1 . Over 400 human footprints preserved in volcanic sediment （沉淀物）provide a sign at social life among ancient hunter-gatherers. The impressions, found in northern Tanzania, add up to Africa's largest collection of ancient human footprints, say evolutionary biologist Kevin Hatala of Chatham University in Pittsburgh and colleagues. People walked across a muddy layer of volcanic ashes dating to between 19,100 and 5,760 years ago, the researchers reported on May 14 in Scientific Reports. Dating of a thin rock layer that partly overlaps （重 叠）the sediment narrows the footprints' age to about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Hatala's team analyzed footprint sizes, distances between prints and which way prints pointed. One collection of tracks was made by 17 people walking southwest. Comparisons with modern prints suggest that this group consisted of fourteen women, two men and one young boy. The women may have been searching for foods while a few males visited or accompanied them, the researchers infer. Some present-day hunter-gatherers form lately female food-gathering groups.
The study is "a nice piece of work”, although it's hard to specify what people were doing, says geologist Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University in Poole, England.
Many more sets of footprint tracks would be needed to argue convincingly that hunter-gatherers at that time had female food-gathering groups, Bennett says. And it would still be unknown if the women were gathering plants or hunting prey. Other footprint sites present especially promising opportunities for studying ancient behavior, he says. He is involved in work in New Mexico that has uncovered tens of thousands of footprints of humans and other creatures from more than 10,000 years ago. Early results suggest that humans there hunted giant sloths （树 獭）.Bennett expects those prints will yield more insights into Stone Age hunting.
1. What does the underlined word "impressions” in the first paragraph mean?| A．Thoughts about people or things. | B．Collections of volcanic ashes. |
| C．Marks left by creatures or something. | D．Behaviors of imitating someone- |
| A．Ancient hunters were socially organized. |
| B．Ancient male hunters were admired by females. |
| C．Female food-gathering groups were obviously formed. |
| D．Males played a more important role in finding food than females. |
| A．The females gathered plants or hunted prey in the Stone Age. |
| B．The footprint tracks have proved female food-gathering groups existed. |
| C．The footprint sites provide a good chance to further study ancient behavior |
| D．The footprints will hardly influence our understanding of Stone Age hunting. |
| A．How Ancient Hunters Gathered Food |
| B．What Ancient Hunan Footprints Were Like |
| C．What Ancient Human Footprints Tell Us |
| D．How Ancient Food-Gathering Groups Cooperated |
2 . Having a microchip implanted in a man's brain may be common in sci-fi movie plots, but it may soon become an actual possibility.
Elon Musk -a US tech tycoon, founder of Space X- has been working on this technology. On Aug 28, Musk gave a display of the chip, which was implanted into the head of a pig named Gertrude.
The chip, developed by Musk's company Neuralink, is the size of a coin. But don't let its size fool you. The tiny chip has over 3,000 electrodes （电极）attached to flexible threads, which can monitor about 1,000 neurons （神经元）.It collects neural signals from an area of the brain, and then transmits those signals wirelessly to nearby computers, according to MSN. That enabled researchers to monitor Gertrude's brain activity while she was walking around in the display.
Though the technology is still in its early stage, it is encouraging for humans. This technology would solve a lot of brain injuries and is essentia] for Al symbiosis, which will allow the human brain to combine with an artificial intelligence.
When the device can be applied to humans, its main goal will be to help those who have mobility difficulties. Musk hopes this technology can also be used to help those with hearing and eyesight issues.
Although such a device could repair those problems, putting it into practice is by no means a piece of cake. Currently, the device can transmit signals from about 500 neurons in the pig's brain. Compared to 80 billion neurons in a human brain, this number is tiny. And to cover the whole human brain also means the electrodes have to be much smaller.
Also, implanting the chip into the brain poses a potential danger. There is a risk of the immune system attacking this foreign body.
Right now, the hope of controlling the brain via controlling a few neurons seems overly optimistic. "There are many technological challenges ... to overcome before Neuralink can put its devices to the purposes," Yuan Lanfeng, an associate professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, told China Daily.
