| A. boost B.capabilities C.ceaseless D.effects E.evolve F. historic G.identify H.initiative I. interconnected J.miraculously K.seriously |
Currently, many of the brainy gadgets being developed for the Internet of Things will anticipate our needs and make choices for us--without being told what to do--marking a(n)
As we turn more of our decision-making over to the devices,they will
But social scientists and others worry these computerized devices might make decisions that are
Stanford University researchers believe society may be profoundly impacted by Internet-of-Things machines blessed with humanlike
Understanding such
One of the most important New Year's resolutions
Children between the ages of 8 and 11 who spend more than two hours a day looking at screens were associated with lower cognitive function than those who engaged in less screen time, according to researchers who published a study in The Lancet in September. While researchers noted there is no causal link, they wrote,“Emerging evidence suggests that mobile device and social media uses have an unfavorable relationship with attention, memory, impulse control, and academic performance”--- perhaps
The Times also reported many elite schools are moving towards eliminating or reducing screens, while many public schools are touting technology in classrooms.
And
New Year's celebrations are the perfect time to get the whole family to look up from their screens
3 . Gyms that profit most from the January rush
Every year, like clockwork, many people go through the same routine. On December 26th and January 1st, as the fog of cheese, chocolate oranges and champagne lifts, regret creeps（悄悄出现）in. Online searches for “get fit” and “lose weight” increase.
Many gym recruits（新成员）will have their new sportswear on for high-intensity interval training. In the basement of Another Space, a club near London’s Leicester Square, music pumps and light flash as a trainer shouts instructions to a group of mostly young women. They are pushed through bursts of burpees, handclap push-ups and various kick and punches at boxing bags. The training is murderous.
They are at one end of a fitness market.
Pure Gym expects soon to reach 1 million members. Part of its appeal is that, unlike traditional gyms, members are not bound by a long contract. “We have taken a £500 decision and turned it into a £20 decision,” says Mr Cobbold.
| A．There will be other ripple effects（连锁反应）, too. |
| B．That will be good news for some gym goers because many will soon suffer a second round of regret. |
| C．However, the club’s luxurious changing rooms and bars relieve some of the pain. |
| D．Health clubs of all shapes and sizes stand ready to respond. |
| E．Spending on fashion items also increases around the time of joining a gym. |
| F．At the other are budget gyms, which have accounted for the big part of gym growth in recent years. |
New look on the Museum
Museums have changed. They are no longer places for the privileged few or for bored vacationers to visit on rainy days.
At a science museum in Ontario, Canada you can feel your hair stand on end as harmless electricity passes through your body. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, you can look at 17 century instruments while listening to their music. At the Modern Museum in Sweden, you can put on costumes provided by the Stockholm Opera. As these examples show, museums are reaching out to new audiences, particularly the young, the poor and the less educated members of the population. As a result, attendance is interesting.
Many museums have changed in appearance. Some old, gray museums have been rebuilt, and the newer ones are open and modern in their architecture. Inside, there is modern lighting, color, and sound. Instead of displaying everything they own, museum directors show fewer objects and leave open spaces where visitor can gather and sit down. They also bring together in one display a group of objects drawn drawn from various parts of the museum to represent the whole lifestyle of region or a historical period. In one room, for instance, you may find materials, clothing, tools, cooking pots, furniture, and art works of a particular place and time.
More and more museum directors are realizing that people learn best when they can somehow become part of what they are seeing. In many science museums, for example, there are no guided tours. The visitor is encouraged to touch, listen, operate, and experiment so as to discover scientific principles for himself. The purpose is not only to provide fun but also to help people feel at home in the world of science. The theory is that people who do not understand science will probably fear it, and those who fear science will not use it to the best advantage.
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We had several monkeys on board, but Jack was the prince of them all. As he grew tame, he got more liberty, till he got the whole range of the ship, except the captain’s and the passengers’ cabins. I
He sometimes burned his fingers by these tricks, and this kept him quiet for a few days. But no sooner had the pain been gone, to no one’s surprise,
Besides Jack, we had on board three little monkeys with red skins and blue faces. Once, Jack attracted
Jack was afraid to come down, and only after three days passed
The lost art of listening
Do you think you’re a good listener? Chances are that you do. But studies show that most people seriously overestimate their ability to listen. The truth is we are generally not good at listening, and our listening comprehension declines as we age.
