As we grow old, we realize that we have so little time to read and there are so many great books that we’ve yet to get around to. Yet re-readers are everywhere around us. For certain fans, re-reading The Lord of the Rings is a conventional practice annually. One friend told me that Jane Austen’s Emma can still surprise him, despite his having read it over 50 times.
New sudden clear understandings can be gained from the process of re-reading. Journalist Rebacca Mead, a long-time Englishwoman in New York, first came across George Eliot’s Middlemarch at 17. Since then, she has read it again every five years. With each re-reading, it has opened up further; in each chapter of her life, it has resonated (引起共鸣) differently. Mead evidenced the large number of ways in which really good books not only stand the test of repeat reads, but also offer fresh gifts each time we crack their spines. These kinds of books grow with us.
Scientists have also recognized the mental health benefits of re-reading. Research conducted with readers in the US found that on our first reading, we are concerned with the “what” and the “why”. Second time round, we’re able to better appreciate the emotions that the plot continues to express. As researcher Cristel Russell of the American University explained, returning to a book “brings new or renewed appreciation of both the great book and its readers.”
It’s true that we often find former selves on the pages of old books (if we’re fond of making notes on the pages). These texts can carry us back to a time and place, and remind us of the kind of person that we were then. We’re changed not only by lived experience but also by read experience – by the books that we’ve discovered since last reading the one in our hand.
More so than the movie director or the musician, the writer calls upon our imaginations, using words to lead us to picture this declaration of love or that unfaithfulness in life. A book is a joint project between writers and readers, and we must pour so much of ourselves into reading that our own life story can become connected with the story in the book.
Perhaps what’s really strange is that we don’t re-read more often. After all, we watch our favourite films again and we wouldn’t think of listening to an album only once. We treasure messy old paintings as objects, yet of all art forms, literature alone is a largely one-time delight. A book, of course, takes up more time, but as Mead confirms, the rewards make it adequately worthwhile.The two books are mentioned in Paragraph 1 mainly to __________.
| A．attract the attention of readers |
| B．introduce the topic of the passage |
| C．provide some background information |
| D．show the similarity between re-readers |
The underlined expression “crack their spines” in Paragraph 2 refers to ________.
| A．recite them | B．re-read them |
| C．recall them | D．retell them |
It can be learned from the passage that __________.
| A．reading benefits people both mentally and physically |
| B．readers mainly focus on feelings on their first reading |
| C．we know ourselves better through re-reading experience |
| D．writers inspire the same imaginations as film directors do |
The purpose of the passage is to __________.
| A．call on different understandings of old books |
| B．focus on the mental health benefits of reading |
| C．bring awareness to the significance of re-reading |
| D．introduce the effective ways of re-reading old books |
Scientists have found what look like caves on Mars, and say they could be protecting life from the planet’s terrible environment.
The first caves discovered beyond the Earth appear as seven mysterious black dots on the pictures sent back by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter. Each as large as a football field, they may be openings into natural caves below the Martian surface.
“If there is life on Mars, there is a good chance you’d find it in caves,” said Jut Wynne, one of the researchers who noticed the features while working on a US Geological Survey Mars Cave Detection Program.
Jonathan Clarke, a geologist with the Mars Society of Australia, yesterday described the discovery as exciting.
One photo taken at night by an infrared imager(红外线成像器) showed one hole to be unusually warm, suggesting hot air trapped during the day is flowing out.
“I said: ‘Wow, that’s a cave’.” Dr. Clarke said excitedly. “People have been looking for these for a long time; now we have found them.”
He agreed such caves would be perfect places to hunt for life escaping from the bitterly cold, radiation-soaked(充满辐射的), dry surface.
“Tiny drops of water could collect inside,” he said. “If there are gases coming out, they could provide energy for a whole range of bacteria. A cave is also a protection from radiation; the surface of Mars is exposed to high levels of space radiation.”
The caves probably formed when tube-shaped lave flows(管状岩浆流) spread across the planet long ago. The outside of the tubes cooled, forming solid walls, while something hotter inside allowed the remaining have to flow out, forming caves.
What does the passage mainly talk about?
| A．How the caves were formed on Mars. |
| B．How scientists found these caves on Mars. |
| C．Caves on Mars may be full of hot air or a sign of life. |
| D．Scientists have completely recognized the surface of Mars. |
What can the “cave” be used for according to the scientists?
