Sports shoes that find out whether their owner has enough exercise to warrant time in front of the television have been devised in the UK.
The shoes — named Square Eyes — contain an electronic pressure sensor and a tiny computer chip to record how many steps the wearer has taken in a day. A wireless transmitter passes the information to a receiver connected to a television, and this decides how much evening viewing time the wearer deserves, based on the day’s efforts.
The design was inspired by a desire to fight against the rapidly ballooning waistlines among British teenagers, says Gillian Swan, who developed Square Eyes as a final year design project at Brunel University to London, UK. “We looked at current issues and childhood overweight really stood out,” she says. “And I wanted to tackle that with my design.”
Once a child has used up their daily allowance gained through exercise, the television automatically switches off. And further time in front of the TV can only be earned through more steps.
Swan calculated how exercise should translate to television time using the recommended(推荐) daily amounts of both. Health experts suggest that a child take 12,000 steps each day and watch no more than two hours of television. So, every 100 steps recorded by the Square Eyes shoes equals precisely one minute of TV time.
Existing pedometers （计步器） normally clip onto a belt or slip into a pocket and keep count of steps by measuring sudden movement. Swan says these can be easily tricked into recording steps through shaking. But her shoe has been built to be harder for lazy teenagers to cheat. “It is possible, but it would be a lot of effort,” she says. “That was one of my main design considerations.”
51．According to Swan, the purpose of her design project is to ____.
A．keep a record of the steps of the wearer
B．deal with overweight among teenagers
C．prevent children from being attracted by the TV programs.
D．prevent children from being tricked by TV programs
52．Which of the following is true of Square Eyes shoes?
A．They control a child’s evening TV viewing time.
B．They determine a child’s daily pocket money.
C．They have raised the hot issue of overweight.
D．They contain information of the receiver.
53．What is emphasized by health experts in their suggestion?
A．The exact number of steps to be taken.
B．The exact number of hours spent on TV.
C．The proper amount of daily exercise and TV time.
D．The way of changing steps into TV watching time.
54．Compared with other similar products, the new design ____.
A．makes it difficult for lazy teenagers to cheat
B．counts the wearer’s steps through shaking
C．records the sudden movement of the wearer
D．sends teenagers’ health data to the receiver
55．Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
A．Smart Shoes Decide on Television Time
B．Smart Shoes Guarantee(保证) More Exercise
C．Smart Shoes Measure Time of Exercise
D．Smart Shoes Stop Childhood Overweight
Back those photos up
The images were striking. Homes on the East Coast were washed away by Superstorm Sandy. People were in tears, picking up faded photographs, among their only remaining possessions.
If that doesn’t move you to get serious about safekeeping your lifetime of memories, what will? The digital age offers tools never imaginable before—including one-click access to a lifetime of family photos.
Here is a brochure on how to back up (存) your photos and save them online, where they can live forever and be accessible in good times and bad.
Scanning
The first step for those old photos is to scan them and save them to a digital format. Most printers come with scanners these days, so that’s an easy but extremely time-consuming step.
Storing the photos
With your scans in place, import the photos into your computer, and back them up.
You could make multiple copies of the disks and spread them to loved ones. Or you could choose external(外接的) hard drives or USB thumb drive, and add your photo and video collection from your computer.
Online backup
If you need lots of space, look at a pure online backup service, Caronite.
Caronite backs up 300 million files daily. Once you sign up, it starts to pick up everything you have on your hard drive. But photo collection on your computer’s main hard drive charges for $59 a year.
Cloud Storage
For folks who don’t need automatic backup, but instead want to take a more active approach, Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft’s SkyDrive let you store files online by yourself, share and instantly access them. All offer free options—2GB of free storage for Dropbox, 5GB for Google and 7GB for SkyDrive. But if you want more, you need to pay.
Bottom Line
The hard drive or flash drive is the cheapest and easiest. But drives can fail. Online services are more expensive, but more secure. With more of us switching back and forth between our computers, such services are the best way to get access to our data from wherever we are. Why does the author mention Superstorm Sandy?
| A．To tell the background of the scanning photos. |
| B．To attract the readers’ interest in the backups. |
| C．describe a severe natural disaster. |
| D．To win the readers’ sympathy. |
What can we know from the passage?
| A．Scanning photos takes little time but costs a lot. |
| B．Caronite charges for backing up photos from hard drive. |
| C．Google Drive offers unlimited free photo storage on line. |
| D．The hard drive or flash drive is the cheapest and safest. |
Which of the following allows storing files automatically?
| A．Caronite. | B．Dropbox. | C．SkyDrive. | D．Flash drive. |
What’s the passage mainly about ?
| A．tell real stories about storage services |
| B．introduce some of the storage services |
| C．describe the functions of storage services |
| D．argue about the advantage of storage services |
As societies develop, their members start to see things not so much according to what they need, but according to what they want. When people have enough money, these wants become demands.
