When Valentine's Day was around the corner, Grandma came down with a terrible cold when she was travelling from Colorado to my family's house in California. She was too weak to go out at all, which was sad and disappointing. That was because Grandma and Grandpa had been planning to take my little sister Indi and me to the zoo for Valentine's Day. Grandma, as an animal lover, had been especially looking forward to it.
On Valentine's Day Indi begged Grandma to go to the zoo together. But Grandma jokingly explained that if she went there, she might spread her cold to other visitors, or even to the animals, making them all start sneezing.
In my mind, I imagined the sight that an elephant kept sneezing. Meanwhile I made my arm into a trunk and blurted out a funny trumpeting sound that ended in a gigantic sneeze. "Good one, Brother!" Indi laughed. "That elephant would need a huge box of tissues.”
Grandma was amused. But she insisted that she should stay at home and rest up. She wished us a pleasant visit and reminded us to send her regards to the monkeys in the zoo.
Well, we did go and we did have a great time but I kept wishing Grandma could have been there with us. When we reached the monkey mountain, Grandpa told us to hold still and say “cheese" and snapped a good picture of the monkeys and us.
“Cheese!” I said. But Indi said, “Happy Valentine's Day, Grandma!”
"You were supposed to say cheese." said Grandpa.
Indi shrugged, “It just came out.”
"I'm glad it did" I said, because your words just gave me a fantastic idea! What if we take pictures of different animals, and then turn them into a special Valentine gift for Grandma?" Indi and Grandpa agreed and we kept taking pictures with delight for Grandma's surprise.
My best friend traveled to stay with our family last weekend. When she arrived, she went straight to the kitchen and, without asking, ate a spoonful of raspberry jam and some dried fruit. She wasn’t being rude. I knew she would do this. We’ve known each other for almost 20 years. She can eat anything she wants from my kitchen. Indeed, I bought her favorite fruits and snacks at the shop that morning.
Our long weekend together was luxuriously (惬意地) simple. I was recovering from surgery (手术) and couldn’t go to shopping malls. We passed the time running errands (做杂事), going to the post office and collecting dry cleaning. We drank way too many cappuccinos. But we talked about every little detail of our lives.
There’s never been a quiet moment in our friendship. We’ve lived in different cities for almost a decade. Reunions demand constant conversation. our personalities are matched, to be sure, and a shared history is indescribably valuable. We were competitors in high school before bonding over a bad experience. Then we discovered the many interests that we had in common. Our friendship cemented (巩固) itself quickly. We stayed companions through law school, through our first jobs and our first boyfriends. We supported each other through break-ups and breakthroughs. Ours is a friendship for the ages.
There is something special about friends who know everyone and everything about you. They are rare. These are the people you’ve chosen to witness your life. They have seen the bright lights of achievement, the depths of despair (绝望) and the boring routine (平淡乏味) of the in-between.
It’s special to unpack feelings and frustrations without wasting time filling in the blanks. As my long weekend shows, with such friends we don’t have to “do”, we simply have to “be”. We drop the act, the performance, the public version of ourselves.
The special friendships are those which never fail to delight, the continuation of which is worth the extra effort, despite distance and difference sneaking (溜进) into your separate lives. I had the very great joy of this reminder last weekend. I’m lucky to have found this friend, to see a future where her companionship remains. Being together is perfection.
1．What happened during her best friend’s visit?| A．They enjoyed an eventful long weekend. | B．They bonded by having long conversations. |
| C．They made their favorite snacks and coffee. | D．They talked about recent news events. |
| A．they help each other deal with the boredom of life |
| B．they prefer to witness each other’s lives from far away |
| C．they try to show each other their best selves |
| D．they are comfortable being themselves when together |
| A．Charm comes from differences. | B．Politeness brings best friends closer. |
| C．Good friendships last naturally. | D．Good friendships need devotion. |
| A．describe what her best friend is like | B．tell about the friendship she treasures |
| C．explore the key aspects of friendship | D．express thanks to her best friend |
From the time when I was a child, my mother made it clear that she did not like nursing homes（敬老院）. I remember her saying that nursing homes were terrible places. Whenever my mother mentioned the topic. she would shake her finger at me and add a warning:"If you put me in one of those places, I'll not forgive you! "I knew my mother's wishes and wanted to obey.
Fortunately, my mother lived near me, and for many years it was easy to check on her and help with her care. But with each passing year, my mother experienced a decline in her physical and mental abilities. After ninety, when she was diagnosed with dementia(老年痴呆症) , she needed more assistance with the normal activities of daily living and required close observation just for her own safety.
During the passage of time, I, too, was getting older, I had my own mobility（移动性） issues and health concerns, As the days passed, it became clearer that some changes were needed. If I had to go out for groceries（食品杂货）, I couldn't leave her alone. When I slept, my mother was un-watched, and she could get out of bed and wander off.
Fortunately, while I was figuring out what to do, a brand-new nursing home was built in our town, I toured the nursing home and discovered that they could provide a private room for my mother. They also had staff members that were very professional and well-trained, I tried to convince myself that the new nursing home was the best and safest place for my mother, but I seemed to hear my mother's words and see her finger shake in front of my eyes.
