I’m sitting here in this coffee shop. You know the one there by Allen street. The town is filled with thousands of middle class college kids living off their parent’s money.
The coffee shop is where the ones come to play the part of sophisticated bohemians (放荡不羁的文化人). The pretensions (自命不凡) glow from their line-less faces as they sip cappuccinos and chew strawberry cookies. The boys to my right are discussing Nabokov with a serious air, a copy of Sartre’s Cuba lies on the table.
The young woman on my left is declaring that she can never allow her creativity to be killed by entering the work force. The man with her scratches his goatee (胡子) in agreement, occasionally suggesting they go back to his place to hear his new Washington Squares CD. Matt has just designed a new international symbol for peace. He moves from table to table trying to sell hand painted T-shirts that bear the design. Tomorrow he’s leaving for the 25th anniversary Woodstock concert where he hopes to strike it rich with his creation.
Gopha the skinny Indian boy feels like singing me a verse of ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ when I ask him if he’s a friend of Monica’s. Jason is trying to talk Gopha into a dollar bet on a game of chess. Between times Jason will chew your ear off with his plans to conquer the music industry while studying entertainment law, but when it comes to his never ending dollar chess matches he’s quiet as a church mouse.
I sit among them. To all surface appearances one and the same. If they could only see I would rather reach into their flesh and tear out their shallow little hearts than listen to another second of their prattle (闲扯).
With no job, no gigs, and my girlfriend’s so far gone she might as well be on another planet, I’ve been leading the writer’s quiet cafe life, spending my free time outdoors drinking iced teas and cheap wines. I chat warmly with whoever decides to squander away their hours in my surrounding area.
But behind my eyes is an unspoken challenge to any and every one of these social elites (精英) to just once say one thing that would inspire me. Just one little idea which is new and meaningful. Unfortunately original thoughts are zero here.
In my secret mind I wish to run like a madman banging gongs and speaking in tongues. Or maybe jump on a table and sing the Star Spangled Banner in the forgotten language of the Hottentots. I know these thoughts only reveal me as a fool because the spark I search for cannot be found in acts of shocking performance art. Where it truly comes from is one of the mysteries which will always hang around me.
1.The college students in the coffee shop can be described as ______.
A. shallow and aimless B. determined and independent
C. vain and ambitious D. honest and hardworking
2.Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?
A. Matt’s T-shirts will be a hit at the concert and bring him wealth.
B. Jason seems to show more enthusiasm in the dollar chess matches.
C. The young woman agrees to listen to a new Washington Squares CD.
D. The hero envies the lifestyle of the college students in the coffee shop.
3.Why is the hero in the coffee shop?
A. To recall the pleasant memories.
B. To relieve his sorrows and worries.
C. To know what is in fashion nowadays.
D. To find something new to inspire himself.
4.What does the passage imply?
A. The hero is sure that he can find the original thoughts in a crazy way.
B. The hero is disappointed at the college students failing his expectation.
C. The hero is quite content with his quiet café life as a writer.
D. The hero is lost in the physical world and hopeless about his future.
THE idea came to Ralph Liedert while he was sweating in the Californian sunshine, having been standing with his daughter for over an hour in a queue for a ride at Disneyland. What, he thought, if his T-shirt had a cooling system he could turn on, at the tap of a smart phone app, when he needed it. Luckily, Mr Liedert does have the means to make the dream reality, for he works at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, as one of a team there studying the rapidly growing field of microfluidics (微流控技术).
Cooling vests already exist (used by racing drivers, motorcyclists and people who work in hot conditions). But the tubes through which the cooling water is being pumped, and the vests’ need to be connected to outside units that cool this water, make them huge and clumsy. Mr Liedert thought VTT’s microfluidics department could do things better.
