If you saw another kid ride her bike too fast around a corner and fall down, you might ride your bike more slowly on that turn. Yes, we humans are very sensitive to others' mistakes. And the same is true for other animals. Animals mess up all the time. They might eat poisonous leaves, fall off a tree or let their prey (猎物) slip away. By watching others fail, an animal can avoid making the same mistakes, thus improving its chance of survival.
Scientists suspected that one part of the brain helps animals process information about others' errors. Cells in that part appear to become more active when a person sees someone else making a mistake. But researchers didn't know whether individual cells in this part of the brain play different roles in detecting errors.
To investigate the brain's response to errors in more detail, the researchers taught a game to two macaques, a type of monkey. One monkey could press a yellow or green button while the other watched. If the first monkey pressed the right button, the team gave both animals a treat. Every couple of rounds, the two monkeys switched roles. Meanwhile, the scientists monitored individual cells in the animal's brains.
When the first monkey messed up the game by pressing the wrong button, a group of cells in the second monkey's brain fired. But if the second monkey also made the wrong choice during its turn, some of the cells in that group didn't respond. Those unresponsive cells reacted specifically to mistakes made by others, not to the monkey's own mistakes.
Scientists believe other parts of the brain also might help people process information about another's errors. "You start to think about this other person and see things from his angle. " Ellen de Bruijn, told Science News. She studies the brain at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
1. According to Paragraph 1 , animals' ability to learn from others' mistakes ______.
A. used to be ignored by humans
B. ensures that they will never fail
C. is being lost because of humans
D. helps them to survive better
2.The underlined word "detecting" in Paragraph 2 probably means "______".
A. correcting B. making C. sensing D. drawing
3.In the experiment mentioned, those unresponsive cells are only sensitive to ______.
A. the same buttons B. others' mistakes
C. one's own mistakes D. the monkey's brain
阅读下面短文，然后按照要求写一篇150词左右的英语短文。
Responsibility is one of the most treasured traditional values in China. The children are taught to be responsible when they are very young. At schools, the students are also instructed to be responsible.
In fact, responsibility can be understood in many ways. For parents, they have had the responsibility for caring for and fostering their children since the birth of their babies; for teachers, both in kindergartens and colleges, they also should be responsible for the study and life of their students, that is to say, teachers are the second parents of children to some extent; for us, to promote a better relationship with our friends, we bear the responsibility for helping our friends when they are in trouble or faced with difficulties.
【写作内容】1. 以约30个词概括上文的主要内容。
2. 以约120个词就“责任心”谈谈你的认识，内容包括：
(1) 责任心的重要性，并举例说明缺乏责任心的影响。
(2) 你认为该如何做一个有责任心的中学生？
注意：1. 可以用自己亲身的经历、虚构的故事或生活中的事例，也可以参照阅读材料的内容，但不得直接引用原文中的句子。
2. 作文中不得提及考生所在学校和本人姓名。
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。
Life is what we make of it. How can we make our life better？Through focus—focusing on one thing and getting it done. Learning to focus can help us in many ways. It can help us realize what we really want in life. It can help us make good decisions. It can also help us accept ourselves just the way we are. Focus can help us gain power and happiness.
Focus，or concentration，is a skill that can be taught，so there are some exercises you can do to improve your focus. Start with easy exercises like staring at a picture on the wall for a few minutes without moving or talking to anyone. Once you learn how to block out your surroundings，your focus will improve.
Learn to manage your pressure. Many athletes require intense focus in their training and games. They try to spare some time to calm themselves down. It isn’t enough to just practice your shots because when game time comes，the stress and tension can make one miss a shot. This is when focus comes into play.
Another mind exercise you can do is picturing yourself in a desired situation，and then you work around your picture. Actors do this a lot to block out laughter or noise. An example of this would be to imagine yourself in a potentially stressful situation，like a singer in a concert. Try to play out the scene in your mind what you would do if different things are to happen. This can actually be a lot of fun，and you learn how to improve your focus by concentrating on one thing only.
If this sounds a little strange to you，you could try another strategy. Why not make lists？Make a list of the things you need to accomplish. Study your lists carefully and see where you can move things around. Planning helps you focus. It will also not stress you out.
