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Nowadays science has made great progress in every aspects and more and more really good inventions have changed our daily lives. However, the U.S. Patent Office has issued over 7.5 million patents, and not all of them are quite so celebrated. Some good, some bad, and some crazy! The following lists some of the more unusual ideas that have come along. Snake Leash In 2002, a patent was issued for a snake-walking leash. There are at least two major problems with this idea, 1) Dog leashes fit securely between the head and shoulders. A snake does not have shoulders; so it might slither away. 2) Dogs are OK for public places because they are social animals, and people like them. Snakes are not OK for public places because they are not social, and some people are terrified of them. Stadium Helmet Americans are known for our love of sports. Unfortunately, good tickets to games are expensive, so some fans have to sit in the backward sections. This invention, patented in 2000, is designed for these fans. Featuring a built-in radio, binoculars (望远镜), a cooling fan, and a helmet for falling litter, this design transforms the stadium experience. Bacon Alarm Clock When you think about it, waking to the dreadful, blaring noise of an alarm clock is a terrible way to start the day. However, this clock could change that. You simply put a piece of frozen bacon in the alarm clock, set the alarm, and go to sleep. The clock gently wakes you up with the mouth watering smell of bacon the next morning, just like waking up on a Sunday morning to the smell of mom cooking breakfast. Who said there’s no time to eat breakfast? Toilet Lock In 1969, a patent was issued for a really bad idea - the toilet seat lock. First of all, fishing for your keys when you have to go seems very unpleasant. Then there is the possibility of losing the key altogether. What about guests? Just think that you would have to ask permission for the .bathroom. Of course, there is the ultimate question: Why would you lock it in the first place? 【小题1】Snake Leash was designed to . A. catch a snake B. keep off a snake C. take a snake for a walk D. keep dogs and snakes together 【小题2】What can be inferred about the backward sections? . A. They are for fans who can’t afford to buy good tickets. B. They are for fans who have poor eyesight. C. They are close to the center of a stadium. D. They are in the center of a stadium. 【小题3】Which of the following inventions can help to save your time? A. Toilet Lock. B. Stadium Helmet. C. Snake Leash. D. Bacon Alarm Clock. |
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As you bite down a delicious piece of fish, you probably don’t think about what the fish itself ate?but perhaps you should. More than 50 species of fish have been found to eat plastic trash at sea. This is bad news, not only for fish but also for humans who rely on fish for food. Fish don’t usually die as a direct result of feeding on the large quantities of plastic trash floating in the oceans. But that doesn’t mean if s not harmful for them. Some negative effects that scientists have discovered when fish eat plastic include reduced activity rates and weakened schooling behavior, as well as compromised liver function. This is troubling because people eat fish that have eaten plastic. Numerous species have been sold for human consumption, including mackerel, striped bass and sturgeon in their stomachs. It is well known that plastic trash causes a serious threat to sea animals, but we are still trying to understand why animals eat it. Typically, research has concluded that sea animals visually mistake plastic for food. While this may be true, the full story is probably more complex. For example, in a recent study, we showed that plastic trash may smell attractive to sea organisms. That study focused on seabirds, but now my co-authors and I have found that plastic trash has a similar effect on anchovies (凤尾鱼). When we started the experiment, we did not know whether adult anchovies used their sense of smell to find food at all, let alone whether smell might lead them to eat plastic. To test our hypothesis that it would, we put krill (鳞虾) or plastic trash and clean plastic in seawater for several hours. We then filtered our krill and plastic “tea”, presented it to the anchovy schools, and observed their behavior. When we put seawater scented with krill into the tank, the anchovies responded as if they were searching for food. When we presented them with seawater scented with smells of plastic trash, the schools responded in nearly the same way, moving as if they were searching for food. This research confirms two things. First, we showed that northern anchovies use smells to locate food. This study also suggests that our consume-and-dispose culture is coming back to upset us via the fish we eat. In fact, everyone can do something right now about ocean-plastic pollution by avoiding single-use plastic items and recycling plastic upon disposal. There is more work to be done. 【小题1】For , the news that many species of fish have been found to eat plastic trash at sea is not good. A. people who live on fish B. people who live by fishing C. people who study sea animals D. people who don’t keep fish for food 【小题2】What does the underlined word mean? A. findings B. guesses C. theories D. opinions 【小题3】Which of the following is NOT true? A. Fish doesn’t die directly because of eating plastic trash. B. Plastic trash poses a serious threat to sea animals at present. C. The researchers didn’t know that smell would lead anchovies to eat plastic at first. D. The study in the passage proves that northern anchovies use sounds to find food. 【小题4】What’s the purpose of the author writing the last paragraph? A. To make a conclusion. B. To make a plan for people fishing. C. To stress that their points are right. D. To call on people to protect the environment. |
