1 . Returning to a book you’ve read many times can feel like drinks with an old friend. There’s a welcome familiarity - but also sometimes a slight suspicion that time has changed you both, and thus the relationship. But books don’t change, people do. And that’s what makes the act of rereading so rich and transformative.
The beauty of rereading lies in the idea that our bond with the work is based on our present mental register. It’s true, the older I get, the more I feel time has wings. But with reading, it’s all about the present. It’s about the now and what one contributes to the now, because reading is a give and take between author and reader. Each has to pull their own weight.
There are three books I reread annually .The first, which I take to reading every spring is Emest Hemningway’s A Moveable Feast. Published in 1964, it’s his classic memoir of 1920s Paris. The language is almost intoxicating (令人陶醉的)，an aging writer looking back on an ambitious yet simpler time. Another is Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm, her poetic 1975 ramble (随笔) about everything and nothing. The third book is Julio Cortazar’s Save Twilight: Selected Poems, because poetry. And because Cortazar.
While I tend to buy a lot of books, these three were given to me as gifs, which might add to the meaning I attach to them. But I imagine that, while money is indeed wonderful and necessary, rereading an author’s work is the highest currency a reader can pay them. The best books are the ones that open further as time passes. But remember, it’s you that has to grow and read and reread in order to better understand your friends.
1. Why does the author like rereading?| A．It evaluates the writer-reader relationship. |
| B．It’s a window to a whole new world. |
| C．It’s a substitute for drinking with a friend. |
| D．It extends the understanding of oneself. |
| A．It’s a brief account of a trip. |
| B．It’s about Hemingway’s life as a young man. |
| C．It’s a record of a historic event. |
| D．It’s about Hemingway’s friends in Paris. |
| A．Debt |
| B．Reward. |
| C．Allowance. |
| D．Face value. |
| A．He loves poetry. |
| B．He’s an editor. |
| C．He’s very ambitious. |
| D．He teaches reading. |
2 . According to a recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research, both the size and consumption habits of our eating companions can influence our food intake. And contrary to existing research that says you should avoid eating with heavier people who order large portions(份), it's the beanpoles with big appetites you really need to avoid.
To test the effect of social influence on eating habits, the researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, 95 undergraduate women were individually invited into a lab to ostensibly(表面上)participate in a study about movie viewership. Before the film began, each woman was asked to help herself to a snack. An actor hired by the researchers grabbed her food first. In her natural state, the actor weighed 105 pounds. But in half the cases she wore a specially designed fat suit which increased her weight to 180 pounds.
Both the fat and thin versions of the actor took a large amount of food. The participants followed suit, taking more food than they normally would have. However, they took significantly more when the actor was thin.
For the second test, in one case the thin actor took two pieces of candy from the snack bowls. In the other case, she took 30 pieces. The results were similar to the first test: the participants followed suit but took significantly more candy when the thin actor took 30 pieces.
The tests show that the social environment is extremely influential when we're making decisions. If this fellow participant is going to eat more, so will I. Call it the “I’ll have what she's having” effect. However, we'll adjust the influence. If an overweight person is having a large portion, I'll hold back a bit because I see the results of his eating habits. But if a thin person eats a lot, I'll follow suit. If he can eat much and keep slim, why can't I?
1. What is the recent study mainly about?| A．Food safety. | B．Movie viewership. |
| C．Consumer demand. | D．Eating behavior. |
| A．Big eaters. | B．Overweight persons. |
| C．Picky eaters. | D．Tall thin persons. |
| A．To see how she would affect the participants. |
| B．To test if the participants could recognize her. |
| C．To find out what she would do in the two tests. |
| D．To study why she could keep her weight down. |
| A．How hungry we are. | B．How slim we want to be. |
| C．How we perceive others. | D．How we feel about the food. |
3 . For Western designers, China and its rich culture have long been an inspiration for Western creative.
“It’s no secret that China has always been a source(来源) of inspiration for designers,” says Amanda Hill, chief creative officer at A+E Networks, a global media company and home to some of the biggest fashion(时尚) shows.
Earlier this year, the China Through A Looking Glass exhibition in New York exhibited 140 pieces of China-inspired fashionable clothing alongside Chinese works of art, with the aim of exploring the influence of Chinese aesthetics(美学) on Western fashion and how China has fueled the fashionable imagination for centuries. The exhibition had record attendance, showing that there is huge interest in Chinese influences.
