragraphs mainly about?

A．Clothes should be used until they fall apart.

B．Fashion brands are replaced with new ones frequently.

C．Fast fashion leads to a significant increase in fashion waste.

D．Fashion brands produce twice more clothing than necessary.

2. According to the author, what does the circular economy focus on?

A．Improving the production of natural textiles.

B．Studying how fast fashion affects the environment.

C．Releasing new lines four times a year instead of every week.

D．Making durable things and expanding the technologies for recycling.

3. What can you infer from the passage?

A．Consumers are fond of chemically recycled fibres.

B．Systems that collect, recycle and reuse are insufficient.

C．Manual separation of fibres is preferred by manufacturers.

D．Environment damage is mainly caused by using chemicals.

4. What does the author think of the future of fashion industry?

A．Big changes are needed to follow fashion styles.

B．Huge steps should be taken for the needs of consumers.

C．More should be done to deal with the heavy environmental cost.

D．Consumers and manufacturers will change their behaviour immediately.

【推荐2】In 1970, before he became a blues legend, Stevie Ray Vaughan was working as a dishwasher in Dallas. One of his jobs was cleaning out the trash bin. To do it, Vaughan had to stand on some large wooden barrels, which were for the kitchen crew to dump hot grease(油脂). One day, while he was cleaning, the top of a barrel suddenly gave and he fell in.

Luckily for Vaughan, it had been a while since the last grease was dumped, so the stuff had cooled and he was able to safely climb out of the barrel. However, the next day, Vaughan’s boss fired him for breaking the barrel. The young man could have been severely injured, and he lost his job for his trouble.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. National surveys suggest that burns, cuts, falls and other injuries are extremely common in the fast food industry, where underpaid people are placed under intense pressure to work quickly.

Then there’s wage theft — employers trying to avoid paying workers what they’re legally entitled to. According to the Economic Policy Institute, federal and state agencies recovered $933 million for victims of wage theft in 2012 alone and that was just for the workers who successfully pursued their cases.

People with power — employers, managers and owners of big and small businesses — quite often do mistreat their workers. And they do it because there are no consequences to fear and workers often can’t leave a job without putting their livelihood at risk. So they dare not speak out against the unfair treatment.

So we also need social institutions — a universal basic income, a wage allowance, a job guarantee, truly universal health care and more — that give workers an alternative to depend on in the market for income. And we need a strong labor movement that can credibly punish employers if they don’t give workers a fair share and press the government to enforce the law.

1. Why was Vaughan able to escape serious injury?

A．The barrel had a cover.

B．His colleagues rescued him in time.

C．The temperature of grease was low.

D．He quickly jumped off the barrel.

2. What does the underlined word “iceberg” in Paragraph 3 refer to?

A．Employers treat their employees badly.

B．Employees may easily get injured at work.

C．Competition is fiercer in the fast food industry.

D．Employees fail to defend their rights through laws.

3. What is Paragraph 5 mainly about?

A．The potential consequences of wage theft.

B．The reasons for the phenomenon of wage theft.

C．The conflict between employers and employees.

D．The complaints from employees about wage theft.

4. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．Employees should work harder to improve income.

B．Vaughan was fired owing to his negative attitude to work.

C．It’s unnecessary for employees to be in conflict with employers.

D．Measures should be taken to protect employees’ rights.

【推荐3】There is a school in my Manhattan neighbourhood that has been giving out free meals during the Covid-19 pandemic—and every time I walk past it, the line seems longer. A community fridge recently showed up a couple of blocks away; it's one of many that activists have fixed across the city to fight against growing food insecurity. Just around the corner there's a young woman who has become a regular among the beggars I usually see in the area. She lost her job because of Covid-19.

It's not all doom and gloom. While the poor are getting poorer, the 1% are making out like robbers. America's 600-plus billionaires saw their wealth grow by more than $700bn in the first few months of the pandemic. During the same period, more than 50 million American workers lost their jobs. The US government has printed trillions of dollars in economic relief but many of the forgivable emergency loans （贷款） for small businesses seem to have been taken by the super-rich. My local independent coffee shop has closed down, but Kanye West received a partially forgivable loan worth at least $2m. It is becoming increasingly clear that the US is experiencing one of the biggest wealth transfers in history.

Bernie Sanders has a plan to help. Last week, Sanders introduced a bill（ 法案） , Make Billionaires Pay Act, which would establish a one-time 60% tax （税收） on billionaires' pandemic gains and use the money to guarantee Americans free health care for a year. There is very little chance the bill will get passed.

Billionaires shouldn't exit in the first place—the idea that they should be taxed at a higher rate during a pandemic to help pay health care shouldn't be slightly controversial（ 有争议的） . However, there are some who think such a move would be extremely unfair to "poor unfortunate" billionaires who, as we all know, are one of the most unfairly hurt groups in the world.

1. How does the author develop the first two paragraphs?

A．By making contrasts.	B．By giving definitions.
C．By presenting arguments.	D．By listing numbers.

2. The underlined sentence "It's not all doom and gloom." implies that ________.

A．the writer doesn't feel depressed at all

B．the current situation of Covid-19 is getting better

C．the billionaires still make profits during the pandemic

D．the woman has suffered more than we can imagine

3. The bill, Make Billionaires Pay Act, was put forward to ________.

A．rid the country of pandemic	B．restrict the billionaires' fortune
C．ensure temporary free medical service	D．provide short-term loans for health care

4. What is the author's attitude towards the billionaires?

A．Disappointed.

