1 . Summer Activities
Students should read the list with their parents/careers, and select two activities they would like to do. Forms will be available in school and online for them to indicate their choices and return to school. Before choices are finalised, parents/careers will be asked to sign to confirm their child’s choices.
Activity | Description | Member of staff | Cost |
Outdoor Adventure (OUT) | Take yourself out of your comfort zone for a week, discover new personal qualities, and learn new skills. You will be able to take part in a number of activities from canoeing to wild camping on Dartmoor. Learn rock climbing and work as a team, and enjoy the great outdoor environment. | Mr. Clemens | £140 |
WWI Battlefields and Paris (WBP) | On Monday we travel to London. After staying overnight in London, we travel on Day 2 to northern France to visit the World War I battlefields. On Day 3 we cross into Belgium. Thursday sees us make the short journey to Paris where we will visit Disneyland Paris park, staying until late to see the parade and the fireworks. Our final day, Friday, sees us visit central Paris and tour the main sights. | Mrs. Wilson | £425 |
Crafty Foxes (CRF) | Four days of product design centred around textiles. Making lovely objects using recycled and made materials. Bags, cushions and decorations...Learn skills and leave with modern and unusual textiles. | Mrs. Goode | £30 |
Potty about Potter (POT) | Visit Warner Bros Studio, shop stop to buy picnic, stay overnight in an approved Youth Hostel in Streatley-on-Thames, guided tour of Oxford to see the film locations, picnic lunch outside Oxford’s Christchurch, boating on the River Cherwell through the University Parks, before heading back to Exeter. | Miss Drake | £150 |
| A．OUT | B．WBP | C．CRF | D．POT |
2 . Monkeys seem to have a way with numbers.
A team of researchers trained three Rhesus monkeys to associate 26 clearly different symbols consisting of numbers and selective letters with 0-25 drops of water or juice as a reward. The researchers then tested how the monkeys combined—or added—the symbols to get the reward.
Here’s how Harvard Medical School scientist Margaret Livingstone, who led the team, described the experiment: In their cages the monkeys were provided with touch screens. On one part of the screen, a symbol would appear, and on the other side two symbols inside a circle were shown. For example, the number 7 would flash on one side of the screen and the other end would have 9 and 8. If the monkeys touched the left side of the screen they would be rewarded with seven drops of water or juice; if they went for the circle, they would be rewarded with the sum of the numbers—17 in this example.
After running hundreds of tests, the researchers noted that the monkeys would go for the higher values more than half the time, indicating that they were performing a calculation, not just memorizing the value of each combination.
When the team examined the results of the experiment more closely, they noticed that the monkeys tended to underestimate(低估) a sum compared with a single symbol when the two were close in value—sometimes choosing, for example, a 13 over the sum of 8 and 6. The underestimation was systematic: When adding two numbers, the monkeys always paid attention to the larger of the two, and then added only a fraction(小部分) of the smaller number to it.
“This indicates that there is a certain way quantity is represented in their brains, ”Dr. Livingstone says. “But in this experiment what they’re doing is paying more attention to the big number than the little one.”
How did the monkeys get their reward in the experiment?| A．By drawing a circle. |
| B．By touching a screen. |
| C．By watching videos. |
| D．By mixing two drinks. |
3 . Before the 1830s, most newspapers were sold through annual subscriptions in America, usually $8 to $10 a year. Today $8 or $10 seems a small amount of money, but at that time these amounts were forbidding to most citizens. Accordingly, newspapers were read almost only by rich people in politics or the trades. In addition, most newspapers had little in them that would appeal to a mass audience. They were dull and visually forbidding. But the revolution that was taking place in the 1830s would change all that.
The trend, then, was toward the “penny paper”—a term referring to papers made widely available to the public. It meant any inexpensive newspaper; perhaps more importantly it meant newspapers that could be bought in single copies on the street.
This development did not take place overnight. It had been possible(but not easy) to buy single copies of newspapers before 1830, but this usually meant the reader had to go down to the printer’s office to purchase a copy. Street sales were almost unknown. However, within a few years, street sales of newspapers would be commonplace in eastern cities. At first the price of single copies was seldom a penny—usually two or three cents was charged—and some of the older well-known papers charged five or six cents. But the phrase “penny paper” caught the public’s fancy, and soon there would be papers that did indeed sell for only a penny.
