1 . Overcoming barriers to exercising

If you’re having trouble beginning an exercise plan or following through, you’re not alone. Detailed exercise instructions and workout plans are just a click awav. But knowing how and why to exercise was far from enough. Making exercise a habit takes more.     1    

While practical concerns like a busy schedule or poor health can make exercise more challenging, for most of us, the biggest barriers are mental. Maybe it’s a lack of self-confidence that keeps you from taking positive steps.     2     . We’ve all been there at some point. There are steps you can take to make exercise-more fun and active.

You don’t have to spend hours in a gym or force yourself into dull or painful activities to experience the physical and mental benefits of exercise.     3     In fact, adding just modest amounts of physical activity to your weekly routine can have a profound effect on your mental and emotional health.

Research shows that self-sympathy increases the likelihood that you’ll succeed in any attempt. So, don’t blame yourself too much for your current fitness level.     4     Instead, look at your past mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow.

    5     Try not to be discouraged by what you can’t accomplish or how far you have to go to reach your fitness goals. Instead, focus on consistency. While the improvements in mood and energy levels may happen quickly, the physical payoff will come in time.

A．Maybe your passion dies down.

B．A little exercise is better than nothing.

C．Expecting too much only leads to frustration.

D．You know there are great reasons to exercise.

E．All that will do is cause you to lose motivation.

F．You need the right mindset and a smart approach.

G．Many of us are struggling to get into the motionless state.

2 . A humanoid robot can relay video and touch sensations to a person wearing a haptic (触觉内) feedback suit and a virtual reality (VR) headset hundreds of kilometres away, offering away for people to attend events without travelling.

The iCub 3 robot is a 52-kilogram, 125-centimetre-tall robot with 54 joints across its body. Its head contains two cameras where a human’s eyes would be, and an Internet-connected computer where the brain would go. Along with the cameras, sensors covering its body send data to the robot’s “brain”. These sensations are then reproduced on a suit and VR headset worn by a remote human operator.

When the operators react to what they see and feel, the suit’s sensors pick up the movements and the robot matches them. “The key is to translate every signal and bit of digital data that can be sent through the network.” says Stefano Dafarra, who was part of the iCub3 team. There can be a small delay of up to 100 milliseconds to capture and transmit the visual shots, but the operator can case this by moving slightly slower than normal.

The team demonstrated the robot at the Venice Biennale, where it wandered through an exhibition while its operator stood 290 kilometres away in Genoa. Dafarra hopes people will use the iCub3 to attend events remotely, reducing the need to travel. “But at present, a fall could be hugely damaging to the robot, and it’s uncertain whether it could stand up again on its own," he says.

“iCub3 is an interesting robot and offers clear advantages from the previous versions.” says Jonathan Aitken, whose laboratory owns a prior version of the robot. However, he is disappointed that the team wasn’t clear in its research about the data transmission requirements of the new version of the robot. “It would be good to know just how much data was required, and what the upper and lower bounds were.” he says.

1. What’s the principle behind the humanoid robot?

A．It conveys sensations to the wearer and acts accordingly.

B．It receives commands from an operator through the Internet.

C．The cameras take pictures and then interact with the sensors.

D．The computer in the robot processes the data and gives orders.

2. Which aspect of life may the technology be applied to?

A．Medical consultation.	B．Sports events.
C．Outdoor workouts.	D．Virtual tourism.

3. What can we infer about iCub 3 from the text?

A．It fails to appeal to potential investors.

B．Its performance hasn’t been evaluated clearly.

C．Its present version still requires to be updated.

D．Its transmission of data came across technical problems.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．Humanoid robots with sense of touch catch on

B．iCub 3 robot combines with VR to benefit more people

C．Humanoid robots let people see and feel things remotely

D．New advances in technology enable people to travel at work

3 . Tokyo restaurant Sushiya no Nohachi reportedly serves great sushi, but it is most famous for its gimmick—making the world’s smallest sushi with a single grain of rice.

