We’ve had weather forecasts for decades. Forecasting our near-term health is far tougher. Yet knowing early that we may be coming down with the flu could be very helpful. The good news is that wearable technology, such as smartwatches, is beginning to provide such information. The smartwatch-like systems contain sensors that collect data.
Jessilyn Dunn is a biomedical engineer at Duke University in Durham. Her team asked 49 volunteers to wear wristbands before and after they received a cold or flu virus. At least once per second, these wristbands recorded heart rates, body movements skin temperatures and more. After analyzing the data, Dunn’s team found that in nine out of very ten volunteers, there were signs of developing illness at least a day before symptoms (症状) appeared.
The early warning, says Dunn, can head off severe symptoms that otherwise would send some people into hospitals. And knowing you’re sick before you have symptoms can warn you to lie low so you can reduce the chance of spreading your disease.
However, these systems aren’t yet ready for the real world, notes virologist Stacey Schultz-Cherry. “This is exciting but also very preliminary (初步的),” says Schultz-Cherry. “Much more work is needed before this approach can be rolled out on a larger scale.” One challenge is that many infections (感染) have analogous symptoms. Actually, besides viruses, many other things also lead to signs of a cold or the flu. Examples, Schultz-Cherry notes, include food poisoning and seasonal allergies (过敏反应). Likewise, heart rates also respond to things that have nothing to do with infections. Examples include exercise and scary movies.
Researchers expect continued improvement in prediction accuracy (准确性). Future models will show signs of developing illness. And researchers will adjust those models by analyzing how well they predict effects on thousands of people.
1. What did the research find out about wearable technology?| A．It tended to give wrong information. |
| B．It helped give early warnings of disease. |
| C．It kept track of people’s use of smartwatches. |
| D．It was likely to make people lead a stressful life. |
| A．They can reduce the harm caused by illness. |
| B．They will remind people to keep away from sick people. |
| C．They can give people the confidence to fight against illness. |
| D．They will encourage people to develop good living habits. |
| A．Clear. | B．Similar. | C．Mental. | D．Serious. |
| A．They can predict disease with high accuracy. |
| B．They can be used for checking various infections. |
| C．They may influence the normal heart rate of people. |
| D．They have a long way to go before being widely applied. |
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【推荐1】Reaching out to support a person when they’re under stress is always a good idea. In fact, a new study suggests that support could be especially important for someone whose genetic quality makes them more likely to develop depression. The study shows the importance of social support to buffer the risk r of developing depression symptoms in general.
The study uses data from two very different groups of people under stress: new doctors in the most intense year of training， and older adults whose beloved ones recently died. The finding shows greatest impact of social support in those with highest risk scores for depression.
Compared to other groups of individuals in the study who had low depression risk scores, the doctors and widows with higher risk scores had higher rates of depression after they lost social support, but also had lower rates of depression when they gained social support during stressful times.
Sen, who is the director of the Eisenberg Family Depression Center adds that even as genetic research reveals more of the DNA variation(变异) related to depression vulnerability, learning how that variation leads to depression is crucial. “Further understanding the different genetic maps associated with sensitivity to loss of social support, lack of sleep, excessive work stress and other risk factors could help us develop personalized guidance for depression prevention,” he said. “In the meantime, these findings reaffirm how important social connections, social support and individual sensitivity to the social environment areas factors in well-being and preventing depression.”
Besides, the data used in the study is based on people of European origin, which limits the ability to generalize the findings to people of other backgrounds. Sen noted that additional work is being done to collect scores based on depression-related genetic characteristics in other populations including people of East Asian and African blood.
1. What does the new study find?| A．Depression can be passed on among generations. |
| B．One is genetic quality is related to depression. |
| C．Social support can reduce genetic depression risk. |
| D．People without support tend.to feel depressed. |
| A．By collecting data. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By studying papers. | D．By doing experiments. |
| A．Tendency. | B．Weakness. | C．Awareness. | D．Reduction. |
| A．Depression will lead to DNA variation. |
| B．Genetic maps can guide us to well-being. |
| C．Further data are to be collected for the study. |
| D．Individual sensitivity is a great depression risk. |
【推荐2】If you’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure, you might be worried about taking medication to bring your numbers down. Chronic（慢性的） stress may contribute to high blood pressure. More research is needed to determine the effects of chronic stress on blood pressure. Occasional stress also can contribute to high blood pressure if you react to stress by eating unhealthy food, drinking alcohol or smoking.
