People in the United States honour their parents with two special days: Mother’s Day, on the second Sunday in May, and Father’s Day, on the third Sunday in June.These days are set aside to show love and respect for parents. They raise their children and educate them to be responsible citizens. They give love and care.These two days make us think about the changing roles of mothers and fathers. More mothers are now working outside home. More fathers must help with the children care.
These two special days are celebrated in many different ways. On Mother’s Day, people wear carnations(康乃馨). A red one symbolizes（象征） a living mother, while a white one shows the mother is dead. Many people attend religious services to honour parents. It is also a day when people whose parents are dead visit cemetery ( 墓地). On these days, families get together at home, as well as in restaurants. They often have outdoor barbecues for Father’s Day. These are days of fun and good feelings and memories.
Another tradition is to give cards and gifts. Children make them in school. Many people make their own presents. These are valued more than the ones bought in stores. It is not the value of the gift that is important, but it is the thought that counts. Greeting card stores, florists, candy makers, bakeries, telephone companies and other stores do a lot of business during these holidays.Which of the following is NOT a reason for parents show love and respect for parents?
| A．Parents bring up children |
| B．Parents give love and care to children |
| C．Parents educate children to be good persons |
| D．Parents pass away before children grow up |
Which do you think is true about “carnation” mentioned in paragraph 2?
| A．It has only two kinds of colours |
| B．It refers to the special clothes people wear on Mother’s Day or Father’Day |
| C．It’s a kind of flower showing love and best wishes. |
| D．People can wear carnations only on the second Sunday in May |
What can we learn from the passage?
| A．Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are both in May |
| B．Fewer women worked outside the home in the past |
| C．Not all the children respect their parents |
| D．Fathers are not as important as mothers |
What do you think the underlined word “florists”do?
| A．They sell flowers |
| B．They offer enough room for having family parties |
| C．They sell special clothes for Mother’s day |
| D．They make bread or pastry(点心) |
Jeanne Calment, a French woman, became a record breaker on 17 October of 1995, when at the age of 120 years and 238 days, she became the longest-lived human being on record. A Japanese man died in 1986 at the age of 120 years and 237 days.
Jeanne Calment lives in a small old people’s home in the south of France; her husband, her only child and her grandson have all died. She is nearly blind and deaf and is always in a wheelchair, but her doctor describes her as being more like a 90-year-old in good health than someone of 120. She still has a lively sense of humor. When asked on her 120th birthday what she expected of the future, she replied: A very short one. She also remarked that she thought the good Lord had forgotten all about her.
So what is the key to a long life? According to some doctors, diet, exercise and no smoking are the three important factors. Jeanne Calment has followed two of the tips. She has always eaten a healthy diet, and she used to do exercise every day until she broke her leg at the age of 115. However, until recently she drank two glasses of strong red wine a day, and she does smoke (now only a little). Besides, Jeanne Calment might have got very good genes from her parents. Her father lived to the age of 94 and her mother to 86.
A local lawyer bought her house when she was 80 under an agreement that he would pay her some money every year until her death. It must have seemed a good move at the time, but so far the lawyer has paid her at least three times the value of the house. Every year on her birthday Jeanne Calment sends him a card saying:
Sorry, I’m still alive!How does Jeanne Calment feel about her old age?
| A．She is miserable and unhappy. |
| B．She is cheerful and humorous. |
| C．She would like to live much longer. |
| D．She feels she is going to die very soon. |
Jeanne Calment owes her good health and long life to _______.
| A．smoking only a little every day |
| B．her giving up smoking and drinking |
| C．drinking two glasses of strong red wine every day |
| D．the good genes from her parents, a healthy diet and some exercise |
Which of the following could best replace the word “move” in the fourth paragraph?
| A．deal | B．trick | C．march | D．sport |
Why does Jeanne Calment say “Sorry, I’m still alive” to the local lawyer every year on her birthday?
| A．Because she had an agreement at 80 with the lawyer which was to her advantage. |
| B．Because she has asked the lawyer to pay her more rent than they first agreed. |
| C．Because the lawyer has paid her much more money than the value of the house. |
| D．Because the house she sold to the lawyer isn’t worth the money he has already paid. |
Dolphins(海豚) live in a dark underwater world. It’s often impossible to see each other or anything else around them, so sound plays an important role in their survival. To communicate with each other, dolphins produce all kinds of sounds.
