Cutting air pollution is on the agenda of all countries nowadays. In the efforts to build low-pollution cities, there are some traps city planners must avoid falling into.
Many countries intend to accomplish the switch to electric cars in the next two decades. In Canada, the government is planning to initiate policies for promoting the use of electric cars: a financial subsidy(补助)on purchase, low-interest rates on loans, etc. However, simply switching to electric cars doesn’t mean pollution-free cities. Emissions at different levels will still be caused when the electricity to run them is generated. Also, brakes, tyres and other components all create airborne particles(大气细颗粒物)pollution as they wear out.
A number of city planners are counting on the car-sharing system to be a great contributor to the reduction of emissions. According to the Economist, car-sharing is fashionable and trendy, but, when it comes to cutting emissions, “unreliable actually”. To make sure the cars come in handy and are always in good condition whenever and wherever a use needs to hit the road, more frequent road trips need to be made by lorries to transport these cars to the right parking spots and to auto repair centers for maintenance, causing extra emissions.
Across the cities around the world, as more people move to city centres, while young people especially are opting for other means of travel, researchers have recently made an inference that motor vehicle use in urban areas has already reached its peak and will decline. City planners need to catch up with this trend, instead of laying new roads to deal with traffic jams. As users of London’s orbital M25 motorway will know, new roads rapidly fill with more traffic. In the US, studies have shown that building new roads can simply multiply the traffic, taking us back to the starting point.
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2 . For the decade between the end of the financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, the ride-hailing app Uber boomed. The company’s business model relied on the flexibility of the rapidly-growing gig economy(零工经济), and its sky-high valuation directly represented its dominant market position.
Now its sufferings illustrate how those trends are shifting again. After almost a decade of being able to rely on cheap and swift Ubers to get around, city residents must get used to a new experience. A shortfall of British drivers got so bad that the chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi met with unions to recruit new workers on a visit to London.
There are some factors accounting for this shortage. During lock-downs few were taking trips, but with the reopening, and the urge to mingle(社交往来)again, came a sudden bounce-back(反弹). Uber said that demand in London had risen by about a fifth in 2021 and even more in smaller UK cities.
The flexibility and casual working arrangements that once so benefited the company now work in reverse in times of labour shortage.
In the past two years, the price of an Uber has increased by 92 percent, according to Rakuten Intelligence. Higher prices are likely to be here to stay.
| A．Workers have little, or no, loyalty to the company and can switch between different apps depending on which offers the better, or closer, ride |
| B．The government is now racking its brain to figure out ways to help support Uber to get through this difficult time. |
| C．The prospect of this huge industry cannot be underestimated. |
| D．In the meantime, thousands of drivers had found other jobs; even while economies were locked down drivers were still needed for takeaway and online shopping deliveries. |
| E．The question is what happens when more normal circumstances return. |
| F．It even sparked the word “Uberisation” to describe how its example helped transform industries, jobs and society. |
3 . How can the train operators possibly justify yet another increase to rail passenger fares? It has become a grimly reliable annual ritual: every January the cost of travelling by train rises, imposing a significant extra burden on those who have no option but to use the rail network to get to work or otherwise. This year’s rise, an average of 2.7 percent, may be a little bit lower than last year’s, but it is still well above the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation(通货膨胀).
Successive governments have permitted such increases on the grounds that the cost of investing in and running the rail network should be borne by those who use it, rather than the general taxpayer. Why, the argument goes, should a car-driving pensioner from Lincolnshire have to subsidise(补贴)the daily commute(通勤)of a rail traveller from Surrey? Equally, there is a sense that the sufferings of commuters in the South East, have received too much attention compared to those who must endure the relatively poor infrastructure of the Midlands and the North.
However, over the past 12 months, those commuters have also experienced some of the worst rail strikes in years. It is all very well train operators boasting about the improvements they are making to the network, but passengers should be able to expect a basic level of service for the substantial sums they are now paying to travel. The responsibility for the latest wave of strikes rests on the unions. However, there is a strong case that those who have been worst affected by industrial action should receive compensation for the disruption they have suffered.
The Government has promised to change the law to introduce a minimum service requirement so that, even when strikes occur, services can continue to operate. This should form part of a wider package of measures to address the long-running problems on Britain’s railways. Yes, more investment is needed, but passengers will not be willing to pay more indefinitely if they must also endure cramped, unreliable services, along with regular chaos when timetables are changed, or planned maintenance is managed incompetently. The threat of nationalisation may have been seen off for now, but it will return with a revenge if the justified anger of passengers is not addressed in short order.
