1 . Instagram has launched (发布) a machine learning technology to its app that better identifies self-harm and suicide (自杀) content in the UK after tragic death of a 14-year-old schoolgirl Molly Russell, who viewed Instagram content connected to anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide before ending her own life in November 2017.
Molly’s family later found she had been viewing content on social media, particularly pictures on Instagram, linked to anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide, which her father, Ian Russell, believed to “help to kill her.” Ian has demanded that web companies should take more responsibility for filtering (过滤) harmful content from the Internet, which may possibly contribute to more young people’s deaths.
Concerns have been raised about self-harm and suicide content online, especially how platforms deal with such content and its impact on certain users, young people in particular. Social media platforms are now increasingly being pressured to develop technology to help remove harmful content as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for users to report it.
Now, the new tool from Instagram automatically searches for suicide-related images and words on the platform. It then makes the content less visible (可见的) in the app or, in some cases, removes it completely after 24 hours if the machine learning decides it breaks the app’s safety rules.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said, “Our technology finds posts that may include suicide or self-harm content and sends them to human reviewers to make the final decision and take the right action.” Between April and June this year, around 90 percent of such kind of harmful content on Instagram was found by its own technology before any real user reported it to the platform. “But our goal is to get that number as close as we possibly can to 100 percent,” Mosseri added. “And I hope this could in some way help avoid tragic deaths like Molly Russell’s.”
1. What does Molly’s father mean by saying “help to kill her”?| A．Someone on Instagram helped her to kill herself. |
| B．She was suffering from cyberbully on Instagram. |
| C．Content on Instagram had negative effects on her. |
| D．She didn’t get any help from social media. |
| A．Social media platforms are all taking action to remove harmful content from the Internet. |
| B．Users can report harmful content online to the platform if they see any. |
| C．All images and words that the new technology finds will be completely removed. |
| D．Instagram has already achieved their goal to find 100 percent of harmful content in its app. |
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. |
| C．Doubtful. | D．Worried. |
| A．A new technology brought out by Instagram after a teenager’s death |
| B．A schoolgirl’s tragic death after viewing harmful content online |
| C．Ways to prevent young people from self-harm and suicide |
| D．How to deal with depression, self-harm and suicide content online |
2 . What do you think of 80s pop music? Do the names George Michael, Madonna and Michael Jackson sound familiar? Well, these are just some of the names that were well-known in the music scene of the 80s and early 90s. The 80s pop music scene was an important step to the popularity (普及) of present-day music. A new wave in the music scene was introduced, which made such music styles as punk rock, rap music and the MTV popular. Although it was an end to the old 60s and 70s styles, it was also the beginning of something big. The popularity of music videos meant that artists now replaced their guitar-based music with visual displays. A new wave of artists came on the scene and the entire industry developed quickly.
The most famous 80s pop music video is Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Introduced in 1982, few people can forget the video not only because of its never-be-foreseen images, but also because of the popularity it received. Think of how 80s pop music changed the lives of people who grew up in the 80s. Ask a young man today to tell you the names of the “New Kids on the Block” and he will start talking about the neighbor kids who just moved in. These are not the answers you might have heard in the 80s. Though today’s young men do not recognize how cool 80s pop music was, most people will always remember it for what it was and these are happy memories they will always love.
Some of the 80s pop music legends (传奇人物) include Madonna, U2, AeroSmith and of course the King of Pop Michael Jackson. Let’s not forget Prince, Tina Turner, Phil Collins and Motown’s Lionel Ritchie. Some of these musicians played music that has stood the test of time. Undoubtedly, the 80s pop music scene will live on for many more years to come.
1. What is the text mainly about?| A．The characters of 80s pop music. | B．What made 80s pop music popular. |
| C．80s pop music’s steps to popularity. | D．The effects of 80s pop music. |
| A．guitar-based music | B．the MTV | C．rap music | D．punk rock |
| A．it changed the lives of people | B．he sang it in a special style |
| C．it was made into a music video | D．it left people with happy memories |
| A．80s pop music is and will remain popular | B．80s pop music has many faults |
| C．80s pop music is now out of date | D．we shouldn’t forget the great musicians of the 80s |
3 . Happiness is not a warm phone, according to a new study exploring the link between young life satisfaction and screen time. The study was led by professor of psychology Jean M. Twenge at San Diego State University (SDSU).
To research this link, Twenge, along with colleagues Gabrielle Martin at SDSU and W. Keith Campbell at the University of Georgia, dealt with data from the Monitoring the Future (MtF) study, a nationally representative survey of more than a million U. S. 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders. The survey asked students questions about how often they spent time on their Phones, tablets and computers, as well as questions about their face-to-face social interactions and their overall happiness.
On average found that teens who spent more time in front of screen devices — playing computer games, using social media, texting and video chatting — were less happy than those who invested more time in non-screen activities like sports, reading newspapers and magazines, and face-to-face social interactions.
"The key to digital media use and happiness is limited use," Twenge said. "Aim to spend no more than two hours a day on digital media, and try to increase the amount of time you spend seeing friends face-to-face and exercising — two activities reliably linked to greater happiness."