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On any given weekend, the Washington, D.C., public library system offers nearly a dozen classes. You can try Matt Mcentee’s class, where he’ll teach you how to fix anything from a clock to a broken heart in person. I decided to check out a small class early one morning. It’s called Homebuying 101. Today, there are about 10 adults ranging in age from their mid-20s to early 50s?finding their seats. In the second row, Whenna Andrews, 28, already has her notebook out. I ask Andrews why she came to a class at the library, instead of learning how to buy a home online. “This is going to be my first time buying a home and I have a lot of questions,” Andrews answers. “I feel like if I’m reading by myself online I can get lost in the information.” Andrews’ decision to learn in a traditional classroom is still the preferred choice for adults, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. Pew looked at nearly 3,000 people, aged 18 and older. Pew wanted to know how, and where, adults learn, after they leave their formal schooling. “Learning is still very much a place-based thing,” says Pew researcher John Horrigan. “The Internet plays a role, but it’s secondary in most respects.” For the 74 percent of adults who considered themselves to be personal learners, only a third turned to the Internet for most or all of their learning. The study also found differences when it comes to education and income level. For those with a bachelor’s degree, technology is helping. But for those with just a high school diploma, it’s not playing as big a role. The study even found that many weren’t aware of online resources like lots of open online courses or learning tools like Khan Academy. Whenna Andrews knows about those things ? she even found the homebuyers class on Facebook. But she prefers learning in person. 【小题1】What can we learn about Matt Mcentee? A. He only teaches online classes. B. He is a science teacher. C. He knows how to break people’s heart. D. You can learn a lot in his class. 【小题2】For Andrews, the online information about homebuying seems . A. valuable B. incorrect C. confusing D. out-of-date 【小题3】What does Andrews think of the classes the library offers? A. She looks forward to them. B. She shows no interest in them. C. She thinks they should be improved. D. She thinks there is no market for them. 【小题4】The text mainly discusses . A. the development of online courses B. the important role technology plays C. the leading way of lifelong learning is traditionally based D. the roles of the public library system |
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William Curry is a serious climate scientist, not an art critic. But he has spent a lot of time on Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting “George Washington Crossing the Delaware,” which describes a boatload of colonial American soldiers making their way to attack English the day after Christmas in 1776. “Most people think these other guys in the boat are rowing, but they are actually pushing the ice away,” says Curry, tapping his finger on the painting. Sure enough, the lead sailor is breaking the frozen river with his boot. “I grew up in the Philadelphia. The place in this painting is 30 minutes away by car. I can tell you, this kind of thing just doesn’t happen anymore.” But it may again soon. And ice-choked scenes may also return to Europe. The 16th-century painter Pieter’s works, including the 1565 masterpiece “Hunters in the Snow,” make the now-temperate European landscapes look more like Lapland. Such frigid settings were commonplace during a period dating roughly from 1300 to 1850 because much of North America and Europe was in the pain of a little ice age. And now there is increasing evidence that the cold could return. A growing number of scientists believe conditions are right for another lasted cooldown, or small ice age. While no one is predicting an ice sheet like the one that covered the Northern Hemisphere with glaciers about 12,000 years ago, the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia. Political changes since the last ice age could make survival far more difficult for the world’s poor. During previous cooling periods, these people simply picked up and moved south, but that doesn’t work in the modem world, of closed borders. “To the extent the climate change may cause rapid and extensive changes of fortune for those who live off the land, the inability to migrate may remove one of the major safety homelands for pitiful people,” says the report. 【小题1】The writer uses paintings in the first paragraph to say A. impossible future climate change. B. climate change of the last two centuries. C. the river doesn’t freeze in winter anymore. D. how George Washington led his troops across the river. 【小题2】Which of the following do scientists believe to be possible? A. The temperature may drop over much of the Northern Hemisphere. B. it will be colder than 12,000 years ago. C. The entire Northern Hemisphere will be covered in ice. D. Europe will look more like Lapland. 【小题3】Why is it difficult for the poor to survive the next age? A. People don’t live in tribes anymore. B. Politics are changing too fast today. C. Climate change causes people live off the land. D. Migration has become impossible because of closed borders. 【小题4】What is the best title of the passage? A. A New Ice Age. B. The Effect of Ice Age. C. Prediction about the Ice Age. D. Political and Climate Change. |
