“City Cycling USA: Los Angeles,” a pocket-sized tour guide to seeing Los Angeles on two wheels, is seemingly for visitors; for locals, its series of bike-friendly paths and itineraries (行程) are a road-map to becoming tourists in their own city again.
“City Cycling” explores five neighborhoods in the Westside and Eastside and generally north of the 10 and south of the 101. Itineraries fit the period of a day, beginning with spots for coffee, walking along museums and shops, and finishing off with recommendations of where to buy a well-deserved drink. Published by Thames and Hudson in association with London cycling brand Rapha Racing, the guidebook is among the first U.S. sections — alongside New York, Chicago and San Francisco — in a series launched in 2013 with biking tours of eight European cities.
Greatest hits such as the Bradbury Building and Echo Park Lake are included in the neighborhood tours, with plenty of fashionable places for where to eat — Eggslut, Pine & Crane and Gjusta. The guide is a reminder of how crowdedly packed each enclave (飞地) of L.A. is with unusual destinations, the large number of places to explore within a few square mile radius (半径), easily done once we step out of the car.
Los Angeles’ famously pleasant weather makes it an ideal city for exploring by bike; neighborhoods have different styles. While the car still plays an important role, cycling culture, like CicLAvia, already has full support, and is prepared to grow with the implementation (实施) of Mobility Plan 2035, which aims to make the city more bike friendly. “City Cycling USA: Los Angeles” is a start.
1．Who is City Cycling USA: Los Angeles really intended for?| A．Locals on bikes. | B．Visitors on bikes. |
| C．Tourist on bikes | D．Bicyclists |
| A．Where there is a café. |
| B．Where it is convenient for tourists on bikes. |
| C．Where drink can be bought easily. |
| D．Where there are museums and shops. |
| A．Destinations you can reach within a day. |
| B．Places where you can eat. |
| C．Guides to a enclave of L.A. crowded with unusual destinations. |
| D．Places where you can see the Bradbury Building and Echo Park Lake. |
| A．Because of its pleasant weather. | B．Because of cycling culture. |
| C．Because of Mobility Plan 2035. | D．Because it is bike friendly. |
Plato believed that men are divided into three classes: gold, silver and bronze. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, argued that “ the vital few” contributed to most progress. Such viewpoints are taboo (禁忌) today in public life. Politicians avoid talking of a “leadership class” or “the vital few”. School recruitment turns away from picking winners. Universities welcome the masses: more people now teach at British universities than attended them in the1950s.
In the private sector things could hardly be more different. The world’s best companies struggle tirelessly to find and keep the vital few. They offer them fat pay packets, extra training, powerful instruction and more challenging assignments. Private-equity (私人股权) firms rely heavily on a few stars. Firms in emerging markets are desperate to find high-flyers who can cope with rapid growth and fast-changing environments.
Few people know more about how companies manage talent than Bill Conaty and RamCharan. Mr. Conaty led the human-resources department at General Electric (GE) for 14years. Mr. Charan has spent the past few decades presenting proposals to some celebrated entrepreneurs (企业家). Their recent book, The Talent Masters, provides. a nice mix of portraits of well-known talent factories, such as GE and Procter & Gamble (P&G).
Successful companies make sure that senior managers are involved with “ talent development”. Jack Welch and A. G. Lafley, former bosses of GE and P&G, claimed that they spent 40% of their time on personnel. Andy Grove, who ra n Intel, a chipmaker, obliged all the senior people, including himself, to spend at least a week a year instructing high-flyers . Nitin Paranjpe, the boss of Hindustan Unilever, recruits people from campuses and regularly visits high-flyers in their offices.
Elitism (精英主义) has its drawbacks. In their rush to classify people, companies can miss potential stars. Those who are singled out for special treatment can become too full of themselves.
