1 . The computer is a useful machine. It is the most important invention in many years. The oldest kind of computer is the abacus, used in China centuries ago, but the first large, modern computer was built in 1946. A computer then could do maths problems quite fast.
Today computers are used in many ways and can do many kinds of work. In a few years the computer may touch the life of everyone, even people in faraway villages.
In the last few years, there have been great changes in computers. They are getting smaller and smaller, and computing faster and faster. Many scientists agree that computers can now do many things, but they cannot do everything. Who knows what the computers of tomorrow will be like? Will computers bring good things or bad things to people? The scientists of today will have to decide how to use the computers of tomorrow.
1. The computer is a ______ machine.| A．helpful | B．strange | C．large | D．dangerous |
| A．a few | B．forty | C．sixty | D．eighty |
| A．bigger | B．fewer | C．smaller | D．taller |
| A．everything | B．anything | C．nothing | D．lots of things |
| A．may decide | B．must decide | C．can make | D．needn’t make |
2 . With low or no-carbohydrate diets rising in popularity in recent times, the potato is now regularly overlooked in favour of other vegetables. In fact, research literature has previously indicated potatoes may have a detrimental effect on health, such as increasing the possibility of developing Type2 diabetes(糖尿病).
However, new research done by Edith Cowan University (ECU) has shown while potatoes may not have all the same benefits as some other vegetables, such as lowering risk of Type 2 diabetes, health issues associated with potatoes may actually be due to how people are preparing them and what they’re eating them with.
A recent analysis of this study led by Dr Nicola Bondonno from ECU’s Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute found people who consumed the most vegetables were 21 percent less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who consumed the least amount of vegetables. PhD candidate Pratik Pokharel carried out work on the analysis and said while potatoes didn’t have the same impact on Type 2 diabetes, they also didn’t have any negative effect.
“In Denmark, people consume potatoes prepared in many different ways. In our study, we could distinguish between the different preparation methods. When we separated boiled potatoes from mashed potatoes(土豆泥), fries or crisps, boiled potatoes were no longer associated with a higher risk of diabetes: They had a zero effect,” said Pokharel.
“In our study, people who ate the most potatoes also consumed more butter, red meat and soft drinks-foods known to increase your risk of Type 2 diabetes,” said Pokharel. “We should separate potatoes from other vegetables in regard to messaging about disease prevention but replacing refined grains such as white rice and pasta(意大利面食)with potatoes can improve your diet quality because of fibre and other nutrients found in potatoes.”
1. What does the underlined word “detrimental” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Magical. | B．Protective. | C．Fantastic. | D．Negative. |
| A．The effects they have caused. | B．The ways they are consumed. |
| C．The places where they are planted. | D．The results previous studies have shown. |
| A．Fries. | B．Crisps. | C．Boiled potatoes. | D．Mashed potatoes. |
| A．Critical. | B．Opposed. | C．Indifferent. | D．Objective. |
3 . Colors can affect (影响) our feelings. Blue is a calm (冷静的) color. If you are feeling nervous (紧张), you can wear blue clothes or stay in a blue room. Blue is also the color of sadness. When someone says he’s feeling blue, he means he is sad.
White can also make you feel calm. So you can wear white too if you are nervous. And white often means a new beginning.
Green is the color of nature. It can give us more energy when we are feeling tired.
Some colors can make you feel warm. In cold areas, people usually use warm colors in their homes, like orange and yellow. Yellow is also the color of wisdom. Some people prefer this color when they study for exams. For example, they may use yellow school things.
Red is one of the strong colors. It often makes us feel active. But this color can also mean danger. So it is often used in stop signs (停车标志) and lights.
1. Which may be NOT good for you if you are nervous?| A．Wear white clothes. | B．Wear blue clothes. |
| C．Stay in a red room. | D．Stay in a blue room. |
| A．I like blue. | B．I’m feeling white. |
| C．I like white. | D．I’m feeling blue. |
| A．Yellow and blue. | B．Yellow and orange. |
| C．White and green. | D．Blue and white. |
| A．智慧 | B．消极 | C．愉快 | D．正义 |
| A．White can make us feel tired. | B．Red is often used in stop signs. |
| C．Orange can mean danger sometimes. | D．Green symbolizes a new beginning. |
4 . A workday filled with mentally challenging tasks can make people feel worn out and desire a relaxing evening of TV shows. A study led by Antonius Wiehler of Pitié-Salpêtrìère University Hospital provides an explanation for this familiar phenomenon.
Researchers arranged for two sets of subjects to work for over six hours. The first group was assigned a difficult version of tasks, while the second was given a simple version. They measured levels of glutamate (谷氨酸) that collected in the cognitive area of subjects’ brains, finding higher levels of the chemical appeared in the first group, although both groups reported feeling similar levels of tiredness after the daylong experiment. Glutamate helps learning and memory, but too much glutamate can give rise to brain cell damage.
