1 . London has a new unusual magazine. But it is not printed on paper. Everyone who has a television can receive it because it is on TV.
In order to read this magazine you have to have a decoder. Each page of it is numbered, so you only have to dial the number to choose which subject you want to read about. There is a wide choice — everything is included from cooking to the latest sports news.
If you want to read the news, the first thing you have to do is to turn to the index page which has an easy-to-remember page number, 100 for example. The news is on pages 101 to 109 so you push out the numbers and the news appears written across your screen. Perhaps you want to go out in the afternoon, so you press 181, and a brightly coloured weather map appears on the screen. But the weather is terrible so you decide to go shopping and dial 162 for a list of the week’s best bargains. But should you drive or take the train? To answer that question you only have to press 189 for the traffic report. It is very simple to use. But probably the best thing about the service is that it is being updated all the time. Journalists type new material directly onto the screen and whole pages of the magazine can be replaced in minutes.
London already has three services. One is transmitted (输送) by ITV while the other two on BBC. BBC engineers do not think that their idea will ever replace books and newspapers because they can be taken with you everywhere. But many people would agree that this is a breakthrough as great as the invention of printing, which could change not just our reading habits but our way of life thoroughly.
1. What can we know from the passage?| A．The magazine can be bought at any local newsstand. |
| B．Most of the postmen in London will lose their jobs some day. |
| C．The readers can get all kinds of information staying at home. |
| D．Everyone can read this magazine if they have a television. |
| A．Decoder. | B．Magazine. | C．Subject. | D．Program. |
| A．Help people find out the sum of certain figures. |
| B．Help people go shopping and have other entertainment. |
| C．Receive some special TV program for entertainment. |
| D．Read the information transmitted by TV signals. |
| A．A magazine printed and published in London. |
| B．A popular TV program about magazines. |
| C．An up-to-date way of keeping up to date. |
| D．A technology helping people to communicate. |
2 . One of the unforgettable experiences in California is to go whale watching in Monterey Bay. Nancy Black, a licensed marine biologist, is one of the scientists who lead these commercial outings, besides doing her own whale research. As Lawrence Biegel, her lawyer, puts it, one day Ms Black was in her research boat with assistants when killer whales attacked grey whales and killed a calf. Its blubber (鲸脂) floated to the surface, and the killer whales were about to feed on it. Seizing this opportunity to film their behavior, Ms Black threaded ropes through some pieces of blubber, then lowered a camera underwater.
For this, Ms Black might now face up to 20 years in prison and half a million dollars in fines, after a federal grand jury indicted her this month. Little about the accusations makes common sense. The federal law in question is the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, which was intended to save whales from being killed and harassed. The law also banned feeding these animals, on the theory that doing so might damage their ability to seek food naturally in future. Feeding is what Ms Black is now accused of. She says she was using whatshe had learned from the federal agencies that are now investigating her to observe a natural feeding that was already in progress.
Just as ridiculous, says Mr Biegel, is the accusation, increasingly common in federal cases, that Ms Black lied to the authorities, which carries its own prison terms. Ms Black always edits the commercial videos of her whale outings to make them more interesting. When investigators demanded footage (连续镜头), she gave them one of these edited videos. Prosecutors now claim that she had changed evidence intentionally.
To Harvey Silverglate, the author of "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent", this is common in America's federal justice system today. A couple of trends have combined to threaten justice and freedom. First, federal regulations are often so poorly written and so vague that they are not understandable in effect. This gives too much discretion (自由裁量权) to bureaucrats and prosecutors (检察官), with their own career ambitions, who apply them randomly. Second, federal law has been moving away from mens rea ("guilty mind"), a common-law tradition that suggests that a person who had no idea he was breaking a law should not be accused of doing so. With swollen federal law system and without mens rea you can accuse most people of something or other, says Mr Silverglate. The question should be, he says, whether charges are reasonable when they run "against all human instinct and experience".
1. What does the underlined word “indicted” in paragraph two probably mean?| A．charged | B．warned | C．criticized | D．sentenced |
| A．Feeding killer whales on a grey whale calf’s blubber. |
| B．Providing false evidence with her edited videos. |
| C．Going whale watching for commercial purposes. |
| D．Breaking the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. |
| A．According to Mr Biegel, Nancy Black has a slim chance of proving herself innocent. |
| B．Nancy Black thought she might get away with her filming killer whales. |
| C．Some jealous research assistants reported Nancy’s commercial outings to the police. |
| D．Those prosecutors might have different views about federal regulations from Nancy. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Indifferent. | C．Disapproving. | D．Ambiguous. |
E-cigarettes一thought by some to be responsible for a decline in youth cigarette smoking---are actually attracting a new population of adolescents who might not otherwise have smoked tobacco products, according to anew UC San Francisco study.
