1 . Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde has spent much of his time seeking artistic solutions to our environmental problems.His past projects include a "Smog Free Tower" to clean polluted air and "Gates of Light", which uses the headlamps of passing cars to light up the 60 floodgates of the Afsluitdijk, a major dam in the Netherlands.Now, he is hoping to use his skills to solve a pressing global problem — space junk!
Scientists estimate that there are over 500,000 pieces of space junk.To deal with the problem, Roosegaarde intends to achieve his goal by educating the public about the urgency of the situation and coming up with possible solutions.The project called the Space Waste Lab started in October 2018 with a laser(激光) show in the Netherlands.The unique outdoor artwork of LEDs used real-time tracking information to point at pieces of space junk floating at altitudes of 200 to 20,000 kilometers.The experience was designed to make the public know more about how much space junk there is.
To find a solution, the designer has been thinking with experts.One of the projects being considered is "Shooting Stars", which attempts to reintroduce the trash to the atmosphere in a controlled way.Upon reentry, the waste would burn in the atmosphere like a shooting star.Roosegaarde envisages that if successful, burning space trash could someday replace fireworks at large public events!
In September 2018, the RemoveDEBRIS satellite successfully sent a net to catch a target while orbiting at an altitude of about 300 kilometers.Sometime this year, the spacecraft will send a harpoon that has been designed to remove space trash.At the end of its task, RemoveDEBRIS will release a sail to bring the satellite itself and hopefully some trash back into the atmosphere where it will burn up.
1. What can we infer about Daan Roosegaarde?| A．He is too aggressive to put forward good plans. |
| B．He is creative in solving environmental problems. |
| C．He is fond of spending all of his time learning art skills. |
| D．He is sensitive to art reflected in environmental projects. |
| A．To confirm real-time information about space trash. |
| B．To show the great beauty of LEDs to common people. |
| C．To raise public awareness of the amount of space trash. |
| D．To inspire people to consider the solution to space trash. |
| A．Suspect. | B．Demand. | C．Advise. | D．Imagine. |
2 . Fou Ts'ong, a Chinese-born pianist known for his sensitive interpretations of Chopin, Debussy and Mozart.died on Monday at a hospital in London, where he had lived for many years. He was 86.
A lover of classical music from a young age, Mr. Fou began taking piano lessons when he was 7. Mr. Fou made his first stage appearance in 1952. The concert caught the attention of officials in Beijing, who selected him to compete and tour in Eastern Europe. Mr. Fou soon moved to Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory(音乐学校)on a scholarship. To prepare for the fifth Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955.he practiced so diligently that he hurt his fingers and was nearly cut from the first round of the competition.
Mr. Fou was one of the first Chinese pianists to achieve global prominence when he took the third place in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1955. He also won a special prize for his performance of Chopin's mazurkas(马祖卜舞曲). Almost overnight, he became a national hero. To China, Mr. Fou's recognition in a well-known international competition was proof that the country could stand on its own artistically in the West. Chinese reporters flocked to interview Mr. Fou, while many others sought out his father, Fu Lei, for advice on child-rearing.
In 1981, a volume of letters written by his father, primarily to Mr. Fou, was published in China. Full of advice, encouragement, life teachings and strict paternal love, the book Fu Lei's Family, Letters became a best-seller in China. Besides influencing a generation of Chinese, Mr. Fu's words resonated(共鸣)long after his death with the person for whom they were intended.
"My father had a saying that 'First you must be a person, then an artist, and then a musician, and only then can you be a pianist.'" Mr. Fou once recalled in an interview. "Even now, I believe in this order-that it should be this way and that I am this way."
1. What can be learned from Paragraph 2?| A．Fou Ts'ong competed and toured in Beijing. |
| B．Fou Ts'ong first performed on the stage at 7. |
| C．Fou Ts'ong made great efforts for competitions. |
| D．Fou Ts'ong started learning music in Eastern Europe. |
| A．It earns Chinese art a place in the West. |
| B．It promotes the spread of Chinese culture. |
| C．It proves Chinese people's talent for music. |
| D．It enables Chinese art education to be recognized. |
| A．Mr. Fu's words. | B．Young Chinese. |
| C．Fou Ts'ong and his family. | D．Readers of Fu Lei's Family Letters. |
| A．Pursuing art is a long and painful process. |
| B．It requires various qualities to be a pianist. |
| C．Everyone should develop an interest in art. |
| D．Talent is of the greatest importance for a pianist. |
3 . When it comes to the most famous 20th century painters of the United States, Grandma Moses should be mentioned, although she did not start painting until she was in her late seventies. As she once said to herself , “I would never sit back in a rocking chair, waiting for someone to help me”. No one could have had a more active old age．
She was born on a farm in New York State, one of five boys and five girls. At 12 she left home and was in domestic service until at 27 she married Thomas Moses, the hired hand of one of her employers. They farmed most of their lives, first in Virginia and then in New York State, at Eagle Bridge. She had ten children, of whom five survived; her husband died in 1927．
Grandma Moses painted a little as a child and made embroidery (刺绣) pictures as a hobby, but only changed to oils in old age because her hands became too stiff (僵硬的) to sew and she still wanted to keep busy and pass the time. Her pictures were first sold at the local drugstore and at a market and were soon noticed by a businessman who bought all that she painted. Three of the pictures were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1940 she had her first exhibition in New York. Between the 1930’s and her death, she produced some 2,000 pictures: careful and lively portrayals of the country life she had known for so long, with a wonderful sense of color and form. “I think really hard till I think of something really pretty, and then I paint it” she said．
1. What can we learn about Moses?| A．She stopped painting in her late seventies. |
| B．She still led an active life when she was old. |
| C．Her marriage life was not happy. |
| D．She painted oils as a child. |
| A．Embroidering. | B．Farming. |
| C．Nursing. | D．Painting. |
| A．Directions. | B．Stages. |
| C．Surveys. | D．Descriptions. |
| A．Grandma Moses: the Best Woman Painter |
| B．Grandma Moses and Her Farm Life |
| C．Grandma Moses and Her Exhibition |
| D．Grandma Moses : A Famous Woman Painter of 20th Century |
