According to researchers, money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it on someone else．
Spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly bring you happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found.
Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were measurably（适度地） 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（慈善机构）．
"Regardless of 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（调查）16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing bonus（奖金） of between $3,000 and $8,000.
"Employees who devoted more of their bonus to pro-social（有益社会的） spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor(预示) 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 alterations（改动） in spending allocations（分配） --- as little as $5 --- may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day," Dunn said. According to the passage,_____________.
| A．the more money you spend on others, the happier you are |
| B．spending money on others can bring you happiness |
| C．Elizabeth Dunn is a psychologist from Harvest Business School |
| D．six hundred volunteers took part in the experiment |
The 16 employees mentioned in the passage _________.
| A．were given clear instructions on how to spend the bonus |
| B．had more happiness than the size of the bonus itself |
| C．experienced greater happiness after receiving their bonus |
| D．felt happier after they contributed much of the bonus to charities |
Dunn’s statement suggested that ______________.
| A．those who spent money on others felt happier no matter how much they earned |
| B．those who spent more money on themselves felt happier |
| C．people thought spending money could make themselves happier |
| D．the money spent was as important as the money earned |
The best title of this passage is ___________.
| A．Experiment on Money Spending |
| B．Devoting Your Money to Charities |
| C．Spending Money on Others Makes One Happier |
| D．Bonus and Pro-social Spending |
Among all the fast growing science and technology, the research of human genes（基因）, or biological engineering as people call it, is drawing more and more attention now. Sometimes it is a hot topic discussed by people.
The greatest thing that gene technology can do is to cure serious diseases that doctors at present can almost do nothing with, such as cancer and heart disease. Every year, millions of people are murdered by these two killers. And to date, doctors have not found an effective way to cure them. But if the gene technology is applied（应用）, not only these two diseases can be cured completely, bringing happiness and more living days to the patients, but also the great amount of money people spend on curing their diseases can be saved, therefore it benefits the economy as well. In addition, human life span(寿命) can be prolonged.
Gene technology can help people to give birth to more healthy and clever children. Some families, with the English imperial family being a good example, have hereditary diseases. This means their children will for sure have the family disease, which is a great trouble for these families. In the past, doctors could do nothing about hereditary diseases. But gene technology can solve this problem perfectly. The scientists just need to find the wrong gene and correct it and a healthy child will be born.
Some people are worrying that the gene research can be used to manufacture (produce) human beings in large quantities. In the past few years, scientists have succeeded in cloning a sheep; therefore these people predict that human babies would soon be cloned. But I believe cloned babies will not come out in large quantities, for most couples in the world can have babies in very normal way. Of course, the governments must take care to control gene technology.What does “these two killers” in the second paragraph refer to?
| A．Gene technology and another treatment of the two diseases. |
| B．The two murderers who killed the cloned baby |
| C．The two diseases of cancer and heart disease |
| D．Hereditary diseases and cancer |
What’s the main idea of the third paragraph?
| A．How gene technology can be applied to cure family diseases. |
| B．Gene technology can be used to clone human babies. |
| C．Gene technology can help people to give birth to a baby. |
| D．Gene technology can help the English imperial family out |
What is the main purpose of writing this passage?
| A．Expressing the writer’s idea that gene technology will benefit people |
| B．Telling people the advantages of gene technology |
| C．Telling the readers that gene technology will not benefit people |
| D．Explaining that gene technology will also do harm to the humanity |
Which of the following worries people by using this technology?
| A．Scientists have already successfully cloned sheep. |
| B．Most couple will normally give birth to babies. |
| C．A good number of babies will be cloned |
| D．The government will take action to control it. |
Now, it’s time for some brief news items.
Teens Go Online
Some 13 million European children under 18 use the Internet for schoolwork, games and music according to research done by Nielsen’s “Net-rating”. The study covered Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Experts advised parents to limit the time their kids spend on line and keep them away from chat rooms.
