1 . Google Cloud is racing to roll out new features and services aimed at helping its customers maintain business during the coronavirus pandemic, including a new security product expected to launch Tuesday. The new security product includes technology that could attract more businesses, especially those in highly regulated industries, to adopt cloud services. The technology protects data while it is being processed. “We wanted people comfortable in knowing they can move to the cloud and don’t have to worry about the security of their data,” said Mr. Kurian, chief executive of the unit.
Google Cloud accelerated the development of several features for its virtual meeting product, Google Meet, in April, including one that automatically filters out background noises such as keystrokes and dog barks. Another feature automatically adjusts a user’s video with lighting variations. In 2018, the company launched an AI tool for manufactures that automatically inspects products for quality.
Google Cloud also benefited from the protocols(协议) for Black Friday, when shopping websites see a rush of online shoppers, to deal with sudden more demand for cloud services. The protocols benefited the customers in online videogames, government services, education and shopping, who needed assistance in more computing capacity.
Also, the protocols benefited many companies. Godbole, chief information officer for home improvement company Lowe’s Cos., worked with Mr. Kurian and his team in March and April to manage increased business. Lowe’s customers were doubling on projects such as those related to home offices during those months, and “Our company saw tremendous demand,” Ms. Godbole said.
The coronavirus pandemic presented a new opportunity for Google Cloud to prove its value for customers, said Plummer, chief of research for cloud computing. “Google Cloud aims to differentiate itself by being known as a provider that can handle unpredictable events,” Mr. Plummer said. It aims to do that by offering secure remote-work tools and software development tools that require minimal coding. “Trust is built in times of crisis,” he said.
1. During the coronavirus pandemic, Google Cloud is working hard to ________.| A．start more highly regulated businesses. |
| B．help customers to save more money. |
| C．make people move to the cloud more safely. |
| D．remove data while it is being processed. |
| A．Produces. | B．Breaks. | C．Matches. | D．Removes. |
| A．To show the market needs the new products of Google Cloud. |
| B．To share the experience of Ms. Godbole’s company. |
| C．To offer an example of running a company in times of crisis. |
| D．To encourage people to follow the step of Godbole. |
| A．Insufficient. | B．Reliable. | C．Unpredictable. | D．Complex. |
2 . Last year, 138,000 San Francisco residents used Airbnb, a popular app designed to connect home renters and travelers. It’s a striking number for a city with a population of about 850,000, and it was enough for Airbnb to win a major victory in local elections, as San Francisco voters struck down a debatable rule that would have placed time restrictions and other regulations on short-term rental services.
The company fiercely opposed the measure, Proposition F, with a nearly $10 million advertising campaign. It also contacted its San Franciscan users with messages urging them to vote against Proposition F.
Most people think of Airbnb as a kind of couch-surfing app. The service works for one-night stays on road trips and longer stays in cities, and it often has more competitive pricing than hotels. It’s a textbook example of the “sharing economy”, but not everyone is a fan.
The app has had unintended consequences in San Francisco. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last year, a significant amount of renting on Airbnb is not in line with the company’s image: middle-class families putting up a spare room to help make ends meet. Some users have taken advantage of the service, using it to turn their multiple properties into vacation rentals or even full-time rentals. Backers of Proposition F argued that this trend takes spaces off the conventional, better-regulated housing market and contributes to rising costs.
“The fact is, widespread abuse of short-term rentals is taking much needed housing off the market and harming our neighborhoods,” said ShareBetter SF, a group that supported Proposition F. Hotel unions have protested the company’s practices in San Francisco and other cities, saying that it creates an illegal hotel system.
San Francisco is in the middle of a long-term, deeply rooted housing crisis that has seen the cost of living explode. Actually, explode is a generous term. The average monthly rent for an apartment is around $4, 000. Located on a narrow outcropping of land overlooking the bay, San Francisco simply doesn’t have enough space to accommodate the massive inflow of young, high-salaried tech employees flocking to Silicon Valley.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, some San Francisco residents supported the measure simply because it seemed like a way to check a big corporation. Opponents of Proposition F countered that the housing crisis runs much deeper, and that passing the rule would have discouraged a popular service while doing little to solve the city’s existing problems.
