1 . If you're planning to go on a diet, or if you suffer from serious conditions like diabetes (糖尿病), knowing exactly what and how much you're eating is essential. In this day and age, we have calorie and nutritional calculators even on our smartphones, but they act only as guides, whereas Panasonic's revolutionary new device, CaloRieco, actually analyzes the food on your plate and provides accurate information about in just a few seconds.
You've probably used calorie calculators before, and you know that they only offer general information. For example, a calculator will tell you the average number of calories in a hamburger, but it can't tell you exactly how many calories are in the hamburger. The same goes for nutrients like protein or fats. And this is what makes the new CaloRieco so special.
Displayed at a recent tech show, CaloRieco is a high tech device that uses light reflection technology to determine the nutritional values of almost any food and also provide accurate calorie estimates. All you have to do is put your plate in the box-shaped device and wait between 10 and 20 seconds for it to analyze all the food on there.
Once it's done analyzing the various ingredients in your meal, CaloRieco displays the number of calories, as well as the nutritional content on an LED display. According to Panasonic, the device is able to recognize the vast majority of foods, except soups and very dark dishes.
CaloRieco can also connect to your smartphone via an app, and send all the data about analyzed foods to your handheld, so you can access it whenever you need.
Panasonic said that its outstanding invention is aimed at dieters and diabetes sufferers, both of which make up a sizable market. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait a bit longer to get your hands on your very own CaloRieco, as the device presented at the show is just a prototype (样品) which needs to be improved. It's scheduled to hit the market sometime in the next few years, but the price remains a mystery.
1. What is special about CaloRieco?| A．It is a high-tech device working as a guide. |
| B．It makes use of light reflection technology. |
| C．It only offers general information of food. |
| D．It can present the exact data of analyzed food. |
| A．It needs a long time to analyze the food. |
| B．It can count the calories of all kinds of food. |
| C．It can display the food data on the smartphone directly. |
| D．It may be well received among dieters and diabetes sufferers. |
| A．Smartphone. | B．App. | C．Data. | D．Food. |
| A．It's perfect. | B．It's promising. | C．It's costly. | D．It's portable. |
2 . Social media is taking over our lives: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and now, TikTok. These social media platforms have transformed from a way to stay connected to an industry where even kids can make money of their posts. While this may seem like another opportunistic innovation, its really full of hidden false realities.
The median income（中位收入） recorded in the United States of America was about $63,000 in 2018. TikTokers with over a million followers can make up to $30,000 a month ---$360,000 a year. They are making more than the average person trying to feed their family and keep a roof over their heads, simply by posting a 15-second video.
Not only is it an overpaid “job”, it also promotes undeserved admiration from viewers and a false sense of reality. Many of these famous TikTokers are still teens, and the effects of fame at such an early stage in life might cause issues later in life, such as mental influenced by what they are watching. They can put a false sense of self-value into who they look up to and what they represent: money, fame, being considered conventionally attractive.
While TikTok has become a great tool for marketing, it’s important to understand how this content affects young viewers. If we’re constantly consuming content that shows us all we need to do to be successful is be conventionally attractive and post a 15-second video featuring a new dance, it will challenge our knowledge of what really makes someone successful and will in turn affect our individual work ethics（伦理）. What about the people who miss birthdays and family holidays due to their jobs and aren’t getting paid nearly as much as these TikTokers?
Richard Colyer, president and creator of Metaphor, Inc., had his own view on this issue. “It sounds great that kids can make money for doing the latest dance moves in a 15-second video, but we should feed the minds of kids and not just their bank accounts. TikTok can be great if used properly. Money alone is not good, technology alone is not good and connectedness can be bad if it’s only online.”
1. What does the underlined word “this” in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．social networking | B．staying connected to the Internet. |
| C．a job offered by TikTok. | D．making money on social media. |
| A．They tend to live an adult life too soon. |
| B．They are forced to pay for certain services. |
| C．They are likely to develop false values |
| D．They may abandon other social media |
| A．Young TiKTokers should be banned from making money. |
| B．TikTok can be a positive influence if teens employ it wisely. |
| C．It is better to involve education on investment in TikTok videos. |
| D．Contents of videos need checking before their release online. |
| A．A Job Vs An Entertainment | B．Join Young TikTokers |
| C．TikTok---A Mine of Money | D．Say No to TiKTok |
3 . The U. S. Thanksgiving holiday is symbolized (象征) by its traditional food-roast turkey. But turkey is certainly not from Turkey. In fact, its English name is based on one big mistake. We could say it is a case of mistaken identity. The word "Turkey" has meant "the land of the Turks" since ancient times. In the mid-1500s, the word "turkey" was first used to refer to the bird in the English language.
The misunderstanding over the word happened because of two similar-looking kinds of birds.
There is an African bird called the guinea fowl(珍珠鸡). It has dark feathers with white spots and a patch of brown on the back of its neck. Traders brought the guinea fowl to Europe through North Africa. This foreign bird came to Europe through Turkish lands. So, the English thought the bird as a "Turkish chicken".
