The term “Industry 4.0” refers to the fourth industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution was the production of goods with machines like steam engines, which was followed by the second industrial revolution that introduced mass production with the help of electric power, followed by the digital revolution —the use of electronics and IT in production.
Industry 4.0 is a high-tech project, which promotes the computerization of manufacturing (制造业). The basic principle of Industry 4.0 is that by connecting machines, work pieces and systems, we are creating intelligent networks along the entire value chain that can control each other automatically. The goal is the Smart Factory, which adapts well and uses resources efficiently as well as linking customers and business partners with great intelligence. Technological basis are the Internet systems and advanced factories. Experts believe that Industry 4.0 could be a reality in about 10 to 20 years.
So, what effects does this change have on the classic manufacturing? According to an expert, “it is highly likely that the world of production will become more and more networked until everything is connected with everything else.” Networks and processes have so far been limited to one factory. But in the time of Industry 4.0, the boundaries (界限) of individual factories will most likely no longer exist. Instead, they will be lifted in order to inter-connect multiple factories or even geographical regions.
How is an Industry 4.0 factory different from a today’s factory? In current industry environment, providing high-end quality service or product with the least cost is the key to success. Factories are trying to increase their profit as much as possible. In the time of Industry 4.0, various data sources are available to provide worthwhile information about different aspects of the factory. Using data for understanding the current condition and checking faults and failures is a natural thing. The sharing of information around the clock and around the globe will enable these connected systems to manage themselves independently, work more efficiently and identify any errors quickly.
The good news is that Europe is much better prepared for the Industry 4.0 revolution than one might think. Europe will position itself as a pioneer in the fourth revolution. Industry 4.0 is a project in the high-tech strategy of the German government. Meanwhile, in the U.S., some companies are also working hard on it. But the success of industry depends on whether business and politics can work together. It’s not only politics that needs to help open the door for Industry 4.0. Every company is advised to seize the new digital opportunities.What marks the coming of Industry 4.0?
| A．Steam engines. | B．Mass production. |
| C．Use of electronics. | D．Intelligent networks. |
Industry 4.0 will probably result in ________ in the world of manufacturing.
| A．production limited to an individual factory |
| B．everything connected with everything else |
| C．networks and processes no longer existing |
| D．classic factories stopping their competition |
What’s the meaning of the underlined part in Para. 4?
| A．Sharing information of the world time. |
| B．Global news broadcast at any time. |
| C．Instant worldwide information exchange. |
| D．Spreading news widely on the hour. |
According to the last paragraph, who is the most active in pushing Industry 4.0?
| A．The European companies. |
| B．The American government. |
| C．The American companies. |
| D．The German government. |
A cancer-stricken British teenage girl said Thursday she had been moved by messages of support from around the world after writing an online “Bucket List” of things she wanted to do before dying．
Alice Pyne，l5，created an Internet blog in which she described her fight against a cancer of the white blood cells．“I’ve been fighting cancer for almost four years and now I know that the cancer is gaining on me and it doesn’t look like I’m going to win this one，” she wrote ．
For her list，the teenager took inspiration from the 2007 film “The Bucket List” in which two men who were badly ill，draw up a list of things they wish to do before they die．
On her list，at the site www．alicepyne．blogspot．com，she has included making everyone sign up to be a bone marrow donor（骨髓捐赠者），swimming with sharks ，meeting boy band Take That and getting a purple iPad computer．
Messages of support and offers of help quickly flooded her webpage and it became one of the most talked about subjects on Twitter．
“Oh, dear and I thought that I was just doing a little blog for a few friends!” she wrote after her site attracted huge attention．“Thank you so much for all your lovely messages to me．”
Pyne，who lives with her family in the northwest English town of Ulverston，revealed（透露）the management of Take That had arranged for her to see the band after reading her blog．A group of local lawmakers have also joined forces with the Anthony blood cancer charity to encourage people to join its stem cell register．What happened after Alice Pyne wrote her “Bucket List”?
| A．People around the world sent messages to support her． |
| B．People sent gifts to her from all over the world． |
| C．A lot of people offered to donate bone marrow to her． |
| D．The media called on people to help her． |
Alice Pyne wrote her “Bucket List” to ．
| A．catch people’s attention |
| B．say goodbye to a few friends |
| C．give comfort to two terminally ill men |
| D．express her last few wishes |
It can be inferred from the second paragraph that Alice Pyne．
| A．is unaware of her own conditions |
| B．is very sad to know that she will die |
| C．is calm to know that death is approaching |
| D．is still quite confident in fighting against cancer |
Which of the following is NOT on Alice Pyne’s “Bucket List”?
| A．To ask people to donate bone marrow． | B．To get a cool computer． |
| C．To swim with shark． | D．To meet a boy． |
Take That will arrange to．
| A．meet Pyne in person |
| B．help Pyne in any possible way |
| C．donate money to Pyne |
| D．invite Pyne to join the band |
In a cab, a woman seemed in such a hurry．She constantly rushed the cab driver to drive quickly．She was so absorbed in her own thoughts of getting to the airport as soon as possible that she was not aware they were going by a different route.
