1 . “When we think of curiosity, we often think of the need for immediate answers,” said Abby Hsiung, Ph. D. , a postdoctoral researcher at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and lead author of a new research paper. “But we found that when people were more curious, they were actually more pleased to wait.”
“When we watch TV shows or football games, we’re watching that information develop over time, uncertain about how it’s all going to end,” said Hsiung. “I wanted to know if higher curiosity would push people to seek, or to avoid getting an immediate ‘spoiler’ (剧透).”
Hsiung drew inspiration from short cooking videos that are popular on social media. “These videos caught my attention because even though they’re so short, they manage to develop a description and suspense (悬念), so that you’re attracted and curious about how the pizza will all come together.” So Hsiung got out her digital paintbrush and made a lot of 30-second animated line drawing videos that, like the cooking videos, eventually ended up as something highly recognizable, like a hamburger or a dog.
More than 2,000 adults from across the U. S. then watched 25 of these short line drawing videos online. Participants in Hsiung’s study were asked along the way how curious they were, how they felt, and to guess what the drawing would become. Viewers also had a spoiler button to skip ahead to see the final drawing. Hsiung and her team were surprised to find that when people were curious, they refused to hit the spoiler button and kept watching the drawings unfold. It was when people were less curious that they tended to go for an instant answer.
The study also found that curiosity increased at different stages of watching these videos. “We saw higher curiosity during moments when it seemed like the drawing could turn into anything and also when participants were starting to really home in on a single answer,” said co-author Jia-Hou Poh, Ph. D. , a postdoctoral researcher at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.
1. What is the popular belief concerning curiosity?| A．It fuels the urge for answers. | B．It leads to endless patience. |
| C．It stresses the need to wait. | D．It brings the pleasure of waiting. |
| A．The evolution the TV shows displayed. | B．The fantasy the short cooking videos shared. |
| C．The way the short cooking videos developed. | D．The popularity the short cooking videos achieved. |
| A．Make drawings to take a shortcut. | B．Answer some questions while watching. |
| C．Press the spoiler button to finish the task. | D．Hunt for an answer as quickly as possible. |
| A．The influence of patience on curiosity | B．Curiosity delays eagerness for the answer |
| C．Curiosity arises from the patience of waiting | D．The way to hold back the urge for an answer |
2 . As we all know, insects can be remarkably agile (灵活的) in flight. This is really hard to build into flying robots, but MIT Assistant Professor Kevin Yufeng Chen has developed an insect-sized drone (无人机) that approaches insects’ agility.
Typically, drones require wide open spaces. “If we look at most drones today, they’re usually quite big,” says Chen. “Most of their applications involve flying outdoors. The question is: Can you create an insect-sized drone that can move around in very crowded and complex spaces?”
According to Chen, he overcame many problems when building the drone. The insect-sized drone requires a fundamentally different construction from a larger one. The large drone is usually powered by a motor, but the motor loses efficiency as you shrink it. So, Chen says, “For an insect-sized drone, you need to look for alternatives.” The principal alternative until now has been employing a small, rigid actuator (执行器) built from new materials. Chen designed a more agile tiny drone using soft actuators instead of hard ones.
......
