Most people will answer a ringing phone. Usually you don’t know who is phoning or how urgent their business is, so a ringing phone is difficult to ignore. In one experiment, a researcher wrote down the numbers of several public phones in stations and airports. Then he called the numbers. Someone nearly always answered. When he asked why, people usually said, “Because it rang.”
A few years ago in New Jersey, a man with a rifle killed 13 people. Armed police surrounded his house but he refused to come out. A reporter found out the phone number of the house and called. The man put down his rifle and answered the phone. “What do you want?” he said, “I’m really busy right now.”
Imagine you’re at work and the phone is ringing in someone else’s office. Do you answer it or not? In one survey on telephone use, 51% of participants told researches that they did. We can’t ignore the phone and for the reason, it forces its way into our lives. It interrupts what we are doing and on top of that, the caller is often someone we don’t really want to talk to. However, in the survey, 58% said they never took the phone off the hook, and 67% didn’t mind if someone called during a television programme. For 44% it wasn’t a problem if someone rang during a meal, while only 28% were annoyed or upset. If someone phoned in the middle of the night, 40% told researchers that they got nervous or frightened, while around 30% got angry.
Of course, when someone is really annoying, you can choose to hang up on him/her. This is in fact one of the rudest things you can do on the phone, but 79% said they were prepared to do it in some cases. Only 6% told researchers they never hung up on people.
1. In the experiment, people answered the researcher’s phone ________.| A．in order to help him gather the data |
| B．to test the function of the phone |
| C．for fear that it was urgent |
| D．to show their interest in the survey |
| A．he decided not to give up his resistance to the police |
| B．he tended to answer a ringing phone |
| C．he wanted to tell the reporter that he was too busy to offer any information |
| D．he intended to be friendly with the media |
| A．They were prepared to punish those rude callers. |
| B．They also agreed to hang up on others regardless of rudeness. |
| C．They were annoying rude callers. |
| D．They were going to hang on annoying phones. |
| A．how the phone interrupts people’s work |
| B．what role the phone plays in people’s lives |
| C．when the phone communication is more welcome |
| D．why people mind a ringing phone sometimes |
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A device that uses the sun is a good way to dry food. There are several kinds of solar dryers. The easiest to build is called the direct dryer. The sun shines directly on the food being dried. The direct dryer is a box with holes in it so that air can enter and leave the box. It has a cover made of clear glass or plastic. When the sun shines into the box, heat is produced. The heat is trapped inside the box and cannot escape back through the cover. The heat dries the food.
The solar dryer works better if the sides of the box are black. This is because dark colors hold heat while light colors reflect it. One way to make the sides black is to use wood that has been blackened by fire.
If you use black paint instead, be sure the paint contains no lead. Lead is poisonous to people, especially children.
The box can be made of almost any material such as wood, concrete or sheet metal. The dryer should be two meters long, one meter wide and twenty-three to thirty centimeters deep. The sides and bottom should have additional material, called insulation, to keep the heat from escaping.
The surface on which the food is placed should permit air to enter from below and pass through to the food. A surface made of wires with small square openings works very well. You should use wire with the largest openings or squares that do not allow the food to fall through. Air that comes in from below the wire surface will also carry away water evaporated from the food as it dries.
A direct dryer will dry most vegetables in two-and-one-half to four hours at temperatures from forty-three to sixty-three degrees Celsius. Fruits take longer, from four to six hours at the same temperatures.
Solar food drying is fast, safe and low-cost. It is also healthy because nutrients such as vitamin C are kept in the food. Solar dried food also tastes and looks good.
1. In which way will the food be fried quickly?| A．Let the sun shine directly on the food. |
| B．Make the sides of the box black. |
| C．Make wood be the sides of the box. |
| D．The box must be made of blackened wood. |
| A．sink into | B．change into gas or steam |
| C．flow away | D．flow into |
| A．Water in the food may cause poisonous substances. |
| B．The sun shines into the box and be trapped. |
| C．Dark colours hold heat better than light colours. |
| D．It takes longer for vegetable to be fried. |
| A．the way to dry food. |
| B．Solar Food Dryers |
| C．The device that uses the sun |
| D．The way to keep food safe. |
【推荐2】If you’re a fan of hummingbirds(蜂鸟), then you probably know that at night they lower their body temperatures greatly by dropping into an energy-saving state of inactivity called torpor(麻木). A new study finds that the birds have more than one level of torpor. “There have been a few signs that this ability to fine-tune thermoregulation(温度调节)is possible,” said the lead author Anusha Shankar.
Shankar and her colleagues used a special method to track the body temperatures of three hummingbird species in Arizona: the blue-throated mountaingem, Rivoli’s hummingbird, and the black-chinned hummingbird. They measured the temperatures emitted from the skin around the eyes of the birds and found that differences in heat generation at various stages are noticeable
The normal daytime body temperature of a hummingbird is more than 100 ℉, even in cold weather. During shallow torpor, their body temperature drops by about 20 ℉. In deep torpor, the bird keeps a body temperature 50 ℉ below its normal daytime temperature. If human body temperature were to drop mere 3 degrees from the standard 98.6 ℉, we’d be in a state of hypothermia(低体温症)and, unlike hummingbirds, we would need outside help to get warm again.