In the first national analysis of the impact of e-cigarettes on trends in youth smoking in the United States, UCSF researchers did not find evidence that e-cigarettes have caused youth smoking to decline. In fact, combined e-cigarette and cigarette use among adolescents in 2014 was higher than total cigarette use in 2009，according to the study.
The authors concluded that the low-risk youth in the study, who went on to smoke regular cigarettes, may not have used nicotine at all if e-cigarettes did not exist.
“We didn't find any evidence that e-cigarettes are causing youth smoking to decline, ”said lead author Lauren Dutra, a former postdoctoral fellow at the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education and current social scientist at RTI International, a not-for-profit research organization based in North Carolina.
“While some of the kids using e-cigarettes were also smoking cigarettes, we found that kids who were at low risk of starting nicotine with cigarettes were using e-cigarettes," Dutra said. “Recent declines in youth smoking are likely due to tobacco control efforts, not to e-cigarettes.”
The national analysis builds on several previous studies that have reported that adolescents who start withe-cigarettes are more likely to subsequently smoke traditional cigarettes.
In August 2016, the US Food and Drug Adminis-tration restricted e-cigarette purchases to adults ages 18and older( California set the age to 21). The FDA also will require a warning label on e-cigarettes, starting August2018, regarding the addictive nature of nicotine. However, the FDA's ruling does not regulate advertising or flavors,and e-cigarettes continue to be sold in flavors that appeal to youth.
1. What is the initial purpose for e-cigarettes to be invented?| A．To warn people of the harm of smoking. | B．To discourage people from smoking. |
| C．To make cigarette smoking less harmful. | D．To help kids give up smoking. |
| A．They actually have a negative influence on youth. |
| B．They are helpful in keeping kids away from smoking. |
| C．They help reduce the number of smokers. |
| D．They turned out to be less harmful than cigarettes. |
| A．People's awareness of health. | B．The use of e-cigarettes. |
| C．Efforts to control tobacco. | D．Restrictions on e-cigarette sales. |
| A．Advertising for e-cigarettes should be stopped. |
| B．There should be a warning label on e-cigarettes. |
| C．E-cigarettes should not contain flavors. |
| D．E-cigarettes should be further promoted. |
4 . Fertile Sichuan has long been one of China's major tea- producing regions. Chengdu had been noted for its teahouses by the Tang dynasty—as early as the ninth century. For centuries, teahouses were places for entertainment as well as tea, with performances of storytelling, music, and Sichuan opera in particular. That is a fading art these days, but Yuelai Teahouse beside Jinjiang Theater still hosts opera every Saturday afternoon.
You will find most of Chengdu's old-school teahouses in parks and temple compounds (大院). Heming Teahouse in Renmin Park buzzes with morning retirees, lunchtime office workers, and afternoon visitors. All of them sit under red lanterns by a lotus pond. When the loud confused noise gets too much, move on to Shaocheng Teahouse in the same park. Regulars are older and quieter. They bring songbirds on outings, hanging their cages in the branches of willow trees, and play mahjong in a pavilion covered with moss. In more recent years, however, increasingly elaborate(精致的) teahouses have opened to appeal to the younger generation. They tend to have a taste for superior teas in a more contemporary style. The most famous one of them is Mi Xun Teahouse in Taikoo Li, which is right in the city's most fashionable retail(零售) district.
As in all teahouses, the tea comes in individual packets with a thermos of water. Maofeng green tea from Mount Emei, south of Chengdu, is the traditional favorite. Shake the loose leaves into your palm-sized cup. The cup usually comes with a saucer and a lid that both functions to strain surface-floating leaves and to keep the tea warm. Don’t let the water level in your cup get too low, since any bitterness from the tea leaves is concentrated at the bottom. You can top up your tea all afternoon and needn't buy anything else.
