【推荐1】You may have experienced the annoyance of being fined because of parking illegally or finding your car towed away(拖走)after leaving it parked somewhere for a couple of minutes. But now a high-tech car sticker that’s designed to be stuck to a car’s windscreen could help motorists avoid such a situation.

The Tow Stop sticker sends a text message to a driver when touched by a traffic policeman, to allow motorists to send a reply and give them time to move their cars immediately. Frankfurt-based IT consultant, Daniel Kalliontzis, came up with the idea and is raising money to put his £43 sticker into production.

Car owners can put the sticker inside their car’s windscreen, having set it up with key information, such as their phone number. The slim design will include a sensor(传感器)that, when touched by a traffic policeman, will send a text message warning a driver of a possible fine. The driver could then type a reply for the policeman using a smart phone, which will appear on the sticker’s screen.

The smart sticker system will rely on the good will of traffic policemen and in a way, a German law. The law states: an officer has to choose the most efficient and inexpensive way for the car owner to remove the vehicle. It could be cheaper for the government to call the driver than to tow his car.

Mail Online asked the Department of Transport whether the sticker could be used in the UK in a similar way. A spokesman said, “In England there is no legal duty to warn the motorist before issuing the ticket. However, a policeman does have the discretion not to issue a ticket if he doesn’t think the situation is that bad or he just wants to issue a warning.”

So far, Mr. Kalliontzis has raised just over £2, 362 of his £39, 381 goal. If he manages to raise the money, the stickers will be shipped in June 2015. But it appears that car owners using the smart system could get some unnecessary warning messages, because anyone could touch the smart sticker.

1. The author wrote the third paragraph to _______________.

A．explain how a smart car sticker works

B．advise drivers to buy a car sticker

C．show the importance of a sensor

D．tell drivers how to park a car

2. We may infer from the text that in Britain _______________.

A．car owners don’t have to worry about a parking ticket

B．smart car stickers wouldn’t work as well as in Germany

C．traffic policemen prefer to call a driver rather than tow his car

D．the Department of Transport thinks highly of smart car stickers

3. The underlined word “discretion” in Paragraph 5 can best be replaced by “___________”.

A．trouble

B．pressure

C．freedom

D．opportunity

4. What would be the best title for the text?

A．Daniel Kalliontzis-a great inventor.

B．Environment-friendly car stickers.

C．Parking systems in Europe.

D．End of the parking ticket?

【推荐2】If you haven’t heard or seen anything about Road Rage in the last few months, you’ve probably been avoiding the media. There have been countless stories about this new and scary phenomenon, considered a type of aggressive driving. You have most likely encountered aggressive driving or Road Rage recently if you drive at all.

While drunk driving remains a critical problem, the facts about aggressive driving are surely as disturbing. For instance, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Association, 41,907 people died on the highway last year. Of those deaths, the agency estimates that about two-thirds were caused at least in part by aggressive driving behavior.

Why is this phenomenon occurring more than ever now, and why is it something that seemed almost nonexistent a few short years ago? Experts have several theories, and all are probably partially correct. One suggestion is extreme overcrowding. In the last decade, the number of cars on the roads has increased by more than 11 percent, and the number of miles driven has increased by 35 percent. However, the number of new road miles has only increased by 1 percent. That means more cars in the same amount of space; and the problem is severe in urban areas. Also, people have less time and more things to do. With people working and trying to fit extra chores and activities into the day, stress levels have never been higher. Stress creates anxiety, which leads to short tempers. These factors, when combined in certain situations, can spell Road Rage.

You may think you are the last person who would drive aggressively, but you might be surprised. For instance, have you ever yelled out loud at a slower driver, sounded the horn long and hard an another car, or sped up to keep another driver from passing? If you recognize yourself in any of these situations, watch out!

Whether you are getting angry at other drivers, or another driver is visibly upset with you, there are things you can do to avoid any major conflict. If you are easily influenced by Road Rage, the key is to release your emotion in a healthy way. If you are the target of another driver’s rage, do everything possible to get away from the other driver safely, including avoiding eye contact and getting out of their way.