1. What can we know about the actuator designed by Chen?| A．It weighs about six grams. |
| B．It drives the insect-sized drone. |
| C．It loses efficiency too much. |
| D．It employs conventional materials. |
3 . Humans are quick judgment machines. With the seemingly reliable
Actually, it turns out that we’re not
But what about the
Your personality can’t be
| A．tool | B．relationship | C．evidence | D．value |
| A．arguing | B．admitting | C．predicting | D．noticing |
| A．long-lasting | B．ground-breaking | C．hard-won | D．one-sided |
| A．content | B．willing | C．crazy | D．sure |
| A．covers | B．records | C．rules | D．indicates |
| A．looked for | B．dug into | C．focused on | D．ended with |
| A．volunteers | B．interviewers | C．subjects | D．candidates |
| A．In comparison | B．In addition | C．In fact | D．In summary |
| A．personality | B．result | C．style | D．age |
| A．pace | B．level | C．time | D．price |
| A．pause | B．process | C．rise | D．decline |
| A．explained | B．changed | C．determined | D．understood |
| A．seen | B．followed | C．researched | D．motivated |
| A．Drive | B．Jump | C．Rush | D．Walk |
| A．fighting | B．handling | C．treating | D．helping |
4 . Jackdaws (寒鸦) are the smallest member of the crow family. They often live in a crowd. Indeed, when cold weather comes, they gather in the hundreds (and sometimes thousands) every evening so that they can sleep in the same place. If you’ve ever heard jackdaws during their evening gatherings and morning departures, you’ll know they are not quiet birds. Despite being fairly low-volume during the day, they are really loud on either side of their night-time get-togethers. Why might this be?
A team of the Cornish Jackdaw Project set out to determine why jackdaws are so noisy before they depart from their sleeping spot. The team’s theory was that the morning calls might be a jackdaw version of “voting”. The researchers suspected that each individual’s call might count as an “I’m in!”. When a certain amount of “I’m in!”s are called —and so a certain volume of noise is reached -the group might then depart as a unit.
To test this idea, the researchers artificially increased the level of calls during the jackdaws’ natural morning calls. Their expectation was that, if jackdaws really are “voting with their voice” to decide when to depart the sleeping site, artificially adding calls would make them leave earlier than they naturally would have done. Subsequent experiments confirmed their expectation. The team therefore showed that jackdaws use their calls as a sort of voting system.
You might wonder why this happens. The researchers suggest that individual jackdaws benefit from the voting system because they are less at risk of being killed and they can get more access to social information — such as where to find food.
So the loud calls of jackdaws in the morning are therefore not the pure chaos it sounds like. If you are ever being driven mad by the sound in the morning, you can find comfort in the fact that the louder they get, the sooner they will leave you in peace.
1. What aspect of jackdaws confused scientists?| A．Their strong team spirit. | B．Their preference for noisy habitats. |
| C．Their collective sleeping habit. | D．Their unusual calling behavior. |
| A．They stopped calling together. | B．They left their sleeping spot earlier. |
| C．They became noisier and more active. | D．They changed their sleeping location. |
| A．A signal of seeking food. | B．A strategy for better survival. |
| C．A way to attract potential partners. | D．A method of displaying social skills. |
| A．Jackdaws are Noise Makers. |
| B．Jackdaws Have a Complex Voting System. |
| C．Jackdaws ‘Vote’ to Make a Group Decision. |
| D．Jackdaws ‘Vote’ to Choose Their Group Leaders. |
5 . Between 1945 and 2000, educators employed a fairly uniform approach. The teacher was the sun in the classroom, and all lessons and activities centered around him or her. Educators stressed the importance of discipline and obedience(服从) within the classroom, and students were expected to follow very rigid standards for behavior and academic performance. The stated goal of this model was to ensure fairness by applying the same expectations; however, the result was that only a few students succeeded while many others were left behind.
When computers and Internet technology entered the classroom a few decades ago, another pattern appeared and progressive educators immediately saw the opportunity to change the way school worked. Instead of needing to focus on the teachers for the vast majority of the day, students could use computers, websites, and even games to learn new materials and improve their skills and knowledge. Not all educators welcomed this shift, however, as some believed it took power and responsibility away from the teachers and cheapened the educational experience for learners.
Over the last decade, two distinct camps of educators have emerged. Tech advocates stress that computers and Internet technology allow students to learn at their own pace in an environment that makes them feel comfortable, while the traditional classroom sets a pace that many learners can’t keep up with and often makes students feel uncomfortable. Traditionalists, on the other hand, believe that over-reliance on tech limits students’ ability to develop their own knowledge and skills and does little to prepare them for the realities of being adults in the real world.
Regrettably, the inability of these two parties to find an agreement has prevented the growth of our education system. We must learn from what worked in the past while adopting the best of our new technologies to create an education system that reflects our modern world. If we can’t get all our teachers on the same page, then we will be at risk of failing future generations.
