For decades, India’s time zone has been a hotly debated issue. Back in 1884 when time zones were officially established, two time zones were used — Bombay Time and Calcutta Time. Indian Standard Time (IST) was introduced in 1906, but Calcutta Time and Bombay Time continued to be maintained after
India’s independence in 1947, until 1948 and 1955 respectively. The current single time zone, though a legacy of British rule, is often viewed as a symbol of unity. Yet, not everyone thinks it is a good idea. India stretches 3,000 km from east to west, spanning roughly 30 degrees longitude. This corresponds to a two-hour difference in mean solar time, based on the position of the sun in the sky. Thus, the sun rises nearly two hours earlier in the east than in India’s far west. In Northeastern states, sunrise can be as early as 4 a.m. in summer and sunset by 4 p.m. in winter, much earlier than the official working hours. This results in great loss of daylight hours and more consumption of electricity, and often reduced productivity.
Meanwhile, recent studies point out that the current system leads to a serious problem in education for some students. Nationwide, the school day starts at roughly the same time; thus, children go to bed later and have reduced sleep in west India, where the sun sets later. Such sunset-induced sleep deprivation is more pronounced among the poor, mostly due to their noisy environment and lack of sleep-inducing facilities like window shades or indoor beds. On average, an hour’s delay in sunset time reduces children’s sleep by 30 minutes, and an hour’s delay in annual average sunset time reduces education by about 0.8 years. As a result, children living in locations with later sunsets are less likely to complete primary and middle school education.
Despite various requests and proposals for multiple time zones, the government is keen to retain the current system. Reasons provided include prevention of confusion and safety issues regarding railway and flight operations.
1．Which of the following illustrates the Indian time zone system since 1955?A． | B． |
C． | D． |
| A．Noisy. | B．Distant. | C．Flexible. | D．Outstanding. |
| A．The number of traffic accidents can be reduced. |
| B．Children may have better-quality sleep and education. |
| C．India may have more energy resources to generate electricity. |
| D．The country may rid itself of the impact of British colonization. |
| A．7 p.m. | B．6 p.m. | C．5 p.m. | D．4 p.m. |
Yours,
Li Hua
I believe if we pay attention to body language, our ability to communicate will improve.
Great work is work that makes a difference in people’s lives, writes David Sturt, Executive Vice President of the O.C. Tanner Institute, in his book Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love. Sturt insists, however, that great work is not just for surgeons or special-needs educators or the founders of organizations trying to eliminate poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. The central theme of Great Work, according to Sturt, is that anyone can make a difference in any job. It’s not the nature of the job, but what you do with the job that counts. As proof, Sturt tells the story of a remarkable hospital cleaner named Moses.
In a building filled with doctors and nurses doing great life-saving work, Moses the cleaner makes a difference. Whenever he enters a room, especially a room with a sick child, he engages both patients and parents with his optimism and calm, introducing himself to the child and, Sturt writes, speaking “little comments about light and sunshine and making things clean.” He comments on any progress he sees day by day (“you’re sitting up today, that’s good.”) Moses is no doctor and doesn’t pretend to be, but he has witnessed hundreds of sick children recovering from painful surgery, and parents take comfort from his encouraging words. For Matt and Mindi, whose son McKay was born with only half of a heart, Moses became a close friend. As Sturt explains, “Moses took his innate (与生俱来的) talents (his sensitivity) and his practical wisdom (from years of hospital experience) and combined them into a powerful form of patient and family support that changed the critical-care experience for Mindi, Matt and little McKay.”
How do people like Moses do great work when so many people just work? That was the central question raised by Sturt and his team at the O.C. Tanner Institute, a consulting company specialized in employee recognition and rewards system.
O.C. Tanner launched an exhaustive Great Work study that included surveys to 200 senior executives, a further set of surveys to 1,000 managers and employees working on projects, an in-depth qualitative study of 1.7 million accounts of award-winning work (in the form of nominations (提名) for awards from corporations around the world), and one-on-one interviews with 200 difference makers. The results of the study revealed that those who do great work refuse to be defeated by the constraints of their jobs and are especially able to reframe their jobs: they don’t view their jobs as a list of tasks and responsibilities but see their jobs as opportunities to make a difference. No matter, as Moses so ably exemplifies (例证), what that job may be.
