DEARAUNTYfMyhusband’snieceis13-优题课

C
The choice between having a career or making time for love is an extremely personal and individual decision. There are many factors which can affect your choice.
Careers and love fulfill us in different but important ways. Having a solid career gives us a sense of accomplishment and self worth. Then there are those who measure their success in terms of having a pleasant and rewarding home life.
So what happens if you cannot or do not wish to make room in your life for both? Consider these factors when pondering which is more important for you.
1. Your Career May be More Important When You are Young
Many people these days focus on careers first and family later. The reasoning is that, while you are young and unencumbered(无负担的), you have the time and energy to fully devote yourself to a career. If you have lofty career ambitions while you are young, it may indeed be the time to start making progress towards those goals.
Once you get married and begin to build a family, much of your time and energy–by necessity–becomes devoted to your family. This is as it should be. You should not start a family unless you are willing to devote time and attention to your loved ones.
2. Falling in Love can be Better When You are Older
More and more people these days are choosing to wait when it comes to making decisions about family. It is not unusual for people to delay marriage until their late 30’s or even their early 40’s. Delaying family decisions allows you to be better prepared for those obligations, and creates a better likelihood that you are in touch with your most important goals and values. You have had the opportunity to completely grow up, greatly reducing the chances of feeling like you are “missing out.” You have had the chance to purge the foolishness of youth from your system and are now confident with the wisdom of maturity.
3. Choosing Both
If you can find a work life balance that allows you to experience the joys of love and maintain a successful career, you will have a truly happy and rewarding life. A loving family at home can help you celebrate all of your successes, and bolster your confidence through your failures. There are many people out there reaping the tremendous rewards that come with including love and work in their lives, and finding the balance that allows for both.
The truly healthy and well balanced person will recognize the benefits of having both. He or she will take steps to achieve the work life balance necessary to assure the continuation of career growth while nurturing and maintaining the health of personal relationships. It is only when we can maintain this delicate balance that we are living life to its greatest potential.
What can we learn from the first two paragraphs________?

A．Choosing to have a career or start a family life is a personal business

B．Nothing can determine people’s choice

C．Careers and love fulfill people in the same way

D．Having a solid career gives us a pleasant home life

Why is career more important when people are young_________?

A．Because family life is not important

B．Because they can devote time and energy to their careers

C．Because they don’t want to devote time and attention to their loved ones

D．Because they have no time for building a family

Which is NOT the reason why people choose to wait when it comes to building a family_________.

A．To be better prepared for obligations

B．To have the opportunity to completely grow up

C．To rid of the foolishness of youth

D．They don’t want to build a family

From the last paragraph, we can infer that_________.

A．People take steps to achieve the work life balance

B．the continuation of career growth has nothing to do with personal relationships

C．Balancing career and family is of great benefit

D．People can live life to its greatest potential without maintaining the balance

What’s the main idea of the passage________?

A．How to achieve a balance between career and family

B．How to have a successful career

C．Career is more important than family

D．People can’t balance their career and family

B
Having a bit of a temper tantrum(发脾气), whether at home or in the classroom, is as harmful as you can get and only serves to discourage your teenagers.
What they really need at this stage in their lives are words that build them up according to their needs that it may benefit them-that is, words of encouragement, affirmation(肯定) and a good deal of praise. The benefits to them and us as parents and teachers are quite amazing-harmony, peace and love.
When I left my last school where I had been a casual(代课老师) for eight years, I received "thank you" notes from the students. I think these notes illustrate what teenagers want and need from their parents and teachers.
Some of the notes mention kindness, patience, thoughtfulness, encouragement and fun. Teenagers value these qualities and what I found was that the more I relaxed and enjoyed their company, the less I had to discipline them.
Below I've included a few excerpts from the notes to let the kids speak for themselves. These are teenagers speaking from the heart and show what, according to teenagers, they need and value.
Each note began, "Thank you for..."
• making each student in the school happy
• putting up with us every time you get us (i.e. having patience)
• Always giving every student a chance and treating everyone like an adult giving lots
of merits and making every lesson fun and enjoyable
• Being very kind & for giving me lots of (merit) stickers
• You make working be fun
• Being a patient and thoughtful teacher
Patience is needed as well as kindness, thoughtfulness, a sense of humor and fun and the ability to listen more than talk.
When we praise and value our teenagers, the results are nothing short of miraculous.
What’s the result of having a temper tantrum________?

