1 . When you're struggling to finish a term paper, preparing a big presentation or studying for final exams, sleep might be the first thing you sacrifice so you have time to get all the work done. To make up for it , you might start drinking coffee to help you study late into the night. But there's bad news if you're trying to keep that kind of schedule for more than a couple of days.
"We were particularly surprised that the performance advantage invested by two daily 200-milligram doses (剂量)of caffeine was lost after lack of sleep for three nights, " lead author Tracy Jill Doty said in a statement. "These results are important, because caffeine is widely used to deal with performance decline following periods of lack of sleep. The data from this study suggests that the same effective daily dose of caffeine is unable to prevent performance decline over many days of lack of sleep. "
The sample size was very small (48 people), so we can't think everyone will respond the same way. Those 48 people slept five hours per night for five nights straight. They got a caffeine dose equal to a large cup of coffee around 8 am and another around 12 pm each day. For the first two days, the people who got caffeine were performing better on attention and reaction tests. But by the third day, the caffeine was no longer helping them perform any better than the people who didn't get any caffeine.
Increasing the caffeine dose may have changed that. "But the more caffeine you consume, the more negative side affects you feel," Doty said. "This work goes along with lots of other work showing that the negative effects of lacking sleep are difficult to overcome. This is true even with a heavy daily dose of caffeine.
1. Who will be the intended reader of the text?| A．Educators. | B．Students. |
| C．Adults. | D．Officials. |
| A．By listing examples. |
| B．By reasoning. |
| C．By analyzing results |
| D．By arguing |
| A．Caffeine fails to perform better over an extended time. |
| B．Increasing caffeine can promote one's performance. |
| C．Drinking too much coffee might lead to sleep loss. |
| D．Caffeine doesn't prevent performance decline at all. |
| A．Coffee: Sleep Loss. |
| B．Coffee: Performance Increase. |
| C．Enough Sleep Makes Coffee Work. |
| D．The More Coffee, the Worse Effects. |
2 . Maeve Higgins once set herself a task. The Irish-born comedian wanted to see what life would be like if she stopped laughing at things that weren’t funny. Turns out it wasn’t as easy as she thought. “It was so hard,” she says. “ Laughter is a lubricant (润滑油) and is expected, and it’s really hard not to do it.”
Higgins suggests there’s something particularly special about being part of the shared experience that is live comedy — that curious magic that occurs when people come together specifically to laugh.
Comedy is more than just a pleasant way to pass an evening, humour more than something to amuse. They’re interwoven into our everyday existence. Whether you’re sharing an amusing story at a party or telling a dark joke at a funeral, humour is everywhere. But what is it for? And can humour, as comedy, change how we feel, what we think or even what we do?
As an essential part of human interaction, humour has been on the minds of thinkers for centuries. One of the most enduring theories of humour was put forward by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. It asserts that humour appears to make fun of the weak and exert superiority. While this is clearly the function of some comedy, it’s far from a complete explanation for the overall purpose of humour.
For some comedians, it’s not just about getting laughs — it’s about changing what we think and maybe even what we do. If there’s one comic who is really typical of this, it’s Josie Long. A social justice activist and a comedian, Long has a reputation for delightful, optimistic humour and storytelling.
As her career has evolved, she has consciously put social and political topics at the heart of her act. She believes that comedians have a role to play in challenging some of the most pressing issues of the day.
British comic Stephen K Amos sells out venues seating thousands, year in, year out. Amos firmly believes that when comics consciously deal with pressing or controversial （有争议的）social issues like racism, they can reach people on a much more meaningful level than that achieved by briefly lifting someone’s mood. And while it may be difficult to quantify, he says, the social and psychological impact of comedy deserves much greater recognition.
The research backs this up. Although the role of comedy is to be entertaining first and foremost, Sharon Lockyer, a sociologist who studies humour, has identified a number of possible other functions. These include challenging stereotypes (刻板印象).