“China is impossible to overlook,” says Hill. “Chinese models are the faces of beauty and fashion campaigns that sell dreams to women all over the world, which means Chinese women are not just consumers of fashion — they are central to its movement.” Of course, not only are today’s top Western designers being influenced by China—some of the best designers of contemporary fashion are themselves Chinese. “Vera Wang, Alexander Wang, Jason Wu are taking on Galliano, Albaz, Marc Jacobs—and beating them hands down in design and sales,” adds Hill.
For Hill, it is impossible not to talk about China as the leading player when discussing fashion. “The most famous designers are Chinese, so are the models, and so are the consumers,” she says. “China is no longer just another market; in many senses it has become the market. If you talk about fashion today, you are talking about China—its influences, its direction, its breathtaking clothes, and how young designers and models are finally acknowledging that in many ways.”
1. What can we learn about the exhibition in New York?| A．It promoted the sales of artworks. | B．It attracted a large number of visitors. |
| C．It showed ancient Chinese clothes. | D．It aimed to introduce Chinese models. |
| A．They are setting the fashion. | B．They start many fashion campaigns. |
| C．They admire super models. | D．They do business all over the world. |
| A．learning from | B．looking down on | C．working with | D．competing against |
| A．Young Models Selling Dreams to the World |
| B．A Chinese Art Exhibition Held in New York |
| C．Differences Between Eastern and Western Aesthetics |
| D．Chinese Culture Fueling International Fashion Trends |
4 . Sometimes it’s hard to let go. For many British people, that can apply to institutions and objects that represent their country’s past-age-old castles, splendid homes… and red phone boxes.
Beaten first by the march of technology and lately by the terrible weather in junkyards (废品场), the phone boxes representative of an age are now making something of a comeback. Adapted in imaginative ways, many have reappeared on city streets and village greens housing tiny cafes, cellphone repair shops or even defibrillator machines (除颤器).
The original iron boxes with the round roofs first appeared in 1926. They were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of the Battersea Power Station in London. After becoming an important part of many British streets, the phone boxes began disappearing in the 1980s, with the rise of the mobile phone sending most of them away to the junkyards.
About that time, Tony Inglis’ engineering and transport company got the job to remove phone boxes from the streets and sell them out. But Inglis ended up buying hundreds of them himself, with the idea of repairing and selling them. He said that he had heard the calls to preserve the boxes and had seen how some of them were listed as historic buildings.
As Inglis and, later other businessmen, got to work, repurposed phone boxes began reappearing in cities and villages as people found new uses for them. Today, they are once again a familiar sight, playing roles that are often just as important for the community as their original purpose.
In rural areas, where ambulances can take a relatively long time to arrive, the phone boxes have taken on a lifesaving role. Local organizations can adopt them for l pound, and install defibrillators to help in emergencies.
Others also looked at the phone boxes and saw business opportunities. LoveFone, a company that advocates repairing cellphones rather than abandoning them, opened a mini workshop in a London phone box in 2016.
The tiny shops made economic sense, according to Robert Kerr, a founder of LoveFone. He said that one of the boxes generated around $13,500 in revenue a month and cost only about $400 to rent.
Inglis said phone boxes called to mind an age when things were built to last. “I like what they are to people, and I enjoy bringing things back,” he said.
1. The phone boxes are making a comeback ______.| A．to form a beautiful sight of the city |
| B．to improve telecommunications services |
| C．to remind people of a historical period |
| D．to meet the requirement of green economy |
| A．They were not well-designed. | B．They provided bad services. |
| C．They had too short a history. | D．They lost to new technologies. |
| A．their new appearance and lower prices | B．the push of the local organizations |
| C．their changed roles and functions | D．the big funding of the businessmen |
5 . Pacific Science Center Guide
◆Visit Pacific Science Center’s Store
Don’t forget to stop by Pacific Science Center’s Store while you are here to pick up a wonderful science activity or souvenir to remember your visit. The store is located(位于) upstairs in Building 3 right next to the Laser Dome.
◆Hungry
Our exhibits will feed your mind, but what about your body? Our café offers a complete menu of lunch and snack options, in addition to seasonal specials. The café is located upstairs in Building 1 and is open daily until one hour before Pacific Science Center closes.
◆Rental Information
Lockers are available to store any belongings during your visit. The lockers are located in Building 1 near the Information Desk and in Building 3. Pushchairs and wheelchairs are available to rent at the Information Desk and Denny Way entrance. ID required.