1. What aspects of Chengdu's teahouses does the first paragraph mainly focus on?| A．Art & history. | B．Art & popularity. |
| C．Function & popularity. | D．History & function. |
| A．Tourists. | B．Owners. | C．Customers. | D．Waiters. |
| A．Yuelai Teahouse. | B．Mi Xun Teahouse. |
| C．Heming Teahouse. | D．Shaocheng Teahouse. |
| A．Some useful tips for readers who want to visit Chengdu's teahouses. |
| B．Some interesting facts the author found in books on Chengdu's teahouses. |
| C．Some painful lessons the author learned from his trip to Chengdu's teahouses. |
| D．Some basic rules readers have to follow if they want to visit Chengdu's teahouses. |
| A．To experience Chengdu's everyday life. |
| B．To introduce Chengdu's teahouse culture. |
| C．To stress the advantages of a slower pace. |
| D．To inspire readers to travel to Sichuang. |
5 . People across Western Europe are experiencing a heat wave this week, with the worst still to come on Thursday. Officials sounded high-temperature health warnings on Wednesday, mindful that some heat waves before had caused thousands of deaths across an area where people are not used to such weather and few homes have air conditioning.
Rene Pierron, 51, a street cleaner at Paris City Hall, was not lucky, and said it was difficult to work outdoors under such conditions. “The buildings and roads here take the heat in during the day and act like radiators (散热器) — it's unbearable,” he said while taking a break near the Avenue des Champs-Elysees.
Kate Simmonds, also 51, who works in a restaurant in central London, could commiserate (同情).“It's so hot—we can’t work like this,” she said on Wednesday. But she said business was good this week, with plenty of people buying cold drinks and ice cream.
Nation after nation have given health-related warning for people becoming tired and weak in the heat. Belgium gave its highest warning since its weather warning system was put in place 20 years ago, and Germany placed the whole country under a heat warning.
Britain's weather service, the Met Office, placed five of England’s nine areas, including London, on a “Level Three” heat health watch, one level short of a national emergency.
Liz Bentley, the chief executive of Britain’s Royal Meteorological Society, warned: “While a country like Britain is not used to heat waves, they could become more common because of the changing climate. If you live in a Mediterranean(地中海) country, the population adapts to these temperatures. But we’ll see the number of deaths go up in the next coming days.”
1. What did Rene Pierron think of the weather?| A．It created some business chances. |
| B．It made his work more difficult. |
| C．It might cause people to die. |
| D．It would end sooner or later. |
| A．It provided air conditioning for poor people. |
| B．It suggested people stay away from work. |
| C．It has carried out many helpful actions. |
| D．It warned the whole country of the heat. |
| A．Two. | B．Three. | C．Four. | D．Five. |
| A．Such weather will appear less frequently. |
| B．The danger of the weather have been gradually realized. |
| C．People from Mediterranean countries adjust to the weather. |
| D．Fewer people from Britain have been influenced by the weather. |
| A．Heat Wave Spreads across Western Europe |
| B．Heat Wave Makes Things Bad for Human Beings |
| C．Europe Tries to Find Ways to Deal with Heat Wave |
| D．Heat Wave Reminds People to Protect the Environment |
6 . Experts are buried in their research in 3D printing food. Several 3D printers designed for food are now on the market. Anything that can be made into a soft wet mixture can be squeezed from a tube in a 3D printer. Instead of ink, these printers can use fruits, vegetables, proteins, sweets, and more. This makes for lots of combinations that can be healthy, delicious, and even artistic, which will be well received by people.
Most 3D printers don’t actually cook the food, at least not yet. Engineers at Columbia University’s Creative Machines Lab invented an oven (烤箱) that cooks 3D-printed pizza with laser beams (激光束). A special computer program controls the lasers, heating each part of the pizza to perfection. Unlike regular ovens, lasers can carefully cook each thin piece of 3D-printed food.
In the future, food can be made with a 3D printer to meet our needs. For example, a hospital could design meals to meet patients’ dietary needs. Vitamins, minerals, and even medicines can be mixed right in. A 3D printer can make food appealing. Foods that someone may not like might be more attractive after 3D printing. Maybe that food you dislike wouldn’t seem so bad if it looked like a castle!
The idea of 3D printed food may seem very modern. In fact, NASA (美国国家航空航天局) has been researching the topic for more than ten years. On a long travel, it’s important to have food that is easy to make, tastes good, and has the nutrients astronauts need to stay healthy. Printing food on demand may soon be into the space!
