A block chain is a data structure that stores time-ordered data in an ever-growing list, like an accounting ledger (分类账簿). The block chain data structure is maintained using a distributed, peer-to-peer network of computers with no central “master”. As with many new concepts, block chain technology generates much optimism and also a huge amount of interest and excitement. Just what is it good for?
In short, block chains may improve any process where people need to access, confirm, send or store information securely. This information could be a person’s identity, a product’s shipment history or digital property like money.
Typical databases, spreadsheets (电子数据表), and ledgers store information about objects, people, and the interactions between them. Much of the world’s information, from credit card transactions to medical and financial records, is stored in these types of systems.
These types of systems have considerable, well-documented weaknesses that arise from their being centralized. A centralized record is hard to understand and is exposed to unauthorized access or distribution. It is also, because it is a ‘master’ copy, exposed to permanent changing or deletion.
Block chains are also used to store information. Crucially, however, they differ in two ways.
First, information is parceled up into blocks and sealed. Bitcoin, for example, which is the most famous practical example of a production block chain, stores all transactions across the network every ten minutes or so in a single, newly formed block. Each block is then added to the previous one to form a chain.
Second, this “chain of blocks” is not stored centrally. Instead, each block is copied and distributed around an entire network of peers - be they individuals, public institutions, or businesses - using distributed ledger technology. (The terms “block chain” and “distributed ledger” are often used interchangeably; for the sake of clarity, block chain technologies tend to employ distributed ledger technology.)
Each time someone adds a new block to the chain, meanwhile it is added to everyone’s copy.
1. What is the biggest strength of a block chain?| A．It promotes people’s enthusiasm about new technology. |
| B．It strengthens the security of processing information. |
| C．It enables people to store more data in time order. |
| D．It stores a large part of world’s information. |
| A．they are difficult to operate | B．they can be accessed easily |
| C．they have a central “master” | D．they store considerable documents |
| A．making comparisons | B．giving examples |
| C．making a list | D．showing the effect and causes |
| A．To analyze the weaknesses of typical systems. |
| B．To encourage the popularity of the block chain. |
| C．To introduce the new concept of the block chain. |
| D．To compare the two different data structures. |
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There’s a contradiction in the way many of us behave online: we know we’re being watched all the time, and disapprove of the monitor by Google and the government. But the bounds of what’s considered too personal to be uploaded or shared online seems to shrink by the day.
I complain about the lack of privacy, for example, and yet I willingly and routinely trade it for convenience. I no longer run the risk of unforeseen delays on public transport; Google Maps will inform me of the fastest route to my destination; I no longer need to remember my friends’ birthdays; Facebook will urge me, and invariably appeal to me to post an update to remind people I exist. All I have to do is make my location, habits and beliefs transparent to their parent companies whenever they choose to check in on me.
So what’s going on? “Visibility is a trap,” explained the French philosopher Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1975). Allowing oneself to be watched, and learning to watch others, is both attractive and dangerous. He took for example “Panopticon”, a prison where prisoners were observed from a tower manned by an invisible occupant. The prisoners would believe in the presence of the mysterious watchman, whether or not anyone was actually inside, and behave themselves.
According to Foucault, the dynamics of the Panopticon are similar to how generally people self-monitor in society. In the presence of ever-watching witness, people police themselves. They don’t know what the observers are looking for, or what the punishments are for disobedience (不顺从). But they willingly accept and follow this invisible discipline.
Foucault claimed that such monitoring is worrisome, not just because of what companies and states might do with our data, but because the act of watching is itself a terrible exercise of power, which may influence behavior without our fully realizing it.
But something’s not right here. Why does the self-display continue when we are sure that we are watched from everywhere and nowhere?
Social media provides a public space that often operates more like a private one, where many people hold the belief that there they won’t suffer the consequences of what they say online, as if protected by technology.