“In this study, we found that the smallest bird used deep torpor every night,” said Shankar. “The bigger birds sometimes use deep torpor and sometimes shallow torpor, and sometimes no torpor at all.”
Shallow torpor may have developed to balance energy saving with the cost of deep torpor. In deep torpor, a hummingbird is much more likely to be affected by disease because its immune system(免疫系统)shuts down. And what’s more, it would get inadequate sleep and be easily harmed by its enemies.
Torpor is not the same as sleep. Sleep uses much more energy and serves many important functions. Daily torpor also differs from hibernation(冬眠). Hibernating animals enter a low-energy state for weeks or months at a time, while hummingbirds can enter torpor every night. But the researchers say their studies were done under laboratory conditions, not the conditions a bird would encounter in the wild. They say more research is needed to understand thermoregulation in birds.
1. What does the new study show?| A．Hummingbirds’ torpor could be flexible. |
| B．Thermoregulation is common among birds. |
| C．Body temperature is vital to hummingbirds’ sleep. |
| D．Hummingbirds are sensitive to change in temperature. |
| A．It would suffer a lot in winter. |
| B．It would be in a state of hibernation. |
| C．It would be in a state of hypothermia. |
| D．It would regain normal body temperature without help. |
| A．It may consume plenty of energy. |
| B．It ensures the bird gets enough sleep. |
| C．It does great harm to its immune system. |
| D．It can greatly threaten its welfare and safety. |
| A．Their research is far from complete. |
| B．Their research method is much too complex. |
| C．It is easy to understand thermoregulation in birds. |
| D．It is difficult to distinguish hibernation from daily torpor. |
【推荐3】Researchers studied a group of black-legged kittiwakes that nest in an abandoned radar tower on Middleton Island, Alaska. They attached GPS-accelerometers onto kittiwakes to track their flight performance and discovered that they sometimes travel as far as 155 miles (250 kilometers) a day to find food.
By combining data from the GPS tracker with minute muscle samples from some of the birds, the researchers found that — despite beating their wings less frequently — birds with larger muscle fibers were able to fly as fast as those with smaller fibers. The team also found that birds that flew faster had a higher number of nuclei — which produce the proteins to power flight — in their muscle cells, allowing the birds to increase more muscle fibers to power their flight.
Athletes exercise to maintain muscle tone. The same may be happening with kittiwakes, with those individuals that exercise the most — that is, fly the most — having better developed muscles than those that move less.
“Past studies have focused on hormone levels, body mass, or levels of red blood cells as a predictor of flight performance. We found that muscle structure and body mass together predict performance, says study coauthor Kyle Elliott, an assistant professor in McGill University's department of natural resource sciences in the Bieler School of Environment.
“With the data from the GPS-accelerometers, we can understand a lot about these birds, like where they're going to find food, how fast they're flying, and how frequently they're beating their wings in flight," says Kristen Lalla, the first author of the paper, which she co-wrote as an undergraduate student under Elliott's guidance. “In the past, one of the challenges of measuring muscle structure in small birds was that it usually requires dissecting (解剖)the muscle."
1. What do the first two paragraphs tell us about kittiwakes?| A．They nest in an abandoned Island of Alaska. |
| B．With smaller muscle fibers, they can fly faster. |
| C．They often travel as far as 250 kilometers a day. |
| D．Muscle fibers play an important role in their flight. |
| A．Body mass. |
| B．Hormone levels. |
| C．Levels of red blood cells. |
| D．Muscle structure and body mass. |
| A．The influential factors of kittiwakes' flight performance. |
| B．The importance of protecting kittiwakes. |
| C．The reasons for Kittiwakes flying so far. |
| D．The process of kittiwakes' flying. |
| A．Sport. | B．Nature. | C．Health. | D．Entertainment. |
【推荐1】We’ve known that sitting for long periods of time every day has countless health consequences, like a higher risk of heart disease. But now a new study has found that sitting is also bad for your brain.
A study published last week, conducted by Dr. Prabha Siddarth at the University of California, showed that sedentary (久坐的) behavior is associated with reduced thickness of the medial temporal lobe, a brain area that is critical to learning and memory.
The researchers asked a group of 35 healthy people, ages 45 to 70, about their activity levels and the average number of hours each day spent sitting and then scanned their brains. They found that the subjects who reported sitting for longer periods had the thinnest medial temporal lobes. It means that the more time you spend in a chair, the worse it is for your brain health, resulting in possible damage to learning and memory.
What is also interesting is that this study did not find a significant association between the level of physical activity and thickness of this brain area, suggesting that exercise, even severe exercise, may not be enough to protect you from the harmful effects of sitting.
