1 . About 2,400 years ago in Athens a man was put to death for asking too many questions. There were philosophers before him, but it was with Socrates that the subject really took off.     1    .

Snub-nosed, podgy, shabby and a bit strange, Socrates did not fit in. Although physically ugly and often unwashed, he had great charisma and a brilliant mind. Everyone in Athens agreed that there had never been anyone quite like him and probably wouldn’t be again. He was unique. But he was also extremely annoying. He saw himself as one of those horseflies that have a nasty bite—a gadfly.     2    . Not everyone in Athens agreed, though. Some loved him; others thought him a dangerous influence.

As a young man he had been a brave soldier fighting in the Peloponnesian War against the Spartans and their allies. In middle age he shuffled around the marketplace, stopping people from time to time and asking them awkward questions.     3    . But the questions he asked were razor-sharp. They seemed straightforward; but they weren’t.

An example of this was his conversation with Euthydemus. Socrates asked him whether being deceitful counted as being immoral. Of course it does, Euthydemus replied. He thought that was obvious. But what, Socrates asked, if your friend is feeling very low and might kill himself, and you steal his knife? Isn’t that a deceitful act? Of course it is. But isn’t it moral rather than immoral to do that? It’s a good thing, not a bad one—despite being a deceitful act. Yes, said Euthydemus, who by now is tied in knots. Socrates by using a clever counter-example has shown that Euthydemus’ general comment that being deceitful is immoral doesn’t apply in every situation. Euthydemus hadn’t realized this before.

Over and over again Socrates demonstrated that the people he met in the marketplace didn’t really know what they thought they knew. A military commander would begin a conversation totally confident that he knew what “courage” meant, but after 20 minutes in Socrates’ company would leave completely confused. The experience must have been disconcerting. Socrates loved to reveal the limits of what people genuinely understood, and to question the assumptions on which they built their lives.     4    . Far better that than to carry on believing that you understood something when you didn’t.

A．That was more or less all he did.

B．What made Socrates so wise was that he kept asking questions and he was always willing to debate his ideas.

C．They are irritating, but don’t do serious harm.

D．If philosophy has a patron saint, it is Socrates.

E．It meant understanding the true nature of our existence, including the limits of what we can know.

F．A conversation that ended in everyone realizing how little they knew was for him a success.

2 . Artificial intelligence or AI is called artificial for a good reason. Facebook made that point last week by ending its attempt to rely heavily on software algorithms to select news items for its 2 billion users.

It announced on Jan.19 that the Facebook community will be asked to rank news outlets by their trustworthiness. “This reader feedback will promote high quality news that helps build a sense of common ground in a world with so much division”, said chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

The first surveys have started in the United States and will soon expand to other countries. The company plans to include the local news outlets of users in its surveys. Like many digital platforms that act as news providers, Facebook had great faith in a belief that programmed electrons in computer servers can discern qualities of thought such as trust, fairness and honesty. Even in respected newsrooms, however, these traits of character require constant upkeep among journalists and feedback from paying customers. Good judgment on news relies on orders of consciousness beyond what a machine can do.

Rather than move toward becoming a hands-on gatekeeper of news, Facebook now hopes its “diverse and representative” sampling of users can lead to a ranking of news outlets and that would bring a measure of objectivity in its news feed. The company may be in the news business, but it has chosen to outsource news credibility to the collective wisdom of individuals and their ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. By placing its trust in people as seekers of truth, Facebook could earn greater trust from its users. This is also a lesson for many companies especially digital platforms or those in the media business.

According to the latest survey of trust in institutions worldwide by Edelman communications firm, “media has become the least-trusted institution for the first time more so than other businesses or government”. “In particular, the US is enduring an unprecedented crisis of trust among many of. its institutions”, says Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman. “The root cause of this fall is the lack of objective facts and rational discourse”, he adds. Facebook’s shift away from computer-driven news selection is a welcome step toward restoring trust in the overall business of news. This is not a new problem. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper”, wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1807. Yet the Digital Age has forced the issue of trust for news providers. By inviting readers to participate in solving this problem, Facebook has itself set a new bar for earning trust.

