1 . A trial project by the Montreal Children's Hospital suggested that the use of medical hypnosis(催眠)can reduce pain and anxiety in patients. The project also resulted in a reduction in the amount of medicines used to perform medical-imaging imaging(医学影像) procedures.
“During the examination children don't move. It works perfectly. It's amazing,“ said Johanne L'Ecuyer, a medical-imaging technologist at the hospital.
The project was inspired by a French team from Rouen University Hospital Centre where examinations are done under hypnosis instead of general anesthesia(麻醉）.
A French medical-imaging technologist-also a hypnotist — was invited to train a few members in the medical-imaging department of the children's hospital. In all, 80 examinations were conducted for the project between January and September, 2019, focusing on the imaging procedures that would cause anxiety.
Hypnosis is not a state of sleep: It is rather a modified(改变的)state of consciousness. The technologist will guide the patient to this modified state—an imaginary world that will disassociate itself more and more from the procedure that follows.
“The technologist must build up a story with the patient," Ms. L'Ecuyer said. "The patient is left with the power to choose what he wants to talk about. Do you play sports? Do you like going to the beach? We establish a subject that we will discuss throughout the procedure."
Everything that happens next during the procedure must be related to this story — an injection （注射）becomes the bite of an insect; the heat on the skin becomes the sensation of the sun and a machine that rings becomes a police car passing nearby.
“The important thing is that the technologist associates what is happening outside the patient's body with what the patient sees in his head," Ms. L'Ecuyer said. "It requires creativity on the part of the technologist, imagination, a lot of patience and kindness."
The procedure appealed to the staff a lot when it was introduced in January. It spread like wildfire that someone from France was here to train the technologists," Ms. L'Ecuyer said. She added that she had a line of staff at her door wanting to take the training.
1. One of the results produced by the trial project is ________ .| A．a better understanding of children |
| B．less use of certain medicines |
| C．new medical-imaging technology |
| D．an improved reputation of the hospital |
| A．assist in treating a patient |
| B．carry out hypnosis training |
| C．start up a new department |
| D．learn about the procedure |
| A．creating a perfect world for patients |
| B．forcing patients into a state of deep sleep |
| C．putting patients into an unconscious state |
| D．leading patients' consciousness away from reality |
| A．It should keep pace with the procedure. |
| B．It reflects the patient's creativity. |
| C．It is selected by the technologist. |
| D．It tells what doctors are doing to the patient. |
| A．uncertainty |
| B．enthusiasm |
| C．worry |
| D．criticism |
| A．An easy way to communicate with patients. |
| B．The standard method of conducting hypnosis. |
| C．An introduction of medical-imaging technology. |
| D．The use of hypnosis in medical-imaging procedures. |
2 . About five weeks ago, I noticed the skin of our pet lizard was growing dusty. It worried me. I reported the strange surface on the skin of the lizard to my husband and children the next morning. Seconds later, our lizard emerged from its tank with its old skin flowing behind it.
I didn't think about it much until a morning last week when I knocked my favorite teapot off the table. It burst into hundreds of pieces. As I swept up the mess, I wondered why we had been breaking so many things over the months.
The destruction started three months ago. It was my husband's birthday. He had just lost his job. The uncertainty was starting to wear on us, so I wanted to do something special.
“Let's make a cake for Dad!” I cried.
My kids screamed with joy. We baked, iced and sprinkled for most of the day. Candles on the cake! Balloons on the walls! Flowers on the table!
Two hours before my husband came back home from another job interview, my daughter climbed up to grab a glass vase from a high shelf. It fell and crashed beside the cake. Tiny pieces of glass were everywhere. She sobbed loudly as I threw the cake away. My husband had banana pudding for his birthday.
Three days ago, the light in our living room suddenly went out. After several frustrating hours of unsuccessful attempts to fix it, my husband suggested watching the Michael Jordan documentary series The Last Dance.
The poignancy of Jordan retiring from his beloved basketball to play baseball and what had pushed him to make such a tough decision took me by surprise. As I watched him take off his basketball uniform and replace it with a baseball uniform, I saw him leaving behind the layer that no longer served him, just as our lizard had. Neither of them chose the moment that had transformed them. But they had to live with who they were after everything was different. Just like us. I realized that we have to learn to leave the past behind.
Humans do not shed skin as easily as other animals. The beginning of change is upsetting. The process is tiring. Damage changes us before we are ready. I see our lizard, raw and nearly new.
Jordan said that no matter how it ends, it starts with hope. With our tender, hopeful skin, that is where we begin.