A. They can protect life from the planet’s terrible environment.
B. They can provide energy for people’s life.
C. They can be used to prevent space radiation
D. Both A and C.We can learn from the passage that.
| A．water has already been found on Mars |
| B．the scientists found all the caves at night |
| C．it is certain that there is life in these caves |
| D．the surface of Mars is bitterly cold, radiation-soaked and dry |
According to the passage, Dr. Clarke was so excited because.
| A．such caves could provide energy for life |
| B．they had finally found the caves on Mars |
| C．such caves would be perfect places to hunt for life |
| D．scientists had long been looking for these caves |
Necessary conditions for life on Mars mentioned in the passage may include.
| A．lave and energy |
| B．water and radiation from space |
| C．gases and lave |
| D．water and protection from radiation |
Fish have ears. Really. They’re quite small and have no opening to the outside world carrying sound through the body. For the past seven years, Simon Thorrold, a university professor, has been examining fish ears, small round ear bones called otoliths.
As fish grow, so do their otoliths. Each day, their otoliths gain a ring of calcium carbonate (碳酸钙). By looking through a microscope (显微镜) and counting these rings, Thorrold can determine the exact age of a young fish. As a fish gets older, its otoliths no longer get daily rings. Instead, they get yearly rings, which can also be counted, giving information about the fish’s age, just like the growth rings of a tree.
Ring counting is nothing new to fish scientists. But Thorold has turned to a new direction. They’re examining the chemical elements (元素) of each otolith ring.
The daily ring gives us the time, but chemistry tells us about the environment in which the fish swam on any given day. These elements tell us about the chemistry of the water that the fish was in. It also says something about water temperature, which determines how much of these elements will gather within each otolith ring.
Thorrold can tell, for example, if a fish spent time in the open ocean before entering the less salty water of coastal areas. He can basically tell where fish are spending their time at any given stage of history.
In the case of the Atlantic croaker, a popular saltwater food fish, Thorrold and his assistant have successfully followed the traveling of young fish from mid-ocean to the coast, a journey of many hundreds of miles.
This is important to managers in the fish industry, who know nearly nothing about the whereabouts of the young fish for most food fish in the ocean. Eager to learn about his technology, fish scientists are now lending Thorrold their ears.What can we learn about fish ears from the text?
| A．They are small soft rings. |
| B．They are not seen from the outside. |
| C．They are openings only on food fish. |
| D．They are not used to receive sound. |
Why does the writer compare the fish to trees?
| A．Trees gain a growth ring each day. |
| B．Trees also have otoliths. |
| C．Their growth rings are very small. |
| D．They both have growth rings. |
Why is it important to study the chemistry of otolith rings?
| A．The elements of the otoliths can tell the history of the sea. |
| B．Chemical contents of otoliths can tell how fast fish can swim. |
| C．We can know more about fish and their living environment. |
| D．Scientists can know exactly how old a fish is. |
How would you understand “fish scientists are now lending their ears”?
| A．They are very interested in Thorrold’s research findings. |
| B．They want to know where they can find fish. |
| C．They lend their fish for chemical studies. |
| D．They wonder if Thorrold can find growth rings from their ears. |
London-Lazy students can now give up on work altogether as two Oxford University students have made scores of A-grade essays on the website for students to copy.
The essays are on the new website, “revise.it”
The website includes an “EssayLab” designed to make cheating (舞弊) as effective and effortless as possible.
Its homepage announces to surfers (网上冲浪者): “The revise.it EssayLab is a bank of hundreds of A-Level essays covering popular topics.”
“Next time you are asked to write an essay, why not see what we have on the subject-if you are in a lazy state of mind you can even use our guide to writing the essays and then just hand them in.”
Nick Rose and Jordan Mayo, both 19 and first from Manchester, spent much of their first year as students at the university setting up the website. There is no charge for downloading the essays.
“I have never been very good at essay writing,” Rose admitted. “We don’t see essay bank as a cheating way. It’s a surprising valuable resource. You can learn a lot by reading other people’s work on the subject.”
Among other tips, the website suggests inventing important speeches to give essays extra weight: “Popular people to quote (引用) are Douglass Hurd or Disraeli.”
Hurd was a foreign secretary in the 1980s and Disraeli was a 19th century prime minister.
Teachers are expressing their opinions by e-mail that they are angry about the website that “encourages students to cheat”, but students disagree.
