1 . Great Panda Center
Join GoEco on a 7-day volunteer program in China to help wildlife at a giant panda center!
Your schedule
Day 1: Arrive at Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport. The local team will be waiting to pick you up and transfer you to the hotel in Chengdu.
Day 2: Walk around Chengdu, visit Panda Breeding Center and enjoy delicious hot pot dinner.
Day 3-6: Transfer to Panda Base in the mountains and take part in rewarding volunteer work! Each day, volunteers will work for 4-6 hours and in the evenings, volunteers will take part in cultural activities ranging from dumpling making to Chinese language lessons.
Day 7: Take a bus to either the airport or Chengdu City Center if extending stay.
Some of your tasks include
• Preparing food for the pandas
• Cutting down and carrying bamboos
• Cleaning panda enclosures
• Occasionally participating in observation and research
Requirements
• Ages 18-50 (This project may accept volunteers who are under 18 with a letter of consent（同意）from a parent)
• Basic English and/or Chinese
• Motivation to work with animals
Total project cost: $1200
• What’s included
Room: Shared hotel room
Food: Three meals a day
Airport transfers: Airport transfers upon arrival and departure
• What’s not included
Flights, travel health insurance, personal expenses
Important note: Please apply for this program 1-2 months in advance. Families upgrading to private accommodations must pay an additional charge.
1. What might volunteers do on the sixth day?| A．Visit Panda Breeding Center. |
| B．Clean panda enclosures. |
| C．Travel around Chengdu. |
| D．Depart from Panda Base. |
| A．Accommodations. | B．Personal expenses. |
| C．Travel insurance. | D．The air ticket. |
| A．Being fluent in both English and Chinese. |
| B．Having experience of working with animals. |
| C．Applying for the program in advance. |
| D．Being at least 18 years old. |
2 . I love animals. So when Dr. Vannini said his vet hospital needed help, I was
I volunteered to clean up and help in several medical procedures. But the moment I will never
A retriever (寻回犬)was in deep
Near the end of the surgery, something caught my eye. I thought I saw the
The experience was especially meaningful for me because a week earlier I had witnessed the
| A．shocked | B．puzzled | C．delighted | D．depressed |
| A．suspect | B．forget | C．encounter | D．seize |
| A．confusion | B．thought | C．suffering | D．sorrow |
| A．survived | B．jumped | C．barked | D．waked |
| A．support | B．response | C．comfort | D．surgery |
| A．homeless | B．lifeless | C．careless | D．faultless |
| A．quickly | B．finally | C．softly | D．roughly |
| A．ashamed | B．formal | C．bored | D．incredible |
| A．event | B．growth | C．opposite | D．accident |
| A．made | B．gave | C．lifted | D．held |
3 . Are you looking for some informative magazines? The following ones can surely meet your needs.
Mental Foss is a magazine full of bite-sized（small bits） trivia（琐事）and mostly short articles with really interesting facts that you'll want to share with others. The writing is fun and friendly, so it’s easy to understand the answers to the more difficult questions, like: What does outer space smell like? Why isn't cat food mouse-flavored? While the print edition of the magazine stopped publishing in 2016, you can still read Mental Floss online.
Reader's Digest is not actually about books reading. Instead, it is about people. Inside you'll find anecdotes—short, personal articles about things that have happened to people. There are stories in simple writing about everything from funny celebrity moments and inspiring personal store to funny jokes and articles.
Cricket and Cicada are easy-to-read literary magazines aimed at teenagers. Each issue is full of wonderful short stories and poems, and beautiful illustrations. Even though these are technically children's magazines, they are perfect for learning English because they have high quality writing.
Time is one of the most well-known magazines in the world. Inside you'll find news, beautiful photographs and everything you need to get a" deeper understanding of the world in which we live. "Since Time is very high quality and provides deep insight on many serious topics, it can also be difficult for English learners to read. If you have trouble understanding Time, try Time For Kids, which has similarly great content but is written in a simpler way.
