1 . If spending is a measure of what matters, then the people of the developing world place a high value on brains. While private spending on education has not changed much in the rich world in the past ten years, in China and India it has more than doubled. Since brainpower is the primary generator of progress, this burst of enthusiasm for investing in private education is excellent news for the world. But not everybody is delighted. Because private education increases inequality, some governments are trying to stop its advance. That’s wrong: they should welcome it, and spread its benefits more widely.
① Education used to be provided by religious institutions or entrepreneurs. But when governments, starting in Prussia in the 18th century, got into the business of nation-building, they realized they could use education to shape young minds. As state systems grew, private schooling was left to the elite and the pious(虔诚的). Now it is enjoying popularity again, for several reasons. Incomes are rising, especially among the better off, at the same time as birth rates are falling. In China the former one-child policy means that six people---two parents and four grandparents---can pour money into educating a single child.
② All over the developing world, people want more or better education than governments provide. Where cities are growing at unmanageable speed, the private education is taking up the slack. In India the private education now educates nearly half of all children, in Pakistan more than a third, and in both countries the state education is shrinking. Even where the state does pretty well, as in East Asia, richer people still want better schooling for their children than the masses get. Thus, Vietnam, which has an outstanding state-school system for a poor country, measured by its performance in the OECD’s PISA test, also has the fastest-growing private education.
③ In most ways, this is an excellent thing, because the world is getting more and better schooling.
In rich countries, once the background and ability of the children who attend private schools are taken into account, their exams results are about the same as those in the state education. But in developing countries private schools are better---and much more efficient. A study of eight Indian states found that, in terms of learning outcomes per rupee, private schools were between 1.5 times and 29 times more cost-effective than state schools.
④ They tend to sort children by income, herding richer ones towards better schools that will enhance their already superior life chances. That is one reason why many governments are troubled by their rise.
Governments are right to worry about private education’s contribution to inequality, but they are wrong to discourage its growth. Governments should instead focus on improving the public education by mimicking(模仿) the private education’s virtues. Freedom from independent management is at the root of its superior performance and greater efficiency. Governments should therefore do their best to give school principals more freedom to innovate and to fire underperforming teachers.
To spread the benefit of private schools more widely, governments should work with them, paying for education through vouchers(代金券) which children can spend in private schools. And vouchers should be limited to students in non-selective schools that do not charge top-up fees; otherwise governments will find themselves helping the better off and increasing inequality.
The world faces plenty of problems. Governments should stop behaving as though private education were one of them. It will, rather, increase the chances of finding solutions.
1. What do we know about private education?| A．More developed countries enjoy it. |
| B．It attracts more and more investment. |
| C．Public education will replace it in the future. |
| D．It has helped governments to remove inequality |
| A．Filling the gap. | B．Setting the place. |
| C．Breaking the balance. | D．Avoiding the risk. |
| A．The population in Vietnam is shrinking dramatically. |
| B．Its state education is worse than other developing countries. |
| C．Some people want better education for their children than others. |
| D．The government intends private education to shape young minds. |
| A．① | B．② | C．③ | D．④ |
| A．Train school principals. | B．Sell vouchers to children. |
| C．learn from private education. | D．Fire underperforming teachers. |
| A．Private education should be based on state education. |
| B．Private education should be targeted at well-off families. |
| C．Governments should prevent the spread of private education. |
| D．Governments should celebrate the popularity of private education. |
2 . Making beers on the moon might seem like a pipe dream to many, but for a group of students from the University of California at San Diego, there is a chance to take their research beyond Earth’s surface.
The Lab2Moon competition, held by TeamIndus, is offering students the chance to secure a spot on the TeamIndus rocket this year.
Taking craft beer to the next level, the students want to test whether it’s possible for yeast(酵母) to work and create beer on the moon. However, they believe the experiment is not just a creative concept for astronauts, it’s also important for the development of drugs and yeast-containing food, like bread.
“The idea started out with a few laughs among a group of friends,” said Neeki Ashari, a fifth-year bioengineering students at UC San Diego. “We all appreciate the craft beer. When we heard that there was an opportunity to design an experiment that would go up on India’s moonlander, w e thought we could combine our hobby with the competition by focusing on the practicality of yeast in outer space.”
The preparation work for the beer — up to the stage of adding yeast — will all be done on Earth, and rather than separating the fermentation ( 发酵) and carbonation stage of making beer, the team plans to combine them.
This removes the need to release CO2 accumulated in the process, which may result in cleanliness and safety issues out in space.
If selected, Team Original Gravity will be the first to make beer in outer space, and the fermentation will take place in a container no bigger than a soda can.
All teams competing for the place will showcase their ideas in Bangalore, India, in March.
