1 . One of Britain' s most outstanding scientists says the growth in the use of electronic tablets and smart phones is causing people to spend so much time indoors that they need to take regular vitamin D supplements to make up for the lack of sunlight they receive naturally.
Geneticist Steve Jones said he himself was a follower to the cause and urged others to follow. “I never thought I would be a person who would take vitamin supplements；I always thought it was absolute nonsense. But now I take vitamin D every day. Today, because I knew the sun wasn't going to shine, I took an extra one,” he said.
Exposure to the sun is the major source of vitamin D. However, people are spending less and less time outdoors in many areas. The problem is particularly serious in Scotland. "The Scots are the whitest people in the world because their entire body systems are crying out for vitamin D," he said, adding that life expectancy in Scotland is two years shorter than in England or Wales. Multiple sclerosis (多发性硬化症), a medical condition which is often seen in northern Europe, is also higher in Scotland than in England.
Vitamin D helps with the absorption of Ca, which helps keep bones strong. And Jones said the fact that rickets (佝偻病) was making a comeback in Britain after nearly 50 years was another sign of how changing behavior patterns were bringing physical harm.
Jones admitted that concerns over the damaging effects on skin of long-time exposure to the sun were reasonable, but said sunlight was healthy and necessary for the human body, and could help in lowering blood pressure. "If you lie on the beach for an hour, you will drop your blood pressure by about 10 points, because it relaxes your blood vessels (血管). So, get out in the sun while we still can," he said.
1. How are people affected by the rise of technology according to the text?| A．They are more sensitive to sunlight |
| B．They take more vitamin D supplements. |
| C．They get less vitamin D than before. |
| D．They become addicted to electronic games. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Cautious. |
| C．Worried. | D．Supportive. |
| A．Because they are in great need of sunlight. |
| B．Because their blood pressure is very low. |
| C．Because they enjoy a short period of sunshine. |
| D．Because they are easy to get multiple sclerosis. |
| A．Get out and gain more Vitamin D |
| B．Keep away from tablets and phones |
| C．Pay attention to the importance of sunlight |
| D．Take vitamin D supplements to keep healthy |
2 . A few degrees can make a big difference when it comes to food storage. Foods can go bad if they get too warm. But for many of the world’s poor, finding a good way to keep food cool is difficult. Refrigerators are costly and they need electricity.
Yet spoiled food not only creates health risks but also economic losses. Farmers lose money when they have to throw away products that they cannot sell quickly.
But in nineteen ninety-five a teacher in northern Nigeria named Mohammed Bah Abba found a solution. He developed the “Pot-in-Pot Preservation/Cooling System.” It uses two round containers made of clay. A smaller pot is placed inside a larger one. The space between the two pots is filled with wet sand. The inner pot can be filled with fruit, vegetables or drinks. A wet cloth covers the whole cooling system.
Food stored in the smaller pot is kept from spoiling through a simple evaporation(蒸发) process. Water in the sand between the two pots evaporates through the surface of the larger pot, where drier outside air is moving.
The evaporation process creates a drop in temperature of several degrees. This cools the inner pot and helps keep food safe from harmful bacteria. Some foods can be kept fresh this way for several weeks.
People throughout Nigeria began using the invention. And it became popular with farmers in other African countries. Mohammed Bah Abba personally financed the first five thousand pot-in-pot systems for his own community and five villages nearby.
In two thousand, the Rolex Watch Company of Switzerland honored him with the Rolex Award for Enterprise. This award recognizes people trying to develop projects aimed at improving human knowledge and well-being. A committee considers projects in science and medicine, technology, exploration and discovery, the environment and cultural history. Winners receive financial assistance to help develop and extend their projects.