Plato would be alarmed by the lack of shame online. His point about moral knowledge is this: we already know the right way to live a just and fulfilling life, but are constantly distracted(转移) from that noble aim. For him, then, shame helps us be true to ourselves and to pay attention to the moral knowledge within. A man without shame, Plato says, is a slave to desire — for material goods, power, fame, respect. Such desire, by its nature, cannot be satisfied.
| Phenomenon | While people hate being monitored, the | |
| My experience | I complain about the lack of privacy but still exchange it for convenience. | |
| convenience | * I * Facebook will remind me of my friends’ birthdays, and appeal to me to be updated. | |
| cost | I must make my | |
| Michel Foucault’s explanations | Idea: Visibility is a trap. | |
| An analogy: * In the Panopticon, prisoners behave themselves just because they believed they were watched by an * In real life, the way people self-monitor Panopticon. They willingly follow the invisible discipline. | ||
| Worr ies: Our data may be | ||
| Reasons for contraction | Though being watched, self-display continues because some netizens think that they don’t need to take | |
| Conclusion | *Shame is essential in leading a just and fulfilling life. *Shame helps us stay true to ourselves and focus on our *Shame can | |
【推荐2】In 1953, when visiting his daughter’s maths class, the Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner found every pupil learning the same topic in the same way at the same speed. Later, he built his first “teaching machine”, which let children tackle questions at their own pace. Since then, education technology (edtech) has repeated the cycle of hype and flop (炒作和失败), even as computers have reshaped almost every other part of life.
Softwares to “personalize” learning can help hundreds of millions of children stuck in miserable classes—but only if edtech supporters can resist the temptation to revive harmful ideas about how children learn. Alternatives have so far failed to teach so many children as efficiently as the conventional model of schooling, where classrooms, hierarchical year-groups, standardized curriculums and fixed timetables are still the typical pattern for most of the world’s nearly 1.5 billion schoolchildren. Under this pattern, too many do not reach their potential. That condition remained almost unchanged over the past 15 years, though billions have been spent on IT in schools during that period.
What really matters then? The answer is how edtech is used. One way it can help is through tailor-made instruction. Reformers think edtech can put individual attention within reach of all pupils. The other way edtech can aid learning is by making schools more productive. In California schools, instead of textbooks, pupils have “playlists”, which they use to access online lessons and take tests. The software assesses children’s progress, lightening teachers’ marking load and allowing them to focus on other tasks. A study suggested that children in early adopters of this model score better in tests than their peers at other schools.
Such innovation is welcome. But making the best of edtech means getting several things right. First, “personalized learning” must follow the evidence on how children learn. It must not be an excuse to revive pseudoscientific ideas such as “learning styles”: the theory that each child has a particular way of taking in information. This theory gave rise to government-sponsored schemes like Brain Gym, which claimed that some pupils should stretch or bend while doing sums. A less consequential falsehood is that technology means children do not need to learn facts or learn from a teacher—instead they can just use Google. Some educationalists go further, arguing that facts get in the way of skills such as creativity. Actually, the opposite is true. According to studies, most effective ways of boosting learning nearly all relied on the craft of a teacher.
Second, edtech must narrow, rather than widen, inequalities in education. Here there are grounds for optimism. Some of the pioneering schools are private ones in Silicon Valley. But many more are run by charter-school groups teaching mostly poor pupils, where laggards (成绩落后者) make the most progress relative to their peers in normal classes. A similar pattern can be observed outside America.
Third, the potential for edtech will be realized only if teachers embrace it. They are right to ask for evidence that products work. But skepticism should not turn into irrational opposition. Given what edtech promises today, closed-mindedness has no place in the classroom.
1. According to the passage, education technology can ________.| A．decrease teachers’ working load |
| B．facilitate personalized learning |
| C．help standardize curriculums |
| D．be loved by schoolchildren |
| A．The students who are better at memorization tend to be less creative. |
| B．Schools with bans on phones have better results than high-tech ones. |
| C．Shakespeare was trained in grammar but he penned many great plays. |
| D．Lu Xun’s creativity was unlocked after he gave up studying medicine. |
| A．at the service of teaching |
| B．limited in use among pupils |
| C．aimed at narrowing the wealth gap |
| D．in line with students’ learning styles |
| A．To stress the importance of edtech. |
| B．To introduce the application of edtech. |
| C．To discuss how to get the best out of edtech. |
| D．To appeal for more open-mindedness to edtech. |
【推荐3】Teachers say the digital age has had a good influence and a not-so-good influence on this generation of American teenagers. More than 2,000 middle and high school teachers took an online survey. Researchers also spoke with teachers in focus groups.