Located in Asakusa, a slightly quieter part of Tokyo, Sushiya no Nohachi is the place to go if you want to enjoy the tiniest, most adorable sushi in the world. Each piece is made with only a grain of rice and a tiny slice of topping wrapped in the thinnest piece of nori(海苔). Every served piece is actually perfect, which hints at the amount of work and patience that Bes into making them. They are the work of Hironori Ikeno, the chef of Sushiya no Nohachi, who came up with the idea in 2002 when a client asked him how small he could make his sushi. He answered, “as small as a grain of rice”, and proceeded to demonstrate that he wasn’t kidding. Over the years, the restaurant has become internationally famous for making the world’s smallest sushi.

Despite its size, miniature sushi actually takes a bit longer to make than regular-sized me, because of the precision and concentration required to put the tiny ingredients together. That is part of the reason why the restaurant only prepares tiny sushi for customers a few times a week and no more than five times a day, although they do sometimes make exceptions for foreign visitors who travel to the restaurant just to experience the world’s smallest sushi.

“I had a client from Sweden who came just to see my tiny sushi and the moment she saw it, she literally cried with joy.” Hironori Ikeno said.

Interestingly, one cannot simply order the tiny sushi at the restaurant. It is served for f re upon request with a regular-sized sushi course. Considering the sushi served at this place is reportedly delicious, you should probably be more excited about that. Plus, it also justifies the gimmick that the restaurant is so famous for.

1. What does the underlined word “gimmick” in paragraph 1 probably refer to?

A．A class to teach cooking skills.

B．A trick to attract customers.

C．A plan to promote the sushi.

D．A dish to win over opponents.

2. What made Hironori Ikeno start to make the smallest sushi?

A．His pursuit for perfection.

B．The curiosity of a customer.

C．The requirement from his boss.

D．A bet he made with others.

3. Compared with the regular sushi, the world’s smallest sushi __________.

A．Take more time to make one

B．Unpopular among customers

C．costs more money to buy one

D．needs more expensive materials

4. What do Hironori Ikeno’s words about the Swedish customer show?

A．Diversity of the customers.

B．His lack of experience.

C．Special treatment to foreigners.

D．His sense of achievement.

4 . I grew up on a dairy farm. The particular life location to which I got assigned-“stuck” is a better word if you’ve ever been there — was a small family-owned-and-operated outfit.

I remember the Christmas when our main hired hand dropped out of the work rotation. Sixteen and the oldest of the kids left at home, I was called on to fill in. Halfway through the first day, I realized I had never noticed exactly how much that worker did. For five days I either milked or slept, fed calves (牛犊) or slept. I have to admit this gave me a deep appreciation of how hard my parents worked day in and day out for 30 years, and that understanding solidified my determination to do whatever it took to not stay on that dairy farm my whole life.

Eventually, my determination paid off. I got into college. Now, I no longer have to worry about my father’s voice yelling, “Stace, come out here! We need help!” To be honest, I’m grateful. But at the same time, I also don’t have a compelling reason to be up in time to see the beauty of a sunrise. Nor do I have the opportunity to dance with my sister in the dairy barn, work side-by-side with my dad and hear the old stories.

Now, there are whole stretches of days when I don’t feel any pressing need to even go outside. And I can go months without petting an animal or watching in amazement at their keen sense of the environment around them. Instead, I have neighbors within shouting distance but who feel like they live a planet away.

Eighteen years I lived my life on that dairy, not really knowing there were people who didn’t get up and go out and work together to get the same overwhelming tasks done day after day. Sometimes I wish I had never found out there were.

1. What did the author come to understand on her first day working on the farm?

A．She couldn’t manage so much work.

B．Her parents sacrificed a lot for her family.

C．The tasks were dull and challenging.

D．The work was more demanding than expected.

2. What motivated the author to pursue further education?

A．Lack of opportunities on the farm.

B．A passion for academic study.

C．Her dissatisfaction with farm life.

D．Encouragement from her parents.

3. How does the author feel about her life now?

A．Mixed.	B．Regretful.
C．Content.	D．Relieved.

4. What can we infer about the author from the last paragraph?

A．She has become tired of her daily routine.

B．She misses the connections she had before.

C．She regrets leaving her family behind.

D．She has lost interest in the beauty of nature.

5 . Sweating may not be your favorite thing to do, but it is necessary.     1    . Here are four research-backed reasons why this salt-based fluid can benefit you.

·Sweating is good for your skin.