As its name suggests, microfluidics is the art of building devices that handle tiny amounts of liquid. Inkjet-printer cartridges (喷墨打印机墨盒) are a familiar example. Less familiar, but also important, are “labs-on-a-chip” (芯片实验室). These are tiny analytical devices that transport fluids such as blood through channels half a millimetre or less in diameter (直径), in order to carry them into what holds analytical reagents (试剂). Sensors, then detect the resulting reactions and provide an instant analysis of a sample (样本). Designing labs-on-a-chip is the VTT microfluidics department’s day job. One of its chips, for example, can tell whether water is affected by the bacteria that cause Legionnaires’ disease.
The department’s biggest contribution to the field, though, is to have developed a way of printing microfluidic channels onto large rolls of thin, flexible plastic. It works by passing the plastic between two heated rollers, one of which contains raised outlines of the required channels. As the rollers squeeze the plastic they create a pattern of channels into one surface. A second plastic film is then melted over the top as a cover. This process might, thought Mr Liedert, be suitable for printing a microfluidic cloth that was thin enough and pleasant enough to wear as a cooling vest.
The group’s first model showed that such a material could indeed be made and used to circulate cooled water. They are also looking at ways the water being circulated through the microchannels might be cooled. They have identified two. One uses a small heat-exchanger, the details of which they are keeping secret at this stage. The other employs evaporation (蒸发). It thus works in the same way that heat from circulating blood is removed by the evaporation of sweat.
Whichever cooling system is applied, the electronics needed to power and control it would be shrunk into a small package contained on the back of the vest. This could be operated by hand or, as Mr Liedert originally envisaged in his Californian queue, by a wireless link to a smart phone. Moreover, what can cool down can also, if run in an opposite way, warm up. In Finland, where winter temperatures fall as far as -50°C, that might be the technology’s killer app.
1.Microfluidics has been used in ______.
A. racing cars B. printing industry
C. testing material D. clothing industry
2.We can learn from the passage that ______.
A. VTT is a company which mainly works on the research into microfluidics
B. the new cooling vest of VTT will be smaller and work more effectively
C. the technology of microfluidics may have a positive effect on medical science
D. heat-exchanger as well as the way of evaporation will be used to cool the wearer
3.______ plays the key role in making the new cooling vest.
A. The special cloth B. The cooling system
C. The tiny liquid D. The wireless link
4.The underlined word “envisaged” most likely means _____ .
A. imagined B. discovered C. viewed D. planned
There’s a case to be made, from things like Google search figures, that Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken – you know, the one about two paths diverging (分开) in a wood – is the most popular in modern history. Yet people still can’t agree what it means. On the surface, it’s a fridge-magnet cliché (陈词滥调) on the importance of taking risks and choosing the road less travelled. But many argue it slyly mocks (暗讽) that American belief in the individual’s power to determine his or her future. After all, the poet admits that both paths look roughly similarly well-travelled. And how could he be sure he took the right one? He’ll never know where the other leads. Looking back at our life histories, we tell ourselves we faced important dilemmas and chose wisely. But maybe only because it’s too awful to admit we’re stumbling (跌跌撞撞地走) mapless among the trees, or that our choices don’t make much difference.
Two psychologists, Karalyn Enz and Jennifer Talarico, throw light on these matters in a new study with a title that nods to Frost: Forks In The Road. They sought to clarify how people think about “turning points” versus “transitions” in life. A turning point, by their definition, is a moment that changes your future – deciding to leave a job or marriage, say – but often isn’t visible from the outside, at least at first. “Transitions” involve big external changes: going to university, marrying, emigrating (迁出). Sometimes the two go together, as when you move to a new place and realize it’s where you belong. (“New Yorkers are born all over the country,” Delia Ephron said, “and then they come to New York and it hits them: oh, that’s who I am.”) But it’s turning points we remember as most significant, Enz and Talarico conclude, whether or not they also involve transitions.
The distinction is useful: it underlines how the most outwardly obvious life changes aren’t always those with the biggest impact. Hence the famous “focusing illusion”, which describes how we exaggerate (夸大) the importance of a single factor on happiness: you switch jobs, or spouses, only to discover you brought the same troublesome old you to the new situation. Before it became a joke, “midlife crisis” referred to a turning point that happens because your circumstances don’t change, when your old life stops feeling meaningful. Turning points can be caused by mundane (世俗的) things – the offhand remark that makes you realize you’re in the wrong life – or by nothing at all.
