1 . Last summer, two nineteenth-century cottages were rescued from remote farm fields in Montana, to be moved to an Art Deco building in San Francisco. The houses were made of wood. These cottages once housed early settlers as they worked the dry Montana soil; now they hold Twitter engineers.
The cottages could be an example of the industry’s unusual love for “low technology”, a concept associated with the natural world, and with old-school craftsmanship（手艺）that exists long before the Internet era. Low technology is not virtual (虚拟的) —so, to take advantage of it, Internet companies have had to get creative. The rescued wood cottages, fitted by band in the late eighteen-hundreds, are an obvious example. Other companies are using a broader interpretation（阐释）of low technology that focuses on nature.
Amazon is building three glass spheres filled with trees, so that employees can “work and socialize in a more natural, park-like setting.” At Google’s office, an entire is carpeted in glass. Facebook’s second Menlo Park campus will have a rooftop park with a walking path.
Olle Lundberg, the founder of Lundberg Design, has worked with many tech companies over the years. “Our tech engineers are the ones who feel impoverished, because they’re surrounded by the digital world,” he says. “We’ve found that introducing real crafts is one way to regain their individual identity.”
This craft-based theory is rooted in history. William Morris, the English artist and writer, turned back to pre-industrial arts in the eighteen-sixties, just after Industrial Revolution. The Arts and Crafts movement defined itself against machines. “Without creative human occupation, people became disconnected from life.” Morris said.
Research has shown that natural environments can restore our mental abilities. In Japan, patients are encouraged to “forest-bathe”, taking walks through woods to lower their blood pressure.
These health benefits apply to the workplace as well. Rachel Kaplvin, a professor of environmental psychology, has spent years researching the restorative effects of natural environment. Her research found that workers with access to nature at the office - even simple views of trees and flowers - felt their jobs were less stressful and more satisfying. If low-tech offices can potentially benefit the brains and improve the mental health of employees then, fine, bring on the cottages.
1. The writer mentions the two nineteenth-century cottages to show that _________| A．Twitter is having a hard time |
| B．Old cottages are in need of protection |
| C．Early settlers once suffered from a dry climate in Montana |
| D．Internet companies have rediscovered the benefits of low technology |
| A．is related to nature | B．is out of date today |
| C．cosumes too much energy | D．exists in the virtual world |
| A．Critical | B．positive |
| C．worried | D．doubtful |
| A．Past Glories, Future Dreams |
| B．The Virtual World, the Real Challenge |
| C．High-tech Companies, Low-tech Offices |
| D．The More Craftsmanship, the Less Creativity |
2 . People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating(评价)？ Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions(互动). In her new book, “Presence”, Cuddy says people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you: Can I trust this person? Can I respect this person?
Psychologists refer to these factors as warmth and competence(胜任) respectively, and ideally you want to be considered as having both. Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional environment, believe that competence is the foremost factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to qualify your business.
But in fact warmth, or trustworthiness, is the most important factor in how people evaluate you. “From an evolutionary view,” Cuddy says, “it is more important to our survival to know whether a person deserves our trust.” It makes sense when you consider that in cavemen days it was more important to figure out if your fellow man was going to kill you and steal all your possessions than if he was competent enough to build a good fire.
Cuddy’s new book explores how to feel more confident. While competence is highly valued, Cuddy says it is evaluated only after trust is established. And focusing too much on displaying your strength can backfire(产生事与愿违的不良后 果). Cuddy says MBA interns(实习生) are often so concerned about coming across as smart and competent that it can lead them to skip social events, not ask for help, and generally come off as unapproachable.
These overachievers are in for a rude awakening when they don’t get the job offer because nobody got to know and trust them as people. “If someone you’re trying to influence doesn’t trust you, you’re not going to get very far; in fact, you might even cause doubt because you come across as manipulative(会 摆布人的),” Cuddy says. “A warm, trustworthy person who is also competent gains admiration, but only after you’ve established trust does your strength become a gift rather than a threat.”
1. What does the passage mainly tell about?| A．People judge you on your look and mind at first sight. |
| B．People judge you on your presence at first sight. |
| C．People judge you on your interaction at first sight. |
| D．People judge you on your warmth and competence initially. |
| A．very valuable | B．changing |
| C．extremely important | D．accessible |
| A．To stress the importance of survival. |
| B．To show the hardship of ancient times. |
| C．To stress the importance of trust. |
| D．To tell us the importance of ability. |
| A．thinks highly of confidence |
| B．lays trust on the basic position |
| C．has a negative attitude to overachievers |
| D．says people who want to influence others are approachable |
3 . If you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume you arrived by internet.
