1 . There is something to be said for being a generalist, even if you are a specialist. Knowing a little about a lot of things that interest you can add to the richness of a whole, well-lived life.
Society pushes us to specialize, to become experts. This requires commitment to a particular occupation, branch of study or research. The drawback to being specialists is we often come to know more and more about less and less. There is a great deal of pressure to master one's field. You may pursue training, degrees, or increasing levels of responsibility at work. Then you discover the pressure of having to keep up.
Some people seem willing to work around the clock in their narrow specialty. But such commitment can also weaken a sense of freedom. These specialists could work at the office until ten each night, then look back and realize they would have loved to have gone home and enjoyed the sweetness of their family and friends, or traveled to exciting places, meeting interesting people. Mastering one thing to the exclusion （排 除）of others can hold back your true spirit.
Generalists, on the other hand, know a lot about a wide range of subjects and view the whole with all its connections. They are people of ability, talent, and enthusiasm who can bring their broad perspective （视角）into specific fields of expertise （专长）.The doctor who is also a poet and philosopher is a superior doctor, one who can give so much more to his patients than just good medical skills.
Things are connected. Let your expertise in one field fuel your passions in all related areas. Some of your interests may not appear to be connected but, once you explore their depths, you discover that they are. My editor Toni, who is also a writer, has edited several history books. She has decided to study Chinese history. Fascinated by the structural beauty of the Forbidden City as a painter, she is equally interested to learn more about Chinese philosophy. "I don't know where it will lead, but I'm excited I'm on this pursuit."
These expansions into new worlds help us by giving us new perspectives. We begin to see the interconnectedness of one thing to another in all aspects of our life, of ourselves and the universe. Develop broad, general knowledge and experience. The universe is all yours to explore and enjoy.
1. To become a specialist, one may have to_____.| A．narrow his range of knowledge |
| B．avoid responsibilities at work |
| C．know more about the society |
| D．broaden his perspective on life |
| A．treasure their freedom |
| B．travel around the world |
| C．spend most time working |
| D．enjoy meeting funny people |
| A．is fully aware of his talent and ability |
| B．is a pure specialist in medicine |
| C．should love poetry and philosophy |
| D．brings knowledge of other fields to work |
| A．Passion alone does not ensure a person's success. |
| B．In-depth exploration makes discoveries possible. |
| C．Everyone has a chance to succeed in their pursuit. |
| D．Seemingly unrelated interests are in a way connected. |
| A．Be More a Generalist Than a Specialist |
| B．Specialist or Generalist: Hard to Decide |
| C．Turn a Generalist into a Specialist |
| D．Ways to Become a Generalist |
2 . A trial project by the Montreal Children's Hospital suggested that the use of medical hypnosis(催眠)can reduce pain and anxiety in patients. The project also resulted in a reduction in the amount of medicines used to perform medical-imaging imaging(医学影像) procedures.
“During the examination children don't move. It works perfectly. It's amazing,“ said Johanne L'Ecuyer, a medical-imaging technologist at the hospital.
The project was inspired by a French team from Rouen University Hospital Centre where examinations are done under hypnosis instead of general anesthesia(麻醉）.
A French medical-imaging technologist-also a hypnotist — was invited to train a few members in the medical-imaging department of the children's hospital. In all, 80 examinations were conducted for the project between January and September, 2019, focusing on the imaging procedures that would cause anxiety.
Hypnosis is not a state of sleep: It is rather a modified(改变的)state of consciousness. The technologist will guide the patient to this modified state—an imaginary world that will disassociate itself more and more from the procedure that follows.
“The technologist must build up a story with the patient," Ms. L'Ecuyer said. "The patient is left with the power to choose what he wants to talk about. Do you play sports? Do you like going to the beach? We establish a subject that we will discuss throughout the procedure."
Everything that happens next during the procedure must be related to this story — an injection （注射）becomes the bite of an insect; the heat on the skin becomes the sensation of the sun and a machine that rings becomes a police car passing nearby.
“The important thing is that the technologist associates what is happening outside the patient's body with what the patient sees in his head," Ms. L'Ecuyer said. "It requires creativity on the part of the technologist, imagination, a lot of patience and kindness."
