1 . Accompanied by her father, using a combination of aid and free climbing and taking advantage of some special equipment and ropes for protection, 10-year-old Selah made it to the top of El Capitan on June 12 after five days of big wall climbing.
Climbing the challenging and adventurous Nose route of El Capitan was a labor of love for Selah in more than one way. Her parents , Mike and Joy Schneiter, fell in love on this 3,000- plus-foot huge rock and she has always wanted to feel the way that her parents felt when they were up there together. Selah showed great interest in rock climbing at an early age. She wore her first rock-climbing equipment shortly after she learned to walk. She first dreamed of climbing El Capitan when she was 6 or 7.
El Capitan is a famous mountain-sized rock in Yosemite National Park. Getting to its top is no easy task. It's taller, as reported, than the tallest building in the world-Dubai’s Buri Khalifa. El Capitan and its difficult Nose route, which runs more than 3,000 feet high up the center of the rock's face, is considered one of the world's hardest big wall climbs and has attracted the best climbers over time. But never before had a youngster accomplished it.
Selah's achievement caught national attention. Outside Magazine called her the youngest documented person to climb the Nose. Ken Yager, president of the Yosemite Climbing Association, said he also couldn't think of anyone younger who has done it.
Selah is humble about her El Capitan accomplishment. "I'm not necessarily a special kid or anything like that, she said. "There were a few times when I would be so worn that it would kind of discourage me from holding on. But overall, it was just great to keep plugging away.”
Selah shared this advice for other young climbers dreaming of big walls, "It doesn't take necessarily a super special person to do something like that. You just have to put your mind to it.”
1. What do we learn about Selah climbing El Capitan?| A．She began her climbing on June 5. |
| B．She got inspired by her family history. |
| C．She managed without any external help. |
| D．She was the first female to reach the top. |
| A．To state El Capitan's height. |
| B．To prove El Capitan's popularity. |
| C．To introduce El Capitan's location. |
| D．To stress the challenge of climbing El Capitan. |
| A．Determined. | B．Generous. |
| C．Warm-hearted. | D．Fortunate. |
| A．Dream big and aim high. |
| B．Be committed to your ambition. |
| C．Chance favors the prepared mind. |
| D．Nothing is impossible for a genius. |
2 . The public nowadays has a misunderstanding of forest fires, believing that fires should be kept out of every type of forest. Many of us can recall Smoky the Bear's famous warning: “Remember, only YOU can prevent forest fires”. However, that's not always the case. Under the right conditions, and when conducted safely, fire can create many environmental benefits as well as help prevent larger, uncontrollable wildfires.
After a forest fire, many wildlife species will move into recently burned areas to feed on these newly available foods. Some reptiles and amphibians such as the pine (松树） snake prefer forests frequently burned by fire. As Herbert Stoddard put it, “One of the most harmful things modern man has done to birds has been his attempt to exclude fire from fire-type pine forests. Within a few years most forests choke up with bushes, lose their prairie-like vegetation (草原般植被） and can no longer support birds dependent on periodic burning for their food supply and proper cover.”
If you are asked to picture the forest floor, what do you see? Pine needles, cones, leaves, branches might come to mind-all sources of fuel. If these fuel sources build up without any type of removal, the 'fuel load' can lead to fires catastrophic to forests and people alike. In contrast, prescribed fire can be used by forest professionals every couple of years to keep forest fuels at an appropriate and manageable level. They can also minimize the spread of pest insects and disease and remove unwanted tree and plant species. Plus, they can create and maintain important wildlife habitats rich in grasses and promote the growth of trees, wildflowers and other various plants.
Many organizations and agencies work to promote fire on the landscape when and where appropriate. Smokey Bear even has an updated warning: “Only You can Prevent Wildfires,” as the Forest Service has over the last few decades developed policies and procedures to include prescribed fire as a management tool, as well as continuing their work to prevent and fight wildfires.
