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.
This is a story about a book that just kept selling, catching publishers, booksellers and even its author off guard. The book is Sapiens, by the Israeli academic Yuval Noah Harari, published in the UK in September 2014.It is a recondite(深奥的) work of evolutionary history charting the development of humankind through a scholarly examination of our ability to cooperate as a species.
Sapiens sold well on publication, particularly when it came out in paperback in the summer of 2015.What is remarkable about it, though, is that it's still selling in vast numbers. Sapiens has sold a further half million copies, establishing itself firmly at the top of the bestseller lists. The book's wild success is symptomatic of a broader trend in our book-buying habits: a surge in the popularity of intelligent, challenging nonfiction, often books that are several years old.
It was trade publication, the Booksellers, that first noted the rise of what is called the “brainy backlist”, it also highlighted a concomitant fall in the sales of the books that had been such a staple of publishers' catalogues-celebrity biographies. We are turning away from exciting but disposable stories of fame towards more serious, thoughtful, quiet books that help us understand our place in the world. Mark Richards, publisher at John Murray Prese, see the return to serious works of nonfiction as a response to the spirit of the age, “People have a hunger both for information and facts, and for nuanced(有细微差别的) exploration of issues, of a sort that books are in a prime position to provide.” he says.
In the end, the story of Sapiens is about a book becoming part of a national conversation. At a time when politics is more furious and fragmented than ever, when technology is colonizing our everyday existence.
Directions:Complete the following passage by using the sentences given below. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.
Fed up with constantly having to recharge or replace batteries in your ever-expanding electronic devices? The solution may be just a few steps away.
“Energy harvesting” promises to power countless consumer devices, often with nothing more than your body's movement or heat.1..But many experts believe the market for the technology could explode due to electronic devices being developed for the Internet of Things.
Among the most basic forms of the technology is body power,2.Automatic watches have employed the concept for decades, for example, by winding themselves when their user moves their arm. Now the concept is being considered for a number of other devices.
In an contest seeking visionary ideas for wearable technologies, Intel awarded$5,000 for a concept to change the temperature difference between a person's body and a special piece of clothing they'd wear into electricity for mobile devices.
3.. Stanford University engineers are testing smart microchips that create electricity from ultrasound to power implantable devices that can analyze a person's nervous system or treat their diseases.
A textile research association in Spain is proposing to obtain electricity from radio waves that flow around everyone to power sensors sewn into clothes, which can monitor a person's heartbeat or other vital signs.
Obtaining stable energy from devices can be complex, however. For one thing, the motlon that generates the electricity has to be constant to be useful. Moreover, the amount of power the devices produce depends on the person using them, according to a Columbia University study, It determined that taller people on average provide about 20percent more power than shorter ones when walking, running or cycling.
4.. While such devices are expected to cost less than battery-powered alternatives when compared over many years ,experts say, people may continue buying ones with batteries merely because those would be cheaper in the short term.
A.Dozens of companies around the world already offer such products
B.Using sound to power devices is another energy-harvesting variation
C.It's also unclear how eagerly consumers might welcome energy-harvesting products,
D.With the Internet of things expected to combine billions of devices, we'll have to use energy harvesting.
E.When certain materials are squeezed or stretched, the movement of their atoms creates an electrical charge.
F.Research fim IDTechEx has estimated that annual global sales of energy-harvesting products could hit $.2.6 billion by 2024.
More than a decade ago, cognitive scientists John Bransford and Daniel Schwartz, both then at Vanderbilt University, found that what distinguished young adults from children was not the ability to retain facts or apply prior knowledge to a new situation but a quality they called “preparation for future learning.” The researchers asked fifth graders and college students to create a recovery plan to protect bald eagles from extinction. Shockingly, the two groups came up with plans of similar quality (although the college students had better spelling skills). From the standpoint of a traditional educator, this outcome indicated that schooling had failed to help students think about ecosystems and extinction, major scientific ideas.
The researchers decided to go deeper, however. They asked both groups to generate questions about important issues needed to create recovery plans. On this task, they found large differences. College students focused on critical issues of interdependence between eagles and their habitats. Fifth graders tended to focus on features of individual eagles (“How big are they?” and “What do they eat?”). The college students had cultivated the ability to ask questions, the cornerstone (最重 要部分)of critical thinking. They had learned how to learn.
