Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the best. For example, to absorb heat from the sun to heat water, you need large, flat, black surfaces. One way to do that is to build those surfaces specially, on the roofs of buildings. But why go to all that trouble when cities are full of black surfaces already, in the form of asphalt (柏油) roads?
Ten years ago, this thought came into the mind of Arian de Bondt, a Dutch engineer. He finally persuaded his boss to follow it up. The result is that their building is now heated in winter and cooled in summer by a system that relies on the surface of the road outside.
The heat-collector is a system of connected water pipes. Most of them ran from one side of the street to the other, just under the asphalt road. Some, however, dive deep into the ground.
When the street surface gets hot in summer, water pumped through the pipes picks up this heat and takes it underground through one of the diving pipes. At a depth of 100 metres lies a natural aquifer (蓄水层) into which several heat exchangers (交换器) have been built. The hot water from the street runs through these exchangers, warning the ground-water, before returning to the surface through another pipe. The aquifer is thus used as a heat store.
In winter, the working system is changed slightly. Water is pumped through the heat exchangers to pick up the heat stored during summer. This water goes into the building and is used to warm the place up. After performing that task, it is pumped under the asphalt and its remaining heat keeps the road free of snow and ice.Which of the following is true according to the first two paragraphs?
A.Arian de Bondt got his idea from his boss. |
B.Large, flat, black surfaces need to be built in cities. |
C.The Dutch engineer’s system has been widely used. |
D.Heat can also be collected from asphalt roads. |
For what purpose are the diving pipes used?
A.To absorb heat from the sun. | B.To store heat for future use. |
C.To turn solar energy into heat energy. | D.To carry heat down below the surface. |
From the last paragraph we can learn that __
A.some pipes have to be re-arranged in winter |
B.the system can do more than warming up the building |
C.the exchangers will pick up heat from the street surface |
D.less heat may be collected in winter than in summer |
What is most likely to be discussed in the paragraph that follows?
A.What we shall do if the system goes wrong. |
B.What we shall do if there are no asphalt roads. |
C.How the system cools the building in summer. |
D.How the system collects heat in spring and autumn |
I began to grow up that winter night when my parents and I were returning from my aunt's house, and my mother said that we might soon be leaving for America. We were on the bus then . I was crying, and some people on the bus were turning around to look at me. I remember that I could not bear the thought of never hearing again the radio program for school children to which I listened every morning.
I do not remember myself crying for this reason again. In fact, I think I cried very little when I was saying goodbye to my friends and relatives. When we were leaving I thought about all the places I was going to see-the strange and magical places I had known only from books and pictures. The country I was leaving never to come back was hardly in my head then.
The four years that followed taught me the importance of optimism, but the idea did not come to me at once. For the first two years in New York I was really lost-having to study in three schools as a result of family moves. I did not quite know what I was or what I should be. Mother remarried, and things became even more complex for me. Some time passed before my stepfather and I got used to each other. I was often sad, and saw no end to "the hard times".
My responsibilities in the family increased a lot since I knew English better than everyone else at home. I wrote letters, filled out forms, translated at interviews with Immigration officers, took my grandparents to the doctor and translated there, and even discussed telephone bills with company representatives.
From my experiences I have learned one important rule: almost all common troubles eventually go away! Something good is certain to happen in the end when you do not give up , and just wait a little! I believe that my life will turn out all right, even though it will not be that easy.What can we learn about the author from paragraph 4?
A.She worked as a translator. |
B.She attended a lot of job interviews. |
C.She paid telephone bills for her family. |
D.She helped her family with her English. |
The author believes that _________________ .
A.her future will be free from troubles |
B.it is difficult to learn to become patient |
C.there are more good things than bad things |
D.good things will happen if one keeps trying |
What is the best title of the passage?
A, how I turn to be optimisticB. I am leaving for America
C. my life in AmericaD. the importance of optimism
下面文章中有5处(第61~65题)需要添加小标题,请从以下选项中选出符合各段意思的小标题,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑,选项中一项为多余选项.
A.Learn Everyday |
B.Agree to Disagree |
C.Respect Each Other |
D.Arrange Some Time to Go Out |
E.Develop Healthy Relationships
F.Learn to Listen and Speak
Healthy Relationship Tips
Healthy relationships are effortless, if both the people involved take equal effort to maintain it. Here are a few healthy relationship tips to help you build the dream of your life.