Take some time to think about what causes you to feel stressed, such as work, family, finances or illness. Once you know what’s causing your stress, consider how you can rid or reduce stress. If you can’t rid all of your stressors, you can at least handle them in a healthier way. Try to:
Change your expectations. For example, plan your day and focus on your strengths. Avoid trying to do too much and learn to say no. Understand there are some things you can’t change or control, but you can focus on how you react to them.
Focus on issues you can control and make plans to solve them. If you are having an issue at work, try talking to your manager. If you are having a conflict with your kids or spouse, take steps to resolve it.
Avoid stress triggers（诱因）. Try to avoid triggers when you can. For example, if rush-hour traffic on the way to work causes stress, try leaving earlier in the morning, or take public transportation. Avoid people who cause you stress if possible.
Make time to relax and to do activities you enjoy. Take time each day to sit quietly and breathe deeply. Make time for enjoyable activities or hobbies in your schedule, such as taking a walk, cooking or volunteering.
Practice gratitude. Expressing gratitude to others can help reduce your stress.
If you successfully control your blood pressure with reducing stress, you might avoid, delay or reduce the need for medication.
1. Which of the following is likely to be a stress trigger?| A．Going to work during rush-hour traffic. | B．Leaving earlier to do something. |
| C．Taking public transportation to work. | D．Staying away from stressful people. |
| A．Being occupied with activities. |
| B．Answering violence with violence. |
| C．Doing something within one’s ability. |
| D．Refusing to solve the issues you can control. |
| A．To inform us of some effects of stress. |
| B．To tell us cures for high blood pressure. |
| C．To warn us of the dangers of high blood pressure. |
| D．To instruct us to control blood pressure by reducing stress. |
| A．News. | B．Health. |
| C．Diet. | D．Entertainment. |
【推荐3】My name is Sara. When I was little, I played the drums. I also had a guitar. In fourth grade, I started playing the trombone (长号). I practiced about four hours a week. All of this might not seem like a big deal for a lot of kids, but I’m a bit different from others. I was born without hands. Since I was about one year old, I’ve worn prosthetics (假肢).
This year, I got an invitation to join the high school marching band (行进管乐队). I told my mom. I wanted to do it. But I had an instructor who thought I would not be able to march in the band— probably just because my body was different. All I wanted was to show that I could do it, so I joined the band. And it paid off!
Music gives me energy. One time I was so down, I didn’t even want to get out of bed. Then I hit my MP3 player by accident. A song came on, and I got up and started dancing. It helped me say to myself, “OK, I can get through today.”
When I’m with the band, I don’t feel as different as I do in other situations. It’s just another way that music makes me want to go on, and not to just sit down by myself and not care about life.
1. In what way is Sara different from other kids?| A．There’s something wrong with her body. |
| B．She knows how to play many instruments. |
| C．She learned to play the drums at a very early age. |
| D．She kept playing the trombone for the longest hours. |
| A．said no at first | B．had no idea what to do |
| C．followed the instructor’s advice | D．believed that she would make it |
| A．Bored. | B．Relaxed. | C．Successful. | D．Afraid. |
| A．A High School Band | B．A Young Drummer |
| C．My Love for Music | D．My Magic Hands |
【推荐1】On June 22, 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew into Dayton, Ohio of the US, for dinner at Orville Wright’s house. It had been just a month since the young aviator (飞行家) completed the first ever solo nonstop crossing of the Atlantic, and he felt he ought to pay his respects to the celebrated pioneer of flight.
Forty-two years later, on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong was allowed to bring a personal guest to the Kennedy Space Center to witness the launch of NASA’s towering Saturn V rocket. Armstrong invited his hero, Charles Lindbergh.
One man, Lindbergh, could be the living link between the pilot of the first powered flight and the commander of the first mission to another world.