Also, when researchers offered financial choices, as a measure of whether the difficulty of work affected subjects’ decision-making ability, those finishing harder tasks were more likely to choose to take home an immediate reward rather than wait for a larger cash-out at a later date. “Existing theories suggested fatigue (疲劳) is an unreal feeling cooked up by the brain to make us relax,” Wiehler says. “Yet our findings provide proof that cognitive work causes the collection of bad substances, so fatigue would be signal that makes us stop working but for a different purpose: to preserve normality of brain functioning.”
“Defining what fatigue is remains a challenge for the field, says neuroscientist Matthew Apps, “but it’s exciting that this experiment provides a reasonable alternative explanation that is of great help.” He notes some areas where these findings might come in. For people in jobs requiring intense focus, burnout can lead to damaging consequences. Preventing glutamate’ building may help maintain attention. Another area of interest would be researching clinical conditions related to fatigue. The presence of glutamate might reveal why patients struggle with fatigue.
For Wiehler, open questions remain. One limitation is their focus on the brain’s specific region, so what impact cognitively effortful work has on the rest parts remains to be seen. In addition, it’s not yet clear how the balance of glutamate is restored after rest. “Maybe it leaves the brain during sleep,” Wiehler says. “There’s tons of research to come.”
1. What was found in the experiment?| A．People who work longer expect higher rewards. |
| B．Tasks’ difficulty greatly affects levels of fatigue. |
| C．Tougher tasks cause more glutamate to build up. |
| D．Decision-making is linked with financial factors. |
| A．It bothers people in the workplace. | B．It mainly results from mental stress. |
| C．It signals the necessity of relaxation. | D．It serves as a protection for the brain. |
| A．Reliability of the finding. | B．The practical use of the study. |
| C．The challenge in the cognitive field. | D．Urgency to solve fatigue-related problems. |
| A．What limitations their experiment has. |
| B．Whether the balance of glutamate can recover. |
| C．Why rest is important for the brain to function well. |
| D．How demanding tasks affect other areas of the brain. |
5 . The body gives off many gases. Although some smells may signal a need to bathe or that you ate a certain meal, other gases might point to serious disease. Now, researchers have come up with a system that uses earmuffs to catch the disease-signaling gases. Doctors could get the information as patients wear a set of earmuffs. Results could be ready within minutes.
“The ear is a good place to monitor,” explains Johnson, a biomedical engineer. The ear’s skin is fairly thin, he notes. So gases don’t have to travel far to get out of the blood and escape through skin pores.
To collect the gases, Johnson and his team selected earmuffs that make a tight seal with the head. These are the type people often wear to protect the ears from loud noise. His team made two holes in the muff covering one ear. A tube slowly pumped air in one hole. Another tube pulled air out of the second hole and sent it to a sensor.
In their tests, the team found that they could measure changes in the amount of alcohol coming from the skin of the ear. It could work much like a Breathalyzer that police use to test people for driving drunk. The team invited three men. Each had to avoid drinking alcohol for at least three days before taking part. Once in the lab, these men wore the earmuffs and sat for 10 minutes as the system recorded normal gas levels leaving their ears. Afterward, the men drank a big amount of alcohol. About 7 minutes later, the earmuff system tested out a rise in alcohol leaving the skin. After 50 minutes, alcohol levels reached the peak and continued falling until the test was over.
The team then measured other gases by changing out the sensor. With the right sensor, their earmuff system could test out disease. Later, they replaced the earmuffs with a one-eared version to make it a bit more comfortable.
Johnson imagines another possible benefit. The earmuff system could help doctors tell whether a child’s ear infections have been caused by bacteria or a virus. How? Each type of infection exudes different gases. That, in turn, could guide how doctors cure the disease.
1. What makes the ear a good place to monitor?| A．Its small size. | B．Its thin skin. |
| C．Its clean surface. | D．Its blood flow. |
| A．Sensors should be examined in time. | B．Drunk-driving tests were ineffective. |
| C．Serious diseases were difficult to identify. | D．Their system could be used to tell diseases. |
| A．Collects. | B．Gives off. | C．Cuts off. | D．Uses. |
| A．Politics. | B．Business. | C．Science. | D．Entertainment. |
6 . There have been a few times in my life when I felt very lonely. I particularly remember my loneliness when I moved to New York City. I had a couple of friends in the city, still, it was a time in my life when I needed to put forth some effort to form more meaningful relationships. But the more I went out to parties, the more disconnected and lonely I felt. Feeling lonely in a room full of people, or in my case, a whole city packed with people everywhere, was the loneliest I have ever felt.