1.Why do some people think the poem makes fun of the American belief?
A. Because the two roads are more or less similar in the poet’s view.
B. Because Americans believe they can decide their future themselves.
C. Because Americans can find their way easily in a forest just with a map.
D. Because Americans surely know which road to take without consideration.
2.Which of the following can be considered as a transition?
A. Your experience of midlife crisis.
B. Your choice of the road to take.
C. Your decision to travel abroad.
D. Your move into a new flat.
3.What can we infer from this passage?
A. Turning points involving transitions are often remembered as most significant.
B. The biggest impact is often characterized with obvious outside changes.
C. A fundamental change is often affected by more than one single factor.
D. We can rid ourselves of the unpleasant past with the change of a job.
4.What’s the best title of the passage?
A. Is our fate in our own hands?
B. Must people make changes in life?
C. Should we choose the road less travelled?
D. Are turning points connected with transitions?
Exerpeutic 15-0125 InStride Folding Cycle
by Exerpeutic
3.8 out of 5 stars 625 customer reviews
List Price: $70.00
Price: $29.22 & FREE DELIVERY on orders over $35.
Portable folding exercise bike that sits on a tabletop or on the floor
Battery-operated electronic monitor times your workout
Convenient tension control offers several resistance levels
Sturdy nonslip rubber feet; sturdy foot straps for stability
DeskCycle Desk Exercise Bike Pedal Exerciser (White)
by DeskCycle
4.7 out of 5 stars 786 customer reviews
List Price: $199.00
Price: $159.00 & FREE DELIVERY.
Lowest pedal height available; Only 10 Inches; Can work with desks as low as 27 Inches
More than twice the resistance range of the other pedal exercisers; 8 calibrated resistance settings; from very easy to more than you need
Magnetic resistance provides smooth, quiet pedal motion; let you focus on your work and your co-workers focus on theirs
5 function display shows speed, time, distance calories and scan
Stamina 15-0120 InStride Cycle XL
by Stamina
3.6 out of 5 stars 747 customer reviews
List Price: $60.00
Price: $31.63 & FREE DELIVERY on orders over $35.
Seatless-exercise cycle with electric progress monitor
Sturdy rubber straps hold feet or hands for full-body workout
Adjustable tension knob lets you vary workout intensity
Improves cardiovascular health and muscle strength
MagneTrainer-ER Mini Exercise Bike Arm and Leg Exerciser
by MagneTrainer
4.5 out of 5 stars 477 customer reviews
List Price: $189.00
Price: $159.00 & FREE DELIVERY.
Compact, lightweight commercial grade arm and leg exerciser
Patented magnetic resistance; More than twice the resistance range of the other magnetic pedal exercisers
Adjustable Velcro straps on pedals to accommodate all foot sizes; pedals work with both feet and hands
Electronic monitor displays Speed, Distance, Time and Calories. Runs on single AA Battery (included)
1.Which product offers you the biggest discount?
A. Stamina 15-0120 InStride Cycle XL
B. Exerpeutic 15-0125 InStride Folding Cycle
C. DeskCycle Desk Exercise Bike Pedal Exerciser
D. MagneTrainer-ER Mini Exercise Bike Arm and Leg Exerciser
2.If you want to exercise without disturbing others at work, you can choose the item from ______.
A. Stamina B. Exerpeutic
C. MagneTrainer D. DeskCycle
58. According to the passage, we can infer that ______.
A. you don’t have to pay for the delivery of the items advertised
B. the producers may be trying to reduce the range of resistance
C. the limit of choice in color may affect the popularity of the product
D. the monitoring system is something these products have in common
—Ouch, mum! A fish bone has stuck in my teeth!
—______, Lucy. I am coming.
A. Take your time B. Help yourself
C. Don’t bother D. Take it easy
As I opened my eyes, in ______ direction I looked, I could see smiling, peaceful, calm and content faces.
A. whatever B. however C. whichever D. wherever
