1 . “Blame My Brain” by Nicola Morgan, reviewed by Rosalie Warren
As someone who constantly blames my brain for all sorts of things (not my fault — my brain did it!), I was
The subtitle is “The amazing teenage brain revealed” and amazing is, I soon
There are also brain-based explanations of why teenagers need so much sleep, why they don’t tidy their rooms, why they come
Nicola Morgan is not a neurologist or a
There’s plenty of humour and a good few well-deserved digs at the stupidity of parents and other well-meaning but misguided adults, which teenagers will
The illustrations by Andy Baker are great, too. And oh yes — there’s some interesting discussion on the differences between girls’ brains and boys’, if there are any. You’ll have to read it to find out...
1.A.attracted | B.interested | C.invested | D.introduced |
A.intended to | B.aimed at | C.targeted by | D.appealed to |
A.defended | B.dismissed | C.discovered | D.differed |
A.happens | B.projects | C.evolves | D.limits |
A.surprisingly | B.immediately | C.unfortunately | D.regularly |
A.expressing | B.explaining | C.declaring | D.exposing |
A.living | B.lively | C.alive | D.alone |
A.sympathetic | B.pessimistic | C.positive | D.negative |
A.laborious | B.humorous | C.productive | D.professional |
A.consulted | B.conducted | C.converted | D.suggested |
A.complicated | B.simplified | C.contrary | D.demanding |
A.denounce | B.distinguish | C.determine | D.depend |
A.appreciate | B.hate | C.respect | D.reflect |
A.confuse | B.combine | C.unite | D.associate |
A.mind | B.physical | C.mental | D.emotional |
2 . The Great PowerPoint Panic of 2003.
Sixteen minutes before touchdown on the morning of February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia (“哥伦比亚”号航天飞机)
The immediate
By the start of 2003, the phrase “death by PowerPoint” had well and truly entered the
Wired ran an excerpt (节选) from Tufte’s booklet in September 2003 under the headline “PowerPoint Is Evil.” A few months later, The New York Times Magazine included his assessment — summarized as “PowerPoint Makes You Dumb” — in its
Despite the backlash it inspired in the
On its face at least, the idea that PowerPoint makes us stupid looks like a textbook case of misguided technological doomsaying. Today’s concerns about social media somehow resemble the PowerPoint critique. Both boil down to a worry that new media technologies
A.disappeared | B.disintegrated | C.distributed | D.disappointed |
A.side | B.cause | C.feature | D.issue |
A.collected | B.unified | C.dropped | D.single |
A.discounted | B.viewed | C.accessed | D.founded |
A.muted | B.absorbed | C.buried | D.sunk |
A.technical | B.popular | C.negative | D.special |
A.possibly | B.reasonably | C.ordinarily | D.necessarily |
A.accommodated | B.combined | C.distinguished | D.enhanced |
A.abstract | B.repetition | C.review | D.brief |
A.press | B.publication | C.media | D.criticism |
A.opened | B.created | C.threw | D.jumped |
A.rules | B.harmonizes | C.impacts | D.roars |
A.feature | B.encourage | C.value | D.defend |
A.Therefore | B.However | C.Certainly | D.Surprisingly |
A.difference | B.truth | C.time | D.concern |
3 . Transition. It’s a pleasant word and a calming concept. It means going surely and sweetly from somewhere present to somewhere future. Unless, that is, it is newspapers’ ‘transition’ to the
Just look at the latest print circulation figures. The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and many of the rest are down overall between 8% and 10% year-on-year, but their websites go ever higher.
All of that may well be true, depending on timing, geography and more.
One is the magazine world, both in the UK and in the US. It ought to be
As for news and current affairs magazines — which you’d expect to find in the eye of the digital storm — they had a 8.4% increase to report. In short, on both sides of the Atlantic, although some magazine areas went down, many showed rapid growth.
