It can’t be easy playing the movie version of a noble real-life figure like Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN diplomat from Brazil who in career devoted to humanitarian (人道主义) efforts, died in the 2003 terrorist bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad. But in Sergio, director Greg Barker’s drama about the last years of Sergio’s life, Wagner Moura (from Netflix’s Narcos) gives it his all.
Sergio was sent to Irag in 2003 as the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General to help the country move forward after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In an early scene, we see Moura’s Sergio and his small followers rolling up to the hotel that will serve as headquarters for what’s intended to be a four-month assignment. They’re greeted by U.S. troops who have been assigned to protect them, but whose every presence speaks of menace and mistrust, Sergio leaves his vehicle and approaches one of the soldiers for what looks like a friendly conversation but we don’t hear what he’s saying.
That moment will be vital, but we don’t understand its meaning until near the end of Sergio. This is a short description of one man’s life of service to the world. The film also covers Sergio’s time in East Timor, where, seemingly against all difficulties, he assisted with the country’s independence from Indonesia. And it’s there that he meets and falls in love with Carolina Larriera (Ana de Armas), who will accompany him to Bagdad on his last, fatal mission.
Sergio’s intentions are pure, and the movie is pleasingly old-school in the way it combines political drama—and tragedy—with romance. Moura makes us see the shining role model, but it’s much harder to see the man underneath—and you can’t leave a property without first having had a heartbreak.
1.Which of the following is true about the movie?
A.Sergio Vieira de Mello stars in the movie.
B.Greg Barker is the director of the movie.
C.The movie focuses on love and friendship
D.Wagner Moura is a man hard to understand.
2.What does the underlined word “menace” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?
A.Fear. B.Caution. C.Sympathy. D.Threat.
3.Where did Sergio meet Carolina Larriera?
A.In Indonesia. B.In Baghdad. C.In East Timor. D.In Brazil.
4.What is the best title for this passage?
A.A Noble Sergio. B.A Devoted Soldier.
C.A Movie Review. D.A Critical Moment.
Problem-solving is part of everyone’s daily life. If you’re facing a tough problem at work, you truly are better off getting a good night’s sleep before making any decisions, as findings from a study at Northwestern University suggest.
Because many tricky problems are solved by thinking of them in a fresh way, Sanders and cognitive researchers Samuel Osburn, Ken A. Paller, and Mark Beeman assumed that processing unsolved problems during sleep would help people purify their memories of the problems, and improve their chances of solving them the next day.
To test that assumption, they used a technique known as targeted memory reactivation (TMR) with 61 study participants. In two evening laboratory sessions, the participants attempted to solve verbal, space, and other puzzles one at a time with the experimenters randomly pairing each puzzle with a musical sound. If the participants failed to solve a puzzle within 2 minutes, the corresponding sound played one more time. After failing to solve six puzzles each evening, they replayed the puzzle-sound pairings until they had them down.
After those sessions, participants took home technology that provided the sound cues while they slept.
Across the two mornings, they solved more cued puzzles than uncued puzzles. In fact, they solved 55 percent more puzzles when the corresponding sound had been played while they slept.
“While we use tricky puzzles in our study, the underlying cognitive processes could relate to solving any problem on which someone is stuck or blocked by an incorrect approach,” Sanders explains. “They advised, however, that the effect may only apply to situations in which an individual already has some background information to help solve a problem.” Beeman says.
Still, the study reveals important information about sleep, memory, and incubation (潜伏期) for problem-solving. The team plans to further study these processes, to further pin down the mechanisms and to see how it occurs in real-life problem-solving.
1.What is the assumption mainly about?
A.Sleep’s effect on problem-solving. B.Solving problems during sleep.
C.Memory’s impact on problem-solving. D.Improper ways of solving problems.
2.What can we learn about the experiments?
A.they set six puzzles for each participant. B.they had the puzzles solved in the evenings.
C.they applied matching sounds to puzzle-solving. D.they met with disapproval.
3.What’s the writer’s attitude towards the study?
A.Subjective. B.Objective. C.Indifferent D.Pessimistic
While testing capacity is gaining ground, the road ahead remains long. The health system has never had to manage testing at the scale needed to control this pandemic, and doing so may require extraordinary solutions, expecting that the gap between testing need and testing capacity will only be wider as states reopen.
Health experts have called for testing well beyond current levels. But increasing capacity will be a challenge at every step in the process.
Step 1
A sample, such as saliva (唾液) or sample from the nose or throat, is collected.
Challenge:
Supplies such as swabs (拭子) and vials (瓶子) are specialized and controlled. This makes the supply chain weak to demand increases. In March, testing was held up by a shortage of swabs.
Step 2
The sample is placed in a solution and delivered to lab technologist.
Challenge:
Workforce is already an issue at many labs Hiring is difficult, as only certified technologists are trained to handle the patient samples.
Step 3
Chemical liquids called reagents (试剂) extract and strengthen the virus’s genetic material.
