Spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly boost happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia found.
Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were measurably happier when they spent money on others even if they thought spending the money on themselves would make them happier.
“We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn,” said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. They asked their 600 volunteers first to rate their general happiness, report their annual income and detail their monthly spending including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity.
“No matter how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not,” Dunn said in a statement.
Dunn’s team also surveyed 16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing bonus of between $3,000 and $8,000. “Employees who devoted more of their bonus to prosocial spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself,” they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.
They gave their volunteers $5 or $20 and half got clear instructions on how to spend it. Those who spent the money on someone or something else reported feeling happier about it.
“These findings suggest that very minor changes in spending allocations-as little as $5 may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day,” Dunn said. What is the general idea of the passage?
| A．The more you earn, the greater happiness you will get. |
| B．Spending more money on yourself will make you happier. |
| C．Money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it on someone else. |
| D．You can spend only $5 a day on someone else to get happiness. |
The underlined work “boost” in the first paragraph probably means .
| A．help to find | B．help to increase | C．help to bring | D．help to get |
Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．Those who spend more money on others can get much more bonus. |
| B．People usually think spending money on themselves will make them happier. |
| C．Very small changes in spending your money may be enough to gain happiness. |
| D．Researchers think that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn. |
Dunn is .
| A．a reporter in a journal | B．a volunteer in the experiment |
| C．an employee in a company | D．a psychologist at a university |
It can be inferred from the 6th paragraph that .
| A．the volunteers not given $5 or $20 spent their own money on themselves |
| B．those who spent the money on someone or something else felt happier about it |
| C．the volunteers were given $5 or $20 as a reward for the experiment |
| D．half of the volunteers could spend the money as they liked |
A ground-based system that uses much stronger signals than GPS can find your location in cities and indoors. It is a new positioning system that could compete with GPS to make sure you never lose your directions again.
Instead of satellites, Locata uses ground-based equipment to launch a radio signal over a localized area that is a million times stronger on arrival than GPS. It can work indoors as well as outdoors, and the makers claim the receivers can be shrunk to fit inside a regular cell phone. Even the US military, which invented GPS technology, signed a contract last month agreeing to a large-scale test of Locata at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
“This is one of the most important technology developments for the future of the positioning industry,” says Nunzio Gambale, CEO and co-founder of the firm Locata, based in Griffith, Australia.
As for the Locata’s accuracy, Christopher Morin of the US Air Force tested it recently at White Sands, and it worked to within 18 centimeters along any axis(轴). Morin says it should be possible to get the resolution down to 5 centimeters.
Admittedly, the tests were performed in an open desert where GPS also works beautifully, but its signals are weak— like a car headlight from 20,000 kilometers away— and easily blocked by solid objects. “Locata’s signal is far stronger, though not guaranteed to work in a complex urban environment,” says David Last, consultant to the UK’s General Lighthouse Authorities.
“Locata’s technology will face competition in the race to transform indoor navigation. But it could shine in specific areas,” Gambale says. “Robots with Locata could easily navigate inside buildings without the complex optical systems they need at the moment. And process that handle precise location data could not only guide you around a mall, railway station or airport, but also take you to the exact shelf in a shop for the product you want. The units small and cheap enough for smart phones should be available within five years— a similar path to the one GPS took on its way towards world domination.”The passage is written mainly to .
| A．encourage people to buy the Locata |
| B．tell us the disadvantage of the GPS |
| C．introduce a new positioning system Locata |
| D．tell us that Locata will replace GPS one day |
Which of the following is not true about Locata according to Paragraph 2?
| A．Without the help of the satellites, Locata can tell you where you are. |
| B．The US military has to test it before using it. |
| C．Locata has a better signal than GPS. |
| D．Locata can be fixed into smart phones only. |
Which of the following words can be used to replace the underlined word in Paragraph 4?
| A．accuracy | B．speed |
| C．determination | D．length |
According to the passage, what can we know about Gambale?
| A．He did the experiment at White Sands. |
| B．He is confident in Locata and think highly of it. |
| C．He said that Locata could not work in a complex urban environment. |
| D．He is worried about the competition that Locata faces. |
The World Bank has looked at the distinguishing features of successful school system.
According to the World Bank’s education specialist, Harry Patrinos, this include: improving the quality of teachers and making sure that teachers are highly regarded; providing information to make schools accountable and giving autonomy to schools and head teachers.
This matters not only for individual pupils but also for the well-being of countries, he says, because improving educational performance has a direct impact on improving economic performance.