1. According to Paragraph 4, Facebook hopes to _______.

A．measure the objectivity of news feed on its own

B．improve its ability to tell truth from falsehood

C．shed off the responsibility of a news provider

D．entrust news credibility to its massive users

2. In the last paragraph, Thomas Jefferson’s words are cited to indicate _______.

A．the poor quality of newspapers nowadays

B．the long-standing trust issue in news businesses

C．the problems arising from Facebook’s shift

D．the issue of trust in the Digital Age

3. The author holds that Facebook’s shift is _______.

A．a lesson for news providers on filtering news

B．the cause of the trust crisis across business of news

C．a step toward restoring user’s trust in news business

D．the result of lacking objective facts and rational discourse

4. To which of the following would Mark Zuckerberg most probably agree?

A．Common grounds among users are the sources of high-quality news.

B．Programmed electrons can make good judgment on news quality.

C．Computers cannot replace human beings in news selection.

D．Reader feedback is not needed in respected newsrooms.

3 . Peek through the inspection windows of the nearly 100 three-dimensional (3D) printers quietly making things at RedEye, a company based in Minnesota, and you can catch a glimpse of how factories will work in the future. It is not simply that the machines run day and night _______ by just a handful of technicians. _______ it is what they are making that shows how the revolutionary production process is _______ the manufacturing mainstream.

3D printers make things by building them up, a layer at a time, from a particular material, rather than _______ it by cutting, drilling or machining—which is why the process is also called additive manufacturing. There are many ways in which this can be done, and with only a _______ adjustment of software each item can be different, without the need for costly retooling of machines. This has made 3D printing a(n) _______   way to make one-off items, especially prototype parts, mock-ups, small mechanical devices and craft items.

And that is about all that 3D printers are good for, _______ the doubters. Chief among them is Terry Gou, the boss of Foxconn. He thinks 3D printing is just “a trick” without any _______ value in the manufacture of real finished goods, and he has vowed to start spelling his name backwards if _______ wrong.

Mr. Gou is right about one thing: additive manufacturing is not about to replace mass manufacturing. ________ the technology is improving, the finish and durability of some printed items can still ________ what producers require. And nor can 3D printers produce millions of ________ parts at low cost, as mass-production lines can. ________, 3D printers have their virtues, which is why they are starting to be used by some of the world’s biggest manufacturers, such as Airbus, Boeing, GE, Ford and Siemens.

The market for 3D printers and ________ is small, but growing fast. Last year it was worth $2.2 billion worldwide, up 29% from 2011. As producers become more ________ with the technology, they are moving from prototype to final products.

1.

A．designed

B．attended

C．introduced

D．maintained

2.

A．Likewise

B．Furthermore

C．Therefore

D．Instead

3.

A．entering

B．conveying

C．transferring

D．adjusting

4.

A．erasing

B．removing

C．resolving

D．eliminating

5.

A．delicate

B．fine

C．sophisticated

D．surprising

6.

A．popular

B．eminent

C．unique

D．regular

7.

A．imply

B．predict

C．prescribe

D．reckon

8.

A．further

B．commercial

C．practical

D．scientific

9.

A．proved

B．supposed

C．considered

D．described

10.

A．Even though

B．Now that

C．If only

D．Provided that

11.

A．advance with

B．lag behind

C．fall short of

D．cater for

12.

A．exact

B．identical

C．similar

D．necessary

13.

A．Then

B．Also

C．Otherwise

D．Nevertheless

14.

A．reserves

B．promotions

C．services

D．sales

15.

A．agreeable

B．identical

C．understandable

D．familiar

4 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is ONE WORD MORE than you need.

