Mary families in the United States have a 1.(large) income now than ever before, but people are finding 2. difficult to make ends meet anyway.
3. isn’t a dollar worth as much as it used to be? Economists say that the cost of living is the money that a family must pay 4. the necessities of life. For many years now, the cost of living has increased 5.(great), so the value of the dollar has decreased.
No one fully understands why the cost of living keeps 6.(increase), but economists believe that workers and producers can make prices go up. As workers earn money, they have more money to spend, so they demand more goods. If there is a demand for certain goods, the prices of these goods go 7.. At the same time, if there’s a 8.(short) of goods, the prices also increase.
Families need to know 9. happens to their money. They need to make their income meet the cost of living, so many people plan a family budget. Budgeting 10.(help) you spend your money wisely as the cost of living increases.
On the last day of college before graduation, our professor walked up on stage to give us a ____ lesson, which she called “a life lesson on the ____ of mindsets（思维模式）”. As she raised a glass of water over her head, everyone ____ her to mention the typical “glass half empty or glass half full” question. _________, with a smile on. her face, the professor asked, “How ______ is this glass of water Pm holding?” Students shouted out answers ______ from eight ounces（盎司）to a couple pounds.
After a few moments of reasonable answers, she replied, “In my opinion, the ________weight of this glass doesn’t matter. It all _______ how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute or two, it’s fairly ________. If I hold it for an hour ______, my arm might feel painful. If I hold it for the whole day, my arm will feel completely numb, _____ me to drop the glass to the floor. In each ____, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, _____ the longer I hold it, the heavier it _______ to me.”
As the class nodded their heads in ______, she continued, “Your worries,disappointments, and _____ thoughts are like this glass of water. Think about them for a while and ____ happens. Think about them a bit longer and you begin to feel _______Think about them all day long, and you will feel completely numb, _____ to do anything else until you ______ them.”
1.A.final B.traditional C.private D.basic
2.A.trend B.origin C.power . D.standard
3.A.advised B.urged C.begged D.expected
4.A.Anyway B.Instead C.Therefore D.Otherwise
5.A.high B.full C.heavy D.clear
6.A.judging B.ranging C.coming D.transforming
7.A.absolute B.rough C.limited D.obvious
8.A.mixes with B.refers to C.results in D.depends on
9.A.normal B.light C.extra D.average
10.A.straight B.only C.again D.later
11.A.reminding B.permitting C.forcing D.encouraging
12.A.field B.section C.problem D.case
13.A.but B.so C.or D.for
14.A.looks B.remains C.feels D.proves
15.A.shock B.agreement C.relief D.fear
16.A.strange B.casual C.crazy D.stressful
17.A.nothing B.something C.everything D.anything
18.A.doubt B.pain C.terror D.sorrow
19.A.unlucky B.unwilling C.unable D.unwise
20.A.accept B.destroy C.hide D.drop
We know that there is nothing worse than finding yourself caught in a strange place, disconnected from your loved ones. Here are a variety of travel tips that will help make your journey a safe and enjoyable one.
Plan ahead. There is no way to fully plan for the unexpected, but you can be prepared for it.1. If traveling on public transportation, make sure you know the route and the stops. Have a well-charged cell phone with you, or take a Mobile Power Pack. You can often save time and money by planning ahead.
Inform family/ friends of your travel plans. Make sure you have someone you can contact in case of emergency. If someone is meeting you at your destination, make sure they know exactly when your lane/ bus / train arrives.
2. Do you routinely take medicine? Are you traveling with a baby who needs milk powder? These are examples of things to carry with you at all times. If travel is delayed, it doesn't help YOU if these items are part of your checked baggage.
Take identification. It is important to have photo identification with you when you travel. Identification is required when purchasing bus and train tickets. 3.
Check on prohibited items in advance. Visit the Transportation Security Agency's website (TSA) to check on what items are prohibited. 4. Better to leave it at home, since you will have to surrender (交出) the item in order to get through airport security.
Protect your money. Instead of carrying a lot of cash with you, use your card to pay. 5. Take some cash just in case, but don’t put all your cash in one place. Put some money in jackets, pockets and different bags. In case your wallet gets lost or stolen, you still have cash in other places.