The procedure appealed to the staff a lot when it was introduced in January. It spread like wildfire that someone from France was here to train the technologists," Ms. L'Ecuyer said. She added that she had a line of staff at her door wanting to take the training.
1. One of the results produced by the trial project is ________ .| A．a better understanding of children |
| B．less use of certain medicines |
| C．new medical-imaging technology |
| D．an improved reputation of the hospital |
| A．assist in treating a patient |
| B．carry out hypnosis training |
| C．start up a new department |
| D．learn about the procedure |
| A．creating a perfect world for patients |
| B．forcing patients into a state of deep sleep |
| C．putting patients into an unconscious state |
| D．leading patients' consciousness away from reality |
| A．It should keep pace with the procedure. |
| B．It reflects the patient's creativity. |
| C．It is selected by the technologist. |
| D．It tells what doctors are doing to the patient. |
| A．uncertainty |
| B．enthusiasm |
| C．worry |
| D．criticism |
| A．An easy way to communicate with patients. |
| B．The standard method of conducting hypnosis. |
| C．An introduction of medical-imaging technology. |
| D．The use of hypnosis in medical-imaging procedures. |
3 . About five weeks ago, I noticed the skin of our pet lizard was growing dusty. It worried me. I reported the strange surface on the skin of the lizard to my husband and children the next morning. Seconds later, our lizard emerged from its tank with its old skin flowing behind it.
I didn't think about it much until a morning last week when I knocked my favorite teapot off the table. It burst into hundreds of pieces. As I swept up the mess, I wondered why we had been breaking so many things over the months.
The destruction started three months ago. It was my husband's birthday. He had just lost his job. The uncertainty was starting to wear on us, so I wanted to do something special.
“Let's make a cake for Dad!” I cried.
My kids screamed with joy. We baked, iced and sprinkled for most of the day. Candles on the cake! Balloons on the walls! Flowers on the table!
Two hours before my husband came back home from another job interview, my daughter climbed up to grab a glass vase from a high shelf. It fell and crashed beside the cake. Tiny pieces of glass were everywhere. She sobbed loudly as I threw the cake away. My husband had banana pudding for his birthday.
Three days ago, the light in our living room suddenly went out. After several frustrating hours of unsuccessful attempts to fix it, my husband suggested watching the Michael Jordan documentary series The Last Dance.
The poignancy of Jordan retiring from his beloved basketball to play baseball and what had pushed him to make such a tough decision took me by surprise. As I watched him take off his basketball uniform and replace it with a baseball uniform, I saw him leaving behind the layer that no longer served him, just as our lizard had. Neither of them chose the moment that had transformed them. But they had to live with who they were after everything was different. Just like us. I realized that we have to learn to leave the past behind.
Humans do not shed skin as easily as other animals. The beginning of change is upsetting. The process is tiring. Damage changes us before we are ready. I see our lizard, raw and nearly new.
Jordan said that no matter how it ends, it starts with hope. With our tender, hopeful skin, that is where we begin.
1. What can we learn about the pet lizard from Paragraph 1?| A．Its tank grew dirty. | B．Its old skin came off. |
| C．It got a skin disease. | D．It went missing. |
| A．The birthday cake was ruined. | B．The author made good puddings. |
| C．Pudding was his favorite dessert. | D．They couldn't afford a birthday cake. |
| A．To prove a theory. | B．To define a concept. |
| C．To develop the theme. | D．To provide the background. |
| A．letting go of the past | B．looking for a new job |
| C．getting rid of a bad habit | D．giving up an opportunity |
| A．Love of family helps us survive great hardships. | B．It's not the end of the world if we break things. |
| C．We should move on no matter what happens. | D．Past experiences should be treasured. |
4 . Job for You!
