【推荐1】In the history of creativity, great ideas often come when we're least expecting them. Consider Mozart, who described how new melodies would arrive while he was eating in a restaurant or getting ready for sleep at night. "It seems to me impossible to say when they come to me and how they arrive; what is certain is that I cannot make them come when I wish," he wrote.

Psychologists would seem to agree, with strong evidence that creative ideas are much more likely to occur after a period of incubation — in which you focus on something entirely different from the job at hand, while your brain works away behind the scenes. This could include taking a walk, doing housework or having a shower. Even our procrastination (拖延症) at work, such as watching funny YouTube videos, may be helpful for our problem solving, provided it is done properly.

Facing a coming deadline, we may fear taking any time away from the task at hand. But this will be counterproductive, and there should be no guilt about spending a few moments of pleasant distraction, or leaving the task altogether as we allow a solution to surfacing suddenly.

There are many reasons why a period of incubation could lead to new insights. According to one of the leading theories, it depends on the power of the unconscious mind. When we leave our task, the brain continues to look for solutions below awareness, until a solution comes out suddenly. Just as importantly, a period of incubation allows us to gain some psychological distance from our task. It would help you to widen your mental focus so that you can make connections and come back to the problem with a new perspective. Interestingly, incubation may work best when your mind is distracted with a relatively easy task, so that it is given just enough room to wander freely.

1. Why is Mozart mentioned in paragraph 1?

A．To stress the importance of relaxation.

B．To explain his love for music composition.

C．To praise the effectiveness of his creativity.

D．To provide an illustration of unexpected creation.

2. What does the underlined word "incubation" in paragraph 2 refer to?

A．The lack of courage.	B．The act of distracting.
C．The trend of laziness.	D．The sign of delaying.

3. What can we infer about procrastination from the passage?

A．It is beneficial.	B．It is risky.
C．It is time-consuming.	D．It is harmful.

4. Which of the following can the author probably agree with?

A．Constant practice makes perfect.

B．Success involves a lot of mistakes.

C．Temporary stop sometimes helps fuel creativity.

D．Watching and playing online games ease our brain.

【推荐2】New research has found a direct correlation between how a child visually tracks his mother’s eyes and the condition. How a toddler responds to baby talk could help diagnose autism (自闭症) years before symptoms begin, according to the new research.

A study examined responses to parents’ use of playful, emotional, exaggerated tones, known as “motherese” (mother’s ‘baby talk’), to capture a child’s attention. Eye-tracking tests showed that children who did not respond had weaker social and language abilities. Professor Karen Pierce, of California University in San Diego, co-author of the research, said, “We know the earlier we can introduce treatment, the more effective it is likely to be. But most children don’t get a formal diagnosis until around the age of three or four. There is a real need for easy and effective tools that can be used on young children. Eye-tacking is a great place to start.”

In experiments, 653 toddlers aged one to two years old were exposed to two one-minute videos featuring a woman speaking motherese or abstract scenes. Their eyes controlled which one played. Participants without ASD (autism spectrum disorder) showed consistently high interest in the woman speaking motherese, spending an average 80 percent of the time watching it. They largely ignored the second video which showed a busy highway, abstract shapes and numbers and had accompanying electronic music.

However, attention levels of peers diagnosed with ASD spanned the full range of concentration levels, with some focusing 100 per cent on the random images. A group who fixed on motherese less than 30 per cent of the time could be accurately identified as having ASD through this measurement alone. These children also showed lower scores on subsequent tests of language and social skills.

Whether less attention to motherese is the cause of reduced sociability or merely a symptom has yet to be determined. However, researchers found it appears to be a highly accurate biomarker for the condition. Prof Pierce said, “The fact we can reliably identify children with autism using such a simple and rapid eye-tracking test is really remarkable. In future, we hope to use a child’s attention to motherese as a clue for which treatments they may most benefit from and as a tool for measuring how well those treatments work.”

1. What is the purpose of the study?

A．To diagnose autism early.	B．To check a child’s eyesight.
C．To test a child’s reaction to motherese.	D．To catch a child’s attention.

2. What can we know according to Pierce?

A．Eye-tracking test is a good way to cure autism.

B．It is essential to bring in ASD treatment in early time.

C．There is an urgent need for complex tool applied to young children.

D．Most children don’t get an informal diagnosis before the age of three or four.