Three-quarters of the teachers said the Internet and digital search tools have had a "mostly positive" effect on their students research habits and skills. But 87 percent agreed that these technologies are creating an "easily distracted generation with short attention spans (持续时间) " .And 64 percent said the technologies "do more to distract students than to help them academically(学业上) " . Many students think "doing research" now means just doing a quick search on Google.
The Pew Internet Project did the survey with the College Board and the. National Writing Project. Most of the teachers came from Advanced Placement classes, which provide college-level work for high school students.
Judy Buchanan is director of the National Writing Project and a co-author of the report. Ms. Buchanan says digital research tools are helping students learn more, and learn faster. Teachers really welcome these tools because they are ways to make some of learning exciting and engaging.Young people welcome these tools. And the goal is to really help them become creators of content,and meaningful content, and not just sort of consumers.
But one problem the survey found is that many students are lacking in digital literacy. In other words, they trust too much of the information they find on the Internet. Another problem the survey found is blamed on something that might not seem like a problem at all: being able toquickly find information online.
Teachers say the result is a reduction in the desire and ability of their students to work hard to find answers. They say students are depending too much on search engines and do not makeenough use of printed books or libraries. Many teachers are also concerned that the Internet makes it easy for students to copy work done by others instead of using their own abilities.
1. The purpose of the online survey is to____| A．convince teachers of the Internet good influence |
| B．spread knowledge about the Internet search tools |
| C．influence teachers viewpoints towards the digital age |
| D．get teachers opinions about the digital age influence on youngsters |
| A．It results in students bad research habits and skills. |
| B．It brings too much negative information to the students. |
| C．It distracts students attention instead of helping them academically. |
| D．It develops their interest in doing research through the technologies. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Negative. | C．Critical. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．The Internet is changing everybody's life. |
| B．Teachers welcome the digital age in general. |
| C．The Internet has more disadvantages than advantages. |
| D．Solutions to the lack of digital literacy should be found. |
【推荐1】Few people doubt the value of developing students' thinking skills. A focus on critical thinking is common in education. In the Australian Curriculum, critical thinking and creative thinking are known as “general capabilities”. The US has a similar focus through their “common core".
Many approaches to developing critical thinking are based on Philosophy for Children. One strategy that has a large impact on students' ability to analyse and evaluate arguments is argument mapping, in which a student's reasoning can be visually displayed by capturing the inferential pathway from assumption to conclusion. This type of argument-based intellectual engagement can show high outcomes in terms of the quality of thinking in any classroom. Research also shows deliberate attention to the practice of reasoning in the context of our everyday lives can be significantly improved through targeted teaching.
Teachers at one high school in Australia, who have much training in critical thinking teaching methods, developed a task that asked students to determine Australia's greatest sports person. Students needed to construct their own criteria for greatness. To do so, they had to analyze the Australian sporting context, create possible evaluative standards, explain and justify why some standards would be more acceptable than others and apply these to their candidates. They then needed to argue their case with their classmates to develop criteria that were solid, defensible, widely applicable and produced a choice that seized significant and relevant aspects of Australian sport.
Researchers looking at the gains made in a single term of teaching critical thinking with argument mapping said the critical thinking gains measured are close to those that could be expected to result from three years of undergraduate education. Students who are taught to think well also do better on subject-based exams and standardized tests than those who do not.
In terms of developing 21st century skills, which includes setting up students for lifelong learning, teaching critical thinking should be core business.
1. Which of the following can explain the underlined word “capturing" in Paragraph 2?| A．Describing. | B．Attracting. | C．Designing. | D．Blocking. |
| A．To construct the criteria for being great. |
| B．To acknowledge the teachers' outcomes. |
| C．To present how to teach critical thinking. |
| D．To emphasize the importance of reasoning. |
| A．Objective. | B．Supportive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Cautious. |
| A．Teaching methods should vary among schools. |
| B．Research on education deserves more attention. |
| C．Critical thinking should be valued in education. |
| D．Concepts of critical thinking aren't well received. |
【推荐2】As Shanghai prepared to introduce mandatory(强制的) garbage sorting on July 1, games and toys that examined fun ways to spread information about the garbage sorting were to encourage younger people to take action.