This was proven by Dr. Ralph Nichols, who conducted a simple experiment to test students’ listening skills. He had some Minnesota teachers stop what they were doing mid-class, and then asked students to describe what their teachers had been talking about. While older kids with more developed brains, are usually assumed to be better listeners, the results, however, showed otherwise: While 90 percent of first-and second-graders gave correct responses, this percentage dropped rapidly as the students got older.
One reason for our poor listening concerns the speed at which we think. The adult brain can process up to around 400 words per minute, more than three times faster than the speed an average person speaks. This means we can easily think about something else while someone is talking to us, allowing our mind to wander or get sidetracked. The younger students in Dr. Nichols’s experiment were better listeners partly because their brains were less developed — they lacked the extra brain power to be distracted.
Another factor that contributes to our poor listening is our ever-decreasing attention span. According to a Mircrosoft study, the age of smartphones has had a negative impact here. In 2000 — around the time the mobile revolution began — the average human attention span was 12 seconds; by 2013, it had fallen to 8 seconds. Even a goldfish — with an average attention span of 9 seconds — can hold a thought for longer!
More and more people now realize that listening is a skill that can be developed through practice. Learning to observe a speaker’s body language and emotions, for example, can improve our active listening. Even the simple act of note-taking or making eye contact can help us stay focused while listening.
7 . There are often many assumptions made about young people aged 15 to 21, but only a few can be proved with hard evidence. Now, new research has been published to help people get a better idea of these
According to an international survey in 2016, young people in emerging (新兴的) economies like China and India have a
The survey was
It was found that 53 percent of those questioned in China thought the world was becoming a better place – the highest percentage among the countries surveyed. Some 93 percent of them also felt
Indian youth were the second most
“At a time of nationalist and populist (民粹主义的) movements (such as Brexit (脱欧) or US President Donald Trump’s plans to build a wall along the US border) that focus on the
“They are a generation that is deeply
As for young people in China, what they
Pota said it was
“This is surely a hopeful development. The young population of China is more aware than anyone of the seriousness of the climate crisis – and will be
The overall survey showed a sense of optimism in the
“They are more likely to travel, to migrate across borders and to forge (建立) friendships in other countries than any
| A．undereducated | B．misunderstood | C．overestimated | D．well-disciplined |
| A．greater | B．fainter | C．simpler | D．safer |
| A．enforced | B．operated | C．demonstrated | D．conducted |
| A．hopeful | B．fearful | C．concerned | D．eager |
| A．fantastic | B．realistic | C．optimistic | D．enthusiastic |
| A．As a result | B．Without doubt | C．Beyond that | D．In contrast |
| A．exchanges | B．agreements | C．differences | D．similarities |
| A．routinely | B．traditionally | C．surprisingly | D．slightly |
| A．pessimistic | B．optimistic | C．excited | D．passionate |
| A．fear | B．suffer | C．consider | D．expect |
| A．question | B．survey | C．attitude | D．movement |
| A．amazing | B．encouraging | C．depressing | D．puzzling |
| A．preparing | B．looking | C．pressing | D．waiting |
| A．attitudes | B．emotions | C．dreams | D．interests |
| A．original | B．present | C．next | D．previous |
Barry Jenkins: ‘When you climb the ladder, you send it back down’
“So, you saw the film?” Barry Jenkins is eager to ask the minute we are introduced. He gives good eye contact through those stylish thick-rimmed glasses – not the big-time, Oscar-winning writer-director speaking, but a nervous artist, anxious
Adapted from James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, Beale Street tells the story in which the personal experiences of a young black couple
Baldwin has been dead for 30 years, but his depiction of the fight against a country’s powerful prejudice is a sad reminder
Beale Street
9 . For years, studies have found that first-generation college students — those who do not have a parent with a college degree — lag behind other students on a range of education achievement factors. Their grades are lower and their dropout rates are higher. But since such students are most likely to advance economically if they succeed in higher education, colleges and universities have pushed for decades to recruit more of them. This has created a ‘paradox’ in that recruiting first-generation students, but then watching many of them fail, means that higher education has ‘continued to reproduce and widen, rather than close’ the achievement gap based on social class, according to the depressing beginning of a paper set to be published in the journal Psychological Science.