1. What do we know about Elon Musk's microchip?| A．It was inspired by sci-fi movie plots. |
| B．It is able to collect wireless signals. |
| C．It is tiny in size but powerful in function. |
| D．It has been implanted into a human's brain. |
| A．The operation of the chip in Gertrude’s brain. |
| B．The attachment of electrodes to flexible threads. |
| C．The development of neurons inside Gertrude's brain. |
| D．The transmission of signals from a nearby computer |
| A．To monitor animals’ brain activity. |
| B．To help people with mobility issues. |
| C．To develop a cure for immune system problems. |
| D．To contribute to the research on Al technologies. |
| A．Worried. | B．Excited. | C．Optimistic. | D．Challenged. |
3 . When we learn to drive, we need to learn basic skills such as how to switch on the engine, turn on the wipers, operate the brakes, etc. before we actually take to the road. Once the lower order operations and skills listed above have been automatized or at least routinized to the extent that we do not have to pay attention to them (by-pass Working Memory's attentional systems), we can actually be safe in the assumption that we can wholly focus on the higher order skills which will allow us to take the split seconds decisions that will prevent us from getting lost, clash with other cars, break the traffic laws while dealing with our children messing about in the back seats.
This is what the brain does, too, when learning languages. Because Working Memory has a very limited space available when performing any task, the brain has learnt to automatize lower order skills so that, by being performed “subconsciously' they free up cognitive(认知）space.So, for instance, if I am an advanced speaker who has routinized accurate pronunciation, grammar and syntax to a fairly high degree, I will be able to devote more conscious attention (Working Memory space) to the message I want to put across. On the other hand, if I still struggle with pronunciation, word order, irregular verb forms and tenses most of my attention will be taken up by the mechanics of what I want to say, rather than the meaning; this will slow me down and limit my ability to think through what I want to say due to cognitive overload.
In language teaching this important principle translates as follows: in order to enable our students to focus on the higher order skills involved in comprehension and production we need to ensure that the lower-order ones have been acquired or performance will be reduced.
1. What does paragraph 1 mainly tell us?| A．We should improve our driving skills on the road. |
| B．Our basic driving will be better as time goes on and on. |
| C．Only by mastering driving skills can we drive safely. |
| D．We must operate automatically when driving on the roads. |
| A．Learning languages has specific characters. |
| B．Skillful driving benefits language learning. |
| C．Driving safely is harder than language learning. |
| D．Driving and language learning share similar skills. |
| A．The meaning we want to express. |
| B．Struggle with language learning problems. |
| C．Spending more time on the topic. |
| D．Devoting more conscious attention. |
| A．Well begun,half done. |
| B．It is never too old to learn. |
| C．Practice makes perfect. |
| D．Learn to walk before you run. |
4 . Parks in cities are usually considered as islands of green among seas of concrete and steel. When you approach the High Line on the west side of Manhattan, what you see first is the kind of thing urban parks were created to get away from—a heavy, black steal structure supporting a raised rail line that once brought freight(货运)trains right into factories, and that looks, at least from a distance, more like some abandoned leftover from the past than an urban oasis(绿洲).
That is what the High Line was until recently. But now, it has been turned into one of the most inviting public spaces. The black steel columns now hold up a raised park. Walking on the High Line, you float about eight meters above the ground. You can sit surrounded by carefully tended plantings and take in the sun and the Hudson River views, or you can walk the line as it winds its way between old buildings and striking new ones. I have walked the High Line dozens of times. Different from any street, sidewalk, or park, it never fails to surprise and delight me. The most extraordinary thing about the High Line is the way without streets to cross or traffic lights to wait for, ten blocks pass as quickly as two.
The High Line is a dream come true. The real heroes of the story are Joshua David and Robert Hammond. “I saw an article saying that the High Line was to be destroyed, and I wondered if anyone wanted to save it,” Hammond said. “I saw that it was on the agenda for a community meeting. I went to see what was going on, and there I met David. We were the only people there who wanted to save it.”
“The railroad representatives showed some plans to reuse it, which enraged(激怒)the people who were trying to get it torn down. We couldn’t believe the degree of rage those people had. Hammond and I asked railroad officials to take them to look at the High Line. When we got up there, we saw a mile and a half of wildflowers. New Yorkers always dream of finding open spaces—it’s fantasy when you live in a studio apartment.” David said. And that’s how the project began.