Museums and other institutions of informal learning may be better suited to teach this skill than elementary and secondary schools. At the Exploratorium in San Francisco, we recently studied how learning to ask good questions can affect the quality of people's scientific inquiry. We found that when we taught participants to ask “What if?” and “How can?” questions that nobody present would know the answer to and that would spark exploration，they engaged in better inquiry at the next exhibit-asking more questions, performing more experiments and making better interpretations of their results. Specifically, their questions became more comprehensive at the new exhibit. Rather than merely asking about something they wanted to try，they tended to include both cause and effect in their question. Asking juicy questions appears to be a transferable skill for deepening collaborative inquiry into the science content found in exhibits.
This type of learning is not confined to museums or institutional settings. Informal learning environments tolerate failure better than schools. Perhaps many teachers have too little time to allow students to form and pursue their own questions and too much ground to cover in the curriculum. But people must acquire this skill somewhere, Our society depends on them being able to make critical decisions about their own medical treatment, say, or what we must do about global energy needs and demands. For that, we have an informal learning system that gives no grades, takes all comers，and is available even on holidays and weekends.
1.What is traditional educators interpretation of the research outcome mentioned in the first paragraph?
A.Students are not able to apply prior knowledge to new problems.
B.College students are no better than fifth grader in memorizing facts.
C.Education has not paid enough attention to major environmental issues.
D.Education has failed to lead students to think about major scientific ideas.
2.College students are different from children in that_____ ?
A.they have learned to think critically.
B.they are concerned about social issues.
C.they are curious about specific features.
D.they have learned to work independently.
3.What is the benefit of asking questions with no ready answers?
A.It arouses students’ interest in things around them.
B.It cultivates students’ ability to make scientific inquiries.
C.It trains students’ ability to design scientific experiments.
D.It helps students realize not every question has an answer.
4.At the end of the passage the author seems to encourage educators to ____.
A.train students to think about global issues
B.design more interactive classroom activities
C.make full use of informal learning resources
D.include collaborative inquiry in the curriculum
Families should reduce exposure to synthetic chemicals found in food colorings, preservatives and packaging materials as a growing body of research shows they may harm children’s health, according to a policy statement and technical report from the American Academy of Pediastrics released online.
The statement also suggests improvements to the food additives regulatory system, including updating the scientific foundation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations safety assessment retesting all previously approved chemicals.
Leonard Trasande ,the author of the policy statement, to tell us more about these concerns.
Q: What are the growing number of studies showing us?
A: Over the past two decades, an accumulating body of science suggests some food additives can interfere with a child’s hormones, growth and development.
Potentially harmful effects of food additives are of special concern for children because they are more sensitive to chemical exposures because they eat and drink more relative to body weight, than adults do and are still growing and developing. An early injury to their organ systems can have lifelong and permanent consequences.
Q: What additives does the statement highlight?
A: The additives of most concern, based on rising research evidence cited in the report, include:
Bisphenols, such as BPA, used to harden plastic containers and line metal cans, can act like estrogen（雌激素）in the body which may potentially change the timing of puberty, decrease fertility, increase body fat and affect the nervous and immune systems. BPA is now banned in baby bottles.
Phthalates, which make plastic and vinyl tubes used in industrial food production flexible, may affect male genital development increase childhood obesity and contribute to cardiovascular disease. In 2017, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the use or some phthalates in child-care products such as teething rings.
1.According to the American Academy of Pediatric’s report, people should ___ to cope with the problem of food additives.
A.try to avoid food additives in daily life and revise relevant rules on food additives
B.update the food safety assessment program and check the approved chemicals again
C.improve the food additives regulatory system and retest all approved chemicals
D.reduce the usage of food additives and establish new food protection system
2.Leonardo Trasande holds the view that food additives do more harm to children than adults because study shows ___.
A.children are more sensitive to what they eat and drink than adults
B.children usually eat and drink more unhealthy food than adults
C.children are just too young and weak to protect themselves
D.children’s organs are easier to be damaged and hard to recover
3.How many specific kinds of harmful effect caused by the additives are mentioned in the passage?
A.2 B.7
C.8 D.3
The bus screamed to a stop in Nazareth, Israel. Five Australian backpackers boarded and struck up a conversation with me. They asked typical travelers’ questions—where was I going and why was I traveling alone? My plan was to travel with a friend of a friend, I explained, but when I called her that morning, she didn’t pick up and I had no other way to reach her. My stomach was in knots, but I decided to head out anyway, thinking I might run into her if I traveled to Tiberius, where we had planned to go together.
“Why don’t you travel with us?” one of the backpackers offered. They were experienced adventurers who would work for a few months, save, then travel for as long as they could. Their current plan was to explore the Middle East and Europe in three months while working in London.
