1 . At the top of a hill called Mount Lee in Los Angeles on the west coast of the USA is a very famous sign, recognizable to people around the world. My job is to look after this sign.     1     The first film was made there in 1907 and by 1912, at least 15 independent studios could be found making films around town.

In the 1940s, TV started to become popular and some Hollywood film studios closed, but then TV companies moved in and took them over. Modern Hollywood was born.     2     If one of them ever fell down I would have to put it back up at exactly the same angle. They follow the shape of Mount Lee and this is part of their fame.

I am responsible for maintaining and protecting the sign.     3     When I first arrived in 1989, security was pretty low-tech-we put up a fence around the sign to stop people messing with it. But people just jumped over the fence. The back of the sign was black with graffiti(涂鸦)there was wire across it, but they still got through. So I decided to improve the effectiveness of the security.

Now we have motion-detectors and cameras. Everything goes via the internet to a dedicated surveillance(监控)team watching various structures around the city. Even so, people still try to climb over the barrier, mostly innocent tourists surprised that you can’t walk right up to the sign. But they can get a closer look on one of my regular tours.

    4     They want to light the sign, paint it pink, or cover it in something to promote their product. You’ll get a really enthusiastic marketing executive call up, terribly excited because they think they’re the first person to think of this or that idea. They mostly get turned down. That’s because we don’t like to change the image and we hope it will have the same significance for generations to come.

A．The letters in the sign weren’t straight and still aren’t.

B．I have been working there for nearly 30 years.

C．People call up with the most ridiculous ideas.

D．It says Hollywood and that’s of course the place where films have been made for over a hundred years.

E．We used to have real problems.

F．Payment must be made for those ideas for commercial purposes.

2 . You’re running late for work and you can’t find your keys: What’s really annoying is that in your search, you pick up and move them without realizing. This may be because the brain systems involved in the task are working at different speeds, with the system responsible for perception(感知)unable to keep pace.

So says Grayden Solman and his colleagues at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. To investigate how we search, Solman’s team created a simple computer-based task that involved searching through a pile of colored shapes on a computer screen. Volunteers were instructed to find a specific shapes as quickly as possible, while the computer monitored their actions.“Between 10 and 20 percent of the time, they would miss the object,”says Solman, even though they picked it up.“We thought that was remarkably often.”

To find out why, the team developed a number of further experiments. To check whether volunteers were just forgetting their target, they gave a new group a list of items to memorize before the search task, which they had to recall afterwards.

The idea was to fill each volunteer’s“memory load”，so that they were unable to hold any other information in their short-term memory. Although this was expected to have a negative effect on their performance at the search task, the extra load made no difference to the percentage of mistakes volunteers made.

To check that the volunteers were paying enough attention to the items they were moving, Solman’s team created another task involving a pile of cards marked with shapes that only became visible while the card was being moved. Again, they were surprised to see the same level of error, says Solman. Finally, the team analyzed participants’ mouse movements as they were carrying out a similar search task. They discovered that volunteers’ movements were slower after they had moved and missed their target.

Solman’s team propose that the system in the brain that deals with movement is running too quickly for the visual system to keep up. While you are searching around a messy house to find your keys, you might not be giving your visual system enough time to work out what each object is. Since time can be costly, sacrificing accuracy on occasion for speed might be beneficial overall, Solman thinks.

The slowing of mouse movements suggests that at some level the volunteers were aware that they had missed their target, a theory that is backed up by other studies that show people tend to slow down their actions after they have made a mistake, even if they don’t consciously realize the mistake.

1. What conclusion has Solman drawn from the first task?

A．More volunteers are needed to confirm the findings.

B．It happens very often that people miss what they intend to find.

C．Computers make negative effects on how people perform at the task.

D．Targets tend to be forgotten after people search for 10 minutes or more.

2. What can be inferred from the third task that Solman’s team created?

A．Cards marked with shapes may become a source of distraction.

B．Fewer errors will be made if people are forbidden to move cards.

C．People may be absent-minded even when they are moving something.

