1 . Twelve-year-old Lydia Denton was recently named the winner of CITGO's Fueling Education Student Challenge, where she earned $20,000 after creating the Beat the Heat Car Seat, which is a portable device placed in the car seat that not only senses weight over five pounds but monitors temperature when the baby is in the seat.
The soon-to-be seventh grader says she became inspired to make the invention after watching the news that babies were being left in hot cars, often by accident.“At first, I thought about raising money for the families, but that wouldn't fix the problem: I wanted to invent something that could prevent the deaths from happening.”
Lydia's device is started when it senses the weight of the child and the temperature setting reaches over 100 F (38℃). At that point, an alarm goes off and a warning is sent via SMS to the parents. If the parents don't reset the device within 60 seconds, a built-in GPS chip sends a message to local authorities with the vehicle's location. After many rounds of testing with her local 911, Lydia is proud to say that Beat the Heat Car Seat is a success.
Though many newer vehicles come with warning systems and smart seat systems, Lydia's goal was to create a device that would reach more people and that could also transfer from car seat to car seat as the child grew. She decided to use her prize money to continue making improvements on the device, which would sell for only about $40.
Lydia is now working with an instructor who is helping her with production and teaching her about business. Lydia hopes that her work will inspire more kids of her age to make their ideas come true. “Don't think that you have to accept things in the world. If there is something that bothers you, think of ways to make it better!”
1. Why did Lydia make the invention?| A．To win 20,000-dollar prize. |
| B．To raise money for unlucky families. |
| C．To help stop babies dying in hot cars. |
| D．To guarantee babies' safety in a car crash. |
| A．How it works. | B．What it consists of. |
| C．Why it raises the alarm. | D．How parents respond to it. |
| A．It will be much stronger. | B．It will be more affordable. |
| C．It will be less problematic. | D．It will be more effective on older kids. |
| A．No competition, no progress. |
| B．It's never too late to go into business. |
| C．One should be open to any suggestion. |
| D．Creative thinking is the key to success. |
2 . These animal dads have some seriously strange ideas about fatherhood.
Barbary macaque
Unlike human dads boasting of their kids' winning contests or college acceptances, barbary macaques, monkeys that are native to North Africa, show off babies as a way to impress each other and build social networks. These monkeys live in troops of about 30 members, and life centers around the babies born each spring.
During baby season, males carry the infants, even picking up little ones that aren’t their own offspring (后代). However, there are status symbols, used to build male social networks and connections within the group. The infants can serve as a social passport, to approach other males and hang out with them. After all, it’s much simpler to break the ice if you have a cute baby in hand.
Sand grouse
Lots of dads bring home the bacon. But for young sand grouses living in Namibia’s dry deserts, water is the essential resource. Sand grouse fathers are the frequent flyers that travel almost 125 miles each day to fill up for the family at a watering hole.
With no other way to transport water, male sand grouses settle in the pool, rocking back and forth to bathe their belly feathers. Filling up can take 15 minutes, leaving them exposed to killers like falcons (猎鹰). But it all pays off. The dads return home after a long day and are able to provide their babies with few precious tablespoons of liquid.
Pipefish
Pregnant pipefish males-yes, males-give birth to live young from eggs that females deposit in their brood pouches (育儿袋). This mothering act has earned them praise as devoted animal dads.
But it turns out that the pregnant pipefish also has a wandering eye. If he sees a bigger female he often aborts (流产) existing eggs. If he stops exporting nutrients to the developing embryos (胚胎) while reabsorbing nutrients from abortions, he assures enough resources to invest in the more rewarding offspring.
Blue poison dart frog
Females of this species lay only about half a dozen precious eggs. That is maybe why dads are so devoted to them. Frog eggs must stay watery or moist, and these devoted dads accomplish that by regularly urinating on them over the course of 10 days, until they hatch (孵化) as tadpoles.
1. Barbary macaques carry their kids around in order to _____.| A．show how proud they are about being a father. |
| B．show their family strength within monkey groups. |
| C．center around their kids as a tradition. |
| D．build up better relations with other monkeys. |
| A．barbary macaque and sand grouse. |
| B．sand grouse and pipefish. |
| C．pipefish and blue poison dart frog. |
| D．sand grouse and blue poison dart frog. |
| A．Sand grouse carries the water by drinking it first and then spitting it out. |
| B．Pipefish gives up some eggs in order to make himself stronger. |
| C．Male blue poison dart frog protects the eggs by keeping them wet. |
| D．Sand grouse has to compete for water with the falcon. |
3 . People around the world participate in various ritualized celebrations. New Year activities included fireworks, and resolutions-as well as some practices unique to specific cultures, such as cooking black-eyed peas and greens in the southeastern United States.
All human cultures have their rituals-typically repetitive, symbolic behaviors that a group of people experience as purposeful; though people generally can’t explain how they are supposed to work. And their diversity can also cause clashes between peoples, particularly when the valued rituals of one culture strike another as strange.
