1 . Accompanied by her father, using a combination of aid and free climbing and taking advantage of some special equipment and ropes for protection, 10-year-old Selah made it to the top of El Capitan on June 12 after five days of big wall climbing.
Climbing the challenging and adventurous Nose route of El Capitan was a labor of love for Selah in more than one way. Her parents , Mike and Joy Schneiter, fell in love on this 3,000- plus-foot huge rock and she has always wanted to feel the way that her parents felt when they were up there together. Selah showed great interest in rock climbing at an early age. She wore her first rock-climbing equipment shortly after she learned to walk. She first dreamed of climbing El Capitan when she was 6 or 7.
El Capitan is a famous mountain-sized rock in Yosemite National Park. Getting to its top is no easy task. It's taller, as reported, than the tallest building in the world-Dubai’s Buri Khalifa. El Capitan and its difficult Nose route, which runs more than 3,000 feet high up the center of the rock's face, is considered one of the world's hardest big wall climbs and has attracted the best climbers over time. But never before had a youngster accomplished it.
Selah's achievement caught national attention. Outside Magazine called her the youngest documented person to climb the Nose. Ken Yager, president of the Yosemite Climbing Association, said he also couldn't think of anyone younger who has done it.
Selah is humble about her El Capitan accomplishment. "I'm not necessarily a special kid or anything like that, she said. "There were a few times when I would be so worn that it would kind of discourage me from holding on. But overall, it was just great to keep plugging away.”
Selah shared this advice for other young climbers dreaming of big walls, "It doesn't take necessarily a super special person to do something like that. You just have to put your mind to it.”
1. What do we learn about Selah climbing El Capitan?| A．She began her climbing on June 5. |
| B．She got inspired by her family history. |
| C．She managed without any external help. |
| D．She was the first female to reach the top. |
| A．To state El Capitan's height. |
| B．To prove El Capitan's popularity. |
| C．To introduce El Capitan's location. |
| D．To stress the challenge of climbing El Capitan. |
| A．Determined. | B．Generous. |
| C．Warm-hearted. | D．Fortunate. |
| A．Dream big and aim high. |
| B．Be committed to your ambition. |
| C．Chance favors the prepared mind. |
| D．Nothing is impossible for a genius. |
2 . A robot with a sense of touch may one day feel “pain”, both its own physical pain and sympathy for the pain of its human companions. Such touchy-feely robots are still far off, but advances in robotic touch-sensing are bringing that possibility closer to reality.
Sensors set in soft, artificial skin that can detect both a gentle touch and a painful strike have been hooked up to a robot that can then signal emotions, Asada reported February 15 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This artificial “pain nervous system,” as Asada calls it, may be a small building block for a machine that could ultimately experience pain. Such a feeling might also allow a robot to “sympathize” with a human companion’s suffering.
Asada, an engineer at Osaka University, and his colleagues have designed touch sensors that reliably pick up a range of touches. In a robot system named Affetto, a realistic looking child’s head, these touch and pain signals can be converted to emotional facial expressions.
A touch-sensitive, soft material, as opposed to a rigid metal surface, allows richer interactions between a machine and the world, says neuroscientist Kingson Man of the University of Southern California. Artificial skin “allows the possibility of engagement in truly intelligent ways”.
Such a system, Asada says, might ultimately lead to robots that can recognize the pain of others, a valuable skill for robots designed to help care for people in need, the elderly, for instance.
But there is an important distinction between a robot that responds in a predictable way to a painful strike and a robot that’s able to compute an internal feeling accurately, says Damasio, a neuroscientist also at the University of Southern California. A robot with sensors that can detect touch and pain is “along the lines of having a robot, for example, that smiles when you talk to it,” Damasio says. ‘It’s a device for communication of the machine to a human.” While that’s an interesting development, “it’s not the same thing” as a robot designed to compute some sort of internal experience, he says.
