1. Where is the solar power plant?
A.In the corner of the park. | B.In the center of the park. | C.In the front of the park. |
A.Develop agriculture. | B.Provide enough jobs. | C.Help the poor people there. |
A.Travel companies. | B.Agricultural companies. | C.Industrial companies. |
A.234. | B.1,008. | C.2,000. |
2 . Are you happy with your appearance?
“Almost all the girls with single-fold eyelids (单眼皮) in our class have had double eyelid operations,” Zeng, a Senior 2 student from Chengdu, told Xinhua. Zeng had the same surgery done this summer.
From popular photo-editing apps to plastic surgery (整形手术), it seems that large eyes, pale skin and a skinny body are the only standard for beauty these days. But can following this standard really make us feel good about ourselves?
“Many teenagers are upset about their appearance because they believe in unrealistic standards of beauty,” experts say.
However, trying to live up to strict standards can make us feel anxious. What troubles us is not just our “imperfect” looks, but the fact that we criticize ourselves too much.
A.Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. |
B.Body image anxiety is common among teenagers. |
C.Guys care just as much as girls do about their body image. |
D.Some teenagers might feel negative about their appearance. |
E.It’s common for teenagers to feel confident about their appearance. |
F.She and many of her classmates believe bigger eyes look more beautiful. |
G.Perfect faces and bodies are everywhere in advertising, TV shows and social media. |
3 . Obese people experience discrimination (歧视) in many parts of their lives, and the workplace is no exception. Studies have long shown that obese workers, defined as those with a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or more, earn significantly less than their slimmer co-workers.
Yet the costs of weight discrimination may be even greater than previously thought. “The overwhelming evidence,” wrote the Institute for employment Studies, “is that it is only women living with obesity who experience the obesity wage penalty (薪资损失).” They were expressing a view that is widely aired in academic papers. To test it, The Economist has analyzed data concerning 23,000 workers from the American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Our number-processing suggests that, in fact, being obese hurts the earnings of both women and men.
The data we analyzed cover men and women aged between 25 and 54 and in full-time employment. At a general level, it is true that men’s BMIs are unrelated to their wages. But that changes for men with university degrees. For them, obesity is associated with a wage penalty of nearly 8%, even after accounting for the separate effects of age, race, graduate education and marital status.
The conclusion — that well-educated workers in particular are penalized for their weight — holds for both sexes. Moreover, the higher your level of education, the greater the penalty. We found that obese men with a Bachelor’s degree (学士学位) earn 5% less than their thinner colleagues, while those with a Master’s degree earn 14% less. Obese women, it is true, still have it worse: for them, the equivalent figures are 12% and 19%, respectively (分别地).
Your line of work makes a difference, too. When we dealt with the numbers for individual occupations and industries, we found the greatest differences in high-skilled jobs. Obese workers in health care, for example, make 11% less than their slimmer colleagues; those in management roles make roughly 9% less, on average. In sectors such as construction and agriculture, meanwhile, obesity is actually associated with higher wages.
These results suggest that the total costs of wage discrimination borne by overweight workers in America are greater than expected. Now, it’s time for our governments to take it seriously.
1. What does the underlined word “it” refer to in paragraph 2?A.Obese men earn less salary. |
B.Only obese women earn less salary. |
C.Both obese men and women earn less salary. |
D.Weight discrimination may be greater than previously thought. |
A.A fat woman office director. |
B.An obese construction worker. |
C.An obese man with a bachelor’s degree. |
D.A heavier female doctor with a Doctor’s degree. |
A.Supportive | B.Objective | C.Subjective | D.indifferent |
A.Overweight discrimination in other countries. |
B.The reason of discriminating obese people in their lives. |
C.American people’s attitude towards overweight discrimination. |
D.Actions taken against overweight discrimination in workplaces. |
1. How does the woman feel now?
A.Shocked. | B.Afraid. | C.Angry. |
A.A doctor. | B.A policeman. | C.The woman’s friend. |
A.A locker. | B.A letter. | C.Some money. |
5 . What goes on in our brains when we decide to hit the share button, and what makes something go viral? Since the dawn of the Internet, businesses, media outlets and influencers alike have been trying to answer these questions. Now, researchers have come one step closer to cracking this mysterious model by shining a light on the neuroscience (神经科学) of viral content.
“Our study finds a way to obtain brain signals that would predict how much information gets shared.” said Emily Falk, professor of communication, psychology and marketing and Hang-Yee Chan, a lecturer of communication.
Their new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 23, investigated both the U. S. and the Netherlands using a broader range of news categories—including health and climate change.
“When we see greater activation of regions that track self-relevance (Is it important to me) and social-relevance (Is it important to people I know), the news articles are more likely to be shared widely,” Falk and Chan said. By studying these brain responses, the team managed to build a value-based model to accurately predict how widely the articles would be shared online. This link between brain activity and sharing was seen in both the American and Dutch participants, suggesting that this model is accurate across cultures.
“Seeing how people’s brains react inside the scanner gives us insight into why people ultimately share information nowadays,” Chan said. “If we understand these signals, we might be able to use that knowledge to help important news get shared and stop misinformation from going viral.” It is also helpful for content creators to maximize their reach. “Our current study demonstrates how tapping into the brain would help content creators optimize their messages’ influence,” Falk and Chan said. “We are interested in building on these results to develop ways to counter harmful information and false news, in addition to spreading high-quality content.” “A lot of our most pressing problems in society are influenced by the decisions people make, and the decisions we make are influenced by the news. What you share matters, and so understanding why you share it matters, too.”