D．Volunteers prefer to use a mouse to control the objects on the computer screen.

3. What does“a theory”(in the last paragraph)refers to?

A．Mistakes will cause people to reduce the speed.

B．Our visual system can’t keep up with the brain system.

C．The faster people move, the more mistakes they will make.

D．People’s actions are independent of the mistakes they make.

4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A．Better memory, worse search

B．Accuracy speaks louder than speed

C．Hurry up, or you will make mistakes

D．Slow down your search to find your keys

3 . Thanks to Top Gear, a British television show for motoring enthusiasts that is now a global brand, a former WWⅡ airfield called Dunsfold has become one of the best-known testing tracks in the world. On October 15, however, instead of booming to the roar of supercars driven by the show’s racing driver, it witnessed the sight of what appeared to be the cableless trailer of an articulated lorry (铰接式卡车) running almost silently around the course at over 80kph.

The Pod, as this vehicle is known, was made by Einride, Swedish firm founded in 2016 by Robert Falck, an engineer who used to work for Volvo. Mr. Falck thinks that the technology of vehicle autonomy, long experimental, has now evolved sufficiently for driverless goods vehicles to begin earning their livings properly. Some Pods are already in trials for real jobs: running between warehouses, dragging logs from forests and delivering goods for Lidl, a supermarket group.

Pods use the same technology of cameras, radar, lidar (the optical equivalent of radar) and satellite-positioning as other competitors in the field, but they differ from those others in the way their maker tries to deal with the regulatory concerns which prevent fully autonomous vehicles from being let loose on public roads. Einride’s approach, at least at the moment, is to avoid these by avoiding the roads in question. Instead, the Pod’s first version operates on designated routes within the limits of enclosed, private areas such as ports and industrial parks. Here, Pods act like bigger and smarter versions of the delivery robots which already run around some factories—though by having the ability to carry 16 tons and with room on board for 15 industrial pallets’ worth of goods, they are indeed quite a lot bigger.

The second difference from most other attempts at vehicle autonomy is Einride’s approach to the word “autonomy.” Some makers take the idea literally, and aim to keep humans out of the decision-making process entirely. Others, often prompted by traffic regulations, arrange things so that a normally passive human occupant can take the controls if necessary. Pods represent a third way. They always have a human to keep an eye on what is happening and to take over the driving for a difficult operation or if something goes wrong. But this human operates remotely.

Having the driver sitting back at headquarters rather than in the vehicle itself is departure from convention, but not a huge one. Aerial drones are usually controlled in this way. The dramatic step is that Mr. Falck believes you do not need a remote driver for each Pod. Einride already uses one person to control two Pods, but plans eventually for a single driver to look after ten.

1. What purpose does the first paragraph mainly serve?

A．To inform readers about a popular racing show.

B．To explain the significance of the Dunsfold track.

C．To introduce a much-sought-after global brand.

D．To offer a glimpse of the main subject of the passage.

2. Pods differ from other autonomous vehicles mainly in that ______.

A．they can be used in many different real job settings

B．they use advanced satellite-positioning technology

C．their maker is not seeking to put them on public roads

D．they are actually meant to be smart and big delivery robots

3. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．The carrying capacity of Pods has yet to be fully exploited.

B．Aerial drones are usually operated remotely from headquarters.

C．Low-performance self-driving vehicles have a human standby.

D．No remote driver will be needed in the future for each Pod.

4. What does the passage mainly talk about?

A．A British TV show advertises a newly-developed self-driving vehicle.

B．A new lorry being tested approaches autonomous driving differently.

C．A remote handler plays a crucial role in future autonomous driving.

D．A driverless lorry is being tested on a famous track.

4 . The US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently asked scientists, lawyers, social scientists and other experts to consider some of these ethical dimension. To give two examples: on privacy, as we let more listening devices into our homes, how do we prevent the data they collect falling into the wrong hands through hacking (黑客) or simply being sold between companies without us receiving any money? Another example: mixed reality, including virtual reality, will become pervasive in the next few years. As we move from headsets to what the IEEE committee describes as “more delicate sensory enhancements” we will use technology to live in an illusory world in many aspects of our lives. How do we balance the rights of the individual, control over our virtual identity, and the need to live and interact on a face-to-face basis while being empowered to live rich lives in mixed reality?