Sadly, you won’t be enjoying moon beer in your local craft beer bar anytime soon, as no samples will be brought back. However, this small experiment could provide important data on just how practical it is for us to make and create our own resources on other planets and moons by learning how consumables (消耗品) behave in different environments.
1. How did the students feel when they got the chance to design the experiment ?| A．Excited. | B．Nervous. |
| C．Confident. | D．Casual. |
| A．The mixing of two stages. | B．Adding yeast on Earth. |
| C．The preparation work on Earth. | D．Fermentation and carbonation. |
| A．It has been designed based on similar experiments. |
| B．It’s quite competitive compared with other designs. |
| C．It’s design has already been approved by TeamIndus. |
| D．Its process was adapted to make it safer and greener. |
| A．It seems like a pipe dream. | B．It’s extremely complicated. |
| C．It’s meaningful and hopeful. | D．It’s creative but impractical. |
3 . China became the first country to clone a monkey using non-reproductive cells, reducing the need to keep lab monkeys and paving the way for more accurate, effective, and affordable animal tests for new drugs .
By December of 2017, Chinese scientists had created two clone macaques named "Zhong Zhong" and "Hua Hua" by nuclear transferring of somatic cells -- any cell in the organism other than reproductive cells. This was the similar technology used to create the famous clone sheep Dolly in 1996.
"Cloning a monkey using somatic cells has been a world-class challenge because it is a primate（灵长类）that shares its genetic makeup, therefore all of its complexity, with humans." Pu Muming said.
"For drug and other lab tests, scientists have to purchase monkeys from all over the world, which is costly, bad for the environment and produces inaccurate results because each monkey might have different genes, " Pu said.
"By cloning monkeys using somatic cells, we can mass produce large numbers of genetically identical（相同的）offspring in a short time, and even change their genes to suit our needs," he added. "This can save time, cut down experiment costs, and produce more accurate results, leading to more effective medicine."
"This achievement will help China lead the world research in an international science project related to neural（神经的）mapping of primate brains，," he said. However, bio labs from the United States, Japan, and European countries are also very able, and they will quickly catch up to China after the monkey cloning technology is made public, Sun added."This means we have to innovate（创新）continuously and work extra harder this year to stay ahead," he said.
1. What is special about China's cloning monkey?| A．It transferred cells in the lab. |
| B．Il creates two monkeys at a lime. |
| C．It adopts a method of embryo splitting. |
| D．It uses non-reproductive cells. |
| A．To keep monkeys from being endangered. |
| B．To test new medicines on them. |
| C．To find the side effects of medicines. |
| D．To find a cure for mental diseases. |
| A．they are determined to catch up to America |
| B．they try to avoid competition from other countries |
| C．they aren't satisfied with what they have achieved |
| D．they have to keep the monkey-cloning technology a secret |
4 . In a recent series of experiments at the University of California, researchers studied toddlers’ thinking about winners and losers, bullies (欺凌) and victims.
In the first experiment, toddlers (学步儿童) watched a scene in which two puppets (木偶) had conflicting goals: One was crossing a stage from right to left, and the other from left to right. The puppets met in the middle and stopped. Eventually one puppet bowed down and moved aside, letting the other one pass by. Then researchers asked the toddlers which puppet they liked. The result: 20 out of 23 toddlers picked the higher-status puppet — the one that did not bow or move aside. It seems that individuals can gain status for being dominant (占优势的) and toddlers like winners better than losers.
But then researchers had another question: Do toddlers like winners no matter how they win? So, researchers did another experiment very similar to the one described above. But this time, the conflict ended because one puppet knocked the other down and out of the way. Now when the toddlers were asked who they liked, the results were different: Only 4 out of 23 children liked the winner.
These data suggest that children already love a winner by the age of 21-31 months. This does not necessarily mean that the preference is inborn: 21 months is enough time to learn a lot of things. But if a preference for winners is something we learn, we appear to learn it quite early.
Even more interesting, the preference for winners is not absolute. Children in our study did not like a winner who knocked a competitor down. This suggests that already by the age of 21-31 months, children’s liking for winners is balanced with other social concerns, including perhaps a general preference for nice or helpful people over aggressive ones.
In a time when the news is full of stories of public figures who celebrate winning at all costs, these results give us much confidence. Humans understand dominance, but we also expect strong individuals to guide, protect and help others. This feels like good news.
1. One of the purposes of the experiments is to ________.| A．teach toddlers how to gain higher status |
| B．offer toddlers a chance to watch a scene |
| C．observe the process of toddlers’ solving a conflict |
| D．find out toddlers’ attitude toward winners and losers |
| A．obeying rules |
| B．gaining status |
| C．giving in to the other |
| D．showing good manners |
| A．They are excellent learners. |
| B．They are always changeable. |
| C．They show mercy to the loser. |
| D．They value kindness over winning. |
| A．Disappointing. | B．Encouraging. |
| C．Unexpected. | D．Controversial. |
5 . Regrets are often painful. A study suggests that some people can overcome them, said Jia Wei Zhang, a psychology graduate at the University of California. But this isn’t the case for everyone, he said.