Amos’s work frequently settles the issues of race by challenging stereotypes.”I don’t do things for shock value,” he says. “ I do stuff that matters to me. In the old days it was just about doing jokes. We’ve moved on — people are talking about things that matter. ”
1. What do the first two paragraphs mainly talk about?| A．The benefits of laughing. |
| B．What a comedian’s daily work is about. |
| C．Why Maeve Higgins chose to be a comedian. |
| D．Maeve Higgins’ understanding of the appeal of comedy. |
| A．Protect the weak from the evil. |
| B．Encourage people to be stronger. |
| C．Be determined to improve oneself. |
| D．Show you are better than other people. |
| A．By gradually influencing people’s attitudes. |
| B．By urging politicians to try and solve the issues. |
| C．By quickly yet thoroughly changing people’s thinking. |
| D．By calling on the whole society to pay attention to the issues. |
| A．getting people to laugh |
| B．promoting social progress |
| C．influencing people’s ideas |
| D．making people more productive |
3 . Researchers at CU Boulder have developed a wearable device that changes the human body into a biological battery. The device is stretchy(弹性的) enough that you can wear it like a ring, sport band or any other thing that touches your skin. It also taps into a person's natural heat-employing thermoelectric generators to change the body's internal temperature into electricity. "In the future, we want to be able to power your wearable electronics without having to include a battery," said Jianliang Xiao, an associate professor at CU Boulder.
The concept may sound like something out of The Matrix film series, in which a race of robots have enslaved humans to harvest their precious organic energy. Xiao and his colleagues aren't that ambitious: Their devices can generate about 1 volt (伏特) of energy for every square centimeter of skin space-less volt per area than what most existing batteries provide but still enough to power electronics like watches or fitness trackers.
Scientists have previously experimented with similar wearable devices, but Xiao's is stretchy, can heal itself when damaged and is fully recyclable-making it a cleaner alternative to traditional electronics. "Whenever you use a battery, you're depleting(消耗) that battery and will, eventually, need to replace it," Xiao said. "The nice thing about our device is that you can wear it, and it provides you with constant power."
Just pretend that you're out for a jog. As you exercise, your body heats up, and that heat will radiate out to the cool air around you. Xiao's device captures that flow of energy rather than let it go to waste. "The thermoelectric generators are in close contact with the human body, and they can use the heat that would normally be sent into the environment," Xiao said.
1. What does Xiao expect of his device at present?| A．It will be used for medical purposes. |
| B．It will be made smaller and wearable. |
| C．It will change natural power into electricity. |
| D．It will supply constant power to wearable devices. |
| A．To give an explanation. | B．To make a comparison. |
| C．To introduce a topic. | D．To analyze the cause. |
| A．The strengths of Xiao's device. |
| B．The convenience of using a battery. |
| C．The replacement of wearable devices. |
| D．The development of traditional electronics. |
| A．It operates with plenty of power. |
| B．It is designed for practical use. |
| C．It benefits people's health in a way. |
| D．It's based on traditional electronics. |
4 . The traditional working day doesn't benefit night owls(夜猫子),with people who prefer to stay up late twice as likely to underperform at work as early birds ;a new study from Finland has6uggested.
Early risers tend to work better early in the morning, while evening types are the opposite. The researchers asked 5,881 individuals born in 1966 in northern Finland about their working life and health and questioned them about their sleep patterns in 2012 when they were 46 years old. The study participants were monitored over a period of four years.
Ten percent of the men and 12% of the women were "evening types", 72% of whom worked in day jobs,the researchers found. A quarter of people classified as evening types rated their own performance at work as poor. This was a significantly higher proportion(比例) than among early birds.
"If evening types have to work in the early morning, they won't rate their work ability as high as morning types. The opposite would be true as well. If normal business hours were 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., the early morning types would feel worse than evening types," said Kristen Knutson, an associate professor at Northwestern University.
