【推荐1】Step into Moving to Mars, an exhibition of the Mars mission and colony design at London’s Design Museum, and immediately you have good reasons for not moving there.

Frightening glowing wall-texts announce that Mars wasn’t made for you, that there is no life and little precious water, that, dressed in a spacesuit, you will never touch, taste or smell the planet you now call “home”. As Lisa Grossman wrote for New Scientist a couple of years ago, “What’s different about Mars is that there is nothing to do there except try not to die.”

It is an odd beginning for such a celebratory exhibition, but it provides a valuable, dark background against which the rest of the show can sparkle(闪耀)—a show that is, as its chief manager Justin remarks, “not about Mars; this is an exhibition about people.”

Moving along, there is a quick yet clear flash through what the science-fiction writer Robinson calls “the history of Mars in the human mind”. A Babylonian clay tablet and a Greek vase speak to early ideas about the planet. A poster for the original Total Recall film reminds us of Mars’ psychological threat.

The main part of the show is our current plans for the Red Planet. There are real spacesuits and models of 3D-printed Martian settlements and suitable clothing and furniture. Mission architectures and engineering sketches line the walls. Real hammers meant for the International Space Station are wall-mounted beside a low-gravity table that has yet to leave, and may indeed never leave, Earth.

This, of course, is the great strength of approaching science through design: reality and assumptions can be given equal visual weight, drawing us into an informed conversation about what it is that we actually want from a future on Mars.

1. What is the text mainly about?

A．How to move to Mars.

B．How to survive on Mars.

C．What preparations we made for Mars.

D．What the exhibition of Mars truly tells us.

2. What can we learn from Lisa Grossman?

A．It’s impossible to live on Mars.

B．It’s no good settling on Mars.

C．You have nothing to do living on Mars.

D．You can live on Mars in your spacesuit.

3. What does the exhibition focus on?

A．The current plans for Mars.

B．The advantages of living on Mars.

C．The early ideas about Mars.

D．The history of Mars in the human mind.

4. What does the author want to tell us in the last paragraph?

A．An experience.	B．An opinion.
C．A fantasy.	D．A solution.

【推荐2】With intelligent systems and new-age transit networks, life in the big cities will likely be happier and more efficient.

After all, more than 60 percent of the world's population is expected to live in cities by 2050, according to a UN report. The answer to making these cities more livable for so many people lies in creating "smart" cities. These cities will use 5G networks and the "internet of things" (IoT) to make everyday life safer and more convenient. Some cities are already using smart technology to improve the lives of residents.

But what exactly does a smart city do? In the United States cities of Boston and Baltimore, smart trash cans can sense how full they are inform cleaning workers when they need to be emptied. In Amsterdam, the Netherlands, traffic flow and energy usage are monitored and adjusted according to real-time data gathered from sensors(传感器)around the city. And in Copenhagen, Denmark, a smart bike system allows riders to check on air quality and traffic condition as they ride.

Smart cities will be interactive, allowing their residents to feel like they're truly shaping their environment, instead of merely existing in it. "One of the most important reasons to have a smart city is that we can actually communicate with our environment in a way that we never have in the past," said Mrinalini Ingram, head of a telecom company.

Smart cities will also allow us to save resources. By using sensors and 5G networks to monitor the use of water, gas and electricity, city managers can figure out how to distribute and save these resources more efficiently. Emissions of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants can be more closely monitored in smart cities as well.

Of course, it will take time and money to turn our current cities into the smart cities of the future. But as we've already seen, more cities around the world are already adopting smart technology in small ways. China, for instance, is making investments in big cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou to make them “smarter” It won't be long until even more cities start to develop their own smart infrastructure(基础设施).

1. What calls for the development of smart cities?

A．The rapid progress in 5G networks.

B．The marked increase in world population.

C．The growing number of residents living in cities.

D．The major concern over the safety of living in cities.

2. How does the writer illustrate the way smart cities work?

A．By making a contrast.	B．By giving examples.
C．By listing figures.	D．By telling a story.

3. How do smart cities help us to live efficiently?

A．By interacting directly with our environment.

B．By keeping track of how the resources are used

C．By ensuring no emission of air pollutants.

D．By educating residents to save resources.

4. What is the author's attitude toward smart cities?

A．Positive.

B．Critical.

C．Doubtful.

D．Indifferent.

【推荐3】It’s 2035. You have a job, a family and you’re about 40 years old! Welcome to your future life.

Getting ready for work, you pause in front of the   mirror. “Turn red,” you say. Your shirt changes from   sky blue to deep red.Tiny preprogrammed electronics   (智能电子元件) are rearranged in your shirt to change its color. Looking into the mirror, you find it hard to believe you’re 40. You look much younger. With amazing advances in medicine, people in your generation may live   to be 150 years old. You’re not even middle­aged!

As you go into the kitchen and prepare to pour your breakfast cereal into a bowl, you hear, “To lose weight, you shouldn’t eat that!” from your shoes. They read the tiny electronic code(电子源码) on the cereal box to find out the nutrition details. You decide to listen to your shoes. “Kitchen, what can I have for breakfast?”A list of possible foods appears on the counter as the kitchen checks its food supplies.

“Ready for your trip to space?” you ask your son and daughter. In 2015 only specially trained astronauts went into space—and very few of them. Today anyone can go to space for day trips or longer vacations. Your best friend even works in space. Handing your children three strawberries each, you add, “The doctor says you need   these   for   space   travel.” Thanks to medical advances, vaccination shots (防疫针) are a thing of the past. Ordinary foods contain special vaccines. With the strawberries in their mouths, the kids head for the front door.

It’s time for you to go to work. Your car checks your fingerprints and unlocks the doors. “My office. Autopilot,”you command. Your car drives itself down the road and moves smoothly into traffic on the highway. You sit back and unroll your e­newspaper. The latest news downloads and fills the viewer. Looking through the pages, you watch the news as video film rather than read it.

1. What changes the color of your shirt?

A．The mirror.

B．The preprogrammed electronics.

C．The sunlight.

D．The medicine.

2. How do the shoes know that you shouldn’t eat the breakfast cereal?

A．By pouring the breakfast into a bowl.

B．By getting the doctor’s advice.

C．By testing the food supplies in the kitchen.

D．By checking the nutrition details of the food.

3. The strawberries the children eat serve as ________.

A．breakfast	B．lunch
C．vaccines	D．nutrition

4. How is the text organized?

A．In order of time.

B．In order of space.

C．In order of preference.

D．In order of importance.