1. Who can probably learn better under the 1945 -2000 model of education?| A．Lisa who tends to read by herself. | B．Michael who disciplines himself. |
| C．Kate who can focus on listening for long. | D．Tom who prefers hands-on learning. |
| A．It allows for different learning styles. | B．It has the same hope for students. |
| C．It fires students’ enthusiasm for learning. | D．It reduces teachers’ level of stress. |
| A．Two of a trade never agree. | B．Everyone thinks in his way. |
| C．Every potter praises his pot. | D．One’s words reflect one’s thinking. |
| A．It’s full of well-trained subject teachers. | B．It’s an accurate mirror of the real world. |
| C．It’s inclusive and accessible to all students. | D．It’s an integration of tradition and modernity. |
6 . If you want to tell the history of the whole world, a history that does not privilege one part of humanity, you cannot do it through texts alone, because only some of the world has ever had texts, while most of the world, for most of the time, has not. Writing is one of humanity’s later achievements, and until fairly recently even many literate (有文字的) societies recorded their concerns not only in writing but in things.
Ideally a history would bring together texts and objects, and some chapters of this book are able to do just that, but in many cases we simply can’t. The clearest example of this between literate and non-literate history is perhaps the first conflict, at Botany Bay, between Captain Cook’s voyage and the Australian Aboriginals. From the English side, we have scientific reports and the captain’s record of that terrible day. From the Australian side, we have only a wooden shield (盾) dropped by a man in flight after his first experience of gunshot. If we want to reconstruct what was actually going on that day, the shield must be questioned and interpreted as deeply and strictly as the written reports.
In addition to the problem of miscomprehension from both sides, there are victories accidentally or deliberately twisted, especially when only the victors know how to write. Those who are on the losing side often have only their things to tell their stories. The Caribbean Taino, the Australian Aboriginals, the African people of Benin and the Incas, all of whom appear in this book, can speak to us now of their past achievements most powerfully through the objects they made: a history told through things gives them back a voice. When we consider contact (联系) between literate and non-literate societies such as these, all our first-hand accounts are necessarily twisted, only one half of a dialogue. If we are to find the other half of that conversation, we have to read not just the texts, but the objects.
What does the author indicate by mentioning Captain Cook in paragraph 2?
| A．His report was scientific. |
| B．He represented the local people. |
| C．He ruled over Botany Bay. |
| D．His record was one-sided. |
7 . In 2023, Musk reached an outstanding landmark: his space company, SpaceX, sent the first group of travelers to Mars. This significant event
In addition to his groundbreaking work at SpaceX, Musk has also made a lasting impact in the field of
Musk’s relentless drive to achieve ambitious goals, such as colonizing Mars and revolutionizing transportation with hyperloop technology, showcases the power of forward-thinking. Despite facing obstacles and
However, Musk’s journey has not been without controversy. His outspoken personality and
In summary, Elon Musk’s story serves as a testament to the transformative potential of human
| A．began | B．erased | C．marked | D．closed |
| A．past | B．present | C．unknown | D．world |
| A．disposable | B．sustainable | C．safe | D．mechanical |
| A．production | B．development | C．innovation | D．destruction |
| A．harmful | B．friendly | C．neutral | D．indifferent |
| A．renewable | B．ideal | C．effective | D．inexpensive |
| A．opportunities | B．praises | C．agreements | D．criticism |
| A．propelled | B．impacted | C．interrupted | D．simplify |
| A．hesitating | B．persisting | C．ignoring | D．overcoming |
| A．traditional | B．cautious | C．unconventional | D．unwilling |
| A．reluctance | B．appreciation | C．praises | D．skepticism |
| A．wish | B．courage | C．decision | D．ability |
| A．ingenuity | B．genuineness | C．diligence | D．indifference |
| A．plan | B．day | C．vision | D．mission |
| A．fear | B．inspiration | C．sadness | D．excitement |
Family is the cell of the society, and rulers of past dynasties all paid great attention to the stability of families, which affected the stability of the society and the ruler’s system of government as well.