1. What do we know about the “pain nervous system”?| A．It is named Affetto by scientists. | B．It is a set of complicated sensors. |
| C．It is able to signal different emotions. | D．It combines sensors and artificial skin. |
| A．Delivered. | B．Translated. | C．Attached. | D．Adapted. |
| A．Robots can smile when talked to. |
| B．Robots can talk to human beings. |
| C．Robots can compute internal feelings |
| D．Robots can detect pains and respond accordingly. |
| A．Machines Become Emotional | B．Robots Inch to Feeling Pain |
| C．Human Feelings Can Be Felt | D．New Devices Touch Your Heart |
3 . A team from Northwestern University has developed a soft, skin-interfaced sensor that can analyze the molecular (分子的) composition of sweat for things like cortisol, blood sugar, and vitamin C, sending the data to the wearer's smartphone. This data, the researchers hope, will allow people to better control their stress levels throughout the day.
Cortisol, also called the stress hormone, can be measured in a person's sweat. Released from the adrenal glands (肾上腺) under periods of physical and mental stress, it can be a powerful performance enhancer—increasing energy production and glucose (葡萄糖) availability for the muscles during a "fight or flight" situation, for instance being attacked by a lion. However, cortisol can also be released because of modern stressors such as money problems, issues at work, and other day-to-day worries that if built up over time, create the chronic anxiety and can lead to an increased risk for diabetes, depression, high blood pressure and obesity.
When someone wears the chip sweats, the liquid runs through small channels into a series of chemical test sensors that look for different biological signals which could suggest a rise in cortisol.
Previous attempts in years past at creating devices like this were limited by the need to take sweat samples to laboratories for analysis, removing any ability for the individual to act on the data in a way that might prevent buildup of stressful feelings, or even an anxiety attack.
Such a device could be paramount in helping people relieve depressive or stressful feelings (not least because exercising hard enough to cause sweating helps with anxiety on its own).
Furthermore, the percent of the population of American adults with regular feelings of worry, nervousness, or anxiety is around 11.2%, while there are nearly 60 million doctors' visits where mental or behavioral health is the chief concern. Putting power into patients' hands—in the form of a detailed diagnosis of cortisol levels, could help significantly to lower those numbers.
1. What's the function of the newly developed sensor?| A．To examine the component of sweat. |
| B．To show when one lacks vitamin. |
| C．To connect wearable devices to smartphones. |
| D．To control people's stress levels the whole day. |
| A．What may create the profile of chronic anxiety. |
| B．What may cause the release of the stress hormone. |
| C．How cortisol can enhance one's energy production. |
| D．How cortisol can be measured in a person's sweat. |
| A．Significant. | B．Useless. |
| C．Accessible. | D．Weak. |
| A．A product review. | B．A guidebook. |
| C．A magazine. | D．A science fiction. |
4 . At the age of twelve years, the human body is at its most vigorous. It has yet to reach its full size and strength, and its owner his or her full intelligence; but at this age the likelihood of death is least. Earlier, we were infants and young children, and consequently more vulnerable (易受伤害的), later, we shall undergo a progressive loss of our vigor and resistance which, though unnoticeable at first, will finally become so steep that we can live no longer, however well we look after ourselves, and however well society, and our doctors, look after us.
This decline in vigor with the passing of time is called ageing. It is one of the most unpleasant discoveries which we all make that we must decline in this way, that if we escape wars, accidents and disease we shall eventually “die of old age”, and that this happens at a rate which differs little from person to person, so that there are heavy odds in favor of our dying between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. Some of us will die sooner, a few will live longer—on into a ninth or tenth decade. But the chances are against it, and there is a virtual limit on how long we can hope to remain alive, however lucky and robust we are.
Normal people tend to forget this process unless and until they are reminded of it. We are so familiar with the fact that ma ages, that people have for years assumed that the process of losing vigor with time, of becoming more likely to die the older we get, was something self-evident, like the cooling of a hot kettle or the wearing-out of a pair of shoes. They have also assumed that all animals, and probably other organisms such as trees, or even the universe itself, must in the nature of things “wear out”.