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A new study challenges a long-held opinion in psychology that most human emotions fall within the universal types of happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear and disgust. Using models to analyze the responses of men and women to 2185 video clips, University of California, Berkeley, researchers have identified 27 types of emotion and created a map to show 【小题1】. For the study, participants went online to view a random of silent 5-to-10 second videos intended to arouse a broad range of emotions. And 【小题2】, weddings and proposals, death and suffering, spiders and snakes, natural disasters... Three separate groups of participants watched series of videos, and, after viewing each clip, completed a reporting task. The first group freely reported their emotional responses to each of 30 video clips. “Their responses reflected a rich emotion states,” noted Cowen. The second group ranked each video according to how strongly it made them feel admiration, adoration, appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awkwardness, disgust... The participants have the similar responses, and 【小题3】. The final group rated their emotional responses on a number of 1 to 9 to each of a dozen videos based on positive or negative, excitement or calmness. Based on how previous participants had responded to the videos, researchers were able to predict 【小题4】. Overall, 【小题5】, providing a wealth of data that allowed the researchers to identify 27 types of emotion. A. because everything is connected with each other B. the results showed that study participants generally shared the same or similar emotional responses to each of the videos C. how they’re connected D. how participants would score the videos E. themes from the video clips included births and babies F. the videos included only one theme G. more than half of them reported the same type of emotion for each video |
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27- year - old Ross OC Jennings has become an online celebrity for his bagpipe-playing (演奏风笛) photos across the globe. He calls ______ the First Piper. The seed for the world traveling idea ______ him when he attended a travel expo in London, where he met adventurers who shared their ______ from across the globe. Ross was attracted by their stories. The ______ began on a night in Tunisia in May 2014 by chance. Ross ______ his bags without knowing much about the North African country.______ Tunisia, he traveled across Western Europe, the mountains of China, played in front of the Taj Mahal in India and Cambodia5s ancient temples. But his greatest ______ was in Kenya. En route to Nairobi, Ross arrived at a famous ______ sanctuary (庇护所) and hotel in Kenya. He begged the hotel owners to ask if he could play the bagpipes there. They answered ______, “Of course the house was built by a Scotsman.” “the minute I started playing all these giraffes started ______ towards me, rocking. It was the most ______ audience I’ve ever had. Ross has three ______ when traveling. First, pipe in a school to interact with students; second, challenge himself to play in a dramatic place; and last, play in public. His Facebook is filled with ______ taken from around the world. Ross’s journey is all ______ thanks to his unique music career, which started ______ 13 when he was offered the chance to play bagpipes at school. After leaving university, he ______ “the last thing I wanted to do was work behind a desk”. Inspired by the travel expo and equipped with his bagpipes, he made his wish to ______ a real desk. ____ planning what to do in the countries Ross visits, the plans seem to find him. He said, “Chance is a big part of it. That’s why I partly, intentionally, don’t try to plan too much.” The music connects people in uncommon and wonderful ______. “Without having this dripping in cliches, it is amazing how ______ does connect people and how it makes people smile,” Ross said. 【小题1】A. herself B. himself C. yourself D. themselves 【小题2】A. occurred to B. got to C. referred to D. moved to 【小题3】A. opinions B. feelings C. problems D. experiences 【小题4】A. journey B. flight C. memory D. challenge 【小题5】A. destroyed B. informed C. packed D. caught 【小题6】A. Allowing B. Following C. Knowing D. Borrowing 【小题7】A. appearance B. consequence C. existence D. performance 【小题8】A. panda B. giraffe C. tiger D. elephant 【小题9】A. warmly B. unconsciously C. carefully D. merely 【小题10】A. climbing B. visiting C. walking D. escaping 【小题11】A. puzzling B. embarrassing C. amazing D. frightening 【小题12】A. mistakes B. edges C. rules D. posters 【小题13】A. photos B. articles C. comments D. messages 【小题14】A. suitable B. possible C. flexible D. responsible 【小题15】A. at the end of B. at the expense of C. at the mention of D. at the age of 【小题16】A. considered B. realized C. classified D. regretted 【小题17】A. avoid B. serve C. shake D. handle 【小题18】A. More than B. Or rather C. Rather than D. Would rather 【小题19】A. eyes B. cases C. paths D. ways 【小题20】A. instrument B. travel C. beauty D. music |
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We know that our pet dogs and cats can recognize our faces, but our pet fish? A team of scientists from the UK and Australia have discovered that archerfish can distinguish human faces! A. remember B. tell apart C. recognize D. attack |
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One day walking to my living area, I was approached by a young woman. She promised she wasn’t a beggar and stressed she just had no food for her baby. A. follow B. run after C. move near D. beg |
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Then other pirate radio stations began to spring up and soon the authorities were being forced to face the new situation created by the pirate stations. A. government B. power C. experts D. radio stations |
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