北京市门头沟区2021届高三下学期英语二模试卷

"Wow, Mubeen is your brother? He is such a wonderful kid.” My new teacher went on and on about how 1 Mubeen was. I am proud of my brother, but I was tired of people expecting me to be as perfect as he is. I was angry, for all the 2 got to me. I wanted to be known as Shameera, not as Mubeen's sister, or worse a female copy of him.

This year, Mubeen was 3 to Cornell University. Actually, that was a big pride for our school. I said to my brother, “Everyone is 4 me. But that really makes me 5 because even when you leave, your 6 will live on. I'm afraid you're going to haunt (使苦恼) me." Mubeen laughed and said, "Don't 7. I won't haunt you. And I'm 8 that you're going to be the second to go to an Ivy League university.”

Recently, I spoke to my history teacher about how I didn't like being compared with my brother. She said, "To be honest, I think you're smarter than him. You 9 activities more and you're more understanding." Whenever I remember these words, they make me happy.

This school year is my first year of school without my brother. I finally have the chance to establish my own 10. I feel less stressed and I am more appreciated as myself now.

Blind boxes are popular with the young people nowadays. Archaeological blind boxes (make) by several museums in China are trending on a major online shopping platform. The idea (receive) wildly by many fans ever since it was released. Most of the blind boxes are sold out as soon as they are restocked every day. "You don't know how difficult archaeology is until you've done it yourself," a buyer said, expressing her admiration archaeologists and recommending that everyone try it.

After a two-week-long trip to China, Dar became a skillful user of WeChat, an application that almost every Chinese would use in their daily life. During his stay in Beijing, Dar (recommend) his family and friends to download WeChat so that they could contact through free WeChat video calls. And via the function of translation, Dar found it easy and efficient (understand) what his friends were saying. As one of the many Chinese innovations nowadays, WeChat is only a glimpse of the energy and (create) in today's China.

Smartphones are becoming more and more of a necessity for high school students. Therefore, a discussion was held about the senior school students should use our smartphones at school. People (support) the idea consider it convenient to contact the students' parents when necessary. However, people who are against it find some students are addicted to playing the smartphones easily, effect on their studies is quite worrying. It is even (bad) that smartphones can also discourage students' will.

If you truly want to live, you need to get out and see the world. Traveling and living different adventures may become your favorite lifestyle. Here is a brief introduction about the top three destinations to visit in the world.

Paris

First on the list is Paris France. For some people, this shouldn't be a surprise. For others, they might consider Paris overrated as it has a reputation for being dirty. Any major city in the world might be thought to be dirty by anyone not living in a city. It comes with the territory. The reason Paris is at the top of this list is not because of its famous attractions but because of its charm. You can spend the day walking around cobblestone streets and enjoy elegant cafes and high-end shopping. When you finish satisfying your appetite, you can relax on the banks of the Seine River.

Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park comes in second on the list. It is located in Montana, America. It will be well worth the effort thanks to snow-capped mountains, crystal blue lakes, seventy miles of hiking trails, and thirteen camping areas. If you visit during the summer, you can go swimming or white-water rafting. If you visit during the winter, you can go skiing or snowshoeing. But the real allure (诱惑力) and what you will always remember is the breathtaking scenery and fresh mountain air.

Bora Bora

The reason Bora Bora is the third on this list is that it's expensive, which could limit your other travel plans. If you do make it to this small island paradise, you will find peaceful beaches, jungles, luxury accommodations, turquoise water, and some of the friendliest people you have ever met.

Other vacation destinations that should be on your list if you're living the adventurous lifestyle include London, the South Island of New Zealand, Maui, Tahiti, Tokyo, Barcelona and New York City.

While many people prefer to buy a new dog from a breeder, another option is to adopt a rescue dog. As the Svilicics already had a healthy daughter Charlotte, they felt fortunate enough to save another life. Thus, Catherine adopted a dog and named it Khan. Catherine was hopeful this would provide valuable lessons for her baby, such as sharing, learning to love and responsibility to care for animals.

They trained Khan during the first few days and everything began smoothly. Charlotte and the new dog made a habit of playing out in the backyard. However, things were different this day. They began running through the backyard grass together. That was until Khan's temperament seemed to change dramatically. Khan began acting wildly aggressively (富于攻击性的), grabbing the baby.