◆Support Pacific Science Center
Since 1962, Pacific Science Center has been inspiring a passion(热情) for discovery and lifelong learning in science, math and technology. Today, Pacific Science Center serves more than 1.3 million people a year and brings inquiry-based science education to classrooms and community events all over Washington State. It’s an amazing accomplishment and one we cannot achieve without generous support from individuals, corporations, and other social organizations. Visit pacificsciencecenter.org to find various ways you can support Pacific Science Center.
1. Where can you buy a souvenir at Pacific Science Center?| A．In Building 1. |
| B．In Building 3. |
| C．At the the Laser Dome. |
| D．At the Denny Way entrance. |
| A．Train Science teachers. |
| B．Distribute science books. |
| C．Inspire scientific research. |
| D．Take science to the classroom. |
| A．To encourage donations. |
| B．To advertise coming events. |
| C．To introduce special exhibits. |
| D．To tell about the Center’s history. |
6 . Elizabeth Spelke, a cognitive (认知的) psychologist at Harvard, has spent her career testing the world's most complex learning system-the mind of a baby. Babies might seem like no match for artificial intelligence (AI). They are terrible at labeling images, hopeless at mining text, and awful at video games. Then again, babies can do things beyond the reach of any AI. By just a few months old, they’ve begun to grasp the foundations of language, such as grammar. They’ve started to understand how to adapt to unfamiliar situations.
Yet even experts like Spelke don’t understand precisely how babies — or adults, for that matter — learn. That gap points to a puzzle at the heart of modern artificial intelligence: We're not sure what to aim for.
Consider one of the most impressive examples of AI, Alpha Zero, a programme that plays board games with superhuman skill. After playing thousands of games against itself at a super speed, and learning from winning positions, Alpha Zero independently discovered several famous chess strategies and even invented new ones. It certainly seems like a machine eclipsing human cognitive abilities. But Alpha Zero needs to play millions more games than a person during practice to learn a game. Most importantly, it cannot take what it has learned from the game and apply it to another area.
To some AI experts, that calls for a new approach. In a November research paper, Francois Chollet, a well-known AI engineer, argued that it’s misguided to measure machine intelligence just according to its skills at specific tasks. “Humans don’t start out with skills; they start out with a broad ability to acquire new skills,” he says. “What a strong human chess player is demonstrating is not only the ability to play chess, but the potential to fulfill any task of a similar difficulty.” Chollet posed a set of problems, each of which requires an AI programme to arrange colored squares on a grid (格栅) based on just a few prior examples. It’s not hard for a person. But modern machine-learning programmes-trained on huge amounts of data — cannot learn from so few examples.
Josh Tenenbaum, a professor in MIT's Center for Brains, Minds & Machines, works closely with Spelke and uses insights from cognitive science as inspiration for his programmes. He says much of modern AI misses the bigger picture, comparing it to a cartoon about a two-dimensional world populated by simple geometrical (几何形的) people. AI programmes will need to learn in new ways — for example, by drawing causal inferences rather than simply finding patterns. “At some point — you know, if you’re intelligent — you realize maybe there's something else out there,” he says.
1. Compared to an advanced AI programme, a baby might be better at _______________.| A．labeling images | B．identifying locations |
| C．playing games | D．making adjustments |
| A．Stimulating. | B．Measuring. | C．Beating. | D．Limiting. |
| A．AI is good at finding similar patterns |
| B．AI should gain abilities with less training |
| C．AI lacks the ability of generalizing a skill |
| D．AI will match humans in cognitive ability |
| A．What is exactly intelligence? |
| B．Why is modern AI advanced? |
| C．Where is human intelligence going? |
| D．How do humans tackle the challenge of AI? |
It’s common knowledge that the woman in Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting seems to look back at observers, following them with her eyes no matter where they stand in the room. But this common knowledge turns out wrong.
A new study finds that the woman in the painting is actually looking out at an angle that’s 15. 4 degrees off to the observer’s right-well outside of the range that people normally believe when they think someone is looking right at them. In other words, said the study author, Horstmann, “She’s not looking at you. “ This is somewhat ironic, because the entire phenomenon of a person’s gaze (凝视) in a photograph or painting seeming to follow the viewer is called the “Mona Lisa effect” . That effect is absolutely real, Horstmann said. If a person is illustrated or photographed looking straight ahead, even people viewing the portrait from an angle will feel they are being looked at. As long as the angle of the person’s gaze is no more than about 5 degrees off to either side, the Mona Lisa effect occurs.