1. What can we learn about the pet lizard from Paragraph 1?| A．Its tank grew dirty. | B．Its old skin came off. |
| C．It got a skin disease. | D．It went missing. |
| A．The birthday cake was ruined. | B．The author made good puddings. |
| C．Pudding was his favorite dessert. | D．They couldn't afford a birthday cake. |
| A．To prove a theory. | B．To define a concept. |
| C．To develop the theme. | D．To provide the background. |
| A．letting go of the past | B．looking for a new job |
| C．getting rid of a bad habit | D．giving up an opportunity |
| A．Love of family helps us survive great hardships. | B．It's not the end of the world if we break things. |
| C．We should move on no matter what happens. | D．Past experiences should be treasured. |
Moving a Giant
The logistics of excavating(挖掘)and relocating a town's century-old, living sequoia(红 杉)tree. Inhabitants of Boise, Idaho, watched with trepidation earlier this year as the city's oldest, tallest resident moved two blocks. The 105-year-old sequoia tree serves as a local landmark, not only for its longevity but also because renowned naturalist and Sierra Club cofounder John Muir provided the original seedling. So, when Saint Luke's Health System found that the 10-story-tall conifer(针叶树)stood stood in the way of its planned hospital expansion, officials called tree-moving firm Environmental Design.
The Texas-based company has developed and patented scooping and lifting technology to move massive trees. Weighing in at more than 800,000 pounds, the Boise sequoia is its largest undertaking yet. "I (had) lost enough sleep over this," says David Cox, the company's Western region vice president—and that was before the hospital mentioned the tree's distinguished origin. Before the heavy lifting began, the team assessed the root system and dug a five-foot-deep cylinder, measuring 40 feet in diameter, around the trunk to protect all essential roots. After encapsulating the root ball in wire mesh, the movers allowed the tree to adapt to its new situation for seven months before relocating it. The illustration details what followed. —Leslie Nemo
1. Mark A. Merit and his team at Environmental Design installed underneath the root ball a platform of seven-inch-diameter, 44-foot-long steelbars and, just below the rods, a first set of uninflated airbags (shown in gray). The team also dug a shallow ramp.
2. In roughly 15 minutes, the movers inflated the airbags to about three feet in diameter to raise the root ball to the surface of the hole.
3. By underinflating the front bags, the team allowed the platform carrying the tree to roll up the ramp and out of the hole while staying level. A trailer hauled the tree along as team members removed the airbags from the back of the platform and replaced them in the front. They repeated the process until the tree arrived at the edge of its new home.
4. There a second set of partially inflated bags (shown in white) waited inside the hole. Soil surrounding the sequoia in its original location was relocated as well, because trees are more likely to survive a transplant when they move with their original soil.
5. Using the first set of airbags, the movers rolled the platform into the new hole.
6. The bags waiting there were then inflated further to take the weight of the sequoia while the transportation bags were deflated and removed from under the tree.
7. The white bags were then deflated in about half an hour to lower the sequoia's root ball to the bottom of its hole. The bags were removed, but the metal bars were left with the tree because they rust and degrade over a number of years.
8. For the next five years the local park service will monitor and maintain the tree in its new home.
1. Which of the following words can be used to replace the words underlined " stood in the way of" ?| A．Resisted. | B．Balanced. |
| C．Blocked. | D．Promoted. |
| A．Because the Scooping and lifting technology should be put into use. |
| B．Because it blocks local hospital expansion plans. |
| C．Because it corresponds to government’s plan of Environmental Design. |
| D．Because sequoia trees are over a hundred years old. |
| A．They will be given new soil in the new living environment. |
| B．Metal rods used to move sequoia trees will not be left on the trees. |
| C．They will be kept in transport bags all the time. |
| D．They will be managed by specialists in the next five years. |
4 . Cloud computing will be in use by about 80 percent of about 600 companies. The trend suggests that data management and storage are moving to cloud computing sellers on a large scale.
Touting(兜售)cloud computing as a way to get rid of the costs of buying and maintain in on-site information-technology equipment, sellers offer it in the form of Software AsA. Service(SAAS), a delivery model in which software applications are delivered to customers over a web-based network. SAAS can serve the needs of entire companies through huge, web-based platforms. As cloud computing rapidly bccomes the delivery channel for software developers of all shapes and sizes to get their products to market, offering applications in a cloud is now the rule not the exception. A. relatively small number of sellers are able to offer SAAS to big companies that want company-wide cloud computing, and only the sellers need apply. Although market-share data are hard to come by, the list of company’s large enough to offer cloud-computing on this scale is short: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Rackspace and not many others.