1. What keeps the food fresh in the container from spoiling?| A．The wet cloth covering the cooling system. |
| B．The moving drier air outside the container. |
| C．A drop in temperature by evaporation. |
| D．The wet sand between the containers. |
| A．Rich and advanced families. |
| B．Poor and underdeveloped areas. |
| C．Scientific experiment laboratories. |
| D．Supermarkets needing to store goods |
| A．financed the systems in all communities |
| B．invented the controversial cooling system |
| C．received financial assistance for his invention |
| D．invented a more complex cooling system later |
| A．Spoiled Food Creates Health Risks and Economic Losses |
| B．The Evaporation Process Creates a Drop in Temperature |
| C．A Few Degrees Can Make a Big Difference for Storage |
| D．A Cooling Way to Keep Food from Spoiling |
3 . JeffBezos has a rule at Amazon, or perhaps more appropriate a philosophy. If a team cannot be fed by two pizzas then that team is too large. The reasoning is quite straightforward and basic. More people means more communication, more bureaucracy, more chaos, and more of pretty much everything that slows things down, hence why large organizations are oftentimes considered as being so inefficient.
In 2013 Gallup released a report called “The State of The American Workplace", in which they found that smaller companies had more engaged employees. In fact,42% of employees working at companies of 10 or fewer were engaged at work versus only 30% of employees at large companies.
Most people are not familiar with the Ringelmann Effect which is the tendency for individual members to become less productive as the size of a group increases. This concept was named after Maximilien Ringelmann, a French professor of agricultural engineering who passed away in 1931.In one of his experiments he asked volunteers to perform a very simple task, to pull on a rope. He found that when only one person is pulling on the rope they give 100% of their effort; however, as more people are added the individual effort goes down.
This experiment was recreated in the 1970's by Alan Ingham who came up with the concept of “social loafing” which helps us understand why the individual effort decreases as the team size increases. So why does this happen? Because it becomes harder to extract the individual contributions and performance of each person.
Organizations should really think about what their team structures look like and create and follow similar “two pizza rules”. It's no coincidence that smaller organizations are oftentimes more nimble while large organizations look like they are stuck in the mud.
1. What is the author's purpose of mentioning “two pizza rules” in paragraph 1?| A．To make a comment. |
| B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To provide an example. |
| D．To analyze a phenomenon. |
| A．It repeated the Ringelmann Effect experiment. |
| B．It was based on a simple task of pulling a rope. |
| C．It aimed to explore the reason behind the phenomenon. |
| D．It revealed the link between team size and individual effort. |
| A．Balanced. |
| B．Complicated. |
| C．Simple. |
| D．Flexible. |
| A．What Makes a Team More Productive? |
| B．Why Are Smaller Teams Better Than Larger Ones? |
| C．How Can Two Pizzas Be Shared by One Team? |
| D．Which Is More Important: Individual Effort r Team Size? |
4 . Are we just thinking with our heads? No. The human brain is just like a telephone switchboard (总机), but not a whole system. Its function is to receive incoming signals, establish appropriate connections, and send the information to its destination. In order to provide efficient service, the body must function as a whole.
But where is the mind? Is it in the brain? Or the nervous system? Can we say that the mind is in a particular place? In fact, the mind is not a thing, not a leg, and not even a brain. Thinking is both a function and an activity. Aristotle, 2300 years ago, noted that the mind is to the body what the tool is to the worker. When the tool is not in use, there is no work. Charles Woolbert said that consciousness is what the body does.
If this activity is necessary for thought, it is also necessary for the transmission of thought from one person to another. Observe how people conduct their daily conversations. If you've never taken the trouble to do this, you'll have a surprise waiting for you, because good conversationalists are almost always in motion. Their heads nodded and nodded, sometimes so violently that you wondered how their necks could withstand the strain. Even the legs and feet are active. As for hands and arms, they rarely stay still for more than a few seconds at a time.
Remember, these people are not giving speeches. They're just people, trying to get their points of view across. They have no sense of movement. Their language has not been studied. They're just human beings in a human environment, trying to adapt to the social environment. However, their conversation is not only verbal, but also visual, involving almost every muscle in the body. Briefly, because people are really thinking, the speaker must be everywhere if he is to succeed in getting people to think.
