Before I turned 10, I lost my parents. My siblings (兄弟姐妹) left Hyderabad after my relatives _________ them, but I insisted on slaying back to continue my _________. And I began to deliver newspaper to _________ myself. I would be up every morning by 5 a. m. and _________ five kilometers to the newspaper office. By 6 a. m., I would be _________ my copies of the Urdu Daily. The area I was _________ for spanned 3 kilometers. After distributing the _________. I would rush home, quickly eat and be off to high school.
One wintry morning in 1945. I got home after my _________ to find a boy of my age at my doorstep. He _________ himself as Afzal and said his father wanted to see me.
I was greeted at the door by Afzal’s mother, Nazeem. Afzal’s father, Mr. Kader, ____________ us as Nazeem served me tea and snacks. Nazeem gently asked me about my daily ____________ . I told her about my morning job and school. They were ____________ that I had to walk so much in one day. Later, as I was about to leave, Mr. Kader ____________into another room, and when he reappeared, he was ____________ a new bicycle. “This is for you!” he said.
It took a few seconds for this act of kindness to ____________. I didn’t realize that ____________ were rolling down my face. Mr. Kader said, “Your newspaper editor is a friend of mine. He gave me your ____________, so I knew you lived close by. Then Afzal told us more about you.”
I bowed, ____________ shook hands with them and left. The ____________ brought convenience to my life and taught me a life-long lesson: Help should always be need-based. Never try to ____________ a person who is dying of thirst.
1.A.abandoned B.comforted C.betrayed D.adopted
2.A.training B.career C.education D.relationship
3.A.occupy B.support C.improve D.please
4.A.cycle B.walk C.drive D.wander
5.A.collecting B.publishing C.selling D.buying
6.A.famous B.helpful C.responsible D.suitable
7.A.copies B.files C.brochures D.books
8.A.studies B.deliveries C.efforts D.tasks
9.A.regarded B.behaved C.considered D.introduced
10.A.wanted B.invited C.joined D.left
11.A.work B.routine C.deals D.burdens
12.A.shocked B.confused C.embarrassed D.disappointed
13.A.spun B.broke C.disappeared D.escaped
14.A.mending B.sending C.designing D.wheeling
15.A.sink in B.get in C.set up D.take up
16.A.thanks B.smiles C.apologies D.tears
17.A.name B.identity C.secret D.address
18.A.gently B.gratefully C.kindly D.firmly
19.A.newspaper B.conversation C.bicycle D.job
20.A.feed B.help C.treat D.choose
The ability to think creatively is not a gift everyone possesses naturally, so it must be developed as a skill. Here are some tips to help you develop creative and critical thinking abilities.
Step outside your comfort zone
Stepping outside of your comfort zone is an easy way to expand your creative and critical thinking skills. This can mean reading a book or an article that is completely unrelated to any previous studies, or even having a difficult conversation with someone you're close to. 1.. We all grow from discomfort.
Stay healthy
Your mind is in the best shape when your body is. Coupling exercise with a healthy diet can clear the mind and allow for creativity. 2.. Some people are easily distracted by a messy office or a dark room. Most people are the most awake when they are in clean, healthy, and organized environments.
3..
This is a common technique used by journalists and writers suffering from writer's block. It's an easy tool to get the creative juices flowing. Open up a laptop, or grab a notebook and pen, and just start writing. Just let your mind take you wherever it wants to go. 4..
Take a breather
Everyone may reach points where they get stuck on an idea and can't get past it. Don't let this discourage you, and don't blame yourself. That sort of thinking will make you disheartened and distracted, which will only make you even more frustrated. 5.. Co outside for some fresh air, take a walk, eat a meal, or call a friend. Distraction, in moderation, can be very rewarding.
A.Write freely
B.Keep an open mind
C.Instead, take a short break
D.Keep your spirits high at work and even during the holidays
E.This is a great way to explore your thoughts and expand your creativity
F.Your work environment can also greatly affect the way the brain functions
G.Anything making you a bit uncomfortable probably benefits you more than it harms you
One of a doctors’ most valuable tools is his nose. Since ancient times, medics have relied on their sense of smell to help them work out what is wrong with their patients. Fruity odors (气味) on the breath, for example, let them monitor the condition of diabetics (糖尿病病人).
But doctors can, as it were, smell only what they can smell—and many compounds characteristic of disease are odorless. To deal with this limitation, Hossam Haick, a chemical engineer at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, has developed a device which, he claims, can do work that the human nose cannot.