In our century, for better or worse, progress isn’t what it used to be. Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon argues that by 1970, all the key technologies of modern life were in place: electricity, mechanized agriculture, highways, air travel, telecommunications, and the like. After that, innovation and economic growth simply couldn’t keep going at the breakneck pace set over the previous 100 years—a period Gordon calls “the special century.”
Since 1970 the only notable creation has been the ever-growing increase in computing power in the form of the Internet and our mobile devices. But in most other ways, Gordon argues, the lives of people in developed nations look and feel the same in 2019 as they did in 1979 or 1989.
Consider consumer robotics. There’s enormous potential for robots to help us with housework, education, entertainment and medical care. But home robotics companies seem to keep folding. So far, the only commercially successful home robot, the Roomba vacuum cleaner, hit the market in 2002.
Or consider access to space. In 2007 the XPRIZE Foundation offered $30 million in prizes to commercial teams that would compete to land a robotic rover on the moon by 2018. Although five teams had built rovers, all had trouble raising enough money to buy launch contracts.
Meanwhile the list of potentially world-changing technologies that get lots of press ink but remain stubbornly in the prototype (雏形) phase is very long. Self-driving cars, flying cars, gene therapy, nuclear fusion. Need I continue?
Granted, these are all hard problems. But historically, solving the really big problems—rural electrification, for example—has required sustained, large-scale investments, often with private markets and taxpayers splitting the burden. In this century, we urgently need to undo some of the consequences of the last great boom by developing affordable zero-and negative-emissions technologies. That’s another hard problem—and to solve it, we’ll need to recapture some of what made the “special century” so special.
1. In the beginning of the passage, the author used the story Charles Lindberg to _____.| A．explain technology advanced fast in the past 100 years |
| B．infer most aviators are likely to know each other well |
| C．prove this man was a key historic figure of the past century |
| D．point out we should be grateful to such a pioneering inventor |
| A．Computing power keeps growing at a high speed. |
| B．New things keep coming up to make life easier. |
| C．Human life has become highly mechanized. |
| D．People have been trained to be more creative. |
| A．Big innovations can’t be achieved without constant financial support. |
| B．Technological development can’t be gained if it is not applied practically. |
| C．Scientific projects are not considered valuable unless commercially successful. |
| D．New creations are not worth making unless significantly improving people’s lives. |
| A．Sustained and large-scale investments are harder to get now than before. |
| B．People are facing a time with more difficult problems than it used to be. |
| C．Major technological shifts are fewer and farther between than they were. |
| D．Solutions to the really big problems are fewer than we could expect. |
【推荐2】The world’s elderly population is increasing. The number of older people ---those age 60 years or older ---is expected to double by 2050 and is growing faster than all younger age groups across the globe. That comes with an increasing need for caregivers which can provide 24-hour care, not only at hospitals or nursing homes, but also at private homes.
Already, caregiving robots are programmed to ask questions a nurse would ask and can keep an eye on patients for falls. These robotic assistants are expected to become increasingly marketable and reach 450,000 by 2045 because of the expected caregiver shortage in the USA.
“Unluckily, the hard structure of present caregiving robots prevents them from a safe human-robot interaction(互动), limiting their assistance to only social interaction and not physical interaction,” said Ramses Martinez, an assistant professor in Purdue’s College of Engineering . “After all, would you leave babies or old people in the hands of a robot?”
Recent advances in material science have enabled the production of soft robots with deformable (可变形的) bodies or the ability to reshape when touched , but today the complex design prevents the use of this technology at home .
However, Martinez and other researchers have developed a new design method which shows promise in enabling the production of soft robots using a 3D printer.
“The soft machines move like humans. Their ability to change their body structure and movement to adapt ( 适应 ) to a wide variety of environments will improve caregiving greatly,” says Martinez .
The researchers are looking for partners to test and bring their technology to market.
