1 . My brother, Michael and I are crazy about houses. On Aug 1, 2016, I was driving through the Northern Neck of Virginia with him. We had found an abandoned Italianate farmhouse with weeds up to our waist. When admiring the property my brother rolled up the unlocked garage door. “Holy smokes!” There sat this Mercedes. Seeing the number 6.9 on its back, I immediately recognized this to be a rare and unique find.
The car’s door was unlocked and in the glovebox, I found insurance papers. It turned out that the owner was a dead country doctor.It took me a year to find his widow’s(寡妇的) address, in Richmond. Twice I made the two-hour drive just to knock on her door, striking out both times. On the third try her neighbor was outside and I was able to get the widow’s phone number.
I logged approximately 25 voice mails,and still nothing.It was, I thought, just bad luck. I called one last time and heard a voice: “Hello?” From that point on, we struck up a friendship.
In July 2018, two years after finding the car, I was ready to buy it from her. We met in the middle — somewhere around what a new Toyota might cost. Still,the night before, I called my brother and said, “I am getting cold feet.” What was I doing buying an old Mercedes? He said, “You are buying that great car. And I promise you, the friendship you will make as a result will make this car worth every penny.” And he was right.
1. Why did the author go to the Northern Neck?| A．To visit his brother. | B．To check the house. |
| C．To buy the unique car. | D．To enjoy the beautiful sights. |
| A．The author had trouble finding the car owner. |
| B．The car was the doctor’s only possession. |
| C．The widow was unwilling to sell the car. |
| D．The car was in bad conditions. |
| A．He was shocked by the price. |
| B．He was hesitating to make the decision. |
| C．He cared about money more than the car. |
| D．The weather that day was quite cold. |
| A．It was a waste of money. |
| B．It would cost a great deal. |
| C．Buying the car brought good friendship. |
| D．His brother made a good bargain buying it. |
2 . Improve Cloud Security
Sensitive customer data has constantly been found exposed on cloud servers without password protection. To ease the problem, database software makers have been trying to make security easier for cloud database managers. At the Enigma Conference in San Francisco, Kenn White, a security manager at database software maker MongoDB, will describe a new technique, called field level encryption, to make data safer on the cloud.
Field level encryption works by scrambling data before it’s sent to a cloud database and rearranging it in order when the data is needed for use. The promise of the product is to protect the contents of a cloud database, even if bad guys access it.
MongoDB’s new feature comes as more and more companies move user data to cloud servers, rather than run their own costly data centers. It was predicted that cloud computing would be a $214 billion industry by the end of 2019. That would be up more than 17% from 2018, when it was $182 billion.
Companies have rushed to the cloud without understanding all of the possible security consequences. Many companies have left countless databases exposed, revealing personal data. A database containing details about who lives in 80 million US households was left unprotected in 2019, just like the data on Facebook users.
Database managers want to store their data in an unreadable form, but they also want to be able to find specific pieces of information in the database with a simple search term. For example, someone might want to look up health care patients by their Social Security numbers, even if those numbers are stored as random characters. To make this possible, field level encryption lets database managers encrypt a search term on their machine and send it to the database as a query. The database matches the encrypted version of the search term with the record it’s storing and then sends it back to you.
This approach only works with specific kinds of data. For example, field level encryption isn’t useful for long text entries, like notes in a patient’s medical chart, because you can’t search for individual words.
Still, for data like account numbers, passwords and government ID numbers, field level encryption protects data and maintains a usable database.
Most importantly, White said, it’s simple to set up. Database managers turn it on with a one-time configuration change when they set up the database. “That’s really powerful,” he said in an interview.
1. The underlined word “scrambling” in paragraph 2 probably means________.| A．mixing | B．collecting | C．hiding | D．storing |
| A．Secure the safety of Internet pages. | B．Protect files with a unique style of storage. |
| C．Stop bad guys from accessing the database. | D．Enable companies to store files on the cloud. |
| A．Companies should move user data to cloud servers. |
| B．Cloud computing achieved a 17% increase in 2019. |
| C．Companies may be unaware of the risks of the cloud. |
| D．No companies were willing to run their own data centers. |
| A．present some facts | B．offer security advice |
| C．introduce a technique | D．recommend a product |
3 . The pandemic (流行病）has left a lot of families in financial difficulty. Not only have many found it difficult to pay bills, they’ve also had to deal with huge unpaid debts. Thankfully, one very kind-hearted doctor, Omar Atiq, from Arkansas decided to forgive the $ 650,000 debt that his patients still had to pay.
