1 . If you wear glasses, chances are you are smarter. Research published in the famous British journal Nature Communications has found that people who displayed higher levels of intelligence were almost 30 percent more likely to wear glasses.
The scientists studied the genes of thousands of people between the ages of 16 and 102.The study showed intelligence can be connected to physical characteristics. One characteristic was eyesight. In out of 10 people who were more intelligent, there was a higher chance they needed glasses. Scientists also said being smarter has other benefits. It is connected to better health.
It is important to remember these are connections which are not proven causes. Scientists call this correlation. Just because something is connected to something else does not mean one of those things caused the other. And it’s worth noting that what constitutes intelligence is subjective and can be difficult, if not impossible, to measure.
Forget genes though. Plenty of proof shows wearing glasses makes people think you are more intelligent, even if you do not need glasses. A number of studies have found people who wear glasses are seen as smarter, hard-working and honest. Many lawyers use this idea to help win their cases. Lawyer Harvey Solves explained this. Glasses soften their appearance. He said Sometimes there has been a huge amount of proof showing that people he was defending broke the law. He had them wear glasses and they weren’t found guilty.
Glasses are also used to show someone is intelligent in movies and on TV. Ideas about people who wear glasses have begun to shift. People who do not need glasses sometimes wear them for fashion only. They want to look worldly or cool. But not everyone is impressed by this idea, though. GQ magazine said people who wear glasses for fashion are trying too hard to look smart and hip (时髦的). However, that hasn’t stopped many celebrities from happily wearing glasses even if they do not need them. Justin Bieber is just one high-profile fan of fashion glasses.
1. What does the new study show?| A．People wearing glasses are smarter. |
| B．People wearing glasses are healthier. |
| C．Wearing glasses can make people cleverer. |
| D．Wearing glasses is associated with higher IQ. |
| A．Shift. | B．Link. | C．Proof. | D．Consequence. |
| A．Because it can create a moral image. |
| B．Because it can mislead the witnesses. |
| C．Because it can highlight clients’ qualities. |
| D．Because it can prove the clients’ innocence. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Mixed | D．Indifferent. |
2 . Nao, the first robot able to show feelings, has been created by a European research team. When Nao is sad, he lowers his head and looks down. When he’s happy, he raises his arms for a hug. Nothing is out of the ordinary, except that Nao is a robot.
“We’re modeling the first years of life,” says Lola Canamero, a computer scientist at the University of Hertforshire. “The feelings are shown through physical gestures and body movements rather than facial or verbal(言语的) expressions.”
In the future, says the scientist, robots are likely to act as companions, provide support for old people, and help people shop online. In such uses, the display of feeling will be important in making the interactions(交往) more natural and comfortable.
Nao has been programmed to copy the emotional skills of a one-year-old child. It can memorize faces, and knows the basic rules of good and bad. Based on these it can decide how to react to what is going on. The actions going with each feeling are pre-programmed, but Nao decides for itself when to display them.
Nao is also programmed to have different personalities. A more independent robot is less likely to call for help when exploring a room, while a more fearful robot will show distress if it finds something in the room that may be harmful.
Canamero’s team will take its emotional programming forward into medical applications. Part of the project will look at ways to use robots in hospitals to support the roles of doctors, nurses and parents. Children might find that a small, friendly-looking robot that can understand their emotional states makes them less anxious. “We want to explore different roles—the robots will help the children to understand their treatment and explain what they have to do. We want to help the children to control their anxiety.” she says.
1. According to the text, Nao_______.| A．displays different feelings in different situations |
| B．is able to imitate adult emotional displays |
| C．can remember people’s feelings |
| D．learns emotions from facial expressions |
| A．Scientists worked on facial and spoken expressions to create Nao’s emotions. |
| B．The time when Nao displays feelings has been pre-programmed. |
| C．Emotional programming is used in medicine production. |
| D．Robots with emotional skills can help children feel more comfortable. |
| A．Courage. | B．Anxiety. |
| C．Anger. | D．Satisfaction. |
| A．The relationship between humans and robots. |
| B．The roles that robots play in different fields. |
| C．The first robot able to show feelings. |
| D．The long history of robots. |
3 . By the end of the century, if not sooner, the world’s oceans will be bluer and greener thanks to a warming climate, according to a new study.
At the heart of the phenomenon lie tiny marine microorganisms (海洋微生物) called phytoplankton. Because of the way light reflects off the organisms, these phytoplankton create colourful patterns at the ocean surface. Ocean colour varies from green to blue, depending on the type and concentration of phytoplankton. Climate change will fuel the growth of phytoplankton in some areas, while reducing it in other spots, leading to changes in the ocean’s appearance.