Most animals we commonly observe do in fact age as we do, if given the chance to live long enough; and mechanical systems like a wound watch, or the sun, do in fact run out of energy in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (whether the whole universe does so is a moot point at present). But these are not analogous (类似的)to what happens when man ages. A run-down watch is still a watch and can be rewound. An old watch, by contrast, becomes so worn and unreliable that it eventually is not worth mending. But a watch could never repair itself —it does not consist of living parts, only of metal, which wears away by friction. We could, at one time, repair ourselves—well enough, at least, to overcome all but the most instantly fatal illnesses and accidents. Between twelve and eighty years we gradually lose this power, an illness which at twelve would knock us over, at eighty can knock us out, and into our grave. If we could stay as vigorous as we are at twelve, it would take about 700 years for half of us to die, and another 700 for the survivors to be reduced by half again.
1. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT?| A．Our first twelve years represent the peak of human development. |
| B．People usually are unhappy when reminded of ageing. |
| C．Normally only a few of us can live to the eighties and nineties. |
| D．People are usually less likely to die at twelve years old. |
| A．remaining alive until 65 | B．remaining alive after 80 |
| C．dying before 65 or after 80 | D．dying between 65 and 80 |
| A．It is usually a phenomenon of dying at an old age. |
| B．It is a fact that people cannot live any longer. |
| C．It is a gradual loss of vigor and resistance. |
| D．It is a phase when people are easily attacked by illness. |
| A．Normally people are quite familiar with the ageing process. |
| B．All animals and other organisms undergo the ageing process. |
| C．The law of thermodynamics functions in the ageing process. |
| D．Human’s ageing process is different from that of mechanisms. |
5 . Now, chemists have discovered new potential in abundant building blocks: Through a series of reactions, scientists have shown that conventional bricks can be transformed into energy storage devices powerful enough to turn on LED lights. “What we have demonstrated in our paper is sufficient enough for you to light up emergency lighting that's in a hallway or sensors that could be put inside the walls of a house, "said Julio M. D’ Arcy, an assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and one of the study's authors. "The next step is trying to store more energy, so that you can power bigger devices--like maybe a laptop--directly from the walls of the house. ”
“Bricks have been prized by architects for their capacity to store heat, but using them to hold electricity has never been tried before, "D'Arcy said. To allow the bricks to store electricity, the researchers pumped a series of gases inside the brick. "The gases react with the brick's chemical components, coating them with a web of plastic nanofiber (纳米纤维）known as a PEDOT, which is a good conductor of electricity, "he said. Though PEDOT can store large amounts of energy, this supercapacitor (超级电容器）cannot hold onto that charge or deliver sustained energy over long periods of time like batteries can. “A battery will give you energy density that will allow you to drive 300 miles, but a supercapacitor will allow you to accelerate very quickly at a red light,” D’ Arcy said.
Still, scientists see potential in the bricks as a possible green energy solution. Right now, these "smart bricks" cannot compete with the energy storage potential of the lithium-ion (锂离子）batteries used in many solar power systems. However, there is hope that this new technology could be developed to provide a new storage method using readily available materials.
“The performance is a long way short of custom-made supercapacitors, but the principle is proven and there is significant room for improving the storage characteristics by optimizing the structure and chemistry of the bricks,” said Dan Brett, a professor of electrochemical engineering at University College London, who was not involved in the study.
