My house is made of wood, glass and stone. It is also made of software.
If you come to visit, you"ll probably be surprised when you come in: Someone will give you an electronic PIN to wear. The PIN tells the house who you are and where you are. The house uses this information to give you what you need. When it"s dark outside, the PIN turns on the lights near you, and then turns them off as you walk away from them. Music moves with you, too. If the house knows your favorite music, it plays it for you. The music seems to be everywhere, but in fact other people in the house hear different music or no music. If you get a telephone call, only the nearest telephone rings.
Of course, you are also able to want something. There is a home control console (控制台) which is a small machine that turns things on and off around you.
The PIN and the console are new ideas, but they are in fact like many things we have today. If you want to go to a movie, you need a ticket. If I give you the key to my car, you can use my car. The car works for you because you have the key. My house works for you because you wear the PIN or hold the console.
I believe that in ten years from now, most new houses will have the systems that I"ve put in my house. The systems will probably be even bigger and better than the ones I"ve got.
I like to try new ideas. I know that some of my ideas will work better than others". But I hope that one day I will stop thinking of these systems as new, and ask myself instead, ”How did I live without them?”
小题1:The writer’s house is made of the following EXCEPT_________.| A．bamboo | B．wood | C．glass | D．software |
小题2:What is the writer most likely to be according to the passage?| A．An IT expert. | B．A famous doctor. | | C．A sportsman. | D．An experienced teacher. |
小题3:The writer"s new house is different from ordinary ones mainly because______________. | A．it has your favorite music following you | | B．you can make a telephone call anywhere | | C．the writer is able to change his new idea into practice | | D．it is controlled by computers |
小题4:What does the passage mainly discuss?| A．How to develop a new system. | B．The function of the PIN. | | C．How great the computers are. | D．Easy life in the future. |
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小题1:A
小题2:A
小题3:D
小题4:D |
试题分析：文章以作者的家为例，介绍了一个智能系统，可以用来操控家里的一切，从而给人们的生活带来便利。作者希望这样的系统能够在将来得到很好的普及。
小题1:根据第一行“My house is made of wood, glass and stone. It is also made of software.”可知，作者的房子是由木头、干草、石头和软件建成的，没有用到竹子，故选A。
小题2:根据“It is also made of software...The systems will probably be even bigger and better than the ones I"ve got...I know that some of my ideas will work better than others"”可知，作者不但给自己的房子安装了智能系统，他还设想不久的将来，这种系统能够得到普及。AIT专家；B知名医生；C运动员；D有经验的教师。根据文章大意可知，作者喜欢电脑科技，他很有可能是一位IT专家。故选A。
小题3:根据“It is also made of software...There is a home control console (控制台) which is a small machine that turns things on and off around you.”可知，作者家的与众不同之处在于，它装有电脑控制的智能系统，故选D。
小题4:文章没有介绍如何开发一个新系统，排除A；文章没有提到电脑的伟大之处，排除C；B项是对第二段的概括，排除B。文章主要设想了未来的舒适生活，故选D。 |
核心考点
试题【My house is made of wood, glass and stone. It is also made of software. If you c】；主要考察你对
题材分类等知识点的理解。
[详细]举一反三
Siri. The intelligent assistant that helps you get things done. All you have to do is ask. 
Now you can use your voice to use your iPhone 4S. Just talk to Siri as you would to a person: “Do I need an umbrella?” or “Where’s the closest ATM?” Siri not only understands what you say, it knows what you mean. It figures out the right apps to use to find the right answer. Then, just like a personal assistant, it answers you. Siri makes phone calls, sends messages, schedules meetings, sets reminders, and more. How much more? Just ask, and Siri tells you that, too.
Dual-core A5 chip: the most powerful iPhone ever. 
Two cores in the A5 chip provide up to two times more power and up to seven times faster graphics. And you’ll feel the effects. iPhone 4S is quick and responsive, which makes all the difference when you’re launching apps, surfing the web, gaming, an doing just about everything. And no matter what you’re doing, you can keep on doing it. Because the A5 chip is so power-efficient, iPhone 4S has outstanding battery life.
FaceTime. It’s even better face-to-face.
FaceTime of iPhone 4S lets you hear a voice and see the face that goes with it—iPhone to iPhone, iPad 2, iPod touch, or Mac over Wi-Fi. So no matter where they are, no matter where you are, you’ll always be there. Making a FaceTime call is just as easy as making a phone call. And it’s even easier with Siri. Just tell Siri “FaceTime with Mom” and you show up, smile and wave hello. You’ll never miss a big event, an important meeting or a good laugh. And who wouldn’t be happy to see your face?
