The universe is expanding faster than it used to, meaning it’s about a billion years younger than we thought, a new study by a Nobel Prize winner says.
At issue is a number called the Hubble constant, a calculation for how fast the universe is expanding. Some scientists call it the most important number in cosmology, the study of the origin and development of the universe.
Using NASAS Hubble Space Telescope, lohns Hopkings University astronomer Adam Riess concluded in this week’s Astrophysical Journal that the figure is 9% higher than the previous calculation, which was based on studying leftovers from the Big Bang.
The trouble is， Riess and others think both calculations are correct. Confused? That’s OK, so are the experts. They find the conflict so confusing that they are talking about coming up with “new physics”, incorporating (合作) perhaps some yet-to-be-discovered particle or other cosmic (宇宙) “fudge factors” like dark energy or dark matter
“Its looking more and more like were going to need something new to explain this,” said Reiss, who won the 2011 Nobel in physics.
NASA astrophysicist John Mather, another Nobel winner, said this leaves two obvious options, “1. We’re making mistakes we can’t find yet. 2. Nature has something we can’t find yet.”
Even with the discovery, life continues on Earth the way it always has. But to astrophysicists trying to get a handle on our place in this expanding universe, this is a cosmic concern. In fact, the universe is really mystical (神秘的). Scientists have done lots of study about it but there is still much they haven’t discovered.
1.What is the finding of the new study?
A.The earth is younger than expected.
B.Many universal problems are rising.
C.The universe is growing faster than before.
D.The finding is based on past scientists’ calculations.
2.What does the underlined word “it” refer to in Paragraph 2?
A.The Hubble constant. B.The faster expanding universe.
C.The development of the universe. D.The scientific research on the universe.
3.How do the experts respond to the conflict of the finding in Paragraph 4?
A.They want to raise a new theory.
B.They want to explore dark matter.
C.They want to further calculate the finding.
D.They want to mix together both calculations.
4.What can we infer from John Mather’s words?
A.We cannot find anything useful.
B.Astronomers are making many mistakes.
C.We need to learn about the universe.
D.We cannot find something new from nature.
The beloved childrens author Tomie depaola, who was born in Connecticut on September15, 1934 and whose imaginative and warm-hearted works crossed generations and continents died Monday at age 85. His death was announced, without details, on social media by his assistant. Bob Hechtel.
Depaola’s works covered many areas of his imagination, from a magical tale centered on a kind and caring Calabrian grandmother--strega Nona, which won the Caldecott Honor Award in 1976--to retelling the inspiring Comanche story of The Legend of the Bluebonnet. In 2000 he won a Newbery Honor for his book 26 Fairmount Avenue, which described his early childhood. Quiet, published in 1980s, is one of his bestselling books. By dePaola’s own count, he worked on some 270 books--the first in 1965, and the most recent published last year.
In 2011, he won a lifetime prize, the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, which praised his “considerable and lasting contribution to literature for children.” In all, nearly 25 million copies of his books have been sold around the world.
Along with his work as an author, dePaola taught art and theater at various colleges in California, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. For many years, he made his home in New London. N H.
In 1998, dePaola told a radio reporter that he hoped to recognize children for all their natural abilities. “As a grown-up,” he said, “I want to give children the credit for everything I can: their courage, their humor, their love, their intellectual abilities, their abilities to be fair, their abilities to be unfair. But I do wish that we grown-ups would give children lots of credit for these temporary kinds of qualities that they have.”
1.Which of the following best describes all dePaola’s works?
A.Inspiring. B.Magic.
C.Adventurous. D.Imaginative
2.Which of the following books reflects dePaola’s own life?
A.Quiet. B.Strega Nona.
C.26 Fairmount Avenue. D.The Legend of the Bluebonnet.
3.What did dePaola think children needed?
A.Adults approval. B.Various abilities.
C.Major improvement. D.Superior qualities.
4.What’s the purpose of writing the text?
A.To announce bad news. B.To praise a great artist.
C.To introduce some books. D.To mourn a distinguished man.
You may have your favorite family spots on Long Island where you frequently take the kids.But there may be unexpected places you haven’t explored yet.
Animal Exhibit
Not only will you see fish, reptiles and amphibians here. But you’ll also see baby alligators and other rescued animals. Kids can also learn about science and participate in programs and workshops throughout the year. The Animal Exhibit is also a hotspot for science-themed birthday parties.