1. Which of the following is the author's opinion?| A．Thinking is a social phenomenon. |
| B．Thinking is just a brain function. |
| C．Thinking is the sum total of bodily activity. |
| D．Thinking is a function of the nervous system. |
| A．to use various bodily movements | B．to speak directly to the other person |
| C．to make the other person listen | D．to observe the other person's behavior |
| A．make the listeners deeply moved |
| B．appeal to the sympathy of the audience |
| C．make the speaker understood |
| D．convey the speaker's implied meaning to the listeners |
| A．Spoken Language | B．Bodily Communication |
| C．Spiritual Activity | D．Proper Conversation |
5 . Ever wondered if dogs can learn new words? Yes, say researchers as they have found that talented dogs may have the ability to grasp new words after hearing them only four times.
While previous evidence seems to show that most dogs do not learn words, unless eventually very well trained, a few individuals have shown some extraordinary abilities, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
“We wanted to know under which conditions the gifted dogs may learn novel words,” said researcher xuekw Claudia Fugazza from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. For the study, the team involved two gifted dogs, Whisky and Vicky Nina. The team exposed the dogs to the new words in two different conditions.
In the exclusion-based task, presented with seven known toys and one new toy, the dogs were able to select the new toy when presented with a new name. Researchers say this proves that dogs can choose by exclusion when faced with a new word, they selected the only toy which did not have a known name.
However, this was not the way they would learn the name of the toy. In fact, when they were presented with one more equally new name to test their ability to recognize the toy by its name, the dogs got totally confused and failed.
The other condition, the social one, where the dogs played with their owners who pronounced the name of the toy while playing with the dog, proved to be the successful way to learn the name of the toy, even after hearing it only 4 times. “The rapid learning that we observed seems to equal children’s ability to learn many new words at a fast rate around the age of 18 months,” Fugazza says. “But we do not know whether the learning mechanisms(机制) behind this learning are the same for humans and dogs. ”
To test whether most dogs would learn words this way, 20 other dogs were tested in the same condition, but none of them showed any evidence of learning the toy names, confirming that the ability to learn words rapidly in the absence of formal training is very rare and is only present in a few gifted dogs.
1. What was the purpose of the study published in Scientific Reports?| A．To better train dogs’ ability to learn new words. |
| B．To further confirm previous evidence about dogs. |
| C．To prove extraordinary memory abilities of gifted dogs. |
| D．To explore favorable conditions for gifted dogs’ new-word learning. |
| A．Slow to understand. | B．Quick to learn. | C．At a loss. | D．In a panic. |
| A．Learning through playing applied to most dogs. |
| B．The social condition helped dogs learn new words. |
| C．Dogs’ new-word learning turned out to be less effective. |
| D．Dogs shared similar learning mechanisms with children. |
| A．Gifted Dogs Can Learn New Words Rapidly. |
| B．Dogs Identify Newly-named Toys by Exclusion. |
| C．Dogs Can Acquire Vocabulary through Tons of Training. |
| D．Gifted Dogs Have Similar Learning Abilities to Humans. |
6 . I saw my first tree today. Dad used to tell me stories about the trees that still existed when he was a boy. There weren’t very many even then, with the urbanization program in full swing.
The O’Brien home was one of the few examples of old-style wooden structures that hadn’t been destroyed in Boston’s urban-renewal campaign. The family had been able to avoid this because of its wealth and political influence, and the house was passed on through generations to the present. Old man O’Brien had no children, so when he died, the Urban Center bought it. Then an official discovered that the house had a backyard-in the yard was a live tree!
When the news of the tree’s discovery leaked out, quite a few sightseers stopped by to have a look at it, and the local government, realizing the money-making potential, began charging admission and advertising the place. By now it had become a favorite spot for family trips like ours.
