For many years，machines have been doing work that people once did，including some dit- ficutt jobs. Search and rescue operations in dangerous environments are often seen as the first areas that will employ high technology robots. But there is another area where they may soon take jobs traditionally held by human beings： the restaurant industry.
Teams from around the world competed in early June at the DARPA Robotic Challenge Finals in California. A team from South Korea and its robot，called DRC-Hubo，won the first place in the competition. The second and third place winners were from the United States. The robots were required to drive a vehicle，climb up steps and do mechanical work. Such activities are easy for humans to perform，but more difficult for machines. Not all of the competitor were successful. The failures showed how difficult it is to design effective walking
machines.
Akihiro Suzuki works at Yaskawa Electric，a company that develops robots. He says robots cannot do everything a human can，but they are able to work without becoming tired. He says robots cannot taste food，change heating levels or seasonings to get the best flavor (风味）.But he says if a food can be easily prepared，a robot can repeat the same movement to reproduce the same meal.
One Japanese woman who saw the robots working wanted to bring them home. Masayo Mori says she would like to have a husband who could work like a robot. Suzumo Machinery showed its sushi (寿司）maker robot. It performs the often difficult work of wrapping the popular Japanese food. Hiroshi Monden is an official with the company. He says people all over the world now eat sushi，but there are not enough skilled workers to prepare it. He says his machine can help anyone make sushi.
In Paragraph 1，the author tells us .
| A．robots just do difficult jobs |
| B．robots are sometimes dangerous |
| C．robots are widely used in our life |
| D．robots are gradually replacing humans |
Why did some teams fail at the DARPA Robotic Challenge Finals?
| A．Their robots cannot be applied at home. |
| B．Preparing food is really difficult for robots. |
| C．Their robots can just repeat the same movement. |
| D．They failed to design effective walking robots. |
We can infer from the last paragraph that .
| A．Japanese men are lazy |
| B．robots are popular in Japan |
| C．Japan has advanced high technology |
| D．robots usually take the job of making sushi in Japan |
In which column can we probably see the text?
| A．Education. | B．Culture. | C．Health. | D．Science. |
Have you heard about Post Office Cats in Britain? They are mouse hunters. The post office has actually employed cats since 1868. They are not employed to sort or deliver mail, of course, but to protect the mail and keep the population of mice under control. They make sure your morning post arrives free from damages caused by rats and mice.
London post offices were the first to try out the experiment. Within a few months the population of mice had shrunk sharply. Other post offices all over the country were soon using cats in the war against rats and mice as well. Within ten years the pay of the cats was improved from one and a half old pence a day to six or nine pence a day. Now the average rate of pay is about a few pounds a month.
Some of the hard-working cats have become quite famous. In 1980, a cat named Lucky stopped an attempted robbery in a Worcestershire post office on her own. As the two burglars made their way in through the window, Lucky started an attack and they fled empty-handed. Another excellent cat was Jerry, of Earls Court post office in London. He served the building for 16 years and was on duty for 24 hours every day. He drove all the mice away.
However, there are fewer cats employed by the post office than at any time in the past. With the faster movement of the mail and better surroundings, post office cats are not always needed. But many post offices still employ them and they become great friends with the postmen. According to the post office, there is no plan for their services to be discontinued in the foreseeable future. Cats were introduced to British post offices to ________.
| A．help sort and deliver mails and papers |
| B．guard the building against thieves |
| C．keep mails and papers undamaged |
| D．search for certain dangers in mails |
The underlined word “shrunk” in the second paragraph probably means “________”.
| A．decreased | B．increased | C．narrowed | D．expanded |
The cat named Lucky became famous because________.
| A．She served the post office for 16 years around the clock. |
| B．She alone drove two burglars away from the post office. |
| C．She protected mails from being bitten by mice. |
| D．She was employed to sort and deliver mail. |
We may learn from the last paragraph that________.
| A．the duty of the cats has been replaced by machines |
| B．all the post offices are now completely mice free |
| C．cats are now considered of little use in post offices |
| D．cats will still be seen in service for quite a long time |
Getting kids to share their toys is a never-ending battle, and forcing them to do so never seems to help. New research suggests that allowing children to make a choice to sacrifice their own toys in order to share with someone else makes them share more in the future. The new findings are published inPsychological Science.
These experiments were conducted by psychological scientists, Nadia Chernyak and Tamar Kushnir of Cornell University. They found that sharing things with others when they are given a difficult choice leads children to think of themselves as people who like to share. It also makes them more likely to act in a pro-social （亲社会的）manner in the future.