1．According to Sturt, which of the following is TRUE?| A．It’s not the nature of the job, but what you do that makes a difference. |
| B．Anyone in the world is responsible to delete poverty and change the world. |
| C．Anyone can make a difference in people’s lives no matter what kind of job he does. |
| D．Surgeons, special-needs educators and founders of organizations can succeed more easily. |
| A．By keeping optimistic and calm when facing patients and their parents at hospital. |
| B．By showing his special gift and working experience when working at hospital. |
| C．By showing his sympathy and kindness to patients when entering their rooms. |
| D．By pretending to be a doctor or nurse when entering a room with a sick child. |
| A．demands | B．advantages | C．disadvantages | D．limitations |
| A．Great work is work that makes a difference in people’s lives no matter what you do. |
| B．If a boss has trouble recognizing his employees, he can ask O. C. Tanner for advice. |
| C．Moses makes a difference through his sensitivity and his practical wisdom. |
| D．Those who do great work are never defeated by others or their jobs themselves. |
Protect Wild Animals
Rebecca stretched her tired back. “That’s the last seedling (树苗), Pa. Have we planted enough?”
Pa walked to the end of the row of cottonwood seedlings. “No,” he said. “We have to plant trees all the way to that rock over there. We’ll need about twenty more seedlings.”
“I’ll get the seedlings,” offered Rebecca. She longed to cool her feet in the shallow river running through the cotton field.
“You’d better let me go, Miss Petticoats,” teased her twin brother, William. “There are dangers all over this prairie (草原).”
“You may both go,” said Pa. “But hurry back. I’d like to finish before sundown.”
They went across the shallow river to a sandbar where small cottonwood seedlings grew.
Gently, they pulled the seedlings from the sand.
“There! That’s twenty, with a few to spare,” said Rebecca.
“OK,” said William. He led the way to the riverbank, and then stopped. “Look! That’s the dugout (防空洞) we had lived in before we moved here last year,” he said, pointing to a hole on the grassy riverbank.
“Come on, let’s go inside.”
“No,” Rebecca said, “Pa is waiting. Besides, it’s hard to tell what’s in it.”
“Then you go back,” said William, handing the seedlings to Rebecca. I’ll catch up.” He ran to the dugout and stepped inside.
Rebecca wrapped the seedlings in her long apron (围裙) and began to walk. Suddenly she froze in her tracks.
A huge rattlesnake (响尾蛇) moved along the riverbank.
It stopped right in front of the dugout and lay still, coiling up on the warm sunny bank.
“William!” Rebecca shouted. “Don’t come out!”
“Huh?” William’s face appeared at a tiny window beside the door of the dugout.
Rebecca pointed at the rattler. William’s face paled when he saw the snake blocking the doorway. He turned desperate eyes toward Rebecca, and then he glanced behind himself. Rebecca knew what he was thinking: “Were there more snakes waiting in the shadowy corners of the dugout?”
Rebecca’s mind raced, trying to think of a way to get William out of there. An idea popped into her head. It was their only hope. It was risky, but it was the only hope.
“Don’t move,” she said to William in a soft voice. “When I say NOW, you run out of there as fast as you can.”
Rebecca removed the skirt-like petticoat (衬裙) from beneath her dress, and then dipped it into the river. She squeezed out some of the water, and then climbed to the top of the bank, directly above the dugout’s opening.
“Get ready to run, William,” she said, keeping an eye on the motionless snake.
“Are you OK?” he asked, breathing heavily. Rebecca nodded.
Like most robots, social robots use artificial intelligence to decide how to act on information received through cameras and other sensors. The ability to respond in ways that seem lifelike has been informed by research into such issues as how perceptions (知觉) form, what constitutes social and emotional intelligence, and how people can infer others’ thoughts and feelings. Advances in Al have enabled designers to translate such psychological and neuroscientific insights into algorithms that allow robots to recognize voices, feces and emotions; interpret speech and gestures; respond appropriately to complex verbal and nonverbal cues; make eye contact; speak conversationally; and adapt to people’s needs by learning from feedback, rewards and criticisms.
A 47-inch humanoid (类人物) called Pepper (from SoftBank Robotics) recognizes faces and basic human emotions and engages in conversations via a touch screen in its “chest,” About 15,000 Peppers worldwide perform such services as hotel check-ins, airport customer service, shopping assistance and fast-food checkout. Temi (from Temi USA) and Loomo (Segway Robotics) are the next generation of personal assistants—like Amazon Echo and Google Home but mobile, providing a new level of functionality. Loomo, for instance, is not only a companion but can also transform on command into a scooter (小型摩托车) for transport.