B．Respectful.

C．Sympathetic.

D．Negative.

【推荐2】Aristotle thought the face was a window onto a person’s mind. Cicero agreed. Two thousand years passed, and facial expressions are still commonly thought to be a universally valid way to judge other people’s feelings, irrespective of age, sex and culture. A raised eyebrow suggests confusion. A smile indicates happiness.

Or do they? An analysis of hundreds of research papers that examined the relationship between facial expressions and underlying emotions has uncovered a surprising conclusion: there is no good scientific evidence to suggest that there are such things as recognizable facial expressions for basic emotions which are universal across cultures. Just because a person is not smiling, the researchers found, does not mean that person is unhappy.

This may raise questions about the efforts of information-technology companies to develop artificial-intelligence algorithms (算法) which can recognize facial expressions and work out a person’s underlying emotional state. Microsoft, for example, claims its “Emotion API” is able to detect what people are feeling by examining video footage of them. Another of the study’s authors, however, expressed scepticism. Aleix Martinez, a computer engineer at Ohio State University, said that companies attempting to obtain emotions from images of faces have failed to understand the importance of context.

For a start, facial expression is but one of a number of non-verbal ways，such as body posture, that people use to communicate with each other. Machine recognition of emotion needs to take account of these as well. But context can reach further than that. Dr Martinez mentioned an experiment in which participants were shown a close-up picture of a man’s face, which was bright red with his mouth open in a scream. Based on this alone, most participants said the man was extremely angry. Then the whole picture was shown. It was a football player with his arms outstretched, celebrating a goal. His angry-looking face was, in fact, a show of pure joy.

Given that people cannot guess each other’s emotional states most of the time, Dr Martinez sees no reason computers would be able to. “There are companies right now claiming to be able to do that and apply this to places I find really scary and dangerous, for example, in hiring people,” he says. “Some companies require you to present a video resume, which is analyzed by a machine-learning system. And depending on your facial expressions, they hire you or not, which I find really shocking.”

1. We can learn from the second paragraph that __________.

A．facial expressions are universal across cultures

B．it is hard to recognize some facial expressions

C．emotions and facial expressions may not be related

D．common facial expressions convey similar meanings

2. In the passage, the word “scepticism” (paragraph 3) is closest in meaning to “__________”.

A．similar interest

B．fierce anger

C．strong support

D．great doubt

3. The experiment mentioned by Dr Martinez may prove that ___________.

A．facial expression is an important way to communicate

B．machine recognition of emotion is not reliable at all

C．facial expression is not the only way to detect feelings

D．people may misread facial expressions for lack of context

4. What does this passage mainly tell us?

A．Facial expressions are among the most universal forms of body language.

B．Computers can detect people’s mind by analyzing their facial expressions.

C．Facial expressions may not be the reliable reflection of a person’s emotions.

D．Companies can depend on machine recognition of emotion to hire people.

【推荐3】Medical drugs sometimes cause more damage than they cure. One solution to this problem is to put the drugs inside a capsule, protecting them from the body—and the body from them—until they can be released at just the right spot. There are lots of ways to trigger (引发) this release, including changing temperature, acidity, and so on. But triggers can come with their own risks—burns, for example. Now, researchers in California have designed what could be a harmless trigger to date: shining near-infrared light (NIR, 近红外线) on the drug in the capsule.
The idea of using light to liberate the drug in the capsule isn’t new. Researchers around the globe have developed polymers (聚合物) and other materials that begin to break down when they absorb either ultraviolet (UV, 紫外线) or visible light. But tissues also readily absorb UV and visible light, which means the drug release can be triggered only near the skin, where the light can reach the capsule. NIR light largely passes through tissues, so researchers have tried to use it as a trigger. But few compounds (化合物) absorb NIR well and go through chemical changes.
That changed last year when Adah Almutairi, a chemist at the University of California, San Diego, reported that she and her colleagues had designed a polymer that breaks down when it absorbs NIR light. Their polymer used a commercially available NIR-absorbing group called o-nitrobenzyl (ONB). When they catch the light, ONB groups fall off the polymer, leading to its breakdown. But ONB is only a so-so NIR absorber, and it could be poisonous to cells when it separates from the polymer.
So Almutairi and her colleagues reported creating a new material for capsules that’s even better.This one consists of a long chain of compounds called cresol groups linked in a polymer. Cresol contains reactive(易反应的) components that make it highly unstable in its polymeric form, a feature Almutairi and her colleagues use to their advantage. After polymerizing the cresols, they cap each reactive component with a light-absorbing compound called Bhc. When the Bhcs absorb NIR light, the reactive groups are exposed and break the long polymer into two short chains. Shining additional light continues this breakdown, potentially releasing any drugs in the capsule. What’s more, Almutairi says, Bhc is 10 times better at absorbing NIR than is ONB and is not poisonous to cells.
1. According to the passage, which of the following could be the best trigger?

A．Temperature change.

B．NIR light.

C．Acidity change.

D．UV light.

2. Why is ONB unsatisfactory?

A．It breaks down when it absorbs NIR light.

B．It falls off the polymer and triggers drug release.

C．It has not come onto the market up till now.

D．It is not effective enough and could be poisonous.

3. Which word can be used to complete the following process of changes?

A．protected

B．formed

C．exposed

D．combined