Now, it' s important for the managers in a company to understand what their customers want if they are going to develop effective marketing strategies (策略). There are various ways of doing this. One way at supermarkets, for example, is to interview customers while they're doing their shopping. They can be asked what they prefer to buy and then the results of the research can be studied. This provides information on which to base future marketing strategies. It' s also quite normal for top managers from department stores to spend a day or two each month visiting stores and mixing freely with the public, as if they were ordinary customers, to get an idea of how customers act.
Another way to get information from customers is to give them something. For example, some fast food restaurants give away tickets in magazines or on the street that permit customers to get part of their meal for nothing. As well as being a good way of attracting customers into the restaurants to spend their money, it also allows the managers to get a feel for where to attract customers and which age-groups to attract.
Another strategy used at some well-known parks such as Disneyland is for top managers to spend at least one day in their work, touring the park dressed as Mickey Mouse or something like that. This provides them with a perfect chance to examine the scene and watch the customers without being noticed.The text is designed for _______
| A．customers | B．salesmen | C．researchers | D．managers |
Which of the following can help managers get useful information?
| A．Visiting customers themselves. |
| B．Giving customers free food on the street. |
| C．Visiting parks as ordinary customers. |
| D．Asking customers questions at supermarkets. |
What does the word "this" underlined in the last sentence refer to?
| A．Visiting Disneyland. | B．Wearing attractive clothes. |
| C．Acting Mickey Mouse. | D．Dressing up and walking around. |
The main idea of the text is _________.
| A．how to find out customers' social needs |
| B．how to develop marketing strategies |
| C．how to do market research |
| D．how to encourage customers to spend more money |
Do you like sitting on the edge of your seat? How about falling off it laughing? If so, "Rush Hour 1" is the perfect movie for you. Although it didn’t get the best reviews, it is perfect for those who like a good comedy.
Just as in the first "Rush Hour," Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) and LAPD Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) are partners. This time, they are on vacation in China and Carter is looking for a good time, but they are on the job again when a bombing at the American Embassy kills two customs agents. Lee and Carter go to look for a suspect named Ricky Tan. For Lee this is a serious case because Tan killed his father. Will Carter and Lee be able to capture Tan?
Another reason to see this movie perhaps is for the thrilling action, which includes karate fights with Jackie Chan. One of my favorite scenes shows Carter and Lee in a massage parlor (店堂) when everything goes crazy.
"Rush Hour 2" is, of course, really funny with Chris Tucker in the lead role. Chan and Tucker have many clever jokes and remarks. Some of the jokes aren’t enjoyed by the critics, but most will find them entertaining.
With no doubt, the movie was great. I was filled with anxiety about what was going to happen next. Many critics say that sequels (续集) are not as good as the original but this one is great. I especially enjoyed it because the special effects are minimal so everything looks as though it actually happened. The lighting effect is great as well as the sound.
So, if you are looking for a great action movie that leaves you at the edge of your seat and makes you laugh quite a bit, you should rush to see “Rush Hour 2.”According to the author, "Rush Hour 2" is a perfect movie particularly ______.
| A．full of special effects |
| B．with the best actors |
| C．full of humors |
| D．with great lights |
In "Rush Hour 2”, the two leading roles are on duty again because ______.
| A．their vocation in China is limited to a short term |
| B．inspector Lee doesn’t want to have a good time |
| C．the American Embassy in China was attacked |
| D．a suspect named Ricky Tan killed Lee’s father |
In Rush Hour series, the following are usually included EXCEPT _____.
| A．thrilling actions | B．maximal special effects |
| C．karate fights | D．clever jokes and remarks |
If "Rush Hour 3" is shot, what kind of the movie will it be? ______.
| A．Stage tragedy | B．Action movie |
| C．Soap opera | D．Situational comedy |
For thousands of years, the most important two buildings in any British village have been the church and the pub. Traditionally, the church and the pub are at the heart of any village or town, where the people gather together to socialize and exchange news.
