1 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box.   Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

Communication — a thing of the past?

We all think we communicate all the time, and that’s true. There’s also non-verbal communication you could add into the mix — everything we’re saying when we’re not saying anything. But there’s a(n)     1     between saying things to people, or liking and sharing a post on social media, and communication. I’m quite well connected — there’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, email, iEverything, but sometimes communication starts to feel like a chore. Check this blog post, read that article someone shared,     2     back to someone else, and answer their questions… Sometimes I feel like a cross between Siri and a mad juggler. Nothing seems to go in and I’m always mixing people up — asking someone how their band is going when they can’t play an instrument or how the job search is going when someone’s just written to say how depressed they are that they can’t find a job.

So it was quite a(n)     3     to spend New Year in the Highlands in Scotland with no phone signal, no internet and no ‘communication’ at all, apart from with the people I was with. Suddenly all the pressure to communicate disappeared. All of our conversations became slower, more inverted and far more interesting. We were a group of 12, a(n)     4     of couples and friends, only one of whom I was at university with, so I was meeting a bunch of new people for the first time. Our conversations veered towards the banal and the humdrum in that we often discussed our plans for the day and what we were going to cook in the evening, but often they went a lot farther and a lot deeper. Tucked up on the leather sofas,     5     dinner, we dissected Brexit and one person even changed their     6     entirely! We shared ideas and theories, plots of books and plays and city trips we’d been on, described family troubles and gave advice, listened to work scenarios and offered pointers, and we had to talk and sketch and use words more than ever before, because you couldn’t say, ‘It’s a great film, you should google it later.’ Some of us even had sore throats from talking so much! In such a short     7     of time, due to the proximity of sharing interconnected cottages and verbal communication, I felt much closer to the new people I’d met and been speaking with than some other people I communicate with in my normal life.

I don’t think our common, current methods of communication come close to being in a small house with lots of people and having to communicate     8    . The brevity of Twitter, the showiness of Facebook, all these aspects contribute to a shallow form of communication that doesn’t challenge you to     9     your feelings and motives enough. ‘Liking’ something is an instant response but what does it really say about your opinion of something? It’s a(n)     10     response to millions of other people, whereas you and your thoughts are unique. If we’re not careful, perhaps we might forget how to communicate on a deeper lever.

What Comes After Space?

Looking at a clear night sky you witness the vastness of space, which holds everything humans know to exist. To find out what     1     beyond a good place to start is to determine where the universe ends. However, the problem is that scientist are uncertain about where space ends or whether it ends at all.

The     2     universe

The furthest humans can see out into space,using all the technology currently available to us,is 46 billion light years (alight year is the distance that light can travel in one year,and is equivalent to about 9. 5 million million kilometres). The     3     of space that humans can see is called the visible universe. Beyond this, it remains a mystery whether it’s an expanse of more galaxies and stars or possibly the edge of the universe. Some think that the universe is     4    , meaning space goes on forever in every direction. In this case,there is nothing after space,because space is everything.

Moving further away

Experts have captured images of the entire Earth from space,and some astronauts have personally witnessed its beauty from orbit. Perhaps     5     the limits of the universe would also be possible too, if only humans knew where to go to look for it.

Another challenge is the universe’s rapid     6    . As galaxies move further away their light   takes longer to reach us. Eventually, some galaxies may be so distant that their light never     7    . This might imply that any edge— and whatever is on the other side — is increasingly     8     itself from us. Regardless of these uncertainties, scientists still spend a lot of time thinking about what comes after space.

Many universes?

It’s possible that there isn’t just one universe, and that our universe is just one small part of a “multiverse”. Perhaps our universe is     9     within its own distinct region of space, separated from others by vast expanses of nothingness. Or maybe     10     universes exist pressed tightly against each other. Getting an idea of the universe’s true shape may help astronomers find out whether it has an edge. What comes after that could be an even great mystery.

Knives Out film director Rian Johnson has revealed a secret in the world of product placement—bad guys cannot use an iPhone on the big screen. Johnson, whose film    1     include Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Looper, reveal the behind-the-scenes secret to a reporter.

He pointed out the Apple warning, saying, “Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies, but, and this is very    2    , if you’re ever watching a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera.” He revealed the    3     to Who Do It On Films, a programme, as he discussed Knives Out, a murder mystery film with an ensemble(全体) cast featuring Daniel Craig, Toni Collette and Jamie Lee Curtis. Johnson    4    , “So oh no, every single filmmaker that has a bad guy in their movie that’s supposed to be a secret    5     wants to murder me right now.” So how common is this? Fairly so, says product placement specialist Darryl Collis.