So, rather than trying a new way to make friends, I was more likely to ignore phone calls from friends, and I looked at social invitations and opportunities to meet new people as drudgery. Looking back on this period of loneliness, I wonder at the way I isolated myself instead of reaching out to those who were willing to keep me company and offer friendship.
What I have learned from my own experience and the experience of many of my friends is that more often than not, those who feel lonely choose isolation. Indeed many of my own friends describe avoiding social life as a way of dealing with feelings of loneliness.
This behavior is somewhat common, and new research takes a big step towards explaining this behavior. According to leading experts on the loneliness, Stephanie and John Cacioppo, there is an evolutionary explanation for this tendency to isolate when we are feeling lonely. By monitoring lonely people’s brainwaves, they found that lonely people tend to respond negatively to social life. “Loneliness causes some brain-related changes that put us into a socially nervous mode,” Dr. Christian Jarrett explains.
Making ourselves aware of this evolutionary natural tendency could actually be the first step in fighting loneliness. Once we know that we are more sensitive to negativity during lonely spells, we can focus our energy on resisting the desire to put up walls.
1. What happened to the author after she moved to New York City?| A．She had no friends there. | B．She lacked confidence there. |
| C．She needed opportunities for parties. | D．She felt lonely even with people present. |
| A．By refusing to go out to meet others. | B．By looking for solutions on the Internet. |
| C．By trying various methods to make friends. | D．By doing some drudgery to forget her problem. |
| A．Lonely people tend to disgust social life. |
| B．People respond negatively to lonely people. |
| C．Loneliness can do great harm to people’s health. |
| D．Loneliness can be caused by a socially nervous mode. |
| A．We shouldn’t be influenced by negativity. |
| B．We shouldn’t choose isolation when we feel lonely. |
| C．We should make friends based on scientific findings. |
| D．We should spend more time with friends than relatives. |
7 . There’s no doubt that football is the global sport. Though basketball, tennis, and other sports are popular too, nothing comes close to football. Being played in every country in the world, football provides dozens of superstars. The numbers are greater when compared to any other sport, and this drives the popularity of football up. Have you ever wondered when the sport started and became popular?
Football has its origin (起源) in China and has a history of more than 2,000 years. However, modern football originally appeared in Britain in the 19th century. Folk football matches had been played before in many cities and towns, but never on a professional level.
Football became a winter sport game played in different schools. The rules were carried out by each school, and this made it difficult for players to play an official game with each other. It all changed in 1849 at the University of Cambridge that invented a set of standard rules known as the Cambridge rules of football. From that moment, a new star sport was born.
By the early 20th century, football had spread all across Europe. In 1904, FIFA was set up. There are seven original members, including France, Denmark and Spain, FIFA became the governing body for many associations in Europe.
England’s international success improved the popularity of the sport in the country. The league (联赛) in Britain was set up in 1992. From the 1990s, it became a truly impressive piece of football organization, becoming the world’s top football league in the process.
Football is obviously the most popular sport in the world. It is impossible for any other sport to take its place, especially with leagues spending billions of pounds every year to stay in the focus.
1. What is the author’s purpose of writing paragraph 1?| A．To describe the level of football. |
| B．To introduce the topic of the text. |
| C．To debate the main idea of the text. |
| D．To introduce famous football leagues. |
| A．In China. | B．In France. |
| C．In Britain. | D．In Spain. |
| A．The rules always changed. |
| B．There were no common rules. |
| C．The season made players hard to win. |
| D．Officials made players misunderstand the rules. |
| A．By time order. | B．By space order. |
| C．By listing numbers. | D．By giving examples. |
8 . It is a windy day. Glenn Gould has got a coffee cup sitting on the piano top and is working on a music written by Bach. As he plays, he gets so totally lost in the music that suddenly, he stands up, and walks in what looks like a dream to the window.
There’s a total silence. Then the Bach flows out of him. He’s still playing, but in his head. Then he turns, wanders back, sits down on a low chair in front of the piano and picks up right where his voice left off, but now with new energy.
Gould, the greatest interpreter of Bach, is a strange man. He doesn’t like to practise. Instead, he’ll prepare for concerts mentally, running the piece over and over and playing with imaginary fingers.
Gould, for some reasons, reminds me of Michael Jordan playing basketball or Etta James singing the blues: There’s a concentration that’s so deep that it feels special, like a kind of “flow”.
“When you are in it, you lose track of everything except what you’re doing,” writes neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. “There was a surgeon, who wasn’t aware that the roof of his operating room had collapsed until he was done with the surgery. In this state, what you think becomes what you do. You get blissfully lost in an activity, forgetting time, yourselves and your problems.”
How does one get there? That’s still a mystery. Practice is important. Strong will matters. Talent helps. When you find your “flow”, your brain changes. Sex, hunger and thirst matter less. You are chemically released and can now wander far and wide. Yes, you have no idea where you are or how this is happening. But once you find your “flow”, it’s one of the most wonderful experiences ever.