61. ________________
Communication is an art of putting your thoughts into words, so that they are exactly understood by the opposite person. Communication does not mean going on talking unnecessarily. This is the first mistake that couples make. One person in the relationship assumes the role of talker and the other becomes the listener. Their roles remain so forever. The talker forgets to listen and the listener becomes used to listening and not reacting. If your partner takes time to open up, help them out by asking questions. So hear them out and give proper reactions. You will obtain the benefits of a healthy relationship through increased confidence in both of you to open up and hear things out.
62. ________________
Regular conversations take the form of heated arguments amongst many couples. Understand that not every statement needs a reaction. Maybe a certain reaction may lead to an argument with your partner. Just agree with whatever it is and there will be no harm done. Try and reach a mutual (相互的) agreement. If that’s not possible leave the topic for later. If you give it time, maybe both of you will be able to think about it rationally.
63. ________________
Every single day is a blessing. Each moment with your partner is a moment to learn something new and discover the finer nuances (细微差别) of your relationships. Each one of us keep changing everyday, the circumstances around us change everyday and with that our attitude also needs to change. The same applies when you are living with a person. Learning everyday and taking everyday as a challenge will help you perfect healthy relationship tips.
64. ________________
This tip is especially meant for couples with children to maintain healthy relationships. After a certain period, couples complain about romance being lost. To keep your relationship healthy, take some time out from your day-to-day routines to spend some quality time with your partner. This can be done as dinners, indulging in outdoor activities or just hanging out at a coffee shop like old times.
65. ________________
Respect has to be earned. It can only be earned only if you learn to respect. Often, one of the partners plays the role of a dictator to give orders, while the other simply follows. Both sides involved are equally responsible for this mistake. Learn to respect each other and understand that both of you are equally responsible for the relationship.
Creating a healthy relationship takes equal effort from both sides. Sharing, caring, being apologetic, forgiving and having realistic expectations are some of the important ingredients to the recipe of a healthy relationship.
Poet Dean Young has dealt with impermanence( 无常)a lot in his career, but it's a particularly strong theme in Young's latest collection, Fall Higher.The new collection was published in April, just days after the poet received a life-saving heart transplant (移植) after about a decade of living with a weakening heart condition.
Young, whose work is often frank and rich with twisted humor, tells NPR's Renee Montaigne that as he recovers from operation, he's also slowly returning to his everyday writing habits.
"I'm getting back to it," Young says."Not with the sort of concentration and sort of flame that I look forward to in the future, but I am blackening some pages."
And on those blackened pages you'll find poems like " How Grasp Green," which carries themes of springtime and rebirth.It's one of the first poems Young has written since his transplant.
It's easy to spot clues (线索) to Young's awful health situation in the lines of his poetry. Fall Higher's "Vintage" opens with, "Because I will die soon, I fall asleep, during the lecture on the ongoing emergency." And the poem "-The Rhythms Pronounce Themselves Then Vanish—published in The /Vew Barker in February —opens with the CT scan that revealed Young's heart condition.
Young says "Rhythms" was written about the beginning of his illness.
"I had been having a lot of physical pain so that I could hardly walk a block.I got sent to a gastroenterologist and he did a series of tests, and then the tests came back to me and it was all heart related," he says." And the outlook wasn't good.
Hearts tend to come up a lot in poetry, and that's especially true of Young's work, which has clearly been influenced by the troubles of his own heart,
"A lot of times, it's not just a metaphor (比喻) ," Young says."For me, it's an actual concern because I've been living with this disease for over 10 years.My father died of heart problems when he was 49, so it's been a sort of shadowy concern for me my whole life.
But Young's poems also deal with more abstract matters of the heart.He wrote Fall Higher's, "Late Valentine" for his wife."We've been married since late November and most of it has been spent in the hospital," Young says of his marriage to poet Laurie Saurborn Young, who says " 'Late Valentine' is very sweet.
Today, Young says, his friends can't help but comment on how pink his cheeks have become—the result of a new heart and better circulation (循环).But Young wrote the poems of Fall Higher before the transplant, at a time when, at its weakest point, his old heart was pumping at 8 percent of what it should have been.
He was staring death in the face—but he was still able to look at his life and see art
in it.
