As the summer travel season rolls in, prices at the gas pump are usually going in the wrong direction for our wallets. That’s when drivers become more concerned about how to squeeze the most miles from their fuel dollars and keep their cars running their best. To help you stay in the know, here are some common questions that our auto-experts often get asked about gas mileage and related topics:
What if I need to carry stuff on my car’s roof?
Carrying things on the roof hurts fuel economy. When tested a 2013 Honda Accord at a steady 65 mph①, it got 42 mpg② with nothing on the roof. Adding even an empty bike rack（架子）dropped the mileage by 5 mpg. And with two bikes on the roof, gas mileage dropped to 27mpg.
Does running the A/C① hurt fuel economy compared with opening the windows?
It depends on-how hard the air-conditioning system has to work. When we measured the fuel-economy difference, we found that fuel use with the A/C running went up with higher outside temperatures. At 55℃ F, there were unnoticeable differences. But when we measured again on days when the temperature was in the low 70s and high 80s, we got fewer miles per gallon with the A/C on.
How far can I go when my low-fuel warning light comes on?
There is no set rule, but most cars have a reserve of between 1 and 2 gallons of gas when the light goes on, or enough to travel about 40 miles or so at a moderate speed. To maximize those last couple of gallons, we suggest slowing down and maintaining a steady pace.
Can I improve gas mileage by installing a special air filter（过滤器）?
With modern cars, changing your air filter probably won’t improve your fuel economy. When we tested a car to see whether a dirty air filter hurt its gas mileage because of reduced air intake, we found that the car’s fuel economy wasn’t hurt. The engine’s computer automatically made up for the restricted airflow by reducing fuel use to maintain the right air/fuel proportion. We expect similar results from any air-filter change.
①mph: mile per hour
②mpg: mile per gallon
③A/C: air-conditioning
1.The passage is intended to give answers to questions related to _____.
A.how to save fuel
B.what fuel drivers can use
C.how to keep cars working well
D.what mileage is most suitable for a car
2.It is suggested in the passage that ______.
A.a special air filter be installed to improve air intake
B.the engine’s computer be updated as often as possible
C.drivers carry an empty bike rack on the roof just in case
D.cars move at a fixed low speed with a warning of low fuel
3.At which temperature is there a most noticeable difference in fuel economy between running A/C and opening the window?
A.40° F B.51° F
C.55° F D.73° F
Standing in line is a pain. At the post office. At the box office. At a restaurant. But on Black Friday, it’s an experience.
The first spot outside some Best Buy stores is usually claimed weeks before Black Friday, often by a person in a tent. Shoppers at Walmart will print out maps of the store, with circles around their primary targets. Someone, somewhere, will try to cut in line at a Target, arousing the anger of the people who played it fair.
At risk are both bargains and bragging rights, turning what would otherwise be a miserable experience into an adventure.
“These queues are quite different than the usual annoying ones we encounter day to day at the A.T.M. or in the subway,”said Richard Larson, a professor at M.I.T. who has spent years studying line behavior.
Professor Larson, whose nickname in academic circles is Dr. Queue, said he would never wait in a line on Black Friday himself. The lines, he said, are“once a year, they’re exciting. They’re the kind you might tell your grandchildren about.”
Lines test patience, personal space and principles of fairness and rationality, especially on Black Friday, when the crowds can be overwhelming. Still, the promise of a once-a-year score draws shoppers to queues that start before sunrise—or in some cases, the night before.
J. Jeffrey Inman, a veteran of Black Friday lines and president of the Society for Consumer Psychology, said that many families treat the hours long experience as a bonding ritual and a cherished tradition.
“It’s not something unimportant,”said Mr. Inman, who is also a professor of marketing at the University of Pittsburgh.“And there’s this layer of competition to it, with people edging forward, because there are only so many of those big screen TVs inside the door.”