This new trend of newspapers for “the man on the street” did not begin well. Some of the early ventures (企业) were immediate failures. Publishers already in business, people who were owners of successful papers, had little desire to change the tradition. It took a few youthful and daring businessmen to get the ball rolling.
Who were the newspapers of the new trend targeted at?| A．Local politicians. |
| B．Common people. |
| C．Young publishers. |
| D．Rich businessmen. |
4 . 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. |
5 . OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS
Animals Out of PaperYolo! Productions and the Great Griffon present the play by Rajiv Joseph, in which an origami (折纸术) artist invites a teenage talent and his teacher into her studio. Merri Milwe directs. In previews. Opens Feb. 12. (West Park Presbyterian Church, 165 W. 86th St. 212-868-4444.)
The AudienceHelen Mirren stars in the play by Peter Morgan, about Queen Elizabeth II of the UK and her private meetings with twelve Prime Ministers in the course of sixty years. Stephen Daldry directs. Also starring Dylan Baker and Judith Ivey. Previews begin Feb. 14. (Schoenfeld, 236 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200.)
HamiltonLin-Manuel Miranda wrote this musical about Alexander Hamilton, in which the birth of America is presented as an immigrant story. Thomas Kail directs. In previews. Opens Feb. 17. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.)
On the Twentieth CenturyKristin Chenoweth and Peter Gallagher star in the musical comedy by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, about a Broadway producer who tries to win a movie star’s love during a cross-country train journey. Scott Ellis directs, for Roundabout Theatre Company. Previews begin Feb. 12. (American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300.)
Which play will you go to if you are interested in American history?| A．Animals Out of Paper. |
| B．The Audience. |
| C．Hamilton. |
| D．On the Twentieth Century. |
6 . Monkeys seem to have a way with numbers.
A team of researchers trained three Rhesus monkeys to associate 26 clearly different symbols consisting of numbers and selective letters with 0-25 drops of water or juice as a reward. The researchers then tested how the monkeys combined—or added—the symbols to get the reward.
Here’s how Harvard Medical School scientist Margaret Livingstone, who led the team, described the experiment: In their cages the monkeys were provided with touch screens. On one part of the screen, a symbol would appear, and on the other side two symbols inside a circle were shown. For example, the number 7 would flash on one side of the screen and the other end would have 9 and 8. If the monkeys touched the left side of the screen they would be rewarded with seven drops of water or juice; if they went for the circle, they would be rewarded with the sum of the numbers—17 in this example.
After running hundreds of tests, the researchers noted that the monkeys would go for the higher values more than half the time, indicating that they were performing a calculation, not just memorizing the value of each combination.
When the team examined the results of the experiment more closely, they noticed that the monkeys tended to underestimate (低估) a sum compared with a single symbol when the two were close in value—sometimes choosing, for example, a 13 over the sum of 8 and 6. The underestimation was systematic: When adding two numbers, the monkeys always paid attention to the larger of the two, and then added only a fraction (小部分) of the smaller number to it.
“This indicates that there is a certain way quantity is represented in their brains, ”Dr. Livingstone says. “But in this experiment what they’re doing is paying more attention to the big number than the little one.”
1. What did the researchers do to the monkeys before testing them?| A．They fed them. |
| B．They named them. |
| C．They trained them. |
| D．They measured them. |
| A．They could perform basic addition. |
| B．They could understand simple words. |
| C．They could memorize numbers easily. |
| D．They could hold their attention for long. |
7 . As data and identity theft becomes more and more common, the market is growing for biometric(生物测量) technologies—like fingerprint scans—to keep others out of private e-spaces. At present, these technologies are still expensive, though.
Researchers from Georgia Tech say that they have come up with a low-cost device(装置) that gets around this problem: a smart keyboard. This smart keyboard precisely measures the cadence(节奏) with which one types and the pressure fingers apply to each key. The keyboard could offer a strong layer of security by analyzing things like the force of a user’s typing and the time between key presses. These patterns are unique to each person. Thus, the keyboard can determine people’s identities, and by extension, whether they should be given access to the computer it’s connected to—regardless of whether someone gets the password right.