The idea behind Dr. Haick’s invention is not new. Many diagnostic “breathalysers” already exist, and sniffer dogs, too, can be trained to detect illnesses such as cancer. Most of these approaches, though, are disease-specific. Dr. Haick wanted to generalize the process.
As he describes in ACS Nano, he and his colleagues created a series of electrodes made of carbon nanotubes (纳米碳管). Each of these had one of 20 organic films laid over it. Each film was sensitive to one of a score of compounds known to be found on the breath of patients suffering from a range of 17 illnesses, including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and bladder cancer. When a film reacted, its electrical resistance changed in a predictable manner. The combined changes produced an electrical fingerprint that would be diagnostic of the disease a patient was suffering from.
To test their invention, Dr. Haick and his colleagues collected 2,808 breath samples from 1,404 patients who were suffering from at least one of the diseases. Its success varied. It could distinguish between samples from patients suffering from gastric cancer and bladder cancer only 64% of the time. At distinguishing lung cancer from head and neck cancer it was, though, 100% successful. Overall, it got things right 86% of the time. Not perfect, but a useful aid to a doctor planning to conduct further investigations. And this is only the first model. Slightly adjusted, its success rate would be expected to improve.
1.How useful is nose to doctors?
A.They can smell what other people can’t.
B.They could tell which diseases are odorless.
C.They diagnose illness through their sense of smell.
D.They will apply new device to helping with diagnosing illness.
2.What is the most special aspect of the new invention?
A.It can help detect more than one disease.
B.It is made of a series of electrodes.
C.It works through analyzing patients’ electrical fingerprints.
D.It can be used to help diagnose cancers.
3.What can we infer about the device?
A.It’s the first invention by using principle of sense of smell.
B.It will be a useful tool in diagnosing lung cancer.
C.Its success rate differs from patient to patient.
D.It can successfully tell Bladder cancer from other cancers.
4.What is the best title for this passage?
A.High Tech in diagnosing illness B.A new way in diagnosing illness
C.Diagnosing illness can be easy D.Diagnosing illness by smell
Dolphins are universally regarded as some of the cleverest creatures in the world. In captivity ( 圈养), they can be trained to complete complex tasks such as jumping through hoops and somersaulting through the air.
But their intelligence doesn’t stop there. In a recent study of cetaceans (鲸目动物)--a group of animals that includes dolphins and whales--researchers created a list of intelligent behaviors observed in 90 different cetacean species, reported the Guardian. For example, the smartest cetaceans hunt in groups, share knowledge through mimicry (模仿) and even care for each other's children. Some even consider their behavior to be human-like.
“There is the saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ seems to be true for both whales and humans,”
Michael Muthukrishna of the London School of Economics, co-author of the study, told the Guardian.
However, cetaceans don’t just use their brain power for survival. The study suggests that dolphins might even gossip. That's because some species greet each other with specific whistles, just as humans greet each other by name, the Guardian reported. Sometimes, a group of dolphins whistles the “name” of a dolphin that isn't there. Could they be speaking about their “friend” behind its back?
For the researchers, dolphin small talk is a big deal. As they found that the most social cetaceans also have the largest brains, they argue that cetacean intelligence developed to meet the demands of complex social groups.
Known as the “cultural brain hypothesis (假设),” it had only been used to explain the intelligence of humans and other primates (灵长目动物). The new study aimed to find a common pathway for the evolution of intelligence among biologically different species.
“It is interesting to think that whale and human brains are different in their structure but have brought us to the same patterns in behavior, ” Luke Rendell, a biologist at the University of St Andrews, told the Guardian.
Indeed, we still have a lot to learn about our intelligent ocean-dwelling neighbors. “We don’ t have to look at other planets to look for aliens,” Muthukrishna told the Guardian, “because we know that underwater there are these amazing species with so many parallels to us in their complex behaviors.”
1.The recent study was intended to ______.
A.learn more about intelligent creatures of the sea
B.explain the intelligence of humans and cetaceans
C.create a list of intelligent behaviors of different cetacean species
D.see whether the intelligence of different species evolved in the same way
2.The implied meaning of the underlined part in Paragraph 3 is that ______.
A.villagers have the responsibility to raise any child in the village
B.like human beings, whales even help raise each other’s babies
C.cetaceans have social behaviors very similar to human beings
D.it is not easy for one villager to take care of his or her own child
3.It can be inferred from the passage that ______.
A.it is unnecessary to look for aliens and do research into them
B.some cetaceans have the same intelligence as human beings
C.both dolphins and whales greet each other with specific whistles
D.both dolphins and whales have a lot in common with humans in behaviors
4.What is the best title for this passage?