A. Don't forget to take medicine.
B. Be aware of your own special needs.
C. This makes payment easier and safer to manage.
D. In case you want to tour around and look for places, maps app is a must.
E. If traveling by car, have a map with you and know your route in advance.
F. Also, it must be presented at airline counters and airport security checkpoints.
G. Remember the Swiss Army knife your grandfather gave you when you were ten years old?
In a new look at the impact of long-time sitting behavior on health， a new study links time watching television to an increased risk of death. One of the most surprising findings is that it isn't just couch potatoes who were affected. Even for people who exercised regularly， the risk of death went up the longer they were in front of the TV. The problem was the long periods of time spent sitting still.
Australian researchers who tracked 8，800 people for an average of six years found that those who said they watched TV for more than four hours a day were 46% more likely to die of any cause and 80% more likely to die of cardiovascular（心血管的）disease than people who reported spending less than two hours a day in front of TV.
Time spent in front of TVs and computers and video games has come under fire in studies in recent years for contributing to a spread of obesity in the US and around the world. But typically the resulting public-health message urges children and adults to put down the Xbox controller and remote and get on a treadmill（跑步机）or a soccer field.
The Australian study offers a different view. "It's not the sweaty type of exercise we're losingsays David Dunstan， a researcher at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute？ Melbourne？ who led the study. "It's the incidental moving around？ standing up and using muscles. That doesn't happen when we are planted on a couch in front of a television.
Indeed？ participants in the study reported getting between 30 and 45 minutes of exercise a day？ on average.
The results are supported by a new field of research that shows how long periods of inactivity can affect the body's processing of fats and other substances that contribute to heart risk. And they suggest that people can help decrease such risk simply by avoiding extended periods of sitting.
Keeping such processes working more effectively doesn't require constant intense exercise， but consciously adding more routine movement to your life might help？ doctors say. "Just standing is better than sitting，" says Gerard Fletcher， a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic， Jacksonville， Fla. ， who works standing up at his computer. "When you stand up， you wander around a little bit and use muscles not required when you are sitting or lying down. "
Simple strategies for increasing activity include combining household chores such as folding laundry with TV-watching time or getting up to change a TV channel rather than using a remote control.
The report， published Tuesday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation focuses on TV watching partly because it is the main leisure-time activity in many countries？ researchers said， especially in the US.
1.One misunderstanding people might have is that___.
A.couch potatoes were affected by long-time sitting.
B.watching TV is related with increased death risk.
C.watching TV very long is a good way to kill time.
D.regular exercise can minimize the side effect of watching TV
2.What is new about the discovery of the Australian study？___
A.Remote control shouldn't be used when people watch TV.
B.People who watch TV too long should take more physical exercise.
C.Sitting too long in front of TV will lead to high risk of heart attack.
D.Long-time sitting is bad for all people including those who exercise regularly.
3.According to the study？ how can people reduce the risk of death when watching TV？___
A.By increasing simple movement.
B.By totally avoiding watching TV.
C.By taking some medicine.
D.By doing sweaty type of exercise.
The Amazon Echo, a voice-driven cylindrical computer that sits on a table top and answers to the name Alexa, can call up music tracks and radio stations, tell jokes, answer trivia questions and control smart appliances; even before Christmas it was already resident in about 4% of American households. Voice assistants are proliferating in smartphones, too: Apple’s Siri handles over 2bn commands a week, and 20% of Google searches on Android-powered handsets in America are input by voice. Dictating e-mails and text messages now works reliably enough to be useful. Why type when you can talk?
Simple though it may seem, voice has the power to transform computing, by providing a natural means of interaction. Windows, icons and menus, and then touchscreens, were welcomed as more intuitive ways to deal with computers than entering complex keyboard commands. But being able to talk to computers abolishes the need for the abstraction of a “user interface” at all. Just as mobile phones were more than existing phones without wires, and cars were more than carriages without horses, so computers without screens and keyboards have the potential to be more useful, powerful and ubiquitous than people can imagine today.