1. What can readers obtain from Mental Floss?| A．They can be inspired by the comments on the magazine. |
| B．They can understand some tough facts in a funny way. |
| C．They can enjoy a variety of eye-catching pictures. |
| D．They can have a deep understanding about the current events. |
| A．The language is easy and friendly to readers. |
| B．The articles are mostly adapted from books. |
| C．The stories are all based on private experiences. |
| D．The topics are serious and difficult to comprehend. |
| A．It's of great help for English beginners. |
| B．It has two editions for readers to choose from. |
| C．People can have an access to it online. |
| D．It is perfect for teenagers who love anecdotes. |
4 . Are you relatively skinny but growing a “beer belly”?
Then don’t be surprised at your next checkup if the nurse measures your waistline to determine your healthy weight. That’s because research is showing that a protruding (鼓出的) belly may be a sign of VAT — a dangerous form of fat around organs deep inside your body. “Studies confirm that visceral (内脏的) fat is a clear health risk,” said Dr. Tiffany Wiley, a senior expert at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Unlike the fat just under your skin, visceral fat raises your risk for heart disease. Experts think that’s because visceral fat raises blood pressure and inflames (使发炎) tissues and organs.
However, you can’t assume you’re safe from visceral fat if your overall weight is healthy, experts stress. That’s because you can have dangerous visceral fat even if you’re not considered overweight — and not have any visceral fat even if you are overweight.
How do you know if your stomach is protruding into dangerous size? Do a check. Non-pregnant women with a waist size greater than 88 cm and men with a waist larger than 102 cm, are at higher risk according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you’re Asian, it drops to 80 cm for women and 90 cm for men. But it is only a rough measure. “The only sure way to know is to check your visceral fat levels on a CT scan or MRI,” say experts.
According to the AHA committee, the most salutary physical activity to “shrink” belly is aerobic exercise. Aerobic means “with oxygen”, so aerobic exercise increases your breathing rate and promotes the circulation of oxygen through the blood. This type of exercise makes the heart work more effectively and improves its ability to move oxygen-carrying blood with every beat. Speed walking, jogging, stair climbing, cycling and swimming are all examples of aerobic exercise.
“However, more studies are needed to determine the best physical activity, food and other lifestyle changes to reduce heart disease risk,” Dr. Tiffany Wiley added.
1. What would a “beer belly” cause?| A．Enlarged organs inside the body. | B．Higher risk of heart disease. |
| C．Raised mental pressure. | D．Inflamed stomach. |
| A．A white man with a waist size of 120 cm. |
| B．A white woman with a waist size of 90 cm. |
| C．An Asian man with a waist size of 102 cm. |
| D．An Asian woman with a waist size of 75 cm. |
| A．Beneficial. | B．Difficult. | C．Enthusiastic. | D．Useless. |
| A．Doing aerobic exercise can remove visceral fat completely. |
| B．Heart ability improves when one does speed walking. |
| C．Further studies are needed to reduce heart disease risk. |
| D．Food and life style determine one’s body shape. |
5 . Japanese automaker Toyota says it will team up with the country’s space agency to develop a vehicle called the Lunar Cruiser to explore the moon. The name comes from a popular Toyota vehicle called the Land Cruiser. The company said it plans to launch the vehicle in the late 2020s. After that, Toyota said the vehicle could assist people living on the moon by 2040 and could possibly be sent to Mars as well.
Takao Sato heads the company’s Lunar Cruiser project. He told The Associated Press the vehicle is based on the idea that people eat, work, sleep and communicate with others safely in cars. He hopes theLunar Cruiser can serve the same purpose in space. “We see space as an area for our once-in-a-century transformation, ” Sato said, “By going to space, we may be able to develop telecommunications and other technology that will prove valuable to human life. ”
Another company, Gitai Japan Inc., is partnering with Toyota to develop a robotic arm for the Lunar Cruiser. It will be designed to perform jobs such as carrying out inspections and maintaining the vehicle. The company said the arm will be built to work with different tools. These tools could be used to study the moon’s surface more closely.