Previous research has explained why rewarding children for sharing can backfire. Children come to think of themselves as people who don't like to share since they had to be rewarded for doing so. Because they don't view themselves as "sharers", they are less likely to share in the future.
Chernyak and Kushnir were interested in finding out whether freely chosen sacrifice might have the opposite effect on kids' willingness to share. To test this, the researchers introduced five-year-old children to Doggie, a sad puppet. Some of the children were given a difficult choice: Share a precious sticker（贴纸） with Doggie, or keep it for themselves. Other children were given an easy choice between sharing and putting the sticker away, while children in a third group were required by the researcher to share.
Later on, all the children were introduced to Ellie, another sad puppet. They were given the option of how many stickers to share (up to three). The kids who earlier made the difficult choice to help Doggie shared more stickers with Ellie. The children who were initially faced with an easy choice or who were required to give their sticker to Doggie, on the other hand, shared fewer stickers with Ellie. Therefore, children did not benefit from simply giving something up, but rather from willingly choosing to give something up of value.
“You might imagine that making difficult, costly choices is demanding for young children or even that once children share, they don’t feel the need to do so again,” Chernyak says. “But this wasn't the case: once children made a difficult decision to give up something for someone else, they were more generous, not less, later on.” Chernyak concludes. _______ helps children to share more in the future.
| A．Rewarding children for sharing |
| B．Forcing children to share |
| C．Allowing children to share precious things willingly |
| D．Allowing children to share what they don’t need |
The underlined word “backfire” means _______.
| A．have an opposite effect | B．serve as a push |
| C．cause anger | D．avoid taking things back |
Those who were required to share give fewer stickers to Ellie because _______.
| A．they regret what they did | B．it’s not their own choice |
| C．Ellie is not as sad as Doggie | D．they like to share with a real person |
We can conclude from the passage that _______.
| A．parents will never find a way to get children to share toys |
| B．a gift should be given to make up for children’s sacrifice |
| C．children pretend to be generous when they are being observed |
| D．making difficult choices may influence sharing behavior |
Online grocery shopping was counted as the next great innovation to make our lives easier. In China more than 3,000 websites offer the service, but none have turned a profit.
Xiang Nian has had a hard day at the office but at least she can skip the trip to the grocery store. A text message on her phone lets her know the order she placed earlier in the day has been delivered to a locker outside her apartment.
"It’s really convenient for an office worker like me. My fresh products are waiting for me when I get home and can start cooking. No need to go to the supermarket any more," Xiang says.
One of the largest online supermarkets in Wuhan is Just-easy Fresh Produce. Over the past 3 years, the company has developed its online retail grocery business by guaranteeing fresh produce and an innovative delivery system. They've installed thousands of lockers in communitieshttp:// / around downtown Wuhan.
"We get an average of 8,000 orders per day. That's the most in China, I'm proud of it. We have placed over 20 thousand lockers in more than half of the communities in Wuhan and we plan to expand to all of them. Many e-commerce giants, like Taobao, are talking about cooperation with us," Jie Xiaofeng, manager of Wuhan Just-easy Agricultural Science & Technology Co., says.
While Just-easy may have thousands of customers, a staff of almost 300 and 40 delivery trucks, it's still operating in the red.
"There are over 3,000 companies selling fresh products online in China. But none is making a profit. It will take them at least 3 years before they make a profit. The major challenge is the cost of delivery. But they do have many advantages. The price of their goods is lower than the supermarkets," professor He Dehua at Huazhong Agricultural University, says.
A number of China's e-commerce giants are making moves into online grocery sales, with Taobao opening an online platform it calls "Cainiao". And traditional retailers(零售店) including Wal-Mart and Carrefour are also looking to start selling their produce online.
Many big B2C e-commerce players usually take fresh farm produce as the last category to add to their offerings. But now more and more large businesses have set their eyes on the industry. They want to prove the fresh food market is definitely suited to online sales. What is the main idea of the passage?
| A．The online grocery shopping is making our life easier. |
| B．Just-easy Fresh Produce is a pioneer of the online retail grocery business. |
| C．Conventional retailers are facing challenges. |
| D．None of the online grocery supermarkets has made a profit. |
The underlined part “it's still operating in the red” probably means _______.
| A．the present situation of the company makes them angry |
| B．the company is not making a profit |
| C．the company is very popular with customers |
| D．the staff of the company are aggressive |
What can we learn from the last two paragraphs?
| A．The fresh food market is definitely suited to online sales. |
| B．Fresh farm produce is the last category that people will buy online. |
| C．Online grocery sales have drawn the attention of e-commerce giants. |
| D．Traditional retailers choose to sell their produce on Cainiao. |
What’s the author’s attitude towards online grocery shopping?
| A．Pessimistic. | B．Indifferent. | C．Objective. | D．Supportive. |
“How to Train Your Dragon” by British author Cressida Cowell is one of the best pieces of children’s literature. A child can make a whole alternative universe with a vivid imagination and Toothless, the hero’s hunting dragon, thus turning a rainy day into an adventure of a lifetime. However, if you have never read the book but instead choose to see the film version, you might think you were seeing a new-age war movie meant for adults rather than children.
