Some people are so rude. Who sends an e-mail or a text message that just says “Thank you?” Who leaves a voice mail message rather than texts you? Who asks for a fact easily found on the Internet?
Maybe I’m the rude one for not appreciating life’s little courtesies(礼节). But many social norms(规范) just don’t make sense to people drowning in digital communication.
Take the thank-you note. Daniel Post Senning, a coauthor of Emily Post’s Etiquette，asked, “At what point does showing appreciation outweigh the cost?”
This isn’t the first time technology has changed our manners,
In the age of the smart phone, there is no reason to ask once-acceptable questions about:the weather forecast, a business’s phone number, or directions to a house, a restaurant, or an office, which can be easily found on a digital map.
How to handle these differing standards? Easy: Consider your audience. Some people,especially older ones, appreciate a thank-you message.
What’s your opinion on spicy food? Some people cannot handle even the smallest amount of chili peppers in their dinner while others can’t get enough of them.
Scientists have long been puzzled by why some people love the chili while others loathe it. Plenty of research has been done on the subject, dating as far back as the 1970s. Previous results showed that a love of chilies is related to childhood experiences, and that cultural influences affect our taste too. But the latest study has found that a person’s love of spicy food may be linked to his or her personality (性格) more than anything else, CBC News reported.
“We have always assumed that liking drives intake — we eat what we like and we like what we eat. But no one has actually directly bothered to connect personality with intake of chili peppers,” said Professor John E. Hayes from Pennsylvania State University, who led the study.
But before you look at the study, you should first know that “spicy” is not a taste, unlike sour, sweet, bitter and salty taste. It is, in fact, a burning feeling that you feel on the surface of your tongue. This got scientists thinking that maybe a love of spicy food is brought about by people’s longing for thrill, something they usually get from watching action movies or riding a roller coaster.
In the study, 97 participants, both male and female, were asked to fill out questionnaires about their personality, for example, whether they like new experiences or tend to avoid risks. They were then given a glass of water with capsaicin (辣椒素), the plant chemical that makes a chili burn, mixed into it.
By comparing the answers to the questionnaire and what participants said they felt about the spicy water, researchers found that those who tended to enjoy action movies or take risks were about six times more likely to enjoy the spicy water.
Interestingly, we used to believe that the reason why some people can withstand (耐受) spicy food is that their tongues have become less sensitive to it. However, this latest study has found otherwise. “It’s not that it doesn’t burn as badly, but that you actually learn to like the burning feeling,” Hayes explained.
1．What’s the meaning of the underlined word “loathe” in the second paragraph?| A．Dislike. | B．Fear. |
| C．Put up with. | D．Adapt to. |
| A．What we eat actually helps to develop our personality. |
| B．Males are more likely to enjoy spicy food than females. |
| C．Those trying to avoid risks tend to be less interested in spicy food. |
| D．People are wrong to treat " spicy" as a kind of taste rather than a feeling. |
| A．Because their taste has become less sensitive. |
| B．Because they love the burning feeling. |
| C．Because they want to challenge themselves. |
| D．Because the more they try spicy food, the less it burns. |
| A．What one likes to eat mainly depends on one’s personality. |
| B．Whether one enjoys spicy food depends largely on one’s personality. |
| C．One’s personal experiences have nothing to do with their taste. |
| D．Different people have different taste. |
Technology has started to take over the world. It may seem like a huge advancement to society, but large setbacks come equally.
We now live in an age of social media. We have never been as
While some may see social media’s positive effects
To understand technology, one must know
The number of fish caught just outside a recently expanded marine (海洋) protected area in Hawaii has risen. It is a sign that quadrupling (四倍) the size of the reserve in 2016 may have shored fish populations in the region.
When the Marine National Monument around Hawaii was enlarged to 1,510,000 square kilometers, marine conservationists around the world rejoiced.
Fishers may have felt differently, however, as fishing inside the area is not allowed. Yet by creating a space for dwindling tuna populations to recover, supporters argued, the reserve would benefit fisheries as well.
As populations inside the reserve boundaries steadily increased, they predicted, the fish would spill (溢出) over into the surrounding areas, increasing the amount of tuna available to catch.
Proving that is tricky, however, as tuna can’t be counted directly. Their numbers may rise or fall for a variety of reasons other than the expansion of a reserve. But the new study, published in Science this week, strongly suggests the number of fish caught just outside the MPA is higher now than it used to be.
Alan Friedlander, chief scientist for the National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas project, calls the study a “very careful and strict test of spillover from marine protected areas.”