1. Why did the author mention Smoky the Bear's warning?| A．To introduce the topic of the passage. |
| B．To clarify a misunderstood concept. |
| C．To show the significance of fire prevention. |
| D．To raise people's awareness of forest protection. |
| A．Forest bushes. |
| B．Fuel sources. |
| C．Pine forests. |
| D．Periodic burning. |
| A．To put out wildfires. |
| B．To keep the forest balance. |
| C．To remove tree and plant species. |
| D．To keep the fuel rich in the forest. |
| A．One Match Can Start A Forest Fire |
| B．Where There Is Smoke There Is A Fire |
| C．Not All Forest Fires Are Created Equal |
| D．Why Not Keep The Forest Fire Burning |
3 . Tears well up in people's eyes for a lot of reasons. A teardrop running down the cheek is the ultimate symbol of sadness, but people may also cry because they just cut an onion, or maybe they're trying to blink out an eyelash.
For the most part, tears help maintain healthy eyes. When you blink, basal (基底的) tears clean and smooth the eyes, which helps you to see clearly, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Moreover, reflex (反射性的) tears, or those that happen unconsciously, help clear the eyes of irritants (刺激物), including dust and the gas that's produced when a knife slices a raw onion, said Andre Silva, a doctoral student of psychology at the University of Minho in Portugal.
Emotions can also bring about tears in humans. These emotional tears can serve as a means of nonverbal communication. Silva said, “Babies cry to signal to their mothers that something's up. It's a pure attention call. Some people think that babies are capable of controlling adults by crying, but that idea is false and misleading, as a baby is not conscious of being tricky: In a way, we can consider these tears as being somewhere between basal tears and emotional tears.”
As people grow older, they begin to use their tears to express emotions, such as happiness or sadness. These tears may promote compassion and empathy in others. But beware of people who may use their tears to control others. “Some sensitive people may be easily controlled through the crying of others, and may easily shed tears that can also be used by others to control them,” he said.
So, emotional tears have both advantages and disadvantages. “They are a powerful communication device and a powerful manipulative (操纵别人的) device,” Silva said. Crying also makes it hard for some people to mask their feelings when they're in the middle of an extreme emotional state.
1. What's the function of reflex tears?| A．Reflecting our feelings. |
| B．Being used to affect others. |
| C．Serving as a means of interaction. |
| D．Clearing away harmful matters in the eyes. |
| A．Tears are usually used to pity others. |
| B．Babies burst into tears without tricks. |
| C．People mask their feelings when crying. |
| D．Blinking out an eyelash makes it easy to cry. |
| A．We ought to identify tears. |
| B．We should control babies, crying. |
| C．We need to smooth our eyes by emotional tears. |
| D．We can hardly fan others' sympathy by tears. |
| A．Why do people cry? |
| B．Why can tears control others? |
| C．How do people express emotions? |
| D．How can people make use of tears? |
4 . Elizabeth Spelke, a cognitive (认知的) psychologist at Harvard, has spent her career testing the world's most complex learning system-the mind of a baby. Babies might seem like no match for artificial intelligence (AI). They are terrible at labeling images, hopeless at mining text, and awful at video games. Then again, babies can do things beyond the reach of any AI. By just a few months old, they’ve begun to grasp the foundations of language, such as grammar. They’ve started to understand how to adapt to unfamiliar situations.
Yet even experts like Spelke don’t understand precisely how babies — or adults, for that matter — learn. That gap points to a puzzle at the heart of modern artificial intelligence: We're not sure what to aim for.
Consider one of the most impressive examples of AI, Alpha Zero, a programme that plays board games with superhuman skill. After playing thousands of games against itself at a super speed, and learning from winning positions, Alpha Zero independently discovered several famous chess strategies and even invented new ones. It certainly seems like a machine eclipsing human cognitive abilities. But Alpha Zero needs to play millions more games than a person during practice to learn a game. Most importantly, it cannot take what it has learned from the game and apply it to another area.
To some AI experts, that calls for a new approach. In a November research paper, Francois Chollet, a well-known AI engineer, argued that it’s misguided to measure machine intelligence just according to its skills at specific tasks. “Humans don’t start out with skills; they start out with a broad ability to acquire new skills,” he says. “What a strong human chess player is demonstrating is not only the ability to play chess, but the potential to fulfill any task of a similar difficulty.” Chollet posed a set of problems, each of which requires an AI programme to arrange colored squares on a grid (格栅) based on just a few prior examples. It’s not hard for a person. But modern machine-learning programmes-trained on huge amounts of data — cannot learn from so few examples.