Maybe you caught the headline as it raced by on Twitter. Or you might be taking a break from watching a boring movie on Netflix.
It doesn’t matter. Because according to a new study, it all adds up to the same thing: one distraction（分心的事情）after another.
And the thing is, they’re welcome distractions. Because, as the research — published this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology — notes, people will do just about anything to avoid being left to their own thoughts.
For their study, researchers designed a sample test for more than 2,557 participants in 11 countries. They divided their test subjects into two groups. In the first group, people were asked to spend 10 to 15 minutes “entertaining themselves with their thoughts as best they could.”
Just sit back and think about things. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, not really. The second group — the one where people were told to surf the Net, play a video game, or even read a book — reported having much more fun. They scored more highly on entertainment and lower on boredom. And the preference for distraction seemed to be a global phenomenon, which may come as a surprise to Italians who are famously brilliant at doing nothing.
“The preference for doing external（外部的）activities such as reading, watching TV, or surfing the internet rather than ‘just thinking’ appears to be strong throughout the world,” the researchers note in the study.
But there does seem to be an important thing that hasn’t been included in the study. Shouldn’t the quality of thoughts matter? If you’ve got something positive to think about — say, how you’re going to spend your vacation or the great screenplay you’ve already half-written in your head — why are you reading this?
On the other hand, if you are always bothered by negative thoughts — a sad or painful experience, perhaps — by all means, keep scrolling（翻网页）.
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to take up much of your time here; it’s a short study that gets to the point in a hurry. Don’t worry though. There’s a whole world of distractions out there. Say, have you seen that ship teetering at the brink of Niagara Falls? And how about those charming cows? Bet you didn’t know they could smell you from six miles away.
And that’s something to think about.
1. Why would the Italians be surprised at the phenomenon?| A．They prefer reading books to surfing the Net. |
| B．They’re convinced that thinking is significant. |
| C．They are used to being left to their own thoughts. |
| D．They seldom entertain themselves by surfing the Net. |
| A．By reference research. | B．By comparative study. |
| C．By theoretical analysis. | D．By experimental study. |
| A．The quality of thoughts. | B．The cause of the phenomenon. |
| C．The solution to the problem. | D．The kinds of distractions. |
| A．Worried. | B．Disappointed. |
| C．Serious. | D．Humorous. |
4 . 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 |
5 . Feeling achy and feverish? Your misery has plenty of company. By the end of December, the tally (计数器) of flu-like illnesses in the state exceeded the peaks in the two previous seasons, when the biggest number of cases occurred in February and March. This time, the flu virus seems to be hitting even harder.
Flu is unique among human diseases. It circulates constantly in cool and dry areas. Because it spreads from person to person and can be picked up easily, nearly everyone is exposed. While it’s unclear whether the annual flu epidemic (流行病) will worsen this year, or just arrived earlier, fears have been increased by the severity of flu in Australia during its most recent season and the fact that the vaccine may protect against the predominant (盛行的) kind of the flu only 30 percent of the time.
Despite the worries, doctors and public health officials say there is no evidence that people are getting sicker than usual. Flu cases in Massachusetts started rising around Thanksgiving and increased steadily, with an especially steep climb in the last week of the year. “This is a bad flu season but not a horrible one,” said Dr. Andrew G. Villanueva, a lung specialist and chief quality officer at the Lahey Hospital & Medieal Centre in Burlington.
The flu season, while clearly in full swing, doesn’t “feel different” from previous years, Villanueva said. “We’re not seeing a lot of people being hospitalized because of flu,” he said. “Most people with the flu recover on their own without medical care.”
1. What’s the function of the first paragraph?| A．A lead-in. | B．A comment. | C．A summary. | D．A background. |
| A．The outbreak of the flu is terrible. |
| B．The flu has arrived earlier than before. |
| C．The vaccine against the nu is highly effective. |
| D．Everyone feels horrible at the mention of the flu. |
| A．Crowded | B．Changeable | C．Permanent | D．Active |
| A．To explain what flu is. |
| B．To rid people of flu panic. |
| C．To warn readers of how serious the flu is. |
| D．To inform readers how to prevent the flu. |
6 . 
News anchors(主播) must have been reluctant to read out the following news: Xin Xiaomeng began working as the world’s first female artificial(人工的) intelligence news anchor at Xinhua News Agency on Sunday, three months after a male robot joined the profession.