There is, of course, always a tension between innovation and regulation. But it can often seem that giant steps are taken in technology with minimal public discussion. Take the self-driving car: although it may be safer than human drivers and is likely to save more than a million lives a year worldwide, it will also take jobs from drivers, traffic police, sign-makers, car-repair companies, carmakers and more. Is this a bargain we want to make? In taking that decision, have we given thought to a car that knows everywhere we go, decides routes, perhaps, based on paid advertisement from shops along the way—and listens and sees everything we do on board? What will happen to that data and can it be kept safe?

Additionally, while some worry about the uncommon “trolley problem” of whom the car should choose to hit in a strange accident—an old lady or a mother and baby—perhaps the more frequent issue will be how we find out what the algorithm (运算程序) was thinking at the time of an accident, because AIs (Artificial Intelligence) are self-learning and devise their own strategies.     

Similar concerns are emerging over the internet of things. Robot vacuum-cleaners already plot cleaning cycles using computer-aided vision that, for some models, is relayed to their manufacturers. As more things at home become connected, they will be hackable and the data they collect saleable.

It’s time for some messy, democratic discussions about the future of AI.

1. Two examples in paragraph 1 are used to________.

A．shed some light on hacking in our modern life

B．lead the reader to think of ethical issues brought by hi-tech

C．lead in the following example concerning the self-driving car

D．list the existing problems that caught the attention of experts

2. The word “pervasive” in paragraph 1 probably means “________”.

A．intelligent

B．powerful

C．widespread

D．skillful

3. We can infer from the passage that________.

A．innovation should be accompanied by guidelines to relieve tension

B．more giant innovative steps will lead to fewer public discussion

C．disadvantages of the self-driving car will outweigh its advantages

D．artificial intelligence fails to have a promising and bright future

4. In the passage, the author intends to ________.

A．expose some underlying problems in high-technology

B．call on professionals to enforce law and order

C．illustrate AI’s abilities in self-devising and self-learning strategies

D．display our inter-connected computer-aided life in future

5 . You know it’s fun to take in the wine country sights. But have you thought about trying the heights?

Whether you’re zooming down a zip line or floating through the air in a hot-air balloon, there are quite a few ways to experience the high life in wine country.

Here are three options ranging from thrill to chill.

1. Up, up in the air: Multicolored hot-air balloons dotting a blue sky are a signature of wine country and you can be part of the picture-postcard scene. Several companies offer balloon flights, including Napa Valley Aloft, which launches from the V Marketplace in Yountville and has two alternate launching places if it’s foggy. Be aware this is a bird’s-eye view for early birds. Flights launch just after dawn when winds are calmest and temperatures lowest. Prices start at $220 for a ride in a gondola that holds up to 14 people followed by an optional $20 Champagne breakfast. Booking in advance recommended, especially in the high seasons of summer and fall.

2. Zip-n-sip: In Paso Robles, the grape-growing area along California’s Central Coast that was featured in the popular 2004 buddy movie, ”Sideways,“ Margarita Adventures has zip lines that will have you whizzing over forests, canyons and vineyards. The tour concludes with optional tastings at neighboring Ancient Peaks Winery. Tickets are $109 on weekdays, $119 on weekends and holidays, $89 for youth under 18 at all times. Details at http://www.margarita-adventures.com.

3. Glide in a gondola: For a brief but lovely time aloft, ride the aerial tram at Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga. You get a smooth ride up a tree-studded hill and are greeted at the top with a glass of wine as you begin a self-guided tour of galleries and overlooks. Finish with a wine and food pairing on the South Terrace which has sweeping views of the Napa Valley. Open Monday-Friday 10:30 a.m.—5 p.m., weekends 10 a.m.—5 p.m. Admission starts at $29, with additional fees for food pairings, and tickets can be booked through http://www.SterlingVineyards.com.