1. What does the underlined word “That” in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．The younger age group |
| B．The group of older people |
| C．The population across the globe |
| D．The growth of the elderly population |
| A．They can’t provide safe physical interaction |
| B．They can’t communicate with patients |
| C．They can’t watch patients for falls |
| D．They can’t provide 24-hour care. |
| A．It requires a special kind of 3D printer. |
| B．It makes the production of soft robots simpler. |
| C．It has been put onto the market. |
| D．It is hard for users to master. |
| A．The robot industry in the future |
| B．Effects of population ageing |
| C．Robots for the elderly created with 3D printers |
| D．The development of caregiving robots |
【推荐3】Mankind’s most famous “eye in the sky” turned 30 this year, taking a beautiful image of “space clouds” to celebrate.
The Hubble Space Telescope, known to most simply as “Hubble”, was sent into space on April 24, 1990. The telescope, one of our best space exploration tools, uses a large mirror to collect light and direct it into a powerful digital camera. This allows it to see parts of outer space that are located 10 to 15 billion light-years away.
Each year on its birthday, the telescope takes a new image to celebrate. On its 30th birthday, Hubble took an image titled “Cosmic Reef”. The picture shows two big clouds of cosmic dust and gas: the giant red nebula NGC 2014 and a smaller blue nebula called NGC 2020, according to Space. The title of the image comes from NGC 2014’s appearance, as it looks like a large reef of red coral.
Hubble has made many important discoveries over the last 30 years. For example, the telescope helped us discover four of Pluto’s five moons. This discovery made it possible to plan a mission for the New Horizons probe, which took never-before-seen images of Pluto in 2015. The telescope has also taken photos of pulsating stars. The regular pulses of light that come from these stars allow us to calculate the age of the universe, which is currently believed to be 13.7 billion years old.
But Hubble’s work is not done yet. It is expected to continue working through the 2020s, when it will be joined by its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, according to CNET.
1. What is the text mainly about?| A．How the Hubble Space Telescope works. |
| B．The Hubble telescope’s 30th anniversary. |
| C．How the Hubble Space Telescope has helped us explore space. |
| D．How scientists chose the follower of the Hubble telescope. |
| A．It was the best space exploration tool. |
| B．It was designed to be in service for about 40 years. |
| C．It can see the whole outer space. |
| D．The James Webb Space Telescope will take place of it soon. |
| A．By titling a new space picture. | B．By naming a new nebula. |
| C．By taking a new image of space. | D．By taking a new image of itself. |
| A．A magazine. | B．A novel. |
| C．A report. | D．An advertisement. |
【推荐1】In the space of just two years, the app Tik Tok, created by Beijing-based company Bytedance, has gathered more than half a billion users—around 40% of them are outside China—who share short videos of themselves lip-syncing (对嘴), cooking, dancing or just being silly. What sets Bytedance apart is its success in the social media category, which is controlled by Facebook, Twitter and Snap— all Western companies.
Bytedance calls itself an artificial intelligence company. It uses machine learning and algorithms(算法) to figure out what people like and give them more of what they want to see. On Tik Tok, people can edit and beautify 15-second videos before posting them online. The app has even spawned(引发) a phase to describe a kind of behaviour of people glued to their customized feeds: “shua Tik Tok” or “scrolling through Tik Tok”. Last year, the company released Tik Tok, the overseas version of Tik Tok. Bytedanee’s growing video empire has made it the world’s fifth biggest app maker. Bytedance says Tik-Tok has more than 500 million monthly active users.
Investors like Bytedance because its hundreds of millions of users attract a lot of advertising money. The video apps are lucrative because they attract a lot of users in their teens and 20s, who are more generous with the money. Bytedance also makes money through income sharing deals. People on Tik Tok, for example, can buy digital coins to give to other people on the app—like throwing money into a performer’s tip jar, Bytedance takes a cut of those earnings.
Bytedance’s founder and CEO is Zhang Yiming, a former Microsoft employee. People who have worked with Zhang describe him as someone who thinks deeply about technology and spends much of his free time writing code.
Like Facebook and Twitter, Bytedance is also battling fake news and inappropriate content. Bytedance promises to add more employees to review content.