This was not the normal play between the two. Mouth open, Catherine watched in complete and utter shock. She watched as Khan tossed (抛) Charlotte across their lawn. What happened next alarmed Catherine and everyone present. He tightly clenched his jaws into her diaper to toss her back and forth. Therefore, with urgency, she ran to Charlotte and carried her to safety.   

Miraculously, her child was unharmed. While Catherine brought her baby to shelter, Khan barked madly and then collapsed. The dog began crying. No one understood what was going on! Khan was obviously not doing well. The dog continued crying and then fell lifeless. Catherine focused on the dog, watching his dying eyes and realized he had been protecting her child. It turned out that Khan was protecting Charlotte from a poisonous, dangerous snake. She used all her strength to bring the dog to her car and sped for the vet, hearing his breath slow. When the vet took over, Catherine cried and felt totally helpless, so she prayed for his recovery.

The vet had to remove all the snake poison from the body. Quite a few days later, Khan was slowly getting stronger through the vet's effort. Eventually, he made progress and the snake's venom was removed. Actually, Khan impressed even the vet with his rapid recovery and progress. 

The whole family could be reunited once again with this amazing and heroic animal. Catherine was determined to protect this amazing animal as if it were her own child.

Imagine someone had a knife and told you, "This is a great knife. The only problem is that it can't cut anything." You'd think it's not a great knife.

"Telos is the Greek word that Aristotle and others use to define the end or purpose of something," Jonathan Haidt, professor at New York University Stern School of Business, says in a recorded lecture at the University of Colorado Springs. The telos of a knife is to cut. What, Haidt asks, is the telos of a university?

Truth — that's the purpose of higher education, Haidt says. The academy aims to be a stage where truth is sought, discovered, and explored. When the university is functioning at its best, students learn to present arguments and receive debate in following truth.

Are today's universities achieving their purpose?

In his lecture, Haidt suggests that changes in campus culture over the past decade have rerouted university resources away from the pursuit of truth and towards creating an emotionally and intellectually comfortable environment for students.

"From out of nowhere, students in 2014 began asking for trigger warnings," Haidt says. A growing group among student bodies and administrators seemed to believe students were fragile and needed to be aggressively protected from "bad" ideas, offensive imagery, and annoying arguments. Students began protesting speakers, and publicly shaming peers whose words made them uncomfortable.

There are many places and institutions whose purpose, or telos, is comfort. But a university is not one of those places. To make that point, Haidt quotes CNN contributor Van Jones: I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong — that's different. I'm not going to settle the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I'm not going to take all the weights out of the gym. That's the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.

Putting comfort over the pursuit of truth, universities are ignoring their purpose. Higher education should be a stage of open exploration and free expression, where ideas are exchanged, tested, and inspected. A common education should be "an invitation to be concerned not with the employment of what is familiar but with understanding what is not yet understood," according to philosopher Michael Oakeshott.

What is the social influence if universities fail to achieve their purpose? New generations could lose more than academic power; they could lose the ability and interest to pursue and prioritize truth first. They could become so dependent on emotional comfort that they refuse to observe deep in thought "what is not yet understood". Anyhow, this is happening in reality. It's time for universities to realize their telos, or they'll risk losing their essential role in society.

The biomedical world is flooded in data. We have a lot of genomic information from mouse to human, precious health measurements from clinical tests, and a large amount of so-called real-world data from insurance companies and drugstores. Using powerful computers, scientists have carefully researched it with some fine results, but it has become clear that we can learn much more with an assist from artificial intelligence. Over the next decade deep-learning neural networks will likely transform how we look for patterns in data and how research is conducted and applied to human health. This special report explores the future of this new transformation.

Right now the biggest assumptions are being placed in the field of drug discovery, and for good reason. The average cost of bringing a new drug to market nearly doubled between 2003 and 2013 to $2.6 billion, and because nine out of ten fail in the final two periods of clinical tests, most of the money goes to waste. Every large drug company is working with at least one AI-focused start-up to see if it can raise the return on investment.

Machine-learning algorithms (算法) can get through millions of chemical compounds, narrowing the choices for a particular drug target. Perhaps more exciting, AI systems—free by leading theories and biases—can identify entirely new targets by spotting tiny differences at the level of cells, genes or proteins between a healthy brain and one marked by Parkinson's—differences that might avoid or even puzzle a human scientist.