1. In which column of a magazine can you find the article?

A．Geography and People.	B．City Beats.
C．Food and Entertainment.	D．Travel.

2. What can you learn from the first option?

A．V Marketplace in Yountville is the only spot for the launch of balloon flights.

B．Viewing birds is also an important part of the flight.

C．Balloon flights will not start until the sun sets.

D．Weather plays a critical role in balloon flights.

3. Which of the following is True?

A．Booking in advance is highly recommended for all of the three options.

B．Tickets can be bought through their respective websites.

C．Tourists can have choices to taste wine in any of the options.

D．There is a special offer for children in all of the three options.

6 . When your home becomes a tourist attraction

Have you ever looked at a beautiful little news house in London and thought “It must be so amazing to live there?”    1     But for the people who actually do live in those homes, social media photography has changed what it means to live in a picturesque place.

Alice Johnston is a longtime resident of Notting Hill, the London neighborhood famous for pastel-painted row houses and for being the setting of the movie of the same name. Johnston, a journalist, has complicated feelings about her Instagram-beloved neighborhood. She lives on Portobello Road, one of the capital’s most famous streets.     2    

Once, she and a friend were walking his French bulldog when a tourist asked if they could “borrow” the pup for a quick photo. The friend and the dog agreed, the Instagrammer posed with the Frenchie in front of a bright blue door and then handed over five pounds as a thank you. In that story, everybody had a good time.     3    “I was once woken up at 6 a.m. on Easter Sunday by French teenagers taking pictures outside,” Johnston says.

    4     Johnston tries to be sympathetic to travelers coming to her hometown, recalling how she loved taking pictures of historic neighborhoods like the Marais in Paris and Alfama in Lisbon. In fact, she recently found photos of herself as a teenager hanging out at the Notting Hill Carnival, years before she moved to the capital herself. “I love to travel, so I have to be pretty understanding when people travel to where I live, and I feel lucky that it’s cool enough that people want to come where I live.”

A．And she has witnessed all kinds of crazy behavior committed in the pursuit of the perfect snapshot.

B．But there can be a darker side to living inside what some people think is a movie set.

C．“For us it’s a tremendous pleasure to be able to share the house and see so many people happy and excited about it.”

D．If so, you’re not the only one.

E．When private homes become tourist attractions, conflicts can occur.

F．When it comes to living in a much-photographed place, some people try to take the good with the bad.

7 . It’s a reader’s rite of passage to walk into a movie theater to see a favorite book come to life and walk out bitterly disappointed. Sometimes, there’s no softening the truth: what you read on the page is so much better than what you watched on the screen. The following are four beloved books that are undoubtedly better than their film adaptations.

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

Passionate fans of this young adult classic will agree that a true film adaptation of Ella Enchanted does not yet exist. Levine’s 1997 retelling of Cinderella, which earned a prestigious Newbery Honor, was adapted for the screen in 2004, with Anne Hathaway in the starring role. But the movie took significant liberties with Levine’s original plot, adding characters and excluding beloved scenes. The moods of the film and the book feel disparate. As David Rooney wrote in Variety, “The filmmakers also pushed the tone into a far more jokey comic realm, which dilutes the romantic-magical chemistry of the book, downplaying its central idea of a ‘Cinderella’ overhaul.”

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This 1850 work of historical fiction about the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1640s has inspired a number of adaptations to film, page and stage, but the most bizarre of these may be the 1995 film starring Demi Moore, Gary Oldman and Robert Duvall. It was labeled “trashy and nonsensical” by Caryn James in the NewYork Times, and is frequently disparaged for changing much of the source material, including the ending. Receiving a shockingly low score of 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, this movie took home the award for the Worst Remake or Sequel at the 1995 Golden Raspberry Awards.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass, published in 1995, is the first novel in the beloved young-adult fantasy series, His Dark Materials, a magical story set in a parallel universe. This first part of the trilogy follows a young girl named Lyra as she embarks on a rescue mission to the Arctic. The widely panned 2007 film took five years to complete, slowed down by disagreements over the script and the direction. The studio bought the rights to the trilogy in 2002 and commissioned Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay. Chris Weitz was hired to direct. But Stoppard’s script was rejected and Weitz was fired. In his place, the studio hired Anand Tucker to direct, though Tucker resigned in 2006. Then Weitz returned to write the screenplay and direct the project. The result was a disappointing (and extremely expensive) movie that cut or changed many elements of the novel.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