Importantly, says John Lynham, an environmental economist at the University of Hawaii and one of the study’s authors, the increase in tuna catches near the reserve held up even when looking at the average numbers caught by particular fishers. This shows the effect is not due to more effective crews now fishing local waters, he explains. To account for effort, catch numbers were divided by the ever-increasing number of fishing hooks in the area.
Lynham and colleagues found the catch per hook increased over the 10 years of the study. Fishers were catching on average six more yellowfin and five more bigeye tuna per year after the expansion than before.
“That last one, especially, was a surprise,” says Lynham, “because it is economically much more important, and there were fewer indications of an increase.”
1．What is the first paragraph mainly about?| A．The rising number of fish caught is a sign of a well-reserved area. |
| B．Enlarge the size of reserve may contribute to the increasing of fish population. |
| C．The number of fish caught has risen to quadrupling (四倍) the size of that in 2016. |
| D．Fish catching outside the reserve does good to the expanded marine protected area. |
| A．They felt joyful. | B．They felt different. | C．They felt unpleasant. | D．They felt excited. |
| A．By figuring the average catch per hook in the area. |
| B．By summing up the catch of mare effective crews. |
| C．By looking at the numbers caught by particular fishers. |
| D．By detecting the number of tuna population in the surrounding area. |
| A．Tuna population embraces a boost | B．Marine Protected Areas Help Fisheries |
| C．Local fisheries hold a promising future | D．Tuna population can be counted scientifically |
A group of frogs were traveling through the woods, and two of them
At first, both of the two frogs didn't care their words and tried
The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again，the crowd of frogs shouted at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even
This story teaches us two lessons: There is power of life and death in the tongue. Well-meant words can help people in trouble. But, evil words sometimes can kill them. Be careful of
Remember the power of words. Anyone can speak words
Most of us never forget the person that was there for us in our darkest times. Apparently, penguins (企鹅) don’t either.
On a typical day, off the coast of a small Brazilian island, Joao Pereira de Souza headed out fishing. He was disheartened to find that an oil leak had polluted the waters. Staring out at the oily waves, he decided it was not a good day to fish. But walking on the beach that day, he found a struggling penguin, covered in oil and starving.
Joao took the penguin home, and spent a whole week gently cleaning it and nursing it back to health. He named it Dindim, a Portuguese word meaning “ice pop”. Dindim is a Magellanic penguin, a species known for living in the seas of South America. In order to breed (繁殖), they must return to Patagonia, 5,000 miles from Joao’s home.
After a week of rehabilitation (康复), Joao patiently took Dindim back to the sea and taught it how to swim again. When Dindim could swim quite well, Joao took it out into the sea by boat and dropped it off to encourage it to swim back to its home. But when he was back to shore, he found the penguin waiting for him. Joao made two more attempts later, but each time the bird would just return to Joao’s home. It seemed that Dindim had already formed a family bond with Joao and wouldn’t leave.
Joao had no choice but to keep the little creature. During the following months, Dindim would follow behind Joao to fish on the coast joyfully. Dindim also liked to lie on Joao’s lap, letting Joao give it showers, allowing Joao to feed it fish and to pick it up. Joao and his family enjoyed the company of Dindim. But deep inside Joao’s heart, he knew Dindim belonged to the wild. Gradually, the hot summer days witnessed the change of its new feathers. Was it time to say “goodbye”?
I was nine when my father first sent me flowers. I had been taking tap-dancing lessons for six months, and the school was holding its yearly
As the years passed, other
As my fortunes grew, my father gradually became
Often in the dozen years since, I have felt a(n)
Then one birthday, the doorbell rang. I was feeling
| A．meeting | B．report | C．speech | D．performance |
| A．aware | B．proud | C．sick | D．tired |
| A．mystery | B．surprise | C．relief | D．regret |
| A．teachers | B．dancers | C．winners | D．readers |
| A．bench | B．pavement | C．stage | D．floor |
| A．carefully | B．politely | C．flatly | D．loudly |
| A．movements | B．conditions | C．occasions | D．customs |
| A．marked | B．covered | C．impressed | D．left |
| A．developed | B．reduced | C．appeared | D．symbolized |
| A．moved | B．benefited | C．graduated | D．worked |
| A．careless | B．weak | C．busy | D．upset |
| A．after | B．while | C．since | D．until |
| A．on | B．of | C．with | D．in |
| A．urge | B．interest | C．threat | D．opportunity |
| A．but | B．or | C．so | D．and |
| A．scared | B．sad | C．worried | D．nervous |
| A．hard work | B．devotion | C．birthday | D．success |
| A．flowers | B．cakes | C．gifts | D．cards |
| A．beyond | B．beside | C．behind | D．before |
| A．sighed | B．cried | C．looked | D．doubted |
Google has announced plans to stop supporting tools designed to follow Internet users across the web in order to target them with specific advertising.