A 15-second video of a game went on Chinese social media. In the video, players wearing VR(虚拟) headsets saw four different types of trash can in front of them, and had to throw different types of garbage into the right buckets(桶) to get points. Although it was not the only VR game in the place, visitors lined up around the booth to explore it because of the garbage-sorting theme.
“As a Shanghai, I am in great need of this game. Maybe I won’t need to check how to categorize(分类) each piece of garbage on my phone while going through all my garbage every day if I play this game more often, ” said ZhouZhou, a young Shanghai. But some social media users in Shanghai have complained about the difficulty of sorting different types of garbage.
Wu Xia, founder and CEO of VitrellaCore, the company that created the game, said the idea was to provide an interesting way of learning about garbage sorting. “It’s simple and easy to understand. People can practice sorting garbage without actually going through their trash, and it is a more effective method than using paper materials when training volunteers,” Wu said.
1. What is the purpose of the VR game?| A．Just for fun. |
| B．Teach students to sort garbage. |
| C．Do exercise. |
| D．Keep fit. |
| A．It is too hard to sort garbage. |
| B．There are too many people lining up. |
| C．The VR game should be more interesting. |
| D．There are more ways to use paper materials. |
| A．successful | B．interesting | C．traditional | D．disappointing |
| A．Young people like VR games more. |
| B．Shanghai performs mandatory garbage sorting. |
| C．Games were used to help young people sort garbage. |
| D．Learning by playing VR games is practical for the young. |
【推荐3】When one looks back upon the fifteen hundred years that are the life span of the English language, he should be able to notice a number of significant truths. The history of our language has always been a history of constant change—at times a slow, almost imperceptible change, at other times a violent collision between two languages. Our language has been a living growing organism, it has never been static. Another significant truth that emerges from such a study is that language at all times has been the possession not of one class or group but of many. At one extreme it has been the property of the common, ignorant folk, who have used it in the daily business of their living, much as they have used their animals or the kitchen pots and pans. At the other extreme it has been the treasure of those who have respected it as an instrument and a sign of civilization, and who have struggled by writing it down to give it some permanence, order, dignity, and if possible, a little beauty.
As we consider our changing language, we should note here two developments that are of special and immediate importance to us. One is that since the time of the Anglo-Saxons there has been an almost complete reversal of the different relationship of words in a sentence. Anglo-Saxon (old English) was a language of many inflections. Modern English has few inflections. We must now depend largely on word order and function words to convey the meanings that the older language did by means of changes in the forms of words. Function words, you should understand, are words such as prepositions, conjunctions, and a few others that are used primarily to show relationships among other words. A few inflections, however, have survived. And when some word inflections come into conflict with word order, there may be trouble for the users of the language, as we shall see later when we turn our attention to such matters as WHO or WHOM and ME or I. The second fact we must consider is that as language itself changes, our attitudes toward language forms change also. The eighteenth century, for example, produced from various sources a tendency to fix the language into patterns not always set in and grew, until at the present time there is a strong tendency to restudy and re-evaluate language practices in terms of the ways in which people speak and write.
1. In contrast to the earlier linguists, modern linguists tend to ________.| A．attempt to continue the standardization of the language |
| B．evaluate language practices in terms of current speech rather than standards or proper patterns |
| C．be more concerned about language than its analysis or history |
| D．be more aware of the rules of the language usage |
| A．Changes in the forms of words. |
| B．Changes in sentence structures. |
| C．Changes in spelling rules. |
| D．Words that have similar meanings. |
| A．It is generally believed that the year 1500 can be set as the beginning of the modern English language. |
| B．Some other languages had great influence on the English language at some stages of its development. |
| C．The English language has been and still in a state of relatively constant change. |
| D．Many classes or groups have contributed to the development of the English language. |
| A．historian | B．philosopher |
| C．anthropologist | D．linguist |
| A．The history of the English language |
| B．Our changing attitude towards the English language |
| C．Our changing language |
| D．Some characteristics of modern English |
【推荐1】Your circle of friends may help you get a better reading on your overall health and wellness rather than just using wearable devices such as a Fitbit, according to researchers.
The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, analyzed what the structure of social networks says about the state of health, happiness and stress.
"We were interested in the topololgy (拓扑学) of the social network — what does my position within my social network predict about my health and well-being said Nitesh V. Chawla, a professor at the University of Notre Dame in the US.