Dad paid the fee and we walked through a doorway hidden in a bookshelf and into the backyard. I just couldn’t help noticing the tree!
It was located at one end of the yard, with a fence around it for protection. It was similar in form to the plastic trees I’d seen, but there was much more. You could see details more delicate than in any artificially made plant. And it was alive. But best of all was the smell-fresh, living smell, unfamiliar to the world outside with metal, plastic, and glass. I wanted to touch the bark, but the fence prevented me from doing so.
On the way back, I read through the brochures. One part said the O’Brien home would be torn down next year to make room for some insurance building, and the tree will have to go, too.
I just sat still, fingering the object in my pocket that I had picked in the O’Brien’s backyard. I think it’s called an acorn (橡子).
1. Why could the tree in the O’Brien’s backyard survive till today?| A．It possessed some special characteristics. |
| B．It had a very strong fence around to protect it. |
| C．It was preserved together with the house by its owner. |
| D．It got the local government’s attention as a tourist attraction. |
| A．Annoyed. | B．Calm. | C．Excited. | D．Upset. |
| A．Social progress and urbanization come at a cost. |
| B．Social progress should give way to nature protection. |
| C．Humans value nature protection over social progress. |
| D．Urbanization has more advantages than disadvantages. |
7 . Humans are not the only ones who underwent self-domestication. So did our close relatives, the bonobos, and the species we call our best friend. A tiny proportion of the genome differentiates dogs from wolves, and yet millions of dogs are comfortably curled up in our homes, while wolves move around at the edge of extinction.
When our research group began its work almost 20 years ago, we discovered that dogs also have extraordinary intelligence: they can read our gestures better than any other species. Wolves, in contrast, are mysterious and unpredictable. Their home is the wilderness, and that wilderness is shrinking.
But not so long ago the evolutionary race between dogs and wolves was so close, it was unclear who would win. Dogs, in fact, did not descend from wolves. Instead, dogs and wolves shared a wolflike ancestor.
Folklore supposes that humans brought wolf puppies into camp and domesticated them. Or as wolf expert David Mech wrote in 1974, “Evidently early humans tamed wolves and domesticated them, eventually selectively breeding them and finally developing the domestic dog from them.” But this story has not held up. Taming an animal occurs during its lifetime. Domestication happens over generations and involves changes to the genome.
So how did wolves turn into dogs? Back in the Ice Age, as our human populations grew more sedentary, we probably created more rubbish, which we then dumped outside our camps. These leavings would have included tempting pieces of food for hungry wolves. Not every wolf would have been able to scavenge, however. These animals would have had to be unafraid of humans, and if they displayed any aggression toward us, they would have been killed. After generations of selection for friendliness without intentional selection by humans, this special population of wolves would have begun to take on a different appearance. Coat color, ears, tails: all probably started to change.
Animals that could respond to our gestures and voices would be extremely useful as hunting partners and guards. They would have been valuable as well for their warmth and companionship, and slowly we would have allowed them to move from outside our camps to our firesides. We did not domesticate dogs. The friendliest wolves domesticated themselves.
1. What can be summarized about wolves and dogs from the first three paragraphs?| A．Wolves are smarter than dogs. |
| B．They are very much racially divided. |
| C．They are close relatives but dogs seem to be on the winning side. |
| D．Dogs have made their ways to indoor life while wolves to the wild. |
| A．diverse | B．limited |
| C．living in the same place | D．involving regular migration |
| A．Dogs evolved from wolves. |
| B．Selective breeding developed domestic dogs. |
| C．Taming and domesticating an animal are the same thing. |
| D．Friendliness as a quality translates into an evolutionary strategy. |
| A．From Wolf to Dog | B．Dog: Our Favorite Pet |
| C．An Intentional Domestication | D．A Competition Story between Wolf and Dog |
8 . It is the season for taking the time to reflect on what we’re thankful for in life. Spending that time with friends and family to give thanks is what makes the holidays so special. But why should limit it to just a few weeks in the year? Gratitude（感恩）is a muscle we should strengthen year-round to make us healthier, happier humans and leaders.