Josh Tenenbaum, a professor in MIT's Center for Brains, Minds & Machines, works closely with Spelke and uses insights from cognitive science as inspiration for his programmes. He says much of modern AI misses the bigger picture, comparing it to a cartoon about a two-dimensional world populated by simple geometrical (几何形的) people. AI programmes will need to learn in new ways — for example, by drawing causal inferences rather than simply finding patterns. “At some point — you know, if you’re intelligent — you realize maybe there's something else out there,” he says.
1. Compared to an advanced AI programme, a baby might be better at _______________.| A．labeling images | B．identifying locations |
| C．playing games | D．making adjustments |
| A．Stimulating. | B．Measuring. | C．Beating. | D．Limiting. |
| A．AI is good at finding similar patterns |
| B．AI should gain abilities with less training |
| C．AI lacks the ability of generalizing a skill |
| D．AI will match humans in cognitive ability |
| A．What is exactly intelligence? |
| B．Why is modern AI advanced? |
| C．Where is human intelligence going? |
| D．How do humans tackle the challenge of AI? |
5 . Once small farmers in Masii, a remote village in Kenya, have picked their crops, all they can do is wait until a buyer trucks through. The system works fairly well for beans and corn, but mangoes-the area’s other main crop-spoil (腐烂) more quickly. If the trader is late, they rot.
Obadiah Kisaingu, a farmer in Masii, estimates 40% of the village’s mango crop is lost to spoilage. But a simple coating could change that. A company, SmartTech, has created a product that doubles the shelf life of fresh produce, enabling farmers like Kisaingu to access far-off, larger markets. More time for fresh produce on grocers' shelves also means less food waste-a $2.6 trillion problem, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
James Rogers, CEO of SmartTech, who has a Ph. D in materials science, wanted to solve the problem for food much in the same way that oxide barriers preventing rust (锈) have achieved for steel. Fortunately, researchers have found when plants made the jump from water to land hundreds of millions of years ago, they developed cutin, a barrier which is made of fatty acids that link together to form a seal around the plant, helping keep water in.
The cutin was such a grand strategy that today you'll still find it across the plant kingdom. Not that it's exactly the same solution across the board: An orange can last longer than a strawberry not so much because of the thickness of its skin, but because of the difference in the arrangement of those cutin molecules (分子)on the surface. SmartTech’s challenge was first identifying the key components of cutin. After extensive trials, Rogers and his team developed a natural and tasteless protective coating from plant material-stems, leaves and skins. The product extends the sweet spot between ripening and rot. And best of all, the treated produce doesn't require refrigeration.
SmartTech traveled a long road to get here. It was six years from launch before products applied with the substance were in stores. SmartTech-treated fruits and vegetables are already in large grocery chains in Europe and the U. S. and the company recently gained regulatory approval in several less developed countries in South America.
“SmartTech has huge potential to turn poor farmers in Africa into commercial farmers,” says Rogers. “That means more money in pockets, and more food in stomachs.” But whether the company can cost-effectively reach small farmers in far-off areas still remains a challenge.
1. The author mentions the small farmers in Kenya to _______________.| A．stress their need for preserving produce |
| B．show their difficulty in harvesting crops |
| C．evaluate their loss caused by slow transport |
| D．help express their wish to reach larger markets |
| A．It is financially supported by FAO. |
| B．It is intended to replace refrigeration. |
| C．It is designed to thicken produce’s skin. |
| D．It is based on plants’ own defence system. |
| A．To profit farmers. | B．To earn more money. |
| C．To produce more food. | D．To expand grocery chains. |
| A．prove a theory | B．promote a product |
| C．introduce a company | D．present a technology |
6 . Charles Darwin lived an unusually quiet life．In 1842, Darwin and his wife Emma moved from London to Kent in southern England to have as little disturbance(烦扰) as possible．They already had two children then, and would go on to have eight more in the country．
Darwin had very regular(有规律的) habits．He rose early and went for a walk．After breakfast he worked in his study until 9：30 am, his most productive time of the day, and then read his letters lying on the sofa before returning to work．
At midday he would go for another walk with his dog, stopping at his greenhouse to inspect(查看) his experiments．Then he would go for another walk around an area of woodland．While walking on his “thinking path”，Darwin would consider his unsolved scientific problems．
After lunch he read the newspaper and wrote letters．His network of friends provided information from all corners of the world．
The Darwins were not very strict parents and the children were always seen running wild．Their father worked patiently to a background of playful shouts and little footsteps walking past his study door．
After dinner Darwin played backgammon (a game for two people to play) with his wife．He once wrote, “Now the result with my wife in backgammon stands like this: she．．．has won only 2，490 games, while I have won, hurrah(a cheer of joy or victory), hurrah, 2，795 games！”
Although he had poor health, Darwin continued to publish(出版) a lot of creative works until his final book in 1881．He died the following year, aged 73．
Rather than a quiet space in the local churchyard, which he called “the sweetest place on Earth”，Darwin was given a state funeral(国葬) in London’s Westminster Abbey．
1. Why did the Darwins move to Kent?| A．To do more experiments． | B．To cut their cost of living． |
| C．To enjoy more peacefulness． | D．To be together with their children． |
| A．He studied in the woods． | B．He started to work at 9：30 am． |
| C．He wrote letters in the morning． | D．He examined his experiments． |
| A．Strict． | B．Sweet． | C．Cold． | D．Brave． |
| A．Darwin’s scientific achievements． | B．Darwin’s unusual state funeral． |
| C．Darwin’s personal life． | D．Darwin’s large family． |
7 . An airline passenger ensured a 20-year-old man was reunited with his lost wallet-along with a little extra something to make up for their time apart.