Dr. Omar Atiq closed his clinic in Pine Bluff after 30 years of offering patients radiation therapy (治疗），and CAT scans. While putting his affairs in order，with the help of a debt collection agency, Dr. Atiq realized that his patients were really struggling to pay off their debts. “So my wife and I，as a family，thought about it andlooked at forgiving all the debts. We saw that we could do it and then just went ahead and did it.”
The reasoning behind the decision comes from his understanding toward those he's seen suffer throughout his years as a doctor： “Since I started practicing，I’ve always been rather uncomfortable with sick patients not only having to worry about their own health, quality of life, their longevity，their families and their jobs but also money. That’s always concerned me.” Atiq’s wife, Mehreen, shares his caring nature and supported her husband in his decision.
So Omar sent the following letter at Christmas to around 200 of his patients： Although various health insurances pay most of the bills for the majority of patients，the deductibles (自负额） and co-pays can be burdensome. Unfortunately, that is the way our health care system currently works. My clinic has decided to forgive all the debts owed to the'clinic by its patients.
Omar, the father of four children who are also doctors or becoming doctors, seems to have always put the patients first. “I have never refused to see a patient，not for lack of health insurance or funds nor for any other reason. Tve always considered it a high honor and privilege to be someone’s physician — more important than anything else，’’ Omar shared with the local media.
1. When did Atiq realize his patients’ inability to pay off their debts?| A．As the debt collection agency helped him. |
| B．When he was collecting the debt in person. |
| C．After he clearly knew the details of the debt. |
| D．After he found out the pandemic was serious. |
| A．His responsibility. | B．His wife’s support. |
| C．His sympathy. | D．His medical practice. |
| A．He values his patients and his job. |
| B．He works together with his children. |
| C．He will start another clinic in the future. |
| D．He thinks that being a doctor is profitable. |
| A．Dr. Atiq has made a very important decision. |
| B．Dr. Atiq removes his patients' financial burden. |
| C．Dr. Atiq has contributed a lot to the medical field. |
| D．Dr. Atiq has set a good example for all the doctors. |
4 . More than half the world’s population live in cities, and by 2050 the UN expects that proportion to reach 68%. This means more homes, roads and other infrastructure. In India alone, a city the size of Chicago will have to be developed every year to meet demand for housing. Such a construction increase is a bad sign for dealing with climate change, because making steel and concrete, two of the most common building materials, generates around 8% of the world’s CO2 emissions (排放). If cities are to expand and become greener at the same time, they will have to be made from something else.
Wood is one of the most promising sustainable (可持续的) alternatives to steel and concrete. It is not, however, everyday wood that is attracting the interest of architects.
Rather, it is a material called engineered timber. This is a combination of different layers, each designed to meet the requirements of specific parts such as floors, panels and beams (横梁). Designers can use it to provide levels of strength like steel, in a product that is up to 80% lighter. In addition, engineered timber is usually made into large sections in a factory for future use, which reduces the number of deliveries to a construction site.
According to Michael Ramage of the University of Cambridge, a wooden building produces 75% less CO2 than a steel and concrete one of the same size. However, if building with wood takes off, it does raise concern about there being enough trees to go round. But with sustainably managed forests that should not be a problem, says Dr Ramage. A family-sized apartment requires about 30 cubic metres of timber, and he estimates Europe’s sustainable forests alone grow that amount every seven seconds. Nor is fire a risk, for engineered timber does not burn easily. Besides, fireproofing layers can be added to the timber. All in all, then, it looks as if wood as a building material may get a new lease of life.
1. Why is India mentioned in paragraph 1?| A．To point out the severe pollution. |
| B．To predict the population increase. |
| C．To indicate the high degree of urbanization. |
| D．To show the great need for building materials. |
| A．It is produced at a low cost. |
| B．It hardly appeals to architects. |
| C．It helps save energy in transportation. |
| D．It possesses greater strength than steel. |
| A．Becomes cheaper. | B．Gains popularity. |
| C．Requires less work. | D．Proves sustainable. |
| A．Making Future Cities More Attractive |
| B．Living in a World with Less Emission |
| C．Building Sustainable Cities with Woods |
| D．Growing More Trees for Future Building |
5 . Every day, it seems that some new algorithm (算法) enables computers to diagnose a disease with unprecedented accuracy, renewing predictions that computer's will soon replace doctors. What if computers could replace patients as well? If virtual humans could have replaced real people in some stages of a coronavirus vaccine trial, it could have sped development of a preventive tool and slowed down the pandemic. Similarly, potential vaccines that weren't likely to work could have been identified early, reducing trial costs and avoiding testing poor vaccine candidates on living volunteers. These are some of the benefits of “in silico medicine”, or the testing of drugs and treatments on virtual organs or body systems to predict how a real person will respond to the therapies.