All of a sudden, a young man got inside the cab．He took her handbag in which she had put her visa, passport, and all the money for the trip.
The cab driver, who was in collusion with the robber, left her in the exactly middle of a dark street．She thought that she was rather unfortunate in the very situation.
During the very night, she was told a piece of shocking news．Tears came down her cheek．Flight 360, the plane that she should have got on board, had crashed．Had she not lost her important belongings, she could surely have lost the thing far more precious——her life.
Sometimes bad things really happen．There are times when nothing seems to go our way．So what should we do about it? We must get rid of all these frustrations and start all over again in the faith that we will get what we deserve．
Don’t waste your time and energy on things that can’t be changed．Continuous worrying will only affect your health and you’ll be doing much more damage than what was previously done.
What if it was the other way round? What if we never ran out of good luck?
There was a man who won the lottery．He became greedy and wasted all his money on everything he could get his hands on.
But when he one day made it to the front page of the newspaper again, it was a different story．He had been killed because of his riches．If you attain good luck, you can never be too secure about it．Life is so unpredictable．You never know what will happen next.
Live one day at a time．We sometimes subject ourselves to unnecessary emotional trouble．But please don’t forget: sometimes misfortune can be the source of happiness．Live for the moment．Do what must be done for the present and the future will turn out just fine．Believe me．And believe in yourself．As Captain Planet always says, “The power is yours！”The underlined phrase “in collusion with” in Paragraph 3 probably means “________.”
| A．was forced by | B．was fighting bravely against |
| C．was doing one’s best to beg | D．had cooperated with |
From the passage, we learn that ________.
| A．robbers are sure to get what they want |
| B．somebody never runs out of good luck |
| C．the woman was lucky to miss her flight |
| D．if one feels oneself lucky, he or she will continue to be so |
The writer presents the second example in order to ________.
| A．warn people of the danger of winning the lottery |
| B．tell people life is unpredictable |
| C．encourage people to buy lottery |
| D．persuade people not to be greedy |
According to the author, which of the following choices is the correct attitude to adopt to life?
| A．Never waste any time or energy because time is so limited. |
| B．One needn’t be worried or feel frustrated．Believe in yourself. |
| C．Even while everything appears to be going smoothly, we should keep fully alert. |
| D．Worrying about what you don’t have |
The passage above is intended to tell us ________.
| A．misfortune sometimes is a blessing |
| B．we should save up for a rainy day |
| C．fortune just goes with those prepared minds |
| D．both losses and gains go hand in hand |
The United Nations climate talks in Doha, Qatar, continued into their second week, Wednesday, as delegates from nearly 200 countries struggle to craft a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, the global agreement on climate change that expires at the end of this month.
The negotiations are deadlocked （陷入僵局）over demands by poorer nations for financial help in coping with climate change.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on delegates at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change to speed up their work on an agreement to address a warming planet.
“Let us be under no illusion（幻想）, this is a crisis, a threat to us all, our economies, our security and the well-being of our children and those who will come after," he said. "No one is immune to climate change, rich or poor.”
Delegates from nearly 200 countries --- rich and poor --- are in Doha to extend the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 global climate change agreement that expires （到期）at the end of this month, and to begin to forge a new agreement to replace it.
Two issues block the way forward. Developing countries are demanding that industrialized nations fulfill their pledges(保证)under Kyoto to reduce their climate-changing industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and to put new, larger emission curbs on the table.
The developing nations, led by China, are also insisting that rich nations provide more aid to poorer countries to help them cope with the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and more violent storms.
In Doha Wednesday, Tim Gore, a climate change policy advisor for Oxfam International, a confederation of groups working on social justice issues, applauded efforts by England, Germany and Sweden to increase their climate aid and expects other nations to follow.
“Those announcements are truly welcome. And they shine a spotlight on those that have remained silent: the U.S., Canada, Japan, even Australia," Gore said. "But we need to be very clear as well that those types of announcements made in press conferences can be no substitute for clear commitments in the text that poor countries have come here to negotiate.”What’s the main idea of the passage?
| A．China plays an important role in The United Nations climate talks in Doha, Qatar. |
| B．The United Nations climate talks in Doha, Qatar, continued into their second week, Wednesday. |
| C．Developing countries want rich nations to pay for climate change. |
| D．Ban Ki-moon called on delegates at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change to speed up their work on an agreement to address a warming planet. |
What did United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Paragraph 4 mean?
| A．Climate change will do harm to all the countries in the world. |
| B．There is no hope to deal with the problem. |
| C．Illusion（幻想）is a crisis, a threat to us all. |
| D．Ban Ki-moon called on delegates to cope with a warming planet. |
What does the underlined word in Paragraph Five forge mean?
| A．put aside | B．deal with | C．call off | D．work out |
Which of the following is Not true?
| A．Climate change includes rising sea levels and more violent storms. |
| B．All the industrialized nations will carry out their promises under Kyoto to reduce their climate-changing industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and to put new, larger emission curbs on the table. |
| C．Tim Gore thought highly of the efforts by England, Germany and Sweden to increase their climate aid and expects other nations to follow. |
| D．The U.S., Canada, Japan, even Australia didn’t make announcements to be responsible for the climate changes. |
Beauty has always been regarded as something praiseworthy. Almost everyone thinks attractive people are happier and healthier, have better marriages and have more respectable jobs. Personal advisors give them better advice for finding jobs. Even judges are softer on attractive defendants. But in the executive (主管的) circle, beauty can become a liability.