1. The intention of Proposition F is to ________.| A．place time limits in local election. | B．set limits on short-term rental. |
| C．strike down a controversial rule. | D．urge users to vote against Airbnb. |
| A．It shrinks the living space of middle-class families. |
| B．Users are taken advantage of by the service financially. |
| C．It makes the house market more competitive. |
| D．It indirectly leads to high house rental price. |
| A．explosion of the living cost | B．its geographic characteristics |
| C．generosity of local enterprises | D．inflow of migrant population |
| A．objective | B．supportive |
| C．negative | D．indifferent |
3 . Masks that helped save lives during the coronavirus pandemic(流行病) are proving a deadly danger for wildlife, with birds and marine creatures trapped in the incredible number of abandoned facial coverings littering on animal habitats.
Single-use surgical masks have been found thrown around pavements, waterways and beaches worldwide since countries began demanding their use in public places to slow the pandemic's spread. Macaques(猕猴) have been spotted chewing the straps(带子) off old and deserted masks in Malaysia a potential choking danger for the little monkeys. And in an incident that captured headlines in Britain, a gull(海鸥) was rescued in the city of Chelmsford after its legs became tangled（缠结）in the straps of a disposable mask for up to a week. The animal welfare charity was alerted after the bird was spotted motionless but still alive, and they took it to a wildlife hospital for treatment before its release.
The biggest impact may be in the water.More than l. 5 billion masks made their way into the world's oceans last year. accounting for around 6,200 extra tons of marine plastic pollution, according to environmental group OceansAsia. ? Already there are signs that masks are worsening threats to marine life. Conservationists in Brazil found one inside the stomach of a penguin after its body was washed up on a beach, while a dead pufferfish(河豚) was discovered caught inside another off the coast of Miami.
Masks and gloves are "particularly problematic" for sea creatures，says George Leonard, chief scientist from U. S. -based NGO Ocean Conservancy. "When it takes those plastics hundreds of years to break down in the environment, they form smaller and smaller particles," he added, "those particles then enter the food chain and impact entire ecosystems."
Fortunately, there has been a shift towards greater use of reusable cloth masks as the pandemic has worn on，but many are still choosing the lighter single- use varieties.Campaigners have urged people to throw away them properly and remove the straps to reduce the risk of animals becoming trapped. Oceans Asia has also called on governments to increase fines for littering and encourage the use of washable masks.
1. What role do masks play during the coronavirus pandemic?| A．They keep people free of the pandemic |
| B．They make people look more mysterious. |
| C．They help reduce the speed of the pandemic's spread. |
| D．They are of great helpful to wildlife. |
| A．The animals lack enough food |
| B．T hey enjoy playing with the straps |
| C．The deserted masks put them in danger |
| D．It's time for people to protect the animals |
| A．Marine creatures are in trouble. |
| B．Masks and gloves will finally threaten the whole ecosystems. |
| C．The plastics are easy to break down. |
| D．The particles masks and gloves form are smaller and smaller. |
| A．Animal protection |
| B．Marine plastic pollution |
| C．How to reduce the risk of abandoned masks |
| D．The deserted masks endangering wildlife |
4 . When we buy something new, we get rid of what’s old. That cycle of consumption（消费）has made electronics waste the world’s fastest-growing solid-waste stream, which is expected to grow as the world upgrades to 5G. However, less than a quarter of U. S. electronic waste is recycled, the rest ending up as rubbish, posing environmental risks.
Part of the problem concerns rule. In states without laws banning (禁止) electronics from the regular trash, electronics often end up in garbage. Even when e-waste rules exist, it’s left to consumers to handle their old devices properly. But recycling them can be a pain. People have to take their electronics to a store, which may pay them for it or charge them to get rid of it. Many consumers simply throw their devices into the trash or throw them in a drawer.
One solution is to make electronics last as long as they once did. Yet, technology companies are speeding the pace of being deserted. “It’s a strategy by producers to force us into shorter upgrade cycles,” said Kyle Wiens, the founder of iFixit, which publishes do-it-yourself repair guides.
Some environmental groups say big companies like Apple and Samsung should pick up the cost of recycling the devices they sell. Lawmakers have passed Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws, which require producers to establish and fund systems to recycle or collect deserted products.