Family Alliance Meal Delivery Family Alliance is looking for people who can deliver hot Chinese meals one to two times a week for people with disabilities in north suburban Fairfield County. All applicants must have a driver's license and access to a car. Gas will be covered for each delivery. Working hours: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesdays and Fridays For more information, contact Charles Chen at cchen@famd.com Or call 740-6668988 | Lancaster Design We provide full furnishings, like donated kitchen equipment and furniture items, for the new homes of people who were oncehomeless. We need people who can work at our warehouse （仓库）sorting and packing items to be delivered to families, repair donated furniture and more. Candidates will be matched with a task based on skill set. Interested? Submit your application to www.lancasterdesign.org Or call 740-6119735 |
Lancaster Weekly Would you like the opportunity to earn extra cash close to home? If so we have a vacancy in our team which would suit you. Both adults and youngsters aged 13+ are required to deliver our newspaper. You may have to cover some distance. Bicycles are available if needed. Working hours: 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Saturdays For more information Call 740-6538360 | Parkview Nursing Home Caregivers are wanted. We seek people who are patient and caring, and who have experience and interest in working with older adults. As part of the package, initial and follow-up training sessions are provided and accommodation is available if required. For more details, visit us at Unit 3 Park View Lane Or contact Ellen White at 740-6968399 |
| A．Delivering meals. |
| B．Delivering newspapers. |
| C．Working at the warehouse. |
| D．Working at the nursing home. |
| A．Applicants are expected to design furniture. |
| B．Work is arranged according to one's skill set. |
| C．It involves collecting furniture from homes. |
| D．It favors applicants who are homeless. |
| A．Family Alliance Meal Delivery |
| B．Lancaster Design |
| C．Lancaster Weekly |
| D．Parkview Nursing Home |
| A．740-6668988. |
| B．740-6119735. |
| C．740-6538360. |
| D．740-6968399. |
5 . Understand the Economic Concept of a Budget Line
The term “budget line" has several related meanings, including a couple that are self-evident and a third that is not.
The Budget Line as an Informal Consumer Understanding
The budget line is an elementary concept that most consumers understand intuitively without a need for graphs and equations—it's the household budget, for example.
Taken informally, the budget line describes the boundary of affordability for a given budget and specific goods.
Given a limited amount of money, a consumer can only spend that same amount buying goods. If the consumer has X amount of money and wants to buy two goods A and B, she can only purchase goods totaling X. If the consumer needs an amount of A costing 0. 75 X, she can then spend only 0. 25 X, the amount remaining, on her purchase of B.
This seems almost too obvious to bother writing or reading about. As it turns out, however, this same concept——one that most consumers make many times each day with reflecting on it—is the basis of the more formal budget line concept in economics, which is explained below.
Lines in a Budget
Before turning to the economics definition of “budget line" , consider another concept: the line-item budget. This is effectively a map of future expenditures, with all the constituent expenditures individually noted and quantified. There's nothing very complicated about this； in this usage, a budget line is one of the lines in the budget, with the service or good to be purchased named and the cost quantified.
The Budget Line as an Economics Concept
One of the interesting ways the study of economics relates to human behavior generally is that a lot of economic theory is the formalization of the kind of simple concept outlined above— a consumer's informal understanding of the amount she has to spend and what that amount will buy.
In the process of formalization, the concept can be expressed as a mathematical equation that can be applied generally.
A Simple Budget Line Graph
To understand this, think of a graph where the vertical lines quantify how many movie tickets you can buy and where the horizontal lines do the same for crime novels. You like going to the movies and reading crime novels and you have $ 150 to spend. In the example below, assume that each movie costs $ 10 and each crime novel costs $ 15. The more formal economics term for these two items is budget set.
If movies cost $ 10 each, then the maximum number of movies you can see with the money available is 15. To note this you make a dot at the number 15 (for total movie tickets) at the extreme left-hand side of the chart. This same dot appears at the extreme left above "0" on the horizontal axis because you have no money left for books—the number of books available in this example is 0.
You can also graph the other extreme—all crime novels and no movies. Since crime novels in the example cost $ 15 and you have $ 150 available, if you spend all the available money crime novels, you can buy 10. So you put a dot on the horizontal axis at the number 10.
You'll place the dot at the bottom of the vertical axis because in this instance you have $ 0 available for movie tickets.
If you now draw a line from the highest, leftmost dot to the lowest, rightmost dot you'll have created a budget line. Any combination of movies and crime novels that falls below the budget line is affordable. Any combination above it is not.