When I watch Glenn Gould walking back to his piano, I see a man living in heaven, if there is one.
1. How does Glenn Gould usually prepare for concerts?| A．By drinking coffee to get more energy. | B．By running the pieces in his head first. |
| C．By practising over and over on the piano. | D．By doing exercise in his sweet dreams. |
| A．Encouraged. | B．Worried. | C．Absorbed. | D．Absent-minded. |
| A．Happily. | B．Occasionally. | C．Unnecessarily. | D．Hardly. |
| A．Practice. | B．Will. | C．Talent. | D．Desire. |
9 . In my teenage period 1 always had wished to pass a geography exam, remembering all the locations of the countries on a map or avoid embarrassing situations of suddenly forgetting the person’s name standing right in front of you. Luckily for me, now one theory that memory, like other muscles in the body, can be strengthened aroused my curiosity. But instead of practicing with flash cards, there may be an interesting way that we can improve our memory while we sleep.
The researchers hold that sleep is when the brain transfers short-term memories experienced throughout the day into long-term memories. This process is called memory consolidation. They have been working on a DIY version of this task to see if we male volunteers can improve memories through the use of sound in sleep. In the test, every time we see the picture, we can hear the related sound. Then we take a nap and they record our EEG.
They’re interested in one of the four periods of sleep: slow-wave sleep, when scientists believe that memory consolidation can happen. In this deep period of sleep, they do something that we don’t know. When we wake back up and do the task again, we find we do better than before a nap. That is because they played a clue during our sleep, for example, a car — we would remember the position of that car when we woke back up again. But if they didn’t play the clue during the sleep, for example, a guitar, we’d be less likely to remember that guitar when we woke up.
I was a huge skeptic when I first heard that result. But they ran this experiment on two female groups and the results were significant. It’s not that you remember things better; it’s that you forget them less. And the facts and memories we collect throughout the day are easily lost and forgotten.
So if you’re like me and a bit forgetful, perhaps a solution is a pair of headphones and a soft couch.
1. How did the author feel about his memory when young?| A．He felt discouraged. | B．He was moved. | C．He felt inspired. | D．He was proud. |
| A．By playing a clue before they sleep. | B．By playing a clue when they sleep. |
| C．By showing a picture before they sleep. | D．By drawing a picture when they sleep. |
| A．He is convinced of the experiment results. | B．He throws doubts on it at present. |
| C．He believed in it from beginning to end. | D．He wanted to prove it in the future. |
| A．Ways to avoid forgetfulness are funny. | B．Headphones and a soft couch are useful. |
| C．Many people can’t avoid forgetting in life. | D．The solution to being forgetful is practical. |
10 . Scientists have done a lot of research on sleep. They’ve shown that sleeplessness can lead to both weight gain and poor performance in school. Might it also affect your moods (情绪) or your behavior? A team of scientists based in Shanghai, China decided to investigate.
To do that, they took advantage of data (数据) from what’s known as the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Begun in 2015, this study followed over 10, 000 U. S. kids into adulthood. All were 9 to 10 years old when they started taking part. ABCD researchers have been collecting records from parents on how much their kids sleep on a regular basis. The scientists also have been surveying whether a kid might have a habit of getting into fights or breaking rules. They even note whether students have difficulty focusing their attention.
Wei Cheng, a mathematician from China, teamed up with other researchers, making a detailed study of the ABCD data. Cheng’s group found out that kids who on average slept less than 7 hours a night were more likely to have behavior problems than kids who slept more. Kids who missed out on sleep also had more mood problems, including depression. Feeling sad or blue for longer than a week or two can be a sign of depression. Poor sleepers were also more likely to have stomach problems and headaches.
According to Kyla Wahlstrom, a professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, at night, your brain sorts information to link related facts but it takes the brain longer to organize negative (消极的) moods than positive ones. If you don’t get enough sleep, your brain might not have time to finish tidying up. If the brain runs out of time, you’re left with negative moods. That may explain why Cheng’s group found out not getting enough sleep was connected with mood problems, says Wahlstrom.
1. What does the underlined word “that” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．The data. | B．The good performance. |
| C．The ABCD Study. | D．The investigation. |
| A．By analyzing the data collected by others. | B．By observing the American kids’ behavior. |
| C．By gathering information on American kids. | D．By recording the American kids’ sleeping time. |
| A．To stress the importance of enough sleep. | B．To encourage people to sleep more at night. |
| C．To introduce the danger of negative moods. | D．To further explain the findings of Cheng’s group. |
| A．Keeping Fit by Sleeping Well | B．Making Yourself a Perfect Sleeper |
| C．Remove Bad Moods by Having a Good Sleep | D．Putting Yourself in a Positive State of Mind |