Young's work also touches on themes of randomness and fate —two factors that contributed to him getting a second chance in the form of a new heart from a 22-year-old student.
"Everything in life is molecules (分子) bouncing against molecules," Young says, and having a successful transplant is no different." Somebody had to die; it had to be a fit; my blood and his blood had to not have an argument; the heart had to be transported; I had to get it."
There were, in short, an amazing number of variables (变量) that led to Young
being here today.
"I just feel enormous gratitude," he says of his donor (捐献者)."He gave me a heart so I'm still alive-"I'm sure I'm going to think about this person for the rest of my life."The poetry collection Fall Higher _______.
A.was published in February |
B.refers darkness as its main theme |
C.is Young's latest collection of poetry |
D.was written after Young's heart transplant |
We can learn from the text that Young _______.
A.was born with heart disease |
B.received a heart transplant in February |
C.married a female poet after he wrote "Late Valentine" |
D.wrote a poem for his wife in his collection |
What does the writer try to say in Paragraph 3?
A.The writer expected some bright future, but he was disappointed. |
B.The writer had less enthusiasm than before, but he still kept on writing. |
C.The writer devoted more time to poems, so he grasped a good chance. |
D.The writer wrote poems with less enthusiasm, so he quitted for a while. |
Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A."How Grasp Green" is the first poem in Fall Higher. |
B.Young began all his poems with his illness. |
C.Young's father died when Young was 49 years old. |
D.Young's health situation is mentioned in his poetry. |
What is the text mainly about?
A.Dean Young and his latest collection. |
B.Dean Young and his heart problems. |
C.The meaning of Fall Higher. |
D.An analysis of Dean Young's poems. |
The ability to memorize things seems to be a vanishing (消失的) technique.So what can we do to bring out brain cells back into action? A newly published book on memory, Moomvalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, by American journalist Joshua Foer, makes a telling point, one that is an analysis of the importance of memorising events and stories in human history; the decline of its role in modem life; and the techniques that we need to adopt to restore the art of remembering.
As For points out, we no longer need to remember telephone numbers.Our mobile phones do that for us.We don't recall addresses either.We send emails from computers that store electronic addresses.Nor do we bother to remember multiplication tables (乘法表) .Pocket calculators do the job of multiplying quite nicely.Museums, photographs, the digital media and books also act as storehouses for memories that once we had to keep in mind.
As a result, we no longer remember long poems or folk stories by heart, feats (技艺) of memory that were once the cornerstones of most people's lives.Indeed, society has changed so much that we no longer know what techniques we should employ to remember such lengthy works.We are, quite simply, forgetting how to remember.
And let's face it, there is nothing sadder than someone who has lost their mobile phone and who finds they cannot even phone home or call their parents or partners because they cannot remember a single telephone number.That is a sad example of loss of personal independence.So, yes, there is a need for us to he able to remember certain things in life.
Therefore, Foer's book outlines the methods that need to be mastered in order to promote our memories and regain the ability to recall long strings of names, numbers or faces.In the process, he adds, we will become more aware of the world about us.
The trick, Foer says, is to adopt a process known as " elaborative encoding", which involves transforming information, such as a shopping list, into a series of "absorbing visual images".If you want to remember a list of household objects—potatoes, cottage cheese, sugar and other items, then visualise them in an unforgettable manner, he says.Start by creating an image of a large jar of potatoes standing in the garden.Next to it, imagine a giant tub of cottage cheese—the size of an outdoor pool—and then picture Lady Gaga swimming in it.And so on.Each image should be as fantastic and memorable as possible.
Using methods like this, it becomes possible to achieve great feats of memory quite easily, Foer says.It certainly seems to have worked for him: he won the annual US Memory Championships after learning how to memorize 120 random digits in five minutes; the first and last names of 156 strangers in 15 minutes; and a deck of cards in under two minutes."What I had really trained my brain to do, as much as to memorise, was to be more mindful and to pay attention to the world around," he says.
These techniques employed by Foer to master his memory were developed by Ed Cooke—a British writer and a world memory championship grandmaster.He acted as Foer's trainer during preparations for the book and helped him achieve his championship performances." Memory techniques do just one thing: they make information more meaningful to the mind, making the things we try to learn unforgettably bright and amusing," said Cooke.Which of the following is conveyed in this article?