Phytoplankton live at the ocean surface, where they pull carbon dioxide (二氧化碳) into the ocean while giving off oxygen. When these organisms die, they bury carbon in the deep ocean, an important process that helps to regulate the global climate. But phytoplankton are vulnerable to the ocean’s warming trend. Warming changes key characteristics of the ocean and can affect phytoplankton growth, since they need not only sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow, but also nutrients.
Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a scientist in MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, built a climate model thatprojectschanges to the oceans throughout the century. In a world that warms up by 39C, it found that multiple changes to the colour of the oceans would occur. The model projects that currently blue areas with little phytoplankton could become even bluer. But in some waters, such as those of the Arctic, a warming will make conditions riper for phytoplankton, and these areas will turn greener.” Not only are the quantities of phytoplankton in the ocean changing,” she said, “but the type of phytoplankton is changing.”
And why does that matter? Phytoplankton are the base of the food web. If certain kinds begin to disappear from the ocean, Dutkiewicz said, “it will change the type of fish that will be able to survive.” Those kinds of changes could affect the food chain.
Whatever colour changes the ocean experiences in the coming decades will probably be too gradual and unnoticeable, but they could mean significant changes. “It’ll be a while before we can statistically show that the changes are happening because of climate change,” Dutkiewicz said, “ but the change in the colour of the ocean will be one of the early warning signals that we really have changed our planet.”
1. What directly makes the change of the ocean’s appearance?| A．The increase of phytoplankton. |
| B．The way light reflects off the organisms. |
| C．The type and concentration of phytoplankton. |
| D．The decline of phytoplankton. |
| A．Control. | B．Use. |
| C．Predict. | D．Discover. |
| A．Phytoplankton are sensitive to the ocean’s warming trend. |
| B．Phytoplankton absorb carbon dioxide at the bottom of the ocean. |
| C．Oceans with more phytoplankton may appear bluer |
| D．Data have been found to show the change in the colour of the ocean |
| A．To introduce a new method to study phytoplankton. |
| B．To explain the effect of climate change on oceans. |
| C．To analyze the consequences of ocean colour changes. |
| D．To analyze the composition of the ocean food chain. |
4 . Athletes who can run several marathons in just months might seem unstoppable.The biggest obstacle，it turns out，is their own bodies.A new study find out for the first time a “ceiling” for endurance activities such as longdistance running and biking.
“Physiologists and athletes alike have long been interested in just how far the human body can push itself.When exercising over a few hours，a wealth of evidence suggests most people max out at about five times their basal metabolic(代谢的)rate(BMR)．How humans use energy during longer endurance activities is another question entirely，”says Herman Pontzer，an evolutionary theorist at Duke University，North Carolina.
Pontzer saw an opportunity to answer that question when Bryce Carlson，an endurance athlete and former biochemist at Purdue University，organized the Race Across the USA in 2015.Runners covered 4，957 kilometers over the course of 20 weeks in a series of marathons stretching from Los Angeles，California，to Washington，D.C.
To find out how many calories the athletes in the study burned，Pontzer，Carlson，and colleagues replaced the normal hydrogen and oxygen in their drinking water with harmless，uncommon isotopes(同位素)of those elements.By chemically tracing how these isotopes flush out in urine，sweat，and breath，scientists can calculate how much carbon dioxide an athlete produces — a measure that directly relates to how many calories they burn.
Pontzer's team then collected energy consumption data over the course of the race to see how many calories they burned per day.They found that whatever the event is，energy consumption leveled off after about 20 days，eventually staying at a steady level at about 2.5 times an athlete's BMR.At that point，the body is burning calories more quickly than it can absorb food and turn it into energy，representing a biologically determined ceiling on human performance.
“It was just one of those moments of discovery that as a scientist you just live for，” Pontzer said.“We ended up plotting out the very limits of human endurance，the envelope for what humans can do.”
1. What does the underlined word “ceiling” in the first paragraph refer to?| A．The weakness of human bodies. |
| B．The effect of lasting exercise. |
| C．The way humans use energy. |
| D．The limit of human endurance. |
| A．The hydrogen and oxygen in their drinking water. |
| B．The carbon dioxide their bodies create. |
| C．The amount of their urine，sweat and breath. |
| D．The remaining isotopes in their body. |
| A．To confirm that an athlete's physical extreme is mainly determined by his BMR. |
| B．To compare human limits in common exercise with those in endurance activities. |
| C．To find out where the highest energy consumption of an athlete lies. |
| D．To set a reasonable standard for researches concerned with human body |
| A．Excited. | B．Regretful. |
| C．Surprised. | D．Hopeful. |
5 . Once I had a student called Jamal. He would squirm (扭来扭去)in his chair during independent work, and he would never stay still for more than three or four minutes. Students like Jamal can confuse brand new teachers because they’re not quite sure how to support young people like him. I took a direct approach. I negotiated with Jamal. If he could give me focused work, then he could do it from anywhere in the classroom: from our classroom rug, from behind my desk, or from inside his classroom locker, which turned out to be his favorite place.