China’s education performance— at least in cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong— seems to be as spectacular as the country’s fast growing economy.
Certainly both these open and outward-looking cities consider education to be important and are willing to adopt the best educational practices from around the world to ensure success. In Hong Kong, education accounts for more than one-fifth of entire government spending every year.
“Shanghai and Hong Kong are small education systems, with a concentration of ideas, manpower and resources for education,” says Prof Cheng.
Under the banner “First class city, first class education”, Shanghai set about systematically re-equipping classroom, upgrading schools and improving the curriculum in the last decade.
It got rid of the “key schools” system which concentrated resources only on top students and top schools. Instead staff were trained in more interactive teaching methods and computers were brought in.
About 80% of Shanghai school leavers go to university compared to an overall average of 24% in China.
Meanwhile, dynamic Hong Kong was forced into educational improvements as its industries moved to cheaper mainland Chinese areas in the 1990s.Its survival as a service and management hub depends on upgrading knowledge and skills.
In the last decade Hong Kong has concentrated on closing the gap for all students, says a report by McKinsey management consultants.
The report, How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better, rated Hong Kong’s education system among the best in the world.The World Bank’s survey about education mainly concentrates on .
| A．what has made some education systems successful |
| B．China’s education system and competitive exams |
| C．how to relieve Chinese students of their heavy schoolwork |
| D．the relationship between education and economic development |
According to Harry Patrinos, the key to successful school systems is .
| A．to give autonomy to all teachers to educate students freely in class |
| B．to let students attend after-school tutoring and do more exercises |
| C．to improve teachers’ abilities and give schools free performance right |
| D．to make school education directly serve the economy of the country |
We can learn from the text that.
| A．the “key school” system is the key to many schools’ failure |
| B．students in Shanghai and Hong Kong work the hardest |
| C．Hong Kong’s educational performance isn’t as good as Shanghai’s |
| D．Shanghai and Hong Kong’s economic performance will improve |
What is the author’s attitude towards the school systems of Shanghai and Hong Kong?
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. |
| C．Neutral. | D．Critical. |
Next year marks the 150th anniversary of when large numbers of Chinese started working on a huge project in the United States. They help to build America’s first transcontinental railroad between 1863 and 1869, connecting the East Coast with the West.
People know little about the Chinese railroad workers and what happened to them after the project was finished. Stanford University in California wants to learn more about the lives of these men by reaching out to their families.
Bill Yee’s ancestors came from southern China. He said, “My great-great-grandfather came to America during the‘gold rush’days and he returned to China as a wealthy man. And then my great-grandfather came to work on the railroad and died there.”
But that did not stop his grandfather from coming to the US on false papers. He operated a laundry. Bill Yee’s father continued to run the business and has never returned to China.
“Things were pretty bad in some parts of China in the 1860’s. They came to America at all costs in order that they no longer had to bear hunger,” Bill Yee said.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin is helping to direct the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University. She said, “Many of the Chinese workers who came to work on the transcontinental and other railroads returned to China after their work was done and created families there. Some of them settled in America and created new families, but they had families who they left when they came here and they may have descendants in China.”
There is a need to create a record of the object and spoken history from the families of the railroad workers.
“The US could not have become the modern industrial nation without the railroads. And the railroads would not have come together without the work of these Chinese workers,” said Shelley Fisher Fishkin.What do you know about Bill Yee?
A. His family was rich in the 1860’s.
B. His father settled in the USA.
C. He knows little about his ancestors and hopes to know more.
D. His grandfather came to America with his great-grandfather.According to Bill Yee, many Chinese went to America in the 1860’s mainly .
| A．to run their own businesses |
| B．to find their ancestors |
| C．to make a living |
| D．to dig gold |
According to Shelley Fisher Fishkin,.
| A．the descendants of the Chinese railroad workers all live a good life |
| B．they expect to find all the descendants of the Chinese railroad workers |
| C．some Chinese railroad workers hope they can find their descendants in China |
| D．some Chinese railroad workers have descendants both in China and the US |
Why did Stanford University carry out the project?
| A．Because they want to help the Chinese railroad workers’ descendants to get together. |
| B．Because they want to show the importance of America’s first transcontinental railroad. |
| C．Because they want to learn more about how to build a railroad in the past in America. |
| D．Because they want Americans to remember the Chinese railroad workers’ role in US history. |
Alibaba started taking the lead in China by connecting big Chinese manufacturers(制造商) with big buyers across the world. Its business-to-business site, Alibaba.com allowed business to buy almost everything. Alibaba’s advantage wasn’t hard to judge: size. Alibaba is just big, even by Chinese standards. Its market attracts 231 million active buyers, 8 million sellers, 11.3 billion orders a year — and Alibaba is just the middleman. It encourages people to use its markets — not charging small sellers a percentage of the sale.