1. The author holds that this year’s increase in rail passengers fares ________.| A．creates extra burden on taxpayers. |
| B．has kept pace with inflation. |
| C．is beyond the expectation of commuters |
| D．remains an unreasonable practice. |
| A．Compensations are to be given to the commuters affected by the strikes. |
| B．A minimum service requirement will be likely to settle the railway problems. |
| C．In terms of service, there is a conflict between train operator’s claim and the reality. |
| D．Train operators have suffered huge losses owing to the strikes. |
| A．the loss of investment. | B．the collapse of operations. |
| C．a reduction of revenue(收入) | D．a change of ownership. |
| A．Who Are to Blame for the Ever-rising Fares? |
| B．Rail Strikes Need to Be Stopped |
| C．Enhance Railway Service, Ease Passenger Anger |
| D．Ever-rising Fares Are Unreasonable |
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5 . Which Way Home, a documentary by Rebecca Cammisa, charts the journeys to Mexican and Central American children who leave their home countries to come to the United States riding on top of a train they call “La Bestia” (the beast). All of the children dream of a better life for themselves and their families. Some of them hope to reunite with family members in the U. S. Others have dreams of going to school or getting a job so they can send money back home.
Kevin
Fourteen-year-old Kevin is from Honduras. A seemingly happy-go-lucky guy, Kevin is the group’s ring leader, telling jokes, making leaps across car roofs, and providing some comic relief in the film. Kevin has a strong sense of duty to his family. His mother, Lupe, tells him to buy a house for them in the U. S., so she can escape Kevin’s violent stepfather. He plans to head to Manhattan once he crosses the border, but during the filming he is taken off of the train by American border agents who send him back to Honduras. Without hesitation, Kevin leaves Honduras again and jumps on the train. Throughout his journey, Kevin encounters violence and brutality that should never be a part of childhood.
Juan Carlos
Juan Carlos is a 13-year-old from Guatemala. When we meet him, we learn that his father abandoned the family years ago and moved to America for a better life, leaving Juan Carlos’s mother, Esmeralda, to care for several children on her own. His younger brother, Francisco, made it into the U. S. a month earlier and now lives with their grandmother in Los Angeles. Juan Carlos feels responsible for providing for his mother and his other family members and decides he must do something to help support them. With the weight of the world on his shoulders, he writes a letter telling Esmeralda that he, too, is leaving for the U. S.
Olga
Olga is the only female migrant featured in the film. She is nine years old and travelling with her friend, Freddy, who is also nine. They are being taken to the U. S. illegally. Both are headed for Minnesota, where Olga hopes to reunite with her mother, and Freddy hopes to find his father. During the making of the documentary, the film crew loses track of Olga and Freddy, and we never find out what becomes of them.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Feature-Length Documentary. Director Rebecca Camissa said her goal for the film was to create public awareness of child migration, and to “promote a dialogue that leads to creating humane immigration policy reform in the United States
1. Which of the following is true of Which Way Home?| A．It is adapted from a book which tells stories about three child migrants. |
| B．It won an Academy Award for its theme that corresponds to the reality. |
| C．It aims to make viewers conscious of the phenomenon of child migration. |
| D．Its director has managed to create humane immigration policy reform |
| A．Kevin and Juan Carlos | B．Juan Carlos and Olga |
| C．Juan Carlos and Freddy | D．Olga and Freedy |
| A．Both of them felt responsible for their families |
| B．Neither of them managed to get to the United States |
| C．Neither of them had any relative in the United States |
| D．Both of them were found on the way to their destinations |
6 . 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 |
7 . 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.
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.
I am responsible for maintaining and protecting the sign.
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.
| 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. |
8 . 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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 |
9 . A hundred years ago, the largest city in the world was London, with a population of 6.5 million. Today it is beaten by Tokyo. With barely a quarter the population of London a century ago, the Tokyo metropolitan area has since
This
The
Planners and architects now agree that to improve the social and environmental condition of cities the top
| A．added | B．mushroomed | C．responded | D．adapted |
| A．out-of-date | B．rural-to-urban | C．close-to-bottom | D．on-the-site |
| A．cities | B．migration | C．poverty | D．communities |
| A．increase | B．advantage | C．management | D．distribution |
| A．criticism | B．comments | C．demands | D．impressions |
| A．Promoting | B．Relating | C．Returning | D．Introducing |
| A．disappear | B．decrease | C．exist | D．occur |
| A．Generally | B．Naturally | C．Previously | D．Fortunately |
| A．rely on | B．set aside | C．result in | D．look into |
| A．self-driving cars | B．public transport | C．green buildings | D．eco-friendly packaging |
| A．changing | B．arranging | C．separating | D．forcing |
| A．concern | B．secret | C．reform | D．priority |
| A．enough | B．possible | C．common | D．scarce |
| A．emphasize | B．minimize | C．neglect | D．consider |
| A．eagerly for | B．far from | C．close to | D．ignorantly of |
| A. associated B. dominant C. frequent D. implications E. inferiority F. interpreted G. physically H. predicted I. potentially J. seconds K. vitality |
Most people do not realize that dreams take up about 25% of the night’s sleep, and each dream period lasts from five to 20 minutes. These is no doubt that dreams play an important role in our lives. If they can be correctly
Dream 1: I can see their laughing faces. laughing at me. But they aren’t as smart. If they were, they’d be up here flying with me!
This dream has both positive and negative
Dream 2: I’m moving fast now, but it’s still behind me. Doesn’t matter how fast I go, I still can’t escape.
Although this is a traditional symbol of health and
Dream 3: I’m sweating and my heart is beating. I’m trapped, trapped in my own bed.
This symbol is
