1 . Motion sickness is an uncomfortable feeling. The sickness it causes can strike people on an airplane, playing video games, or, commonly, when riding in a car. In a future where people may find themselves running around streets in self-driving vehicles, the problems could get worse.
We typically sense our physical position and movement in the world by relying on our eyes, the feeling we get in our body, and our inner ear. Motion sickness may develop when there's disagreement between what your eyes see and what your inner ear senses. If you're looking at your phone in a moving vehicle, your eyes see a stationary screen but your inner ear feels that you're moving. The result of that dissonance can cause sickness. The common-sense solution is to just stop looking at your phone, but some of the appeal of self-driving cars is that you could use the time to be productive or entertained by what's on a screen.
Researchers of a car-making company and a video game company have been studying ways to address these issues. And their solution uses an interesting medium: sound. The research had two goals: to explore if sound could help relieve motion sickness, and to help people trust self-driving cars more. They experimented with two different categories of sound: tips that tell passengers what's about to happen, and noises that alert passengers when the device has noticed something, like a pedestrian.
The most convincing experiment took place on a closed airport runway in Sweden, near Gothenburg, in August of last year. On that track, brave participants had to ride in the backseat of a car driven by a human and read from a tablet while the car navigated the course. With just 20 people, the study was small, but according to researchers, the presence of sound tips made people report that they felt less ill. Participants said the sounds helped prepare them physically, or adjust their bodies for what was about to happen.
1. When does motion sickness usually happen?| A．Sleeping during travels. | B．Closing eyes on vehicles. |
| C．Driving vehicles speedily. | D．Riding in moving vehicles. |
| A．Confusion. | B．Potentiality. | C．Randomness. | D．Disagreement. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Optimistic. | C．Concerned. | D．Dissatisfaction. |
| A．A study of motion sickness. | B．Self-driving vehicles. |
| C．A convincing experiment. | D．The cause and handling of motion sickness. |
2 . Have you ever wondered why certain pop songs just make you feel so good? Researchers studying the question found that uncertainty and surprise give listeners the most pleasure. The study included 80,000 chords（和弦）in 745 pop songs between 1958 and 1991.
Each song was stripped of its melody（旋律）and lyrics（歌词）so that only chords were left and the results couldn’t be misunderstood by other imaginations of the songs that listeners might have had.
They found two things. Listeners got great pleasure from unexpected chords when they knew what would happen. However, they still found it pleasant to hear familiar chords when they did not know what would follow.
Vincent Cheung, the lead researcher, said, "Pleasant songs are likely those which keep a good balance（平衡）between knowing what is going to happen next and surprising us with something we did not expect. Understanding how music starts our pleasure system in the brain could explain why listening to music might help us feel better when we are feeling blue.”
Cheung told CNN that pleasure in music is connected to expectation. The study before had looked into the effects of surprise on pleasure, but his team's study also paid attention to the uncertainty of listeners' expectations.
1. What does the underlined word in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．Removed. | B．Added. |
| C．Played. | D．Recorded. |
| A．They listened to lots of pop songs. |
| B．They focus on the chords in popular songs. |
| C．They imagined the songs that can make people pleased. |
| D．They found lots of songs and then compared each other. |
| A．Pleasant music can explain human nature. |
| B．Listening to music might make people feel blue. |
| C．Music can improve the pleasure system of people. |
| D．Pleasant music comes from the balance of expectation and surprise. |
| A．His study only paid attention to chords in songs. |
| B．His study focused on the effects of surprise on pleasure. |
| C．His study took time to how music starts the pleasure system. |
| D．His study paid attention to the uncertainty of listeners' expectations. |
3 . It's hard for doctors to do a thorough eye exam on small children. But a new smartphone app takes advantage of parents' fondness for taking pictures of their children to look for signs that a child might be developing an eye disease.
