In 2010, 700 million people huddled together in front of their television sets to watch the World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain. Even more are expected to tune in to this year's contest, which kicks off on June 12th with a match between Brazil and Croatia in Sao Paulo. Brazil are the runaway favourites to win the tournament, with bookmakers offering odds of less than three to one on the home team winning the championship．Many experts agree that the country will benefit from a strong home advantage, as local crowds roar on the Seleqao．How much does playing on home turf fealty affect a team's performance?
Sports scientists have come up with all sorts of theories to explain why playing at home helps. In 2007 a study investigated the influence of crowd noise on referees in the English football Premier League. It showed that some were more likely to flash yellow cards and award penalties against touring players than the hosts, because they relied on the split-second rise in the home crowd's roar as a reminder to determine if a tackle deserved punishment. In the most recent season of the Spanish football Riga, two-thirds of all penalty kicks were awarded to the home team.
In the latest English football season, the top 20 clubs enjoyed a home success rate of 50%, while their victory rate on the road was 32%. In 12 of the past 19 World Cups the host nation has made it to the semi-finals and six times it has gone on to win. The effect can be seen in other sports too． A Before the start of the London Olympics in 2012, UK Sport, a government agency, studied the results of more than 100 big tournaments across 14 Olympic sports. B As it turned out, Britain bettered its 2008 performance by winning 18 more medals（10 of them gold), an improvement of 38% . C At the Beijing games, China won 59% more medals than it had done at the 2004 Athens games. D Russia topped the medal table in Sochi：in the previous winter Olympics it had come sixth．
Given these numbers, it is not surprising that teams have poured money into maximizing their home advantage. For example, Brazil has spent a considerable fortune on, if somewhat leisurely, a programme of stadium construction and renovation. In all its home advantage is worth the equivalent of a 0.6-goal headstart in every match, according to Goldman Sachs, an investment bank. Like most others, Goldman predicts that Brazil will triumph this year. Other countries' fans will have to hope for a miracle-and perhaps bid to stage the Cup on their own home turf next time.What does "some" in Paragraph 2 refer to?
| A．Crowd noises. | B．Referees. |
| C．Touring players. | D．Host players. |
Put the following sentence in the most appropriate place marked A, B, C, or D It predicted that the London home advantage would boost Britain's medal haul by as much as 25％．
What can be inferred from the passage?
| A．Fans may raise their noise levels to cheer their teams up. |
| B．Brazil will win because of its strong ability. |
| C．It is a waste of time and effort for countries to hold sports games. |
| D．The visiting teams have a good chance of winning. |
【2015·新课标全国II】B
Your house may have an effect on your figure. Experts say the way you design your home could play a role in whether you pack on the pounds or keep them off. you can make your environment work for you instead of against you. Here are some ways to turn your home into part of your diet plan.
Open the curtains and turn up the lights. Dark environments are more likely to encourage overeating, for people are often less self-conscious(难为情) when they’re in poorly lit places – and so more likely to eat lots of food. If your home doesn’t have enough window light, get more lamps and flood the place with brightness.
Mind the colors. Research suggests warm colors fuel our appetites. In one study, people who ate meals in a blue room consumed 33 percent less than those in a yellow or red room. Warm colors like yellow make food appear more appetizing, while cold colors make us less hungry. So when it’s time to repaint, go blue.
Don’t forget the clock – or the radio. People who eat slowly tend to consume about 70 fewer calories(卡路里) per meal than those who rush through their meals. Begin keeping track of the time, and try to make dinner last at 30 minutes. And while you’re at it, actually sit down to eat. If you need some help slowing down, turning on relaxing music. It makes you less likely to rush through a meal.
Downsize the dishes. Big serving bowls and plants can easily makes us fat. We eat about 22 percent more when using a 12-inch plate instead of a 10-inch plate. When we choose a large spoon over a smaller one, total intake(摄入) jumps by 14 percent. And we’ll pour about 30 percent more liquid into a short, wide glass than a tall, skinny glass.The text is especially helpful for those who care about ____.
| A．their home comforts |
| B．their body shape |
| C．house buying |
| D．healthy diets |
A home environment in blue can help people ____.
| A．digest food better |
| B．reduce food intake |
| C．burn more calories |
| D．regain their appetites |
What are people advised to do at mealtimes?
| A．Eat quickly. |
| B．Play fast music |
| C．Use smaller spoons |
| D．Turn down the lights |
What can be a suitable title for the text?
| A．Is Your House Making You Fat? |
| B．Ways of Serving Dinner |
| C．Effects of Self-Consciousness |
| D．Is Your Home Environment Relaxing? |
【2015·湖南】B
In its early history, Chicago had floods frequently, especially in the spring, making the streets so muddy that people, horses, and carts got stuck. An old joke that was popular at the time went something like this: A man is stuck up to his waist in a muddy Chicago street. Asked if he needs help, he replies, "No, thanks. I've got a good horse under me."
The city planner decided to build an underground drainage (排水) system, but there simply wasn't enough difference between the height of the ground level and the water level. The only two options were to lower the Chicago River or raise the city.
An engineer named Ellis Chesbrough convinced me the city that it had no choice but to build the pipes above ground and then cover them with dirt. This raised the level of the city's streets by as much as 12 feet.
This of course created a new problem: dirt practically buried the first floors of every building in Chicago. Building owners were faced with a choice: either change the first floors of their buildings into basements, and the second stories into main floors, or hoist the entire buildings to meet the new street level. Small wood-frame buildings could be lifted fairly easily. But what about large, heavy structures like Tremont Hotel, which was a six-story brick building?