1. Why will 3D printed food be popular?| A．It is easy to take around. |
| B．It is delicious and healthy. |
| C．It is cheaper than other food. |
| D．It is environmentally friendly. |
| A．Healthy. | B．Fresh. | C．Attractive. | D．Terrible. |
| A．3D printing will be used to study the space. |
| B．Printed food has been used by NASA in space. |
| C．NASA is the first to do research into 3D printing. |
| D．3D printed food is expected to meet the needs of astronauts. |
| A．3D printed food in the future. |
| B．The development of 3D printing. |
| C．All kinds of 3D printed products. |
| D．The ways to keep healthy in the future. |
7 . The room was full of the smell of ink. It was nice, but I wondered what I was doing there. I felt butterflies in my stomach when I started calligraphy (书法) class. At that moment, I couldn’t have known that I’d just made one of the best choices of my life.
I sat down and listened to the teacher introducing the writing brush. Then it was time for me to try my hand. I took up the brush, using the correct gesture, dipped (蘸) it in the ink, and carefully wrote “one” in Chinese.
I watched the ink spread. The character I wrote wasn’t pretty at all. I lost heart. My teacher noticed my sadness and encouraged me to try as many times as possible. I dipped the brush and tried again. After I had written the word repeatedly for two hours, perhaps thousands of times, I finally made a “one” that looked neat and clear.
I walked out of the classroom with a pile of paper, seeing the sunlight fall through the spaces between the leaves to the ground, and everything seemed to shine. With the calligraphy I’d learned, I realized that I could discover the world’s beauty.
Since that time, I have been interested in calligraphy.
After nearly five years of practicing, I became quite good at it. I started to make versions of well-known poems. In the quiet room full of the smell of ink, calligraphy seemed like a bridge, which connected me to writers from centuries past. Stroke (笔画) by stroke, word by word? I touched the author’s feelings about wars, the pain of not being appreciated and difficulties in their work. I could feel their emotions — their sadness, anger and loneliness. During that time, I cherished (珍惜) my own peace and learned to appreciate my daily life.
1. How did the writer feel when she started calligraphy class?| A．Nervous. | B．Excited. | C．Relaxed. | D．Confident. |
| A．Seeing is believing. |
| B．Time waits for no man. |
| C．Practice makes perfect. |
| D．Think twice before taking action. |
| A．By creating poems of her own. |
| B．Through writing words from poems. |
| C．By reading the poems from centuries ago. |
| D．By learning about the writers of the poems. |
8 . Like many inventions, language translators were imagined by writers long before they became real. In Hugo Gernsback’s 1911 novel A Romance of the Year 2660, characters use a video telephone that can translate from one language to another. A language translator also appears in Murray Leinster’s 1945 First Contact. In that story, humans and creatures from another planet made a translation device together after asking for contact with one another. The idea of the language translator didn’t become truly popular, however, until the “universal translator” appeared in the 1970 Star Trek series, which delighted television viewers at that time. That device was universal in the sense that it could translate any language that it came across.
The first real language translator was demonstrated（展示）by engineers from IBM company and Georgetown University in 1954. Their machine could only translate Russian sentences into English.
Language translators have come a long way since then. Today, online translations can be accessed easily at no cost to users. With translation apps, users sometimes don’t even have to look things up. All they need to do is point their cellphone’s camera at some writing, and a translation immediately appears. If users want to translate something being said aloud, they just turn on their phone’s microphone. All of these features save time and effort.
Translation apps on phones make foreign travel much easier than before. They are invaluable and convenient when it comes to communicating with taxi drivers or hotel waiters who don’t speak a traveler’s native language. But these apps are far from perfect. Sometimes a translation makes no sense, forcing the user to guess what the translation means. At other times, the user might not know that the translation has failed until he or she shows it to a native speaker.
1. When was the idea of the language translator widely known?| A．In 1911. | B．In 1945. | C．In 1970. | D．In 1954. |
| A．writers are usually cleverer than inventors. |
| B．the idea of a language translator came from science stories. |
| C．engineers made language translators to delight TV viewers. |
| D．it took little effort for people to develop language translators. |
| A．Translation apps. | B．Users. |
| C．Translations. | D．Phones. |
| A．By telling that online translation will change our life. |
| B．By explaining that online translation has its weakness. |
| C．By introducing how to use translation apps in travelling. |
| D．By discussing why people should give up translation apps. |
| A．How do science stories become true? |
| B．Can languages be translated into each other? |
| C．How does a language translator develop? |
| D．Why do we depend on language translators? |
9 . On her third Christmas, my daughter Jillian didn't have the energy for opening presents. At 23-months, she had been diagnosed with neuroblastoma, an aggressive tumor. I didn’t know how challenging the holidays could become until Jillian died. Being sorrowful became my full-time job in the following days. The pain was a wildfire in my chest and nothing could put it out.