1. What does the underlined word “That” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．An urban oasis. | B．A raised rail |
| C．A black steel structure. | D．An abandoned leftover. |
| A．He can always see strange things. |
| B．The weather seems much better there. |
| C．New buildings keep being built around it. |
| D．He can cover more miles in the same amount of time. |
| A．Because he was the representative of the railroad. |
| B．Because he went there to accompany his friend David. |
| C．Because he wanted to see if others would share his views. |
| D．Because he thought he could persuade people to join in his campaign. |
| A．He was pleased to realize he might succeed. |
| B．He was encouraged by everyone’s determination. |
| C．He was worried that their way of life might change. |
| D．He was surprised by the reactions to the idea proposed. |
5 . The eastern Siberian landscape is not normally like hell. In winter it is blanketed in snow:in summer, its forests are lush(苍翠繁茂的). This year, however, the region is on fire, as one large parts of the Arctic Circle.
The fires began in June, caused by an extremely hot and dry early summer. It was the hottest June on record globally. In the regions that are burning, temperatures peaked at 8-10℃ warmer than the average from 1981 to 2010. This has dried out the landscape, producing tinder(易燃物)for natural forest fires.
So far, hundreds of above-ground fires have been recorded by satellites in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. It is estimated that fires within the Arctic Circle have produced more than 100m tonnes of carbon dioxide in a year. That is a lot. But burnt vegetation can regrow within a decade, and in doing so reabsorbs much of the released carbon dioxide. It is what is happening below ground that most worries ecologists and climate scientists.
Global warming will melt Arctic permafrost(永久冻土), releasing large amounts of stored greenhouse gases. But if fires in the region become more common, that could have even bigger consequences. Wildfires will release much faster and bigger amounts of carbon, rather than melting permafrost. The fires also produce black carbon which, if dropped on the Arctic sea ice by favourable winds, will darken its surface, making it more likely to absorb sunlight and melt. This decreases the reflectivity of the region and further increases Arctic warming.
Smog from the fires is blanketing much of Siberia. "What is scary about the Arctic fires is that they are driven by climate change, and there's very little you can do," says Thomas Smith. Few natural fires this big have ever been successfully managed. The only way to deal with the spread of these fires is to slow the rate of global warming. Don't hold your breath.
1. What do we know about the wild fires in the Arctic Circle?| A．They are common yearly phenomena. | B．They come earlier than usual this year. |
| C．They result from extreme weather. | D．They destroy Siberian landscape. |
| A．Hundreds of above-ground fires. | B．100m tonnes of carbon dioxide. |
| C．Burnt plant life within a decade. | D．Satellite distribution in the Arctic. |
| A．The causes of fires. | B．The consequences of fires. |
| C．The working principles of global warming. | D．The characteristics of Arctic warming. |
| A．Objective. | B．Indifferent. | C．Optimistic. | D．Worried. |
6 . Germs(细菌) are everywhere. You can’t see them, but they are on your desk, on your computer, and even in the air!
Like people, germs move around the world. They fly with us on planes. When food, clothes, and other things travel around the world, germs travel, too. Some germs are safe, but some are dangerous. Germs cause illnesses like colds and the flu.
Warmer Weather Brings Germs
The world’s weather is changing. Cooler countries are getting warmer, so insects from hot countries can move there. Some of these insects, like mosquitoes, carry dangerous germs. These germs cause headaches, fever, and can even kill people.
Under Your Skin
Your skin protects you from germs. It stops some germs, but not all. They can enter your body when you eat, or when you have a cut. Germs are on your hands, too. They enter your body when you touch your eyes, nose, or mouth.
Fighting Germs
Your immune system(免疫系统) protects you, too. When germs get inside your body, your immune system finds and kills them. Special cells(细胞) move around your body and fight germs. They help you stay healthy. Other cells make antibodies. Antibodies help your body find and stop germs.
What can you do to fight germs? You should wash your hands with soap and water. Soap kills many germs, and water washes them away.
1. According to the text, insects ______.| A．kill germs | B．carry germs | C．protect germs | D．love germs |
| A．cooler countries | B．hot countries | C．everywhere | D．the world |
| A．All germs are dangerous. | B．There are more germs in cold places. |
| C．Soap can kill all germs. | D．Germs can get into your body. |
| A．They kill germs and wash them away. | B．They find and develop germs. |
| C．They help protect us from germs. | D．They carry dangerous germs. |
| A．Germs Are Everywhere | B．Weather Is Changing |
| C．Skin Stops Germs | D．Germs Are Developed |
7 . A tracked robot approaches a pile of brushwood blocking its path. This is Rolan, short for Robot Manipulator (操控者), who is practising for what is its graduation ceremony, when it will show off its skills. After a pause, it reaches out an arm, takes hold of a branch, lifts it up and drags it clear.