“What we found was the social network structure provides a significant improvement in predictability of wellness states of an individual over just using the data obtained from wearables, like the number of steps or heart rate,” Chawla said.
For the study, participants wore a Fitbit to capture health behavior data about walking, sleeping, heart rate and overall activity level. They also completed surveys and self-assessments of their stress, happiness and positivity.
Cbawla and his team then analyzed the data with a machine learning model, alongside the connections and characteristics of an individual's social network.
The study showed a strong correlation (相关性) between social network structures, heart rate, number of steps and level of activity.
Social network structure provided significant improvement in predicting one's health and well-being compared to just looking at health behavior data from the Fitbit alone.
For example, when social network structure is combined with the data from wearables, the machine learning model achieved a 65 percent improvement in predicting happiness.
The model also achieved a 54 percent improvement in predicting one's self-assessed health prediction, a 55 percent improvement in predicting positive attitude and a 38 percent improvement in predicting success.
This study asserts (断言) that without social network information, we only have an incomplete view of an individual's wellness state, and to be fully predictive or to be able to obtain interventions (干扰). It is critical to be aware of the social network, Chawla said.
1. What did the study find?| A．How people choose their friend circles. |
| B．What factors decide your friend circles. |
| C．How your circle of friends influences you |
| D．What your circle of friends says about your health. |
| A．By comparing data. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By analyzing cause and effect | D．By describing personal experiences. |
| A．Easy. | B．Common. |
| C．Important. | D．Challenging. |
| A．How fitness devices can connect your circle of friends |
| B．That a person's social network is part of his health picture. |
| C．The best ways to make friends and keep a healthy social circle |
| D．That wearable devices are not useful for understanding someone's health. |
Here’s something to think about the next time you ask your teacher for help: struggling with schoolwork on your own can help you learn. According to a recent study, the more you struggle while you are learning new information, the better you can remember it later.
This theory might surprise you. When teachers are presenting new information, they often give students lots of help. But a new study shows this may not be the best way to support learning. “Don't be too quick to get help when learning something new,” education expert Manu Kapur told TFK. “Try to work on it yourself even if it means trying different ways.”
Kapur came up with the idea that struggling can lead to better learning. Then he tested it out on students in Singapore. He separated students into two groups. In the first group, students were asked to solve math problems with the teacher’s help. In the second group, students were asked to solve the same problems by helping one another, instead of getting help from the teacher.
With the teacher’s help, students in the first group were able to find the correct answers. Students in the second group did not solve the problems correctly. But they did come up with a lot of good ideas. The students were then tested on what they had learned. The group without any help from a teacher scored much higher than the group who had help. Kapur said working to find the answers helped students understand the process, not just the solution.
Kapur’s advice for kids is to put a lot of effort into learning something new rather than going to your teacher for help. “Simply doing a little work or nothing at all won’t work,” says Kapur. “The struggle needs to be a genuine attempt to figure out or solve a problem in as many ways as possible.”
1. When you have doubt on schoolwork, you’d better ____________.
| A．ask your teacher for help |
| B．make it clear by yourself |
| C．ask your classmates to help you |
| D．ask your parents for help |
| A．Give students much help as soon as possible. |
| B．Let students learn it on themselves in one way. |
| C．Let students learn it by themselves in the same way. |
| D．Let students learn it for themselves in different ways. |
| A．By asking questions. |
| B．By solving art problems. |
| C．By group comparations. |
| D．By solving science problems. |
| A．Getting the teacher’s help. |
| B．Getting the student’s help. |
| C．Grasping the learning course. |
| D．Receiving the final solution. |
【推荐3】A robot created by Washington State University (WSU) scientists could help elderly people with dementia (痴呆) and other limitations live independently in their own homes.
The Robot Activity Support System, or RAS, uses sensors installed in a WSU smart home to determine where its residents are, what they are doing and when they need assistance with daily activities. It navigates (定位) through rooms and around obstacles to find people on its own, provides video instructions on how to do simple tasks and can even lead its owner to objects like their medication or a snack in the kitchen.