When Europeans came to North America, they saw a bird that looked like the guinea fowl. This bird was native to the North American continent. But they thought that it was the guinea fowl，which. at that time, was called the “turkey cock"，so they gave it the same name.
Hundreds of years later, we continue to call this North American bird ‘turkey", even though it has no connection at all with the country Turkey, or even with Europe.
But English is not the only language with interesting names for this North American bird.
The Turkish call turkey “hindi”, the Turkish name for India. The reference(涉及)to India probably conies from the old. wrong idea that the New World was in Eastern Asia.
The French call it "dinde", a name that also connects the bird to India. "Dinde" means "from India" in the French language. "Turkey" has similar names in several other languages.
1. What can we know from paragraph 1?| A．The word "turkey" appeared in modern times. |
| B．Turkey's English name is based on correct identity. |
| C．Americans like eating turkey in Thanksgiving holiday. |
| D．Both Turkey and turkey have similar meanings in English. |
| A．Europe. | B．Africa. |
| C．America. | D．Asia. |
| A．Eastern Asia. | B．The French language. |
| C．The New World. | D．The bird turkey. |
| A．How did Thanksgiving "turkey" get its name? |
| B．How did Americans spend their Thanksgiving holiday? |
| C．Why was the guinea fowl so popular with Americans? |
| D．Why was the guinea fowl different from American turkeys? |
4 . Let’s face it. No one drinks diet sodas for the taste. People drink diet sodas in the hope that it will help them lose weight or at least keep them from gaining it. Yet it seems to have exactly the opposite effect, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Texas said those who drank two or more diet sodas a day had waist size increases that were six times greater than those who didn’t drink diet sodas. ＂What we saw was that the more diet sodas a person drank, the more weight they were likely to gain,＂said Sharon Fowler.
The study was based on data from 474 participants in a large, ongoing research project, where the participants were followed for nearly 10 years.
While the findings are surprising, they also offer some explanations. Nutrition expert, Melanie Rogers, who works with overweight patients in New York, has found that when patients are switched from regular to diet sodas, they don’t lose weight at all. ＂We weren’t seeing weight loss necessarily, and that was confusing to us＂, said Rogers.
So why would diet soda cause weight gain? No one knows for sure yet, but it could be that people think they can eat more if they drink diet sodas, and so over-compensate for the missing calories.
A related study found some sweeteners (甜味剂) raised blood sugar levels in some mice. ＂Data from this and other potential studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners may be risky, said Helen P. Hazuda, professor at the University of Texas’s school of medicine. ＂They may be free of calories, but not of consequences.＂
1. People drink diet sodas to ____________.| A．enjoy its taste | B．stay in fashion |
| C．achieve weight loss | D．gain more energy |
| A．causes people to become heavier | B．helps people to be healthier |
| C．makes people much thinner | D．offers people more calories |
| A．regular sodas make people lose more weight | B．diet soda drinkers tend to eat more food |
| C．diet sodas do help reduce calories | D．most blood diseases come from diet sodas |
| A．sweeteners | B．diet sodas and artificial sweeteners |
| C．sodas | D．diet soda drinkers and sweetener takers |
5 . Far from the land of Antarctica, a huge shelf of ice meets the ocean. At the underside of the shelf there lives a small fish, the Antarctic cod.
For forty years scientists have been curious about that fish. How does it live where most fish would freeze to death? It must have some secret. The Antarctic is not a comfortable place to work and research has been slow. Now it seems we have an answer.
Research was begun by cutting holes in the ice and catching the fish. Scientists studied the fish’s blood and measured its freezing point.
The fish were taken from seawater that had a temperature of -1.88℃ and many tiny pieces of ice floating in it. The blood of the fish did not begin to freeze until its temperature was lowered to -2.05℃. That small difference is enough for the fish to live at the freezing temperature of the ice-salt mixture.
The scientists’ next research job was clear: Find out what in the fish’s blood kept it from freezing. Their search led to some really strange thing made up of a protein never before seen in the blood of a fish. When it was removed, the blood froze at seawater temperature. When it was put back, the blood again had its antifreeze quality and a lowered freezing point.
Study showed that it is an unusual kind of protein. It has many small sugar molecules held in special positions within each big protein molecule. Because of its sugar content, it is called a glycoprotein. So it has come to be called the antifreeze fish glycoprotein. Or AFGP.
1. What is the text mainly about?| A．The terrible conditions in the Antarctic. |
| B．A special fish living in freezing waters. |
| C．The ice shelf around Antarctica. |
| D．Protection of the Antarctic cod. |
| A．The seawater has a temperature of -1.88℃. |
| B．It loves to live in the ice-salt mixture. |
| C．A special protein keeps it from freezing. |
| D．Its blood has a temperature lower than -2.05℃. |
| A．A type of ice-salt mixture. | B．A newly found protein. |
| C．Fish blood. | D．Sugar molecule. |
| A．sugar | B．ice |
| C．blood | D．molecule |
