Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s)of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
Building a Greener Future
Year after year, Earth's precious resources are becoming increasingly scarce. Still people need materials to build new houses, office buildings and schools. There's only one solution to this problem: do more with less. That's what sustainable construction is all about. Advocates of sustainable construction believe the entire building process can be done without harming the environment, and by doing so, the earth is kept sustainable for future generations. To make these green buildings possible, however, the process must be implemented from the beginning.
Picture a city government that wants to build a green office building. The first thing these city planners would do is select a site with a small environmental impact. Ideally, they would choose a site that had already been developed, thus keeping the forests and grasslands protected.
Next, city planners would turn their attention toward the construction process. Only green materials could be used to build their office towers. These include wood, steel, and other materials that have been recycled from destroyed buildings. If possible, they have been manufactured, recovered, or resourced locally. The closer that these green materials are to the construction site, the less energy is wasted getting them to where they're needed.
Maintenance costs are the next important factors that need to be considered. City planners would design heating and cooling systems that use as little energy as possible. They would fit solar roof panels that will absorb the heat from the sun to power the building. Toilets and sinks designed to minimize water waste would be fitted throughout the building. These efficiencies don't just help to protect the environment; they can save money over the long run as well.
After all this was finished, the city planners would relax and maybe even throw a party. They have designed a building that was green at every step--the golden rule of sustainable construction.
Bringing Light to the Darkness with Crisco Art
Most paintings are best enjoyed in galleries with good lighting. But an Italian artist who goes by the name Crisco is changing the way we look at paintings with a new approach: glow (发光）－in-the-dark paint.
Crisco's paintings are beautiful in normal lighting, but it is when the lights go down that they really come alive. 1. His art mostly shows landscapes. Trees, horizons, and especially starry skies come alive with the glow of his paints. At the center of most of his work, there is often a human or animal figure. The figure may be just a shadow surrounded by the glowing colors, but it often appears to be the source of the light. 2.
Instead, they are all bright pictures of hope, life, wonder, and growth. They are Crisco's way of adding a little light to the world.
Crisco's full name is Cristoforo Scorpiniti. 3.Instead of letting a negative experience get the best of him, he threw himself into a new pursuit: art. According to Crisco, he paints with glowing colors to inspire hope. Though his paintings often show night scenes that look good in the dark, Crisco does not focus on the darkness. Instead, he uses his paintings to express positivity by creating light in the darkness.
A lot of his best work has come out of just painting what he felt at the time without any plan or structure. 4.With over half a million followers on Instagram, Crisco is already popular on social media for his unique paintings. He'll surely only get more famous in the future for his inspiring paintings that beautifully mix darkness and light.
A.In addition to painting on canvas, Crisco also paints on musical instruments.
B.However, no matter what the scene is, none of the paintings focus on the darkness.
C.His paintings take you on an unknown adventure into an unknown space, reminding you to be alert and brave.
D.Through the use of glowing paint, he brings a sense of magic and energy to the scenes that he creates.
E.Studies have shown that expressing themselves through art can help people with depression and anxiety.
F.As a self-taught artist, he found his passion for art at a dark time in his life when he found himself suddenly out of work.
American writer A.N.DEVERS was at a rare-book fair in New York City in 2015 when she noticed a Joan Didion title selling for just $25. Then she saw the price tag of a novel by the equally famous Cormac McCarthy: about $600. “I realized we don’t value women’s work the same way we do men’s,” Devers says. “It’s depressing. But it’s also exciting, because I can do something about it.”
Three years later, after moving to London and joining the U.K.’s booming rare-book trade, Devers opened the red doors of her new bookstore, the Second Shelf. Located in a quiet courtyard off the busy streets of London’s Soho, the store almost exclusively stocks rare books by women (alongside a handful of male-authored books about women). The focus is modern fiction: Elizabeth Bowen novels, romances by Rosamunde Pilcher, poetry by Ntozake Shange.
Devers’ skill for finding overlooked jewels was polished during a childhood of Visits to yard sales in towns across the U.S., a result of her family’s following her father’s Air Force job. Some of her most sought-after recent finds were works by Miriam Tlali, the first black woman to publish a novel in South Africa. Devers hit on her 1975 debut in a charity store and quickly sourced and sold 15 more Tlali books.