“RAS combines the convenience of a mobile robot with the activity detection technology of a WSU smart home to provide assistance in the moment, as the need for help is detected,” said Bryan Minor, a postdoctoral researcher in the WSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Currently, an estimated 50 percent of adults over the age of 85 need assistance with every day activities such as preparing meals and taking medication and the annual cost for this assistance in the US is nearly $2 trillion. With the number of adults over 85 expected to triple by 2050, researchers hope that technologies like RAS and the WSU smart home will relieve some of the financial strain on the healthcare system by making it easier for older adults to live alone.
RAS is the first robot researchers have tried to incorporate into their smart home environment. They recently published a study in the journal Cognitive Systems Research that demonstrates how RAS could make life easier for older adults struggling to live independently.
“While we are still in an early stage of development, our initial results with RAS have been promising,” Minor said. “The next step in the research will be to test RAS’ performance with a group of older adults to get a better idea of what prompts, video reminders and other preferences they have regarding the robot.”
1. How does RAS serve elderly people?| A．Through sensors. | B．Through objects. |
| C．Through a mobile robot. | D．Through their daily activities. |
| A．It is the first robot used in daily life. | B．Its function remains to be tested. |
| C．It can locate people and do any task. | D．It can cook for owners on its own. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Negative. |
| C．Optimistic. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．Elderly people leave the nursing home. |
| B．Smart Home Tests first elder-Care robot. |
| C．RAS, the first robot to make home smart. |
| D．Older adults have benefited from RAS. |
【推荐1】A medical capsule robot is a small, often pill-sized device that can do planned movement inside the body after being swallowed or surgically inserted. Most models use wireless electronics or magnets or a combination of the two to control the movement of the capsule. Such devices have been equipped with cameras to allow observation and diagnosis, with sensors that “feel,” and even with mechanical needles that administer drugs.
But in practice, Biomechatronics engineer Pietro Valdastri has found that developing capsule models from scratch (从头开始) is costly, time-consuming and requires advanced skills. “The problem was we had to do them from scratch every time,” said Valdastri in an interview. “And other research groups were redeveloping those same modules from scratch, which didn’t make sense.”
Since most of the capsules have the same parts of components: a microprocessor, communication submodules, an energy source, sensors, and actuators (致动器), Valdastri and his team made the modular platform in which the pieces work in concert and can be interchanged with ease. They also developed a flexible board on which the component parts are snapped in like Legos. The board can be folded to fit the body of the capsule, down to about 14 mm. Additionally, they compiled (编译) a library of components that designers could choose from, enabling hundreds of different combinations. They arranged it all in a free online system. Designers can take the available designs or adapt them to their specific needs.
“Instead of redeveloping all the modules from scratch, people with limited technological experience can use our modules to build their own capsule robots in clinical use and focus on their innovation,” Valdastri said.
Now, the team has designed a capsule equipped with a surgical clip to stop internal bleeding. Researchers at Scotland’s Royal Infirmary of Edinburg have also expressed interest in using the system to make a crawling capsule that takes images of the colon(结肠). One research group, led by professors at the Institute of Digestive Disease of the Chinese University of HongKong, is making a swimming capsule equipped with a camera that pushes itself through the stomach.
One limitation of Valdastri’s system is that it’s only for designing models. Researchers can confirm their hypotheses (假设) and do first design using the platform, but will need to move to a custom approach to develop their capsules further and make them practical for clinical use.
1. According to the passage, Valdastri and his team created the platform to ________.| A．adopt the latest technologies |
| B．make their robots dream come true |
| C．help build specialized capsule robots |
| D．do preciser observation and diagnosis |
| A．Perform live. | B．Run independently. |
| C．Act in a cooperative way. | D．Carry on step by step. |
| A．Valdastri’s system can’t provide a complete capsule creation. |
| B．The modular platform is more useful than a custom approach. |
| C．The capsules can move in human’s body automatically. |
| D．It costs more to module the capsules on the board. |
【推荐2】Examples of effective conservation of places matter to the world. They range from the 1960s Nubian campaign to safeguard Ancient Egyptian monuments from the waters of the Aswan Dam to the removal in 2018 of the Belize Barrier Reef from the List of World Heritage in Danger. Conservation is the core purpose of the World Heritage Convention and it may also be its biggest challenge.