The modeling begins by feeding anatomical data drawn from noninvasive (非侵入式) high- resolution imaging of an individual's actual organ into a complex mathematical model of the mechanisms that govern that organ's function. Algorithms running on powerful computers resolve the resulting equations and unknowns, generating a virtual organ that looks and behaves like the real thing.
In silico clinical trials are already underway to an extent. Heart Flow Analysis, for instance, enables clinicians to identify CAD (冠心病) based on CT images of a patient's heart. The Heart Flow system uses these images to construct a fluid dynamic model of the blood running through the coronary blood vessels, thereby identifying abnormal conditions and their severity. Without this technology, doctors would need to perform an invasive operation to decide whether and how to intervene. Experimenting on digital models of individual patients can also help personalize therapy for any number of conditions and is already used in diabetes care.
The philosophy behind in silico medicine is not new. The ability to create and simulate the performance of an object under hundreds of operating conditions has been a cornerstone of engineering for decades, such as for designing electronic circuits, airplanes and buildings. Various obstacles remain to its widespread implementation in medical research and development.
The predictive power and reliability of this technology must be confirmed, and that will require several advances. Those include the generation of high quality medical databases from a large, ethnically diverse patient base that has both women and men; improvement of mathematical models to account for the many interacting processes in the body; and further modification of Al methods that were developed mainly for computer-based speech and image recognition and need to be extended to provide biological insights.
In recent years American and European regulators have approved some commercial uses of computer-based diagnostics, but meeting regulatory demands requires considerable time and money. Creating demand for these computer-based diagnostic tools is challenging as well. In silico medicine must be able to deliver cost-effective value for patients, clinicians and health care organizations to accelerate their adoption of the technology.
1. According to the text, “in silico medicine” might help ________.| A．discover the cause of an illness |
| B．quicken the creation of new medicine |
| C．recognize the symptoms of a disease earlier |
| D．avoid including unhealthy volunteers in trials |
| A．works effectively in CAD treatment |
| B．offers personalized therapies to patients |
| C．reduces the chances of invasive operations |
| D．builds models after identifying abnormal conditions |
| A．money and time from the regulators |
| B．replacement of old mathematical models |
| C．more proof of its effectiveness and dependability |
| D．progress in speech and image recognition technology |
| A．Looking to Al to End Experimental Study |
| B．In Silico Medicine Saved Millions of Lives |
| C．Exploring the Future of Algorithm in Medicine |
| D．Virtual Patients Could Revolutionize Medicine |
6 . The idea of billions of people going through a few masks a week during this pandemic definitely rings alarm bells, but a team of researchers in Melbourne may have the solution.
They’ve discovered that adding millions of discarded face masks to road-paving (铺路) mixtures would actually lower the cost of the road, while preventing billions of them from landfills. Just one kilometer of road would need three million masks, and the polypropylene (聚丙烯) plastic used to make single-use surgical face masks also increased the flexibility and durability of the road.
The new material is a mixture of about 2% torn masks, with recycled concrete aggregate (RCA)—a material obtained from waste concrete and other minerals from destroyed buildings. This recycled material was found in the study to be ideal for two of the four layers generally required to create roadways. Paving a kilometer of two-way road with the RCA and three million face masks would result in a change of 93 tons of waste from landfills.
The final product then is more resistant to wear than asphalt (沥青), as well as being cheaper too, provided there was a method for collecting masks. The research team did a cost-analysis and found that, at $26 per ton, the RCA was about half the cost of mining raw materials, and as much as a third of the cost of shipping the used masks to a landfill.
The widespread application would be ideal for large infrastructure (基础设施) projects. For example, Washington has the 11th worst roads in terms of unaddressed repairs in the U.S. If the damaged roads in Washington state were repaired with the RCA/mask mixture, it would reuse nearly 10 billion masks, sparing American landfills hundreds of millions of tons of trash.