小题1:The passage is mainly about __________.| A．how to use iPhone 4S | B．some models of iPhone 4S | | C．some special uses of iPhone 4S | D．how to understand some pictures |
小题2:What is special about Siri? | A．It can take photos. | B．It can make videos. | | C．It can write messages. | D．It can answer questions. |
小题3:Which of the following helps iPhone 4S to perform fast? 小题4:Which of the following is NOT TRUE about FaceTime? | A．It can be used together with Siri. | | B．It allows you to see the other person’s face. | | C．It allows you to hear the other person’s voice. | | D．It can only be used between iPhone and iPhone. |
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Jerry Morris died on 28 October 2009. He was 99 years old. You have probably never heard of him. He was a professor of public health. More than 50 years ago he produced one of the most famous epidemiological (流行病学) papers of the 20th century.
His study showed that bus conductors were much less likely to die of heart disease than bus drivers. Why? Because the conductors spent their working day walking. It seems obvious now but in the middle of the last century doctors were puzzled by the rising numbers of people who got heart diseases. Jerry Morris found one of the main causes: a sedentary (久坐不动的) lifestyle. He started exercising for a few minutes each day and lived until his 100th year.
If you wish to protect your heart, you have to do more than wander in the garden. The exercise needs to be reasonable. Jogging is not for everyone and a round trip to the gym takes a couple of hours, plus the monthly membership fee is only good value if you visit regularly. The answer is simple: walk.
A half-hour purposeful walk five times a week will lower your risk of heart disease, diabetes and strokes. Older people sometimes feel they have left it too late. But it is never too late to start and there are no upper age limits. Start gently. Take your time: a 15-minute flat walk in the nearest park, four or five times a week. Within a month or so, you are already beginning to protect your heart. Build the walks up. When you can comfortably walk for half an hour in the park, go further: try following rivers and canals.
Regular walkers have their own natural gymnasium. There is no membership fee, just some of the finest scenery in the world. Great Britain is the walker’s gym. When you have followed the rivers and canals, and are enjoying walking for a couple of hours, head for the coast. Once again, build it up slowly. When you are comfortable with long coastal walks, you can think of our national parks.
小题1:Jerry Morris is mentioned in the first paragraph mainly to __________.| A．make his epidemiological message known to the public | | B．praise his research into ways of improving public health | | C．introduce the topic of doing exercise and keeping healthy | | D．give an example of a person who lives a healthy and long life |
小题2:We can learn from the passage that __________.| A．bus conductors are more likely to die of heart disease than bus drivers. | | B．doctors in the 1950s knew why heart diseases kept happening to people. | | C．walking is better than doing sports in a gym because it saves time and money. | | D．British people love walking because they have free gymnasium with finest scenery. |
小题3:What suggestion does the writer give about walking? | A．Parks are the best place for walking. | | B．Starters should not push themselves too hard. | | C．A two-quarter walk a day is suitable for starters. | | D．People of old age might not be fit enough to start walking. |
小题4:What might be the best title for this passage? | A．Long Life Comes from Walking | | B．Walking Helps Cure Heart Disease | | C．A Walk a Day Keeps the Doctors away | | D．An Hour’s Walk in Nature is Worth Two in the Gym |
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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 in Psychological 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.
小题1:_______ 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 |
小题2:The underlined word “backfire” means _______.| A．have an opposite effect | B．serve as a push | | C．cause anger | D．avoid taking things back |
小题3: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 |
小题4: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 |
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400-year-old plants from the Little Ice Age were brought back to life, which could help us understand how the Earth will deal with climate change.
Moss(藓类植物) found buried beneath the Teardrop glacier(冰川) on Ellesmere Island in Canada has been brought back to life. Findings suggest that these plants could help repopulate regions exposed by melting ice caps. Plants that were buried beneath thick ice in Canada more than 400 years ago and were thought to have frozen to death have been brought back to life by Canadian scientists.
Samples of the moss plant, covered by the glacier during the Little Ice Age of 1550 to 1850 AD, were replanted in a lab at the University of Alberta and grew new stems(茎). Researchers now think these findings can give indication as to how regions can recover as the ice covering them melts.
Biologist Dr. Catherine La Farge and her team at the University of Alberta were exploring the region around the Teardrop glacier on Ellesmere Island. Ice on Ellesmere Island region has been melting at around four meters each year for the past nine years. This means that many areas of land that were previously covered by ice have since been exposed. Many ecosystems that were thought to have been destroyed during the Little Ice Age between 1550 and 1850 AD can now be studied, including many species that have never been studied before.
While examining an exposed area of land, La Farge and her team discovered a small area of moss called Aulacomnium turgidum. It is a type of bryophyte(苔藓类植物) plant that mainly grows across Canada, the US and the Highlands of Scotland.
Dr La Farge noticed that the moss had small patches of green stems, suggesting it is either growing again or can be encouraged to repopulate. Dr La Farge told the BBC, “When we looked at the samples in detail and brought them to the lab, I could see some of the stems actually had new growth of green branches, suggesting that these plants are growing again, and that blew my mind. When we think of thick areas of ice covering the landscape, we’ve always thought that plants have to come from refugia(濒绝生物保护区), never considering that land plants come from underneath a glacier. It’s a whole world of what’s coming out from underneath the glacier that really needs to be studied. The ice is disappearing pretty fast. We really have not examined all the biological systems that exist in the world; we don’t know it all.”