A. dash     B. literally     C. complex     D. locally     E. intangible     F. superior G. array     H. crafted     I. modified     J. launched     K. personalized

As pandemic measures persist, vacationing locally remains a main option for holiday

“Tailor-made trips", “staycation” and “cultural tours” have become the buzzwords describing the domestic tourism market during the recent National Day holiday, which ran from Oct 1 through Friday.

On an online platform for travel customization, a user can book a     1     itinerary with a click of a button after providing information such as place of departure, destination, travel dates and number of travelers, Xinhua News Agency reported.

“The tour customization specialist who received my order     2     a travel plan for me according to my specifications in terms of food, accommodation, transport and recreational activities,” a tourist from the eastern city of Qingdao told Xinhua. “A dedicated driver and guide were assigned to us, and any details could be     3     at my request.”

Dai Xuefeng, director of the division for tourism and leisure at the National Academy of Economic Strategy from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua: “Bespoke holidays are an inevitable result of the development of the tourism industry and of economic growth.”

Vacationing     4     remains a main option as COVID-19 precautions continue. In the week leading up to the holiday, on-demand services platform Meituan saw searches for “local tours” and “suburban attractions” surge by 440 percent week-on-week.

Suburban attractions in Beijing, such as Universal Beijing Resort and Beijing Wtown, were among the popular choices for local residents, Xinhua reported.

In the Central China province of Hubei, rural tours, fruit and vegetable picking experiences, and camping trips emerged as the top options. They were expected to take in more than 60 percent of the province’s tourist spending during the holiday week, according to Xinhua.

Zhou Qiao, a resident of Hubei’s Yichang city who vacationed at the local Bailihuang scenic area during the holiday, told Xinhua: “We booked tents in advance and took our family here to experience the wonder of watching the sunrise in the morning and counting the stars in the evening. My children loved the experience very much.”

The wide     5     of cultural events and destinations in cities drew huge numbers of urban residents during the holiday week.

Historical architectural     6     Sanfang Qixiang, which     7     means “three lanes and seven alleys”, in Fuzhou, East China’s Fujian province, entertained tourists with     8     cultural heritage-themed talent shows and Yueju Opera performances, among others.

In Shanghai, many museums     9     exhibitions, cultural activities, as well as night tours to add a(n)     10     of culture to the holiday fun, said China Central Television.

Li Xinjian, a professor at Beijing International Studies University’s School of Tourism Sciences, told Xinhua that the integration of culture and tourism highlights the cultural experiences in tourist trips, and tailor-made tours offer in-depth cultural experiences that large group tours are unable to provide.

7 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. wound     B. fundamentally   C. argues     D. virtue     E. mirrors   F. universally G. judged       H. simply        I. adopted       J. fascination       K. similarly

Jenny Carter an NHS coordinator is an “extreme night owl,” one of an estimated 8.2% of the population whose natural inclination(倾向)is to fall asleep well after midnight. Left to her own devices, she’d prefer to go to bed around 3 a.m. and wake up about noon.

Why do night owls exist? There is no single     1     accepted theory, but evolutionary biologists think that communities with more variation in chronotypes(睡眠类型)may have been more likely to survive.

Another theory is that variation is     2     how genetics works. Right from birth, our personal biological clocks are already     3    . Genetics establishes a person’s chronotype. Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford, says this     4     differences in hair eye and skin color or height.

Natural night owls are     5     different from insomniacs or people who stay up until the early hours because of family or work circumstances. Being a night owl isn’t a problem.

But this isn’t always well understood. Jessica Batchelor is a medical writer who feels most productive at 11 p.m. “I can’t tell anyone when I went to sleep, woke up, showered or ate a meal without being     6    ,” she says “I struggle with feelings of guilt and shame.”

This mentality is rooted in our agrarian(耕地的)past when farm work had to begin at dawn.