This bestselling novel from 2002 tells the story of a teenage girl who is raped and murdered and watches her family grieve from heaven. The 2009 film adaptation boasts terrific performances by Saoirse Ronan and Stanley Tucci as the girl and her attacker, but has little else to offer. The fine balance of sentiment and violence that Sebold strikes in the novel is lost in the movie. The film “strikes clashing tones, veering from lightheartedness to heavy-handedness,” Claudia Puig wrote in USA Today, adding that the device of main character narrating from heaven “works on the page but comes off artificial and emotionless on-screen.”

1. All the reviews mention the actors or actresses starring the film adaptations except ______.

A．Ella Enchanted	B．The Scarlet Letter
C．The Golden Compass	D．The Lovely Bones

2. Which of the following is NOT among the causes of unsatisfactory film adaptations?

A．Disappointing changes to the original story.

B．Being not so ground-breaking as the book.

C．Taking too much time and money for filming.

D．Being not so vividly expressive as the book.

3. We can conclude from the passage that ______.

A．it is always the truth that books are better than film adaptations

B．an all-star cast results in the excellence of film adaptations

C．changes to original plots can’t influence film adaptations positively

D．words can be more powerful than images in expressiveness

8 . Lego in China

Engineers gather around a table-sized model of the China Art Museum, a landmark of Shanghai, adding airports for helicopters, car parks and other improvements with colorful bricks.     1    Li Yang, visiting for a few days from Shenzhen, has been waiting for her daughter for two hours. Zhu Yunfei, watching his son, marvels at the variety: “Coming here to play with him is making up for my childhood,” he says. They drop by every week.

Lego’s rise in China has been shiningly attractive. In 2017 it overlook Alpha Group, a local giant, to become the country’s leading toy company (not including video games). In the past two years it has opened 89 stores and wants 50 more by December, which will bring it to 30 cities. Its first Chinese factory started making bricks in 2016. The toy industry is growing by 9% annually in the country, but the Danish firm’s Chinese section has won “very strong double digits(两位数)”, says Paul Huang, its boss.

    2     In 2017 Lego cut 1,400 jobs and recorded its first drop in revenues and profits in over a decade. But last year both ticked up again, by 4% each. Lego has thus retained its status as the world’s biggest toy-maker, snatched from Mattel in 2014 - even as its American rival last year earned its highest revenues in five years from its Barbie dolls.

Newly wealthy parents in China have helped Lego recover. “We have not reached the extreme out there, by far,” says Niels Christiansen, whom Lego brought in as chief executive two years ago.     3     Last year 98% of those surveyed by Lego said that play was essential for their child’s well-being, even more than Americans and Danes.

Lego has also sensibly managed to meet the demands of local tastes.     4     Fans were delighted at the attention to cultural detail. One was a Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner kit, with tiny red envelopes and chunlian, lucky couplets on banners pasted around doorways. A dragon boat race set included a sticky-rice dumpling, a popular festival snack. The high-quality kits are pricey, costing up to 700 yuan ($100) a piece.

A．It has done so even though the brick-maker’s global business has looked shakier.

B．It has been sold in great volumes with various kinds of sets and earned the fame as the most suitable toys for children to play with.

C．Removing a child from Lego’s vast shop near People’s Square can be like unsticking two stubborn bits of Lego.

D．Over the past decades, Lego’s sales volume in China is not as satisfying as it expected.

E．As in the West, the educational merits of bricks appeal to Chinese parents.

F．This year the firm launched several sets specifically for China, the first time it has done so for any country.