1. What do researchers intend to do in their study?A.To find a way to get brain signals. |
B.To work out a mysterious model. |
C.To use a broad range of news categories. |
D.To predict how much information get shared. |
A.The basis and process of the study. |
B.The way to predict brain activation. |
C.The pattern of a value-based model. |
D.The reason why certain news is shared. |
A.To solve most urgent problems. |
B.To understand why viral news matter. |
C.To influence the decisions people will make. |
D.To better the efficiency of positive publicity. |
A.How to Share a Viral News |
B.How to Obtain Brain Signals |
C.How Certain Studies Get Shared |
D.How Brain Identifies Viral Content |
When people move to a new country, they often feel worried and stressed because they don’t know the customs and traditions of the new place. This feeling is what
7 . A shocking 53.6 million metric tons of electronic waste was discarded last year, a new UN-backed report has revealed. The report shows that e-waste is up by 21% from five years ago. This isn’t surprising, considering how many more people are adopting new technology and updating devices regularly to have the latest versions, but the report also shows that national collection and recycling strategies are nowhere close to matching consumption rates.
E-waste contains materials including copper (铜), iron, gold and silver, which the report gives a conservative value of $ 57 billion. But most are thrown away or burned rather than being collected for recycling. Precious metals in waste are estimated to be worth $ 14 billion, but only $ 4 billion-worth is recovered at the moment.
While the number of countries with national e-waste policies has grown from 61 to 78 since 2014, there is little encouragement to obey and a mere 17% of collected items are recycled. If recycling does occur, it’s often under dangerous conditions, such as burning circuit boards to recover copper, which “releases highly poisonous metals” and harms the health of workers.
The report found that Asia has the highest amounts of waste overall, producing 24.9 million metric tons (MMT), followed by Europe at 12 MMT, Africa at 2.9 MMT, and Oceania at 0.7 MMT.
But whose responsibility is it? Are governments in charge of setting up collection and recycling points, or should companies be responsible for recycling the goods they produce? It goes both ways. Companies do need to be held accountable by government regulations and have incentives to design products that are easily repaired. At the same time, governments need to make it easy for citizens to access collection points and deal with their broken electronics in a convenient way. Otherwise, they may turn to the easiest option — the landfill.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” most probably mean?A.increased | B.distributed | C.thrown away | D.consumed |
A.The functions of policies. | B.The great damage to environment. |
C.The change of consumption rates. | D.The urgency of recovering e-waste. |
A.It does harm to the workers’ health. | B.It lacks national policy support. |
C.It hardly makes profits. | D.It takes too much time. |
A.New technology should be used to update old devices. |
B.Governments and companies should take responsibilities. |
C.Non-poisonous metals had better be used in e-device. |
D.Citizens must play a key role in recycling e-waste. |
8 . In a fast developing world, many old-fashioned skills seem to be disappearing. It’s hard to find people who know such skills as sewing, but a few decades ago, it was common for every person to learn them.
Now many would think sewing isn’t as useful today. The garment (服装) industry is producing clothing that is cheaper, faster and more fashionable than ever, making it possible to buy a suit for less than $10 at home.
However, that doesn’t mean clothing isn’t indestructible (破坏不了的). Garments with simple tears that could be fixed in seconds with a needle are just thrown away. This causes more than 26 billion pounds of garbage and millions of dollars wasted because of a tear. Even dirty or worn clothing that still has plenty of usable cloth is being thrown away.
The ability to create hand-made clothes doesn’t only reduce waste. It is also tailor-made just for you. Most buy clothes made for a general body type, and to get it tailored by a professional is expensive. So why not do it yourself?
Perhaps the greatest problem of sewing is simply the time involved. Buying a skirt online takes a few seconds. Making a skirt can take weeks. But learning to sew doesn’t always involve complicated projects. Instead they might just be simple adjustments to help the garments fit or match your style.
Schools could easily teach sewing. Yet, they focus more on college preparations, ignoring traditional skills. Actually sewing is a valuable skill to be used in daily life. It wouldn’t take much time to teach children how to sew.
So, instead of letting old things die in this new age of the Internet, how about learning some of the lost skills that helped us for so long?
1. Why do some people think the sewing skill is less useful?A.Because cloth is too expensive. |
B.Because sewing is a bit boring to learn. |
C.Because hand-made things are easily broken. |
D.Because clothes are cheaper and convenient to buy. |
A.It contributes to creativity. | B.It’s environmentally-friendly. |
C.It pushes the garment industry. | D.It gives costumers a typical look. |
A.They make the skills easy to learn. | B.They set the skills as basic subjects. |
C.They make every effort to teach the skills. | D.They fail to give the skills enough attention. |
A.Supportive. | B.Doubtful. | C.Uncaring. | D.Opposing. |
9 . 现今,大城市普遍存在着交通问题。它不仅给人们的生活和工作带来不便而且还威胁到了人们的生命安全。请以“Traffic Problems in Big Cities”为题,根据以下内容提示完成作文:
1. 描述两个常见的交通问题;
2. 简要分析导致这些交通问题的主要原因;
3. 根据你的分析,从社会规范(rules and regulations)和个人行为两方面谈谈你得到的启示(不少于两点)。
注意:词数120左右,开头已给出,不计入总词数。
Nowadays, traffic problems are common in big cities.
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Have you ever wondered what life is like now
So what did they talk about? For
That said, it’s not all a matter of improvement. Quite a few people told me that they feel more stressed these days because they rely a lot on technology and they are always