It’s said that the team is looking for private industry partners or governments willing to give their plastic mask road an opportunity for a large-scale test.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” mean in paragraph 2?| A．Recycled. | B．Produced. |
| C．Mixed. | D．Abandoned. |
| A．2% torn masks, concrete and tons of trash. |
| B．Polypropylene plastic and building materials. |
| C．Single-use surgical masks and recycled concrete aggregate. |
| D．Waste concrete and other minerals from destroyed buildings. |
| A．To tell us what the team has found. |
| B．To prove this material is cost-effective in paving roads. |
| C．To explain repairing roads costs a lot of materials. |
| D．To praise the hard work the team has done. |
| A．The material used to pave roads is made of masks. |
| B．Generally speaking, it requires two layers to create roadways. |
| C．It remains to be tested whether the solution is practical. |
| D．The damaged roads in Washington were repaired with the RCA. |
7 . Sawyer Current’s first visit to Isla Mujeres, a small island off the coast of Cancun, Mexico, was meant to be a getaway. But instead of relaxing on white sand beaches, Current was disappointed at the number of unwanted animals wandering the streets. “Dogs were everywhere, coming out of the bushes and along the sides of the road,” she recalls of that trip 25 years ago. “They were dirty and covered with fleas and scars.” “It was sad,” she says. “I just couldn’t stand to watch it.”
Current decided to help fix it. She built a second home on Isla Mujeres in 2000, and beginning with a skinny, toothless cat she rescued from the streets, she went on to find homes for more than 2,000 dogs and cats. Today, thanks to Current’s efforts, the island no longer has a wild-dog problem, and “people are more aware of their pets’ needs,” says Marcelino Velazquez, 34, a property manager from Isla Mujeres. “They vaccinate them and don’t abandon them on the streets. The way of thinking has changed.”
For Current, it was a hard-fought transformation. “At first I was angry and thought it was horrible,” Current says of the conditions on the island when she began her work. “But these weren’t bad people. They were people without resources.” When she first arrived, the community had no small-animal vet, and animal control consisted of a team of government workers who’d round up street dogs in a truck and kill them. “I used to follow the truck, and when they’d go for lunch, I’d let the dogs out,” she says. “One time I let the air out of their tires.”
At one point she was caring for more than 65 rescued dogs in her home, and she estimates she has spent about $1 million of her own savings on her efforts. “It was exhausting,” she admits. Now Isla Animals has an on-site shelter with a small staff, and many volunteers and donors among the island’s tourists. Each year the group re-homes more than 170 pets, many of which fly with volunteers to families in the U.S. and Canada.
“There’s nothing in the world like finding a starving dog, nursing it back to good health and finding it a loving home,” Current says.
1. What made Current feel disappointed with the island?| A．Insects biting people. | B．People without resources. |
| C．Houses in poor conditions. | D．Animals abandoned in the streets. |
| A．To show the local people how to solve their problems. |
| B．To draw public attention to what she was doing. |
| C．To stop the workers from killing the animals. |
| D．To help the government punish bad people. |
| A．Loving. | B．Ambitious. | C．Intelligent. | D．Cautious. |
8 . During the COVID-19 pandemic, Julia began her second year as a first grade teacher in an online classroom. One September afternoon, she received a call from and Cynthia, who was having technical difficulties with her granddaughter's tools for online learning.
Julia immediately knew something was wrong with Cynthia. The two women had spoken many times before, but Julia had never heard she sounded like this. Her words were so jumbled that Julia could barely understand her. Julia called her headmaster, Charlie, who convinced her that he would call and check on Cynthia himself.
Just like Julia, Charlie could barely understand Cynthia. He suspected she might be having a stroke (中风) — he recognized the signs from when his own father had suffered one. Charlie immediately became concerned that Cynthia's two grandchildren, ages six and eight, were probably home alone with her and scared. Charlie asked his office manager to send an ambulance to the grandmother's home.
The quick response from Julia and Charlie saved Cynthia's life. She arrived at the hospital in time to get treatment before long-term damage occurred. Thanks to an extended stay in the hospital, she has regained most of the movement throughout her body except for one hand and a region of her mouth.
“I'm proud of the people I work with, that they responded so quickly and that it did make a difference to Cynthia,” says Julia. “I am so pleased to be part of such a caring community.” But the school's crisis response is only one piece of the community's extraordinary efforts to help Cynthia and her granddaughters. Another family with young children took in the two girls.
Virtual learning has been a challenge across the country, but it's fair to say that it has helped the community grow closer. Many teachers there gave their personal phone numbers to students and families in case they needed extra help. In this case, the exchange was literally life-altering.