A better way to improve your focus is to take breaks. Don’t spend it with your coworkers beside the coffee machine talking about problems in the office. Doing this will actually cause your stress and cause you to lose focus on the things that need to be done. Your breaks should be as quiet as possible. Read a book or take a walk. Go and do something that will give your brain a rest.
The reason why we lose focus so easily is because we have too much on our minds. Of course，it could also because you are bored with nothing to do. A good balance between a too relaxed brain and a too active brain is necessary. Find your ability to work，and try not to waste your time. Improving your focus also mean knowing what you can do and being confident about doing it well.
Title：Improving your focus
1.________of learning to focus | It can help us realize what we really want in life，make good decisions，hold positive 2.__________ towards ourselves，and gain power and happiness. |
Tips on improving focus | ·Start with easy exercises to make yourself 3._______from your surroundings. ·Keep 4.________when managing your pressure. ·Use your 5.________and play out the scene in your mind. ·Make a list to make things well 6.________. ·Take 7.________breaks to give your brain a rest. ·Make a good8.________between a too relaxed brain and a too active brain. ·Find your ability to work with9._______. |
10._______for our losing focus | ·Our minds are full of things. ·We feel bored with nothing to do. |
Petroleum, consisting of crude oil（原油） and natural gas, seems to originate from organic matter in marine sediment（海洋沉淀物）.Tiny organisms settle to the seafloor and gather in marine mud. The organic matter may partially break down, using up the dissolved oxygen in the sediment. As soon as the oxygen is gone, decay stops and the remaining organic matter is preserved.
Continued sedimentation buries the organic matter and subjects it to higher temperatures and pressures, which change the organic matter to oil and gas. As muddy sediments are pressed together, the gas and small drops of oil may be squeezed out of the mud and may move into sandy layers nearby. Over millions of years, accumulations of gas and oil can collect in the sandy layers. Both oil and gas are less dense than water, so they generally tend to rise upward through rock and sediment.
Oil pools are valuable underground accumulations of oil, and oil fields are regions underlain by one or more oil pools. When an oil pool or field is discovered, wells are drilled into the ground. When the well reaches a pool, oil usually rises up the well because of its density difference（密度差） with water beneath it or because of the pressure of expanding gas trapped above it. Although this rise of oil is almost always carefully controlled today, strong natural flows of oil were common in the past. Gas pressure gradually dies out, and oil is pumped from the well. Water or steam may be pumped down neighboring wells to help push the oil out.
As oil becomes increasingly difficult to find, the search for it is extended into more unfriendly environments. The development of the oil field on the North Slope of Alaska and the construction of the Alaska pipeline are examples of the great expense and difficulty involved in new oil discoveries. Offshore drilling platforms extend the search for oil to the ocean’s continental shelves. More than one-quarter of the world’s oil and almost one-fifth of the world’s natural gas come from offshore, even though offshore drilling is six to seven times more expensive than drilling on land.
Of course, there is far more oil underground than can be recovered. Even given the best exploration techniques, only about 30 to 40 percent of the oil in a given pool can be brought to the surface. The rest is far too difficult to reach and has to remain underground.
1.Which of the following is true about petroleum formation?
A. Microscopic organisms that live in mud produce crude oil and natural gas.
B. Large amounts of oxygen are needed for petroleum formation to begin.
C. Petroleum is formed when organic material in sediments combines with decaying organisms.
D. Petroleum formation appears to begin in marine sediments where organic matter exists.
2.What does the development of the Alaskan oil field mentioned illustrate?
A. More petroleum is extracted from the sea than from land.
B. Drilling for oil requires huge financial investments.
C. The global demand for oil has been increasing over the years.
D. The North Slope of Alaska has substantial amounts of oil.
3.What does the author mainly intend to tell us in the passage?
A. The formation, processing and exploration of petroleum
B. The specific techniques involved in oil exploration.
C. The changing relationships between countries.
D. The future intense situation in oil product markets.
4.What can we infer from the passage?
A. Available exploration techniques serve our purpose of exploring oil very well.
B. More and more public regions will be further protected from being drilled in the future.
C. Countries may suffer from unpleasant relationships for respective benefits in exploring oil.
D. Powerful flows of oil is a phenomenon which can be witnessed rarely now.
While success is surely sweeter than failure, it seems failure is a far better teacher, and organizations that fail miserably often flourish (繁荣) more in the long run, according to a new study by Vinit Desai, assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. Researchers have found that people missing their goals perform much better in the long run. That is because they gain more knowledge from their failures than their successes and the lessons are more likely to stay longer in their minds.