It also doesn’t require a new type of technology that people aren’t already familiar with. Everybody uses a keyboard and everybody types differently.
In a study describing the technology, the researchers had 100 volunteers type the word “touch” four times using the smart keyboard. Data collected from the device could be used to recognize different participants based on how they typed, with very low error rates. The researchers say that the keyboard should be pretty straightforward to commercialize and is mostly made of inexpensive, plastic-like parts. The team hopes to make it to market in the near future.
Why do the researchers develop the smart keyboard?| A．To reduce pressure on keys. |
| B．To improve accuracy in typing. |
| C．To replace the password system. |
| D．To cut the cost of e-space protection. |
8 . We may think we’re a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices (装置) well after they go out of style. That’s bad news for the environment — and our wallets — as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.
To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life — from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s. Devices were grouped by generation — Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992. Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997. And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.
As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn’t throw out our old ones. “The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids’ room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house,” said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007. We’re not just keeping these old devices — we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt’s team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (排放) more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.
So what’s the solution (解决方案)? The team’s data only went up to 2007, but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.
1. Why did Babbitt’s team conduct the research?| A．To reduce the cost of minerals. |
| B．To test the life cycle of a product. |
| C．To update consumers on new technology. |
| D．To find out electricity consumption of the devices. |
| A．The box-set TV. |
| B．The tablet. |
| C．The LCD TV. |
| D．The desktop computer. |
9 . Languages have been coming and going for thousands of years, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers, small, tightly knit (联系) groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other. Some language experts believe that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just five to ten million people, they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.
Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, trade, industrialization, the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education, especially globalisation and better communications in the past few decades, all have caused many languages to disappear, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.
At present, the world has about 6,800 languages. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages. Often spoken by many people while hot, wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers. Europe has only around 200 Languages: the Americas about 1,000, Africa 2,400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number (中位数) of speakers is a mere 6,000, which means that half the worlds languages are spoken by fewer people than that.
Already well over 400 of the total of 6,800 languages are close to extinction (消亡), with only a few elderly speakers left. Pick, at random, Busuu in Cameroon (eight remaining speakers), Chiapaneco in Mexico(150). Lipan Apache in the United States (two or three) or Wadjigu in Australia (one, with a question-mark): none of these seems to have much chance of survival.
How many languages are spoken by less than 6, 000 people at present?| A．About 6,800. |
| B．About 3,400. |
| C．About 2,400. |
| D．About 1,200. |
10 . Good Morning Britain’s Susanna Reid is used to grilling guests on the sofa every morning, but she is cooking up a storm in her latest role — showing families how to prepare delicious and nutritious meals on a tight budget.
In Save Money: Good Food, she visits a different home each week and with the help of chef Matt Tebbutt offers top tips on how to reduce food waste, while preparing recipes for under £5 per family a day. And the Good Morning Britain presenter says she’s been able to put a lot of what she’s leant into practice in her own home, preparing meals for sons, Sam,14, Finn,13, and Jack, 11.
“We love Mexican churros, so I buy them on my phone from my local Mexican takeaway restaurant,” she explains. “I pay £5 for a portion (一份), but Matt makes them for 26p a portion, because they are flour, water, sugar and oil. Everybody can buy takeaway food, but sometimes we’re not aware how cheaply we can make this food ourselves.”
The eight-part series (系列节自), Save Money: Good Food, follows in the footsteps of ITV’s Save Money: Good Health, which gave viewers advice on how to get value from the vast range of health products on the market.
With food our biggest weekly household expense, Susanna and Matt spend time with a different family each week. In tonight’s Easter special they come to the aid of a family in need of some delicious inspiration on a budget. The team transforms the family’s long weekend of celebration with less expensive but still tasty recipes.
1. What do we know about Susanna Reid?| A．She enjoys embarrassing her guests. |
| B．She has started a new programme. |
| C．She dislikes working early in the morning. |
| D．She has had a light budget for her family. |
| A．He buys cooking materials for her. |
| B．He prepares food for her kids. |
| C．He assists her in cooking matters. |
| D．He invites guest families for her. |