According to Rose: “Exams are a fight. It’s us against them.”It can be inferred from this passage that ______.
| A．students who visit the website “revise. it” are all lazy |
| B．students in Oxford University are all lazy |
| C．websites in Oxford University are all set up by students |
| D．websites can provide people with different kinds of information |
Nick Rose and Jordan Mayo set up their website for the purpose of ______.
| A．helping students to cheat in exams |
| B．helping students to improve their writing |
| C．making money to pay for their schooling |
| D．making their teacher free |
What Rose said at last suggests that in England ______.
| A．it is difficult for students to pass their exams |
| B．it is difficult for teachers to finish their teaching |
| C．students are not satisfied with the education system |
| D．students are too lazy to learn anything |
Sharpen your axe (斧头)
A young man approached the foreman (工头)of a logging crew and asked for a job.
“That ” replied the foreman. “Let’s see you fell this tree.”
The young man stepped forward and skillfully a great tree. , the foreman exclaimed, “You can start Monday.”
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and on Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, “You can pick up your on the way out today.” , the young man replied, “I thought you paid on Friday.”
“ we do,” said the foreman. “But we’re letting you go today because you’ve . Our daily felling charts show that you’ve from first place on Monday to last place today.”
“But I’m a worker,” the young man objected. “I arrive first, leave last, and have worked through my coffee breaks!”
The foreman, the young man’s honesty, thought for a minute and then asked, “Have you ____ your axe?”
The young man replied, “No, sir, I’ve been working too hard to take time for !”
Our lives are like that. We sometimes get so that we don’t take time to sharpen the axe. In today’s world, it seems that everyone is busier than ever, but happy than ever. Why is that? Could it be that we have forgotten how to sharp?
There’s nothing wrong with activity and hard work. But we all need time to , to think and meditate(谋划), to learn and . If we don’t take time to sharpen the axe, we will become and lose our effectiveness.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
How do people traditionally manufacture (制造) things? They usually start with a sheet of metal, wood or other material and cut, drill (钻) and shave it to create a desired shape. Sometimes, they use a mold (模具) made of metal or sand, pour liquid plastic or metal into it and let it cool to create a solid part.
Now, a completely different method is gaining popularity.
On Oct. 9, 2013, London Science Museum kicked off its new exhibition, 3-D: Printing the Future, with over 600 3-D printed objects on display, including space probes (探测器), toy dolls and even human organs – basically any product you can think of, reported Live Science.
You might find it hard to believe that an object can actually be “printed out” like a picture. But it is not that hard to understand how it works. Just as a traditional printer sprays (喷洒) ink onto paper line by line, modern 3-D printers spread material onto a surface layer by layer, from the bottom to the top, gradually building up a shape.
Instead of ink, the materials the 3-D printer uses are mainly plastic, resin (树脂) and certain metals. The thinner each layer is – from a millimeter to less than the width of a hair – the smoother and finer the object will be. And objects always come out in one piece, sparing you the trouble of putting different parts together afterward.
For example, 10 years ago a desktop 3-D printer might have cost ￡20,000 (200,000 yuan), while now it costs only about ￡1,000, according to the BBC. In fact, 3-D printers have been around for some time, but until recently they hadn’t been very popular since few people could afford them. Last year, though, saw a big decrease in the price of 3-D printers.
However, as 3-D printing technology becomes more commonplace, it may trigger certain problems. One of them is piracy (盗版). “Once you can download a coffee maker, or print out a new set of kitchen utensils (餐具) on your personal 3-D printer, who will visit a retail (零售的) store again?” an expert on 3-D printing told Forbes News.
Even more frightening, the world’s first 3-D printed gun was successfully fired in the US in May of this year, which means that 3-D printing could potentially give more people access to weapons.
According to the article, in the future, 3-D printing technology will probably ______.
| A．change the way people make products |
| B．be applied as widely in our daily lives as computers |
| C．forbid many countries to make purchases of weapons |
| D．take the place of normal printers and save lots of energy |
What was the big event that happened in the 3-D printing industry last year?
| A．Over 600 3-D printed objects were on display in an exhibition. |
| B．3-D printing technology came to be used in various fields. |
| C．The world’s first 3-D printed gun was successfully made. |
| D．The 3-D printer became more affordable for consumers. |
What is the author’s attitude toward 3-D printing technology?
| A．Amused. | B．Objective. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Negative. |