Our club is open to everyone ____ age, sex or educational background.
A. due to B. except for C. along with D. regardless of
In some countries, people eat with chopsticks, while in , knives and forks.
A. another B. others C. both D. all
学校正在组织科技创新大赛，你想为日常生活中某件物品（如钢笔、书包、鞋子……)设计添加新功能来参赛。请以“My Magic_______”为题写一篇英语短文，介绍你的创意。
内容：
1.说明设计理由
2.介绍新功能。
注意;:
1.词数不少于120个字
2.不能使用真实姓名和学校名称。
Directions: Read the following passage. Answer the questions according to the
information given in the passage.
Kids and Ponds
Years ago there was a group of kids who would hang around at some local ponds in the woods near their houses in Warwick, Rhode Island. In summer they caught frogs and fish. When winter arrived they couldn’t wait to go skating. Time passed, and the ponds became the only open space for the kids to enjoy themselves in that neighborhood.
One day. a thirteen-year-old boy from this group of kids read in the local newspaper that a developer wanted to fill in the ponds and build over a hundred small houses called condominiums. So the boy went door to door and gathered more than two hundred signatures (签名）to stop the development A group of citizens met and decided to support him.
At the meeting of the town planning board (委员会)，the boy was quite nervous at first and spoke very softly. But when he saw the faces of his friends and neighbors in the crowd and thought about what was happening to their favorite ponds，his voice grew louder. He told the town officials that they should speak for the citizens. He also insisted that they should leave enough space for children. A few days later，the developer stopped his plan.
Nine years later, when that teen was a senior in college, he was informed that the developer was back with his proposal to build condominiums. Now twenty-two years old, he was studying wetlands ecology. He again appeared before the town planning board. This time as an expert witness, he used environmental protection laws to explain restrictions on development in and around wetlands and the knowledge of wetlands ecology to help improve the development. Finally some condominiums were built, but less than half the number the developer wanted. The ponds where those kids used to hang around were protected by a strip of natural land，and are still there today.
1.What did the kids like to do at the local ponds in winter?
(No more than 6 words) (2 marks)
_______________________________________________________________________________
2.How did the boy win the citizens’ support?
(No more than 10 words) (2 marks)
_______________________________________________________________________________
3.What did the boy tell the town officials?
(No more than 16 words) (3 marks)
_______________________________________________________________________________
4.What helped the boy to protect the ponds successfully nine years later?
(No more than 12 words) (3 marks)
_______________________________________________________________________________
Many of us invest valuable time，energy and money planning our vacations. We do this because we know for sure that going on vacations must be good for us. Research proves this feeling without a doubt. Vacations help us perform better at work, improve our sleep quality and cushion us against depression.
Yet, despite these benefits, many of us return home with a feeling that our last vacation was OK - but not great. In order to change this, some mistakes should be avoided. A classic one for vacation planners is attempting to maximize value for money by planning trips that have too many components (组成部分)• Perhaps you’re planning a trip to Europe, seven cities in 10 days，and you realize it will cost only a little more to add two more destinations to the list Sounds fine in theory, but hopping from one place to the next hardly gives an opportunity to experience what psychologists call mindfulness - time to take in our new surroundings, time to be present and absorb our travel experiences. Another mistake is that we worry too much about strategic issues such as how to find a good flight deal，how to get from A to B，or which destinations to add or subtract from our journey. These issues may seem important, but our psychological state of mind is far more important.
Actually, vacation happiness is based on the following top rules. First, choose your travel companions wisely, because nothing contributes more significantly to a trip than the right companions. Second，don’t spend your vacation time in a place where everything is too expensive so as to maintain a positive mood. Third, shop wisely, for meaningful experiences provide more long-term happiness than physical possessions.
The behaviour of a building’s users may be at least as important as its design when it comes to energy use, according to new research from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). The UK promises to reduce its carbon emissions (排放）by 80 percent by 2050, part of which will be achieved by all new homes being zero-carbon by 2016. But this report shows that sustainable building design on its own — though extremely important- is not enough to achieve such reductions: the behaviour of the people using the building has to change too.
The study suggests that the ways that people use and live in their homes have been largely ignored by existing efforts to improve energy efficiency (效率)，which instead focus on architectural and technological developments.
‘Technology is going to assist but it is not going to do everything,’explains Katy Janda, a UKERC senior researcher，‘consumption patterns of building users can defeat the most careful design. ’In other words，old habits die hard, even in the best-designed eco-home.
Another part of the problem is information. Households and bill-payers don’t have the knowledge they need to change their energy-use habits. Without specific information，it’s hard to estimate the costs and benefits of making different choices. Feedback (反馈） facilities, like smart meters and energy monitors，could help bridge this information gap by helping people see how changing their behaviour directly affects their energy use; some studies have shown that households can achieve up to 15 percent energy savings using smart meters.
Social science research has added a further dimension (方面），suggesting that individuals’behaviour in the home can be personal and cannot be predicted 一 whether people throw open their windows rather than turn down the thermostat (恒温器) , for example.
Janda argues that education is the key. She calls for a focused programme to teach people about buildings and their own behaviour in them.
1.As to energy use, the new research from UKERC stresses the importance of________.
A.zero-carbon homes B. the behaviour of building users
C.sustainable building designD. the reduction of carbon emissions
2.The underlined word “which” in Paragraph 2 refers to”________.”
A. the waysB. their homes
C.developments D. existing efforts
3.What are Katy Janda’s words mainly about?
A.The importance of changing building users, habits.
B.The necessity of making a careful building design.
C.The variety of consumption patterns of building users.
D.The role of technology in improving energy efficiency.
4.The information gap in energy use _______.
A.can be bridged by feedback facilities
B.affects the study on energy monitors
C. brings about problems for smart meters
D.will be caused by building users’ old habits
5.What does the dimension added by social science research suggest?
A.The social science research is to be furthered.
B.The education programme is under discussion.
C.The behaviour of building users is unpredictable.
D.The behaviour preference of building users is similar.