Jamal’s least favorite subject was writing, and he never wanted to read what he had written out loud in class, but we were still making progress. One day, I decided to host a mock (模拟的)2008 presidential election in my classroom. My third graders had to research and write a speech for their chosen candidate: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain. The favorite candidates were obvious, but one student chose John McCain. It was Jamal. Jamal finally decided to read something that he had written out loud in class, and sure enough, Jamal stunned all of us with his brilliance. Just like Jamal’s dad, John McCain was a veteran, and just like Jamal’s dad protected him, Jamal believed that John McCain would protect the entire country. He wasn’t my candidate of choice, but it didn’t matter, because the entire class erupted into applause for our brave friend Jamal who finally showed up as his most confident self for the first time that year.
A lack of confidence pulls us down from the bottom and weighs us down from the top, crushing us between a flurry of can’ts and won’ts. Without confidence, we get stuck, and when we get stuck, we can’t even get started. Instead of getting mired in what can get in our way, confidence invites us to perform with certainty.
1. Which of the following best describes Jamal?| A．Naughty and stubborn | B．Determined but shy |
| C．Smart but unfocused | D．Confident and generous |
| A．Because John was the least popular among the three choices. |
| B．Because John had written something about him before. |
| C．Because John shared some similarities with Jamal’s father. |
| D．Because John was a soldier who could protect the country. |
| A．Amaze. | B．Cheer. | C．Awake. | D．Entertain. |
| A．To introduce the change of the authors student. |
| B．To show how to deal with problem students. |
| C．To stress the importance of encouragement. |
| D．To encourage us to be confident. |
6 . Recently coined words such as "selfie" and "hangry" reflect humans' evolving language. The communication patterns of other social animals, including whales also vary over time. The songs adult male humpback whales produce during the breeding season, for example, are constantly changing.
But in a new study, researchers investigated the permanence of non-song whale vocalizations (发声) known as calls and found that the majority have remained stable over multiple decades. This surprising result suggests that calls may function as important tools for conveying information about foraging (觅食), social behaviors and whale identity.
"The running hypothesis is that any time the whales are talking about something other than breeding, they're using calls, " explains Michelle Fournet, a marine ecologist now at Cornell University and lead author of the new study. These vocalizations, which typically last only a few seconds, are extremely diverse. They can be heard by other whales several kilometers away.
Fournet and her collaborators amassed nearly 115 hours of archival recordings collected in southeastern Alaska between 1976 and 2012. By analyzing the duration and frequency of the calls, the researchers grouped them into 16 types. Fournet and her team detected 12 of them in both the earliest and most recent recordings -and each of the 16 call types recurred over at least three decades, the scientists reported last September in Scientific Reports. This finding led Fournet to conclude that these particular vocalizations most likely are essential to the whales' survival ensuring foraging success and social contact. "For calls to stay in the [collective] conversation for so long is an indication that these call types are vital to the life histories of humpback whales, " she says.
Next summer Fournet plans to travel to Southeastern Alaska to play back recordings of calls humpbacks there. The goal is to test theories about the functions of different calls, she says, adding "We're going to go and start the conversation. "
1. The first paragraph is intended to draw readers' attention to ______.| A．whales' good gift in singing songs |
| B．humans' creative invention of words |
| C．the wide use of language in the world today |
| D．social animals' changing way of communication |
| A．They often last several minutes. | B．They can still be heard from a distance. |
| C．They are divided into 12 types. | D．They help whales sleep very well. |
| A．Repeated. | B．Changed. |
| C．Suffered. | D．Disappeared. |
| A．record the real-life calls of humpbacks |
| B．advance new theories of humpbacks' calls |
| C．find out the specific meanings of humpbacks' calls |
| D．travel all over the world to collect more calls of whales |
7 . Several years ago, a public school teacher was hired to visit children who were patients in a city hospital. Her job was to tutor them with their schoolwork.
One day, this teacher received a routine call requesting that she visit a particular child. She was told by the teacher on the other end of the line. “We’re studying nouns and adverbs in Class now. I’d be grateful if you could help him with his homework.”
It wasn’t until the visiting teacher got outside the boy’s room that she realized it was located in the hospital’s burn unit. No one had prepared her for that. When she walked into the room, she found the young boy, horribly burned, was obviously in great pain. The teacher felt awkward and didn’t know what to say, but she had gone too far to walk out. Finally, she was able to stammer out, “I…I’m… the special visiting hospital teacher, and your teacher sent me to help you with your nouns and adverbs.” Afterward, she thought it was not one of her more successful tutoring sessions.