In the Past
The Chinese family as it is described in the Story of the Stone (hong lou meng, Qing dyansty) is the result of a long historical development.
The Chinese for “family” is Jia, which generally means the basic family group, those who are related by blood, marriage, or adoption, living and managing their finances together. In a Jia, the males are all blood relations. Sons live in their father's house with their wives, who have been brought in from outside the family. As soon as daughters come of age, they are married out, that is, they join another Jia. They are members of their parents’ Jia only as long as they are unmarried. During the wedding ceremony, daughters officially end their ties to their father’s patriline, and are promised to serve their new family, including its ancestors. Males are permanent members of the family they were born into; females, however, are expected to eventually leave their born family. Women, therefore, belong to a place in a patriline -- that of their husband, not their father -- when they give birth to a son.
The Jia shares living space and finances. One male, the patriarch (the oldest competent male) has the most authority in all family matters. In the ideal Jia, three, four, or five generations live under one roof. Sons obediently follow their father’s direction in choosing a career and a wife, and every member of the Jia works together for a single aim: keeping and increasing the Jia’s wealth and status. Such a large, multi-generational Jia can grow to be very complex.
For women and children, especially in the large, wealthy, elite families, the Jia was essentially both the center and the limit of the world. The wealth, reputation, and status of the Jia, however, rested largely on the success or failure of men operating outside the Jia.
Modern Chinese Family
According to latest statistics, China has 430 million families (the year 2014), with 3.13 people per household on average. In general, a Chinese family is made up of a couple and their children, but big families with three or more generations can also be found in China. With the pursuit of personal freedom, the trend of forming small families with only directly related members is now popular.
In the past, each Chinese family had a “head”, who had absolute authority at home, and had the final say in family affairs. But now in most Chinese families, the husband and wife, or a couple with other family members, work out together the household plans, and decide family affairs through consultation.
Moreover, family members share the housework, making the division of labor at home more reasonable; and the husband and wife support each other’s work.
Chinese people have the tradition of respecting the old and loving the young. Though many young couples do not live with their parents, they keep close contact with them. Grown-up children have the duty to support and help their parents. The Chinese people attach great importance to relations between family members and relatives, and treasure their parents, children, brothers and sister, uncles, aunts and other relatives.
Family planning has been pushed forward as one of the basic state policies in China. The basic requirements of family planning are late marriages and late childbearing, so as to have fewer but healthier babies, especially one child per couple. But a flexible family planning policy is adopted for rural people and ethnic minorities: in rural areas, couples may have a second baby in exceptional cases, but must wait several years after the birth of the first child; in areas inhabited by minority peoples, each ethnic group may work out different regulations in accordance with its wish, population, natural resources, economy, culture and customs -- now in general a couple may have a second baby, or a third child in some places. As for ethnic minorities with extremely small populations, a couple may have as many children as they want.
Nowadays, universal two-child or three-child policy has been carried out to meet with the country’s aging trend.
1. Taking the Story of the Stone for example, tell your foreign friends about Chinese families.
2. What’s difference between modern Chinese family and Chinese family in the past?
9 . As Frans de Waal, a primatologist (灵长动物学家), recognizes, a better way to think about other creatures would be to ask ourselves how different species have developed different kinds of minds to solve different adaptive problems. Surely the important question is not whether animals can do the same things humans can, but how those animals solve the cognitive (认知的) problems they face, like how to imitate the sea floor. Children and some animals are so interesting not because they are smart like us, but because they are smart in ways we haven’t even considered.
Sometimes studying children’s ways of knowing can cast light on adult-human cognition. Children’s pretend play may help us understand our adult taste for fiction. De Waal’s research provides another interesting example. We human beings tend to think that our social relationships are rooted in our perceptions, beliefs, and desires, and our understanding of the perceptions, beliefs, and desires of others — what psychologists call our “theory of mind.” In the 80s and 90s, developmental psychologists showed that pre-schoolers and even infants understand minds apart from their own. But it was hard to show that other animals did the same. “Theory of mind” became a candidate for the special, uniquely human trick.