People may actually gravitate toward longer lines, so they can feel a greater sense of accomplishment once they finally make a purchase. Professor Larson said,“Even if they don’t know what the line is for, they reason that whatever’s at the end of it must be fantastically valuable.”
1.From the second paragraph, we can learn that _______.
A.people in Target are most likely to cut in line
B.shops will hand out store maps to shoppers
C.shoppers dislike queuing well in advance
D.queuing for Black Friday is common
2.Which of the following statements is J. Jeffrey Inman most likely to agree with?
A.Shoppers stand in line to enjoy the pleasure of bargaining with salespeople.
B.People feel like winning if they get something after queuing for some time.
C.Standing in line on Black Friday is not an exciting experience for some people.
D.Grandchildren like hearing grandparents talking about their experience of queuing.
3.The phrase“gravitate toward”is closest in meaning to ______.
A.turn a blind eye to B.be attracted by
C.pick up bargains in D.be cheated by
4.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
A.Why Stand in Line on Black Friday?
B.Fairness: Key to Consumer Psychology
C.Standing in Line Is a Pain, Says Professors
D.Black Friday is Getting Increasingly Valuable
Instead of cruising in on a hoverboard, I rode my bike to the office today. The bicycle was invented in the 19th century. Instead of taking a pill for breakfast, I had a bacon roll, cooked using gas. Science fiction has ________ to us.
Making predictions is tricky, especially about the future, as physicist Niels Bohr joked. In science fiction, you can’t escape that ________ though. Since its birth in the 19th century, writers have ________ imagined the things to come: devices that humankind will invent to make life easier. But in so many instances, those promises have not come to pass. The biggest ________ are in travel—jet packs, hoverboards and flying cars are yet to fill the skies. Air travel has become significantly cheaper and wide-reaching, but only using distinctly 20th-century technology: commercial aeroplanes are much the same as they were 50 years ago.
________ is what science fiction frequently delivers, but its arrival in the real world has been unpredicrable. Domestic robots with a degree of intelligence are yet to ________, though robotic vacuum cleaners are commercially available—even if they are fairly hopeless. Video calls have now arrived—sort of—but conferencing on Skype is still dissatisfying. In mobiles, video call technology is now available, so when your dad rings to update you on his vegetable patch, he’ll be able to ________ your look of boredom.
The truth is that we quickly ________ the astonishment of invention: our wonderment is soon replaced with the feeling of nothing new. We should try to stay in that period of ________. It is astonishing that the contents of every book ever written can be stored in a small box. Or that you can carry 10,000 albums on an object kept in your pocket. Or that almost all the information in the world can be accessed almost anywhere at any time. All these ________ are dependent on the emergence of the microchip and its place in computers. Yet sci-fi didn’t ________ the dominance of the computer in running our lives.
But the real area where ________ far outstrips（超越）predictions is medicine. Sure, fiction would describe humans as“disease-free”but without going into detail.“Disease-free”humans are still absent, but the progress made in ________ life is breathtaking. With relative ease, we can sequence anyone’s genome（基因组），giving a read-out of our entire genetic code. This means we can find out the underlying genetic cause of thousands of diseases in minutes.
Photosensitive implants now exist that can replace damaged cells in the retina（视网膜）and can, thus ________ sight to the blind. While the inventions of science fiction can show great ideas we’d like to happen, nothing ________ the inventiveness of people in the real world.
1.A.turned B.lied C.objected D.talked
2.A.opportunity B.challenge C.imagination D.conflict
3.A.hesitantly B.critically C.temporarily D.tirelessly
4.A.disappointments B.advancements C.enjoyments D.experiments
5.A.Modernization B.Exploration C.Automation D.Transportation
6.A.materialise B.identify C.honour D.liberate
7.A.imagine B.feel C.see D.ignore
8.A.arouse B.discover C.forget D.evaluate
9.A.frustration B.amazement C.boredom D.limitation
10.A.modes B.worries C.potentials D.actions
11.A.predict B.overlook C.motivate D.prevent
12.A.quality B.obstacle C.passion D.reality
13.A.maintaining B.creating C.researching D.encountering
14.A.show B.lend C.restore D.label
15.A.guarantees B.overestimates C.releases D.outperforms
Directions：After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.