This is important for human interaction with on-screen characters. If you want someone off to the right side of a room to feel that a person on-screen is looking at him or her, you don’t cut the gaze of the character to that side-surprisingly, doing so would make an observer feel like the character isn’t looking at anyone in the room at all. Instead, you keep the gaze straight ahead.
Horstmann and his co-author were studying this effect for its application in the creation of artificial-intelligence avatars(虚拟头像) when Horstmann took a long look at the “Mona Lisa” and realized she wasn’t looking at him.
To make sure it wasn’t just him, the researchers asked 24 people to view images of the “Mona Lisa” on a computer screen. They set a ruler between the viewer and the screen and asked the participants to note which number on the ruler intersected(和……相交) Mona Lisa’s gaze. To calculate the angle of Mona Lisa’s gaze as she looked at the viewer, they moved the ruler farther from or closer to the screen during the study. Consistently, the researchers found, participants judged that the woman in the “Mona Lisa” portrait was not looking straight at them, but slightly off to their right.
So why do people repeat the belief that her eyes seem to follow the viewer? Horstmann isn’t sure. It’s possible, he said, that people have the desire to be looked at, so they think the woman is looking straight at them. Or maybe the people who first coined the term “Mona Lisa effect” just thought it was a cool name.
1. It is generally believed that the woman in the painting “Mona Lisa”___________.| A．attracts the viewers to look back |
| B．seems mysterious because of her eyes |
| C．fixes her eyes on the back of the viewers |
| D．looks at the viewers wherever they stand |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
| A．confirm Horstmann’s belief |
| B．create artificial-intelligence avatars |
| C．calculate the angle of Mona Lisa’s gaze |
| D．explain how the Mona Lisa effect can be applied |
| A．Horstmann thinks it’s cool to coin the term “Mona Lisa effect”. |
| B．The Mona Lisa effect contributes to the creation of artificial intelligence. |
| C．Feeling being gazed at by Mona Lisa may be caused by the desire for attention. |
| D．The position of the ruler in the experiment will influence the viewers’ judgement. |
8 . Recycling Electronic Waste
When Alex Lin was 11 years old, he read an alarming article in the newspaper which said that people were burying old computers in backyards, throwing TVs into streams, and dumping (丢弃) cell phones in the garbage. This was dangerous because e-waste contains harmful chemicals that can leak into the environment, getting into crops, animals, water supplies—and people.
Alex was really worried and decided to make it next project for WIN—the Westerly Innovations Network. Alex and six of his friends had formed this organization to help solve community problems two years before.
But what could they do about this project with e-waste? The team spent several weeks gathering information about the harmful chemicals in e-waste and their effects on humans. They learned how to dispose (处置) of e-waste properly and how it could be recycled. Then, they sent out a survey and found only one in eight knew what e-waste was, let alone how to properly dispose of it.
Alex and his friends went into action. They advertised in the local newspaper and distributed notices to students, asking residents to bring their unwanted electronics to the school parking lot. The drive lasted two days, and they collected over 9, 500 kilograms of e-waste.
The next step was to set up a long-term e-waste drop-off center for the town. After some research, they’d learned that reusing is the best way to deal with electronic devices and it is seven times more efficient than recycling. So, they began learning to refurbish (翻新) computers themselves and distributed them to students who didn’t have their own. In this way, they could help students in the area and protect the environment at the same time.
For a lasting solution to e-waste, the drop-off center wasn’t enough. Laws would have to be passed. In 2016, WIN helped push for an e-waste bill in their town, which required companies that manufactured or sold electronics to take back e-waste. The bill clearly forbids the dumping of e-waste.
Because of the work of WIN, more and more people, like Alex and his team, are getting the message about safe disposal of e-waste. As Alex says, “Today’s technology should not become tomorrow’s harmful garbage.”
1. What was Alex’s worry after he read the article?| A．The littering of e-waste. | B．The recycling of plastic. |
| C．The change of environment. | D．The overuse of old computers. |
| A．Set up WIN. | B．Collect information. |
| C．Ask friends for help. | D．Carry out a survey. |
| A．Traditional. | B．Competitive. |
| C．Scientific. | D．Convenient. |
| A．There is no end to perfection. |
| B．Success comes through failure. |
| C．Every positive attitude has a reward. |
| D．Young people can make a big difference. |
9 . Financial regulations in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of big banks. Starting next year, any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10 years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing. The main purpose of this “clawback” rule is to hold bankers responsible for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institution. Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit: more long-term decision-making not only by banks but also by all corporations, to build a stronger economy for future generations.