The following example shows how successes at specific sites now serve as models for conservation and sustainable (可持续性) development. A year after Vienna was included on the World Heritage List in 2001, the World Heritage Committee (WHC) expressed concerns about the architectural solutions and height of four planned towers of the Wien-Mitte project. This development project, close to the Historic Centre of Vienna in the site’s buffer zone, the one that lies between two or more other areas, affected the urban scale (规模) and visual effects in and around the property (地产). As a result of the Committee’s concerns, Vienna changed its building codes and launched a new design competition for the Wien-Mitte project to work out architectural plans with reduced size in keeping with World Heritage protection.
The successful practice inspired the government of the city to invite over 600 experts and professionals from 55 countries to an international conference on World Heritage and contemporary architecture, held in Vienna in May 2005. The global discussion that followed, detailing an approach to managing conservation and development, was recorded in the UNESCO Recommendation in 2011.
The Recommendation put forwards an all-rounded and combined approach to balancing urban heritage (遗产) conservation and economic development, arguing that active protection and management of urban heritage supports the goal of sustainable development.
The Recommendation supports the harmonious combination of contemporary involvement into the historic urban framework while holding on to values linked to history, memory and the environment.
1. Why does the author mention the Belize Barrier Reef in Paragraph 1?| A．To explain the goal of the organization. |
| B．To encourage the public to protect the world. |
| C．To show the positive effect of conservation. |
| D．To remind people of the environmental problems. |
| A．It took up too much public land of the city. |
| B．It had a bad effect on the Historic Centre of Vienna. |
| C．Its original designs were not environmentally friendly. |
| D．Its architectural solutions couldn’t meet safety standards. |
| A．The ways to combine conservation and development. |
| B．The creation of the new UNESCO Recommendation. |
| C．The international urban management and development. |
| D．The styles of the contemporary architecture of Vienna. |
| A．To examine the challenges faced by global urban planners. |
| B．To introduce alternative ways of protecting the environment. |
| C．To stress the importance of the value of history and memory. |
| D．To promote active conservation and sustainable development. |
【推荐3】In the early 1960s Wilt Chamberlain was one of only three players in the National Basketball Association (NBA)listed at over seven feet. If he had played last season, however, he would have been one of 42. The bodies playing major professional sports have changed dramatically over the years, and managers have been more than willing to adjust team uniforms to fit the growing numbers of bigger, longer frames.
The trend in sports, though, may be obscuring an unrecognized reality: Americans have generally stopped growing. Though typically about two inches taller now than 140 years ago, today's people-especially those born to families who have lived in the U. S. for many generations-apparently reached their limit in the early 1960s. And they aren't likely to get any taller. "In the general population today, at this genetic, environmental level, we've pretty much gone as far as we can go," says anthropologist William Cameron Chum-lea of Wright State University. In the case of NBA players, their increase in height appears to result from the increasingly common practice of recruiting players from all over the world.
Growth, which rarely continues beyond the age of 20, demands calories and nutrients-notably, protein--to feed expanding tissues. At the start of the 20th century, under-nutrition and childhood infections got in the way. But as diet and health improved, children and adolescents have, on average, increased in height by about an inch and a half every 20 years, a pattern known as the secular trend in height. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, average height--5 '9" for men, 5'4" for women--hasn't really changed since 1960.
Genetic maximums can change, but don't expect this to happen soon. Claire C. Gordon, senior anthropologist at the Army Research Center in Natick, Mass ensures that 90 percent of the uniforms and workstations fit recruits without alteration. She says that, unlike those for basketball, the length of military uniforms has not changed for some time. And if you need to predict human height in the near future to design a piece of equipment, Gordon says that by and large, "you could use today's data and feel fairly confident."
1. Wilt Chamberlain is cited as an example to_________.| A．illustrate the change of height of NBA players. |
| B．show the popularity of NBA players in the U.S.. |
| C．compare different generations of NBA players. |
| D．assess the achievements of famous NBA players. |
| A．Genetic modification. | B．Living standards. |
| C．Natural environment. | D．Daily exercise. |
| A．the garment industry will reconsider the uniform size. |
| B．the design of military uniforms will remain unchanged. |
| C．genetic testing will be employed in selecting sportsmen. |
| D．the existing data of human height will still be applicable. |
| A．the change of human height follows a cyclic pattern. |
| B．human height is becoming even more predictable. |
| C．Americans have reached their genetic growth limit. |
| D．the genetic pattern of Americans has altered. |