Challenge:
Labs have faced reagent shortages, and industry groups have already noted that a rise in testing demand has the potential to use up supplies.
Step 4
Machines detect the presence of the virus in a sample.
Challenge:
Dozens of test systems have been FDA approved, but many labs lack the up-front money to invest in the technology and growing up.
1.Which organ will we fail to get a testing sample from?
A.The mouth. B.The throat. C.The nose. D.The ears.
2.What is the challenge for Step 4?
A.Supply shortage. B.Workforce in demand.
C.Genetic substances. D.Financial support in advance.
3.What does the passage intend to tell us about?
A.Ways to fight pandemic. B.Testing capacity for viruses.
C.Roadblocks to testing goals. D.Efforts to test viruses.
假如你是李华，你的英国朋友Henry发邮件向你询问有关中国抗疫专家钟南山的一些情况，请你回复邮件。内容包括：
1. 人物简介；
2. 抗疫贡献；
3. ……
注意：1. 词数100左右。
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
参考词汇：冠状病毒 COVID-19，epicenter (疫情)中心
Dear Henry,
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Best wishes!
Yours,
Li Hua
阅读下面短文，根据其内容写一篇60词左右的内容概要。
Why do we have deserts today? Deserts have not always been here. Most deserts that we have today were once green lands full of plant life. One of today’s biggest deserts is in North Africa. However, in the 1st century BC farms in North Africa grew corn and wheat to make bread for the whole city of Rome. How did this area become desert?
Both weather and people can help form a desert. Hot weather or very little rain makes the land so dry that nothing can grow. While in some regions, the increase in desert areas is occurring largely as a result of a trend toward drier climatic conditions.
Continued gradual global warming has produced an increase in aridity (干旱) for some areas over the past few thousand years. The process may be sped up in the following decades if global warming resulting from air pollution seriously increases.
The primary reason for desert formation is human activities, though. If people cut down or burn trees and plants to make land clear for farming, the wind can blow the soil away and turn the dry land into sand. Another big problem is farming on land that is not very good. This poor land can very quickly turn into desert, if it is farmed too much. One of the biggest causes, however, is when people take their animals to the same fields to feed over and over, and the fields finally lose all their nutrition. Because of these problems, deserts are slowly taking over green land in many parts of the world, including China.
However, we can fight the growing deserts! In some parts of China people are working to prevent desert from expanding. In Xinjiang, for example, some farmers are trying new scientific farming methods. These methods make it possible to use less land for crops, so farmers then can plant trees on the rest of their land!
One Xinjiang farmer used only HALF of his fields to grow the SAME amount of crops as last year. On the other half of his land, he planted fruit trees. The work of people like this is helping to fight the world’s growing deserts.
Recently, a Philadelphia teen has been a hot topic in the US. Having always been hard-working in studying, Richard Jenkins has now ________ a full ride (奖学金) to Harvard University.
However, life is not always ________ for Jenkins. When his mother couldn’t ________ a motel room, they would stay in shelters. ________ by his situation, he would lie to classmates about where he lived. Jenkins knew there was one thing that could give him a better life: ________. Then, he attended a program called Mighty Writers, which teaches Philadelphia kids to think and write clearly.
“I realized I’ve got to try my best ________ I can’t have my future kids ________ through what I’m undergoing now,” Jenkins thought to himself. Though being ________, he decided to ________ academics and kept working hard on it. His ________ in school would pay off in a major way.
Jenkins applied to Harvard in his junior year of high school. He said he was ________ of his acceptance on a class trip to Paris. He was so ________ that he threw his cellphone. Jenkins was not only ________ to the university, but also got full ________! He recently went back to Mighty Writers to ________ his good news to the program’s director.
Jenkins was quite ________ of his mother, and says to the reports that he doesn’t like to talk about his past ________ in homeless shelter. However, he does say his ________ as a child gave him the ________ and desire to get into Harvard and he was ________ in the end.
1.A.demanded B.received C.achieved D.represented
2.A.easy B.practical C.ordinary D.impressive
3.A.build B.afford C.buy D.exchange
4.A.Amazed B.Discouraged C.Encouraged D.Embarrassed
5.A.creativity B.profession C.education D.development
6.A.though B.because C.if D.when
7.A.going B.looking C.putting D.coming
8.A.poor B.hungry C.ashamed D.regretful
9.A.live on B.call up C.focus on D.bring up
10.A.feeling B.idea C.nature D.effort
11.A.informed B.warned C.made D.reminded
12.A.moved B.confused C.excited D.satisfied
13.A.taken B.changed C.devoted D.admitted
14.A.salary B.scholarship C.life D.mark
15.A.show B.spread C.deliver D.supply
16.A.proud B.protective C.fond D.sure
17.A.hiding B.existing C.moving D.living
18.A.knowledge B.suffering C.experiences D.happiness
19.A.drive B.ability C.imagination D.influence
20.A.praised B.convinced C.inspired D.rewarded