Our culture mistakenly associates sleeping little and rising early with     7    . It is often extolled(颂扬)as a habit of successful people: for instance in the     8     with Margaret Thatcher’s four-hour rest, or articles about “sleepless-elite” CEOs who start their days with a 4 a.m. jog.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with staying up late as long as you’re getting a good amount of sleep every night;     9    , early risers have no special biological advantage. What research has not disproved, however, is that morning people tend to get more done.

The productivity expert Laura Vanderkam     10     that people should consider switching their schedule not because it’s necessarily better but because it’s practical.

Waking up earlier to work out, make headway on a creative project or enjoy a stress-free cup of coffee can help make it easier to accomplish more without sacrificing time for yourself.

8 . At least since the appearance of Napster (一个文件共享平台), in 1999, the Internet’s potential effect on music listeners has often been portrayed as dramatic. Music bloggers, the iPod’s massive storage capabilities, and most recently, the virtually unlimited browsing potential afforded by streaming — put together, they would surely pave the way for a generation to whom eclecticism (折衷主义) was normal. Human curiosity could finally win, and the super-listener would rise.

Little in the modern music landscape suggests that this has come to pass. Quite the contrary, which is an important assumption of the New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff’s Every Song Ever: 20 Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty. In the past decade or so, traditional radio stations have cut down the number of songs they played and increased the frequency of repetition, because listeners are less likely to switch away from tunes they recognize. Successful online playlist makers such as Pandora continually fine-tune algorithms (算法) to figure out what individual users want to hear based on what they’ve liked before. And music journalists working online have come to understand that defending little-known artists commands far less traffic — and therefore less job security — than does promotion of the latest Taylor Swift video or Beatles anniversary.

Ratliff wisely diagnoses the psychology underlying this state of affairs. “In many cases, having rapidly acquired a new kind of listening brain — a brain with unlimited access — we dig very deeply and very narrowly, creating bottomless comfort zones in what we have decided we like and trust,” he writes. “Or we shut down, threatened by the endless choice. The riches remain dumb unless we have an engaged relationship with them.”

An “engaged relationship”— what’s that? Well, you know: Active listening. Open listening. The kind of listening that happened more often when switching from an unfamiliar song back to an old favorite wasn’t so frictionless — when the unfamiliar song had cost you $16.99 and a trip to Tower Records to acquire, and the old CD was gathering dust somewhere under your bed. Ratliff has 20 suggestions, mostly good ones, for how to achieve this level of engagement in a world overflowing with new and strange, and instantaneously available, sounds. He reminds us, as he proceeds, of how urgently we need adventurous critics like him at a time when the idea of musical discovery has been appropriated by tech companies and sidelines in the chase for clicks.

1. What effect is the Internet supposed to have on listeners?

A．They would have a better taste for music.

B．They would prefer more powerful players.

C．They would be willing to try different types of music.

D．They would be more curious about the quality of music.

2. According to Ben Ratliff, which statement best describes the modern music landscape?

A．Online playlist makers don’t take individual users’ preference into account.

B．People don’t have as much chance to listen to unfamiliar music as expected.

C．Music journalists are ready to help those unknown artists promote their music

D．Algorithms are upgraded frequently to satisfy music lovers’ needs for new music.

3. The word “frictionless” (in the last paragraph) is closest in meaning to “________”.

A．sudden

B．expensive

C．obvious

D．easy

4. It can be inferred from the passage that music critics should take the responsibility of ________.

A．reducing the impact of technology on us

B．engaging us in more chase for clicks

C．helping us find our comfort zones

D．brining old classics back to life

9 . It is the great tragedy of shoelaces. From the moment they are tied, they are sure to become untied.

That is the conclusion of scientists who have studied the shoelace knot (结) and found that it seems almost uniquely ill-suited to survive long walk. Instead, it will always come undone eventually, usually suddenly and unexpectedly.

Or, as they put it, “the failure of the knot happens in a matter of seconds, often without warning, and is disastrous.” Especially so if you trip up afterwards.