Though this is a small action for a human being, it is a breakthrough for robots, according to Stuart Young of the Army Research Laboratory, who is in charge of the RoMan project. As is known, robots easily become confused by something unexpected, some unfamiliar and none with convenient handles. Taking it apart is far beyond the power of any industrial robot. Dr. Young says that, as far as he knows, RoMan is the first machine able to manipulate unfamiliar objects in an unknown environment.
Just as a human being would, it has to learn about the world through observation and experiment before manipulating it. So it is trained on numerous tree branches until it is able to recognize unfamiliar ones for what they are and knows to grasp the trunk, rather than the leaves or the branches. Having grasped an object, RoMan assesses its weight and decides whether to try to lift it or drag it.
Dr. Young hopes to take this further by dealing with piles of burning tyres. He also wants RoMan to be able to use its body weight in the way a human being might to push open a tight door or to move heavy furniture by bracing against a wall. One problem with RoMan is that it is still impractically slow. It often takes 10-15 seconds to decide what to do. RoMan will also need to learn to deal with a wider range of objects.
However, the device's future could be bright. Beyond military applications, its following generations might work in warehouses, pick fruit, clear litter or tidy people's homes. They might even collect rocks from the surface of Mars.
1. Why does RoMan take a pause before taking action?| A．The branch is too heavy for it. |
| B．It is reflecting on its next move. |
| C．It takes time to show off its skills. |
| D．It is totally confused by the mess. |
| A．Everything existing around. |
| B．Observation before manipulating. |
| C．The similarity to a human being. |
| D．RoMan's ability acquired by training. |
| A．The author's wish for RoMan. | B．The power of RoMan's weight. |
| C．Dr.Young's regret for RoMan. | D．RoMan's room for improvement. |
| A．Sports&Entertainment. | B．Health&Medicine. |
| C．Education&Career. | D．Science&Technology. |
8 . The different parts of a health care system have different focuses. A hospital's stroke （中风） unit monitors blood flow in the brain. The cardiac unit is interested in that same flow, but through and from the heart. Each collection of equipment and data is effective in its own field. Thus, like the story of blind men feeling an elephant, modern health care offers many separate pictures of a patient, but rarely a useful united one.
On top of all this, the instruments that doctors use to monitor health are often expensive, as is the training required to use them. That combined cost is too high for the medical system to scan regularly, for early signs of illness, so patients are at risk of heart disease or a stroke.
An unusual research project called AlzEye, run by Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, in cooperation with University College, London (UCL) , may change this. It is attempting to use the eye as a window through which signals about the health of other organs could be discovered. The doctors in charge of it, Siegfried Wagner and Pearse Keane, are studying Moorfields' database of eye scans, which offers a detailed picture of the health of the retina (视网膜).
The project will go a step further：With the information about other aspects of patients' health collected from other hospitals around England, doctors will be able to look for more accurate signs of disease through eye scans.
The Moorfields data set has lots of linked cases to work with--far more than any similar project. For instance, the UK Biobank, one of the world's leading collections of medical data about individual people, contains 631 cases of a "major cardiac adverse event". The Moorfields data contain about 12, 000 such. The Biobank has data on about 1, 500 stroke patients. Moorfields has 11, 900. For the disease on which the Moorfields project will focus to start with dementia, the data set holds 15, 100 cases. The only comparable study has 86.
Wagner and Keane are searching for patterns in the eye that show the emergence of disease elsewhere in the body. If such patterns could be recognized reliably, the potential impact would be huge.
1. Why does the author mention “the story of blind men feeling an elephant” in Paragraph 1?| A．To claim the ineffectiveness of our health care system. |
| B．To tell the similarity in various health care units. |
| C．To explain the limitation of modern health care. |
| D．To show the complexity of patients' pictures. |
| A．The challenge of making advanced medical instruments. |
| B．The high risk of getting a heart disease or a stroke |
| C．The inconvenience of modern health care service. |
| D．The incomplete and expensive health monitoring. |
| A．By thoroughly examining one's body organs. |
| B．By identifying one's state of health through eye scans |
| C．By helping doctors discover one's diseases of the eye |
| D．By comparing the eye-scan data from different hospitals. |
| A．It takes advantage of abundantly available medical data. |
| B．It makes the collection of medical data more convenient. |
| C．It improves the Moorfields' competitiveness in the medical field. |
| D．It strengthens data sharing between the Moorfields and the Biobank. |
9 . With chip (芯片)readers, auto-reload apps, and one-dick online purchasing, it’s only too easy to buy something without fully registering how much it costs. That said, even if you’re not counting out small change for the cashier these days, you’ve probably still noticed how often prices end in .99.