Sweat is known to cool the skin, bringing toxins (毒素) to the surface and giving the skin a healthy glow. Research shows that sweating can increase and maintain skin hydration. However, leaving sweat on the skin for too long can cause skin diseases such as acne.     2    .

·Sweating makes you happy.

When you’re hot, your heart beats faster to cool the body, releasing endorphins that cause feelings of joy.     3    . In a 2015 study, people who smelled “happy sweat” displayed tendencies associated with happiness. However, those exposed to fear-induced sweat showed characteristics of terror.

·    4    

When sitting in a sauna (桑拿浴室), your body temperature rises, so your body works overtime to cool itself down by sweating. And you’ll be better off for it. A 20-year Finnish study found that people who sweated it out regularly in a sauna had a lower rate of sudden cardiac (心脏的) deaths.

·    5    

If you sweat heavily during exercise, that’s usually a positive sign. Athletes tend to sweat sooner and more than inactive people. Their bodies have learned to cool down more efficiently during physical activity. A PLOSONE study supports this, showing that long-distance runners not only got sweatier sooner, but also activated more sweat glands, resulting in more sweat than their non-active counterparts.

A．Sweating supports your heart

B．Sweating a lot means that you’re fit

C．Sweat is the stuff that floods out when our body temperature rises

D．Your sweaty self can also make those around you feel happier too

E．Sweating contributes to a decrease in blood pressure to some extent

F．So, it’s essential to wash your face and body after sweating

G．It’s a natural bodily function that helps to regulate body temperature and prevent overheating

6 . Anyone who’s used noise-canceling headphones knows that hearing the right noise at the right time can be vital. Someone might want to remove sirens (汽笛) when working indoors, but not when walking along busy streets. Yet people can’t choose what sounds their headphones cancel.

Now, a team led by researchers at the University of Washington (UW) has developed deep-learning algorithms (算法) that let users pick which sounds pass through their headphones in real time. The system, called “semantic hearing”, works with headphones that stream the captured sounds to a connected smartphone which cancels all environmental sounds. Either through voice commands or a smartphone app, headphone wearers can select which sounds they want to include from 20 classes, such as sirens, baby cries, speech and bird chirps. Only the selected sounds will be played through the headphones.

“The challenge posed to today’s noise-canceling headphones is that the sounds headphone wearers hear need to sync (同步) with their visual senses. You can’t hear someone’s voice two seconds after they talk to you,” said senior author Shyam Gollakota, a UW professor. “This means the algorithms must process sounds in under a hundredth of a second.”

That need for speed is why the system must process sounds on a device such as a connected smartphone, instead of on cloud servers. Additionally, because sounds from different directions arrive in people’s ears at different times, the system must preserve these delays and other clues so people can still meaningfully perceive sounds in their environment.

Tested in environments such as offices, streets and parks, the system was able to capture sirens, bird chirps, alarms and other target sounds, while removing all other real-world noise. When 22 participants rated the system’s voice output for the target sound, they said that the quality improved compared to the original recording. In some cases, the system struggled to distinguish between sounds that share many properties, such as vocal music and human speech. The researchers note that training the models on more real-world data can improve these outcomes. In the near future, the researchers plan to release a commercial version of the system.

1. What’s the innovative feature of the UW’s new hearing system?

A．It can capture noise more precisely.

B．It is connected with efficient cloud servers.

C．It can customize sounds for users’ preferences.

D．It lets wearers perceive the surroundings better.

2. What is the disadvantage of today’s noise-cancelıng headphones?

A．They can’t feel the directions of sounds.

B．They can’t recognize the target sounds.

C．They lack relevant technical support.

D．They lack real-time intelligence.

3. What do the researchers expect of the new hearing system?

A．It’ll come onto the market soon.

B．It’ll improve the sound quality.

C．It’ll capture sounds from nature.

D．It’ll be tested in noisier environments.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．An effective way to avoid noise around us.

B．The development of deep-learning algorithms

C．A new noise-canceling headphone technology.

D．The application of noise-canceling headphones.

7 . Edinburgh is famous for its many museums where you can learn its rich history.

Museum on the Mound

Located in the heart of Edinburgh’s city center, this appealing museum takes a fresh look at money — and much, much more. You will see coins and banknotes from over the ages, including the first Scottish banknote printed in 1727. There are also interesting interactive displays and you can even try your hand at opening a safe!