A．hurting yourself and your teenagers

B．being harmful to yourself only

C．being not good for teenagers

D．having no negative influence

Which is NOT needed by teenagers________?

A．words of encouragement

B．words of affirmation

C．words of praise

D．words of criticism

What did the author receive when he left his last school________?

A．"thank you" notes

B．students’ criticism

C．praise from the school

D．parents’ encouragement

Why does the author mention the “Thank you” notes________?

A．Because he wants to show himself off

B．Because he wants to tell parents and other teachers what teenagers really need

C．Because he wants to show that his students are all kind and polite

D．Because he doesn’t want to leave that school

From the passage, we can learn that the author is __________.

A．impatient, careful and humour

B．patient, thoughtful and strict

C．patient, kind and humour

D．impatient, kind and stubborn

A
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis(ALS) （肌萎缩性侧索硬化症） is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary(随意的) muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.
A-myo-trophic comes from the Greek language. "A" means no or negative. "Myo" refers to muscle, and "Trophic" means nourishment--"No muscle nourishment." When a muscle has no nourishment, it "atrophies" or wastes away. "Lateral" identifies the areas in a person's spinal cord where portions of the nerve cells that signal and control the muscles are located. As this area degenerates it leads to scarring or hardening ("sclerosis") in the region.
As motor neurons degenerate, they can no longer send impulses to the muscle fibers that normally result in muscle movement. Early symptoms of ALS often include increasing muscle weakness, especially involving the arms and legs, speech, swallowing or breathing. When muscles no longer receive the messages from the motor neurons that they require to function, the muscles begin to atrophy (become smaller). Limbs begin to look "thinner" as muscle tissue atrophies.
What Types of Nerves Make Your Body Work Properly?
The body has many kinds of nerves. There are those involved in the process of thinking, memory, and of detecting sensations (such as hot/cold, sharp/dull), and others for vision, hearing, and other bodily functions. The nerves that are affected when you have ALS are the motor neurons that provide voluntary movements and muscle power. Examples of voluntary movements are your making the effort to reach for the phone or step off a curb; these actions are controlled by the muscles in the arms and legs.
The heart and the digestive system are also made of muscle but a different kind, and their movements are not under voluntary control. When your heart beats or a meal is digested, it all happens automatically. Therefore, the heart and digestive system are not involved in ALS. Breathing also may seem to be involuntary. Remember, though, while you cannot stop your heart, you can hold your breath-so be aware that ALS may eventually have an impact on breathing.
Although the cause of ALS is not completely understood, the recent years have brought a wealth of new scientific understanding regarding the physiology of this disease.
While there is not a cure or treatment today that halts or reverses ALS, there is one FDA approved drug, riluzole, that modestly slows the progression of ALS as well as several other drugs in clinical trials that hold promise.
Importantly, there are significant devices and therapies that can manage the symptoms of ALS that help people maintain as much independence as possible and prolong survival. It is important to remember that ALS is a quite variable disease; no two people will have the same journey or experiences. There are medically documented cases of people in whom ALS ‘burns out,’ stops progressing or progresses at a very slow rate.
What does the underlined word “their” in Paragraph 1 refer to___________?

A．ALS patients	B．nerve cells
C．motor neurons	D．muscle action

What’s the main idea of Paragraph 2___________?

A．introduce the meaning of ALS

B．why does a muscle have no nourishment

C．where portions of the nerve cells are located

D．what leads to scarring or hardening

Which is NOT involved in the early symptoms of ALS__________?

A．arms

B．speech

C．breathing

D．heart

What can we learn from the passage__________?

A．As motor neurons degenerate, they can no longer send impulses to the muscle fibers.

B．If muscles can’t receive the messages sent by motor neurons, limbs begin to look "thinner".

C．The heart and the digestive system are also affected by ALS.

D．the cause of ALS has been completely understood.

The passage most probably comes from____________.