The concentration of data and virtual (虚拟)computing in the hands of relatively few sellers raises an important risk for their customers if the Internet-based systems of any one seller are hacked, the result could be security problems across entire industries in which their customers do
Can this small group of cloud-computing sellers effectively respond to the needs of their customers to quickly fix such a problem and, most importantly, cut off the damage to these companies' own customers? Don't think such things can't happen. If hackers can penetrate the Department of Defense, the risk that they will penetrate Microsoft or google cannot be ruled out Compromise of just one of these sellers---even one with a modest market share---possibly could shut down, at least temporarily, a sizable part of the U. S. economy.
1. What can cloud computing do？| A．Reduce the cost of computers. |
| B．Provide software service. |
| C．Market various products. |
| D．Help companies design websites. |
| A．It works under SAAS. |
| B．It covers a large part of market-share. |
| C．Most companies can provide it. |
| D．Most sellers apply for it. |
| A．To warn people of the hackers' power. |
| B．To show relationship between it and microsoft. |
| C．To give an example of the country's loss. |
| D．To present the real picture of the U.S.economy. |
| A．The Unthinkable risks of the cloud. |
| B．Cloud Computing and Smart Sellers. |
| C．SAAS and changing Companies. |
| D．The Cloud Computing Age. |
5 . I never knew much about my mother's father, John leon La Walla. He moved to the city of Melbourne, Australia, in the 1920s, married, and started to raise a family, but died in World War Two. All we had was one framed photo of him dressed in his army uniform.
For some reason, my grandfather had not kept in touch with any of his relatives, although my mother did recall some family names. It wasn't till 1963 that she finally saw her father's grave, in the Albury War Cemetery in New South Wales. I fiercely wanted to know more about this man. Who were his parents？Who were his brothers and sisters？Were any of them still alive and, if so, where were they now？Did they ever wonder what become of our John Leon？
With the advent（到来）of the Internet, I started searching in earnest in the late 1990s. From my grandfather's records in the army, I learned he'd listed his birthplace as Hertfordshire England." I think his surname must have been a false name," my father said. This made me upset but I put it aside, concentrating instead on my father's line. I joined a genealogy（系谱学）website and was soon discovering some of my ancestors from distant relatives. I wrote, “I just wish I could find out about my mother's father now," and told them of my search.
In late 2012, I heard from a very distant relation on my father's side called Julie, from New Zealand. As a genealogist herself, she'd taken pity on me and spent several weeks on research. It was a bombshell when she said she may have found my grandfather's family.
She'd searched English census（人口普查） records and found the surname Waller. The dates and first names matched right down to a brother who'd died on the Western Front. Julie had overcome the false name, traced a whole tree and put me in touch with current﹣day relatives.
"Consider it an early Christmas present," she said. "Julie had done all this very careful research for a stranger. I will be ever grateful."
1. What can we learn about the author's grandfather？| A．He was born in Australia. |
| B．He was a soldier. |
| C．He died in 1963. |
| D．He had no relatives. |
| A．The Internet was not helpful. |
| B．His father gave up searching. |
| C．The genealogy website worked well. |
| D．His search could not continue. |
| A．The author 's father. |
| B．Someone named Waller. |
| C．The author's brother. |
| D．Julie, a practical stranger. |
| A．The search of the family root. |
| B．The powerful Internet. |
| C．The story of a genealogist. |
| D．The gratitude of a young man. |
6 . In a recent announcement, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology（MIT）said that they have joined forces to offer free online courses in an effort to attract millions of online learners worldwide.
Beginning this fall, a number of courses developed by teachers at both universities will be offered online through a new $60 million program, known as edX. “Anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world can use our online courses,” Harvard President Drew Faust said during a meeting to announce the plan.
MIT has offered a program called OpenCourseWare for ten years that makes materials from more than 2,000 classes free online. It has been used by more than 100 million people. In December, the school announced it also would begin offering a special certificate, known as MITx, for people who complete certain online courses. Harvard has long offered courses to a wider population through a similar program.
The MITx will serve as the foundation for the new learning platform.
MIT President Susan Hockfield said more than 120,000 people signed up for the first MITx course. She said Harvard and MIT hope other universities will join them in offering courses on the open-source edX platform.
“Fasten your seatbelts,” Hockfield said.
Other universities, including Stanford, Yale and Carnegie-Mellon, have been experimenting with teaching to a global population online.