Interest in space has been growing in Japan in recent years. Japanese space exploration company iSpace announced last April that it would transport an explorer belonging to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the moon in 2022. Japan’s iSpace will provide the lander to carry the UAE’s rover(探测器).
The company plans to launch the lander on a Falcon 9 rocket built by American company SpaceX. Japanese citizens followed the trip to space last year of billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. He spent 12 days aboard the International Space Station. Maezawa also plans in the future to orbit around the moon on a SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.
Toyota engineer Shinichiro Noda said he thinks the lunar project can extend the company’s tradition of serving customers to a place beyond Earth. He said Toyota currently has vehicles almost everywhere. “But this is about taking our cars to somewhere we have never been, ” Noda said.
1. What’s the ultimate purpose of the Lunar Cruiser project?| A．To better human life. | B．To make safe vehicles. |
| C．To prove the previous idea. | D．To transform communication. |
| A．Japan’s enthusiasm in space. | B．Japan’s achievements in space. |
| C．Japan’s potential in space travel. | D．Japan ’s ambition to explore space. |
| A．Negative. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Cautious. | D．Positive. |
| A．Japanese Curiosity in Moon Travel Generated |
| B．Great Contribution Made in Exploring Mars |
| C．Rover Built by Toyota to Be Landed on Mars |
| D．Toyota to Help Develop Vehicle to Explore Moon |
6 . Arden University
Arden University has physical study centres in London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Berlin, Germany, and also offers high quality online bachelor and master degree programmes to British and international students all over the world. They have supported over 50,000 students while remaining true to their core values, ensuring higher education is available for all. Covering a range of professional subjects in 12 academic fields, Arden University makes UK education accessible and affordable through their creative study platform. Click here to view this school.
University of London International Programmes
We have over 60,000 students in every corner of the globe studying on more than 100 different programmes. Our global footprint and flexible study method has enabled students to study wherever they live. As a family of 19 world-class colleges and admired institutes, the University of London has an international reputation for academic distinction in teaching and research. Our students achieve exactly the same standard of internationally recognized qualification as those who attend the University itself. Click here to view this school.
University of York
The University of York is one of the top ten universities in the UK for teaching and research, and is ranked in the top 100 universities in the world. This well-established university consists of over 30 academic departments and research centres and a student body of 13,000, and was named Times Higher Education University of the Year 2010. Most of the distance learning courses are designed to meet professional development needs, and reflect the benefits of online learning in this context. Click here to view this school.
Lloyd’s Maritime Academy
Course options include popular and well-established diplomas in Marine (海洋) Surveying, Ship Management, and Maritime Law. Various accreditation levels are available from short, online based certificate courses to fully-accredited diploma and postgraduate diploma study options. We also offer our best course — the MBA in Shipping&. Logistics. The continued strength of these distance learning programmes have over 6,000 students enrolled on our courses. Click here to view this school.
1. Which holds the largest number of students?| A．Arden University. | B．University of York. |
| C．Lloyd's Maritime Academy. | D．University of London International Programmes. |
| A．How to be a training teacher. | B．How to be a good programmer. |
| C．How to be a professional in shipping industry. | D．How to be an excellent shipbuilder. |
| A．They all offer online courses. | B．They are only accessible to the British. |
| C．They are all top ten schools in the world. | D．They were all built in the early 20th century. |
7 . Record-breaking. Abnormal. Dangerous. That’s how the National Weather Service described the heat wave hitting much of North America.
The heat wave has already broken all-time high temperature records in places unaccustomed to such extreme heat. For example, Oregon’s capital city, Salem, recorded the highest temperature in its history on Sunday: 130F, breaking the old mark by 4 degrees. The temperature hit 104F in Seattle. It was an all-time record for the city better known for rain than heat and was the first time the area reached such a high temperature since records began being kept in 1894.