It seemed risky to travel with strangers, but my instinct said yes. For the next two weeks, I explored Israel with the backpackers and learned to trust my instincts in all types of new and interesting situations. When they hook a ride, I took the bus, but when they wanted to steal into the King David Hotel’s swimming pool, I led the way. The world opened up to me because I chose to travel alone. I joined complete strangers, who become close friends. Years later, one couple from the backpacking group even flew from Sydney to Phoenix to be in my wedding. The trip was such a special experience that it gave me confidence in all areas of my life. Since then, I’ve backpacked alone across South Africa, sky-dived from 12,000 feet in New Zealand and even moved across the U.S. with no job lined up.
On my third day wandering in Israel with my new friends, I bumped into the woman I was supposed to meet. Though I was happy she was all right, I was grateful she hadn’t picked up the phone.
1.By “My stomach was in knots” (in paragraph 1), the author most likely means that she was ______.
A.sick of riding on a bumpy bus B.nervous of meeting strangers
C.upset about the sudden change D.sorry about the impractical plan
2.Which of the following best describes the backpackers the author met?
A.Courageous but disrespectful. B.Jobless and poorly educated.
C.Warmhearted and trustworthy. D.Homeless but lighthearted.
3.The author’s sixth sense told her that ______.
A.she would get along with the backpackers B.it might cause trouble to have a swim
C.she ought to stay away from the backpackers D.it could add excitement to get a free ride
4.What can be inferred from the passage?
A.Most of the backpackers became the author’s lifelong friends.
B.The author gathered the courage to be a fulltime backpack traveler.
C.The woman missed the phone call with the purpose of traveling alone.
D.The author considered it the best decision of her life to travel on her own.
Space exploration has always been the province of ________：The human imagination readily soars where human ingenuity (创造力）struggles to follow. A Voyage to the Moon, often cited as the first science fiction story, was written by Cyrano de Bergerac in 1649. Cyrano was dead and buried for a good three centuries ________the first manned rockets started to fly.
In 1961, when President Kennedy declared that America would send a man to the moon by the ________'s end, those words, too, had a dreamlike quality. They resonated with optimism and ambition in much the same way as the most famous ________ speech of all, delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. two years later. By the end of the decade, both visions had yielded concrete results and________American society. And yet in many ways the two dreams ended up ________each other. The fight for racial and economic equality is intensely pragmatic (讲求实用的）and immediate in its impact. The urge to explore space is just the opposite. It is figuratively and literally otherworldly in its ________.
When the dust settled, the space dreamers lost out. There was no grand follow-up to the Apollo missions. The technologically compromised space shuttle program has just come to an end, with no ________. The perpetual argument is that ________ are tight, that we have more pressing problems here on Earth. Amid the current concerns about the federal deficit, reaching toward the stars seems a dispensable luxury—________ saving one-thousandth of a single year’s budget would solve our problems.
But human ingenuity struggles on. NASA is developing a series of robotic probes that will get the most bang from a buck. They will serve as modern Magellans,________out the solar system for whatever explorers follow, whether man or machine. On the flip side, companies like Virgin Galactic are plotting a bottom-up assault on the space dream by making it a reality to the public. Private spaceflight could lie within ________ of rich civilians in a few years. Another decade or two and it could go mainstream.
The space dreamers end up benefiting all of us—-not just because of the way they expand human knowledge, or because of the spin-off _______ they produce, but because the two types of dreams feed off each other. Both Martin Luther King and John Kennedy appealed to the idea that humans can ________what were once considered inherent limitations. Today we face seeming challenges in energy, the environment, health care. Tomorrow we will transcend these as well, and the dreamers will deserve a lot of the credit. The more evidence we collect that our species is ________greatness, the more we will actually achieve it.
1.A.dreamers B.explorers C.astronomers D.novelists
2.A.after B.before C.until D.while
3.A.year B.quarter C.century D.decade
4.A.inspiring B.public C.dream D.freedom
5.A.attacked B.industrialized C.transformed D.accessed
6.A.in conflict with B.in line with C.in common with D.keeping pace with
7.A.aims B.influence C.concerns D.terms
8.A.ancestor B.successor C.forefather D.advocate
9.A.situations B.securities C.funds D.schedules
10.A.just like B.on condition that C.as if D.so that
11.A.making B.figuring C.sweeping D.mapping
12.A.reach B.range C.control D.knowledge
13.A.productions B.chips C.technologies D.substitutes
14.A.go beyond B.go through C.go after D.go over
15.A.In ignorance of B.capable of C.proud of D.in favor of