A．Health Magazine	B．News report
C．Travel Guide	D．English textbook

D
A developer edition of Sony’s augmented reality smart glasses will go on sale in ten countries next month, the tech giant has announced.
Pre-orders for the SmartEyeglass, costing $840 (£620), are now being taken in the UK and Germany, with Japan and the US to follow shortly. The black-framed glasses are compatible (兼容的) with recent Android operating systems. Last month Google announced that it was withdrawing its smart glasses for redevelopment. Sony’s initial model will come with a software development kit to encourage people to design apps for it, the company said.
The glasses, which weigh 77g, contain an accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, image and brightness sensors, 3-megapixel camera and a microphone. They also come with a controller, designed to be attached to clothing, which contains a speaker, touch sensor and the device’s battery. Text is displayed in front of the wearer in monochrome green.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook has been open about his dislike of glasses as a wearable device. “We always thought that glasses were not a smart move, from a point of view that people would not really want to wear them,” he told the New Yorker. “They were intrusive (闯入的), instead of pushing technology to the background, as we’ve always believed.”
Stuart Miles, founder of tech site Pocket-lint, said: “I think [Sony is] wasting their time, energy and effort.”
“Google Glass obviously needed a complete rethink... I can’t see how something thick-rimmed and more invasive-looking than Google Glass is going to catch on.
“People are keen on wearables like fitness bands and watches, but they care about their faces. Wearing something on your head is a lot stronger than wearing something on your arm,” he added. “The industry keeps pushing it but consumers just don’t want it.”
In which countries people can get the SmartEyeglass first?

A．The US and Japan.	B．The US and the UK.
C．The UK and Japan.	D．Germany and the UK.

The purpose of this passage is to __________.

A．introduce an accelerometer developed by the Google company

B．tell the people that the SmartEyeglass will go on sale

C．people like the glasses very much

D．the SmartEyeglass is less than 840 yuan

What can be inferred from what Stuart Miles said?

A．He supports Sony’s efforts to develop the SmartEyeglass.

B．He cares more about his clothes and face.

C．He dislikes the SmartEyeglass.

D．He really wants to wear them.

Choose the true statements according to the passage.

A．The glasses, which weigh more than 77g.

B．Tim Cook has been open about his dislike of glasses as a wearable device.

C．Last month Google announced that it was withdrawing its smart glasses for development.

D．Sony’s later model will come with a software development kit to encourage people to design apps for it.

C
Penguins can taste only sour and salty food, scientists have discovered. A genetic study suggests the flightless birds lost three of the five basic tastes long ago in evolution.
Taste is critical for survival in most animals, but may not matter in the penguin, which swallows fish whole, say researchers in China and the US.
Many other birds are unable to taste sweet things, but they do have receptors (感受器) for detecting bitter and umami (or meaty) flavours. The discovery was made when researchers decoding penguin genomes found some of the taste genes were missing. A closer look at the DNA of penguins revealed that all species lack functioning genes for the receptors of sweet, umami, and bitter tastes.
“Based on genetic data, penguins are believed to have sour and salty tastes, but have lost sweet, umami, and bitter tastes,” lead researcher Prof Jianzhi Zhang, of the University of Michigan, US, and Wuhan University, China, told the reporter.
The umami taste gives food the strong, savoury (咸味的) flavour associated with meat. Lacking this sense is surprising for a carnivorous (食肉的) animal, but does not matter that much in the penguin, which swallows fish without chewing. “Their behaviour of swallowing food whole, and their tongue structure and function, suggest that penguins need no taste perception,” said Prof Zhang. “Although it is unclear whether these traits (特点) are a cause or a consequence of their major taste loss.” The findings, published in Current Biology journal, were a puzzle, he added.
One clue comes from the bird’s evolution on the frozen ice sheets of Antarctica. Sending signals from sweet, umami, and bitter (but not sour or salty) taste receptors to the brain does not work at very low temperatures. This may have led to the penguin gradually losing its sense of taste, say the researchers.
Intriguingly(有趣的是), the sweet taste is missing in almost all birds. The hummingbird, which feeds on sweet nectar, is an exception.
What’s the best title of the passage?

A．Penguins lost ability to taste fish

B．The life of penguins

C．The findings of researchers in China and USA

D．Penguins living on Antarctica

Which of the following animals can taste sweet flavour according to the passage?

A．The penguin.	B．The hummingbird.
C．The polar bear.	D．The fish.

What was the discovery made by the researchers when decoding penguin genomes?

A．Some of the taste genes were missing.

B．Penguins are believed to have sweet and salty tastes.

C．The bird’s evolution on the frozen ice sheets of Antarctica.

D．Taste is critical for survival in most animals.

Which of the following statements is not true according to the passage?

A．Penguins swallow fish without chewing.

B．The findings were published in Current Biology journal.

C．Sending signals from sweet, umami, and bitter taste receptors to the brain does not work at very low temperatures.

D．Prof Jianzhi Zhang was the lead researcher of a university in UK, and Wuhan University, China.

A．is difficult to deal with	B．enjoys making friends
C．is easy to get along with	D．gets easily influenced