Unlike previous news robots though, Xin does not read news like a cold machine; she reads it almost like a human being. The muscles on her face stretch and relax-and her reactions change-as she continues reading. That’s why many news anchors were worried: Will AI replace us in the near future?
To find the answer, we have to analyse the technologies that support Xin at her job. Three key technologies are used to support Xin. First, samples of human voices are collected and synthesized (合成). This is followed by the collection and synthesis of human muscle movement samples. And third the voices and movements are married in a way that when the Al news anchor reads, the micro -electric motors behind her face move to make her expressions seem more human.
Yet we need a thorough knowledge of deep leaning technology to make a robot imitate a person’s voice. The developer needs to collect tens of thousands of pieces of pronunciations, input them Into the machine and match them with the text or the Al to lean and read. The process for imitating facial movements is similar. The developer has to analyse the movements of the 53 muscles in the human face, make a model set from the collected data for the AI news anchor to lean, and imitate the movements of facial muscles via programs
Both the technologies used to make Xin’s performance impressive are mature. The real difficulty lies in the third -the technology to match the pronunciations with facial movements so that Xin expressions vary according to the content of the news report. In fact, Xins expressions don' t always change according to the content. As a result, her expressions look anything but human. Actually. AI is still no match for human qualities.
1. What does the underlined word "reluctant "in the first paragraph mean?| A．Delighted. | B．Unwilling. | C．Confused. | D．Optimistic. |
| A．They read news without expressions. | B．They looked like a human being |
| C．They could interview sports stars | D．They could interact with audience. |
| A．This technology is very perfect so far |
| B．This technology is quite popular now |
| C．This technology remains at the theoretical stage |
| D．This technology is far from mature. |
| A．human news anchors should learn from AT anchors to save their jobs |
| B．Al anchors perform much better than human news anchors at present |
| C．Al news anchors won 't replace human news anchors in the near future |
| D．Xin Xiaomeng s expressions vary so naturally that they are true to life |
7 . Before the age of the smartphone, photographers had to learn how to use high-tech cameras and photographic techniques. Today, with the huge range of camera apps on our smartphones, we’re all good amateur photographers, since the quality of smartphone images now nearly equals that of digital cameras.
The new ease of photography has given us a tremendous appetite for capturing the magical and the ordinary. We are obsessed with documenting everyday moments, whether it’s a shot of our breakfast, our cat or the cat’s breakfast. Even photo journalists are experimenting with mobile phones because their near invisibility makes it easier to capture unguarded moments.
In the past, magazines published unforgettable photos of important people and global events that captured our imaginations. These photos had the power to change public opinion and even the course of history. But if there are fewer memorable images today, it’s not because there are fewer good images. It’s because there are so many, and no one image gets to be special for long.
As people everywhere embrace photography and the media make use of citizen journalists, professional standards appear to be shifting. Before digital images, most people trusted photographs to accurately reflect reality. Today, images can be altered in ways the naked eye might never notice. Photojournalists are trained to accurately represent what they witness. Yet any image can be altered to create an “improved” picture of reality. The average viewer is left with no way to assess the accuracy of an image except through trust in a news organization or photographer.
The question of the accuracy of images gets even trickier when photojournalists start experimenting with camera apps-- like Hipstamatic or Instagram --- which encourage the use of filters （滤镜）. Images can be colored, brightened, faded, and scratched to make photographs more artistic, or to give them an antique look. Photographers using camera apps to cover wars and conflicts have created powerful images--- but also controversy. Critics worry that antique-looking photographs romanticize war, while distancing us from those who fight in them.
Yet photography has always been more subjective than we assume. Each picture is a result of a series of decisions-- where to stand, what lens to use, what to leave in and what to leave out of the frame. Does altering photographs with camera app filters make them less true? There’s something powerful and exciting about the experiment the digital age has forced upon us. These new tools make it easier to tell our own stories--- and they give others the power to do the same. Many members of the media get stuck on the same stories, focusing on elections, governments, wars, and disasters, and in the process, miss out on the less dramatic images of daily life that can be as revealing.
Who knows? Our obsession with documentation and constantly being connected could lead to a dramatic change in our way of being. Perhaps we are witnessing the development of a universal visual language, one that could change the way we relate to each other and the world. Of course, as with any language, there will be those who produce poetry and those who make shopping lists.