The Writers’ Museum

It is housed in the beautiful Lady Stair’s House, a category A listed building. The collection celebrates the legacy (遗产) of Scotland’s literary contributions, with special emphasis given to Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns. The museum is home to numerous paintings, books and manuscripts (手稿), and you can also see Burns’ writing desk and Scott’s chess set.

Our Dynamic Earth

It celebrates the beauty of the earth via technology. Interactive exhibits allow visitors to experience earthquakes, the ocean floor, ice ages and mountains by the use of computer software. Particularly interesting is the “tour” around the eleven Earthscapes. It is educational fun for the whole family and can serve as a good introduction to concepts surrounding the formation of the planet and the creatures we share the earth with.

National Museum of Scotland

The diverse collections here include the history of Scotland with exhibitions of international interest. The natural world, science and technology, discoveries, art, and world cultures are all explored. There are interactive elements and activities to suit children of all ages, including science experiments and musical instruments.

1. Which might be the most attractive to finance majors?

A．Our Dynamic Earth.	B．Museum on the Mound.
C．The Writers’ Museum.	D．National Museum of Scotland.

2. What do The Writers’ Museum and National Museum of Scotland have in common?

A．They have an artistic atmosphere.	B．They have interactive exhibits.
C．They provide hands-on activities.	D．They showcase world cultures.

3. What can you do at Our Dynamic Earth?

A．Play with your family.	B．Tour the world virtually.
C．Design computer software.	D．Learn about ancient creatures.

8 . Self-driving cars may sound like something from a futuristic sci-fi novel. However, with advanced trials expected from 2021, they are a lot closer to reality than you may think, and they could really help you.

Connected and automated vehicles (also known as CAVs), are vehicles that could perform many of the functions of today’s human drivers in the future. Aware of the potential benefits of the technology from improving road safety and reducing traffic congestion (拥塞), to enabling greater travel independence-the U. K. government has been encouraging the technology.

“However, we won’t get there unless those designing the technology engage properly with a wide range of transport users,” said lain Forbes, head of the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

FLOURISH, one initiative that received government backing, has helped to advance the successful implementation of CAVs in the U. K. by developing services and capabilities which maxi-mise the benefits of driverless vehicles for users and transport authorities.

The project was a collaboration between small and medium companies and large businesses across multiple industries, universities, local authorities and the not-for-profit sector, to investigate how these vehicles might benefit older adults and those with mobility-related conditions.

Mervyn Kohler, an Age U. K. spokesman, believes FLOURISH’s approach will be key to the positive impact self-driving cars have on older adults. “The project’s connectivity findings will also help the users of the future to make real-time journey decisions, responding to live information,” Tracey Poole, FLOURISH’s project manager and transport planning specialist says: “Not only will these vehicles be more inclusive; they will also be safer, more efficient and more environmentally friendly.”

Although safety is one of the big prizes associated with the introduction of self-driving cars, with the vast majority of collisions caused by human error, concerns about their safety are common.

The government is keen to understand the public’s view on CAVs and continues to survey public attitudes. It is also taking big steps towards establishing how our laws and regulations might need to change to support the safe use of self-driving cars.

1. What is the advantage of self-driving cars?

A．They guarantee road safety.

B．They remove traffic jams.

C．They provide more freedom of traveling.

D．They get over the elder’s dependence on drivers.

2. What does the underlined word “prizes” in paragraph 7 refer to?

A．Awards.	B．Achievements.
C．Realization.	D．Characteristics.

3. What can we infer about self-driving cars?

A．Collisions between self-driving cars can’t be avoided.

B．Self-driving cars are more eco-friendly than today's cars.

C．There is still a way to go before self-driving cars hit the road.

D．People are not worried about the safety problems of self-driving cars.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．CAVs: a substitute for today’s human driver.

B．How do CAVs help people less able to travel?

C．FLOURISH: a new project on self-driving cars.

D．Could self-driving cars soon be a reality?

9 . Who can imagine life today without an Automated Teller Machine (ATM)? They are available in considerable numbers throughout the world.

