【推荐1】Scientists find that the hard-working people live longer than average men and women. Career women are healthier than housewives. Evidences show that the jobless are in poorer health than job-holders. An research shows that whenever the unemployment rate increases by 1%，the death rate increases correspondingly(相应地) by 2%. All this comes down to one point: work is helpful to health.（找出中心句）

【推荐2】Gender(性别)equality at work benefits everyone and the way to get there faster is to empower men as allies(同盟) in the fight.

The difference between women’s and men’s earnings is on average 18 cents per dollar earned, and even more than that for women of color. After years in which women have formed about half of the college-educated work force, this significant unchanging pay gap and the lack of representation of women in the upper ranks of senior management are troubling. In fact, only a surprisingly tiny 7.8 percent of CEOs at S&P 500 companies were female at the close of 2020. Why is it taking so long to break the well-known glass ceiling once and for all?

At an individual level, men who are unwilling to work closely with women can of course have a damaging effect on the careers of their female colleagues. But men who are indifferent about gender equality and also without necessarily meaning to prevent women’s advancement.

However, men have never been entirely absent from the struggle to expand economic access and professional opportunity for women. In 1984 the Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives and another two officials-all men-spoke out in favor of naming a woman to the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and eventually, they made Geraldine Ferraro the vice president, the first woman ever to run on a major party ticket. Ferraro’s access to an important leadership role was the product not only of decades of activism and protest by women but also of powerful men’s endorsement of those demands, a practice that continues to be important today. In 2020, Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden made a promise to select a woman as his vice-presidential nominee(候选人) and ultimately shared electoral victory with running mate Kamala Harris, the first woman and first person of color to be elected vice president.

Men’s voices are important. When men speak up against gender discrimination, they not only become obvious as allies who can be counted on to support industry or company rules to advance equality, but they also improve awareness and acceptance of gender inequality as a shared problem, not a special interest.

Which of the following best explains “endorsement” underlined in paragraph 4?

A．Responsibility.

B．Support.

C．Ignorance.

D．Misunderstanding.

【推荐3】Some parents will buy any high-tech toy if they think it will help their child, but researchers said puzzles help children with math-related skills.

Psychologist Susan Levine, an expert on mathematics development in young children at the University of Chicago, found children who play with puzzles between ages 2 and 4 later develop better spatial skills. Puzzle play was found to be a significant predictor of cognition(认知) after controlling for differences in parents’ income, education and the amount of parent talk, Levine said.

The researchers analyzed video recordings of 53 child-parent pairs during everyday activities at home and found children who play with puzzles between 26 and 46 months of age have better spatial skills when assessed at 54 months of age.

“The children who played with puzzles performed better than those who did not, on tasks that assessed their ability to rotate(旋转)and translate shapes,” Levine said in a statement.

The parents were asked to interact with their children as they normally would, and about half of children in the study played with puzzles at one time. Higher-income parents tended to have children play with puzzles more frequently, and both boys and girls who played with puzzles had better spatial skills. However, boys tended to play with more complex puzzles than girls, and the parents of boys provided more spatial language and were more active during puzzle play than parents of girls.

The findings were published in the journal Developmental Science.

In which aspect do children benefit from puzzle play?

A．Building confidence.

B．Developing spatial skills.

C．Learning self-control.

D．Gaining high-tech knowledge.

【推荐1】The problem of robocalls has gotten so bad that many people now refuse to pick up calls from numbers they don’t know. By next year, half of the calls we receive will be scams (欺诈). We are finally waking up to the severity of the problem by supporting and developing a group of tools, apps and approaches intended to prevent scammers from getting through. Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late. By the time these “solutions” (解决方案) become widely available, scammers will have moved onto cleverer means. In the near future, it’s not just going to be the number you see on your screen that will be in doubt. Soon you will also question whether the voice you’re hearing is actually real.

That’s because there are a number of powerful voice manipulation (处理) and automation technologies that are about to become widely available for anyone to use. At this year’s I/O Conference, a company showed a new voice technology able to produce such a convincing human-sounding voice that it was able to speak to a receptionist and book a reservation without detection.

These developments are likely to make our current problems with robocalls much worse. The reason that robocalls are a headache has less to do with amount than precision. A decade of data breaches (数据侵入) of personal information has led to a situation where scammers can easily learn your mother’s name, and far more. Armed with this knowledge, they’re able to carry out individually targeted campaigns to cheat people. This means, for example, that a scammer could call you from what looks to be a familiar number and talk to you using a voice that sounds exactly like your bank teller’s, tricking you into “confirming” your address, mother’s name, and card number. Scammers follow money, so companies will be the worst hit. A lot of business is still done over the phone, and much of it is based on trust and existing relationships. Voice manipulation technologies may weaken that gradually.

We need to deal with the insecure nature of our telecom networks. Phone carriers and consumers need to work together to find ways of determining and communicating what is real. That might mean either developing a uniform way to mark videos and images, showing when and who they were made by, or abandoning phone calls altogether and moving towards data-based communications—using apps like FaceTime or WhatsApp, which can be tied to your identity.

Credibility is hard to earn but easy to lose, and the problem is only going to get harder from here on out.

Taking advantage of the new technologies, scammer can ________.

A．aim at victims precisely

B．damage databases easily

C．start campaigns rapidly

D．spread information widely

【推荐2】In the mid-1990s, Tom Bissell taught English as a volunteer in Uzbekistan. He left after seven months, physically broken and having lost his mind. A few years later, still attracted to the country, he returned to Uzbekistan to write an article about the disappearance of the Aral Sea.

His visit, however, ended up involving a lot more than that. Hence this book, Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia, which talks about a road trip from Tashkent to Karakalpakstan, where millions of lives have been destroyed by the slow drying up of the sea. It is the story of an American travelling to a strange land, and of the people he meets on his way: Rustam, his translator, a lovely 24-year-old who picked up his colorful English in California, Oleg and Natasha, his hosts in Tashkent, and a string of foreign aid workers.

This is a quick look at life in Uzbekistan, made of friendliness and warmth, but also its darker side of society. In Samarkand, Mr Bissell admires the architectural wonders, while on his way to Bukhara he gets a taste of police methods when suspected of drug dealing. In Ferghana, he attends a mountain funeral (葬礼) followed by a strange drinking party. And in Karakalpakstan, he is saddened by the dust storms, diseases and fishing boats stuck miles from the sea.

Mr Bissell skillfully organizes historical insights and cultural references, making his tale a well-rounded picture of Uzbekistan, seen from Western eyes. His judgment and references are decidedly American, as well as his delicate stomach. As the author explains, this is neither a travel nor a history book, or even a piece of reportage. Whatever it is, the result is a fine and vivid description of the purest of Central Asian traditions.

What is the purpose of this text?

A．To introduce a book.	B．To explain a cultural phenomenon.
C．To remember a writer.	D．To recommend a travel destination.