Gratitude builds empathy. We often take for granted the simple things in life. Those who recognize the goodness in life, no matter how simple or automatic, are more likely to be sensitive to the needs of others and to help whenever they can. Being empathetic to others’ opinions, experiences and backgrounds will make you a better professional, no matter your career.
Through his research, Emmons, a leading researcher, found that grateful people reported feeling healthier, both mentally and physically. Specifically, those who were grateful were 25 percent happier than those who weren’t. In the workplace, well-being（健康快乐）is a crucial topic when it comes to preventing employee burn-out and promoting engagement. Beyond the research that shows that employees who are shown that they are appreciated are more productive by 50 percent, caring for your employees’ well-being is simply the right thing to do. Offering fitness classes or carrying out flexible work schedules are just a few things that, when paired with gratitude, can lead to more productive, engaged and happier working professionals.
Working in a developing, fast-paced industry, we are often surrounded by ambitious people who are always striving（奋斗）for more and better. Gratitude makes us more self-aware. It challenges us to reflect in the moment instead of always thinking about the future. It starts by paying attention to what’s going on in our life, and that true self-awareness is a key factor to being successful in our career.
Gratitude is a powerful tool for making relationships stronger, both at work and in our personal life. People who express their gratitude tend to be more willing to forgive others and therefore able to create relatively long-lasting connections.
During my month-long vacation, I made it a point to be reflective during the time I had without disturbances or deadlines. Part of that was making a mental list of the people, things and experiences I was grateful for in my life. I decided to reach out to my fifth-grade teacher and thank her for being positive instructor and a strong influence on my life.
The old saying goes “It’s never too late to say you’re sorry,” but the same is true of gratitude. Taking the time to thank people for their work, kindness or empathy-whether it was today, last month or many years ago-makes you happier, healthier and more self-aware. And that’s a gift worth celebrating 365 days a year.
1. What does the underlined word “empathy” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．The feeling of being sorry for others’ problems. |
| B．The desire to help people in difficult situations. |
| C．The ability to understand other people’s feelings. |
| D．The feeling of pleasure or satisfaction towards others. |
| A．People who have self-awareness can succeed without effort. |
| B．Grateful people will live a much longer life than ungrateful people. |
| C．Wise enterprises should raise the employees’ sense of well-being. |
| D．Gratitude can ensure the relationship between people is unbreakable. |
| A．To encourage people to contact with teachers. |
| B．To show it’s never too late to express gratitude. |
| C．To order people to keep long-lasting connection. |
| D．To present that his teacher greatly influenced him. |
| A．Being Grateful Year-Round. |
| B．The Season for Gratitude. |
| C．The Way to Show Thanks. |
| D．The Special Holiday of Gratitude. |
9 . A few plants in the cabbage and mustard (芥菜) family pay a dramatic price to fight off hungry caterpillars (毛毛虫): they kill off patches of their own leaves where butterflies have laid eggs. Without a living anchor, the eggs wrinkle and die. These plants’ egg-killing abilities have been documented since at least the 1980s, but a new study shows they appear in just a few closely related plants in this family — and they are triggered only by certain butterfly species.
Nina Fatouros of Wageningen University in the Netherlands and her colleagues investigated 31 plant species in the target family. First, they dabbed the plants’ leaves with liquid that had been exposed to egg material from a butterfly species known to lay eggs on them. Four closely related plant species reliably killed off the treated leaf patches. Further tests confirmed that the species with the most distinct response only reacted strongly when the egg material came from one group of butterflies, Pieris, which lays eggs on these plants in the wild. This is “clear evidence” that specific butterfly species could have stimulated the evolution of the necrosis (坏死) defense, Fatouros says. The researchers also tracked eggs laid by wild butterflies to confirm the defense mechanism. The work was detailed in New Phytologist.