Most scientists who study rituals consider their mysterious origins to be one of their defining characteristics. But recently, researchers have come to realize that before rituals become purely social and highly peculiar, many have started out as attempts to avoid disasters.
Ritualized ways of preparing food or cleaning the body, for example, have emerged as ways to prevent disease. Many rituals also provide psychological comfort during times of hardship. Today, humans are adopting new behaviors although it’s too early to tell whether any of these behaviors will become truly ritualized. It will only be the case when the social significance of the behavior takes precedence over its practical use. This is what sets rituals apart from other cultural practices, such as cooking.
Not all rituals are effective because we don’t always understand what is producing the risk we are trying to control. But some do work. In the Indian state of Bihar, where maternal and infant death rate at birth remains high, 269 rituals are associated with pregnancy and birth. A significant proportion of these rituals, such as preparing the nutritious food, are perfectly in accord with modern medical advice. Many others are likely neutral while the ones, such as bathing the infant immediately after birth, are viewed as risky just because of practical limitations such as a lack of clean water.
The relationship between medicine and rituals is also interesting. “It is important to keep in mind that to most people, the mechanisms of modern medicine are just as opaque as rituals are,” says Legare, an expert. The practices of modern medicine are relatively new. “When a doctor tells you, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do for you, that may be true, but it is very discouraging as well,” Legare says. “Therefore relevant rituals are firmly valued seemingly out of no reasons.”
1. According to the passage, what behavior can be regarded as a cultural ritual?| A．A student habitually conducts reading before sleep every day. |
| B．A family eat dinner at the same restaurant every weekend. |
| C．People eat green dumplings during the Festival of Qingming. |
| D．Many Chinese people used to ride bicycles to work. |
| A．make people get along with people from the same cultural group. |
| B．protect people from potential life threats |
| C．get people to identify with their own culture. |
| D．provide people with values when clashing with people from other cultures. |
| A．Groups with different rituals can basically live together in peace. |
| B．The practical use of a behavior takes priority when it’s to be judged as a ritual. |
| C．Appropriateness of some rituals depends on local conditions. |
| D．When ill, people turn to rituals because they work better than medicine. |
| A．Be cautious of the weird rituals |
| B．Long gone are decayed rituals |
| C．Ritual, the mysterious reflection of human innocence. |
| D．Ritual,there’s a reason for itsexistence. |
4 . When Chef Enrique Olvera opened his restaurant, Pujol, 13 years ago, his only goal was to have the best restaurant in the neighborhood. Olvera's budget was so small that he had to do all the things himself. But Pujol is now widely thought of as Mexico's finest restaurant and the 36th best in the world. He reached his position by making his cuisine 'fancier and fancier, and more complex' over time. Pujol now serves a tasting menu of sophisticated food that wouldn't look out of place even at New York's Momofuku Ko. To decode his rocket soar in world cuisine circus, Olvera insists on mixing elaborate, cutting-edge techniques with a strong emphasis on local ingredients to create a cosmopolitan cuisine that's at once international yet unmistakably Mexican, matching the direction of Mexico City itself.
A visit to the 48-seat Pujol reveals a space-age kitchen containing 27 cooks, with one making his fifth attempt to reshape the egg liquid and another coloring potatoes. Pujol tolerates any grotesque attempt a chef could imagine and the restaurant is the trial site for its staff. That makes Pujol a hot place to attract free labor. The chef has also thought more about bringing Mexican cooks home from the U.S. Many are returning to move past the glass ceiling that exists in America. “Despite the number of Mexicans working in U.S. restaurants, you rarely see a Mexican head chef in a New York kitchen,” said Olvera. “Then why not come back here to attract diners here for the most local but also novel dishes?”
And for foreign diners, Mexican restaurants have another wonder to offer. Just think that merely 30 dollars can sustain you for a 4-course feast in an ordinary Mexican restaurant and no one could resist the temptation. To achieve such high cost performance, Olvera states that you have to keep looking for and exploring with the simple ingredients from which to accomplish amazing dishes. “You always cherish where you come from, but there’s also the need for new sensations. Keep exploring with new ideas until you get a better dish.” After all, it’s the soul of modern cuisine.
1. Why has Pujol become so successful?| A．Because Olvera aimed low in the first place. |
| B．Because Olvera forms the habit of doing things by himself. |
| C．Because Olvera attracts excellent cooks from the U.S. |
| D．Because Olvera combines cooking skills with local characteristics. |
| A．forceful. | B．weird. | C．abstract. | D．painful. |
| A．Because Pujol provides them with high titles and salaries. |
| B．Because they find it hard to rise to senior positions in U.S. restaurants. |
| C．Because they cook Mexican food better than American food. |
| D．Because they refer to the high cost performance of the restaurants. |
| A．Momofuku Ko is a famous food critic. |
| B．Olvera relies totally on foreign cutting-edge cooking techniques. |
| C．Eating in ordinary Mexican restaurants is expensive. |
| D．One key to success in today’s restaurant business is continuous innovation. |