Yet de Waal’s studies show that chimps (黑猩猩) possess a remarkably developed political intelligence — they are much interested in figuring out social relationships. It turns out, as de Waal describes, that chimps do infer something about what other chimps see. But experimental studies also suggest that this happens only in a competitive political context. The evolutionary anthropologist (人类学家) Brain Hare and his colleagues gave a junior chimp a choice between pieces of food that a dominant chimp had seen hidden and other pieces it had not seen hidden. The junior chimp, who watched all the hiding, stayed away from the food the dominant chimp had seen, but took the food it hadn’t seen.
Anyone who has gone to an academic conference will recognize that we may be in the same situation. We may say that we sign up because we’re eager to find out what other human beings think, but we’re just as interested in who’s on top. Many of the political judgments we make there don’t have much to do with our theory of mind. We may show our respect to a famous professor even if we have no respect for his ideas.
Until recently, however, there wasn’t much research into how humans develop and employ this kind of political knowledge. It may be that we understand the social world in terms of dominance, like chimps, but we’re just not usually as politically motivated as they are. Instead of asking whether we have a better everyday theory of mind, we might wonder whether they have a better everyday theory of politics.
1. According to the first paragraph, which of the following shows that an animal is smart?| A．It can behave like a human kid. |
| B．It can imitate what human beings do. |
| C．It can find a solution to its own problem. |
| D．It can figure out those adaptive problems. |
| A．We talk with infants in a way that they can fully understand. |
| B．We make guesses at what others think while interacting with them. |
| C．We hide our emotions when we try establishing contact with a stranger. |
| D．We try to understand how kids’ pretend play affects our taste for fiction. |
| A．Neither human nor animals display their preference for dominance. |
| B．Animals living in a competitive political context are smarter. |
| C．Both humans and some animals have political intelligence. |
| D．Humans are more interested in who’s on top than animals. |
| A．we know little about how chimps are politically motivated |
| B．our political knowledge doesn’t always determine how we behave |
| C．our theory of mind might enable us to understand our theory of politics |
| D．more research should be conducted to understand animals’ social world |
| Name of the country | The People’s Republic of China |
| Capital city | Beijing is the capital of the People’s Republic of China. 43.5 meters above sea level, Beijing covers an area of 16,808 square kilometers and has a resident population of 21.7 million (the year 2017). Under the city’s control there are 10 districts and 8 counties. Beijing’s history as a city can date back to 3,000 years ago. Its time-honored history left Beijing plenty of historical relics and colorful customs. As the center of the country, here gathers the offices of the Party, the Government and the Military, as well as headquarters of national companies, industrial associations and financial institutions. Beijing is in the central place of the nation’s financial decisions and macro-control. It is also China’s most prosperous city in terms of science, education and culture, because it covers all subjects of sciences and has strong research capabilities. Beijing is the communication pivot between China and the international community and, the most important center for international exchanges. |
| Population | China has a population over 1.39 billion people (the year 2017), and over 58.52% of the total (the year 2017) are distributed in urban area. Strict population controls was in place for several decades, but now two-child policy has been carried out. |
| Area | China has a territory area of 9.6 million square km, second to Russia and Canada, with a sea area of about 4.73 million square kilometers. |
| Location | In East Asia, border on the west Pacific Ocean |
National flag | The National Flag of the PRC is a red rectangle emblazoned with five stars. The proportion of its length and height is 3 to 2. The upper left of the face of the Flag is set with five yellow five-pointed stars. One of the stars is bigger than the others, with its circumcircle’s diameter being three-tenth of the height of the Flag, and is placed in the left; the other four stars are smaller, with their circumcircle’s diameter being one-tenth of the height of the Flag, surrounding the big star on its right in the shape of an arch. |
| National anthem | March of the Volunteers (lines: Arise, those who do not want to be slaves! We will use our flesh and blood to build another Great Wall. China has reached the brink of national collapse. All the people have been making their last outcry. Arise! Arise! Arise! All our hearts become one. Let us face the enemy’s gunfire. March on! Let us face the enemy’s gunfire. March on! March on! March on! On!) |
| National Emblem | The National Emblem of the PRC features Tiananmen Gate beneath the five shining stars, encircled by ears of grain and with a cogwheel at the bottom. The ears of grain, stars, Tiananmen and cogwheel are gold; the field within the circle is red, as are the ribbons festooning the bottom of the circle.