Some companies are increasing their recycling efforts on their own. For example, Apple in 2018 introduced Daisy, a smartphone-recycling robot that can take apart 200 iPhones every hour. But that's a drop in the bucket compared with the 50 million tons of e-waste produced globally last year.
1. Which of the following statements is true?| A．A large number of electronics end up as waste. |
| B．E-waste problems will be solved if laws are made. |
| C．Most people prefer to sell their old electronics to stores. |
| D．E-waste is the biggest threat to environment. |
| A．are trying to collect their deserted products |
| B．have a short life cycle because of the market |
| C．intend to shorten the life cycle of products |
| D．struggle to provide goods with good quality |
| A．Positive. | B．Unconcerned. | C．Confident. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Choice for Recycled Electronics |
| B．Solutions to the Mountain of E-waste |
| C．Bad Effects of E-waste on the Environment |
| D．Companies on Duty for Nature Protection |
5 . In recent years computer scientists have come up with several different ways of creating false videos of people using Artificial Intelligence (AI). These videos are usually called “deepfakes”. Some deepfakes work by putting the face of one person onto a different person in a video. Others work by taking an existing video of a person and changing it so that the person says or does something they didn't say or do.
At first, creating deepfakes was complex. It required special knowledge, hundreds of pictures of the person who was being faked, and lots of time. Now it's much simpler. There are websites and apps that allow almost anyone to create deepfakes. An app recently came out which allowed users to put their faces into famous movie scenes. The process lakes about eight seconds, requires one picture, and can be done on a mobile phone. One group of computer scientists created a program that allowed them to edit the words conning out of someone's mouth in a video just like you might edit a document on the computer.
It's one thing to swap the faces of famous actors. But what happens if someone puts out a fake video of a politician, for example, making it look like they broke the law? There's also the problem of the time it takes to figure out that something is fake. Even if a video is proven to be fake, it could be too late. Millions of people might have already seen and believed it. On the other hand, what happens if a video is actually real, but people don't trust it because they're told it's a deepfake?
Many deepfakes are so good that only another AI system can tell that they're fake. Experts are working hard to create new AI tools that can identify faked videos. Many people are confident that people can defeat deepfakes soon. However, personally, it is very challenging because this technology has always fallen behind the deepfakes.
1. What can be learnt about deepfakes?| A．They are all made by apps. | B．They are improving rapidly. |
| C．They are mainly used to joke. | D．They'll lose popularity soon. |
| A．The anxieties raised by them. | B．The results caused by them. |
| C．The ways of making them. | D．The doubts about them. |
| A．Optimistic. | B．Supportive. | C．Disapproving. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．To recommend new AI tools. | B．To explain the importance of AL |
| C．To describe a technology trend. | D．To stress technology revolutions. |
6 . The world can be a scary place when you' re young. It can be even scarier when you' re a young little blue penguin(企鹅) , the tiniest of the penguin species. Luckily, there are some humans willing to help. They stepped in to protect Billy, a blue penguin that appeared on a beach in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Spotted on November 29 at the slipway at Moncks Bay, near Sumner，in Christchurch，the little penguin immediately attracted a small crowd. Jeff Mein Smith saw the crowd while he was bicycling that afternoon, and he biked home to get his camera. When he returned to the scene，he found that the penguin had received a little sign, one that read “Hi, I'm waiting for my mum to come back. DOC(Department of Conservation) knows I'm here. Please leave me alone. Keep your dog away. Thanks, Billy the baby blue penguin.”
Billy didn't move away from the sign. The DOC arrived later that afternoon to pick up Billy, though they were surprised to see it on the beach. “It's unusual for a blue penguin to be out in the open on the beach during the day, ”Anita Spencer, a DOC senior ranger, told Stuff.
Billy was taken to the Christchurch Penguin Rehabilitation Center after being retrieved from the beach. Volunteers believe the bird may actually be a female penguin, and is around 2 months old. The chick weighs a mere 550 grams, less than a standard basketball. A blue penguin should weigh around 900 grams at this age. Most little penguins grow up to weigh 1 kilogram.
The center will help the little penguin gain some weight by feeding it fish juice, before it's set free into the ocean.