That's where George Pullman came in. He had developed some house-moving skills successfully. To lift a big structure like the Tremont Hotel, Pullman would place thousands of jackscrews (螺旋千斤顶) beneath the building's foundation. One man was assigned to operate each section of roughly 10 jackscrews. At Pullman's signal each man turned his jackscrew the same amount at the same time, thereby raising the building slowly and evenly. Astonishingly, the Tremont Hotel stay open during the entire operation, and many of its guests didn't even notice anything was happening. Some people like to say that every problem has a solution. But in Chicago's early history, every engineering solution seemed to create a new problem. Now that Chicago's waste water was draining efficiently into the Chicago River, the city's next step was to clean the polluted river.The author mentions the joke to show ______.
| A．horses were fairly useful in Chicago |
| B．Chicago's streets were extremely muddy |
| C．Chicago was very dangerous in the spring |
| D．the Chicago people were particularly humorous |
The city planners were convinced by Ellis Chesbrough to_______.
| A．get rid of the street dirt |
| B．lower the Chicago River |
| C．fight against heavy floods |
| D．build the pipes above ground |
The underlined word "hoist" in Paragraph 4 means "_______".
| A．change | B．lift |
| C．repair | D．decorate |
What can we conclude about the moving operation of the Tremont Hotel?
| A．It went on smoothly as intended. |
| B．It interrupted the business of the hotel. |
| C．It involved Pullman turning ten jackscrews. |
| D．It separated the building from its foundation. |
The passage is mainly about the early Chicago's ______.
| A．popular life styles and their influences |
| B．environmental disasters and their causes |
| C．engineering problems and their solutions |
| D．successful businessmen and their achievements |
【2015·安徽】C
As Internet users become more dependent on the Internet to store information, are people remember less? If you know your computer will save information, why store it in your own personal memory, your brain? Experts are wondering if the Internet is changing what we remember and how.
In a recent study, Professor Betsy Sparrow conducted some experiments. She and her research team wanted to know the Internet is changing memory. In the first experiment, they gave people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood thatthe computer would save the information. The second group understood that the computer would not save it. Later, the second group remembered the information better. People in the first group knew they could find the information again, so they did not try to remember it.
In another experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember, and told them where to find the information on the Internet. The information was in a specific computer folder (文件夹). Surprisingly, people later remember the folder location (位置) better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather, they remember how to find it. This is called "transactive memory (交互记忆)".
According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memories as a result of the Internet. Instead, computer users are developing stronger transactive memories; that is, people are learning how to organize huge quantities of information so that they are able to access it at a later date. This doesn't mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.The passage begins with two questions to ______.
| A．introduce the main topic |
| B．show the author's altitude |
| C．describe how to use the Interne. |
| D．explain how to store information |
What can we learn about the first experiment?
| A．Sparrow's team typed the information into a computer. |
| B．The two groups remembered the information equally well. |
| C．The first group did not try to remember the formation. |
| D．The second group did not understand the information. |
In transactive memory, people ______.
| A．keep the information in mind |
| B．change the quantity of information |
| C．organize information like a computer |
| D．remember how to find the information |
What is the effect of the Internet according to Sparrow's research?
| A．Weare using memory differently. |
| B．We arebecoming more intelligent. |
| C．We have poorer memories than before. |
| D．We need a better way to access information. |
【2015·浙江】C
If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars，we would go in darkness happily，the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal(夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead，we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling itwith light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences 一 called light pollution 一 whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design，which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky.III-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels 一 and light rhythms — to which many forms of life, including, ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect or life is affected .
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze(霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit nigh, - dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadow on Earth, is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further form the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing, Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet(磁铁). The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being“captured”by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times righter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint including most other creatures ,we do need darkness .Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our making,we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night .In a very real sense light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy arching overhead.
According to the passage, human being .
| A．prefer to live in the darkness |
| B．are used to living in the day light |
| C．were curious about the midnight world |
| D．had to stay at home with the light of the moon |
What does “it”(Paragraph 1) most probably refer to?
| A．The night. | B．The moon |
| C．The sky | D．The planet |
The writer mentions birds and frogs to .
| A．provide examples of animal protection |
| B．show how light pollution affects animals |
| C．compare the living habits of both species |
| D．explain why the number of certain species has declined |
It is implied in the last paragraph that .
| A．light pollution dose harm to the eyesight of animals |
| B．light pollution has destroyed some of the world heritages |
| C．human beings cannot go to the outer space |
| D．human beings should reflect on their position in the universe |
What might be the best title for the passage?
| A．The Magic light. |
| B．The Orange Haze. |
| C．The Disappearing Night. |
| D．The Rhythms of Nature. |
【2015·天津】B
Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become a lot more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.
While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like companions than mere tools. For example, these robots will be able to distinguish when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more appropriately to the user.
The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn’t just deliver general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each individual in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.
Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these spaces.
Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company’s “Oshbot” robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product’s location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.
The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not intended to replace workers, but to work alongside other employees. “We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us,” said Breazeal.How are social robots different from household robots?
| A．They can control their emotions. |
| B．They are more like humans. |
| C．They do the normal housework. |
| D．They respond to users more slowly. |
What can a Jibo robot do according to Paragraph 3?
| A．Communicate with you and perform operations. |
| B．Answer your questions and make requests. |
| C．Take your family pictures and deliver milk. |
| D．Obey your orders and remind you to take pills. |
What can Oshbot work as?
| A．A language teacher. | B．A tour guide. |
| C．A shop assistant. | D．A private nurse. |
We can learn from the last paragraph that social robots will ______.
| A．train employees | B．be our workmates |
| C．improve technologies | D．take the place of workers |
What does the passage mainly present?
| A．A new design idea of household robots. |
| B．Marketing strategies for social robots. |
| C．Information on household robots. |
| D．An introduction to social robots. |
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