Eventually，I decided and shared my plan with Mom.
The big day came finally.
It is often difficult for farmers to identify diseases quickly enough to protect their crops and those on neighboring farms. Now, some farmers are using a simple device directly in the field to find viruses before they spread.
In Tanzania, several viruses are a threat to cassava crops. Farmers struggle to identify the diseases in an urgent effort to avoid severe crop damage. The disease identification process is often difficult when farmers are acting on their own. If they do not know what is attacking their crops, they cannot decide the best way to fight the disease. A device from British technology company Oxford Nanopore is changing that. The device extracts deoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA, from plants. DNA is the carrier of genetic information in nearly all living things. The device helps farmers identify what is harming their crops so they can change to more resistant crops.
Laura Boykin is with the University of Western Australia and also works with the Cassava Virus Action Project. She brought the device to a Tanzanian farm owned by Asha Mohamed. She said, “We are here collecting leaf punches from infected material to test, to do a DNA extraction and then start sequencing (排序) in the field.” The testing identified a number of viruses in the cassava fields near Mohamed’s farm. The process also discovered that plants considered resistant to disease had a very low viral level. Once the viruses were identified, Asha Mohamed was given two kinds of seeds that are resistant to the diseases.
In another case, DNA was collected from a pawpaw tree farm in Kenya. With that test, the technology was able to identify diseases affecting Naomi Mumo’s crops. Naomi Mumo said, “All my pawpaw were affected by a disease, and I didn’t know what kind of disease it was. But now, I have people who have identified the disease using new technology, and within a very short time. So I’m very happy.”
The speed at which farmers identify diseases can mean the difference between the success or failure on large areas of crop land. Now, the use of such simple and easily transportable DNA sequencing devices is making that possible.
1．What’s the main idea of the whole passage?| A．Farmers In Tanzania struggle to identify the diseases in their crops |
| B．How Laura Boykin helped Asha Mohamed to identify the viruses. |
| C．DNA sequencing device helps farmers to find viruses and identify the diseases in their crops quickly. |
| D．A DNA sequencing device helps farmers to identify the diseases and keep healthy. |
| A．produces | B．creates | C．refuses | D．gets |
| A．relaxed | B．satisfied | C．disappointed | D．annoyed |
| A．Farmers often have difficulty in identifying diseases in their crops quickly by themselves. |
| B．DNA carries genetic information in nearly all living things. |
| C．Both Asha Mohamed and Naomi Mumo are farmers in Tanzania. |
| D．If farmers can identify diseases in their crops quickly, they can protect their crops and succeed on large areas of crop land. |
At six years old, I dreamed of becoming an artist. My mom knew this, so she gave the perfect gift to a first-grade artist like me. My friends and I called them “Stampy Markers (马克笔)”. They quickly became my treasure.
Unfortunately, my little sister thought they were amazing, too. For three days in a row, she would ask to play with my markers. However, each time, she would receive my firm “No”. Finally, maybe realizing it was impossible to take them from.me, she stopped asking. And I was able to leave them out in my room when I went to school, certain that she understood they were forbidden to her.
The first day that I didn’t hide them, I got home from school and went upstairs to my room. Right away, I saw that my markers were not where I had left them. My rainbow-colored treasures were gone!
Suspecting that my sister might have something to do with their ds appearance, I searched the entire house for her. Finally, I found her in the basement and, sure enough, she was working on some rainbow drawing with my markers surrounding her.
“Hey! Why did you take them while I was away?” I started yelling at her.
“Sorry...but I...” she murmured.
Before she could make any explanation, I grabbed the markers—at least the ones I could reach—and ran back up to my room, slamming the door shut behind me. I sat there for at least half an hour, but it seemed like much longer. Then, I heard my sister’s footsteps coming up the stairs.
I opened my mouth, about to demand that she give the rest of my markers back, when I noticed a folded piece of paper being pushed underneath the door.
Once it reached my side of the door, I picked it up. As I read the words written on the cover, my anger quickly fell away.
What was on the paper was something that I would never forget.
I opened the door, reached out to her and gave her a hug.
We may think we're a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices(装置) well after they go out of style. That’s bad news for the environment — and our wallets — as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.
To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life — from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s. Devices were grouped by generation — Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992. Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997. And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.
As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn't throw out our old ones. "The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids' room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house," said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007. We're not just keeping these old devices — we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt's team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions（排放）more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.
So what's the solution（解决方案）? The team's data only went up to 2007, but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.
1．What does the author think of new devices?| A．They are environment-friendly. | B．They are no better than the old. |
| C．They cost more to use at home. | D．They go out of style quickly. |
| A．To reduce the cost of minerals. |
| B．To test the life cycle of a product. |
| C．To update consumers on new technology. |
| D．To find out electricity consumption of the devices. |
| A．The box-set TV. | B．The tablet. |
| C．The LCD TV. | D．The desktop computer. |
| A．Stop using them. | B．Take them apart. |
| C．Upgrade them. | D．Recycle them. |
Yours,
Li Hua
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