The first ATM was the brainchild of an enterprising Turkish-American inventor Luther George Simjian. When the idea of an automated banking machine struck him, he registered 20 patents before any bank agreed to give it a trial run. It is easy to assume that the inventor of such a popular machine was laughing all the way to the bank.     1     Within six months of its operation in New York in 1939, the device was removed due to lack of customer acceptance.

It was not until 1967, nearly 30 years later, that Barclays Bank, in a careful launch, rolled out a self-service machine in London, England, which proved successful.     2     The first cash machine relied on customers’ use of prepaid tokens (代币) to get envelopes with a fixed amount of cash inside.

    3     The banks’ principle was seemingly customer service. But it would be foolish to minimize the many advantages that cash machines provided to the banks themselves. By the late 1970s, the highest fixed cost for the average large bank was its branches. The greatest variable cost and loss to profits were its staff. Bank accounts swiftly recognized that self-service operations could reduce bank branch staff cost by70 percent.

Experts quickly determined that public acceptance of ATMs counted on convenience, simplicity, speed, security and trust.     4     For maximum efficiency, ATMs had to be located near public transport or in a shopping mall, not at a branch. The busier and more crowded the location, obviously, the better. Now, roughly 75 percent of all cash provided by banks to their customers comes from cash machines.     5    .

Public acceptance of deposits (存款) by machine was significantly slower than customers’ usage of ATMs for withdrawals. In general, it seems that customers sometimes still prefer and trust an over-the-counter transaction (交易) for deposits.

A．Location, in particular, was a key factor.

B．His cash machine, however, didn’t prove durable.

C．The device was relatively primitive, at least by today’s standards.

D．However, cash machines posed some interesting, unanswered questions.

E．An interesting factor was the issue of bio-statistics for customer identification.

F．Devices originally dismissed by the public are now recognized as essential institutions.

G．Soon afterwards, many other banks became admittedly champions of the cash machine.

10 . What’s your first memory? Whatever it is, you’re bound to treasure it. But can we actually trust them? Nothing about memory is simple. Memory is malleable. What we remember is not necessarily what happened. A memory is not a recording. It’s more like a dramatic reconstruction and one that we can keep changing without realizing it.

For any experience to be remembered, it has to be encoded (编码). This encoding is not any kind of direct translation, though. It’s a rich and complex process that creates associations and meanings. We might be remembering something very similar, but slightly changed and colored by our own sets of associations.

Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus produced groundbreaking research on eyewitness testimony (证据). Her work showed that memories can easily be influenced, even after they’ve been created. For example, if two eyewitnesses talk with each other, their memories of events often change, absorbing what they’ve heard from the other one — but they won’t realize this has happened. Similarly, witnesses who are shown an image of an innocent person, can sometimes stick it onto their memory of the actual event — a process known as unconscious transference (无意识的转移). It is estimated that around 70% of wrongful convictions (定罪), later overturned by DNA evidence, are due to mistaken eyewitness testimony.

In some cases, memories can even be deliberately created and implanted. The Lost in the Mall experiment took a test group of subjects and talked to them in depth about key childhood memories while also adding an invented one — the experience of having been lost in a shopping center. It was found that between a quarter and a third of subjects not only accepted this new memory as genuine but enriched it with specific details.

Most of us have certain key memories of being a very young child. But research suggests that they’re highly unlikely to be actual memories due to the way memory is stored in the baby brain. Your precious first memory may well not be a real memory, and we’re all perhaps living in our imaginations more than we realize.

1. What does the underlined word “malleable” in paragraph 1 mean?

A．Trustworthy.

B．False.

C．Easily changed.

D．Deeply impressive.

2. Which will influence the memory of eyewitnesses?

A．Powerful DNA evidence.	B．Pictures stuck in their memory.
C．Reduced accuracy of convictions.	D．Exchanged information between them.

3. What can we learn about “The Lost in the Mall” experiment?

A．It was designed to investigate mistaken eyewitness testimony.

B．Its subjects could recall specific details of a shopping center.

C．Its subjects made believe that they had been lost in a shopping center.

D．It demonstrated that invented experiences could be fixed in one’s memory.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．The Unreliable Nature of Memory.	B．Revised Eyewitness Testimony.
C．Reflection on Sweet Childhood.	D．An Exploration of Truth and Fiction.