In collecting these works, the Second Shelf is correcting a historical imbalance that has allowed women’s literary achievements to be eclipsed. Bookdealers have tended to be men; much of the trade’s early material was collected by “country gentlemen who ran estates and amassed libraries of books to show their wealth and intelligence,” Devers says. She argues that they’ve been like their peers in other male-led creative industries — including television, film and the news media — in that “they focus on themselves.”
That past contributes to a plain absence of women’s work among the books considered to be valuable cultural objects. In January, the Second Shelf went viral (走红) on Twitter after Devers pointed out that only nine books by women appeared in a list, produced by a trade website, of the 500 biggest sales at auction in the books-and-paper field last year. Even among more recently published works, a 2018 study found, titles by women are on average priced 45% lower than books by men.
In recent years, calls have gone out to read only books by women for a year and for universities to expand their curriculums. The observance of Women’s History Month in the U.S. has also made March a time for publishers to suggest fitting reading lists. Devers’ shop is the physical site of that movement challenging the current situation. “We’ve been taught to find value in something really narrow,” she says. “It’s time to explore something different.”
1.The first paragraph tells the readers _________.
A.why Devers named her shop the Second Shelf
B.how Devers was exposed to rare book trade
C.what motivated Devers to open the Second Shelf
D.where Devers first came across women’s literary works
2.The underlined word “eclipse” in the fourth paragraph means_________.
A.fully exposed
B.partially concealed
C.seriously treated
D.roughly explained
3.Which may explain the absence of the great literary works by women?
A.The trade used to be dominated by men.
B.Women writers’ ideas conflict with the bookdealers’.
C.Males tend to be productive in the creative industry.
D.The majority of male readers don’t read modern fiction.
4.What can be inferred from the passage?
A.In recent years, university curriculums have emphasized books by women.
B.Women’s History Month has pushed women writers to be more productive.
C.More physical bookstores like Devers’ are needed to change the situation.
D.The Second Shelf is helping turn a page for women in literature.
1.By using the app released by SOLEIF, people can
A.watch a video about the statue's history
B.appreciate the exhibits in the museum
C.view the statue from different angles
D.see a life-size model of the statue
2.Where can we find both apps and popular videos?
A.tinyurl.com
B.uefa.com
C.Apple's iPad
D.SOLELF
3.The following words can be used to describe the Xploro app EXCEPT
A.entertaining
B.interactive
C.informative
D.sensitive
For almost 500 years, people have wondered what deadly disease wiped out most of the Aztecs (阿芝特克人）. The locals called it cocolizthi, and now a team of scientists think they know exactly what that was. The outbreak is considered to be one of the deadliest epidemics (传染病）in human history. For centuries, its cause has been debated by historians. New evidence suggests that the Aztecs died from a type of bacteria called salmonella enterica.
An international team of scientists came to this conclusion after analysing the skeletons (骨骼) of 29 Aztecs buried in a cocoliztli cemetery in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. The scientists obtained samples from the teeth of ten of the skeletons. They compared these with their database of bacteria and found traces of salmonella enterica.
Salmonella enterica can cause enteric fever, of which typhoid (伤寒）is a type. Today, there are around 21 million cases of typhoid worldwide and it is considered a global threat.
The Aztecs were fierce hunter-gatherers who settled in what is now Mexico at the beginning of the 13th century. From their incredible capital city Tenochtitlan(now Mexico City),the Aztecs fought wars with other tribes until they ruled much of the region.
The Aztecs ended up controlling large parts of Mesoamerica--now much of Mexico and Central America--until Spanish explorers arrived in 1519 and brought with them advanced weapons and deadly diseases. The team believe that the domesticated animals, such as goats and horses, which the explorers brought with them carried the deadly bacteria.
By 1545,not even 30 years after the Spanish had arrived, Mexico's Aztec nation started coming down with a terrible illness. Symptoms included high fever, headaches and bleeding from the eyes, nose and mouth. Within five years, up to 15 million people---more than 80%of the population at the time--had died from the mystery illness they called cocoliztli. The Aztec people had no immunity (免疫) to fight the disease.