1. According to the author, there are fewer memorable photographs today because_________.| A．the quality of many images is still poor |
| B．there are so many good images these days |
| C．traditional media refuse to allow amateur photos |
| D．most images are not appealing to a global audience |
| A．indicate it’s a word cited from another source |
| B．stress that the picture of reality is greatly improved |
| C．draw audience attention to a word worth considering |
| D．show it’s arguable whether the picture is truly improved |
| A．The daily life pictures are very expressive themselves. |
| B．Photographs of the digital age are more subjective than before. |
| C．Photos altered by filters of camera apps are too subjective to be true. |
| D．Many members of the media value daily life images over major social events. |
| A．Camera Apps Bury Authenticity |
| B．Photography Redefined: A Visual Language |
| C．Smartphone: Killer of Professional Photography |
| D．The Shifting Standards of Professional Photography |
8 . The most thoroughly studied intellectuals in the history of the new world are the ministers and political leaders of seventeenth-century New England. According to the standard history of American philosophy, nowhere else in colonial American was “so much important attached to intellectual pursuits.” According to many books and articles, New England’s leaders established the basic themes and preoccupations of an unfolding, dominant Puritan tradition in American intellectual life.
To take this approach to the New Englanders normally mean to start with the Puritans’ theological（神学的）innovations and their distinctive ideas about the church --- important subjects that we may not neglect. But in keeping with our examination of southern intellectual life, we may consider the original Puritans as carriers of European culture, adjusting to New would circumstances. The New England colonies were the scenes of important episodes in the pursuit of widely understood ideals of civility and virtuosity.
The early settlers of Massachusetts Bay included men of impressive education and influence in England. Besides the ninety or so learned ministers who came to Massachusetts church in the decade after 1629, there were political leaders like John Winthrop, an educated gentleman, lawyer, and official of the Crown before he journeyed to Boston. These men wrote and published extensively, reaching both New World and Old World audiences, and giving New English an atmosphere of intellectual earnestness.
We should not forget, however, that most New Englanders were less will educated. While few craftsmen or farmers, let alone dependents and servants, left literary compositions to be analyzed. Their thinking often had a traditional superstitions quality. A tailor named John Dane, who emigrated in the late 1630s, left an account of his reasons for leaving England that is filled with signs. Sexual confusion, economic frustrations, and religious hope --- all came together in a decisive moment when he opened the Bible, told his father the first line he saw would settle his fate, and read the magical words: “come out from among them, touch no unclean thing, and I will be your God and you shall be my people.” One wonders what Dane thought of the careful sermons explaining the Bible that he heard in Puritan churches.
Meanwhile, any settlers had slighter religious commitments than Dane’s, as one clergyman learned in confronting folk along the coast who mocked that they had not come to the New World for religion. “Our main end was to catch fish.”
1. The author notes that in the seventeenth-century New England______.| A．Puritan tradition dominated political life. |
| B．intellectual interests were encouraged. |
| C．Politics benefited much from intellectual endeavors. |
| D．intellectual pursuits enjoyed a liberal environment. |
| A．a virtue | B．an intelligent mind |
| C．a taste for fine arts | D．a nice character |
| A．experienced a comparatively peaceful early history. |
| B．brought with them the culture of the Old World |
| C．paid little attention to southern intellectual life |
| D．were obsessed with religious innovations |
| A．were famous in the New World for their writings |
| B．gained increasing importance in religious affairs |
| C．abandoned high positions before coming to the New World |
| D．created a new intellectual atmosphere in New England |
| A．influenced by superstitions |
| B．troubled with religious beliefs |
| C．puzzled by church sermons |
| D．frustrated with family earnings |
9 . Microsoft announced this week that its facial-recognition system is now more accurate in identifying people of color, touting (吹嘘）its progress at tackling one of the technology’s biggest biases (偏见).
But critics, citing Microsoft’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, quickly seized on how that improved technology might be used. The agency contracts with Microsoft for cloud-computing tools that the tech giant says is largely limited to office work but can also include face recognition.
Columbia University professor Alondra Nelson tweeted, “We must stop confusing ‘inclusion’ in more ‘diverse’ surveillance (监管）systems with justice and equality.”
Facial-recognition systems more often misidentify people of color because of a long-running data problem： The massive sets of facial images they train on skew heavily toward white men. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study this year of the face-recognition systems designed by Microsoft, IBM and the China-based Face++ found that facial-recognition systems consistently giving the wrong gender for famous women of color including Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, Michelle Obama and Shirley Chisholm, the first black female member of Congress.