1. How many overseas users does Tik Tok have?| A．Under 20 million. | B．Over half a billion. |
| C．Around 400 million. | D．About 200 million. |
| A．It is a new generation of hi-tech product. |
| B．It meets the demand of most people. |
| C．It is easy and cheap to operate online. |
| D．It has both a home and an overseas version. |
| A．Professional. | B．Expensive. |
| C．Profitable. | D．Challenging. |
| A．When to introduce their new version. |
| B．What to do with fierce competition . |
| C．Where to find much new investment. |
| D．How to keep their content positive. |
【推荐2】Baby bats learn language from peers (同伴) in their social group, and will adopt the group’s dialect, or accent, instead of their mother’s, researchers said on Tuesday. The findings shed new light on crowd-learning of language, a skill thought to belong mainly to humans and just a few other mammals. It also shows that bats are different from songbirds, which tend to learn songs by copying one of their parents. “The ability to copy vocalizations (发音) from others is extremely important for speech learning in humans, but it’s believed to be rare among animals”, said lead author Yossi Yovel of Tel Aviv University.
For the study, researchers captured 14 pregnant Egyptian fruit bats. They separated them into three different bat social groups, where they raised the young bats with their mothers. Each bat group was exposed to a different recording of bat vocalizations. “The baby bats all adopted the manner of vocalizing of the group they heard, not their mothers. The difference between the vocalizations of the mother bat and those of the group is comparable to the difference in a London accent and, say, a Scottish accent,” Yovel said.
“The babies heard their mothers’ London dialect, but also heard the Scottish dialect produced by many dozens of Scottish bats. The babies eventually adopted a dialect that was more similar to the local Scottish dialect than to the London accent of their mothers.” Researchers hope to conduct future studies to examine how bats’ dialects change when they leave their social groups, and if it affects how they integrate with others.
1. What are the latest findings about bats?| A．Bats are born to adopt their mother’s dialect. |
| B．Bats can understand peers with different dialects. |
| C．Bats’ accents are influenced by their peer’s accents. |
| D．Bats pick up language quickly in company with their peers. |
| A．Accents. | B．Baby bats. |
| C．Researchers. | D．Mother bats. |
| A．To show the differences in dialects among social groups. |
| B．To explain why bat produce different sounds. |
| C．To indicate the birthplace of baby bats. |
| D．To compare how the two accents influenced understanding. |
| A．How bats adopt a new dialect after entering a new social group. |
| B．What changes might occur to bats’ accent after entering a new social group. |
| C．Whether bats leave their social group if they change their accents. |
| D．Why some bats fail to be accepted in a new group after they are born. |
【推荐3】All parents know exercise is important for children: It can lower heart risks, control weight and help kids do better in school. Scientists have also proved that outdoor activities at an early age can help children form healthy habits for life. But don’t expect kids to understand about those things. Some kids just aren’t into exercise, but that shouldn’t mean they have to be attracted to the TV. So parents could do something to help inactive kids fall in love with physical activity.
If parents sit in front of the TV every night, kids aren’t likely to respect restrictions (限制) you set on their screen time either. So check your own behavior and serve as a role model by putting physical activity into your everyday life. Walk instead of driving if possible. Regularly join in activities that you enjoy and let your kids see how much you enjoy them. In this way, they may “do as the Romans do”. Make sure that children’s fitness is included in the family plans as well as school, work and shopping. Then you and your children are more likely to stick to an exercise plan. And your children will begin to expect that Sunday morning usually means a hike ride, and on a couple of nights after dinner the family takes a light walk through the neighborhood.
Children who aren’t naturally good at physical activity may be worried about their lack of physical skills and even fear public failure. They need all the support and encouragement from parents. Negative comments don’t work and will only make them feel bad. Remember, fix on the effort — choosing to be active or trying to improve a skill — rather than the result.
1. What’s the second paragraph mainly about ?| A．How parents can lead children to exercise. | B．Why children should enjoy exercise. |
| C．What activity parents can join in. | D．When parents can watch TV. |
| A．Good examples set by parents for children. | B．A family routine of exercise. |
| C．Support and encouragement from parents. | D．Negative comments from parents. |
| A．It is the result that always comes first. |
| B．Kids can choose either exercise or the TV. |
| C．Exercise is necessary for healthy development. |
| D．Children having few physical skills should be punished. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Supportive. | C．Opposed. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．An advertisement. | B．A news report. | C．A magazine. | D．A science book. |