Dr La Farge took samples of the moss and, using carbon-dating techniques, discovered that the plants date back to the Little Ice Age. Dr La Farge’s team took the samples, planted them in dishes full of nutrient-rich potting soil and fed them with water.
The samples were from four separate species including Aulacomnium turgidum, Distichium capillaceum, Encalypta procera and Syntrichia ruralis. The moss plants found by Dr La Farge are types of bryophytes. Bryophytes can survive long winters and regrow when the weather gets warmer.
However, Dr La Farge was surprised that the plants buried under ice have survived into the twenty-first century. Her findings appear in proceedings（论文集）of the National Academy of Sciences.
小题1:Dr La Farge’s research is of great importance to ________.| A．knowing what the plants during the Little Ice Age were like | | B．understanding how ecosystems recover from glaciers. | | C．regrowing many species that have been destroyed before. | | D．figuring out the effects of melting ice caps on moss. |
小题2:The underlined part “blew my mind” in Paragraph 6 can best be replaced by “________”.| A．surprised me | B．greatly frightened me | | C．put my doubt out of my mind | D．was exactly what I had in my mind |
小题3:According to the passage, Aulacomnium turgidum ________.| A．lives better in small groups | | B．is very active in hot weather | | C．is strong enough to survive coldness | | D．is chosen from Canadian refugia |
小题4:Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?| A．Bryophyte ecology is greatly affected by climate change. | | B．400-year-old moss’s survival is a mystery to solve. | | C．Moss in ancient times was discovered in Canada. | | D．400-year-old plants were brought back to life. |
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Even though Danish students have equal access to education, their choice of studies is still influenced by social class. Young people from working class backgrounds are by studies with a clear job profile侧面，半面，外形，轮廓and high income, prestige and studies with a strong identity interest young people of parents with university degrees when choosing which studies to . This is what researchers from the University of Copenhagen in a new study. Students who have chosen to study medicine, architecture, economy and sociology often come from homes where the parents have higher education, whereas business studies and pharmacy often young people with a working class background. This is by a research team from the University of Copenhagen and Aalborg University in a new study.
“There is a between the studies chosen by young Danes and their background. Even for the young people who have very good grades in their A-level exams, and who could successfully admission to a large variety of studies, the parents’ of education and social class play an important role in their choice,” says Education Sociologist Jens Peter Thomsen, who is one of the researchers behind the study.
The study “The Educational Strategies of Danish University Students from Professional and Working-Class Backgrounds” is 60 interviews with Danish students from six different university level study programmes: Medicine, architecture, sociology, economy, pharmacy and business studies.
The young people bring with them the they get from their families. If you grow up in a home with parents who are doctors or architects with a strong professional , it is an obvious choice to follow the path as your parents when you grow up.
“For young people whose parents are university educated, such as fame and mastery of expert knowledge are important. They are by an educational culture in which you are a diligent student, and where leisure activities are to the identity that lies within your studies. These young people have also grown up with discussions around the dinner table which also prepare them for their lives as students,” says Jens Peter Thomsen.
He also added, “Young people who come from a working class background, and have good grades have to the full range of opportunities they have. But the effort to reach this goal must start early”.
| 小题1: | | A．monitored | B．motivated | C．motioned | D．multiplied |
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| 小题2: | | A．while | B．although | C．when | D．if |
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| 小题3: | | A．pursue | B．engage | C．involve | D．conduct |
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| 小题4: | | A．calculate | B．suspect | C．conclude | D．achieve |
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| 小题5: | | A．required | B．confirmed | C．refused | D．completed |
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| 小题6: | | A．subscribes to | B．caters to | C．sticks to | D．appeals to |
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| 小题7: | | A．inquired | B．proved | C．extended | D．acquired |
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| 小题8: | | A．connection | B．comparison | C．difference | D．contradiction |
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| 小题9: | | A．educational | B．political | C．social | D．professional |
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| 小题10: | | A．balance | B．develop | C．identify | D．seek |
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| 小题11: | | A．situation | B．judgment | C．level | D．preference |
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| 小题12: | | A．connected with | B．based on | C．committed to | D．combined with |
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| 小题13: | | A．resources | B．experiences | C．finance | D．memory |
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| 小题14: | | A．degree | B．identity | C．success | D．responsibility |
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| 小题15: | | A．perfect | B．usual | C．common | D．same |
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| 小题16: | | A．changes | B．problems | C．factors | D．characters |
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| 小题17: | | A．disturbed | B．moved | C．puzzled | D．attracted |
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| 小题18: | | A．tied | B．accustomed | C．transferred | D．copied |
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| 小题19: | | A．practical | B．topical | C．physical | D．medical |
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| 小题20: | | A．take charge of | B．take control of | C．take advantage of | D．take care of |
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