The app is the result of a father's five-year quest to find a way to catch the earliest signs of eye diseases, and prevent loss of vision. Five years ago, doctors diagnosed (诊断）Noah Shaw's retinoblastoma—a rare type of eye cancer—when he was 4 months old. To make the diagnosis, the doctors shined a light into Noah's eye, and got a pale reflection from the back of the eyeball, an indication that there was something wrong there. Noah's father Bryan, a scientist, wondered if he could see that same pale reflection in pictures of his baby son. Sure enough, he saw the reflection, which doctors call "white eye", in a picture taken right after Noah was born.
Then Bryan decided to create an app that could scan photos for signs of this reflection. Now, that app exists, called CRADLE. To test the app, Bryan and his colleagues analyzed more than 50, 000 pictures taken of 40 children. Half had no eye disease and half had. "On average, the app detected 'white eye' in pictures collected 1. 3 years before diagnosis," says Bryan.
The app isn't perfect. It sometimes misses "white eye" when it's there, and sometimes says it's there when it's not. That latter condition is a problem. Even though the so-called false positive occurs less than 1% of the time, that's not good enough. There are about 4 million children born in the U. S. each year. A 1% false positive rate would mean tens of thousands of children showing up at the doctor unnecessarily.
Still, Bryan is upbeat about the promise of the app. "This is exciting new technology, and this is how I think we're going to go about screening for a number of diseases in the future," he says.
1. What inspired Bryan to create CRADLE?| A．His son's diagnosis. |
| B．His family photos. |
| C．His hobby of taking pictures. |
| D．His working experience as a scientist. |
| A．lt is a sign of some eye diseases. |
| B．It hardly causes serious loss of vision. |
| C．It refers to the white part of an eyeball. |
| D．It occurs when no light is reflected from the eye. |
| A．It may delay the treatment of a patient. |
| B．It may badly affect the future of the app. |
| C．It may raise serious doubts about doctors. |
| D．It may cause a waste of medical resources. |
| A．Curious. | B．Cautious. |
| C．Optimistic. | D．Worried. |
4 . Your circle of friends may help you get a better reading on your overall health and wellness rather than just using wearable devices such as a Fitbit, according to researchers.
The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, analyzed what the structure of social networks says about the state of health, happiness and stress.
"We were interested in the topololgy (拓扑学) of the social network — what does my position within my social network predict about my health and well-being said Nitesh V. Chawla, a professor at the University of Notre Dame in the US.
“What we found was the social network structure provides a significant improvement in predictability of wellness states of an individual over just using the data obtained from wearables, like the number of steps or heart rate,” Chawla said.
For the study, participants wore a Fitbit to capture health behavior data about walking, sleeping, heart rate and overall activity level. They also completed surveys and self-assessments of their stress, happiness and positivity.
Cbawla and his team then analyzed the data with a machine learning model, alongside the connections and characteristics of an individual's social network.
The study showed a strong correlation (相关性) between social network structures, heart rate, number of steps and level of activity.
Social network structure provided significant improvement in predicting one's health and well-being compared to just looking at health behavior data from the Fitbit alone.
For example, when social network structure is combined with the data from wearables, the machine learning model achieved a 65 percent improvement in predicting happiness.
The model also achieved a 54 percent improvement in predicting one's self-assessed health prediction, a 55 percent improvement in predicting positive attitude and a 38 percent improvement in predicting success.
This study asserts (断言) that without social network information, we only have an incomplete view of an individual's wellness state, and to be fully predictive or to be able to obtain interventions (干扰). It is critical to be aware of the social network, Chawla said.
1. What did the study find?| A．How people choose their friend circles. |
| B．What factors decide your friend circles. |
| C．How your circle of friends influences you |
| D．What your circle of friends says about your health. |
| A．By comparing data. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By analyzing cause and effect | D．By describing personal experiences. |
| A．Easy. | B．Common. |
| C．Important. | D．Challenging. |
| A．How fitness devices can connect your circle of friends |
| B．That a person's social network is part of his health picture. |
| C．The best ways to make friends and keep a healthy social circle |
| D．That wearable devices are not useful for understanding someone's health. |
5 . If maths is the language of the universe, bees may have just uttered their first words. New research suggests these busybodies of the insect world are capable of addition and subtraction (减法) — using colors in the place of plus and minus symbols.