A.People become more independent with modern equipment. |
B.The memory's role in life is declining in modem society. |
C.Memory techniques can make information less meaningful. |
D.Ed Cooke is the first one who benefited from Foer's techniques. |
According to Joshua Foer, people no longer memorize information today because________.
A.museums can do everything for them. |
B.they no longer have the ability to memorize things. |
C.they have things that can act as storehouses for memories. |
D.it is not necessary to memorize anything in modem life. |
One method of memorizing things mentioned in the passage is to ________.
A.link things to famous pop stars |
B.find the connection between different things |
C.form vivid, unforgettable images of certain things |
D.use advanced digital imaging technology to help |
The underlined word "visualise" in the last paragraph most probably means "_______".
A.imagine | B.undertake | C.remark | D.indicate |
This passage can be sorted as ________.
A.a news report | B.an advertisement |
C.a scientific discovery | D.a book review |
Kalle Lasn was in a supermarket parking lot one afternoon when he had an experience that changed his life.In order to shop at the store, he needed to put money into the shopping cart to use it.Annoyed that he had to "pay to shop," Lasn jammed the coin into the cart so that it wouldn't work.It was an act of rebellion—the first of many—for Lasn.
Born in Estonia, Kalle Lasn moved to Australia as a young man and then later to Japan, where he founded a marketing research firm in Tokyo.Eventually, Lasn moved to Canada and for several years produced documentaries (纪录片) for public television.In the late 1980s, Lasn made an advertisement that spoke out against the logging industry and the deforestation going on in the Pacific Northwest.When he tried to show his ad on TV, though, no station in this area would give him airtime.In response, Lasn and a colleague founded Adbusters Media Foundation, a company for the "Human right to communicate.
Adbusters produces magazine, newspaper, and TV ads with a social message.Many use humor and irony to make their points: In one, for example, a man chain smokes a brand of cigarettes called "Hope".In another, a child is dressed in an outfit used in fast-food ads.Next to the child is a note from its mother telling the restaurant to leave her child alone.
Adbusters also has a magazine and a web site, the Culture Jammers Network, whose members include students, artists, and activists as well as educators and businesspeople interested in social change.Many of these "culture jammers" are working to raise awareness about different social issues by hosting events like "Buy Nothing Day" , " No Car Day" and "TV Turnoff Week" .Lasn and his partners hope these events will encourage people to think about questions such as;
·What kinds of things are we being encouraged to buy by the media?
·Should cars be our primary means of transportation?
·How are television and radio being used now? How could we be using them?
Some culture jammers are using other methods to challenge how people think.Some pretend to be shoppers.They move items in stores from one shelf to another making it difficult for people to find things easily.Other culture jammers break into large company well sites and jam them so that they become unusable.The goal in both cases ia to prevent "Business as usual" and to gel people to ask themselves questions such as "Why am I shopping here?" or "Why should I buy this product?"
Lasn and members of the Culture Jammers Network want to make people aware of social issues, but they also believe it's important to think of solutions, too."A lot of people tell you everything that's wrong but they never say much about how to fix these problems," says Lasn."But there is plenty we can do.If you start despairing, you have lost everything."
Though many TV stations still won't show Adbusters' " uncommercials" , some cable TV stations have started to.People all over the world have joined the Culture Jammers Network and are doing their part to promote social change.What does the underlined word "rebellion" in Paragraph 1 most probably mean?
A.argument | B.violence |
C.opposition | D.protection |
What's the main point of the ad for "Hope" cigarettes?
A.Smoking can help to remove your worries and make you hopeful. |
B.Hopefully, the bad taste of the cigarette can help you to quit smoking. |
C.You are hopeless at abandoning the habit of smoking. |
D.Smoking can ruin you if you are hopelessly addicted to it. |
Some culture jammers break into websites in order to ________.
A.ask people to be thoughtful consumers. |
B.help make the companies better known. |
C.encourage people to think less and buy less |
D.challenge how people react to sudden changes |
It can be inferred from the passage ________.
A.Adbusters Media Foundation was founded to fight against deforestation |
B.More and more people will know about and even become culture jammers |
C.The Culture Jammers Network is made up of annoying trouble makers |
D.People can see some of Adbusters ads on TV stations |
Which of the following best describes what Lasn has done?
A.One step at a time. |
B.We can and must change the world. |
C.Accept what you can't change. |
D.Everyone deserves a second chance. |