Only other dolphins understand what the sounds mean. Scientists haven’t uncovered their secret communication, except for one kind of whistle. It might last less than a second, but this whistle is a big deal. Why? Because these whistles are actually names of dolphins - and every dolphin has one. Scientists call these sounds a “signature whistle.” When other dolphins hear the whistle, they know which dolphin is calling.
Dolphins often hunt by themselves but still need to stay connected to the group. Since they can’t always see each other, dolphins use their signature whistles to check in with other dolphins hundreds of yards away. “In coastal areas, dolphins exchange whistles even when they’re a third of a mile apart,” says Greg Campbell, who studies animals. That means dolphins shout out to group members that might be nearly five football fields away.
What’s amazing is who names the baby dolphin. Not the mother. Not an auntie dolphin or another group member. Scientists believe the baby dolphin itself comes up with the signature whistle. Like human babies, a baby dolphin plays with sounds throughout its first year. While testing its sound skills, a baby dolphin is doing something amazing. It’s creating or figuring out its signature whistle. How or why it chooses its signature whistle is not clear. Studies show that most of the time the signature whistle is nothing like its mother’s or group members’ whistles.
When the baby dolphin is about a year old, its signature whistle is set. It repeats it often so the other dolphins learn to recognize it.
Deciphering(破译) dolphin names is just the beginning of figuring out what dolphins communicate about. Do they chat about sharks? Discuss the tides? Maybe they even have a name for people. Someday scientists are to decipher the rest of dolphins’ communication.Sound is important for dolphins because of ______.
| A．their poor sense of direction |
| B．their living environment |
| C．their strong enemies |
| D．their big groups |
The dolphin’s signature whistle ______.
| A．lasts along time |
| B．can travel long distances |
| C．is especially helpful in hunting |
| D．can be recognized by other animals |
The author writes the text mainly to _____.
| A．encourage readers to study dolphins |
| B．tell readers how dolphins communicate |
| C．show how lovely and clever dolphins are |
| D．introduce a special sound made by dolphins |
A baby dolphin gets its name ______.
| A．soon after it was born | B．according to its size |
| C．all by itself | D．with the help of its group |
Christian Eijkman, a Dutch doctor, left the Netherlands for the island of Java. Many people on the island had a disease called beri-beri. He was going there to try and find a cure.
At first, Eijkman thought some kind of germ (细菌) caused beri-beri. He raised some chickens. He didn’t eat them, but made experiments on them. The local people were quite surprised at that. One day he noticed that his chickens became sick when they were fed the food most Javanese ate — refined white rice (精炼米). When he fed them with unrefined rice, also known as brown rice, they recovered. Eijkman realized that he had made an important discovery — that some things in food could prevent disease. These things were named vitamins. The Javanese were not getting enough vitamins because they had actually removed the part that contains vitamins. Later, other diseases were also found to be caused by the lack of vitamins in a person’s food.
Today many people know the importance of vitamins and they make sure they have enough vitamins from the food they eat. If they don’t, they can also take vitamin pills.Christian Eijkman went to the island of Java to ______.
A. help the Javanese with their illness
. find ways to grow better crops
C. do some research about the island
D. spend his holidayWhy did Christian Eijkman raise some chickens?
| A．To eat them. |
| B．To make money by selling them. |
| C．To give the Javanese a surprise. |
| D．To carry out his experiments. |
If a person doesn’t get enough vitamins in his diet, he’d better ______.
| A．eat more rice | B．eat vitamin pills |
| C．eat some chicken | D．eat more meat |
Decision-thinking is not unlike poker—it often matters not only what you think, but also what others think you think and what you think they think you think. The mental process is similar. Naturally, this card game has often been of considerable interest to people who are, by any standards, good thinkers.