The researchers wondered why some people report feeling improvement from regrets but others don’t. Does it lie in how people approach their regrets?
In the study, the researchers focused on self-compassion (自我同情) as a potential factor in why some people have an easier lime leaving their regrets behind them.
400 people attended an experiment. First, they were asked to write about their biggest regret. Half wrote something they did but wish they hadn’t done; the other half wrote something they didn’t do but wish they had. Then, the participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: self compassion, self-esteem and a control group. The self-esteem group was asked to respond by “talking to yourself about this regret from the aspect of confirming your positive qualities”.
The control group was asked to write about their favorite hobby rather than their regret. Then, they were asked about their feelings of forgiveness, acceptance and personal improvement following the exercise.
They found that the self-compassion group reported greater feelings of acceptance, forgiveness and personal improvement, compared with the control group and the self esteem group. In other words, focusing on your best qualities is not what helps you feel better about a regret. Rather, being compassionate toward yourself is what may make a difference, the researchers found.
It’s possible that people who practice self-compassion are able to confront their regrets and see what went wrong, so they can make a better choice in the future, Zhang told Live Science. Self-compassion pushes people to accept their regret instead of running away from it.
The researchers used an example of this from a previous study on breast cancer patients who were asked to try thinking about their treatment in a positive light before it began. The women who did so reported greater feelings of personal growth later on.
1. What does the underlined word “confront” in Paragraph 7 mean?| A．Handle | B．Forget. |
| C．Ignore | D．Show. |
| A．Think of a way out. | B．Write about their regrets. |
| C．Record their favorite hobbies. | D．Treat their regrets in positive ways. |
| A．To cover up their regrets. |
| B．To see if they have weaknesses. |
| C．To see if they have self compassion. |
| D．To help them feel better about their regrets. |
| A．To show the method of the research. |
| B．To show the value of the acceptance. |
| C．To show the truth of people’s feeling. |
| D．To show the difficulty of the research. |
6 . I read somewhere that we spend a full third of our lives waiting. But where are we doing all of this waiting, and what does it mean to an impatient society like ours? To understand the issue, let’s take a look at three types of “waits”.
The very purest form of waiting is the Watched-Pot Wait. It is without doubt the most annoying of all. Take filling up the kitchen sink(洗碗池) as an example. There is absolutely nothing you can do while this is going on but keep both eyes fixed on the sink until it’s full. During these waits, the brain slips away from the body and wanders about until the water runs over the edge of the counter and onto your socks. This kind of wait makes the waiter helpless and mindless.
A cousin to the Watched-Pot Wait is the Forced Wait. This one requires a bit of discipline. Properly preparing packaged noodle soup required a Forced Wait. Directions are very specific. “Bring three cups of water to boil, add mix, simmer three minutes, remove from heat, let stand five minutes.”I have my doubts that anyone has actually followed the procedures strictly. After all, Forced Waiting requires patience.
Perhaps the most powerful type of waiting is the Lucky-Break Wait. This type of wait is unusual in that it is for the most part voluntary. Unlike the Forced Wait, which is also voluntary, waiting for your lucky break does not necessarily mean that it will happen.
Turning one’s life into a waiting game requires faith and hope, and is strictly for the optimists among us. On the surface it seems as ridiculous as following the directions on soup mixes, but the Lucky-Break Wait well serves those who are willing to do it. As long as one doesn’t come to rely on it, wishing for a few good things to happen never hurts anybody.
We certainly do spend a good deal of our time waiting. The next time you’re standing at the sink waiting for it to fill while cooking noodle soup that you’ll have to eat until a large bag of cash falls out of the sky, don’t be desperate. You’re probably just as busy as the next guy.
1. While doing a Watched-Pot Wait, we tend to ___________.| A．keep ourselves busy |
| B．get absent-minded |
| C．grow anxious |
| D．stay focused |
| A．The Forced Wait requires some self-control. |
| B．The Forced Wait makes people passive. |
| C．The Watched-Pot Wait needs directions. |
| D．The Watched-Pot Wait engages body and brain. |
| A．It is less voluntary than the Forced Wait. |
| B．It doesn’t always bring the desired result. |
| C．It is more fruitful than the Forced Wait. |
| D．It doesn’t give people faith and hope. |
| A．Take it seriously. |
| B．Don’t rely on others. |
| C．Do something else. |
| D．Don’t lose heart. |
| A．exploring various causes of “waits”. |
| B．describing detailed processes of “waits”. |
| C．analyzing different categories of “waits” |
| D．revealing frustrating consequences of “waits” |
7 . Hollywood’s theory that machines with evil(邪恶) minds will drive armies of killer robots is just silly. The real problem relates to the possibility that artificial intelligence(AI) may become extremely good at achieving something other than what we really want. In 1960 a well-known mathematician Norbert Wiener, who founded the field of cybernetics（控制论）, put it this way: “If we use, to achieve our purposes, a mechanical agency with whose operation we cannot effectively interfere(干预), we had better be quite sure that the purpose put into the machine is the purpose which we really desire.”