The Harvard-MIT program will be monitored by a not-for-profit（非盈利的）organization based in Cambridge, to be owned equally by the two universities. Both MIT and Harvard have provided $30 million to start the program. They also plan to use the edX platform to research how students learn and which teaching methods and tools are most successful.
1. According to this text, edX is _______.| A．a part of the free MIT OpenCourseWare |
| B．a free computer program by MIT and Harvard |
| C．a Harvard-MIT platform of free online courses |
| D．a free program online for universities worldwide |
| A．Universities have been trying online courses. |
| B．About 2,000 online courses have been offered. |
| C．Over 100 million people have finished courses online. |
| D．Stanford and Yale together have courses similar to edX. |
| A．Get ready for the difficulties |
| B．Get ready for this educational change |
| C．Get prepared to complete the online courses |
| D．Get prepared to make materials for the edX courses |
| A．It is first offered as part of the edX learning program. |
| B．It is another free MIT-Harvard online learning program. |
| C．It is a standard to recognize online learners’ achievement. |
| D．It is a new kind of free online course of Harvard and MIT. |
The Shard was designed by the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano. When he began designing the Shard for London, Piano wanted a very tall building that looked like a spire (尖顶)• He wanted the glass surfaces to reflect the sky and the city. The sides of the building aren’t regular. So the building has an unusual shape. It looks like a very thin，sharp piece of broken glass. And that is how the building got the name: the Shard. Piano says that the spire shape of the Shard is part of a great London tradition. The shape reminds him of the spires of the churches of London or the tall masts (桅杆）of the ships that were once on the river Thames.
The Shard has 87 floors. At the top, there is an observatory. At the moment the building is empty, but eventually there will be a five-star hotel. There will also be top quality restaurants, apartments and offices.
Before building work began, a lot of people didn’t want the Shard though the plans were approved. Now they are still unhappy about the Shard. Some critics say that such a tall skyscraper might be good in a city like New York, but not in London. They say that the best thing about the Shard is its spire shape. But that is the only thing. There is no decoration, only flat surfaces. The Egyptians did that 4,500 years ago. They also think the Shard is too big for London. It destroys the beauty of the city.
Other critics don’t like what the Shard seems to represent. They say that the Shard shows how London is becoming more unequal. Only very rich people can afford to buy the expensive private apartments and stay in the hotel. But the people who live near the Shard are among the poorest in London. So the Shard seems a symbol of the division in society between the very rich and the poor.
The Shard now dominates the London skyline. It is not certain, however, that ordinary London citizens will ever accept it as a valuable addition to the city.
1. London’s newest skyscraper is called the Shard because of ._____
| A．its cost |
| B．its size |
| C．its shape |
| D．its height |
| A．change London’s skyline |
| B．inherit London’s tradition |
| C．imitate the Egyptian style |
| D．attract potential visitors |
| A．is only preferred by the rich |
| B．is intended for wealthy people |
| C．is far away from the poor area |
| D．is popular only with Londoners |
| A．The Shard: Cheers and Claps |
| B．The Shard: Work of a Great Architect |
| C．The Shard: New Symbol of London? |
| D．The Shard: A Change for the Better? |
A new review based on a research shows that acute stress affects the way the brain considers the advantages and disadvantages, causing it to focus on pleasure and ignore the possible negative (负面的) consequences of a decision.
The research suggests that stress may change the way people make choices in predictable ways.
“Stress affects how people learn,” says Professor Mara Mather. “People learn better about positive than negative outcomes under stress.”
For example, two recent studies looked at how people learned to connect images(影像) with either rewards or punishments. In one experiment, some of the participants were first stressed by having to give a speech and do difficult math problems in front of an audience; in the other, some were stressed by having to keep their hands in ice water. In both cases, the stressed participants remembered the rewarded material more accurately and the punished material less accurately than those who hadn’t gone through the stress.
This phenomenon is likely not surprising to anyone who has tried to resist eating cookies or smoking a cigarette while under stress –at those moments, only the pleasure associated with such activities comes to mind. But the findings further suggest that stress may bring about a double effect. Not only are rewarding experiences remembered better, but negative consequences are also easily recalled.
The research also found that stress appears to affect decision-making differently in men and women. While both men and women tend to focus on rewards and less on consequences under stress, their responses to risk turn out to be different.
Men who had been stressed by the cold-water task tended to take more risks in the experiment while women responded in the opposite way. In stressful situations in which risk-taking can pay off big, men may tend to do better, when caution weighs more, however, women will win.
This tendency to slow down and become more cautious when decisions are risky might also help explain why women are less likely to become addicted than men: they may more often avoid making the risky choices that eventually harden into addiction.