Weather forecasters said the heat wave was caused by an extended “heat dome”which allowed hot air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic to stream northward over much of North America.
This current heat wave was yet more evidence of the impact of human-caused climate change. “When it comes to record-breaking heat events, the study has been run for event after event in region after region in year after year. And the answer is almost always the same,” said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington “The days-long heat wave is a taste of the future as climate change reshapes global weather patterns.”
“Another aspect that we see connected to climate change but that we don’t hear about as much is the fact that there is also a lot more water in the atmosphere now. As we warm the oceans and warm the air, there is more evaporation（蒸发）and that wetter air makes us feel hotter,” added weather forecaster, Jennifer Francis. “A combination of high temperature and moisture（湿度）in the air means dangerous conditions for the young, elderly or others who are not healthy. Please drink plenty of water; stay out of the sun and in air-conditioned rooms.”
1. What was the previous temperature record in Salem?| A．104F. | B．126F. | C．130F. | D．134F. |
| A．The climate change. | B．The northward air streams. |
| C．The extended "heat dome". | D．The moisture in the atmosphere. |
| A．The Dangerous Heat Wave Will Last Long |
| B．A Heat Wave Roasts Much of North America |
| C．Measures Must Be Taken to Protect the Young and Elderly |
| D．The "Heat Dome" Is Expected to Cover the Pacific Northwest |
| A．In a first aid guidebook. | B．In a weather forecast. |
| C．In a news report. | D．In a professor's lecture. |
8 . Algorithms (计算程序) are able to do a huge number of tasks, and the number of tasks that they are able to do is expanding practically every day. According to a new study, despite increasing concern over the effect of algorithms in daily life, more and more people nowadays are willing to trust a computer program, especially if a task becomes too challenging. From choosing the next song on your playlist to choosing the right size of pants, people are relying more on the advice of algorithms to help make everyday decisions.
During the study, researchers asked volunteers to count the number of people of a crowd in a photograph and supplied suggestions that were offered by a group of other people and suggestions offered by an algorithm. As the number of people in the photograph expanded, counting became more difficult and people were more likely to follow the suggestions offered by an algorithm rather than count themselves or follow the “wisdom of the crowd”.
One of the common problems with AI is when it is used for awarding credit. While that is a subjective decision, there are lots of numbers there, like income and credit scores. Therefore, people feel like this is a good job for an algorithm. But we know that dependence leads to unfair and incomplete practices in many cases because of social factors that aren’t considered.
Facial recognition and hiring algorithms have come under inspection in recent years because their use has shown cultural prejudice in the way they were built, which can cause inaccuracies when matching faces to identities or screening for qualified job candidates. The prejudice may not be present in a simple task like counting, but their presence in other trusted algorithms is a reason why it is important to understand how people rely on algorithms when making decisions.
“The eventual goal is to look at groups of humans and computers making decisions and find how we can get them to trust each other and how that changes their behaviors,” one of the researchers said. “Because there is very little research in that setting, we’re starting with the fundamentals.”
1. What can we learn about the present people from paragraph 1?| A．They become more dependent on algorithms. |
| B．They show little concern about algorithms in life. |
| C．They are addicted to numbers of challenging tasks online. |
| D．They never rely on computers to make everyday decisions. |
| A．They cannot be used to award credit. |
| B．They can lead to one-sided decisions. |
| C．They can give away candidates’ identities. |
| D．They cannot be applied to difficult calculations. |
| A．It leads to cultural differences. |
| B．It may produce some false results. |
| C．It takes lots of money and manpower. |
| D．It rules out most qualified job candidates. |
| A．It is really necessary to stay away from AI. |
| B．It is very easy to make choices with the help of AI. |
| C．People need to adapt to the development of computers. |
| D．People tend to trust computer programs more than themselves. |
9 . Going to sleep at a certain time is associated with a lower risk of developing heart disease, according to researchers. A team led by the U.K. -based University of Exeter found that going to sleep between 10 and 11 p.m. was beneficial compared to earlier or later bedtimes.