9 . Housing prices have been growing less and less affordable across the U. S.     1    

Paragon Real Estate, a San Francisco real estate(房地产)company, has calculated that the median housing price in the city has risen $205, 000 since the end of 2017, the highest six - month gain in at least a quarter century.     2    . That’s more than double the 7.2% rise in 2017, but not as high as the 26.1% rise in housing prices in 2000, during the peak of the bubble. It’s also below the 20% rise in 2007, just before the housing market crashed.

    3    . But it also reflects a broader trend in the U. S. The average home price in U. S. stands at around $260,000, after having risen for the past six years, Paragon said.

Home-buyers who can’t afford such inflationary(通货膨胀引起的)housing prices might consider buying an apartment.     4    .

Paragon said that a sudden increase in both the asking prices for homes and the bids being placed by buyers, coupled with a multi - year decline in the number of homes listed for sale, have contributed to the sudden increase in prices. Housing activists in the Bay Area have grown more outspoken in calling for more available housing in the region.

There are signs that the affordable - housing problems that many residents in San Francisco struggle with are recurring in other cities, even if at a smaller scale. Home prices across the U. S. are by some measures at their least affordable levels since the financial crisis.

A．The median price for San Francisco apartments rose by $71,000 in the first half of 2018, a comparative bargain.

B．On a percentage basis, the median home price in San Francisco rose 14.5% over the past year to $1.6 million.

C．No city is a more fitting poster child for that trend than San Francisco.

D．The current housing construction pick-up supported overall GDP growth in first quarter and should do so in second quarter.

E．San Francisco may offer an extreme example of rising home prices.

F．In part, house prices have risen because interest have fallen and incomes have risen.

10 . Extreme sorrow claws my mind. I am a statistic. When I first got here. I felt very much lonely. I found no sympathy. I saw only thousands of others whose bodies were as badly mangled as mine. I was given a number and placed in a category, which was called “traffic death”.

The day I died was an ordinary school day. How I wish I had taken the bus! But I was too cool for the bus. I remember how I wheedled (哄骗) the car out of Mom. “Special favor,” I pleaded. “All the kids drive.” After school, I rushed to the parking lot, excited at the thought of driving a car and being my own boss.

It doesn’t matter how the accident happened, I was going too fast taking crazy chances. But I was enjoying my freedom and having fun. The last thing I remember was passing an old lady who seemed to be going awfully slow. I heard a crash and felt a terrific shake. Glass and steel flew everywhere. My whole body seemed to be turning inside out. I heard myself scream.

Suddenly, I awakened. It was very quiet. I saw a police officer and a doctor. I was saturated with blood. Pieces of jagged glass were sticking out all over. Strange that I couldn’t feel anything. Hey, don’t pull that sheet over my head. I can’t be dead. I’m only 17. I’m supposed to have a wonderful life ahead of me. I haven’t lived yet. I can’t be dead!

Later I was placed in a drawer. My folks came to identify me. Why did they see me like this? Why did I have to look at Moms eyes when she faced the most terrible ordeal of her life? Dad suddenly looked very old. He told the man in charge, “Yes — he is our son.”

Please — somebody — wake me up! Get me out of here. I can’t bear to see Mom and Dad in such pain. My grandparents are so weak from grief they can barely walk. My brother and sister move like robots.

Please don’t bury me! I’m not dead! I promise if you give me just one more chance, God. I’ll be the most careful driver in the whole world. All I want is one more chance. Please, God, I’m only 17.

1. Why did the writer become a statistic?

A．Because he was majoring in statistics (统计学) in the school.

B．Because he felt very lonely at that moment.

C．Because he was dead due to a traffic accident.

D．Because he made a fatal mistake in statistics.

2. Where did the traffic accident take place?

A．On the way to the school.	B．On the way home.
C．Near a police station.	D．Near an old lady’s house.

3. What was the cause of the accident?

A．I was driving too fast.

B．I was too young to drive.

C．I wanted to avoid knocking down an old lady.

D．I was not familiar with the road condition.

4. Which of the following could be the best title of the passage?

A．How careless a young driver is!	B．Dead at 17.
C．An avoidable tragedy.	D．Safe drive on the road.