3. How did participants without ASD responded to the videos in experiments?

A．They mainly overlooked the second one.

B．They fixed 80 percent on the random images.

C．They focused on motherese more than 30% percent of time.

D．They showed occasionally high interest in the woman speaking motherese.

4. What’s the main idea of the passage?

A．How to heal autism.

B．The process of eye-tracking test.

C．How to improve toddlers’ language and social skills.

D．The connection between a child’s reaction to motherese and autism.

【推荐3】Recently, economist Francisca Antman makes a convincing case that the explosion of tea as an everyman’s drink in late 1700s England saved many lives. This would not have been because of any beneficial substances of the leaf. Instead, the simple practice of boiling water for tea, in an era before people understood that illness could be caused by water-borne pathogens (病原体), may have been enough to keep many from an early grave.

Between 1761 and 1834, the annual death rate decreased considerably, but wages didn’t seem to have risen much and standards of living arguably didn’t increase. Actually, with the rise of the industrial revolution, many people crowded into towns whose sanitation (卫生条件) left much to be desired. Some historians suggested that boiling water for tea might have played a role in this decrease.

“With people coming into cities to work, given the level of sanitation they have, the big killer is water.” says Antman. Using data from over 400 English districts, relating water sources and quality with death rates, she found the key date is 1785 when tea suddenly became affordable for the majority of Britons. There were many things to recommend tea as a drink of the common people: you could make a satisfying drink with just a few leaves, which could be reused for multiple pots, and tea was potentially cheaper than beer, which became expensive both by the complex making process and by a tax on malt (麦芽). She found that deaths dropped in all districts, but those with bad water saw death rates drop 18% more than those with good water.

Interestingly,while there wasn’t a noticeable decrease in deaths among children aged two to five — who typically didn’t consume much tea — there was a slight fall in infant deaths, perhaps reflecting the fact that if tea-drinking parents had less diarrheal (腹泻) disease, their very young children might have been protected a bit as well.

1. What might contribute to decreased death rates according to some historians?

A．Desirable sanitation.	B．Less water-related disease.
C．Industrial revolution.	D．Beneficial substances in tea.

2. Why did the majority of Britons in 1785 turn to tea?

A．Because it tasted better than beer.	B．Because it was less costly and reusable.
C．Because people needn’t pay any tax on it.	D．Because people enjoyed its making process.

3. What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A．Drinking tea has tittle influence on young children.

B．Children can also drink tea to protect themselves from diarrheal disease.

C．Parents’ tea-drinking habits may have a positive effect on their children.

D．Death rates of children didn’t drop due to their lack of tea-drinking habits.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Why people need to boil water to make tea.

B．Why British develop a love for drinking tea.

C．How tea gains increasing popularity in Britain.

D．How Britain’s taste for tea may have saved lives.

【推荐1】Climate change disproportionately affects the world’s most vulnerable people, particularly poor rural communities that depend on the land for their livelihoods and coastal populations throughout the tropics. We have already seen a chain of tough suffering that results from extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, and more.

For remedies, advocates and politicians have tended to look toward cuts in fossil-fuel use or technologies to capture carbon before it enters the atmosphere—both of which are crucial. But this focus has overshadowed the most powerful and cost-efficient carbon capture technology in the world. Recent research confirms that forests are absolutely essential in reducing climate change, thanks to their ability to absorb and isolate carbon. In fact, natural climate solutions such as conservation and restoration of forests, along with improvements in land management, can help us achieve 37 percent of our climate target of limiting warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, even though they currently receive only 2.5 percent of public climate financing.

Forests’ power to store carbon dioxide is staggering: one tree can store an average of about 48 pounds in one year. Intact(完整的)forests could take in the CO₂ emissions of some entire countries.

For this reason, policymakers and business leaders must create and enforce policies to prevent deforestation, foster, reforestation of degraded land, and promote the sustainable management of standing forests in the fight against climate change. Protecting the world’s forests ensures they can keep performing essential functions such as producing oxygen, filtering water and supporting biodiversity. Not only does the world’s entire population depend on forests to provide clean air, clean water, oxygen and medicines, but 1.6 billion people also rely on them directly for their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, a huge amount of forest continues to be converted into agricultural land to produce a handful of resource-intensive commodities - despite zero-deforestation commitments from companies and governments. So now is the time to increase forest protection and restoration. This action will also address a number of other pressing global issues. For example, in less developed, rural areas - especially in the tropics - community-based forest-management programs can forge pathways out of poverty. In the Peten region of Guatemala, for instance, community-managed forests boasted a near-zero deforestation rate from 2000 through 2013, as compared with 12 percent in nearby protected areas and buffer(缓冲)zones. These communities have built low-impact, sustainable forest-based businesses that have stimulated the economy of the region enough to fund the creation of local schools and health services. Their success is especially noticeable in a location where, outside these community-managed zones, deforestation rates have increased 20-fold.