The research included 88,000 participants in the U.K. Biobank who were recruited between 2006 and 2010. The average age of the group — ranging from 43 to 79 years old — was 61 and 58 percent were women. Participants filled out demographic (人口统计的), lifestyle, health and physical questionnaires, according to a European Society of Cardiology news release. The study looked at the association between objectively measured sleep onset timing and cardiovascular disease using wrist-worn accelerometers, collecting a week’s worth of data.
Using Cox proportional hazards models, an age- and sex-controlled base analysis found that sleep on set time of 10 to 10:59 p.m. was associated with the lowest incidence of cardiovascular (心血管的) disease. Another model that controlled for sleep duration, sleep irregularity and established cardiovascular risk factors like smoking status and body mass index did not reduce the impact of the association.
There was a 25 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease with sleep onset at midnight or later, a 12 percent greater risk for 11 to 11:59 p.m. and a 24 percent raised risk for falling asleep before 10 p.m. compared to sleep onset from 10 to 10:59 p.m. More than 3,170 cases, or 3.6 percent, were reported during an average follow-up period of nearly six years. Sensitivity analyses revealed the association with increased risk of cardiovascular disease was stronger in women, with only sleep onset earlier than 10 p.m. significant for men.
“The body has a 24-hour internal clock, called circadian rhythm (昼夜节律), that helps regulate physical and mental functioning,” study author David Plans of the University of Exeter said in a statement. “While we cannot conclude causation from our study, the results suggest that early or late bedtimes may be more likely to disrupt the body clock, with adverse consequences for cardiovascular health.”
1. How many participants are male in the study?| A．34,320. | B．51,040. | C．53,680. | D．36,960. |
| A．Sleeping regularly. | B．Sleeping at a proper time. |
| C．Adjusting the body clock. | D．Increasing sleep time. |
| A．9:00 p.m.. | B．10:30 p.m.. | C．11:00 p.m.. | D．12:00 p.m.. |
| A．By listing data. | B．By giving example. |
| C．By analyzing causes. | D．Ry describing a process. |
10 . What you should know when applying for a credit card online
Applying for a credit card online can be awful, as you may have heard all sorts of information and might not know what to believe. Consider these tips when applying for a credit card online.
Who can apply for a credit card online
Online credit card applications are open to US adult residents -in other words, people with a mailing address in the US who are over 18 and either have a Social Security Number (SSN) or Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN). Applicants under the age of 21 will need a co-signer or proof of income as part of the application process. While nearly anyone can apply for a credit card, note that credit card issuers evaluate applications based on many different factors and criteria. They are interested in getting a full picture of your financial health. Therefore, besides collecting your basic contact information, they will use your SSN to pull your credit report.
How to apply for a credit card online
Do your research. There are hundreds of different credit cards available with a variety of offers, fee structures and rewards programs. Chart your spending behaviors so you know which categories you spend most heavily in, and then shop around for the card that matches your credit profile and best fits your needs.
Follow internet security best practices. When you’re ready to apply, make sure both your web browser and operating system are up to date. Consider filling out the application on a mobile data connection or a safe, private network to prevent the risks of someone stealing your personal information. And if you have any doubt about the safety of an email from a card issuer, go directly to the issuer’s website rather than clicking on any links in the email.
1. What can show an applicant’s overall financial health?| A．The income proof. | B．The SSN or ITIN. |
| C．The credit report. | D．The co-signer. |
| A．Changing its fee structures. | B．Joining its rewards programs. |
| C．Charting your shopping habits. | D．Improving your credit profile. |
| A．By using a slower operating system. | B．By using a mobile data connection. |
| C．By giving no personal information. | D．By clicking on the links in an email. |