A machine with a specific purpose has another quality, one that we usually associate with living things: a wish to preserve its own existence. For the machine, this quality is not in-born, nor is it something introduced by humans; it is a logical consequence of the simple fact that the machine cannot achieve its original purpose if it is dead. So if we send out a robot with the single instruction of fetching coffee, it will have a strong desire to secure success by disabling its own off switch or even killing anyone who might interfere with its task. If we are not careful, then, we could face a kind of global chess match against very determined, super intelligent machines whose objectives conflict with our own, with the real world as the chessboard.
The possibility of entering into and losing such a match should concentrate the minds of computer scientists. Some researchers argue that we can seal the machines inside a kind of firewall, using them to answer difficult questions but never allowing them to affect the real world. Unfortunately, that plan seems unlikely to work: we have yet to invent a firewall that is secure against ordinary humans, let alone super intelligent machines.
Solving the safety problem well enough to move forward in AI seems to be possible but not easy. There are probably decades in which to plan for the arrival of super intelligent machines. But the problem should not be dismissed out of hand, as it has been by some AI researchers. Some argue that humans and machines can coexist as long as they work in teams—yet that is not possible unless machines share the goals of humans. Others say we can just “switch them off” as if super intelligent machines are too stupid to think of that possibility. Still others think that super intelligent AI will never happen. On September 11, 1933, famous physicist Ernest Rutherford stated, with confidence, “Anyone who expects a source of power in the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.” However, on September 12, 1933, physicist Leo Szilard invented the neutron-induced(中子诱导) nuclear chain reaction.
1. Paragraph 1 mainly tells us that artificial intelligence may .| A．run out of human control |
| B．satisfy human’s real desires |
| C．command armies of killer robots |
| D．work faster than a mathematician |
| A．prevent themselves from being destroyed |
| B．achieve their original goals independently |
| C．do anything successfully with given orders |
| D．beat humans in international chess matches |
| A．help super intelligent machines work better |
| B．be secure against evil human beings |
| C．keep machines from being harmed |
| D．avoid robots’ affecting the world |
| A．It will disappear with the development of AI. |
| B．It will get worse with human interference. |
| C．It will be solved but with difficulty. |
| D．It will stay for a decade. |
8 . Facial expressions carry meaning that is determined by situations and relationships. For example, in American culture (文化) the smile is in general an expression of pleasure. Yet it also has other uses. A woman’s smile at a police officer does not carry the same meaning as the smile she gives to a young child. A smile may show love or politeness. It can also hide true feelings. It often causes confusion (困惑) across cultures. For example, many people in Russia consider smiling at strangers in public to be unusual and even improper. Yet many Americans smile freely at strangers in public places (although this is less common in big cities).Some Russians believe that Americans smile in the wrong places; some Americans believe that Russians don’t smile enough. In Southeast Asian cultures, a smile is frequently used to cover painful feelings. Vietnamese people may tell a sad story but end the story with a smile.
Our faces show emotions (情感), but we should not attempt to "read" people from another culture as we would "read" someone from our own culture. The fact that members of one culture do not express their emotions as openly as do members of another does not mean that they do not experience emotions.
Rather, there are cultural differences in the amount of facial expressions permitted. For example, in public and in formal situations many Japanese do not show their emotions as freely as Americans do. When with friends, Japanese and Americans seem to show their emotions similarly.
It is difficult to generalize about Americans and facial expressiveness because of personal and cultural differences in the United States. People from certain cultural backgrounds in the United States seem to be more facially expressive than others. The key is to try not to judge people whose ways of showing emotion are different. If we judge according to our own cultural habits, we may make the mistake of "reading" the other person incorrectly.
1. What does the smile usually mean in America?| A．Love. | B．Politeness. |
| C．Joy. | D．Thankfulness. |
| A．show friendliness to strangers |
| B．be used to hide true feelings |
| C．be used in the wrong places |
| D．show personal habits |
| A．Learn about their relations with others. |
| B．Understand their cultural backgrounds. |
| C．Find out about their past experience. |
| D．Figure out what they will do next. |
| A．Cultural Differences |
| B．Smiles and Relationship |
| C．Facial Expressiveness |
| D．Habits and Emotions |