Such tools are known as cookies-small data files that are stored on an Internet user's computer as they browse （浏览）different websites. This data can be read by web servers to identify web browsing behaviors of the user. Cookies make it possible for users to avoid having to repeatedly enter their user names and passwords to get access to websites they use often. But the use of cookies raises major privacy concerns, with critics saying a user's browsing history should not be recorded just to target them with ads.
Google announced in 2020 it had decided “to remove support for third-party cookies" from its Chrome browser. In another online announcement, Google repeated this promise, saying it will not build new tools to replace current cookie technology.
In explaining its decision, Google referred to a Pew Research study that found 72 percent of Americans feel that almost all of what they do online is tracked by advertisers. Google's decision to remove third-party cookies also followed increasing efforts to protect privacy in Europe and the United States. Google said the current Internet advertising model needs to change to answer “the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used.”
In January, however, Google's plan was questioned by British competition regulators. The country's Competition and Markets Authority announced it had launched an investigation into whether the changes would give Google an unfair advantage over competitors in Internet advertising. The agency said it received objections to the plan from Marketers for an Open Web, a league of technology and publishing companies. The group accuses Google of “abusing its dominant position” by attempting to create a new advertising model.
In its latest statement, Google said, “We will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.”
1．According to the text, what do you know about cookies?| A．Cookies are inconvenient for web users. |
| B．The users should repeat their passwords to enter websites. |
| C．Google uses Cookies to monitor the web users' private life. |
| D．The tracks of the web users can be followed by the web servers. |
| A．To use a alternative tool. |
| B．To get more personal information, |
| C．To respond to concerns about privacy. |
| D．To create a fair Internet advertising platform. |
| A．It was organized by an agency of the US. |
| B．All people don't accept the Google's plan. |
| C．Google has the biggest advantages on the Internet. |
| D．Marketers for an Open Web is in favor of the Google's plan. |
| A．Privacy should be protected. |
| B．Google will change advertising model. |
| C．There should not be many advertisements on the web. |
| D．Cookies will be removed from Google for privacy protection. |
For generations, students were taught to stretch before playing games. Then the practice fell out of favor. Studies seemed to show that such stretching temporarily reduces muscular power, weakens athletic performance and increases the risk of injury. So most fitness experts currently advise against stretches before exercise. But now a new research indicates that they might not be such a bad idea after all.
This month, the journal, Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism (APNM), published a study by four distinguished exercise scientists who analyzed more than 200 studies of how stretching affects the following exercise. In broad terms, they found that stretching can briefly prevent the ability to generate power. So if you reach for your toes and hold that position, tightening your hamstrings (腿筋), you might not then be able to leap as high or start a dash as forcefully as you don’t stretch.
Those undesirable effects were generally found, however, only if each stretch was held for more than 60 seconds and the subject then immediately became fully active, with no further warm-up. “Outside the lab, most people are unlikely to hold a warm-up stretch for longer than about 30 seconds.” Dr. McHugh, the co-author of the study says. The review found few lasting negative impacts from these short stretches, especially if the volunteers followed that stretching with several minutes of jogging or other basic warm-up movements. In fact, these short stretches turned out to have a positive effect.
Do these findings mean that all the athletes should stretch in advance before a match? “Not necessarily,” Dr. McHugh says, “Runners and cyclists don’t have much risk for acute muscle injuries.” Stretching before these activities is unlikely to protect against injury. Runners and cyclists can adequately warm up by jogging or pedaling lightly. But he suggests that people who play basketball and other ball sports should stretch in advance. Those who haven’t stretched since childhood gym class might want to consider consulting an athletic trainer about the best upper and lower body stretches, particularly for the shoulders and hamstrings.
1．Which of the following statements agrees with most fitness experts?| A．Before playing a game you should stretch your legs and arms. |
| B．After attending a match you should stretch your legs and arms. |
| C．It’s harmful to stretch your legs and arms before playing games. |
| D．It doesn’t matter whether you stretch or not before playing games. |
| A．they do stretches after attending a game |
| B．they reach for toes and hold that position |
| C．following a stretch with several minutes’ jogging |
| D．dashing immediately after one 60-second plus stretch |
| A．all athletes should not stretch in advance |
| B．the four scientists published the journal APNM |
| C．it’s unnecessary for a tennis player to do warm-up stretches |
| D．players ought to have done warm-up stretches since childhood |
| A．Concerned. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Disapproving. | D．Objective. |
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