Suzanne Hood, an associate professor at Bishop's University in Qucbec, Canada, said that night owls shouldn't be alarmed by the findings.
"Rating job performance doesn't necessarily tell you about the quality of the work in real terms," noted Hood. "Also, the study was observational—it doesn't mean that being a night owl makes you less able to work."
"For example, the employee who seems like a slow starter in the morning might be the person who's most able to work effectively into the evening to meet an important deadline," said Hood. "If there is some opportunity for flexibility in scheduling, allowing employees some control over what time of day they complete their work may help to optimize(优化) performance and productivity."
1. What do we learn about the study from Finland?| A．It lasted from 1966 to 2012. |
| B．It was conducted mainly in the lab. |
| C．72% of participants were early birds. |
| D．A minority of participants were night owls. |
| A．Objective. | B．Worried. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．Starting early in the morning. |
| B．Choosing different work schedules. |
| C．Following normal business hours. |
| D．Finishing one's work later than usual. |
| A．Night Owls Tend To Perform Badly At Work |
| B．Early Birds Are More Likely To Gain Advantages |
| C．Are You A Night Owl? Blame It On Your Genes |
| D．Which Do You Prefer, Morning Type Or Evening Type? |
5 . It would be easy to believe that Mother’s Day was created by a greeting card company. After all, the day is celebrated with special sales and brunches, lots of presents and massive advertising campaigns. But the day was actually conceived more than a century ago by Anna Jarvis of West Virginia as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children.
Jarvis’s mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, helped start “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs,” teaching women how to care for their children. During the Civil War, she organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” where mothers of Union and Confederate soldiers met to try to promote harmony. The younger Jarvis Was inspired by all the things her mother had accomplished with her social work.
When Jarvis was young, she overheard her mother praying, “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will find a memorial mother’s day honoring her for the matchless service she offers to humanity in every field of life.” When her mom died in 1905, Jarvis looked through all the sympathy cards she received. She underlined all the kind words that praised her mother, reading them over and over. The outpouring of kindness for her mother inspired her to create a day to honor all mothers.
The white carnation was her mother’s favorite flower, so it became the symbol for the day. She said it symbolized the truth, purity and charity of a mother’s love. Her idea of celebrating Mother’s Day was wearing a carnation while visiting your mother or maybe going to church together. Children were also encouraged to write letters to their mothers, sharing the depths of their appreciation.
The first official Mother’s Day events were held on May 10. 1908, at the church where her mother taught Sunday School in Grafton, West Virginia, and at the Wanamaker’s department store auditorium（礼堂）in Philadelphia. Jarvis didn’t attend the event in Grafton, but she sent 500 white carnations.
1. What is the probable meaning of the underlined word “conceived” in paragraph 1?| A．Thought up | B．Figured out. |
| C．Found out. | D．Believed in. |
| A．She created Mother’s Day. | B．She was active in social work. |
| C．She joined in the American Civil War. | D．She taught Jarvis how to care for children. |
| A．Pray for their mother’s happiness. | B．Send some flowers to their mothers. |
| C．Write a letter to thank their mothers. | D．Accompany their mothers to the celebration. |
| A．A Memorable Mother | B．Carnation and Mother’s Day |
| C．The Greatness of a Mother | D．The Founding of Mother’s Day |
6 . 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 |
7 . Research has shown that 85 percent of communication is nonverbal, so choosing what to wear to an interview is clearly an important part of your overall presentation. It won’t make up for weak answers, but it can communicate some positive things about your personality and what you might be like to work with.
· Blue：You can’t go wrong with darker shades of blue, especially navy. Choosing from this powerful color will project an image of someone who is in control. From the interviewer’s point of view, the color blue suggests calm, stability, trust, truth, confidence and security. These are all great messages to send without saying a word.
· Gray: After blue, gray is the second most popular color to wear for an interview. Like darker blue, it’s not a distracting color to the interviewer, which means they’ll be focused more on what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. Gray means sophistication （老成）, so use it to your advantage.