As a result, British pubs are often old and well preserved. Many of them have become historic sites. The most famous example is the pub in the city of Nottingham called “The Old Trip to Jerusalem”, which dates back to the year 1189 AD and is probably the oldest pub in England.
However, British pubs are not just for kings and queens; they welcome people from all classes and parts of society. On a cold night, the pub’s landlord or landlady can always find a warm place for you by the fire. There is always honest and hearty food and plenty of drink available at an affordable price.
That’s how things used to be. Things are beginning to change. It is said that the credit crunch(信贷紧缩) is causing 39 British pubs a week to go out of business. People do not have enough spare money to spend on beer. Recently, the UK government banned smoking in all pubs, and that may also have affected the number of customers going to pubs.
This decline is happening despite the fact that in 2005 the UK government started to allow pubs to stay open after 1l pm. Previously, with 1l pm as closing time, customers would have to drink quite quickly, meaning they sometimes got more drunk than they would if allowed to drink slowly. The British habit of drinking a lot very quickly is known as “binge drinking”, and it causes long-term health problems for people and problems with violent crime for communities.
In order to save their businesses, pubs are trying to change with the market. British pubs now offer something for everyone. A lot of pubs used to be “Working Men's Clubs”, meaning that women could not usually enter. Today, however, women can freely enter 99% of pubs without experiencing any problems. Perhaps things are changing for the better after all.The passage mainly tells us something about ______.
| A．the past and present of British pubs |
| B．the decline of British pubs |
| C．the long history of British pubs |
| D．the importance of British pubs |
Which may not be the cause of the decline of British pubs?
| A．The credit crunch. |
| B．The present closing time. |
| C．The ban of smoking. |
| D．Having no spare money. |
We can infer from the passage that ______.
| A．British people used to like drinking slowly |
| B．closing the pubs early will reduce social problems |
| C．binge drinking means drinking less beer |
| D．British government aims to discourage people from binge drinking |
We can see from the last paragraph that the author _______.
| A．is against the admission of too many women to the pubs |
| B．holds an optimistic attitude towards the British pubs |
| C．thinks that women in the pubs will cause less social problems |
| D．thinks that British pubs should offer everything you need |
The most frightening words in the English language are, “Our computer is down.” You hear it more and more when you are on business. The other day I was at the airport waiting for a ticket to Washington and the girl in the ticket office said, “I’m sorry, I can’t sell you a ticket. Our computer is down.”
“If your computer is down, just write me out a ticket.”
“I can’t write you out a ticket. The computer is the only one allowed to do so.”
I looked down on the computer and every passenger was just standing there drinking coffee and staring at the black screen. Then I asked her, “What do all you people do?”
“We give the computer the information about your trip, and then it tells us whether you can fly with us or not.”
So when it goes down, you go down with it.”
“That’s good, sir.”
“How long will the computer be down?” I wanted to know.
“I have no idea. Sometimes it’s down for 10 minutes, sometimes for two hours. There’s no way we can find out without asking the computer, and since it’s down it won’t answer us.”
After the girl told me they had no backup(备用) computer, I said. “Let’s forget the computer. What about your planes? They’re still flying, aren’t they?”
“I couldn’t tell without asking the computer.”
“Maybe I could just go to the gate and ask the pilot if he’s flying to Washington, ” I suggested.
“I wouldn’t know what gate to send you to. Even if the pilot was going to Washington, he couldn’t take you if you didn’t have a ticket.”
“Is there any other airline flying to Washington within the next few hours?”
“I wouldn’t know, ” she said, pointing at the dark screen. “Only ‘IT’ knows. ‘It’ can’t tell me.”
By this time there were quite a few people standing in lines. The word soon spread to other travelers that the computer was down. Some people went white, some people started to cry and still others kicked their luggage.The best title for the article is _______.
| A．When the Computer Is Down |
| B．The Most Frightening Words |
| C．The Computer of the Airport |
| D．Asking the Computer |
What could the girl in the ticket office do for the passengers without asking the computer?
| A．She could sell a ticket. |
| B．She could write out a ticket. |
| C．She could answer the passengers’ questions. |
| D．She could do nothing. |
Why do you think they had not a backup computer?
| A．Because it was easy down |
| B．Because it was very expensive. |
| C．Because it was not advanced enough. |
| D．Because it was not as big as the main computer. |
The last paragraph suggests that _______.
| A．a modern computer won’t be down. |
| B．computers can take the place of humans |
| C．sometimes a computer may bring suffering to people |
| D．there will be great changes in computers |
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