You can discover a
So if sales in that area have fallen so little, perhaps the
Already 360 US papers—including most of the biggest and best — have built paywalls around their products. However, the best way of attracting a paying readership appears to be a deal that offers the print copy and digital access as some kind of
Of course this huge difference isn’t
A.publishing | B.online | C.ideal | D.unknown |
A.On the other hand | B.After all | C.To begin with | D.For instance |
A.stop | B.exist | C.emerge | D.fit |
A.regulated | B.advancing | C.collapsing | D.minimized |
A.solid | B.simple | C.creative | D.changeable |
A.cultural | B.common | C.scientific | D.similar |
A.later | B.harder | C.clearer | D.slower |
A.all | B.neither | C.both | D.either |
A.service | B.system | C.crisis | D.figure |
A.right | B.vague | C.designed | D.mixed |
A.made up | B.told apart | C.took over | D.held on |
A.joint | B.mysterious | C.modern | D.complex |
A.In other words | B.On the contrary | C.What’s more | D.Even so |
A.new | B.sad | C.big | D.good |
A.spared | B.updated | C.noticed | D.edited |
4 . Group-Centered Societies Have Just as Much Creativity
What does culture have to do with creativity? The answer could be “a lot”. For decades, psychologists trying to understand the roots of creative imaginations have looked at the ways in which two different types of cultures can come to have an effect over its artistic and
Individualism has long been thought to have a creative
The new work comes from comparing communities in different parts of China. Though it scores high, as a nation, on measures of cultural
In the new creativity study, researchers investigated innovation with these two groups in mind. The team used a drawing test that had been created by psychologists. They gave kids a sheet of paper with just a few basic elements printed on it: some dots here, squiggles (弯曲的线条) there, and a rectangle that suggested a drawing frame. The children got 15 minutes to use the elements already on the page to draw whatever they wanted. They could get “adaptive creativity” points for doodling in ways that connected the squiggles and lines into an original and
The researchers gave the test to 683 middle school students from north and south of the Yangtze River. When the scientists got the scores back, they discovered that there were no differences in the children’s overall creativity. When they broke down the results into components, they found that students from collectivistic regions scored
The findings are also a warning against cultural chauvinism (极端民族主义). Western countries have tended to lead the way in innovation — at least as defined by the metrics (指标) we Westerners have created. Perhaps we have been
A.theoretical | B.inventive | C.productive | D.regular |
A.prioritize | B.deprive | C.tolerate | D.abandon |
A.satisfy | B.stimulate | C.cherish | D.sacrifice |
A.shelter | B.edge | C.border | D.alternative |
A.embrace | B.propose | C.resist | D.create |
A.However | B.Therefore | C.Meanwhile | D.Moreover |
A.broadly | B.objectively | C.seriously | D.narrowly |
A.individualism | B.identity | C.collectivism | D.flexibility |
A.selfish | B.collective | C.individualistic | D.realistic |
A.fall apart | B.fit in | C.give in | D.show off |
A.separate | B.ugly | C.unified | D.tiny |
A.catch | B.miss | C.target | D.misuse |
A.higher | B.averagely | C.lower | D.vaguely |
A.capturing | B.approaching | C.imitating | D.overlooking |
A.improvements | B.drawbacks | C.insights | D.attempts |
5 . Artificial intelligence (AI) has amazing potential to change the world, and we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. As AI matures and people move further away from distinct programming and monitoring of systems, unidentified bias (偏见) might make decisions continue for a long time that cause
All too often, data sets are incomplete and the sample represented in the data set does not
Bias resulting from AI algorithms themselves, or algorithmic bias, is equally
To create ethical AI, companies need to put the
Having
None of this will be easy, but true innovation never is. By coming together and working on the problem of bias now, before it becomes a(n)
A.theoretical | B.psychological | C.disproportionate | D.unintended |
A.arise from | B.contribute to | C.take over | D.make up |
A.inspire | B.match | C.protect | D.restrict |
A.quit | B.administer | C.compare | D.analyze |
A.distinct | B.predictable | C.original | D.widespread |
A.restore | B.imply | C.miss | D.favor |
A.embarrassing | B.dangerous | C.relevant | D.ridiculous |
A.intentionally | B.temporarily | C.automatically | D.appropriately |
A.influence | B.help | C.attract | D.predict |
A.admit | B.define | C.address | D.publicize |
A.belongings | B.expressions | C.characteristics | D.needs |
A.civil | B.digital | C.legal | D.natural |
A.frequent | B.responsible | C.peculiar | D.graceful |
A.fair | B.quick | C.appealing | D.adequate |
A.leading | B.innovative | C.cultural | D.destructive |