· Black: This is a commanding color and represents authority. Black also suggests excitement, so use it carefully when putting together your interview outfit. You may want to use it as an accent （着重色） —like in a scarf or tie, for instance—rather than as the primary color.
· Red：This is an extremely powerful color. It’s so strong that you should only use it as an accent color. Reds are associated with energy, passion, desire, power and aggression. People think of intensity （紧张） and passion when they see the color red, so use it carefully or it could send the wrong message to the interviewer.
· White：White shirts and blouses are always appropriate. It sends the message of simplicity, cleanliness, precision and goodness.
1. What is the best title of the passage？| A．How to Prepare for Your Job Interview |
| B．A Research on Colours |
| C．Colorful Clothes Never Fail |
| D．What the Colors of Your Clothes Say about You |
| A．Because it will make up for your weak answers. |
| B．Because it suggests something about your personality. |
| C．Because it will make you feel better. |
| D．Because the interviewer judges a person by his appearance. |
①stability ②energy ③power ④confidence ⑤security
| A．①②④ | B．②③④ | C．①④⑤ | D．②③⑤ |
| A．gray | B．red | C．black | D．white |
| A．job interviewees should think twice before wearing red clothes |
| B．the colors can send all the messages you want to convey |
| C．you can wear white clothes if you want to appear active |
| D．gray is the most popular color to wear for an interview |
8 . 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. |
9 . 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 |
10 . Things changed for Ben Southall when the Australian state of Queensland advertised a job for someone to look after Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef. They knew it sounded like the best job in the world, but they were surprised when over 35, 000 people applied for the job. Then they had to make a difficult decision—which person to choose from so many candidates? After a lot of testing and interviewing, they announced 34-year-old Ben Southall from England as the winner. Ben now works for the Queensland Tourist Board and his job is to look after the island and to promote tourism there. Because of the unique nature of the job, the Tourist Board wanted a unique person, with a range of skills and qualities. It was a long interview process, involving a variety of tasks to find out about each candidate.
Fitness was very important; swimming ability was particularly essential. Ben can swim very well and he also likes running, climbing, diving and mountain biking. It is clear that, physically, he can do almost anything. The ability to communicate was as important as fitness. For the last part of interview process, the final sixteen candidates did various tests and tasks, including talking to TV and radio reporters. The competition was tough and the candidates needed to show what they could do. The interviewers were interested in how the candidates performed in the tasks, how they handled the press attention and their ability to write about their adventures in a daily log. The candidates did their best to impress the interviewers and they knew they couldn't make any mistakes at this final stage.
Before he went, Ben was confident about his abilities to handle the challenge. He couldn’t do everything they asked him in the interview, as he can’t speak any other language but he felt that his other skills and his personality were impressive. He made a huge effort during the interview process and he was able to convince the interviewers that he was the best person for the job. Even so, he says he was amazed when he got the job; he couldn’t believe it! He hopes to do a good job and promote the island successfully: he has to get to know every part of the island and tell the world about it in numerous media interviews. When you read Ben's blogs from his interview tasks, it is easy to see why they chose him. He is funny and easy-going and he will certainly get the attention of any potential tourist to this beautiful place.
1. According to the passage, Ben’s job includes the following EXCEPT ________.| A．drawing travellers' attention to the island. | B．going to Hamilton Island once a day. |
| C．being interviewed in different media. | D．knowing Hamilton Island very well. |
| A．go through a fitness training. | B．take part in various TV shows. |
| C．write about their own interviewers. | D．communicate with the press. |
| A．He used to be a swimming champion. | B．He kept his personal blog very well. |
| C．He is easy to get along with. | D．He can speak several foreign languages. |
| A．Hamilton Island gets well protected. | B．The funniest job in the world. |
| C．Ben gets dream job. | D．Tourism in Australia. |