1．The change that occurred in British universities reflects that .| A．more students enroll for schools |
| B．people of today are much cleverer |
| C．UK attaches importance to education |
| D．elitism in public organizations declines |
| A．Potential clients. | B．Faithful employees. |
| C．Competent managers. | D．Celebrated politicians. |
| A．By listing examples. | B．By classification. |
| C．By analyzing causes. | D． By describing a process. |
| A．Discrimination in workplaces will get more serious. |
| B．Famous companies’ elitism management is worth trying. |
| C．The Talent Masters offers advice to some leading bosses. |
| D．Elitism may get some potential talented people excluded. |
I am excited to be teaching in an introductory history seminar (研讨班) on the world of Thomas Jefferson. It affords a(n)
I love seeing students try to make
With more
| A．expensive | B．serious | C．fantastic | D．acceptable |
| A．sense | B．use | C．mistakes | D．excuses |
| A．fixed | B．connected | C．tied | D．contacted |
| A．interview | B．imagine | C．describe | D．understand |
| A．support | B．satisfy | C．attract | D．guide |
| A．point out | B．look on | C．think up | D．put through |
| A．famous | B．powerful | C．unique | D．noble |
| A．combined | B．compared | C．added | D．devoted |
| A．experiments | B．research | C．suggestions | D．introductions |
| A．magical | B．surprising | C．interesting | D．logical |
| A．preferred | B．succeeded | C．expected | D．failed |
| A．structures | B．agreements | C．conditions | D．directions |
| A．century | B．history | C．seminar | D．facts |
| A．reveals | B．discovers | C．divides | D．explains |
| A．skill | B．subject | C．event | D．relationship |
The Mona Lisa is the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting of a woman with a mysterious smile. This week, the painting gave up a secret.
Scientists using X-rays to examine the chemical structure of a small part of the painting discovered a technique Leonardo used in the work. An oil paint used for it was a special, new chemical mixture, which suggests that the Italian artist was in an experimental mood when he worked on the painting in the 16th century.
“He loved to experiment, and each of his paintings is completely different technically,”said Victor Gonzalez, a chemist who has studied the chemical element (成分) of several works by Leonardo and other artists. The researchers found a rare lead compound (铅化合物) — plumbonacrite, in Leonardo’s first layer of paint. The discovery proved that da Vinci most likely used lead oxide to thicken and help dry his paint. The paint in the study is about the thickness of a human hair, lying in the top right area of the painting.
The scientists looked into its atomic structure using X-rays, moving particles at the speed of light, permitting researchers to look deeper into the paint structure. “ Plumbonacrite is really a fingerprint of his recipe, as it’s the first time we can chemically confirm it,” Gonzalez said.
Dutch artist Rembrandt may have used a similar mixture when he was painting in the 17th century. Gonzalez and other researchers have found plumbonacrite in his work, too. Leonardo is thought to have put lead oxide powder, which has an orange color, in the oil to make it thicker and dry faster. “What you will get is an oil that has a very nice golden color,” Gonzalez said. “It flows more like honey.”
But the Mona Lisa — said by the Louvre to be a portrait (肖像) of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk businessman — and additional works by Leonardo still have other secrets to tell. “What we are saying is just a little brick in the knowledge,” Gonzalez said.
1．What’s the new discovery about the Mona Lisa?| A．A new explanation of the secret smile. |
| B．A new chemical element used in the painting. |
| C．The secret of the woman in the painting. |
| D．The structure of the paint da Vinci used. |
| A．Open secret. | B．Widespread use. | C．Hidden element. | D．Long-term dream. |
| A．It helps to make many things into paints. |
| B．It helps to make paints easy to deal with. |
| C．It helps to keep the paintings last long. |
| D．It helps to make paintings rich in color. |
| A．It has more secrets to tell the world. |
| B．It’s the portrait of a silk businessman. |
| C．It’s well kept in bricks in the Louvre. |
| D．It has a mixture of different art styles. |
When a chunk of ice fell from a collapsing glacier(冰川)on the Swiss Alps’ Mount Eiger in 2017, part of the long deep sound it produced was too low for human ears to detect. But these vibrations held a key to calculating the ice avalanche’s(崩塌)critical characteristics.
Low-frequency sound waves called infrasound that travel great distances through the atmosphere are already used to monitor active volcanoes from afar. Now some researchers in this field have switched focus from fire to ice: dangerous blocks snapping off glaciers. Previous work has analyzed infrasound from snow avalanches but never ice, says Boise State University geophysicist Jeffrey Johnson. “This was different,” Johnson says. “A signature of a new material has been detected with infrasound.”
Usually glaciers move far too slowly to generate an infrasound signal, which researchers pick up using detectors that track slight changes in air pressure. But a collapse—a sudden, rapid breaking of ice from the glacier’s main body—is a prolific infrasound producer. Glacial collapses drive ice avalanches, which pose an increasing threat to people in mountainous regions as rising temperatures weaken large fields of ice. A glacier “can become detached from the ground due to melting, causing bigger break— offs,” says University of Florence geologist Emanuele Marchetti, lead author of the new study. As the threat grows, scientists seek new ways to monitor and detect such collapses.