In the animal kingdom, the ability to count — or at least distinguish between differing quantities — isn’t unusual: It has been seen in frogs, spiders, and even fish. But solving equations (方程式) using symbols is rare, so far only achieved by famously brainy animals such as chimpanzees and African grey parrots.
Building on previous research that says the social insects can count to four and understand the concept of zero, researchers wanted to test the limits of what their tiny brains can do.
Scientists trained 14 bees to link the colors blue and yellow to addition and subtraction, respectively. They placed the bees at the entrance of a Y-shaped maze (迷宫), where they were shown several shapes in either yellow or blue. If the shapes were blue, bees got a reward if they went to the end of the maze with one more blue shape (the other end had one less blue shape); if the shapes were yellow, they got a reward if they went to the end of the maze with one less yellow shape.
The testing worked the same way: Bees that “subtracted” one shape when they saw yellow, or “added” one shape when they saw blue were considered to have aced the test. The bees got the right answer 63% to 72% of the time, depending on the type of equation and the direction of the right answer — much better than random guesses would allow—the researchers report today in Science Advances.
Though the results came from just 14 bees, researchers say the advance is exciting. If a brain about 20,000 times smaller than ours can perform maths using symbols, it could pave the way to novel approaches in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Just don’t ask the bees to do your homework anytime soon.
1. Why do the scientists conduct the research?| A．To teach them maths. | B．To test the power of tiny brains. |
| C．To explain the meaning of colors. | D．To get access to machine learning. |
| A．Given up. | B．Entered for. |
| C．Got through. | D．Checked over. |
| A．Language acquisition. | B．Arithmetic learning. |
| C．Protection of animals. | D．Development of AI. |
| A．Bees “Like” Counting |
| B．Bees “Tell” Colors Apart |
| C．Bees “Perform” Maths Using Shapes |
| D．Bees “Get” Addition and Subtraction |
6 . Nowadays, especially in China, everything seems to favor social intercourse(社交) , such as gatherings of friends, KTV, group travel, dining tighter, playing cards and Mahjong, plus the Chinese-style " street-crossing group. " Back home, discussions can still be boisterously carried on within the " circle of friends" of WeChat.
However, these scenes cannot always ease a sense of loneliness. Zhu Ziqing, a well-known professor of Tsinghua University, signed with emotion: "My loneliness increases as scene becomes much busier. " One popular song today is also called " A lonely man in crowds. " Actually, engaging in social intercourse requires ability, while being alone involves the whole character.
These days, it is not easy to calm down totally and return to one' s true self. Willpower, intellect and discipline are required. Einstein said: "It is not your working time but your spare time that determines the possibility of whether you will be successful or not. " The "spare time" he referred to could be taken as " spending time by yourself. "
Lonely life could be either dull, boring and tasteless or abundant, interesting and colorful, depending on one' s quality, ambition and inspiration.
Just as the body constantly requires energy, the mind and soul also demand never stopping inputs. However,information, processed and integrated (融入) into knowledge, thoughts and feelings, instead of bustle (忙碌) seems to be the right condition. Successful careers m all walks of life worldwide have proved that "the soul grows in peace and talent is nurtured in loneliness". In a sense, it may be reasonable to say that " Happiness tends to be shallow while loneliness involves depth".
Man, in fact, needs loneliness more than happy time, and only abundant loneliness can produce quality happiness.
1. Which of the following can replace the underlined the word "boisterously" in paragraph l?| A．surprisingly | B．sadly |
| C．busily | D．peacefully |
| A．Being alone marks people depressed. |
| B．Social intercourse improves our happiness. |
| C．One may feel lonely even when surrounded by people. |
| D．We should attend social intercourse to decrease our loneliness. |
| A．You should be successful if you spend all your time by yourself. |
| B．You should exercise more if you want to keep your minds healthy. |
| C．You will not become successful if you join in more social intercourse. |
| D．You will be more successful if you can make your lonely time meaningful. |
| A．Live on Your Own | B．Happiness and Loneliness |
| C．The Secret of Success | D．Practice Your Social Ability |