|
| National flower | Peony |
| National Animal | giant pandas |
| Ethnic groups | There are 56 ethnic groups in China. The Han people make up 92 percent of the country’s total population, totaling 1159.4 million; and the other 55 ethnic groups, 8 percent, totaling 106.43 million. |
| Languages | Of the 56 ethnic groups in China, the Hui and Manchu use the same language as Han people, while the rest groups have their own spoken and written languages. |
| Written languages | 23 ethnic groups have their own characters. |
| Religion | The main religions are Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Christianity, and Catholicism. Chinese citizens’ right of the freedom of religious belief is protected by the Constitution and laws. |
| Main festivals | New Year’s Day (January 1), the Spring Festival (the New Year’s Day by Chinese lunar calendar), International Labor Day (May 1), and the National Day (October 1) |
| Currency | Renminbi (RMB) yuan |
| Time difference | 8 hours earlier than the Greenwich |
| Climate | Most of the country is in the temperate zone, although geographically the country stretches from the tropical and subtropical zones in the south to the frigid zone in the north. |
| Topography | High in its west and low in its east: mountain areas 33.3%, plateaus 26%, basins 18.8%, plains 12% and hills 9.9%. |
| Mountains | Among the 19 mountains over 7,000 meters high in the world, seven are in China. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as “the roof of the world”, has many high mountains. The Himalayas, with an average elevation of 6,000 meters, have the world’s highest peak Mount Qomolangma, 8,848 meters above sea level. |
| Rivers | The Yangtze River, 6,300 km long, is the third longest in the world after the Nile and the Amazon. The Yellow River, the second longest in China, stretching 5,464 km. |
| Canal | The Grand Canal, 1,801 km long, is the longest man-made river in the world. Its cutting began in the fifth century BC. |
| Lakes | The Poyang Lake on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River is China’s largest freshwater lake, with an area of 3583 sq. km; the Qinghai Lake on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the country’s largest salt lake, covering 4583 sq. km. |
| History | China is one of the world’s oldest civilizations with a chronicled history of more than 5,000 years. China has gone over a long history of primitive society, slavery society, feudal society and semi-feudal semi-colonial society and the present socialist society. In 221 BC, Qinshihuang established the Qin Dynasty, the first feudal autocracy in Chinese history, therefore unveiling a 2,000-year period of feudalism which was to last through a succession of dynasties such as the Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing, a period which finally met its end in the bourgeois democratic Revolution of 1911 by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. October 1, 1949 saw the founding of the People’s Republic of China. |
| Famous Tourist Attractions | Tiananmen Square, Badaling Great Wall, the Imperial Palace, the Summer Palace, the Water Cube, Chengde Imperial Summer Resort, Hulunbuir Pasture Land, Shenyang Imperial Palace, the Bund, the Oriental Pearl Tower, Mount Huang, Mount Lu, Mount Tai, the Longmen Grottoes, the Three Gorges, the Potala Palace, figurines of soldiers and horses from the Qin Mausoleum. |
| Traditional Festivals | Spring Festival, New Year’s Day, Lantern Festival, National Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Festival. |
2. Describe the National Emblem and its meaning.
3. Please list some main festivals of China?
4. Which time zone does China lie in?
5. What is The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau known as?
6. Which is the longest river in China?
7. Please list some famous tourist attractions in China.
8. Please list some typical traditional festivals.