Let’s look at “Where the Wild Things Are” for further discussion. The story centers around a lonely eight-year-old boy named Max, who sails away to an island. Creatures living there declare Max their king.
What an amazing piece of children’s literature! A treasure for every child’s library. Yet, children were crying in the movie theatre. Owls were falling from the sky, chicken’s arms were being torn off, and a child was running around a dark abandoned world fighting evil as the only human. It was almost as if Hollywood could not imagine children enjoying a movie for its basic literature content. Hollywood might be right. But more and more its audiences are complaining that there is an increased amount of violence in children’s stories today than in the past.
While there appears to be a trend in our society to make more violence more accessible to younger children, books and literature are generally an exception. I truly believe that children’s literature has become more vivid, and more colorful. This is a great treasure for the children, and is certainly not violent. What has changed the children’s stories of today is not the writers, but the film industry. In some way, children’s literature is just being strangely twisted. I wonder how much influence the author have over this.The Text is mainly about ________.
| A．two good books for children |
| B．how a book is adapted into a film |
| C．whether children should go to movies |
| D．whether children’s literature is getting more violent |
It can be inferred that the film “Where the Wild Things Are” is _______.
| A．moving | B．frightening | C．interesting | D．amazing |
According to the text, the author thinks that ________.
| A．the film industry’s treatment of children’s literature is wrong |
| B．writers should provide more colorful works for children |
| C．there is an increase in violence in children’s literature |
| D．children should read books rather than see films. |
How does the text mainly develop?
| A．By inferring. | B．By giving explanations. |
| C．By providing examples. | D．By making comparisons. |
Summer Cultural Exploration in France
The Summer Cultural Exploration program in Amboise, France, provides students with the opportunity to study French in a friendly historic atmosphere while experiencing a taste of French culture.
Amboise
Amboise is a charming small town on the Loire River in central France. The royal Amboise castle was the preferred residence of Charles VIII, who built it in the 15th century. With a rich history and beautiful natural scenes, Amboise is the ideal environment for students to study French.
Learn
French courses take place every morning, Monday through Friday, for four hours per day in a historic 19th-century building in the center of Amboise. Students will be given an exam upon arrival to make sure that they attend a language class of the appropriate level. An interactive teaching approach is stressed.
Experience
There is a good balance between planned activities and free time throughout the four-week program. Two to three days per week, organized activities are offered such as: lecture on topics in French history, literature, art and cinema, showing of French films, and a visit to Leonardo da Vinci’s home at the Clos Luce.
Travel
Also, students will explore France through the following guided trips.
●Chambord, Cheverny and Blois —Explore two of the area’s famous castles. Chambord, the largest of the Loire castle, was built by the great Renaissance king, France I. Chevernby castle was built in 1630. Visit the old town of Blois, a favorite residence of French royalty.
●Villandry and Sache — One of the last Renaissance castles to be built along the Loire, Villandry, is also known for its flower and vegetable gardens. The lovely old castle of Sache was a best-loved house of the great 19th-century writer Honore de Balzac.
●Paris — Discover the City of Light, famous for its fashion, food and art during a journey to Paris! Walk along the banks of the Seine River, visit Notre Dame Cathedral and discover some of the city’s famous museums and including the Louvre.
Housing
Students stay with carefully-selected host families. Ability to remain open-minded and tolerance of cultural differences are required. There is an 11 pm curfew（熄灯时间）for this program.When a student gets to Amboise, he or she will first _______.
| A．take a language test | B．visit da Vinci’s home |
| C．hear lectures on French history | D．go to see the castle built by Charles VIII |
Students can enjoy beautiful flowers at _______.
| A．Chambord castle | B．Cheverny castle | C．Villandry castle | D．Sache castle |
Students who want to take part in the program will _______.
| A．mainly study cultural differences | B．spend most of their time in Paris |
| C．live in a historic building | D．study for 20 hours a week |
What is the purpose of the text?
| A．To advertise. | B．To educate. | C．To entertain. | D．To instruct. |