Maybe you assumed it had something to do with tax laws, or else it was a leftover practice from decades ago, when things cost less and pennies mattered more. In fact, it’s actually a clever psychological tool that tricks your brain into thinking the price of an item is lower. “Because we read from left to right, we pay less attention to the end of the number versus (与……相比) the beginning,” DealNews.com consumer analyst Julie Ramhold told Reader’s Digest. So, for example, your mind will interpret $9.99 as $9. though it’s obviously much closer to $10.
Just one dollar’s difference might not seem like enough to a fleet your decision on whether to buy something, but it can push an item into a lower price range—and that’s enough to make your mind think it costs significantly less. To your subconscious brain, a one-digit (一位数的)price like $9 seems a lot cheaper than a two-digit price like $10.
Though ending prices in 9 might be the norm, there is a fair amount of variation when it comes to retailers’ pricing tactics (定价策略). Live Science reports that because we often see a price ending in 9 as a cheap deal, some stores—like J. Crew and Ralph Lauren—save the nines for their sale items, and use numbers ending in 0 for their full-priced items, giving the impression that those items are high-quality. Thrift stores (二手商店),on the other hand, often use whole numbers for all their products.
1. What does the underlined word “it” refer to?| A．an auto-reload app | B．a chip |
| C．one-click | D．something |
| A．Ending in .99 is a mentally low price. |
| B．Ending in .99 is a reasonable price. |
| C．Ending in .99 is a fit to tax laws. |
| D．Ending in .99 is a one-digit lower price. |
| A．To show the items are cheap enough. |
| B．To show the items are in high-quality. |
| C．To show the items are fit for the norm. |
| D．To show the items are different enough. |
| A．Buy What You Want at the Right Prices |
| B．Why Are So Many Prices Lower? |
| C．The Reason So Many Prices End in .99 |
| D．Saving the Nines for Your Purchasing Items |
10 . Due to a scheduling accident, one Waffle House worker was left alone to run the entire restaurant on a Sunday night.
Ethan Crispo was just one of about 30 hungry customers who wanted food at midnight. After sitting at his table for a while, he noticed there was just one upset employee available to take orders, cook food, clean tables and manage the cash register.
The 24-year-old patron was losing hope of ever getting a meal. The employee who was recognized only by his name tag reading “Ben”-seemed to be on the edge of panic until Crispo saw him speaking to a male customer in a blue shirt sitting at the counter. After a brief conversation, Ben handed him an apron (围裙) and the man got to work washing dishes.
“It was a transition so smooth. I initially assumed it was a staff member returning to his shift,” Crispo told AL.com. “It wasn’t. It was a kind stranger.”
A couple of minutes later, a woman in high heels and a stylish dress walked behind the counter to make more coffee. She then took a few orders before resigning herself to clearing tables. Suddenly, a third customer in a red shirt marched over to help as well, though Crispo failed to catch his name or take a photo of the man at work.
The term “customer service” took on a whole new meaning that night. “It was the most fascinating thing,” Crispo said. “It was just one of the wildest instances of really, really cool people just coming together. It made a difference to many people that night. Certainly, their actions made an impact on me,” he added. “Humanity isn’t just good－it’s great.”
1. What does the underlined word”patron”probably refer to?| A．The employer of the Waffle House. | B．Ethan Crispo. |
| C．Ben. | D．A beggar wanting food at midnight. |
| A．He was a staff member returning to work. |
| B．He intended to try new “customer service”. |
| C．He wanted to give the only worker a hand. |
| D．He liked to do something before getting his meal. |
| A．A new term “customer service” was created that night. |
| B．The strangers were paid to help in the Waffle House that night. |
| C．Many cool people went to the Waffle House to have a party that night. |
| D．The customers who were willing to offer help showed great humanity. |
| A．show an example of humanity at its finest |
| B．describe the strangers who helped Ben |
| C．define what good humanity is |
| D．show appreciation for the waiter’s hard work |