“We cannot say with certainty that salmonella enterica was the cause of the cocolizti epidemic,” said Kirsten Bos from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany.” We do believe that it should be considered a strong candidate."
1.Which helped the scientists come to the conclusion.
A.Certain traces of deadly diseases carried by goats and horses
B.Extensive comparison of Aztecs buried in a cocoliztli cemetery
C.Definite discoveries of infected tooth samples from the database
D.Small amounts of certain bacteria in the teeth of the skeletons
2.Which of the following is TRUE about the Aztecs?
A.They had a population of about 15 million around 1545.
B.Their livelihood depended on raising domesticated animals.
C.Their population dropped sharply in the middle 16th century.
D.They won the wars with the Spanish despite being poorly equipped.
3.The underlined word “it” in the last paragraph refers to_
A.cocolizti epidemic B.salmonella enterica C.the typhoid D.the Max Planck Institute
4.The passage is mainly about
A.how the Aztecs got infected with salmonella enterica
B.why the Aztecs had no immunity to fight typhoid
C.which reason caused the Aztecs to abandon their native land
D.what led to the military and economic decline of the Aztecs
Developments in artificial intelligence, robotics and sensors (传感器) are making houses and apartments smarter than ever.
IT’S 6 A.M., and the alarm clock is ringing earlier than usual. It’s not a malfunction: the smart clock scanned your schedule and_______ because you’ve got that big presentation first thing in the morning. Your shower automatically turns on and warms to your preferred temperature. The electric car is_______ to go, charged by the solar panels. When you get home later, there’s a(n) _______package waiting, delivered by drone. You open it to find cold medicine. It turns out that health sensors in your bathroom detected _______of an approaching illness and placed an order automatically.
That at least is the ideal version of the smart home that exists 10 years out. Swedish research firm Berg Insight says 63 million American homes will_______as “smart” by 2022,with everything from Internet-connected light bulbs to cameras that let us spy on our pets from the office. But a decade from now, experts say, we’ll move from turning the lights on and off with our voices to total engagement in the Internet of Things (IoT)._______advancements in artificial intelligence, the smartest homes will be able to truly learn about their owners, eventually foretelling their_______. Developments in robotics will give us machines that offer a helping hand with cleaning, cooking and more. New sensors will be_______watching our well-being._______ to all of this will be the data that smart homes collect, analyze and act upon, helping to turn the houses of the future from a mere collection of devices and accessories into truly “smart” homes.
Of course, as our homes learn more about us, keeping them________will become all the more important. Every________ that’s connected to the Internet is a potential target for hackers. Therefore, cybersecurity will become all the more vital.
A range of technological developments will drive smart-home technology well beyond what’s available on store shelves today. Innovations in artificial intelligence, ________, stand to reverse almost everything in our lives, including our homes. You might already be using some kind of Al-powered voice-assistant device to get the latest news or weather forecast every morning. But in the smart home of the future, those AI platforms could serve as the brain for entire homes, learning about________and organizing and automating all of their various smart devices. IT company Crestron, for example, is working on software that________ a person’s habits, like which music they want to hear in the morning or which lights they want to be on at a certain time of the day. Then, once it knows a user’s________ automatically plays just the right playlists or dims the lights before bedtime.
1.A.attempted B.adjusted C.approved D.assisted
2.A.free B.likely C.ready D.eager
3.A.unexpected B.disconnected C.unsealed D.misplaced
4.A.symbols B.signals C.codes D.signs
5.A.serve B.qualify C.behave D.model
6.A.In spite of B.Instead of C.In addition to D.Thanks to
7.A.needs B.dangers C.instincts D.responses
8.A.deeply B.barely C.closely D.manually
9.A.Accessible B.Central C.Relative D.Objective
10.A.personal B.special C.specific D.secure
11.A.camera B.bulb C.device D.model
12.A.by contrast B.for example C.in turn D.at least
13.A.residents B.operators C.relatives D.consumers
14.A.transforms B.tracks C.treats D.trains
15.A.conditions B.features C.preferences D.characters