A week before the fourth Christmas, Tom and I bought a three-foot plant that slightly resembled a Christmas tree. My adult nephew Frankie came along. We were busy decorating the tree and Frankie reached into a Christmas decoration box and pulled out a toy angel with a white gown that my aunt had crafted years before. As he lifted the angel, her hair fell out in one big bunch, just like Jillian's.
We burst into laughter. In between gasps, Frankie looked up with the angel in hand and said, “Hi, Jillian.” Tom emerged from the bedroom and saw our tree, “It’s small, bald and beautiful! Just like Jilly-boo. I like it.”
I moved closer to Tom and he put his arm around my shoulder. Looking at the angel, I knew it would help us through the holidays. Like us, it was sad and pitiful, but full of beautiful memories of Jillian.
“Do something new.” said a minister who ran a support group I went to. It’s as if you must create a new space in your heart to keep it beating, despite the bleeding hole.
Tom and I were eventually able to experience the wonder of a four-year-old at Christmas. On the one-year anniversary of Jillian’s death, I discovered I was pregnant. Our second daughter, Cadence, brought us back to joy and hope. Cadence is nine now, and hoping Santa will bring her a dog this year. Eleven years after Jillian’s death, Christmas is almost Christmas again.
1. What does the author say about herself after Jillian’s death?| A．She went on her life as usual. | B．She was drowned in tears. |
| C．She decided to start a new life. | D．She quit her full-time job. |
| A．It was a beautiful decoration. | B．It was a gift from Jillian. |
| C．It was a relief to the author. | D．It was a symbol of strength. |
| A．Her family can reunite again. | B．She has been out of sadness. |
| C．Santa will bring them gifts. | D．She has another daughter. |
| A．Mother’s love is forever strong. | B．One should depend on himself. |
| C．Family is everything for people. | D．Life goes on despite misfortunes. |
10 . As a geothermal scientist, I know that boiling rivers exist—but they are always near volcanoes. You need a lot of heat to make that much water boil. We were working in the volcanic gap, a 950-mile-long area that covers most of Peru, where there hasn’t been active volcanism for the past two million years.
Yet we’d found the Shanaya, a name originated from “heating thing”. My measurements averaged 190°-195°F. The locals think it’s so hot because of the Yacumama, or “water mother”—a spirit who gives birth to waters—represented by a snake-head-shaped rock at the origin of the heated water.
I had to cut my way through the bush at the side of the river to take temperature readings. All the while, right next to me was this very hot, fast-flowing body of water. A friend at the nearest village had told me, “Use your feet like eyes.” You can’t see heat, but you can feel it when you step near it. I wore sandals(凉鞋）.
I was at a part of the river measuring 210°F, standing on a rock the size of a sheet or paper, when the rain fell. It was like a curtain rising. The temperature differential between the rain and the river caused a whiteout. I couldn’t see, but I whistled to let my partner know I was OK.
At 130°F flesh cooks, and the water around me was nearing twice that. My eyes would have cooked in less than a minute, and I couldn’t have seen how to get out. I saw rats fall in, their eyes turning milky white. I kept whistling.
After 15 minutes the rain stopped and the steam cleared. A hard rain in most situations would have been nothing important. Here, for a matter of minutes, it thinned the line between researching and being boiled alive.
1. What do we know about boiling rivers?| A．They are always found not far from volcanoes. |
| B．They were discovered two million years ago. |
| C．Geothermal scientists doubt their existence. |
| D．Most of them can be found in Peru. |
| A．It was convenient to wear sandals in the river. |
| B．He was advised to do so by his friend. |
| C．He wanted to feel heat with his feet. |
| D．The temperature was high there. |
| A．He signaled to his partner for help. |
| B．He was in danger of losing his life. |
| C．He raised a curtain to protect himself. |
| D．He fell down because of his blindness. |
| A．Water near volcanoes. |
| B．Milky white eyes. |
| C．Boiling point. |
| D．A hard rain. |