1. Which sentence about the budget line is NOT TRUE?| A．It is a limitation of affordability for a given budget and specific goods. |
| B．Most costumers will be confused with this concept because of its complex. |
| C．It is the effectively a map of future expenditures. |
| D．It can be expressed as a mathematical equation. |
| A．To tell us any concept can be expressed as a mathematical equation. |
| B．To help us figure out the meaning Budget Line. |
| C．To tell us we should budget before we buy goods. |
| D．To give an instruction of drawing a budget Line. |
| A．The maximum number of movies you can see is 10. |
| B．The maximum number of crime novels you can buy is 15. |
| C．You can buy 7 crime novels and see 5 movies. |
| D．You can buy 7 crime novels and see 4 movies. |
| A．Are we really know the economic concept of a budget line? |
| B．The Budget Line as an Economics Concept |
| C．The Budget Line as an Informal Consumer Understanding |
| D．The Complex Concept—Budget Line |
6 . Bitcoin and other so-called cryptocurrencies （加密货币）have been all over the news lately. Apparently, the idea of money that's not tied to a specific bank—or a specific country—is appealing to many. But it's worth remembering that the banking system that we now all live with is just that： A modern invention. Not so long ago, money was almost always created and used locally, and bartering was common. （In fact, it still is common among many online local networks, like the Buy Nothing Project.）.
In the past, money's makeup varied from place to place, depending on what was considered valuable there. So while some of the world's first coins were made from a naturally occurring hybrid of gold and silver called electrum （银金矿），objects other than coins have served as currency, including beads, ivory, livestock, and cowrie shells. In West Africa, bracelets of bronze or copper were used as cash, especially if the transaction was associated with the slave trade there. Throughout the colonial period, tobacco was used to replace coins or paper bills in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, even though it was used elsewhere in the colonies and extensively throughout Europe and the U. K.
Today, on an island in the Pacific, a specific type of shell still serves as currency—and some people there are even hoarding（贮存）it, just like Bitcoin moguls, convinced that one day, it will make them wealthy beyond imagination. On Malaita, the most-populated island that's part of the Solomon Islands, shells are accepted at most places in exchange for goods.
"How much tuna（金枪鱼）you can get for your shells depends on their color and shape," Mary Bruno, a shop owner from the small town of Auki, on Malaita, told Vice. "One strip of darker shells might get you about two cans of smaller tuna, but the red ones are worth more. For the red ones, one strip might get enough tuna to feed a big family for a long time."
Just like a mint that creates coins, there's only one place on the island where the shells, which are polished and strung together to form 3-foot-long ropes, are made. The strips of red, white, and black shells all come from Langa Langa Lagoon, where artificial islands were long-ago built by locals to escape from the island-dwelling cannibals. Once marooned（困住）out on their islands, locals needed a currency to use among themselves, and so the shell currency was born.
Using shells for money was common throughout the Pacific islands as late as the early 1900s, but Malaita is unique in that they are still used today. And just like cryptocurrencies, there are those who think the islanders are smart to invest in this type of money, which is reported to have risen in value over the last three decades. It might seem strange to hoard a bunch of processed, strung-together shells, but what is a pile of dollars? Just a specially printed piece of paper and hemp that we've assigned value to—and probably less durable over time than those shells.
1. According to the passage, which of the following is TRUE?| A．Money was created and was widely used in the world. |
| B．Tobacco was used as coins or paper bills in American in the past. |
| C．The ingredients of world’s first coins may be the combination of gold and silver. |
| D．Using shells for money has been out of date in the world. |
| A．a kind of money that can exchange |
| B．the leaves of a mint plant used fresh or candied |
| C．a place to produce and polish shells |
| D．a factory that produces currency |
| A．Reasonable. | B．Imaginary. |
| C．Convenient. | D．Inventive. |
| A．The History of Bitcoin |
| B．Shells Still Money |
| C．The Currency Is of Great Use |
| D．Some Shells |
Moving a Giant
The logistics of excavating(挖掘)and relocating a town's century-old, living sequoia(红 杉)tree. Inhabitants of Boise, Idaho, watched with trepidation earlier this year as the city's oldest, tallest resident moved two blocks. The 105-year-old sequoia tree serves as a local landmark, not only for its longevity but also because renowned naturalist and Sierra Club cofounder John Muir provided the original seedling. So, when Saint Luke's Health System found that the 10-story-tall conifer(针叶树)stood stood in the way of its planned hospital expansion, officials called tree-moving firm Environmental Design.