1. Which of the following statements about natural climate solutions is true according to the passage?

A．They are the only effective strategies available to address the climate change.

B．They pale in comparison with the reduction in fossil-fuel use or technologies.

C．They can and should play a more important role in cutting carbon emissions.

D．They manage to limit warming to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

2. The word “staggering” (Paragraph 3) is closest in meaning to “_________”.

A．documented	B．incredible
C．unsteady	D．negligible

3. Which of the following statements is the author most likely to agree with?

A．The policies to prevent deforestation have borne fruit.

B．Developed countries are hit the hardest by climate change.

C．Economic growth contributes a lot to reducing deforestation.

D．Some governments fail to keep their promises to preserve forests.

4. What does the passage mainly talk about?

A．Keeping forests undamaged can go a long way toward saving the planet.

B．A high-tech climate fix is required to dramatically lessen global warming.

C．Governments should work together with businesses to stop deforestation.

D．Sustainable management of forests is crucial in powering regional development.

【推荐3】The worldwide 20th century “Green Revolution”, which saw huge year-by-year increases in global grain yields (产量),was fueled by the development in the 1960s of new high-yielding dwarfed (矮小) varieties known as Green Revolution Varieties (GRVs).

These dwarfed GRVs are common all over the world in today’s wheat and rice crops. Because they are dwarfed, with short stems, GRVs devote relatively more resources than tall plants to the growth of grains rather than stems, and are less likely to suffer yield losses from wind and rain damage. However, the growth of GRVs requires farmers to use large amounts of nitrogen fertilizers (氮肥) in their fields. These fertilizers are costly to farmers and cause extensive damage to the natural environment. The development of new GRVs combining high yields with reduced fertilizer requirements is thus a global agricultural goal.

Researchers at the University of Oxford and the Chinese Academy of Science have discovered for the first time a gene that can help reach the goal. Comparing 36 different dwarfed rice varieties, the researchers identified a novel natural gene that helps increase the rate at which plants make use of nitrogen from the soil. This gene, called GRF4, can increase the amount of a protein (蛋白质) in plant cells. GRF4 is actually a promoter that encourages the activity of other genes—genes that promote nitrogen uptake (摄入). Professor Harberd said, “Increasing GRF4 levels could contribute to an increase in the grain yields of GRVs, especially at low fertilizer input levels.”

The researchers say the latest rice variety containing GRVs should now become a major target for farmers in increasing crop yields and fertilizer use efficiency, with the aim of achieving the global grain yield increases necessary to feed a growing world population at a reduced environmental cost. It is very urgent at the moment.

Professor Harberd added, “This study is an example of how studying fundamental science objectives can lead rapidly to potential solutions to global challenges. It shows how the discovery can enable chances for food security and future new green revolutions.”

1. What can we know about dwarfed GRVs?

A．They have higher yield and taller stems.

B．They are a “double-edged sword”.

C．They are environmentally friendly.

D．They can be easily affected by weather.

2. What does “the goal” in Paragraph 3 refer to?

A．Increasing the rate of nitrogen use.

B．Producing cheaper nitrogen fertilizers.

C．Using fewer fertilizers to produce more grains.

D．Finding a gene to solve agricultural problems.

3. What can GRF4 directly do?

A．It promotes other genes' activity.

B．It increases the output of crops.

C．It takes in nitrogen from the soil.

D．It lowers fertilizer input levels.

4. What’s the urgent thing recently according to the researchers?

A．Decreasing the amount of fertilizers required by GRVs.

B．Encouraging farmers to adopt the new rice variety.

C．Calling on farmers to use effective fertilizers.

D．Focusing on the improvement of GRF4.

5. What’s the main idea of the text?

A．GRVs—a potential measure to achieve global food security.

B．The influence of agricultural development on the environment.

C．The importance of raising public awareness of global issues.

D．GRF4—foundation for new green revolutions.