Hunter Shamatt first lost his wallet while he was on a Frontier Airlines flight from Omaha to attend his sister's wedding in Las Vegas earlier this month. On realizing his wallet was lost, he contacted the airline to see if anyone had turned it in—but to no avail. Since the wallet contained his ID, a signed paycheck, his debit card and $60 in cash, he “feared the worst”.
Shortly after the flight, however, Hunter was shocked to receive a package in the mail from an unknown sender. Inside was his wallet-along with an additional $40 in cash.
“Found this on a Frontier flight from Omaha to Denver-row 12, seat F stuck between the seat and wall,” read a letter in the package. “Thought you might want it hack. All the best. PS: I rounded your cash up to an even $100 so you could celebrate getting your wallet hack. Have fun!”
Hunter's mother, Jeannie, posted a photo of the letter to social media in hopes that they would be able to track down the sender and thank them for their kindness. All they had to go on was that the letter was sent from Applied Underwriters in Omaha and the sender's initials were signed: "T.B".
The Good Man was later identified as Todd Brown, a father-of-five who was delighted at the chance to "have a little fun" with helping out a hard-working stranger. Brown says that he often tries to do good deeds without any recognition, thus why he didn't sign his full name on the letter, but Jeannie later insisted on praising the Nebraska native on social media.
“I try to teach my children to do the right things in life, help people when you can despite the outcome,” she wrote on Facebook. “This story is more about restoring faith in people than anything”.
1. What does the underlined word "to no avail" in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Under discussion. | B．In vain. | C．Beyond belief. | D．At a loss. |
| A．To throw light on the truth. |
| B．To draw attention to Hunter's lost wallet. |
| C．To find out the sender to express gratefulness. |
| D．To sing high praise for the sender's generosity. |
| A．Innocent. | B．Warm-hearted. | C．Romantic. | D．Easy-going. |
| A．Hunter Shamatt-a Lucky Man | B．Young Passenger Reunites with Sister |
| C．Helping Needy People Is a Great Virtue | D．Stranger Returns Lost Wallet with More Cash Inside |
8 . “The price of books for our students is just getting higher and higher and，combined with the rising cost of tuition，it’s killing these students，”said Peter Jason，a college professor. “Remember，students are one of the poorest groups of people in America. Almost half of them have at least one part-time job. In fact，one of my students has three jobs. And she still manages to have high scores and go to school full-time. ”
Textbook prices are traditionally high. Adding to that problem, many college teachers change textbooks year after year; they either upgrade to a new edition or switch to an entirely different textbook. This further hurts students because if an instructor no longer uses a particular textbook，that book has no resale value.