A.Aliens living underwater B.A study of intelligent dolphins
C.Intelligent creatures of the sea D.Reasons for the intelligence of sea creatures
I became a magician by accident. When I was nine years old, I learned how to make a coin disappear. I’d read The Lord of the Rings and ventured into the adult section of the library to search for a book of spells—nine being that curious age at which you’re old enough to work through more than 1,200 pages of fantasy literature but young enough to still hold out hope that you might find a book of real, actual magic in the library. The book I found instead taught basic sleight-of-hand technique, and I dedicated the next months to practice.
At first the magic wasn’t any good. At first it wasn’t even magic; it was just a trick—a bad trick. I spent hours each day in the bathroom running through the secret moves in front of the mirror. I dropped the coin over and over, a thousand times in a day, and after two weeks of this my mom got a carpet from the hardware store and placed it under the mirror to muffle the sound of the coin falling again and again.
I had heard my dad work through passages of new music on the piano, so I knew how to practice—slowly, deliberately, going for precision rather than speed. One day I tried the illusion in the mirror and the coin vanished. It did not look like a magic trick. It looked like a miracle.
One of the lessons you learn very early on as a magician is that the most amazing part of a trick has nothing to do with the secret. The secret is simple and often dull: a hidden piece of tape, a small mirror, a duplicate playing card, diversion of the audience’s attention. In this case, the secret was a series of covert ( 暗 中 的 ) technique to hide the coin behind my hand in the act of opening it, a dance of the fingers that I learned so completely I didn’t even have to think. I would close my hand, then open it, and the coin would vanish not by skill but by real magic.
1.What book did the author intend to find in the library when he was nine years old?
A.A book teaching people how to make a coin disappear.
B.The second book of The Lord of the Rings.
C.A book on how to become a magician.
D.A book of real magic.
2.The underlined word “muffle” probably means ______.
A.clean B.punish
C.lower D.kill
3.What did the author learn from his dad playing the piano?
A.Without music, life is of no value. B.Practice makes perfect.
C.Great liars are also great magicians. D.No pains, no gains.
4.Which of the following is not mentioned as a magician trick?
A.Carrying out skillful hand moves.
B.Using real magic to create miracles.
C.Hiding some stage tools inside the coat.
D.Guiding the audience to focus on something unimportant.
Maps Special Edition, £25
This book was already popular in our children’s department and has been made even better with this special edition, which includes 16 new maps. The collection of 68 maps takes you through 58 countries and six continents. It is packed with illustrated information, which includes famous historical figures, local dishes, festivals, wild animals and landmarks. Each page is a work of art to revisit, because each time you look you will notice something new.
Doodle World Map Pillowcase, £14.99
This 100% cotton, machine-washable world map pillowcase features lots of wonderful illustrations, including animals, the seven wonders of the modern world and interesting facts, such as the first solo round the world hot air balloon, the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the world record migration of the humpback whale. It comes with wash-out pens so you can wash off the old design and colour it in all over again, and again. Perfect for sleepovers.
Atlas of Dinosaur Adventures: Step Into a Prehistoric World, £20
Palaeontology meets cartography in this atlas (地图册) that is perfect for any dinosaur-obsessed child. It is by the award-winning team behind Atlas of Animal Adventures and Lucy Leather land’s inky illustrations, which makes the book a joy to look at. It covers the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and includes maps on the shifting continents and fossil finds. On every page you meet a different creature and discover its behaviours, hunting techniques, defence tactics and migration patterns.
Usborne Atlas and Jigsaw Europe, £9.99
You get two gifts in one here. This 300-piece jigsaw of Europe comes with a 32-page picture atlas, so you can see and discover the continent in more detail with the maps and learn more about the countries as you are building the puzzle. Beautiful illustrations of animals, landmarks and attractions cover every centimetre of the jigsaw, making it challenging (but not too hard) to put together for children age 5+.
1.All the four superbly illustrated atlases are perfect presents for ______ .
A.geologists B.children
C.adults D.parents
2.If a kid is obsessed by the remote past, what may he be interested in?
A.Maps Special Edition B.Doodle World Map Pillowcase
C.Atlas of Dinosaur Adventures D.Usborne Atlas and Jigsaw Europe
3.Which of the following is TRUE about these atlases?
A.All of them serve to explore the world.
B.All of them contain widely acknowledged landmarks.
C.They all have multiple purposes.
D.They are all made of unique materials.