1. The first sentence in Para. 1 implies that ______.

A．Road Rage has received much media coverage in the last few months

B．the media created the term“RoadRage”only a few months ago

C．one may be angered by media reports and wants to avoid them

D．people not interested in the media know little about recent happenings

2. The underlined word “spell” in Para. 3 means ________.

A．relieve

B．cause

C．spread

D．prevent

3. Which of the following characterizes aggressive driving?

A．Talking while driving.	B．Driving at high speed.
C．Shouting at another driver.	D．Sounding the horn when passing

4. The last paragraph is intended to _________.

A．tell people how to deal with Road Rage

B．inform people how aggressive drivers could be

C．show people how to control themselves when angry

D．warn people against eye contact with another driver

【推荐3】When a driver slams on the brakes to avoid hitting a pedestrian crossing the road illegally, she is making a moral decision that shifts risk from the pedestrian to the people in the car. Self-driving cars might soon have to make such ethical (道德的)judgments on their own — but settling on a universal moral code for the vehicles could be a tough task, suggests a survey.

The largest ever survey of machine ethics, called the Moral Machine, laid out 13 possible situations in which someone’s death was unavoidable. Respondents were asked to choose who to spare in situations that involved a mix of variables: young or old, rich or poor, more people or fewer. Within 18 months, the online quiz had recorded 40 million decisions made by people from 233 countries and territories.

When the researchers analysed these answers, they found that the nations could be divided into three groups. One contains North America and several European nations where Christianity has been the dominant (占支配地位的)religion; another includes countries such as Japan, Indonesia and Pakistan, with strong Confucian or Islamic traditions. A third group consists of countries in Central and South America, such as Colombia and Brazil. The first group showed a stronger preference for sacrificing older lives to save younger ones than did the second group, for example.

The researchers also identified relationships between social and economic factors in a country. They found that people from relatively wealthy countries with strong institutions, such as Finland and Japan, more often chose to hit people who stepped into traffic illegally than did respondents in nations with weaker institutions, such as Nigeria or Pakistan.

People rarely face such moral dilemmas, and some cities question whether the possible situations posed in the online quiz are relevant to the ethical and practical questions surrounding driverless cars. But the researchers argue that the findings reveal cultural differences that governments and makers of self-driving cars must take into account if they want the vehicles to gain public acceptance.

At least Barbara Wege, who heads a group working on autonomous-vehicle ethics at Audi in Ingolstadt, Germany, says such studies are valuable. Wege argues that self-driving cars would cause fewer accidents, proportionally, than human drivers do each year—but that people might focus more on events involving robots.

Surveys such as the Moral Machine can help to begin public discussions about these unavoidable accidents that might develop trust. “We need to come up with a social consensus,” she says, “about which risks we are willing to take.”

1. Why is it difficult to set universal moral rules for programming self-driving cars?

A．Social values always change with the times.

B．Moral choices vary between different cultures.

C．Drivers have a preference for sacrificing the weak.

D．Car makers are faced with decisions of life or death.

2. The researchers conducted the study by_____.

A．using a massive online quiz worldwide

B．comparing different cultures and customs

C．dividing the respondents into three groups

D．performing a series of controlled experiments

3. According to the study, in which country are drivers more likely to hit a pedestrian crossing the road illegally?

A．Nigeria	B．Colombia
C．Finland	D．Indonesia

4. Barbara Wege would probably agree that _____.

A．Self-driving cars will greatly improve the traffic environment

B．Accidents caused by self-driving cars might receive more attention

C．Problems involving self-driving cars might shake the public trust in society

D．Car makers needn’t take the risk of solving self-driving car ethical dilemmas

【推荐1】Last summer my daughter’s school was blown up. No students were harmed, but the main building was completely destroyed, as well as the nearby dorms.

Before you start trying to ask when this horrible act took place on U. S. soil, I should mention that this attack didn’t happen in reality, rather in my daughter’s carefully constructed Minecraft world. During an online journey with a few friends, a stranger came to her school and bombed the school she had carefully built. In a minute, her school was ruined. Sure, no actual property(财产)was damaged. But the emotional pain she felt was very much real. She thought this was a form of terrorism.

I shared this act of absurd online violence on my Facebook page, and fellow parents with Minecraft-loving children were just as shocked as I was. I had thought this was a unique experience, and my daughter was just unlucky that this happened to her. But, as it turned out, she was far from alone. The acts were performed by computer bullies(暴徒) known as “griefers”. The platform that my daughter was playing was the Minecraft: Pocket Edition(PE)version, which is popular with younger players. While she once only played in creative mode(模式), she began to play in the multi-player mode so that she and a few friends from school could build and create together. That multi-player choice made it possible for a stranger, one of these “griefers”, to do damage.