The Mattituck Strawberry Festival
The Mattituck Strawberry Festival kicks off the summer season with sweet treats and more. Long Island is known for numerous and extremely popular fairs and festivals that take place throughout the year. Other summer festivals include the Sayville Summer Fest, St. Rocco’s Feast, Brookhaven Fair and more. The fall season offers the largest abundance of fairs and festivals, such as the Pickle Festival, Oyster Festival, Long Island Fall Festival and many Halloween-themed festivals in Nassau and Suffolk.
Home Depot Kids Workshop
Does your kid enjoy making things by hand? You may want to take a trip to Home Depot Kids Workshop. Offered on the first Saturday morning of each month, workshops allow little ones to build and craft items, such as a skateboard pencil box that they can decorate and keep.
Chuck E. Cheeses
As soon as you walk through the doors you’re instantly greeeted by the sounds of other kids laughing as they play arcade games to win prizes and enjoy an animatronic show. After hours of play, check out their restaurant with kid-friendly options.
1.Where will science fans prefer to celebrate their birthday?
A.At Animal Exhibit. B.At Chuck E. Cheese’s.
C.At Home Depot Kids Workshop D.At the Mattituck Strawberry Festival
2.Which sees the most fairs and festivals on Long Island?
A.Spring. B.Summer.
C.Autumn. D.Winter.
3.Who is the text specially targeted at?
A.Kids. B.Parents.
C.Tour guides. D.Students.
请阅读下面文字及图表，并按照要求用英语写一篇150词左右的文章。
The ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released a list of 100 professions that have major demand. Vacancies for sales positions, cashiers, restaurant waiters and security guards topped the list, followed by manufacturing professionals, including lathe (车床) operators, welders (电焊工) and porters, according to the ministry.
“Usually, we believe that sectors closely related to high technology face the toughest situation,” said Yin Baoming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security. “But it’s the same with low-killed jobs. They are also key.”
Lin Qing, a 23-year-old from Jiangsu province, who worked as a receptionist for a cybercafe in Beijing, quit last year and is now studying for the test to get into a vocational college.
”I felt hopeless after working for the cybercafe for almost three years,” she said. “I worked for restaurants and cafes, but none of these jobs brought me any respect or sense of dignity. I want to learn some skills through training courses. I don’t want to live a life of hard physical work anymore.”
（写作内容）
1. 用约30个单词概述上述信息的主要内容；
2. 结合上述信息，简要分析低技能工人短缺的原因；
3. 根据你的分析，谈谈解决低技能工人短缺的途径和方法。
（写作要求）
1. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；
3. 不必写标题。
（评分标准）
内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。
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请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。
注意:每个空格只填1个单词。请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。
Success Takes Focus
You can have a strong desire and really want to achieve your goal but as you’ve experienced, life has its way of knocking us off course. Things come up, and distractions occur.
Success takes a lot of focus. You’ve had the experience of setting a goal and being really excited about achieving it only to have a few weeks or months to go by and realize the goal has dropped down on your list of priorities.
People often get easily side tracked. This doesn’t just happen all at once. You get off track just little by little until one day, you realize you’re completely off track. Keeping your mind focused on your goal can be a constant battle because everything around you is trying to get your attention. It will be your job to keep your goal up high on your priorities list.
So what can you do to keep your focus? There are several things you can try. You can write down your goal and read it each morning and night. You can visualize achieving your goal daily.
One of my favorite methods of keeping focused on a goal is to constantly ask myself, “Is what I’m doing right now bringing me closer to my goal or further away?” Once you answer that question, you’ll know what to do. You can make sure that your daily to-do list includes doing something that will take you closer to your goal.
If you look back at the goals you’ve tried to achieve and realized you haven’t achieved any of your major goals, it may be time to just focus on a single goal. This way, all of your energy and focus can be put towards obtaining that one goal which will increase your chances of getting it. It’s a lot better to just achieve one major goal than to work on a dozen and achieve none of them.
Remember that you’re human and because of this, you’ll make some errors in judgment. Instead of beating yourself up, just be aware that certain things can take your focus away from your goals. Once you’re aware of these things, you can actively reduce the amount of time they take your focus off your goals.
Distractions are like gravity. It’s going to cause us all to fall every now and then. The important thing is that we bounce back up every time we fall. Get your focus back on your goal when you start to realize it’s drifting somewhere else.