Oliver O’Reilly, from the University of California, Berkeley, said that the research was inspired by personal experience. “My shoelaces have always come untied,” he said. So when he was teaching his daughter how to tie hers he sought expert advice. “I found wonderful videos showing why they became untied, which struck me as unusual.”

He decided to correct this. He got his PhD student Christine Gregg to run on a treadmill (跑步机) until her laces came undone, while filming with a slow-motion camera. “Christine started running and we were really surprised. For a long time nothing happened, then everything happened really quickly—in a few steps.” He found there was a gradual, hidden, loosening which came before a total collapse of the knot.

To try to establish what was causing this, Christine tried leg-swinging while sitting on a table, and heavy steps. Neither resulted in the shoelaces coming undone. It required both together, even with a loosely tied knot. Next, for his research in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Professor O’Reilly attached instruments to the laces to see why this might be. “We put an accelerometer on a knot, and we were surprised the g-forces were so large.” With each heavy step, the knot experienced 7g, more than that found on any rollercoaster. “The hypothesis(假设) is the knot opens up as you run, from the amount of forces.”

That was a necessary, but not sufficient condition though. The swing was also needed, as well as the heavy step. “The shoe laces move back and forth, putting a force on the bows and ends.” As the knot opens “you get slippage and at the end with the higher force this will get larger”. Once slippage starts, this rapidly pulls the laces undone.

Predicting when though, said Professor O’Reilly, was difficult. “The tipping point was really difficult for us to spot,” he said. “That in itself explains our experience. You are walking along and everything is fine and suddenly, ‘Boom!’ they’re gone—and you realise you are about to trip over your shoelaces.” His conclusion is that we should just accept retying shoelaces to be one of the minor misfortunes of the human condition.

1. The word “so” (in paragraph 3) refers to ________.

A．falling down	B．happening without warning
C．being disastrous	D．appearing in a few seconds

2. What did Professor O’Reilly find in his experiment with his PhD student?

A．Shoelaces got untied without any obvious sign.

B．The collapse of the shoelace knot could be avoided.

C．Nothing happened to shoelaces if a runner took right steps.

D．Walking on a treadmill would prevent shoelace knots getting loose.

3. It can be inferred from the passage that a loosely tied knot ________.

A．will come undone unless you walk slowly

B．won’t come undone even if you walk fast

C．will come undone as long as you swing your leg

D．won’t come undone if you just stamp your foot

4. What is O’Reilly’s conclusion about the failure of shoelace knots?

A．It is totally inevitable.	B．It will be corrected soon.
C．It will be easy to predict.	D．It is related to shoe type.

10 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. bodies B. containers C. cut D. decomposed E. densely F. engaged G. prevention H. property I. remove J. scarcely K. unwanted

Get rid of mosquitoes, but how?

Almost everyone who spends time outdoors has experienced mosquitoes. These bloodsucking insects give itchy bites and can spread disease. But how can you avoid them and protect yourself?

Jessica Damiano is a gardening expert. In a recent story, Damiano said the best control is     1    . And she gave suggestions on how to     2     mosquito populations.

It may seem difficult to avoid mosquitoes, as most of the areas in the world are     3     populated with them. People who live near     4     of water, such as lakeside, may experience more mosquitoes. But there are several measures you can take to reduce their numbers.

Mosquitoes need less than a centimeter of water to lay eggs. A female can lay hundreds of eggs at a time. So, check your     5     to see if there is anywhere that collects water. Water can easily collect in small     6     —a child’s toy, a trash can lid, or a cooking pot.

Even if the amount of standing water seems small,     7     it. Make holes in the bottoms of containers that can hold     8     water. Other standing water such as in ponds and bird baths can be     9     with chemicals.

There are other things you can do to protect yourself. Put screens in your doors and windows or keep them closed. And cut down on time spent outdoors between the early evening and the early morning. Mosquitoes are most     10     during that time.