But the article is actually quite optimistic, as it outlines a potential solution to this problem, suggesting that an approach (which involves a one-hour, next-to-no-cost program) can close 63 percent of the achievement gap (measured by such factors as grades) between first-generation and other students.
The authors of the paper are from different universities, and their findings are based on a study involving 147 students (who completed the project) at an unnamed private university. First generation was defined as not having a parent with a four-year college degree. Most of the first-generation students (59.1 percent) were recipients of Pell Grants, a federal grant for undergraduates with financial needs, while this was true only for 8.6 percent of the students with at least one parent with a four-year degree.
Their thesis — that a relatively modest intervention could have a big impact — was based on the view that first-generation students may be most lacking not in potential but in practical knowledge about how to deal with the issues that face most college students. They cite past research by several authors to show that this is the gap that must be narrowed to close the achievement gap.
Many first-generation students “struggle to navigate the middle-class culture of higher education, learn the rules of the game, and take advantage of college resources,” they write. And this becomes more of a problem when colleges don’t talk about the class advantage and disadvantages of different groups of students. Because U.S. colleges and universities seldom acknowledge how social class can affect students’ educational experience, many first-generation students lack sight about why they are struggling and do not understand how students like them can improve.
1. The authors of the research article are optimistic because _____________.| A．the problem is solvable |
| B．their approach is costless |
| C．the recruiting rate has increased |
| D．their findings appeal to students |
| A．study at private universities |
| B．are from single-parent families |
| C．are in need of financial support |
| D．have failed their college education |
| A．are actually indifferent to the achievement gap |
| B．are inexperienced in handling their issues at college |
| C．may lack opportunities to apply for research projects |
| D．can have a potential influence on other students |
| A．universities often reject the culture of the middle-class |
| B．students are usually to blame for their lack of resources |
| C．social class greatly helps enrich one’s educational experience |
| D．colleges are partly responsible for the problem in question |
10 . It was a long way up the humble zipper (拉链) to become the mechanical wonder that has kept our lives “together” in many ways. The zipper had passed through the hands of several gifted inventors, though none
The story began when Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, received a patent (专利) in 1851 for an “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure.” However, it didn’t go much further beyond that simple
Perhaps it was the success of the sewing machine, that stopped Elias from
Forty-four years later, inventor Whitcomb Judson marketed a “Clasp Locker” device
It was an electrical engineer named Gideon Sundback who helped make the zipper the hit it is today.
In the 1930s, a sales campaign began for children’s clothing featuring zippers. The campaign advertised zippers as a way to promote
Today the zipper is everywhere and is used in clothing, luggage, leather goods and
| A．convinced | B．advised | C．permitted | D．invited |
| A．manufacturer | B．function | C．price | D．material |
| A．imagining | B．delaying | C．pursuing | D．rewarding |
| A．recognized | B．upgraded | C．interpreted | D．pretended |
| A．agreeable | B．familiar | C．similar | D．inferior |
| A．edition | B．credit | C．method | D．wealth |
| A．commercial | B．private | C．domestic | D．potential |
| A．Purposefully | B．Generally | C．Originally | D．Decidedly |
| A．brand | B．assessment | C．packing | D．improvement |
| A．profitable | B．scarce | C．modern | D．noticeable |
| A．Moreover | B．For example | C．However | D．On the contrary |
| A．self-awareness | B．self-reliance | C．self-defense | D．self-guidance |
| A．avoid | B．worsen | C．balance | D．personalize |
| A．mechanical | B．countless | C．reliable | D．portable |
| A．in name of | B．thanks to | C．in addition to | D．in case of |