“It’s very unlikely that you find this by coincidence,” says University of Sheffield molecular plant biologist Jurriaan Ton, who was not involved in the study. He adds that the plants’ relatedness, coupled with their exaggerated reaction to these butterflies, suggests a heated evolutionary “arms race” took place between the plants and insects.
“This is the first study to my knowledge where they really looked at the appearance of this trait within a particular plant family,” says ecologist Julia Koricheva, who was also not involved in the work.
Future research could explore how recently the trait evolved, Fatouros says. She notes that arms races rarely end—and evidence suggests the butterflies may be fighting back. Some prefer to lay their eggs in tightly grouped clusters(丛), making them less likely to be influenced by the plants’ strategy.
1. What is special about Nina Fatouros’ study?| A．It found the plants’ egg-killing abilities for the first time. |
| B．It pointed out the price plants paid to defend themselves. |
| C．It discovered a new species of egg-killing plants. |
| D．It narrowed down the range of the plant-butterfly interaction. |
| A．To see whether they would sacrifice their leaves. |
| B．To stimulate their defense mechanism. |
| C．To find out which species reacted most strongly to the liquid. |
| D．To track eggs laid by wild butterflies. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Approving. |
| C．Disapproving. | D．Skeptical. |
| A．Survival strategies of plants |
| B．Evolution of plants against hungry caterpillars |
| C．Killer leaves emerge from plant-butterfly arms race |
| D．The relatedness of plants and butterflies |
10 . Soccer legend: They told me girls couldn't play this game
Note: Michelle Akers was a player on the US Women's National Teams who won World Cup titles in 1991 (where she won the Golden Hoot as top scorer) and 1999.
(CNN) — In third grade, I shared my dream along with my favorite football with the class, and as I proudly finished my speech, my teacher responded, "Michelle, girls cannot play football" to which I answered, "Yes, I can." I wouldn’t let it go, landing myself in the principal's office, trying not to cry. Soon, my mom arrived. “God help me now,” I thought ... until I heard her say to both my teacher and the principal, “How dare you tell my daughter what she can or cannot do.”
On Wednesday, all the world (myself included) will watch the 2019 US Women's National Team — Women's World Cup champions. I'm also thinking about how they — like I — got to the place where they lifted that trophy. To me, the 2019 World Cup and above all, this team, has taken the stories and dreams of the USWNT full circle.
It goes like this: First, you dream. Next, you play. Then, you inspire a legacy.
So many years ago, I dreamed of being a Pittsburgh Steeler. But many of the players on this 2019 World Champion USA Team sat in stadiums or watched games on TV in 1999 and dreamed of playing for the USWNT. No one could tell them they couldn't — they could see for themselves that it was possible.
They have now not only won a World Cup, but have turned their dreams into action. Dreams of being the best in the world. Dreams of equality and equal opportunity. And the actions to back them up and make them real for the people who come after them. They are demanding respect and equality from the powers that be because they know what it is to achieve more than just a trophy.
That, for me, is so very powerful. What this 2019 World Champion team demands for themselves — and put first in their lives — will be their biggest message of change: Respect. Equal opportunity. Team and family. Individual choice. Excellence. Into a new era.
And I am grateful to be celebrating them in their much deserved ticker-tape parade in the Canyon of Heroes in NYC.
1. What's the attitude of Michelle's mom towards her dream?| A．Funny. | B．Supportive. | C．Ambiguous. | D．Carefree. |
| A．Michelle is coaching and encouraging the team. | B．Michelle together with her team won the trophy. |
| C．The team carries the same dreams as Michelle's | D．The team didn't fail Michelle's great expectation. |
| A．She set an example to women football players. |
| B．She won the Golden Boot in 1999. |
| C．She retired from her team in 2019. |
| D．She recognized inequality to women in football. |
| A．Dream, Play and Inspire | B．Woman Football Develops |
| C．Football Counts More than Ever | D．Equal Playing Field Is More than Men's |