It was a painful lesson for my daughter that dangers happened suddenly. She understood we have to protect ourselves from bad people in the real world. Still, there was some goodness that came out of the ruins. Many fellow players of hers took the time to help her rebuild her school, which has been set up again. She is moved. Also, this experience opened her eyes.

1. What was the result of the daughter’s school being blown up?

A．All the buildings but the dorms were ruined.

B．Many students were seriously injured.

C．Money needed to be seriously injured.

D．The author’s daughter felt hurt a lot.

2. Before talking to other parents about the attack the author had thought that         .

A．her daughter should be blamed for it

B．this attack was just a rare incident

C．danger happened all of a sudden on the Internet

D．her daughter was too lonely

3. Which of the following is NOT true about the “griefers”?

A．They can help players build and create a new world.

B．They are performed by computer bullies.

C．They are likely to cause damage in the multi-player mode.

D．They disturb and cause sadness to game players.

4. What did her daughter do after the incident?

A．Quit playing Minecraft.

B．Gave up multi-player mode.

C．Learned to defend herself against bad people.

D．Decided to rebuild her school independently.

【推荐3】Those with closed minds refused to consider any contradictory facts, and they proceed with their planned course of action, full speed ahead, with their “minds made up” and tightly shut. As an illustration, consider the situation in 1986, prior to the space shuttle Challenger’s disatrous launch that killed all seven astronauts aboard, there was a heated telephone debate between two engineers from the company that produced the shuttle booster rockets and the top officials of NASA (the federal government’s space agency). The engineers insisted that the flight was too risky because of freezing temperature at the Florida launch site. They explained that some of the seals on the fuel tanks were not designed to withstand such low temperatures and might leak under pressure, thus endangering the craft and crew.

Despite the pleas to stop the flight, officials at NASA overruled the engineers, who were best qualified to make judgments about the complex technical problems of space flight. What caused the officials to ignore the engineers? Several flights had already been postponed, and it would not look good to postpone another. It would be bad public relations to disappoint the crowds of people and news reporters waiting for the launch. Top government officials were ready to appear on the national television and take the credit for another safe flight. As a result, with their minds absolutely closed to the facts presented by the engineers, NASA officials ordered the Challenger to take off. Seventy-three seconds later, the spacecraft was enveloped in flame.

Incredibly, seventeen years later, the lesson of the Challenger disaster was repeated. In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart while re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, killing another crew of seven. During the shuttle’s liftoff, a piece of foam insulation(泡沫隔热材料) had broken off, hitting the shuttle's wing at five hundred miles per hour. Lower-level engineers at NASA begged for photographs of the Columbia in orbit, which might have shown the extent of the damage, but their closed-minded superiors ignored their requests. It was the damage caused by the 1.7 pound chunk of insulation that doomed the Columbia.

There is no virtue in ignoring contradictory facts and “sticking to your guns” when the course taken shows all the signs of being the wrong one. Closed minds are especially noticeable in political campaigns and debates. Many people line up to support one candidate or another and won’t listen to any facts presented by the opposing candidate.

All those with an open mind say is this: “I don’t know everything, so I’d better keep my mind, eyes, and ears open to any new facts that may come along.” The world would be a much better and safer place if everyone had this attitude.

1. Which of the following brought about the disastrous launch of the Challenger?

A．Its crew	B．The engineers
C．The fuel tanks’ seals	D．The size of its rocket

2. When the engineers appealed to stop the launch of the Challenger, the government officials ___________.

A．postponed the flight at once.

B．made judgments about the complex technical problems.

C．announced the news on national television.

D．ordered to launch the Challenger as scheduled.

3. What could be inferred from Paragraph 3?

A．The Columbia disaster was impossible to foresee.

B．Engineers were to blame for the Columbia’s explosion.

C．The Columbia disaster could have been avoided.

D．The Columbia was deliberately damaged.

4. What does the underlined phrase “sticking to your guns” in Paragraph 4 mean?

A．Holding firm to your own opinion.

B．Remaining and firing your gun at enemies.

C．Strengthening your status.

D．Keeping an open mind.

5. What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To inform readers about what an open mind is.

B．To entertain readers with two stories of tragedies in space.

C．To persuade readers to keep an open mind.

D．To criticize what NASA officials had done in aerospace history.

6. How does the author support the argument of the passage?

A．By stating arguments.	B．By giving examples.
C．By explaining statistical data.	D．By providing research result.