1. Why can the world be frightening to a young penguin?| A．It is a rare species. |
| B．It faces potential danger. |
| C．It is surrounded by the crowd. |
| D．It is threatened by dogs. |
| A．is a male penguin |
| B．has expressed its thanks |
| C．weighs less for its age |
| D．prefers living on the beach |
| A．Ignored. | B．Cured. |
| C．Given away. | D．Brought back. |
| A．It will be reported to Stuff. |
| B．It will be visited by the locals. |
| C．It will be taken good care of. |
| D．It will be fed with fruit juice. |
7 . Bird pattern carved on Yubi in Chinese, comes alive and circles around, while an audio guide introduces the cultural relic and the bird’s connotation (寓意). Such is the experience of watching a cultural relic through a pair of augmented reality (AR) glasses at the Liangzhu Museum.
The museum displays various burial objects found in the Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City in Hangzhou, showcasing the civilization of prehistoric rice agriculture and a state-level society between 3,300 B.C. and 2,300 B.C. The site was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2019, providing profound and compelling evidence that Chinese civilization started 5,000 years ago.
Using AR to tell Liangzhu’s ancient story and let the young people sense and feel close to cultural relics through modern technology is an important task at the museum, making it a pioneer in using modern technology and a hot place for tourists.
“I found that most students were very curious about it, and it could inspire students to have the desire to learn more,” said Chen Xi, the AR glasses provider. “I’ve never seen this before. The illustration of the ancient wild birds above is not that clear. But with the AR glasses, I know what the ancient wild bird exactly looks like and how it is different from what we see on TV,” said Rong Mei, a visitor in her twenties. “Compared with traditional ways of appreciating a cultural relic, AR glasses guide has virtual images which help people visually understand the information behind the relic, such as in which life scenarios was the relic used, its function and its cultural connotation,” said Zhou Liming, director of the Liangzhu Museum.
From digitalization to intelligentization (智能化), the Liangzhu Museum took more than five years. It started to collect the digital information of the ruins and relics since 2015. It paves the way for the museum to deliver Liangzhu’s story through multimedia approaches to attract more people, especially the youth, as modern technology bridges the gap between young people and cultural relics.
1. What is the crucial significance of Liangzhu cultural relics?| A．Unearthing various prehistoric burial objects. |
| B．Representing the world’s earliest rice culture. |
| C．Enriching the UNESCO World Heritage List. |
| D．Confirming China’s 5,000-year-old civilization. |
| A．To inspire the curiosity of students. |
| B．To show the aim and effects of using AR glasses. |
| C．To highlight hi-tech brings people close to cultural relics. |
| D．To present opinions of appreciating cultural relics vary. |
| A．The discovery of the cultural relics. |
| B．The restoration of the ruins and relics. |
| C．The process of forming intelligentization. |
| D．The reconstruction of the Liangzhu Museum. |
| A．Stories behind the AR Glasses |
| B．Adventures in Liangzhu Museum |
| C．A New Chapter for Liangzhu Museum |
| D．An Encounter with the Prehistoric China |
8 . Apple revealed new ways to discover and organize apps, confirmed a significant change and announced a new feature that will let users unlock their cars with their smartphones.
The updates, announced at Apple (AAPL)’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, highlight the company’s continued effort to involve itself into seemingly every corner of our lives, from our cars and living rooms to our personal health, while also facing the potential for app tiredness more than a decade after the App Store launched.
The company kicked off the event by focusing on iOS 14, the upcoming operating system for the iPhone. As part of its presentation, Apple unveiled a new feature called App Library, which automatically organizes the apps on your homescreen so you don’t have to scroll (滚屏) through several pages.
Apple also developed a more perfect way to discover and access new apps. The feature, called App Clips, offers a small part of an app for use at the moment it’s needed, whether it’s for ordering a scooter on demand or food from a restaurant. These apps are small in size and connect with Apple Pay. Users can then decide to download the full version of the app from the App Store.
At the same time, Apple attempted to demonstrate the still undeveloped potential of the iPhone, which remains its chief moneymaker. Having already turned the iPhone into a digital credit card, Apple now has plans to make it a digital car key. A new feature, called Carkey, will initially be available with the new 2021 BMW 5 series.