“We found that the knowledge gained from success was often fleeting while knowledge from failure stuck around for years,” said professor Desai, who led the study. “But companies often ignore failure. Managers may fire people or turn over the whole workforce while they should treat the failure as a learning opportunity.”
Prof Desai compared the flights of the space shuttle Atlantis and the Challenger. During the Atlantis flight last year, a piece of insulation (绝缘体) broke off and damaged the left solid rocket booster (助推火箭) but didn’t influence the program. There was little investigation. The Challenger was launched next and another piece of insulation broke off. This time the shuttle and its seven–person crew were destroyed. The disaster led to a major investigation resulting in 29 changes to prevent future disasters.
The difference in response in the two cases came down to this: Atlantis was considered a success and the Challenger a failure.
“Despite crowded skies, airlines are extremely reliable,” he said. “The number of failures is extremely small. And past researches have shown that older airlines, those with more experience in failure, have a lower number of accidents.”
Prof Desai doesn’t recommend finding out failure in order to learn. Instead, he advises organizations to analyze small failures to collect useful information rather than wait for major failures.
1.Why did experts pay little attention to the problem of Atlantis?
A. Because it worked perfectly.
B. Because the right booster was still OK.
C. Because nothing serious happened then.
D. Because fewer people died in the flight.
2.Fewer accidents happen to older airlines in that ________.
A. their planes couldn’t fly high in the sky
B. they gained much from experience in failure
C. their planes were often checked by the experts
D. they were unpopular among passengers
3.The passage is written mainly to ________.
A. show failure is a better teacher than success
B. explain why Challenger failed
C. introduce something about Prof Desai
D. tell managers how to achieve success
My old digital camera broke down, so I wanted to buy a new one．Being the cautious type, I fancied a reliable brand．So I went on the Net, spent 15 minutes reading product reviews on good websites, wrote down the names of three top recommendations and headed for my nearest big friendly camera store．There in the cupboard was one of the cameras on my list．And it was on special offer．Oh joy．I pointed at it and asked an assistant, "Can I have one of those? " He looked perturbed（ 不安）．"Do you want to try it first? "he said．It didn' t quite sound like a question．"Do I need to?" I replied, "There's nothing wrong with it．" This made him look a bit offended and I started to feel bad．"No, no．But you should try it," he said encouragingly, "Compare it with the others．
I looked across at the others: shelves of similar cameras placed along the wall, offering a wide range of slightly different prices and discounts, with each company selling a range of models based around the same basic box. With so many models to choose from, it seemed that I would have to spend hours weighing X against Y, always trying to take Z and possibly H into account at the same time. But when I had finished, I would still have only the same two certainties that I had entered the store with: first, soon after I carried my new camera out of the shop, it would be worth half what I paid for it; and second, my wonderful camera would very quickly be replaced by a new model．
But something in the human soul whispers that you can beat these traps by making the right choice, the clever choice, the wise choice．In the end, I agreed to try the model I had chosen．The assistant seemed a sincere man．So I let him take out my chosen camera from the cupboard, show how it took excellent pictures of my fellow shoppers．．．and when he started to introduce the special features, I interrupted to ask whether I needed to buy a carry-case and a memory card as well．Why do we think that new options still offer us anything new? Perhaps it is because they offer an opportunity to avoid facing the fact that our real choices in this culture are far more limited than we would like to imagine．
1.The shop assistant insisted that the writer should ____．
A．trust him and stop asking questions
B．try the camera to see if there was anything wrong with it
C．get more information about different companies.
D. compare the camera he had chosen with the others
2.What does the writer mean by "it would be worth half what I paid for it"（ Paragraph 2）?
A．He should get a 50% discount．
B．The price of the camera would soon fall．
C. The quality of the camera was not good.
D．The price of the camera was unreasonably high．
3.The writer decided to try the model he had chosen because he ____．
A．knew very little about it
B．wanted to make sure the one he chose would be the best
C．didn' t trust the shop assistant
D．had a special interest in taking pictures of his fellow shoppers
4.It can be inferred from the passage that in the writer's opinion, __．
A．we waste too much money on cameras
B．cameras have become an important part of our daily life
C．we don' t actually need so many choices when buying a product
D．famous companies care more about profit than quality