It then surprisingly turned out that you don’t even have to move much to improve cognition; just standing will do the trick. For example, two groups of subjects were asked to complete a test while either sitting or standing. Participants are presented with conflicting stimuli, like the word “green” in blue ink, and asked to name the color. Subjects thinking on their feet beat those who sat by a 32-millisecond margin.
The cognitive effects of severe physical exercise are well known. But the possibility that standing more and sitting less improves brain health could lower the bar for everyone.
I know, this all runs counter to received ideas about deep thought, from our grade school teachers, who told us to sit down and focus, to Rodin’s famous “Thinker,” sitting with chin on hand.
They were wrong. You can now all stand up.
1. What can we infer from Paragraphs 3 and 4?| A．Severe exercise can lessen the damage of sitting. |
| B．Severe exercise can greatly improve our brain health. |
| C．Sedentary behavior will possibly damage our brain. |
| D．Brain health has nothing to do with sedentary behavior. |
| A．Blank. | B．Edge. | C．Increase. | D．Difference. |
| A．Sitting more is good for our mental health. | B．Sitting is better when we think. |
| C．Thinking more can improve our cognition. | D．We should stand while thinking. |
| A．People tend to sit while thinking. |
| B．Standing more can make our brain healthier. |
| C．Physical exercise can improve our brain health. |
| D．Sedentary behavior leads to countless health problems. |
【推荐2】It is not only praise or punishment that determines a child’s level of confidence. There are some other important ways we shape our kids — particularly by giving instructions and commands in a negative or positive choice of words. For example, we can say to a child “Don’t run into traffic!” or “Stay on the footpath close to me.” In using the latter, you will be helping your kids to think and act positively, and to feel competent in a wide range of situations, because they know what to do, and aren’t scaring themselves about what not to do.
Why does such a small thing make a difference? It is all in the way the human mind works. When we think, we automatically rehearse. For example, if someone offered you a million dollars not to think of a blue monkey for two minutes, you wouldn’t be able to do it. When a child is told “Don’t fall off the tree,” he will think of two things: “don’t” and “fall off the tree”. That is, he will automatically create the picture of falling off the tree in his mind. A child who is vividly imagining falling off the tree is much more likely to fall off. So it is far better to use “Hold on to the tree carefully.”
Clear, positive instructions help kids to understand the right way to do things. Kids do not always know how to be safe, or how to react to the warning of the danger in negative words. So parents should make their commands positive. “Sam, hold on firm to the side of the boat” is much more useful than “Don’t you dare to fall out of the boat?” or worse still “How do you think I’ll feel if you drown?” The changes are small but difference is obvious.
Children learn how to guide and organize themselves from the way we guide them with our words, so it pays to be positive.
1. Positive choice of words helps kids to____________.| A．do things carefully | B．build up their confidence |
| C．improve their imagination | D．learn in different situation |
| A．A child will act on what is instructed. |
| B．One can’t help imagining what is heard. |
| C．A child will fall off the tree when told not to. |
| D．One won’t think of a blue monkey when given money. |
| A．Fasten your seat belt. |
| B．Don’t play by the lake. |
| C．How do you think I’ll feel if you get hurt? |
| D．Don’t you dare to walk through the red light. |
| A．praise makes kids confident |
| B．right instructions keep kids safe |
| C．clear commands make kids different |
| D．choice of words can make a difference |
【推荐3】The following chart is provided by Elizabeth Weise from《America Today》. It shows the growth of the immersive schools in America.
Immersive (沉浸式) Schools in America In recent years, there have been quite a few Chinese immersive schools in America. Full Immersion: Pre-k children aged 2 to 4 are fully immersed in Chinese all day — 5 days per week. Part Immersion: Children (in kindergarten through Grade 5 in primary schools, from Grade 6 to Grade 8 in middle schools) learn all subjects in both Chinese and English. |
Based on The Daily Advertiser’s report, foreign children at the age of about 5 are having Chinese lessons like this:
Zhaoting Xia, a 29-year-old teacher, holds paper copies of Chinese currency and invites kids up one at a time to use the “money” to purchase something from her pretend fruit stand.
One of the students, a 5-year-old boy, picks out his money and greets Xia with “ni hao”, starting the conversation as he has been taught. Then he works in some vocabulary words to ask for a plastic ear of corn. Xia tells him the price, and he counts the money in his hand before making the exchange. They finish with “xiexie” or “thank you”.
In this one exercise, they’ve practiced a lot in such a “real situation”. And all of this takes place in Chinese.
1. What can we learn about the immersive schools in America based on the chart?| A．Children in them are aged 2 to 4. |
| B．They accept only Chinese children in America. |
| C．All the teachers in the immersive schools come from China. |
| D．The immersive schools have greatly increased in America since 2007. |
| A．Vocabulary, sentence structure, math and culture. |
| B．Knowing about “Chinese money — renminbi”. |
| C．Counting the number from 1-10 in Chinese. |
| D．Greeting by saying “Hello!” to each other. |
| A．A teacher. | B．A headmaster. |
| C．A reporter. | D．A director. |