1. What will the scientists do about the bricks next according to M. D'Arcy?| A．Put the bricks into commercial use. |
| B．Refer their paper to academic journals. |
| C．Expand the bricks' ability of storing power. |
| D．Develop new smart laptop with powered bricks. |
| A．It allows bricks to take up less space. |
| B．It can protect bricks with a powered coat. |
| C．It helps bricks store and conduct electricity. |
| D．It can make the powered vehicles travel farther. |
| A．They need much more development. |
| B．They are more environmentally-friendly. |
| C．They will be released into the market soon. |
| D．They can be made according to consumers' requirements. |
| A．Making the most of. | B．Trying out for. |
| C．Breaking up with. | D．Breaking away from. |
6 . Hardware in general, and smartphones in particular, have become a huge environmental and health problem in the Global South' s landfill sites(垃圾填埋场).
Electronic waste(e-waste) currently takes up 5 percent of all global waste, and it is set to increase rapidly as more of us own more than one smartphone, laptop and power bank. They end up in places like Agbogbloshie on the outskirts of Ghana's capital, Accra.It is the biggest e-waste dump in the world, where 10,000 informal workers walk through tons of abandoned goods as part of an informal recycling process.They risk their health searching for the precious metals that are found in abandoned smartphones.
But Agbogbloshie should not exist. The Basel Convention, a 1989 treaty aims to prevent developed nations from unauthorized dumping of e-waste in less developed countries. The E-waste industry, however, circumvents the regulations by exporting e-waste labelled as “secondhand goods” to poor countries like Ghana, knowing full well that it is heading for a landfill site.
A recent report found Agbogbloshie contained some of the most dangerous chemicals.This is not surprising: smartphones contain chemicals like mercury(水银), lead and even arsenic (砷 ) Reportedly, one egg from a free-range chicken in Agbogbloshie contained a certain chemical which can cause cancer and damage the immune system at a level that's about 220 times greater than a limit set by the European Food Safety Authority(EFSA), Most worryingly, these poisonous chemicals are free to pollute the broader soil and water system. This should concern us all, since some of Ghana's top exports are cocoa and nuts.
Some governments have started to take responsibility for their consumers' waste.For example, Germany has started a project that includes a sustainable recycling system at Agbogbloshie, along with a health clinic for workers.However, governments cannot solve the problem alone, as there is am almost limitless consumer demand for hardware, especially when governments’ green policies are focused on issues like climate change.
Only the manufacturers can fix this.A more economically sustainable and politically possible solution is through encouraging hardware manufacturers to make the repair, reuse and recycling of hardware profitable, or at least cost-neutral.
1. What can we infer from paragraph2?| A．Electronic products need improving urgently. |
| B．Electronic waste is too complex to get fully recycled. |
| C．Electronic waste requires more landfill sites across Ghana. |
| D．Electronic pollution is a burning question in Agbogbloshie. |
| A．Tightens |
| B．Abolishes |
| C．Avoids |
| D．Follows |
| A．The violation of EFSA’s standard |
| B．The lack of diversity in Ghana s exports. |
| C．The damage to chickens immune system |
| D．The threat of polluted food around the world |
| A．Manufacturers' developing a sustainable hardware economy. |
| B．Governments' adjusting their green policies about e-waste. |
| C．Reducing customers' demands for electronic products. |
| D．Letting governments take on the main responsibility. |
7 . Described as the world’s most environmentally friendly protein（蛋白质）, Solein is made by applying electricity to water to release bubbles of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Living microbes (微生物) are then added to the liquid to feed on the carbon dioxide and hydrogen bubbles and produce the Solein, which is then dried to make the powder. It’s a chemical change process similar to beer brewing. The dried Solein has a protein content of 50 percent and looks and tastes just like wheat flour.
“It is a completely new kind of food, a new kind of protein, different to all the food on the market today in how it is produced as it does not need agriculture.” Dr Pasi Vainikka, the chief manager of Solar Foods told The Guardian. The process used to produce Solein—changing hydrogen and carbon dioxide is amazing, as the wonder food can be produced anywhere in the world. It’s also 10 time-efficient than photosynthesis (光合作用), and 10 to 100 times more environment and climate-friendly in water use than animal or plant-based food production.