1. We can learn from the passage that people under pressure tend to ______.
| A．keep rewards better in their memory |
| B．recall consequences more effortlessly |
| C．make risky decisions more frequently |
| D．learn a subject more effectively |
| A．ways of making choices | B．preference for pleasure |
| C．tolerance of punishments | D．responses to suggestions |
| A．women find it easier to fall into certain habits |
| B．men have a greater tendency to slow down |
| C．women focus more on outcomes |
| D．men are more likely to take risks |
9 . In May 1987 the Golden Gate Bridge had a 50th birthday party. The bridge was closed to motor traffic so people could enjoy a walk across it. Organizers expected perhaps 50,000 people to show up. Instead, as many as 800, 000 crowded the roads to the bridge. By the time 250,000 were on the bridge, engineers noticed something terrible：the roadway was flattening under what turned out to be the heaviest load it had ever been asked to carry. Worse, it was beginning to sway（晃动）. The authorities closed access to the bridge and tens of thousands of people made their way back to land. A disaster was avoided.
The story is one of scores in To Forgive Design：Understanding Failure, a book that is at once a love letter to engineering and a paean（赞歌）to its breakdowns. Its author, Dr. Henry Petroski, has long been writing about disasters. In this book, he includes the loss of the space shuttles（航天飞机）Challenger and Columbia, and the sinking of the Titanic.
Though he acknowledges that engineering works can fail because the person who thought them up or engineered them simply got things wrong, in this book Dr. Petroski widens his view to consider the larger context in which such failures occur. Sometimes devices fail because a good design is constructed with low quality materials incompetently applied. Or perhaps a design works so well it is adopted elsewhere again and again, with seemingly harmless improvements, until, suddenly, it does not work at all anymore.
Readers will encounter not only stories they have heard before, but some new stories and a moving discussion of the responsibility of the engineer to the public and the ways young engineers can be helped to grasp them.
"Success is success but that is all that it is," Dr. Petroski writes. It is failure that brings improvement.
1. What happened to the Golden Gate Bridge on its 50th birthday?| A．It carried more weight than it could. |
| B．It swayed violently in a strong wind |
| C．Its roadway was damaged by vehicles |
| D．Its access was blocked by many people. |
| A．No design is well received everywhere |
| B．Construction is more important than design. |
| C．Not all disasters are caused by engineering design |
| D．Improvements on engineering works are necessary. |
| A．Failure can lead to progress. | B．Success results in overconfidence |
| C．Failure should be avoided. | D．Success comes from joint efforts. |
| A．A news report | B．A short story. |
| C．A book review | D．A research article. |
10 . The end of the school year was in sight and spirits were high. I was back teaching after an absence of 15 years, dealing with the various kinds of "forbidden fruit" that come out of book bags. Now was the spring of the water pistol.
I decided to think up a method of dealing with forbidden fruit.
"Please bring that pistol to me," I said. "I'm going to put it in my Grandma's Box."
"What's that?" they asked.
"It's a large wooden chest full of toys for my grandchildren," I replied,
"You don't have grandchildren," someone said.
"I don't now." I replied. "But someday I will. When I do, my box will be full of wonderful things for them."
My imaginary Grandma's Box worked like magic that spring, and later. Sometimes. students would ask me to describe all the things I had in it. Then I would try to remember the different possessions I supposedly had taken away—since I seldom actually kept them. Usually the offender would appear at the end of the day, and I would return the belonging.
The-years went by, and my first grandchild Gordon was born. I shared my joy with that year's class. Then someone said, "Now you can use your Grandma's Box." From then on instead of coming to ask their possessions back, the students would say, "That's okay. Put it in your Grandma's Box for Gordon."
I loved talking about the imaginary box, not only with my students but also with my own children. They enjoyed hearing about all the forbidden fruit I had collected. Then one Christmas I received a surprise gift—a large, beautifully made wooden chest. My son Bruce had made my Grandma's Box a reality.
1. What was the author's purpose in having the conversation with the students?| A．To collect the water pistol. | B．To talk about her grandchildren. |
| C．To recommend some toys. | D．To explain her teaching method. |
| A．The student's parent. | B．The maker of the Grandma's Box. |
| C．The author's grandchild. | D．The owner of the forbidden fruit. |
| A．They went to play with the baby. | B．They asked to see the Grandma's Box. |
| C．They made a present for Gordon. | D．They stopped asking their toys back. |
| A．She enjoys telling jokes. | B．She is a strict and smart teacher. |
| C．She loves doing woodwork. | D．She is a responsible grandmother |
