1 . As we all know, washing our hands helps stop the spread of illnesses. It seems so _________, but it took one doctor, many experiments and a lot of opposition before the _________ was accepted.

In 1846, Ignaz Semmelweis was working in a _________ in Vienna. He saw many women dying of a particular type of fever and he wanted to figure out the _________. So Dr. Semmelweis began experimenting by _________ two groups of women-one with male doctors and medical students _________ their babies and the other with women midwives (产婆) doing that.

It _________ that more women were dying in the ward with the male doctors and medical students. Semmelweis then conducted experiments with _________ conditions, none of which produced any changes in the _________. He tried getting the mothers in the doctors’ wards to deliver babies and __________ mental stress and worry, but there were no changes.

________, Semmelweis discovered one key difference: The doctors and medical students were performing other __________ while the midwives were just there to help deliver babies. Semmelweis then __________ his doctors to wash their hands after completing them and the number of __________ in their wards went down!

Nowadays, no one __________ that handwashing is one of the best things to do for staying healthy and stopping the spread of disease.

1.

A．funny

B．simple

C．crazy

D．possible

2.

A．program

B．notice

C．practice

D．challenge

3.

A．hospital

B．school

C．company

D．restaurant

4.

A．story

B．trouble

C．event

D．cause

5.

A．comparing

B．describing

C．grading

D．combining

6.

A．greeting

B．catching

C．delivering

D．rocking

7.

A．came out

B．turned out

C．got out

D．moved out

8.

A．necessary

B．severe

C．available

D．different

9.

A．care

B．cure

C．result

D．budget

10.

A．reduce

B．escape

C．refuse

D．attack

11.

A．Clearly

B．Luckily

C．Gradually

D．Finally

12.

A．steps

B．tasks

C．actions

D．chances

13.

A．warned

B．forced

C．required

D．reminded

14.

A．injuries

B．accidents

C．patients

D．deaths

15.

A．doubts

B．expects

C．imagines

D．thinks

2 . Seventeen-year-old Lindsey Stoefen loves to play tennis, softball and run until last October when a rare disorder paralyzed her legs and left her in a wheelchair. But in late April after becoming an in-patient at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Chicago, the teen climbed into a specially designed exoskeleton (外骨骼) which supported her body and moved her legs.

“Yes, I'm gonna be a robot! And I was scared at first. Am I gonna like it? Is it gonna be okay? And then once I got into it, I loved it." Lauren Bularzik, Lindsey s physical therapist, says the exo robots help to accelerate the recovery process.

For someone who takes a lot of energy to only walk a few feet, exo can get them up and get them moving. Besides speeding up recovery time, these robotic skeletons are especially helpful for those with paralysis, from spinal cord injuries and strokes.

Using the machine can help some patients rewire their brains to use secondary muscles, so they can eventually walk again without the device. But Patrick Wensing, assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame says exoskeletons have one big drawback. While existing exoskeletons are very powerful, right now they don t understand what the user wants to do. So in order to switch between activities in daily life, you often have to press a button interface to tell the exoskeleton “I would like to stand up now".

Wensing and his team are cooperating with Ekso Bionics, a leading developer of wearable robots, to create a machine that can understand what its user wants to do without implanted sensors and complicated control panels.

Taylor Gambon has spent the last year analyzing data from exoskeleton users and comparing them to models of everyday walking. Later this year, the team will travel to Ekso Bionics' California headquarters, where they will work directly with exoskeletons to design programs that interact with users of various disabilities, so that more people like Lindsey Stoefen can get back on their feet again.

1. What's the purpose of the story about Stoefen in the first paragraph?

A．To prove Stoefen's bravery against disability.

B．To explain Stoefen's misfortune in life.

C．To introduce advanced medical skills in Chicago.

D．To introduce the topic of robotic skeleton.

2. How does Patrick Wensing find the robotic skeletons?

A．They can improve the recovery speed.

B．They can replace the real person.

C．They can't understand the intention of users.

D．They can help patients do everything in life.

3. What's the attitude of Taylor Gambon and his team towards the development of exo robots?

A．Disappointed.	B．Critical.
C．Indifferent.	D．Optimistic.

4. Where is the text probably taken?

A．An advertisement.	B．A science fiction.
C．A product handbook.	D．A popular science magazine.

3 . As they reach school age, about 90 percent of children will have experienced a condition in which fluid (液体) fills the middle ear, muffling (使模糊) sound and sometimes causing infection. The fluid usually clears on its own, but if not, it can lead to a painful ear infection called acute otitis (中耳炎) media. In some cases the fluid can persist for more than a year, causing hearing loss during this period, and slowing down their development of language and social skills.

Diagnosis usually requires a visit to a specialist—but researchers have now developed an app that detects this fluid just as accurately, with only a smartphone and a paper funnel (漏斗).

Doctors typically detect the problem by peering into the ear for a visual assessment. Yet, this method has only a 50 percent accuracy rate. “Right now, if you bring your child to a pediatrician, or to any urgent care family doctor, the way they look at whether or not there’s fluid in the middle ear is by looking at the eardrum,” says Sharat Raju, a surgeon in the department of head and neck surgery at the University of Washington.

For a cheaper and more accessible alternative, researchers at the University of Washington turned to smartphones. First the user follows a template to cut and tape a piece of paper into a funnel, which can be placed between a smartphone and the patient’s ear. Next the app plays a chirping sound through the phone’s speaker; the sound waves bounce off the eardrum and hit the phone’s microphone, where they register and are analyzed by the app. An eardrum with fluid behind it will vibrate (振动) differently than if the middle ear is full of air, as it normally is.

To develop the app, the researchers first played chirps for patients with and without fluid in their ears. They recorded the echoes (回音), which indicate the eardrum’s mobility. Then they used a machine learning model to classify the returning sound waves, determining which audio characteristics indicated a normal ear and which suggested the presence of fluid. Once they tested the app on 98 children, ranging from 18 months to 17 years old, at Seattle Children’s Hospital. It correctly detected fluid in 85 percent of cases, and correctly identified fluid-free ears in 82 percent.

The researchers are currently trying to get FDA approval for the app, and have founded a company to commercialize it. They hope to make it available by the end of the year, to help parents track children’s ear health at home.

1. What do we know about the fluid from the first paragraph?

A．It is mostly part of children’s growth.	B．It is unavoidable for any child.
C．It is a permanent physical condition.	D．It is beyond any medical means.

2. What does the underlined word “pediatrician” refer to in Paragraph 3?

A．A hospital.	B．A specialist.
C．A relative.	D．An app.

3. What is the fourth paragraph mainly about?

A．The application of the app.	B．The causes of the kid’s ear problem.
C．The purpose of developing the app.	D．The experiment of the smartphone.

4. What do the researchers expect of the app?

A．It will upgrade the medical technology.	B．It will hit the market in the near future.
C．It will help children do better academically.	D．It will save doctors medical operations.