The companies have responded in recent months by pouring many more photos into the mix, hoping to train the systems to better tell the differences among more than just white faces. IBM said Wednesday it used 1 million facial images, taken from the photo-sharing site Flickr, to build the “world’s largest facial data-set” which it will release publicly for other companies to use.
IBM and Microsoft say that allowed its systems to recognize gender and skin tone with much more precision. Microsoft said its improved system reduced the error rates for darker-skinned men and women by “up to 20 times,” and reduced error rates for all women by nine times.
Those improvements were heralded（宣布）by some for taking aim at the prejudices in a rapidly spreading technology, including potentially reducing the kinds of false positives that could lead police officers misidentify a criminal suspect.
But others suggested that the technology's increasing accuracy could also make it more marketable. The system should be accurate, “but that’s just the beginning, not the end, of their ethical obligation,” said David Robinson, managing director of the think tank Upturn.
At the center of that debate is Microsoft, whose multimillion-dollar contracts with ICE came under fire amid the agency’s separation of migrant parents and children at the Mexican border.
In an open letter to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella urging the company to cancel that contract, Microsoft workers pointed to a company blog post in January that said Azure Government would help ICE “accelerate recognition and identification.” “We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits,” the letter said.
A Microsoft spokesman, pointing to a statement last week from Nadella, said the company’s “current cloud engagement” with ICE supports relatively anodyne（温和的）office work such as “mail, calendar, massaging and document management workloads.” The company said in a statement that its facial-recognition improvements are “part of our going work to address the industry-wide and societal issues on bias.”
Criticism of face recognition will probably expand as the technology finds its way into more arenas, including airports, stores and schools. The Orlando police department said this week that it would not renew its use of Amazon. com’s Rekognition system.
Companies ”have to acknowledge their moral involvement in the downstream use of their technology,”
Robinson said. “The impulse is that they’re going to put a product out there and wash their hands of the consequences. That’s unacceptable.”
1. What is “one of the technology’s biggest biases” in Paragraph 1?| A．Class bias. | B．Regional difference. |
| C．Professional prejudice. | D．Racial discrimination. |
| A．Justice and equality have been truly achieved. |
| B．It is due to the expansion of the photo database. |
| C．It has already solved all the social issues on biases. |
| D．The separation of immigrant parents from their children can be avoided. |
| A．Data problems. | B．The market value. |
| C．The application field. | D．A moral issue |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Approval. |
| C．Optimistic. | D．Neutral. |
| A．companies had better hide from responsibilities |
| B．companies deny problems with its technical process |
| C．companies should not launch new products on impulse |
| D．companies should be responsible for the new product and the consequences |
| A．The wide use of Microsoft system | B．Fears of facial-recognition technology |
| C．The improvement of Microsoft system | D．Failure of recognizing black women |
10 . If you think that running marathons will help you live a long and healthy life, new research may come as a shock. According to a recent scientific study, people who do a very strenuous workout are as likely to die as people who do no exercise at all.
Scientists in Denmark have been studying over 1,000 joggers and non-joggers for 12 years. The death rates from the sample group indicate that people who jog at a moderate pace two or three times a week for less than two and a half hours in total are least likely to die. The best speed to jog at was found to be about 5 miles per hour. The research suggests that people who jog more than three times a week or at higher speeds of over 7 mph die at the same rate as non-joggers. The scientists think that this is because strenuous exercise causes structural changes to the heart and arteries (动脉). Over time, this can cause serious injuries.
Peter Schnohr, a researcher in Copenhagen, said, “If your goal is to decrease the risk of death and improve life expectancy, jogging a few times a week at a moderate pace is a good strategy. Anything more is just unnecessary, and it may be harmful.”
The implications of this are that moderate forms of exercise such as tai chi, yoga and brisk walking may be better for us than “iron man” events, triathlons and long-distance running and cycling. According to Jacob Louis Marott, another researcher involved in the study, “You don’t actually have to do that much to have a good impact on your health. And perhaps you shouldn’t actually do too much.”
1. The underlined word “strenuous” in Paragraph 1 refers to “______”.| A．hard | B．regular |
| C．practical | D．little |
| A．suggest giving up jogging |
| B．show risks of doing sports |
| C．provide supportive evidence |
| D．introduce the research process |
| A．It may injure the heart and arteries. |
| B．It can make the body tired out. |
| C．It will bring much pressure. |
| D．It consumes too much energy. |