On an otherwise ordinary afternoon in mid-December, the Hakata to Tokyo express pulled into Negoya and a thousand passengers were ordered 1. the train. The burning smell and unusual sound turned out to be cracks in the chassis（底盘）.
It was the first time that the Shinkansen（新干线），the country’s symbol of industrial power and“made in Japan”engineering quality, 2.（give）way to an officially called“serious incident”. Once upon a time, the cracks would have been unthinkable; the nation—3.the outside world—has long been conditioned to think of Japanese manufacturing as perfect. But after suffering a succession of different scandals. Japan’s problem is that imperfection is far less untbinkable than it 4. be.
The bullet train breakdown marks the peak of months of public admissions by some of Japan’s greatest names—including Nissan Motor. Subaru, Toray Industries, Kobe Steel and Mitsubishi Materials—5. they have either been cheating on quality tests or faking documents 6.（sell）products of a lower quality than stated. For an industrial economy that has built its global fame on its reputation for quality, these are nerve-racking times.
No one thought that Japanese companies were basically more honest than their competitors around the world, says one former Toshiba executive, 7. there was an assumption both inside and outside Japan that everyone on the factory floor was devoted to the perfection of monozukuri. 8. craftsmanship that represents what is arguably the proudest Japanese corporate boasts.“That assumption is 9. has taken the heaviest beating,”he said.
When Hiroya Kawasaki, the chief executive of Kobe Steel, first confessed that the company had been taking part in data falsification（伪造）10.（data）back to the 1970s, his statement was almost apocalyptic（预示灾难的）.“Trust in our company has fallen to zero,”he said.
阅读下面短文，根据所给情节进行续写，使之构成一个完整的故事。
One day, my brother and I were alone in our apartment. The reason was that my parents had both gone for a ball party and had left me in charge of everything. I was doing my homework while my younger brother was watching TV. All of a sudden, the doorbell rang. Ding-Dong! Ding-Dong! My younger brother had rushed to the door before I decided to answer the door. We both thought that our parents had come home. As a result, he unlocked the door and opened it.
Outside of the house stood a man who wore a black raincoat and black rubber boots. He looked no different from other people and he said that he was a salesman and asked politely if our mother or father was at home so he could talk with them.
Without any thinking, my brother said, “No.” He asked if we would like to buy some comic books, which he was selling. I quickly explained to him that we were not supposed to buy anything without our parents’ permission. However, it seemed that he was not willing to follow my advice and he had an intention to enter our house.
Then, I realized something terrible would happen. As I was about to close the door, he forced his way into our house. He took out a knife and forced me to tie up my brother’s hands with some rope which he took out from his pocket. I tied up his hands but I tied itin a special way so my brother could untie himself as we often did. The man then tied my hands up and locked both of us in the kitchen.
Soon, he went upstairs to search the bedroom for something valuable. I managed to teach my brother to untie the roop on his hands. He then untied me. I rushed to the telephone to call the police, but line was dead.
注意：1.所续写短文的词数应为150词左右；
2.应使用5个以上短文中标有下划线的关键词语；
3.续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好；
4.续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词语。
Paragraph 1:
The doors were all locked from the outside and what’s more, I did not have the keys.
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Paragraph 2:
Just at the same time our parents came back home.________________________________________________
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假如你是李华，你的英国笔友罗伊正在中国某城市作交换生，他因交不到朋友而苦恼，发来邮件想你求助。
请你用英文给他写封电子邮件，内容主要包括：1.表示安慰2. 你的建议。
Dear Roy,
I am sorry to hear that you are having some problems in China. _____________________________________
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Yours,
Li Hua