1. Cynthia called Julia in order to .| A．complain about the poor contents of online learning |
| B．consult about her granddaughter's academic performance |
| C．seek some help for lack of certain technical knowledge |
| D．volunteer her services as a teacher in an online classroom |
| A．brief |
| B．unclear |
| C．gentle |
| D．impolite |
| A．By recalling his own previous sufferings from the disease. |
| B．By using his professional knowledge to form the judgment. |
| C．By combining Julia's call with the granddaughters' description. |
| D．By identifying the symptoms that a stroke patient may have. |
| A．It has caused much inconvenience to parents. |
| B．It will bring about unavoidable leak of privacy. |
| C．It has provided more benefits than challenges. |
| D．It needs technical guidance to be highly effective. |
9 . Anyone wanting to help the poor may like this idea—recycling aluminum cans in a different way, which is apparently also good for the environment. So you're actually killing two birds with one stone. It goes without saying that recycling aluminum cans can save resources, energy, time and money. People usually save and place aluminum cans in the dustbins, which are then collected and taken away by cleaners, who will finally recycle them in the recycling center. But if you save the aluminum cans, and skip the cleaners, you can save these same cans for something more important—helping the poor. In other words, by doing less, you are giving the environmental cause some new significance.
Here is how to put this idea into action. Take your aluminum cans and place them in a plastic bag. For the dirty ones, rinse them out first. Store the bag of clean aluminum cans. Once you collect about one hundred cans or more, take the cans to the recycle center yourself. There are about eighteen aluminum cans in a pound. And you can receive three to four dollars for one hundred cans. Donate your three to four dollars to the poor or any charity organization of your choice.
By now, you may wonder if your few dollars have really made a difference to the poor. Consider this: Is there any individual or any specific event that is great enough to change the world or decide the direction that history takes? The answer is probably no. What if there were a lot of people who would do the same thing? History shows nothing but the collective will of the whole community. And that will surely be powerful enough to make a bigger difference.
Go to your community or your school and spread your idea. Share your idea and save your aluminum cans with other people. One hundred people can speak louder than one. And the money you make by saving cans can be multiplied by one hundred times. And if more people join in the cause around the world, an even larger difference can be made , and more people in need will enjoy the benefits.
1. What's special about the new idea?| A．It makes profits. | B．It saves resources. |
| C．It benefits the poor. | D．It involves cleaners. |
| A．Dirty cans do not sell well. | B．You decide who receives the money. |
| C．A hundred cans weigh about 3 pounds. | D．The recycle center is conveniently located. |
| A．A great individual or event. | B．The direction history takes. |
| C．The collective will of people. | D．The neighbourhood you live in. |
| A．Many hands make light work. | B．Kill two birds with one stone. |
| C．Don't put the cart before the horse. | D．No man can do two things at once. |
10 . Training for Saving
First Aid at Work 3 days £279
Suitable for people aged 16+ who might need to provide first aid by responding to a wide range of accidents, injuries and illnesses that they could encounter in their workplace. Ideal for organizations whose needs assessment has identified a requirement for additional first aid training, especially, having employees with a disability or a medical condition.
Lunch break. Classroom setting. Certificate to issue.
AED with Life Support 2 days £107
Right choice for people, over 16, who want to learn how to use an automated external defibrillator （AED）. First aid for unresponsive adults in addition. Currently available at our London, Edinburgh and Reading venues; however, you can organize a training session for a group of up to 15 people at your workplace by requesting a group booking.
Certificate valid for three years.
First Aid for Teachers Training 1 day £50
Specially designed for those working in a school environment and wishing to have the first aid skills to act in an emergency. Ideal for teachers and other school staff over 16. First aid skills to help a child who is unresponsive and breathing or not breathing, choking, having an allergic reaction or a head injury.
Not qualify the learner to act as a first aider.
Fire Marshal Training 4 days £364
Take this if you are over 16 and responsible for fire safety or appointed fire marshals in the workplace. Come to understand how a fire starts and spreads; how to assess and manage these risks; and how to use firefighting equipment. You must be physically able to carry out the practical elements of the course.
Role play. Classroom environment. Certificate.
1. What can be learnt in the course AED with Life Support?| A．Steps to deal with massive injuries. |
| B．Process of preventing a terrible fire. |
| C．Operation of certain medical equipment. |
| D．Treatment for an adult's mental problems. |
| A．First Aid at Work. | B．AED with Life Support. |
| C．First Aid for Teachers Training. | D．Fire Marshal Training. |
| A．Providing certificates for trainees. |
| B．Having the same requirement for age. |
| C．Offering discount for group booking. |
| D．Taking more than one day to complete. |