“Solein also contains all the essential amino acid (氨基酸),but because it is produced using carbon and electricity, it does not require large amounts of land to produce, ” the Solar Foods website explains. “Another unique characteristic of Solein is that it is able to take carbon directly from carbon dioxide without needing a source of sugar.”
While Solar Foods does not expect Solein to challenge conventional protein production methods in the next two decades, it does expect it to become a “new harvest” for humanity, which is significant considering so far we have only relied on plants and animals for sustenance. The Helsinki-based company plans to open its first Solein factory at the end of 2021 and increase production to two billion meals per year by 2022.
1. Why is Solein described as environmentally friendly?| A．Because it is man-made by using electricity. |
| B．Because it contains all the nutrition people need. |
| C．Because it is made consuming less land and energy. |
| D．Because it is produced from water and carbon dioxide. |
| A．It’ll have a rewarding future. |
| B．It’ll reach consumers in 2020. |
| C．It’ll challenge traditional protein production. |
| D．It’ll be a complete replacement for plants and animals. |
| A．survival | B．food |
| C．material | D．support |
| A．A textbook. | B．A novel. |
| C．A magazine. | D．A brochure. |
8 . The animal kingdom is full of beautiful and attractive creatures, and it is inviting to purchase exotic animals and call them pets. But undomesticated(未驯化的) pets may affect the health and safety of both the animals and the people who keep them.
The umbrella cockatoo, for instance, is a type of parrot, which can live up to seventy years. It is often purchased as an exotic pet. It requires a very large living place and a great deal of attention. When its specific needs are unmet, the bird commonly bites itself or becomes aggressive. Similarly, the ball python one of the most popular pet snakes, requires special conditions to survive. Like the umbrella cockatoo, the snake's long lifespan—up to forty years—presents serious practical challenges to any owner, no matter how devoted.
Exotic pet owners are most likely identified as animal lovers who purchased their animals in order to feel a deep connection to the natural world. However, the mere ownership of such an animal means it's probable that the person participated in the illegal trade. This trade—the capture and sale of wild animals——is often cruel to species. Countless animals suffer and die each year.
The problems continue when exotic pets are sold to non-professional owners. When they find they cannot care for them, owners take their exotic pets into the wild and abandon them, as proved by the case of Burmese pythons in Florida. This non-native species multiplied quickly seriously threatening the Florida ecosystem. Also , exotic pets pose a danger to their owners: some emerging infectious diseases, which thousands of people per year are stricken with, and especially occurred in children.
Wild animals are undoubtedly attracting, but they should be admired in their own natural environments. Penning animals as exotic pets harms their quality of life. Pet ownership of any kind is a serious responsibility, and that's why animal lovers should choose domesticated animals that will Boom under the care of humans.
1. What can we infer about exotic pets in paragraph 2?| A．They can live longest in the animal kingdom. |
| B．They need professional care from the owner. |
| C．They require special training from their owner. |
| D．They can’t have a satisfying life under human care. |
| A．To get high income. |
| B．To build a bond with nature, |
| C．To help prevent illegal pet trades. |
| D．To make exotic pets' life comfortable. |
| A．Improving the native ecosystem. |
| B．Increasing the number of rare species. |
| C．Losing control of illegal wildlife trading. |
| D．Putting humans and exotic wildlife at risk. |
| A．Wild animals are more dangerous than ordinary pets. |
| B．It's inappropriate to keep undomesticated exotic pets. |
| C．Exotic pets should be kept in better conditions. |
| D．Rules of the exotic pet trade should be updated. |
9 . Time and how we experience it have always puzzled us. Physicists have created fascinating theories, but their time is measured by a pendulum (钟摆) and is not psychological time, which leaps with little regard to the clock or calendar. As someone who understood the distinction observed, ''When you sit with a nice girl for two hours it seems like a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove, a minute seems like two hours. ''
Psychologists have long noticed that larger units of time, such as months and years, fly on swifter wings as we age. They also note that the more time is structured with schedules and appointments, the more rapidly it seems to pass. For example, a day at the office flies compared with a day at the beach.