The great mathematician John von Neumann was one of the founders of game theory. In particular , he showed that all games fall into two classes : there are what he called games of “ perfect information ” , games like chess where the players can’t hide anything or play tricks : they don’t win by chance , but by means of logic and skills . Then there are games of “imperfect information”, like poker, in which it is impossible to know in advance that one course of action is better than another.
One mistaken idea about business is that it can be treated as a game of “perfect information”. Quite the reverse, business, polities, life itself are games which we must normally play with very imperfect information. Business decisions are often made with many unknown and unknowable factors, which would even puzzle the best poker players. But few business people find it comfortable to admit that they are taking a chance, and many still prefer to believe that they are playing chess, not poker.The subject discussed in this text is __________.
| A．the process of reaching decisions |
| B．the difference between poker and chess. |
| C．the secret of making good business plans |
| D．the value of information in winning games |
An important factor in a game of imperfect information is __________.
| A．rules | B．luck | C．time | D．ideas |
Which of the following can be used in place of “Quite the reverse ” in Paragraph 3 ?
| A．Quite right. | B．True enough. |
| C．Most unlikely. | D．Just the opposite. |
In the writer’s opinion, when making business decisions one should _________.
| A．put perfect information before imperfect information |
| B．accept the existence of unknown factors |
| C．regard business as a game of chess |
| D．mix known and unknown factors |
See a cellphone cover that you like on Taobao? Forget about placing an order, paying the bill online and waiting for days for it to be delivered to you. In the near future, you'll be able to get it in minutes just by hitting “print” on your computer.
You might find it hard to believe that you could actually “print” an object like you would a picture. But it is not that hard to understand how it would work. Just as a traditional printer sprays ink onto paper line by line, modern 3D printers spread material onto a surface layer by layer, from the bottom to the top, gradually building up a shape.
Instead of ink, the materials the 3D printer uses are mainly plastic, resin(树脂) and certain metals. The thinner each layer is—from a millimetre to less than the width of a hair—the smoother and finer the object will be.
This may sound like a completely new technology, but the truth is that 3D printing has been around since the late 1980s. Back then, it was barely affordable for most people, so few knew about it.
Last year, though, saw a big change in the 3D printing industry—printers became much cheaper. For example, 10 years ago a desktop 3D printer might have cost ￡20，000, while now they cost only about ￡1，000, according to the BBC.
Taken out of the factory and introduced to more diverse and common uses, 3D printing can create just about anything you can think of—flutes , bikinis, jewelry, aircraft parts and even human organs. In fact, scientists from Cornell University in New York have just made an artificial ear using a 3D printer, according to Science Daily. The fake ear looks and acts exactly like a natural one.
However, as 3D printing becomes more common, it may bring about certain problems—such as piracy. “Once you can download a coffee maker, or print out a new set of kitchen utensils (餐具) on your personal 3D printer, who will visit a retail store again？” an expert in 3D printing told Forbes News. Even more frightening, what if anyone in the world could use a 3D printer to print out a fully functioning gun?
According to the article, in the future, the 3D printing technology will _______.
| A．enable people to make better purchases online |
| B．change the way we make many products |
| C．be applied as widely in our daily life as computers |
| D．shorten the time it takes for people to get what they buy online |
What happened in the 3D printing industry last year?
| A．The 3D printing technology was taken out of the factory. |
| B．The 3D printing technology began to be used in various fields. |
| C．The 3D printer was used for medical treatment for the first time. |
| D．The 3D printer became more affordable for consumers. |
What is the best title of the passage?
| A．Great Demand for 3D Printers | B．Technology in the Future |
| C．Online Shopping Disappearing | D．Printing out Everything |
How is the last paragraph developed?
| A．By giving examples. |
| B．By making comparisons. |
| C．By analyzing the cause and effect. |
| D．By presenting research findings. |
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