While attractiveness is a positive factor for a man on his way up the executive ladder, it is harmful to a woman.
Handsome male executives were considered having more honesty than plainer men; effort and ability were thought to lead to their success.
Attractive female executives were considered to have less honesty than unattractive ones; their success was connected not with ability but with factors such as luck.
All unattractive women executives were thought to have more honesty and to be more capable than the attractive female executives. Interestingly, though, the rise of the unattractive overnight successes was connected more to personal relationships and less to ability than that of the attractive overnight successes.
Why are attractive women not thought to be able? An attractive woman is considered to be more feminine (女性的，娇柔的) and has an advantage in traditionally female jobs, but an attractive woman in a traditionally manly position appears to lack the “manly” qualifies required.
This is true even in politics, “When the only clue is how he or she looks, people treat men and women differently,” says Anne Bowman, who recently published a study on the effects of attractiveness on political candidates (候选人). She asked 125 undergraduate students to rank two groups of photographs, one of men and one of women, in order of attractiveness. The students were told the photographs were of candidates for political offices. They were asked to rank them again, in the order they would vote for them.
The results showed that attractive males completely defeated unattractive men, but the women who had ranked most attractive unchangeably received the fewest votes.The underlined word in the first paragraph “liability” most probably means_________.
| A．trust | B．trouble | C．disadvantage | D．benefit |
Bowman's experiment shows that when it comes to politics, attractiveness________.
| A．is more of a disadvantage than an advantage to women |
| B．turns out to be a disadvantage to men |
| C．has more effects on men than on women |
| D．has nothing to do with one’s work |
It can be inferred from the passage that people's views on beauty are often__________.
| A．objective | B．supportive | C．old-fashioned | D．subjective |
The author writes this passage to_________.
| A．give advice to job-seekers who are attractive |
| B．discuss the disadvantages of being attractive |
| C．emphasize the impact of appearance on both sexes |
| D．make women pay more attention to their appearance |
All it took was a slice of Xinjiang cake to spark heated debates online over China's policy on ethnic minorities (少数民族) .
Since Monday,qiegao(cut cake) has been a trending topic on Sina Weibo, China’s main Twitter-like microblogging service.
The cake was a reference to Xinjiang’s famed nut cake, sometimes known by its old Turkic name baklava, a popular pastry across Central Asia and the Middle East. In Xinjiang, they are sold by Uygur vendors on tricycles who are known to charge dubious prices depending on the time and season.
The ethnic flare-up started after the Yueyang police from Hunan province posted a message on their official Weibo account. It reported a dispute in Pingjiang countyover an overpriced piece of nut cake between a Xinjiang Uygur vendor and a villager named "Ling".
Villager Ling got into a fight with a Uygur due to a misunderstanding. The verbal dispute eventually escalated into a fight and then a mass fight. As a result, two people were injured and Xinjiang nut cakes worth about 160,000 yuan (US$25,000) were destroyed. The total damage was worth 200,000 yuan which included a broken motorcycle and injuries to people. Local police have detained Ling. The 16 Uygur sellers were dully compensated and sent back to Xinjiang.
"Yueyang police incident" quickly became one of the most popular topics on Weibo. Yueyang police removed the post shortly after. As of Tuesday night, the topic was still amassing more than 66,000 hits.
The incident is just one of many similar cases of ethnic tensions across China, notably in Xinjiang province, where deeply entrenched social and racial frictions between the dominant ethnic Han Chinese and minority Uygur Muslims occasionally spark violence. Many Uygurs living in major Chinese cities are viewed by locals as thieves, crooks and even terrorists.Which of the following is true?
| A．The dispute is between a Xinjiang Uygur vendor and a policeman. |
| B．Nut cake is a popular pastry across East Asia and the Middle East. |
| C．The prices of Baklava will change according to the time and season. |
| D．The demand of the 16 Uygur sellers were refused and they were sent back to Xinjiang. |
How much did the broken motorcycle cost？
| A．160,000 yuan | B．200,000 yuan | C．40,000yuan | D．We don’t know |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．World's most expensive baklava |
| B．Ethnic tensions across China |
| C．Pay attention to the Uygurs |
| D．Misunderstanding caused a fight |
What can we infer from the passage?
| A．Yueyang police are afraid of the Xinjiang Uygur vendor |
| B．It’s not the only ethnic tension across China, |
| C．Many Uygurs living in major Chinese cities are viewed by locals as thieves, crooks and even terrorists. |
| D．Villager Ling got into a fight with a Uygur due to a misunderstanding. |