If you want a quick look into the influence of Alibaba on daily Chinese life, take my experience. I moved to Beijing a year ago and quickly got tired of visiting small stores across the crowded, polluted city of 20 million people in search of new electronics, bathroom furnishings, and anything else my wife wanted. “You’re looking for what exactly? Why not try it? ” my Chinese teacher asked me one day. With that, my wonderful new relationship with Alibaba began.
Alibaba’s original business-to-business model now is second to consumer buying. Chinese retail(零售) buying makes up 80% of Alibaba’s profit, and leading that group is Taobao, with 800 million items(物品) for sale and the most unbelievable selection of things you’ll ever find. TMall.com is Alibaba’s other big site, where you can find brand name goods from Nike and Unilever near the lowest prices.
What I have a hard time explaining to friends and family back in the U.S. is how China has gone beyond traditional shopping — big-box retailers especially —in favor of online purchases on Taobao and a few other sites. In smaller towns than Beijing, where big retailers have not yet traveled, shopping online is shopping, and shopping is Taobao.
I have a list of some of my recent purchases on Taobao for a sense of how wide the marketplace is. Almost everything arrived a day or two after ordering with free shipping. I’m not even a big buyer, because I need friends to help me search the Chinese-language site. When I was searching my purchase history on my Chinese teacher’s iPad, which helps me buy goods, I looked through with great difficulty about 10 of her purchases for every one of mine.Alibaba’s advantage mainly lies in .
| A．its business-to-business service |
| B．its big size |
| C．its not charging small sellers |
| D．its low price |
What can we learn from the underlined sentence in the passage?
| A．Alibaba is of middle size among all the online sites. |
| B．Alibaba will continue to develop. |
| C．Alibaba acts as a bridge between the buyers and sellers. |
| D．Alibaba stands out as the best online site. |
What can be inferred from the passage?
| A．Alibaba’s business-to-business service earns more money than retail. |
| B．Taobao has no obvious advantage over other similar online sites. |
| C．TMall.com provides more profit than Taobao. |
| D．The author’s Chinese teacher is also an online purchase lover. |
What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Shopping online in China is TaoBao. |
| B．Alibaba influences people’s daily purchase in China. |
| C．Shopping online goes beyond traditional shopping. |
| D．How the author purchases online in China. |
Stop wasting your time thinking of reasons for your failures. Instead, realize that the seeds of success were planted within you when you were born. Only you have the power to make those seeds grow.
The seeds, and the power to grow them, are contained in the most awesome machine ever created: the human mind. Success is a choice and not a chance. You were born a winner. You were born rich. You can be a success if only you make the right choice.
You cannot be successful without first developing your self-confidence. Your level of self-confidence is always based on the degree of control that you are able to exercise over yourself, and thus over your life. People with low self-confidence are people who do not believe that they have any power, or responsibility for their lives. They are always victims. They are leaves tossed (摇摆) by the winds of chance blown about with any sudden change in the weather.
You can exercise control over your life only to the degree that you believe you are responsible for everything that happens in your life. Failures think that everything happens by accident and chance. Successful people realize that they are responsible.
Everything happens as a result of something. If we can identify(确定) the cause, we can control the effect. We are responsible for what we choose to think and believe. One generally rises to the level that one expects. We are responsible for setting our expectations. Our success is dependent upon our level of confidence.
In all areas of your life, whether they are financial, physical, or spiritual, you are responsible. Once you recognize this, accept it, and firmly believe it. You are on the road to success.People with low self-confidence are compared to leaves because they .
| A．don’t have the power to face their lives |
| B．are ready to change their minds |
| C．can’t exercise control over themselves |
| D．are easily affected by windy weather |
Losers would think that .
| A．they fail only because of bad luck |
| B．they don’t make efforts to succeed |
| C．success is the result of hard work |
| D．working hard will lead to success |
It can be inferred from the fifth paragraph that .
| A．what we believe in is the result of creative mind |
| B．whether we will succeed depends on our attitudes |
| C．setting our expectations is vital before taking action |
| D．knowing cause and effect is the key to future success |
The last paragraph serves as .
| A．an introduction to another topic |
| B．a comparison between two views |
| C．the proof of the author’s points |
| D．the conclusion of the argument |