That same sharp-eyed ability is also being used to explain medical scans. Some systems can already discover early signs of cancer that might be missed by a radiologist or see things that are simply beyond human capacity—such as evaluating cardiovascular (心血管) risk from a retinal scan. The Food and Drug Administration is approving imaging algorithms at a rapid click. Other AI applications lie a bit further down the road.

Will the inefficiencies of today's electronic health records (EHRs) be solved by smart systems that prevent prescribing mistakes and provide early warnings of disease? Some of the world's biggest tech giants are working on it.

Despite fears that machines will replace humans, most experts believe artificial and human intelligence will work cooperatively. The bigger concern is a shortage of people with both biomedical knowledge and algorithm proficiency. If this human problem can be solved, the key to creating successful AI applications may depend on the quality and quantity of what we provide them with. "We rely on three things," says the CEO of one deep-learning start-up. "Data, data and more data."

Mobile technology impacts all areas of our lives today. The early mobile phones, often referred to as 0G mobile phones, led to the phones used now which rely on 4G or 5G mobile technology. The mobile revolution has enabled global communities to form, but there are concerns too, the impact of which we look at here.

The mobile revolution has seen all of us spend more time online than ever before. Whether catching up with family, shopping, doing research, watching movies or gaming, all of these are now all possible at any time, wherever we are.

Nowadays, almost all businesses offer mobile-accessible sites for smartphones and tablets. Whether you are placing an order for a new pair of jeans, researching the best financial advisor or wanting to play a casino game on the move like blackjack mobile, it is really easy to do all of these.

Since the launch of social media in 1997 with Six Degrees, which allowed users to upload a profile and make friends with other users, there are now many other social media platforms like Facebook (2004). These offer global communication on a scale never seen before which have led to the rise of social movements such as Black Lives Matter.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal (丑闻) concerning Facebook involved the harvesting of Facebook data of 87 million people that was used for advertising during elections. Also, for young people in particular, social media can harm their self-worth.

Mobile technology means that we have access to information at our fingertips wherever we are. "Google is your friend" is now listed in urban dictionaries, showing how many of us search for instant answers without doing more than pull out our phones or ask Alexa.

The mobile revolution has also seen a rise in fitness devices worn on the wrist. Not only recording lap times, fitness devices can also monitor pulse rates, blood pressure and sleeping patterns.

A. The impact is not all positive.

B. They have a number of functions.

C. What's more, it is very popular with young people.

D. Besides, app technology makes the searching simple.

E. You can begin a game at home and continue it on the bus or train.

F. They can even offer instant health feedback and recommendations.

G. They give us real-time access into the lives of friends, family, celebrities and businesses.

Judgement is a quality that is hard to define but important to possess. Sir Andrew Likierman of the London Business School suggests that judgment is "the combination of personal qualities with relevant knowledge and experience to form opinions and take decisions". And he argues that, thus defined, judgment involves a process—taking in information, deciding whom and what to trust, summarizing one's personal knowledge, checking any prior beliefs or feelings, summarizing the available choices and then making the decision.

Expert knowledge can be useful in making judgments. But it is not the same thing. "Academics have expert knowledge," Sir Andrew observes. "They don't necessarily have judgment." People with judgment know when they are out of their depth in making a decision and typically then seek the advice of someone who has the right background and knowledge. "While good judgment is important to success," Sir Andrew cautions, "success is not a signal that there has been good judgment."

The degree of judgment required tends to increase as people take on more responsibility. Those with routine tasks generally have limited scope for judgment. Line supervisors have some discretion (自行决定权). For a chief executive, the proportion of decisions involving judgment is high. Deciding not to take action is also a judgment with potentially serious consequences (for example, "I won't get vaccinated" or "I won't pay my bills"). The world is full of people whose lack of judgment brought their careers or personal life crashing down. Many made the common mistake of assuming everything was fine.

As artificial intelligence gets used for more and more routine tasks in the service sector, exercising judgment may be one area where humans retain an edge over machines. This is far from certain, however. With enough practice, machines may be able to recognize these implicit cues and thus display the equivalent of good judgment. But then, perhaps humans can be taught, too. In the long run, one of the trickiest aspects of human judgment may be knowing precisely when to let machines take decisions and when to leave it to people.