Voice will not wholly replace other forms of input and output. Sometimes it will remain more convenient to converse with a machine by typing rather than talking (Amazon is said to be working on an Echo device with a built-in screen). But voice is destined to account for a growing share of people’s interactions with the technology around them, from washing machines that tell you how much of the cycle they have left to virtual assistants in corporate call-centres. However, to reach its full potential, the technology requires further breakthroughs—and a resolution of the tricky questions it raises around the trade-off between convenience and privacy.
Computer-dictation systems have been around for years. But they were unreliable and required lengthy training to learn a specific user’s voice. Computers’ new ability to recognise almost anyone’s speech dependably without training is the latest manifestation of the power of “deep learning”, an artificial-intelligence technique in which a software system is trained using millions of examples, usually culled from the internet. Thanks to deep learning, machines now nearly equal humans in transcription accuracy, computerised translation systems are improving rapidly and text-to-speech systems are becoming less robotic and more natural-sounding. Computers are, in short, getting much better at handling natural language in all its forms
Although deep learning means that machines can recognise speech more reliably and talk in a less stilted manner, they still don’t understand the meaning of language. That is the most difficult aspect of the problem and, if voice-driven computing is truly to flourish, one that must be overcome. Computers must be able to understand context in order to maintain a coherent conversation about something, rather than just responding to simple, one-off voice commands, as they mostly do today (“Hey, Siri, set a timer for ten minutes”). Researchers in universities and at companies large and small are working on this very problem, building “bots” that can hold more elaborate conversations about more complex tasks, from retrieving information to advising on mortgages to making travel arrangements.
Many voice-driven devices are always listening, waiting to be activated. Some people are already concerned about the implications of internet-connected microphones listening in every room and from every smartphone. Not all audio is sent to the cloud—devices wait for a trigger phrase (“Alexa”, “OK, Google”, “Hey, Cortana”, or “Hey, Siri”) before they start relaying the user’s voice to the servers that actually handle the requests—but when it comes to storing audio, it is unclear who keeps what and when.
1.According to Paragraph I the American Echo ___
A.has been sold out before Christmas
B.has been used by most American families
C.came out the market later than Apple’s Siri
D.is more useful than smart phones in fictating e-mails
2.What can we infer about the technology of voice computing?
A.It is more effective and convenient than typing
B.It needs to be improved in some important aspects
C.It increases a person’s chances of communicating with others
D.It will replace other forms of input and output in the near future
3.What are some users of voice -driven devices concerned about?
A.The devices will be in charge of theit life
B.The devices need to be activeated before working
C.They are in the dark about their data’s ownership
D.Their voices can be recognized by every smart technology?
4.What’s the author’s attitude towards voice-driven technology?
A.Worried B.Doubtful
C.Supportive D.Objective
Exploit your parking space
An unused parking space or garage can make money. If you live near a city center or an airport, you could make anything up to £200 or £300 a week. Put an advertisement（广告）for free on Letpark or Atmyhousepark.
Rent a room
Spare room? Not only will a lodger（房客）earn you an income, but also, thanks to the government-backed “rent a room” program, you won’t have to pay any tax on the first £4500 you make per year. Try advertising your room on Roomspare or Roommateeasy.
Make money during special events
Don’t want a full-time lodger? Then rent on a short-term basis. If you live in the capital, renting a room out during the Olympics or other big events could bring in money. Grashpadder can advertise your space.
Live on set
Renting your home out as a “film set” could earn you hundreds of pounds a day, depending on the film production company and how long your home is needed. A quick search on the Internet will bring up dozens of online companies that allow you to register your home for free—but you will be charged if your home gets picked.
Use your roof
You need the right kind of roof, but some energy companies pay the cost of fixing solar equipment(around￡14,000), and let you use the energy produced for nothing. In return, they get paid for unused energy fed back into the National Grid. However, you have to sign a 25-year agreement with the supplier, which could prevent you from changing the roof.
1.If you earn ￡5000 from renting a room in one year, the tax you need to pay will be based on ______.
A.￡800 B.￡4500 C.￡500 D.5000
2.If you want to use energy free, you have to_____.
A.sign an agreement with the government
B.keep the roof unchanged for within 25 years
C.sell the roof to some energy companies
D.pay around ￡14,000 for the equipment
3.For whom the text most probably written?
A.Lodgers. B.Advertisers.
C.Online companies D.House owners.