1. How many new features are mentioned in the text?| A．Two. | B．Three. | C．Four. | D．Five. |
| A．Produced. | B．Developed. | C．Issued. | D．Downloaded. |
| A．App Library. | B．App Clips. | C．Carkey. | D．Apple Watch. |
| A．Users can start their cars with Carkey. |
| B．Apples has already used iOS 14 for the iPhone. |
| C．Users still need to scroll the screen with an App Library. |
| D．Apple makes profit mainly from its undeveloped potential of the iPhone. |
9 . For years, I was in the rat race, my sense of wonder lost. Gardening was my antidote (解毒药). It gave me time to stop, listen and absorb all the little details that nature has to offer—nurturing the earth, plants and myself to fight against the aggression and tiredness of everyday working life.
I quit my job and had a vision for my company. I wanted others to find the comfort that my garden gave me. Now, I watch my clients experience their own transformations. A corner that was once an unwelcoming place of weeds is a child's play area; a lonely person has an inspiring, evolving view.
Gardening requires us to be present in the moment, while also imagining the future. You may see a beautiful flower and surprise for a minute at the magic of nature. Some flowers last for a day, others for a season. Some come back year after year. Seasons pass and you become connected to the changes in life in a deeper, more spiritual way. This builds acceptance.
Where there once may have been beauty, there might now be an empty space and a deep sense of sadness... But gardening brings hope—we can create something beautiful again and that space will no longer be bare.
Hope is one of many emotions stirred by gardening. Whether you're growing vegetables to eat, planting tiny seeds or tending flowers, there is always a great sense of satisfaction at the end of a session. How you choose to garden is deeply personal to you—it's about creating something fruitful, alone or with others.
The key is to have a vision, ideas and bright hopes for the future.
1. What does the underlined phrase "the rat race" refer to?| A．The fierce race among rats. | B．The tiredness of the family. |
| C．The competitive working life. | D．The bad relationship with neighbors. |
| A．It helps to develop a take-it-as-it-is attitude. |
| B．It relieves anxiety about losing the job. |
| C．It releases her loneliness and depression. |
| D．It teaches her a lot of sowing knowledge. |
| A．It's beautiful. | B．It's rewarding. |
| C．It's depressing. | D．It's cooperative. |
| A．Gardening for Fun | B．A Sense of Wonder |
| C．Sowing Seeds of Hope | D．A Vision for the Future |
10 . We humans used to think that our ability to use tools made us different from all other animals. But then we found out that chimps use tools, too, such as sticks to gather distant snacks and rocks to hammer open nuts. And some birds use tools — like brainy New Caledonian crows (乌鸦), which can collect multipart tools to solve puzzle boxes presented to them by researchers.
Now we’ve learned that a different group of birds — seabirds — can also use tools. Scientists spied on Atlantic puffins, the distinctive birds with bright orange beaks (鸟喙). And in 2014 the observers spotted one floating on the sea off Wales, scratching (抓挠) its back with a stick. Then, in 2018, the researchers caught another tool-using puffin on camera, on Iceland’s Grímsey Island. In the short video clip, a puffin can be seen grabbing a stick with its beak and then using it to scratch its chest — perhaps to remove one of the seabird ticks (蜱虫) living on the island that summer.
The details about puffins’ superb ability are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Study author Annette Fayet told Scientific American in an e-mail that these two instances don’t prove that seabirds are highly intelligent — though they could be smarter than we thought. But what is certain, she says, is that puffin populations are crashing, and it’s largely the fault of us and our tools — which have led to overfishing, climate change, marine pollution and the presence of invasive species, all of which make seabird life harder. It would be nice to keep puffins and other birds around and find out just what else we don’t know that they’re able to do.
1. What do we know from the first paragraph?| A．Chimps are smarter than other animals. |
| B．Crows are the cleverest birds in the world. |
| C．Some animals are smarter than originally thought. |
| D．Mammals and birds are cleverer than other species. |
| A．To float on the water. | B．To treat some diseases. |
| C．To kill island insects. | D．To make use of a stick. |
| A．They possess high intelligence. |
| B．They have been endangered for long. |
| C．Their number is decreasing very fast. |
| D．Their existence affects other sea animals. |
| A．It is necessary to protect seabirds like puffins. |
| B．Humans are to blame for some species’ extinction. |
| C．Scientists have known more than they need about birds. |
| D．Enough evidence has been collected to prove puffins’ value. |