Researchers often use radar to track ice avalanches, which is precise but expensive and can monitor only one specific location and neighboring avalanche paths. Infrasound, Marchetti says, is cheaper and can detect break—off events around a much broader area as well as multiple avalanches across a mountain. It is challenging, however, to separate a signal into its components (such as traffic noises, individual avalanches and nearby earthquakes) without additional measurements, says ETH Zurich glaciologist Malgorzata Chmiel. “The model used by Marchetti is a first approximation for this,” she says. Isolating the relevant signal helps the researchers monitor an ice avalanche’s speed, path and volume from afar using infrasound.
Marchetti and his colleagues are now working to improve their detectors to pick up more signals across at-risk regions in Europe, and they have set up collaborations around the continent to better understand signals that collapsing glaciers produce. They are also refining their mathematical analysis to figure out each ice cascade’s physical details.
1．What can we learn from Paragraph 2 and Paragraph 3?| A．Infrasound has a major role to play in discovering new materials. |
| B．Ice avalanches are a bigger threat to people than volcanic eruptions. |
| C．Researchers are trying to use infrasound in detecting ice avalanches. |
| D．Scientists employ infrasound more in mountain areas than in other places. |
| A．The combination with other relevant signals. |
| B．The accuracy in locating a certain avalanche. |
| C．The ability in picking up signals in wider areas. |
| D．The sensitivity in tracking air pressure changes. |
| A．distinguishing different components of a signal |
| B．detecting multiple avalanches at the same time |
| C．calculating the speed and path of ice avalanches |
| D．monitoring the specific location of ice break—offs |
| A．From Fire to Ice | B．Glacier Whispers |
| C．Nature is Warning | D．Secret of Ice Avalanches |
Monday started out great. I woke up on time, ate breakfast and did some last minute studying for my first hour math test. I was confident of getting good grades. Then I left my house. Ten minutes later, I was settled with my friends on the school bus. We were busy chatting about how we spent our weekend. At one stop, Fat Ryan got on hurriedly. He tripped over someone’s foot accidentally and THUMP! He fell flat onto the floor.
Every one of us on the bus looked on and laughed crazily. Ryan struggled to his feet, dusted the jacket and made his way to an empty seat. He tried to laugh with us, but his face was burning with embarrassment. The rest of the morning flew by. I did well in my math test. I read two more chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird in English class. It wasn’t long before there went the lunch bell. I met my friends from the cheerleading team in the dining hall. Then I couldn’t help but notice Ryan a few tables away, sitting all alone. He caught me looking. I smiled at him quickly and looked away.
When we finished eating, we headed out to the courtyard to practice a cheer we would do at that night’s football game. After a little practice, we nailed the cheer, so we decided we only needed to go through it one last time. Again, just like the rest of my day so far, the cheer was going great. I raised my leg for one last toe touch. RIIPPP! I felt my jeans split down the middle of my backside.
I froze. I had no idea what to do but stand still. Then I heard people burst out laughing, and I saw them pointing at my torn jeans. Trying to cover myself with my hands, I tried to laugh too, but I felt tears began to well up in my eyes.
Then I saw Ryan running towards me.
That night, after the cheer at the football game, I found Ryan.
After filling out fifty applications, going through four interviews, and winning one offer, I took what I could get — a teaching job at what I considered a distant wild area: western New Jersey. My characteristic optimism was alive only when I reminded myself that I would be doing what I had wanted to do since I was fourteen — teaching English．
School started. I was teaching English. I worked hard, taking time off only to eat and sleep. And then there was my sixth-grade class who were only six years younger than me. I was struggling in my work as a young idealistic teacher. I wanted to make literature come alive and to promote a love for the written word. The students wanted to throw spitballs (纸团)and whisper dirty words in the back of the room.
In college, I had been taught that a successful educator should ignore bad behavior. So I did, confident that, as the textbook had said, the bad behavior would disappear as I gave my students positive attention. But in fact, humans, particularly teenagers, rarely seem reasonable. By the time my boss, who was also my taskmaster, known to be the strictest, most demanding, most quick to fire inexperienced teachers, came into the classroom to observe me, the students exhibited very little good behavior to praise.