Expectation and familiarity also make time seem to flow more rapidly. Almost all of us have had the experience of driving somewhere we've never been before. Surrounded by unfamiliar scenery, with no real idea of when we’ll arrive, we experience the trip as lasing a long time. But the return trip, although exactly as long, seems to take far less time. The novelty of the outward journey has become routine.
When days become as identical as beads (小珠子)on a string, they mix together, and even months become a single day. To counter this, try to find ways to interrupt the structure of your day-- to stop time, so to speak.
Learning something new is one of the ways to slow the passage of time. One of the reasons the days of our youth seems to be full and long is that these are the days of learning and discovery. For many of us, learning ends when we leave school, but this doesn't have to be.
1. What is the underlined sentence in paragraph 1 used to show?| A．Psychological time is quite puzzling. |
| B．Time should not be measured by a pendulum. |
| C．Physical time is different from psychological time |
| D．Physical theory has nothing to do with the true sense of time |
| A．Our sense of time changes. |
| B．We spend less time at the beach |
| C．More time is structured and scheduled |
| D．Time is structured with too many appointments. |
| A．excitement | B．unfamiliarity | C．imagination | D．amusement |
| A．To give various explanations about time |
| B．To describe how we experience time physically |
| C．To show the differences of two kinds of time |
| D．To explain why time flies and how to slow it down |
10 . Artists always treat businessmen as money-obsessed ( 迷 恋 金 钱 的 ) bores. Or worse, many businessmen, for their part, assume that artists usually consider themselves to be more intelligent than others. Bosses may stick a few modern paintings on their office walls. But they seldom take the arts seriously as a source of inspiration.
The prejudice starts at business school, where “hard” things such as numbers rule. It is reinforced by everyday experience. Bosses constantly remind their employees that if you can't count it, it doesn't count. Few read deeply about the arts. Sun Tzu's The Art of War does not count while some tasteless business books are pleasing to them: consider Wess Roberts' Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun.
But lately there are welcome signs of a thaw (缓和) on the business side of the great cultural divide. Business presses are publishing a series of books such as The Fine Art of Success by Jamie Anderson. Business schools such as the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto are trying to learn from the arts.
Mr. Anderson points out that many artists have also been superb enterprisers. Damien Hirst has been one of the most enterprising. He upturned the art world by selling his work directly through Sotheby's, an auction ( 拍 卖 ) house. Whatever they think of his work, businessmen cannot help admiring a man who parted art lovers from £ 75.5 million on the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed.
Studying the arts can help businessmen communicate more effectively. Most bosses spend a huge amount of time “messaging” and “reaching out”, yet few are good at it. Half an hour with George Orwell's Why I Write would work wonders.
Studying the arts can also help companies learn how to manage bright people. Rob Goffee of the London Business School points out that today's most productive companies are dominated by what they call “clevers”, who are very hard to manage. They hate being told what to do by managers, whom they regard as being stupid. They refuse to submit to performance reviews.
In short, they are prima donnas. The art world has centuries of experience in managing such difficult people.
Directors persuade actresses to cooperate with actors they hate. Their tips might be worth hearing.
1. Which book combines the arts with business?
| A．Why I Write. | B．The Art of War. |
| C．The Fine Art of Success. | D．Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. |
| A．An artist who is good at doing business. |
| B．A businessman who just cares about money. |
| C．An artist whose works changed the art world. |
| D．A businessman who had prejudice toward the arts. |
| A．quite stupid | B．rather proud |
| C．really bright | D．very efficient |
| A．Good management takes skill and patience. |
| B．Artists should show respect for businessmen. |
| C．Painting is a special form of communication. |
| D．Businessmen have much to learn from artists. |