Passage outline | Supporting details |
A common phenomenon | Achieving your goal requires much 1., but distractions are a barrier to your success. |
The way it happens | Getting side tracked is a 2. process, and you have to battle against getting off track 3.. |
4. on solving the problem | ◆You can 5. yourself of your goal by writing it down, reading it every morning and imagining achieving it. ◆ Make sure what you do helps you get 6. to your goal. ◆ Focusing on a single goal makes you more 7. to achieve it. ◆ Don’t blame yourself, as it is 8. for humans to make wrong judgement. ◆ Accept the fact that distractions are 9. to happen and try to reduce the time of getting distracted. |
Summary | Distractions can be compared to 10. causing us all to fall often, in which case we should bounce back to our goal timely. |
One in four children and young people could have problematic smart-phone use, according to research that also suggests such behaviour is associated with poorer mental health.
The amount of time children and teens spend using their devices has become an issue of growing concern, but experts say there is still little evidence as to whether spending time on screens is harmful in itself.
The experts behind the latest study said they wanted to look beyond the time young people were spending on smart-phones and instead explore the type of relationship they had with smart-phones.
The results suggest more than 23% of young people have an abnormal relationship with their smart-phones, and that this appears to be associated with poorer mental health-although the research cannot say whether phone use is driving such problems.
“It seems like only a minority of teenagers and young people from various different countries are self-reporting a pattern of behaviour that we recognise from other addictions,” said Dr Nicola Kalk of King’s College London, co-author of the study. “The quality of the evidence is poor, but it is enough to warrant (保证) further investigation.”
Writing in the journal BMC Psychiatry, the team reported how they looked at data from 41 studies involving a total of almost 42,000 participants across Europe, Asia and America, mainly in their teens or early 20s.
These studies used questionnaires to probe the prevalence (普遍) of problematic smart-phone use-behaviours such as being anxious when the device is not available or neglecting other activities to spend time on the smart-phone.
Taken together, the team said on average these studies suggested as many as one in four children and young people had problematic smart-phone use.
Among the studies that probed mental health, the results suggested people with problematic smart-phone use were also more likely to have depression-for which the odds (可能性) were more than three times worse-anxiety, feelings of stress and poor sleep as well as poorer educational attainment.
While the team said it was too soon to call problematic smart-phone usage an addiction, they noted that it appeared to be linked to similar patterns of behaviour and emotion.
Kalk said further studies were needed to explore if these behaviours were hard to break, or cause harm-other key features of an addiction.
The authors argued that the availability and pervasiveness of smart-phones in everyday life meant problematic use of the devices posed a different and much bigger public health problem than substances of abuse or internet gaming.
Kalk said the team were now looking at whether smart-phones were just delivering addictive content, or whether there was something inherently addictive about using such devices.
Dr Amy Orben, an expert in screen time at the University of Cambridge, raised concerns, noting that the definition of problematic internet use varied considerably across studies, and the measures used were questioned.
She said studies finding little signs of problematic internet use might have been overlooked, while the research could not say whether problematic smart-phone use caused poorer mental health.
Prof Russell Viner, President of Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said that parents were navigating unchartered water when it came to technology.
“One of the most critical things for parents to consider is whether screen time is having a harmful impact on other activities like school, relationships or other interests. This study suggests that this is the case for a significant minority of children and young people,” he said.
Viner said in these cases parents should calmly install age-appropriate boundaries on smart-phone use, and ask questions about whether their children were experiencing other problems.
“While screen time is a new problem, part of the solution is tried and tested-open and regular conversations based on respect and trust,” he said.
1.Experts conducted the research to ______.
A.address the concern about adolescent behavior
B.prove spending time on screens is harmful in itself
C.calculate the time young people spent on smart-phones
D.explore young people’s relationship type with smart-phones
2.We can learn from the research that ______.
A.it involved a vast majority of participants across the globe
B.the participants were asked to report their online activities
C.researchers compared different behaviors of the participants
D.problematic smart-phone use is linked to poorer mental health
3.Which of the following might Kalk probably agree?
A.It is hard to break problematic smart-phone use.
B.Internet gaming is problematic smart-phone use.
C.Problematic smart-phone use is an addiction.
D.The research still has some limitations.
4.What’s Dr Amy Orben’s attitude towards the research findings?
A.Supportive. B.Negative.
C.Sceptical. D.Unconcerned.
5.What does the underlined part in Paragraph 16 mean?
A.Screen time is a new challenge to parents.
B.Technology is posing a threat to parents.
C.Parents are lost in the sea of technology.
D.Parents use technology to chart water.
6.According to Viner, what should parents do to solve the problem?
A.Keep track of the screen time of children.
B.Strictly prohibit children from using devices.
C.Have a sincere communication with children.
D.Evaluate the impact of screen time on children.