My boss sat in the back of the room. The boys in the class were making animal noises, hitting each other while the girls filed their nails or read magazines. I just pretended it all wasn’t happening and went on lecturing and tried to ask some inspiring questions. My boss, sitting in the back of the room, seemed to be growing bigger and bigger. After twenty minutes, he left silently. Visions of unemployment marched before my eyes. I felt mildly proud that I got through the rest of class without crying, but at my next free period, I had to face him.
After class, I walked to his office, took a deep breath and opened the door.
Inspired by his advice, I walked toward the classroom, determined to make a change.
Growing up in a Southern family, big meals were the norm. Every meal for my nuclear family of four provided enough food for eight. Each Sunday, when we drove to my grandmother’s home for lunch, there was more than enough food.
When I lost my job, though, my handling of extra food suddenly hit a barrier.
But instead of cooking a lot and then simply eating the leftovers, I had a new solution that worked well with my belief in showing love through food:
Such a small act can bring large amounts of joy to anyone in these hard times. And in unfavorable situations, it’s an act that allows us to develop friendship and show love while we must, still, remain apart.
| A．Continue cooking for my family. |
| B．Bringing the extras as meals to my friends. |
| C．It was the one part of our new world I couldn’t refuse. |
| D．In the shock of the change, I cooked less for about a year. |
| E．In my adult life before unemployment, this tradition stayed with me. |
| F．Serving extra food was the way that we showed love to one another. |
| G．But doing so seemed contrary to the generosity I had been brought up to believe in. |
I was awakened by the sound of heavy boots hitting the floor as my grandfather walked across the wooden floor to the fireplace. He added wood to the fire. Soon, the small wooden house felt warm.
It was 5: 30 on a cold January morning, deep in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. I, a12-year-old boy, was here with my grandfather and four other men on an annual deer-hunting trip. My grandfather wanted me to take the adventure to increase my courage and fun.
Looking at me, he smiled, “Could you make some coffee?” To prove that I was qualified to join this male club, I got up and started the work.
After breakfast, we left the warm and safe house and headed out into the dark, snowy morning, walking through deep snow. When we climbed over a mountain and crossed frozen streams, my grandfather told me to be mindful of where we had been and where we were headed. I tried to keep track of our route, but later had no idea.
About mid-afternoon, we made our way down the side of a new mountain to the stream bed below. My grandfather told me to head to the top of the next mountain, walk along the ridge (山脊) for a few hundred feet, and then come back down. If there were any deer on that part of the mountain, I would need to threaten them down to the bottom where my grandfather waited. So, off I went with a gun.
It took me 20 minutes to climb to the top. I walked along the ridge and then headed back down. I didn’t realize I had crossed over the top and had started back down the other side of the mountain. I headed in the wrong direction. After walking for 45 minutes, I realized I was lost in the woods. I was shocked.
After finally calming myself, I sat down and worked out a plan. I would first fire the gun and then start a fire, hoping my grandfather would know where I was by the sounds and smoke.
I held my gun and immediately fired three shots.
Finally, I found my grandfather and other men walking in my direction hurriedly.
Have you had enough(or enuf)trouble spelling English words to make you want to scream(or skreem)? You are not alone. Generations of scholars since the 17th century have protested against the
Part of the problem is caused by the
Some English learners know that memorizing the Latin roots of English words is a great way to
By the time English was again
Standardization did not come until the 15th century. The use of the printing press(印刷机)and, for the first time, the mass distribution(大量流通)of books
Now the story gets a bit
Supporters of English spelling reform argue that
| A．similarities | B．mistakes | C．irregularities | D．varieties |
| A．ancient | B．various | C．local | D．unknown |
| A．questions | B．steps | C．goals | D．rules |
| A．unnecessary | B．impossible | C．natural | D．easy |
| A．mixed together | B．put forward | C．figured out | D．written down |
| A．understand | B．recite | C．expand | D．practice |
| A．correct | B．actual | C．official | D．popular |
| A．banned | B．translated | C．changed | D．allowed |
| A．set | B．alternative | C．complex | D．separate |
| A．transformed | B．froze | C．repeated | D．measured |
| A．funny | B．clear | C．scary | D．tricky |
| A．since | B．while | C．unless | D．until |
| A．combining | B．replacing | C．sharing | D．exchanging |
| A．obstacles | B．admissions | C．keys | D．applications |
| A．fix | B．improve | C．copy | D．avoid |
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