“With feature films, every production needs the brand’s    6     to show a brand within the film,” he told ITV News. “So if Apple don’t give clearance for that to appear, then what will have to happen    7     is they’ll either have to remove the logo or that brand can’t appear in the film.” A good example would be: Coca Cola were    8     in a film called Slumdog Millionaire, but they were shown in a    9     light so what they said to the producers is: “You cannot show our brand, you need to take away the labels.” “They never gave clearance for the brand to appear so they had to remove the labels at the end of the post production.”

But will it    10     movies for film fans?

Film critic Hannah Woodhead works at Little White Lies magazine, she told ITV News now one of the secrets of Hollywood is out of the bag, she’ll be much more eagle-eyed.

4 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

How does thunder-snow work? Thunder-snow is rare because the conditions that produce snow tend to have a stabilizing effect on the atmosphere. In winter the surface and lower troposphere (对流层) are cold and there is little moisture to lead to lightning. Lightning super-heats the air, while the rapid     1     produces the sound waves we call thunder.

Thunderstorms can form in winter, but have different characteristics. A typical normal thunderstorm consists of tall,     2     clouds that rise from a warm updraft (上升气流) leading from the surface up to around 40, 000 feet. Thunder-snow usually forms when layers of flat snow clouds develop instability and experience dynamic lifting. Three     3     lead to the instability. Firstly, a normal thunderstorm at the edge of a warm or cold front can run into cold air, changing rain into freezing rain or snow. Secondly, when the flat snow clouds become bumpy or develop what are usually called “turrets”. Turrets rise about the clouds, making the top layer     4     . The change causes water molecules or ice crystals to gain or lose electrons (电子). When the electrical     5     difference between two bodies becomes large enough, lightning occurs. Thirdly, a cold air front passing over warmer water can produce thunder-snow. This is the type of thunder-snow most often seen near the Great Lakes or near and ocean.

The obvious difference between a typical thunderstorm and thunder-snow is that a thunderstorm produces rain, while thunder-snow is     6     with snow. However, the thunder and lightning of thunder-snow are different, too. Snow can     7     sound, so thundersnow’s thunder sounds low and doesn’t travel as far as it would in a clear or rainy sky. Normal thunder may be heard miles from its source, while thunder-snow thunder tends to be     8     to a 2 to 3 mile radius from the lightning strike. While the sound of a thunder may be lowered, lightning flashes are enhanced by     9     snow. Thunder-snow lightning     10     appears white or golden, rather than the usual blue or purple of thunderstorm lightning.

5 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

An American researcher who studied 600 millionaires found how rich you can get comes down to 6 “wealth factors“. She found that six behaviors are related to net worth potential, regardless of age or income. These were thriftiness, confidence, responsibility, planning, focus and social indifference.

Being thrifty comes as no great    1    .“Spending above your means, spending instead of saving for retirement, spending in anticipation of becoming wealthy makes you a    2     to the paycheck, even with an astronomical level of income,”she wrote. To properly build wealth, experts recommend saving 20% your income and living off the    3     80%.

Having confidence is another key    4    , as it helps people to be thrifty. It takes confidence to live within your means. It also takes confidence to invest    5    . Instead of making investing decisions with your emotions, financial planners advise that you should leave your investments alone and focus on a long-term investment plan.

But people can’t invest--or manage their own money--without    6     responsibility for the outcomes. Many millionaires take on personal responsibility--and most also happen to be self-made, meaning they didn’t acquire their wealth through luck. Millionaires don’t count on anyone else to make them rich, and they don’t    7     anyone else if they fall short. They focus on things they can control and align their daily habits to the goals they have set for themselves. They tend to be goal-    8     and hard workers, which enables them to plan financially and focus on seeing those plans through. 92% of the millionaires surveyed developed a long-term plan for their money, and 97% almost always achieved the goals they set for themselves.

And it is these    9     that make it easy for them to be socially indifferent. They    10     lifestyle creep, the tendency to spend more whenever one earns more. Essentially, they don’t yield to pressure to buy the latest thing or to keep up with others or what they have acquired. Instead of being focused on what might make them happy today, they’re focused on their long-term wealth-building plan.