The Texas-based company has developed and patented scooping and lifting technology to move massive trees. Weighing in at more than 800,000 pounds, the Boise sequoia is its largest undertaking yet. "I (had) lost enough sleep over this," says David Cox, the company's Western region vice president—and that was before the hospital mentioned the tree's distinguished origin. Before the heavy lifting began, the team assessed the root system and dug a five-foot-deep cylinder, measuring 40 feet in diameter, around the trunk to protect all essential roots. After encapsulating the root ball in wire mesh, the movers allowed the tree to adapt to its new situation for seven months before relocating it. The illustration details what followed. —Leslie Nemo
1. Mark A. Merit and his team at Environmental Design installed underneath the root ball a platform of seven-inch-diameter, 44-foot-long steelbars and, just below the rods, a first set of uninflated airbags (shown in gray). The team also dug a shallow ramp.
2. In roughly 15 minutes, the movers inflated the airbags to about three feet in diameter to raise the root ball to the surface of the hole.
3. By underinflating the front bags, the team allowed the platform carrying the tree to roll up the ramp and out of the hole while staying level. A trailer hauled the tree along as team members removed the airbags from the back of the platform and replaced them in the front. They repeated the process until the tree arrived at the edge of its new home.
4. There a second set of partially inflated bags (shown in white) waited inside the hole. Soil surrounding the sequoia in its original location was relocated as well, because trees are more likely to survive a transplant when they move with their original soil.
5. Using the first set of airbags, the movers rolled the platform into the new hole.
6. The bags waiting there were then inflated further to take the weight of the sequoia while the transportation bags were deflated and removed from under the tree.
7. The white bags were then deflated in about half an hour to lower the sequoia's root ball to the bottom of its hole. The bags were removed, but the metal bars were left with the tree because they rust and degrade over a number of years.
8. For the next five years the local park service will monitor and maintain the tree in its new home.
1. Which of the following words can be used to replace the words underlined " stood in the way of" ?| A．Resisted. | B．Balanced. |
| C．Blocked. | D．Promoted. |
| A．Because the Scooping and lifting technology should be put into use. |
| B．Because it blocks local hospital expansion plans. |
| C．Because it corresponds to government’s plan of Environmental Design. |
| D．Because sequoia trees are over a hundred years old. |
| A．They will be given new soil in the new living environment. |
| B．Metal rods used to move sequoia trees will not be left on the trees. |
| C．They will be kept in transport bags all the time. |
| D．They will be managed by specialists in the next five years. |
8 . A new study has found no evidence that sunscreen, commonly used to reduce the risk of skin cancer, actually increases the risk.
Researchers from the University of Iowa based their findings on a review of 18 earlier studies that looked at the associstion between sunscreen use and melanoms(黑素瘤). They said that they found flaws in studies that had reported associations between sunscreen use and higher risk of melanoma.
Most health experts believe that by protecting the skin from the harmful effects of the sun, sunscreen helps prevent skin cancer, which is increasing in incidence (发生率) faster than any other cancer in the United States.
But questions have been raised about sunscreen and whether it may have the opposite effect, perhaps by allowing people to remain exposed to the sun longer without burning.
The researchers said that among the problems with some earlier studies is that they often failed to take into account that those people most at risk for skin cancer—people with fair skin and freckles（雀斑）, for example—are more likely to use sunscreen. As a result, it may appear that sunscreen users get cancer more often.
The studies, which generally relied on volunteers to recall their sunscreen use, were also unable to prove how well the products had been applied, said the new study.
1. What is the meaning of the underlined word “flaws” in the 2nd paragraph?| A．Evidences | B．Facts | C．Faults | D．Failures |
| A．They seldom use sunscreen. |
| B．They are more in danger of skin cancer. |
| C．They can be free from the harm of the sun. |
| D．They often expose themselves to the sun. |
| A．Sunscreen users get skin cancer more often. |
| B．The volunteers have proved the effect of sunscreen. |
| C．The new study was based on the experiences of volunteers. |
| D．The number of skin cancer patients is increasing in America. |
| A．Sunscreen to Prevent Skin Cancer |
| B．Sunscreen to Increase Skin Cancer |
| C．Skin Cancer Caused by Sunscreen |
| D．Skin Cancer Caused by Freckles |
9 . Cloud computing will be in use by about 80 percent of about 600 companies. The trend suggests that data management and storage are moving to cloud computing sellers on a large scale.