“Short-termism” or the desire for quick profits, has worsened in publicly traded companies, says the Bank of England’s top economist, Andrew Haldane. He quotes a giant of classical economies, Alfred Marshall, in describing this financial impatience as acting like “Children who pick the strawberries out of their pudding to eat them at once” rather than putting them aside to be eaten last.
The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain, he notes, has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades. Transient(短期的) investors, who demand high quarterly profits from companies, can hold back a firm’s efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty. This has been called “quarterly capitalism”.
In addition, new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities( 股 票 ), quicker use of information, and thus shortens attention spans in financial markets. “There seems to be an advantage of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing,” said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in speech this week.
In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to delay performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year, slightly helping reduce “short-termism.” In its latest survey of CEO pay, The Wall Street Journal finds that “a substantial part” of executive pay is now tied to performance.
Much more could be done to encourage “long-termism,” such as changes in the tax code and quicker disclosure(披露) of stock acquisitions. In France, shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company.
Within companies, the right compensation design can provide motivation for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all shareholders. Britain’s new rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interest in their performance, not just for the short term but for the long term.
1. According to Paragraph 1, one reason for imposing the new rule is the _______.| A．enhance banker’s sense of responsibility |
| B．help corporations achieve larger profits |
| C．build a new system of financial regulation |
| D．guarantee the bonuses of top executives |
| A．indirect | B．negative |
| C．favorable | D．temporary |
| A．the obstacles to preventing “short-termism”. |
| B．the significance of long-term thinking. |
| C．the approaches to promoting “long-termism” |
| D．the popularity of short-term thinking. |
| A．Failure of Quarterly Capitalism |
| B．Patience as a Corporate Virtue |
| C．Decisiveness Required of Top Executives |
| D．Frustration of Risk-taking Bankers |
10 . According to a new study， teens focus on rewards and have a hard time learning to avoid punishment or consider the consequences of alternative actions.
University College London researchers compared how teens and adults learn to make choices based on the available information. They tracked the way in which 18 volunteers aged 12-17 and 20 volunteers aged 18-32 completed tasks in which they had to choose between abstract symbols.
Each symbol was consistently associated with a fixed chance of a reward, punishment, or no outcome. As the trial progressed ， participants learned which symbols were likely to lead to each outcome and adjusted their choices accordingly. Teens and adults were equally good at learning to choose symbols associated with reward， but teens were less good at avoiding symbols associated with punishment. Adults also performed significantly better when they were told what would have happened if they had chosen the other symbol after each choice， while teens did not appear to take this information into account.
“From this experimental lab study we can draw conclusions about learning during the teen years. We find that teens and adults learn in different ways， something that might be relevant to education," said lead author Dr. Stefano Palminteri. " Unlike adults, teens are not so good at learning to adjust their choices to avoid punishment. This suggests that incentive systems based on reward rather than punishment may be more effective for this age group. Additionally, we found that teens did not learn from being shown what would have happened if they made alternative choices."
To interpret the results, the researchers developed computational models of learning and ran simulations （模拟）applying them to the results of the study. The first was a simple model, one that learned from rewards, and the second model added to this by also learning from the option that was not chosen. The third model was the most complete and took the full context into account, with equal weight given to punishment avoidance and reward seeking. For example, obtaining no outcome rather than losing a point is weighted equally to gaining a point rather than having no outcome.
Comparing the experimental data to the models, the team found that teens" behavior followed the simple reward-based model while adults" behavior matched the complete, contextual model. “Our study suggests that teens are more receptive to rewards than they are to punishments of equal value, ” said senior author Dr. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. “As a result, it may be useful for parents and teachers to frame things in more positive terms.”
1. It can be learned from the study that .| A．adults made choices faster than teens |
| B．adults understood rewards better than teens |
| C．teens reacted better to reward than punishment |
| D．teens were aware of the outcome of each choice |
| A．They reflected people’s strong desire for punishment avoidance. |
| B．They gave circumstances different degrees of consideration. |
| C．They paid equal attention to reward and punishment. |
| D．They shaped the behavior of people at different ages. |
| A．accustomed | B．opposed |
| C．sympathetic | D．responsive |
| A．“If you insist on doing things in this way， you will lose ten points. " |
| B．“If we had talked about this earlier， you wouldn’t have made the mistake. " |
| C．“ If you hand in your assignment ahead of time， you will get an extra bonus." |
| D．“If you want to approach a problem differently ， you can talk to your parents. " |