8 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen:

We’re at a tipping point in human history, between gaining the stars and losing the planet we call home. At the same time as we’re discovering this treasure of potentially     1     worlds, our own planet is sinking. 2014 was the hottest year on record. Glaciers and sea ice are now disappearing in a matter of decades. These planetary-scale environmental changes are rapidly     2     our ability to alter their course.

I’m not a climate scientist, I’m an astronomer. You could say that I look for     3     alien real estate. Now, as somebody who is deeply     4     in the search for life in the universe, I can tell you that the more you look for planets like Earth, the more you appreciate our own planet itself. Each one of these new worlds     5     a comparison between the newly discovered planet and the planets we know best: those of our own Solar System.

Consider our neighbor, Mars. Though the Martian view     6     the deserts of our own home world, Mars is a pretty terrible place to live considering the extent to which we have not     7     the deserts of our own planet. Even in the driest, highest places on Earth, the air is sweet and thick with oxygen exhaled (呼气) from thousands of miles away by our rainforests.

I worry that Mars and other planets carries with it a long, dark shadow: the     8     by some that Mars will be there to save us from the destruction of the only truly livable planet we know of, the Earth. As much as I love interplanetary     9     , I deeply disagree with this idea. There are many excellent reasons to go to Mars, but for anyone to tell you that Mars will be there to back up humanity is like the captain of the Titanic telling you that the real party is happening later on the lifeboats.

If we truly believe in our ability to     10     the hostile environments of Mars for human habitation, then we should be able to surmount the far easier task of preserving the habitability of the Earth.

Mixing senses: synaesthesia taught to adults

Brain training for synaesthesia — where you mix up sensory information — may be just around the corner. People have been taught to experience a form of synaesthesia where letters     1     as certain colours, in their everyday life.

By the end of the nine-week course, most of the volunteers were seeing text in the real world take on particular colours, on road signs, for example. “The colour     2     pops into my head as soon as I saw the words on the road sign,” said one participant.

Synaesthesia is thought to result from people’s brains developing in such a way that their sensory     3     get mixed up. So “Tuesday” might evoke (导致) the colour pink, for example, or the word “tree” might taste like popcorn. Early life experiences may play a role — some synaesthetes report that their letter-colour     4     match the colours of a childhood alphabet or fridge magnets. But is it something you can learn as an adult?

Two years ago researchers made some aspects of the condition by getting people to read books where some of the letters were printed in certain colours. This improved their scores on tests but didn’t     5     out of the lab.

What if people     6     more intense training? Daniel Bor at the University of Sussex, UK, gave people daily half-hour training courses to teach them 13 letter-colour associations, using     7     harder tasks. The volunteers also practised with specially coloured e-books. As well as passing the lab tests, 9 of the 14 volunteers reported seeing coloured letters to varying extents when they read     8     black text. Many saw effects by week five, and some had synaesthetic experiences daily. Their power     9     once the training stopped.

The training had a(n)     10     benefit too. The volunteers gained 12 points in IQ tests by the end of training. However, this may be a general benefit of intensive training with memory-related tasks, says Bor, who adds that he may in future put the training tools online.

Baby Steps Toward Autonomy…

Companies, like Google and Tesla, didn't even exist when Toyota introduced the Prius in1997. However, they have become major     1     in the auto industry recently. Both of them aim to introduce fully autonomous cars ---that is, cars that drive themselves---within the next several years.

Self-driving cars are expected to be much safer than human-driven ones. But even if the first robot cars     2     the roads in the next few years, most of us probably won't give up driving entirely for at least another 15 or 20 years. In the meantime,     3     cars will gradually take over certain aspects of driving.

Companies have been adding     4     features to cars since the 1990s---things like adaptive cruise control, which uses sensors to adjust a car's speed based on the traffic in front of it, and automated parallel parking. Some cars automatically stop—or at least slow down—if a driver doesn't step on the brake in time to avoid a crash. In a certain model developed in 2017, the driver will be able to change     5     simply by hitting the turn signal for two seconds (the car will take care of the rest). Within a few years, cars may be able to determine when an accident is likely and make     6    to the cabin---moving seats, closing windows , retracting the steering wheel.

Even better than preparing for a crash, of course, is     7    one. Some vehicles     8     warnings when they detect, through cameras and sensors, that a driver is getting sleepy. Future cars might take over for     9     drivers---or automatically pull to the side of the road and shut down. Biometrics(生物识别技术）could aid this process. If a car has sensors that can measure a driver's breath and heart rate, it could     10     into self-driving mode when a driver has a heart attack.