Looking at historical trends from the same age groups since the 1990s, it's easy to find that the increase of screen devices over time happened at the same time as a general drop-off in reported happiness in U. S. teens. Specifically, young peopled life satisfaction and happiness declined sharply after 2012. That's the year when the percentage of Americans who owned a smartphone rose above 50 percent. By far the largest change in teens' lives between 2012 and 2016 was the increase in the amount of time they spent on digital media, and the following decline in in-person social activities and sleep.
1. Which method did Twenge's team use for the study?| A．Calculating students' happiness. |
| B．Asking students certain questions. |
| C．Analyzing data from a survey. |
| D．Doing experiments on screen time. |
| A．By making a comparison. |
| B．By giving an example. |
| C．By making an argument. |
| D．By introducing a concept. |
| A．To draw a conclusion from the study. |
| B．To offer some advice to the readers. |
| C．To prove social activities' importance. |
| D．To support the researchers' finding. |
| A．Quitting Phones Equals Happiness |
| B．Screen Time Should Be Banned |
| C．Teens' Lives Have Changed Sharply |
| D．Screen-addicted Teens Are Unhappier |
4 . Israeli researchers say they have created the world's first three-dimensional, or 3D-printed heart using a patient's own cells. They described the experiment as "a major medical breakthrough." Tal Dvir, the lead researcher on the project, said in a statement that it was the first time that human cells had been used with 3D printing technology to successfully create a whole heart. Dvir added that the "printed" heart contains blood vessels which are needed to pump blood. The development marks a step forward for 3D printing in the medical field.
The researchers took samples of fatty tissue from patients. This material was then used to develop “ink” for the 3D printing process. First, the researchers created patches of tissue from the patient’s own cells. Later, they used that same process to create a small version of a whole heart. Using the patient’s own cells is important to reduce the risk that the body’s system to fight infection will reject a transplanted organ.
The goal, the researchers said, is to treat heart disease. The World Health Organization reports that heart disease is by far the leading cause of death worldwide. For patients with severe heart disease, a heart transplant is currently the main treatment available. The researchers hope their invention can help ease the demand for heart transplant donors.
Dvir says that the newly-created heart represents great progress. However, more research and development is needed to produce a fully operating, transplantable organ. One of the biggest challenges for the engineering team will be finding a way to create a human-sized heart.
Dvir said his team planned to transplant heart models designed for animals, possibly within the next year. He added that, for human use, “simpler organs” will likely be produced before hearts. “Maybe, in ten years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world,” Dvir said. He hopes such methods will be used “routinely” to produce organs in the future.
1. Why should patients’ own cells be used to create a 3D heart?| A．To avoid being rejected. | B．To make it suitable to print. |
| C．To fight infection. | D．To build up immune system. |
| A．To adopt printing technology. | B．To create human organs. |
| C．To treat heart disease. | D．To develop organ printers. |
| A．They will be developed to create organs routinely. |
| B．They will be widely used to treat different diseases. |
| C．They will be used to transplant organs for animals. |
| D．They will be applied to various fields in the world. |
| A．An artificial heart. | B．A major medical breakthrough |
| C．A scientific project | D．A great research team. |
5 . "For years, we had seen a lot of old villages dying slowly before being torn down. It's such a shame. So I wanted to do something," says Zhang Lei, a professor from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Nanjing University.
Zhang's two design works for Librairie Avant-Garde, the Yunxi Library bookshop in Tonglu county's Daijiashan village and Chenjiapu Bookstore in Songyang county, both in East China's Zhejiang province, were opened respectively in 2015 and 2018. The villages have since seen increasing number of visitors. Hostels have been built and, as a result, property prices in the villages have soared. For instance, the annual rent of a house in Daijiashan village was 2,000 yuan ($306) in 2015, but has now grown to 8,000 yuan.
Similarly, Chenjiapu village used to be dying despite a history stretching back 600 years. The bookstore, however, means that holidays bring so many visitors that there are often traffic jams on the road leading to the village. "I never thought that a small bookstore could change the fate of a village," he says.
When Qian Xiaohua, founder of Librairie Avant-Garde headquartered in Nanjing, started opening bookstores in the countryside six years ago, he met with a lot of doubts and questions. After all, bookstores in cities, with much bigger populations, could barely survive due to online competition. Even more surprisingly, Qian prefers targeting old villages that are losing their young people, with just the elderly and children left behind. Those villages are usually located in picturesque surroundings, many with historical details. Qian, accompanied by architects, will then choose old buildings from the villages to be renovated into well-lit modern bookstores that remain true to their original structures and decorative aspects.
Since April 2014, Qian has opened five bookstores in the countryside. All have attracted large numbers of tourists and even young villagers to return home. Apart from their commercial success and subsequent economic revival of the villages, these bookstores have become new public spaces for locals, benefiting the development of rural areas in the long run.
1. What can we know about many old villages from Zhang Lei’s words in paragraph 1?| A．They were booming gradually. | B．They were being deserted. |
| C．They were under construction. | D．They were overdeveloped. |
| A．Risen. | B．Decreased. | C．Changed. | D．Overturned |
| A．Favorable. | B．Interested. | C．Hopeful. | D．Skeptical. |
| A．Old Villages Survive Amazingly | B．Rebuild Traditional Settlements |
| C．Bookstores Rewrite Old Villages | D．Knowledge Changes Villages |