Dr. Jason decided to make reading a little easier and a lot cheaper for his students by writing his own book on public speaking. “Many books have an increased price because of CD-ROMs，lots of color photographs and pictures. I talked to my students，and many of them，like me，prefer to keep things simple! So，a few years ago，I wrote my own textbook. Compared to most other public speaking books，mine is half the number of pages，and one-third the price. That is，$30 instead of $90. When I wrote a second edition last year，students only had to buy the 35 new pages, For only $7. 00，they had almost a new book. Now my loose-leaf textbook enjoys great popularity among the students. Maybe in the future more writers and publishers will try it. ”
1. What did Dr. Jason say about students at college?| A．They are short of money. |
| B．They need better textbooks. |
| C．They should do part-time jobs. |
| D．They are trying to get high scores. |
| A．To choose cheaper textbooks. |
| B．To write a textbook himself. |
| C．To speak to his students. |
| D．To use old textbooks. |
| A．About 7 dollars. | B．About 30 dollars. |
| C．About 37 dollars. | D．About 90 dollars. |
| A．Dr. Jason’s textbook has CD-ROMs and nice pictures. |
| B．More writers and publishers will write simpler textbooks. |
| C．Dr. Jason teaches public speaking at a college. |
| D．Dr. Jason’s textbook is not well received. |
9 . I’ve spent two decades observing what makes people lucky and trying to help people increase their luck. I teach entrepreneurship (社会学). We know many new enterprises fail, and innovators (创业者)need luck.
With my students, I spend much time encouraging them to get out of their comfort zone and take some risks. I do this myself all the time. About a dozen years ago, during a flight, I decided to take a little risk. I started a conversation with the man sitting next to me. I introduced myself, and I learned that he was a publisher. I learned all about the future of the publishing industry and we exchanged contact (联系) information. So about three quarters through the night, I decided to take another risk. I showed him a book plan I was doing in my class. Although he was very polite, he said it wasn’t right for us.
A couple of months later, I told him I was doing a project on transforming the book, the future of publishing and invited him to come to my class. So he gladly came to my class. We had a great experience. A few months later, I wrote to him again, sending a bunch of video clips (剪辑) from another project my students had made. He was so stricken by one of them that he thought there was a book in it. I was a little bit hurt, but it was all right. So I invited him and his colleagues to have lunch together. Later, one of his editors asked me if I had considered writing a book. And I pulled out the exact same plan I had showed his boss a year earlier. Within two years, my book had sold over a million copies.
1. We can infer from the author’s experience on the plane that .| A．the publisher was stricken by his book |
| B．that was his first experience by plane |
| C．the first risk during the night didn’t work out |
| D．the experience made him transform his book |
| A．To have their book published. | B．To help to increase his luck. |
| C．To assess their writing skills. | D．To help them see their strength. |
| A．Take the Lead | B．Everything is Possible |
| C．Win in Danger | D．Luck and Risk |
| A．Publishing books. | B．A series of small risks. |
| C．Being turned down frequently. | D．Meeting with the stranger on the plane. |
10 . Chinese painting, also known as the traditional national painting, one of the traditional paintings with a long history, has its unique and independent system. Using brushes, ink, and Chinese pigments (天然颜料), a painting is drawn on a special kind of paper (Xuan paper) or silk. The traditional subjects are figures, landscapes, flowers and birds.
In comparison with Western painting, Chinese painting has its own artistic characteristics. After a careful study of the object, a painter can discover the rules of its structure, and then produce it by the mind’s eye. It is not merely a simple copy, but it combines the object with the artistic concept of the producer, turning a natural image into an “artistic image”. The object can show the artist’s feelings and personality to achieve the effect of “being alike not only in spirit, but also in appearance”. Not all the objects are to be drawn on the paper, and much space is left for the imagination. The use of lines is important in Chinese painting. Clear, swift, sharp and changeable lines are combined with the push, point and press of the brush and ink to show the quality of the object and variations of tone (色调). Ancient Chinese artists listed 18 different ways of drawing lines with the brush in figure painting. Different ways of creating lines are used when painting a landscape, flowers and birds, clouds, and bamboos.
Traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy are different branches of art stemming (起源) from the same origin. They use the same kind of tools and all the lines used in painting are variations of the points and lines of calligraphy. Though they are different artistic forms, they are closely linked in terms of their expression of thoughts and feelings. They influence each other to create another artistic feature.
1. Which of the following words can describe the common subjects of traditional Chinese painting?| A．Valuable. | B．Independent. |
| C．Special. | D．Natural. |
| A．reflects social problems of his times | B．describes mainly a natural image |
| C．expresses his thoughts | D．tells a true story |
| A．traveling | B．learning to draw lines |
| C．reading | D．studying calligraphy before drawing |
| A．Using the similar techniques. | B．Starting from the same period. |
| C．Belonging to the same artistic form. | D．Covering the same themes. |