The next morning when she returned, a nurse stopped her, “What did you do to that boy?” Before she could finish her apologies, the nurse interrupted her by saying, “You don’t understand. We’ve been worried about him, but ever since you were here yesterday his whole attitude has changed. He’s responding to treatment…”
In fact, the boy had completely given up hope and felt he was going to die until he saw that special teacher. Everything had changed with an insight gained by a simple realization. With happy tears in his eyes, the little boy said, “They wouldn’t send a special teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, now, would they?”
1. Why did the teacher feel awkward after entering the room?| A．She walked into the wrong room. |
| B．She was too eager to be successful. |
| C．She had no idea how the boy was suffering. |
| D．She was not well prepared for her lesson. |
| A．To speak with a fear. |
| B．To speak with a pause. |
| C．To speak with a concern. |
| D．To speak with a gesture. |
| A．She got scared by the hospital nurse. |
| B．She was a person of modest personality. |
| C．She thought she made the boy uncomfortable. |
| D．She realized she got the usage of a noun wrong. |
| A．He felt the learning pressure from the special teacher. |
| B．He believed that the teacher was expert at teaching grammar. |
| C．He was aware that everyone was trying their best to care for him. |
| D．He realized that he was not in so bad a situation as he had assumed. |
8 . World Book Day falls on April 23 every year. It was set up in 1955 to encourage people to discover the pleasure of reading.
Many countries celebrate World Book Day. In the UK, the government has introduced a rule that a book token(购书券)is a passport. Every year 15 million tokens are given out to students in Britain and Ireland. With a token, students can go to any bookshop to choose a free book according to their taste and hobby. It is believed that 15% of the UK children don’t have a book of theirs. This mainly results from the high book prices. A book token will help them realize their dream to have their first book.
Reading helps us become more knowledgeable and more intelligent(智慧的). Reading helps us to follow the latest developments of science and technology. Reading provides us with information about other culture and places of the world. When we read, we may learn many things that are off our beat to us. We would have to use our brain to think about them or do more reading to find out the answers. The more we read, the more we know. The more we know, the smarter we become.
Reading is also one of the most important ways to learn a foreign language like English. we all know that we can’t learn everything at school, for example, the ways English people are speaking and writing today.“Reading makes a full man.”Books, magazines, newspapers and other kinds of reading materials can help to know more about the outside world and perfect us. Therefore, it is necessary to form the habit of reading every day.
1. How does the UK celebrate World Book Day?| A．By writing more books for kids. |
| B．By building more public libraries. |
| C．By introducing book token system. |
| D．By opening free bookshops for kids. |
| A．Unknown. | B．Familiar. | C．Difficult. | D．Traditional. |
| A．Reading helps to develop science. |
| B．Reading is good for people in many ways. |
| C．Reading can help to create a new culture. |
| D．Reading can help find a way to learn well. |
| A．Suggestions on Reading |
| B．World Book Day in China |
| C．World Book Day in the UK |
| D．World Book Day and Benefits of Reading |
9 . An American brother and sister have survived a 14-hour swim to safety in the Caribbean after the fishing boat they had rented sank off the north coast of St Lucia.
Dan Susk, 30-year-old IT professional from San Francisco, said he had been fishing in rough seas with help from his sister, Kate Suski, a 39-year-old architect, when the ship began to sink on 21April. Water flooded the engine room. The captain threw life jackets to the Suski and said, “Jump out! Jump out!” The Suski obeyed and jumped into the water with the captain and the first mate (大副). Less than five minutes later the boat sank. They were at least eight mile was telling us to stay together, and that help was on its way and that we needed to wait, Kate Suski said. After an hour, when no help came, the Suski decided to swim for it and lost sight of the captain and the first mate.
A helicopter appeared in the distance but no one spotted them. Several hours went by, and the sun began to set. “There’s this very real understanding that the situation is dire,” Kate Suski said both considered the possible ways we might die. Would we drown? Be eaten by a shark? Would our legs give out and make it impossible to swim?
They swam for 12 to 14 hours, talking as they pushed and trembled their way through the ocean. When in the moonlight they finally came within about 10 meters of land they realized that they were looking at steep rocky cliffs and would be beaten to death against them if they tried to approach any closer. They swam until they noticed sand nearby around midnight and dragged themselves ashore. Later, the Suski were treated in hospital. They learned that the captain and the first mate were rescued after spending nearly 23 hours in the water.
1. How many people were there on the fishing boat before it sank?| A．5. | B．4. |
| C．3. | D．2 |
| A．Awkward | B．Serious |
| C．Perfect. | D．Different |
| A．They were rescued by a helicopter. |
| B．They survived 23 hours in the water. |
| C．They swam over eight miles to the shore |
| D．They got back on land as soon as they saw it. |
| A．Brave and calm. | B．Strong and sensitive |
| C．Optimistic and generous. | D．Faithful and curious |