Chat to the magic Mum
British author J. K. Rowling, mother of magic boy Harry Potter, will do an Internet interview about her new book “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” on June 26. Before the event, children are invited to send their questions about Harry to the website. The book will hit stores in the US and UK on June 21 and will arrive in China in August.
School Soldiers
Russian school students will have to do basic military training in their final year of school, the government has decided. The lesson will include learning to fire guns, marching drills and how to deal with a chemical, nuclear or biological attack. The activity is seen as part of a drive toward the education of their love for their country.
Is it hard for you to get up early and get ready for classes? Some students at Winter Park High School just roll out of bed in their pajamas (睡衣) and go to class in their own bedrooms, Of course, their teachers and classmates do not see them because all their class work is on the computer. The Florida High School, the state’s only online school, has 250 students who are taking classes at home by computer. Students in this first online program take classes in algebra (代数), American government, chemistry, computer, economics, and web-page design. They also have to go to regular school to attend other classes.In the first news item, which country is NOT covered in the research?
| A．Britain. | B．France. | C．Sweden. | D．Spain. |
What is the second news item mainly about?
| A．J. K. Rowling will have an Internet interview. |
| B．Children will meet Harry Potter’s mother. |
| C．The Harry Potter book will be available on the Internet. |
| D．The Harry Potter book will arrive in China in early June. |
Why will Russian school students have basic military training?
| A．To get ready for a military parade. |
| B．To learn to protect themselves. |
| C．To gain some military knowledge. |
| D．To develop their love for the country. |
The last news can be given a title “________”.
| A．Get up Late | B．Online School |
| C．Magical Computers | D．No Teachers |
Homework can put you in a bad mood (心情), and that might actually be a good thing. Researchers from the University of Plymouth in England doubted whether mood might affect the way kids learn. To find out the answer, they did two experiments with children.
The first experiment tested 30 kids. Some shapes (图片) were hidden inside a different, larger picture. The kids had to find the small shapes while sitting in a room with either cheerful or sad music playing in the background. To test their mood, the scientists asked the kids to point to one of five faces, from happy to sad. Children who listened to cheerful music tended to point to the smiley faces while the others pointed to the unhappy ones. The researchers found that sad kids took at least a second less to find the small shapes. They also found an average of three or four more shapes.
In the second experiment, 61 children watched one of two scenes from a film. One scene was happy, and the other was sad. Just like in the first experiment, kids who saw the sad scene acted better compared to the others.
The researchers guessed that feeling down makes people more likely to focus on a problem or difficult situation. Not all scientists agree with them, however. Other studies argued that maybe, that cheerful music in the first experiment distracted (使分心) kids from finding shapes.
While scientists work on finding out the answers, it still might be wise to choose when to do your tasks according to your mood. After eating a delicious ice cream, for example, write an essay. Researchers did experiments on kids in order to find out ______.
| A．how they really feel when they are learning |
| B．whether mood affects their learning ability |
| C．what methods are easy for kids to learn |
| D．the relationship between sadness and happiness |
The researchers found in the first experiment that ______.
| A．kids who listened to happy music turned out to be energetic |
| B．kids who listened to sad music liked to choose smiley faces |
| C．kids worked harder in the background of happy music |
| D．sad music helped kids find out small shapes quickly |
What can we learn from the text?
| A．The researchers will continue to do experiments. |
| B．The researchers have found a clear answer. |
| C．The experiments are popular among kids. |
| D．Kids change their feelings more easily. |
We can infer that the text is ______.
| A．a science survey | B．a research report |
| C．a school project | D．an introduction to an experiment |
My 8-year-old daughter is making an experiment. She has been making her own colorful smile cards and often takes them with her everywhere.
Last Sunday, I took my kid to go shopping with me. She was hoping to see John, who is an elderly man and gives out samples. We see him from time to time and he is so happy and friendly. John wasn’t at the store on Sunday, so my daughter decided that it would be a good idea to distribute her smile cards to the store’s other employees.