Touting(兜售)cloud computing as a way to get rid of the costs of buying and maintain in on-site information-technology equipment, sellers offer it in the form of Software AsA. Service(SAAS), a delivery model in which software applications are delivered to customers over a web-based network. SAAS can serve the needs of entire companies through huge, web-based platforms. As cloud computing rapidly bccomes the delivery channel for software developers of all shapes and sizes to get their products to market, offering applications in a cloud is now the rule not the exception. A. relatively small number of sellers are able to offer SAAS to big companies that want company-wide cloud computing, and only the sellers need apply. Although market-share data are hard to come by, the list of company’s large enough to offer cloud-computing on this scale is short: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Rackspace and not many others.
The concentration of data and virtual (虚拟)computing in the hands of relatively few sellers raises an important risk for their customers if the Internet-based systems of any one seller are hacked, the result could be security problems across entire industries in which their customers do
Can this small group of cloud-computing sellers effectively respond to the needs of their customers to quickly fix such a problem and, most importantly, cut off the damage to these companies' own customers? Don't think such things can't happen. If hackers can penetrate the Department of Defense, the risk that they will penetrate Microsoft or google cannot be ruled out Compromise of just one of these sellers---even one with a modest market share---possibly could shut down, at least temporarily, a sizable part of the U. S. economy.
1. What can cloud computing do？| A．Reduce the cost of computers. |
| B．Provide software service. |
| C．Market various products. |
| D．Help companies design websites. |
| A．It works under SAAS. |
| B．It covers a large part of market-share. |
| C．Most companies can provide it. |
| D．Most sellers apply for it. |
| A．To warn people of the hackers' power. |
| B．To show relationship between it and microsoft. |
| C．To give an example of the country's loss. |
| D．To present the real picture of the U.S.economy. |
| A．The Unthinkable risks of the cloud. |
| B．Cloud Computing and Smart Sellers. |
| C．SAAS and changing Companies. |
| D．The Cloud Computing Age. |
10 . Liverpool's weekend Culture Guide is bursting with new music, family fun and a side order of food and drink． We've prepared a handy guide in the coming months here．
Alan McGee's 359 at District﹣Friday February 7，8 pm，£5
Blending classic rock and roll and swaggering Liverpool melodies， they've just returned from London to rave reviews．
Joining them are garage rockers Go Fiasco， Comwall's Black Tambourines and Lcon Fender Walker．
Children's International Festival， Underwater Street， Cunard Building， Pier Head﹣ Sat﹣Sunday，10 am﹣5 pm． £4 Adults， £11 Children
A. fun﹣filled activity day for children at the Underwater Street Discovery Centre．
Activities include face﹣painting Bollywood dance workshops and beautiful box making．
The Children International Festival is encouraged for all ages and to entertain even the adults in various creative workshops．
Wirral Chinese Association City Rendezvous Restaurant， Columbus Quay﹣Sunday
February 9， 11： 30 am
Head to the City rendezvous restaurant on Sunday for some unique oriental entertainment．
Expert lion dancing， traditional Chinese folk dancing， live music， a raffle﹣and a visit from the money god．
The Wirral Chinese association will be hosting in the heart of the restaurant on Columbus Quay．For more details call Henry on 0151 666 4547．
Soccer In The City at Steble Fountain outside the Walker A.rt Gallery﹣﹣﹣﹣Sunday， February 9，10am， £15
Soccer In The City offers a fascinating insight into the relationship between the city of Liverpool，its citizens and soccer，the beautiful game．
There are two tours，Standard Tour& Matchday Tour．
People are asked to arrive 15 minutes before tours start． bear in mind your tour will involve some short spells of walking there is no stop planned for toilets or snacks for the first hour and you might need an umbrella!
Find out more by contacting Peter on 07954373549 and visiting www．soccerinthecity．co．uk．
1. What is Alan McGee's show about?| A．Sports． |
| B．Food． |
| C．Music． |
| D．Car racing． |
| A．At Steble fountain． |
| B．In City rendezvous restaurant． |
| C．On Columbus Quay． |
| D．In Cunard Building． |
| A．Lion dancing． |
| B．Soccer. |
| C．Face﹣painting． |
| D．Box making． |
| A．Hhenry． |
| B．Peter． |
| C．Leon． |
| D．Alan． |