So she did. In the produce department, she gave a card to a young man and she hoped it would make him smile. And he smiled at her and thanked her. Then she came across an older gentleman who looked rather impatient. And she snuck a card into his cart on top of his groceries, remarking to me later that he looked at her suspiciously as if she was dumping trash in his cart. But I thought he would be happy later.
When we got back from our shopping trip, she had run out of cards. She was walking by a woman with two babies in her cart. My daughter smiled at her and the young mother smiled back. My daughter came to me and said excitedly, “Mom, I just realized something. You don’t need cards to make someone smile. All you need to do is make eye contact and smile into their eyes and they will smile back.”
What a beautiful lesson my daughter reminded me of. You are never too young or too old to experiment with kindness and smiles. At first, the writer’s daughter made an experiment by ______.
| A．giving smile cards | B．giving samples |
| C．making eye contact | D．giving groceries |
According to the text, John was a man ______.
| A．who is very young and lively | B．who may be a salesman |
| C．who is in trouble and needs smiles | D．who is never seen to smile |
The underlined word “distribute” in paragraph 2 probably means ______.
| A．make up | B．tear up | C．give out | D．sell out |
From the text, we can learn that ______.
| A．John got a smile card from the writer’s daughter |
| B．the older gentleman would smile later after he got the smile card |
| C．we could make others smile only by giving them what they wanted |
| D．the mother with two babies smiled because she got a smile card |
“Eat local.” It’s one way to reduce human effect on the planet. Eating local means to try to buy and consume foods that are grown in places close to home. However, most of the food sold at supermarkets is not locally grown or produced. Trucks and planes deliver these foods from hundreds or thousands of miles away. During the transportation, greenhouse(温室)gases are produced, causing global warming. So the shorter the distance your foods must travel, the less the harm is done to the environment.
But how do you get local food if you live in a large city, hundreds of miles away from farms？Environmental health scientist Dickson Despommier and his students came up with the idea of a “vertical(垂直的)farm”. 
A vertical farm is a glass-walled structure that could be built as tall as a skyscraper(摩天大楼). Since the garden is built upwards, rather than outwards, it requires much less space than an ordinary farm. The world is quickly running out of room for ordinary farming. Vertical farms could be a key to this situation. Despommier imagines a 30-story building with a greenhouse on every floor. The walls of the building would be clear, to allow crops to get as much sunlight as possible. Depending on a city’s water resources, Despommier thinks hydroponic(水培的) farming is another method for the vertical farm which needs no soil to grow plants.
Despommier says the hydroponic greenhouses would use a system that would use a city’s waste water and fill it with nutritions to make the crops grow. If this method works, it would provide food to a city and save millions of tons of water.
The idea of a vertical farm has attracted the attention of government officials around the world. Scott Stringer, a government official from New York City, thinks the city is suitable for the vertical farming. “Obviously we don’t have much land left for us,” Stringer said. “But the sky is the limit in Manhattan. ”
Despommier admits that there is still a lot of work to do to make vertical farms a reality. “But I think vertical farming is an idea that can work in a big way,” he says.Why are people advised to eat local?
| A．Because it means convenience(方便) to people. |
| B．Because it can help people save a lot of money. |
| C．Because local food has more nutrition. |
| D．Because it is environmentally friendly. |
Which is one of the vertical farm’s benefits when compared with ordinary farming?
| A．It produces healthier food. |
| B．It does less harm to the cities. |
| C．It needs less space of the city. |
| D．It requires less transport costs. |
By saying “the sky is the limit in Manhattan”, Stringer means _____.
| A．people can make full use of vertical space of Manhattan |
| B．there is a limit for using empty land in Manhattan |
| C．the height of buildings in Manhattan is limited |
| D．Manhattan can spread as far as possible |
What can we learn about the vertical farming in the passage?
| A．No soil is needed to grow plants in a vertical farm. |
| B．It has solved the problem of the food shortage in a big way. |
| C．It is a 30-story building with a greenhouse on every floor. |
| D．Crops are mainly grown in the rainwater in a vertical farm. |