Social robots have particular appeal for assisting the world’s growing elderly population. The PARO Therapeutic Robot (developed by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), which looks like a seal, soft and cute, is meant to stimulate and reduce stress for those with Alzheimer’s disease and other patients in care facilities: it responds to its name by moving its head, and it cries for petting. Mabu (Catalia Health) engages patients, particularly the elderly, as a wellness aide, reminding them to take walks and medication and to call family members. Social robots are also gaining popularity with consumers as toys. Early attempts to include social behavior in toys, such as Hasbro’s Baby Alive and Sony’s AIBO robotic dog, had limited success. But both are resurging (复活), and the most recent version of AIBO has advanced voice and gesture recognition, can be taught tricks and develops new behaviors based on previous interactions.
Worldwide sales of consumer robots reached an estimated $5.6 billion in 2018, and the market is expected to grow to $19 billion by the end of 2025, with more than 65 million robots sold a year. This trend may seem surprising given that multiple well-funded consumer robot companies, such as Jibo and Anki, have failed. But a wave of robots is lining up to take the place of old robots, including BUDDY (Blue Frog Robotics), a big-eyed mobile device that plays games in addition to acting as a personal assistant and providing home automation and security.
1．What does the first paragraph mainly talk about?| A．How social robots receive information. |
| B．What research has been conducted about social robots. |
| C．Why social robots can respond in lifelike ways. |
| D．How designers translate insights into social robots. |
| A．filling an expanding variety of roles | B．getting higher intelligence |
| C．interacting with people | D．learning to respond in lifelike ways |
| A．social robots can have various forms and appearances |
| B．PARO can interact with people by moving its head like a dog |
| C．the most recent version of AIBO has achieved as great success as before |
| D．the sales of consumer robots have been increasing as ever expected |
| A．More companies will invest on social robots. |
| B．Social robots play nicely with human beings. |
| C．Social robots have great effects on elder people’s life. |
| D．Artificial intelligence enables social robots to make decisions. |
Going to university is supposed to be a mind-broadening experience. That statement is probably made in comparison to training for work straight after school. But is it actually true? Jessika Golle of the University of Tubingen, in Germany reports in Psychological Science this week that those who have been to university indeed seem to leave with broader and more curious minds than those who have spent their immediate post-school years in vocational (职业的) training for work. However, it was not the case that university broadened minds. Rather, vocational training for work seemed to have narrowed them. The result is not quite what might be expected.
Dr. Golle came to this conclusion after she and a team of colleagues studied the early careers of 2,095 German youngsters. The team used two standardized tests to assess their volunteers’ personality traits (特点) including openness, conscientiousness (认真) and so on, and attitudes such as realistic, investigative and enterprising twice, once towards the end of each volunteer’s time at high school, and then again six years later. Of the original group, 382 had to make a choice between the academic and vocational routes, and it was on these that the researchers focused. University beckoned for 212 of them. The remaining 170 chose vocational training and a job.
When it came to the second round of tests, Dr. Golle found that the personalities of both groups had not changed significantly. As for changes in altitude, again, none were noticeable in the university group. However, those who had chosen the vocational route showed marked drops in interest in tasks that are investigative and enterprising in nature. And that might restrict their choice of careers.
The changes in attitude that the researchers recorded were more worrying. Vocational training has always been what Germany prides itself on. If Dr Golle is correct, and changes in attitude brought about by the very training are narrowing people’s choices that is indeed a matter worthy of serious consideration.
1．What does Dr. Colle’s research suggest?| A．Going to university is a mind-broadening experience. |
| B．College students pride themselves on their education. |
| C．Working straight after school narrows people’s minds. |
| D．Attending university has apparent effects on personalities. |
| A．Examined. | B．Attracted. |
| C．Organized. | D．Recognized |
| A．it is essential to scientific research. |
| B．It leads to marked change in personality. |
| C．It helps to broaden the volunteers’ minds. |
| D．It causes less interest in investigative job. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Optimistic. |
| C．Concerned. | D．Unclear. |
Global Positioning System (GPS) is now a part of everyday driving in many countries. It is a space-based system that provides position and time information in all weather conditions. GPS can help people get to where they want to go.
“The Normal and Natural Troubles of Driving with GPS” lists several areas where GPS can cause difficulties. They include maps that are outdated, incorrect or difficult to understand.
Although GPS sometimes causes difficulties when people are driving, the most attractive point of this system is its 100% coverage on the planet. It is important for you to have to know what you are doing when you use GPS. You need to have the “ability” to be able to use GPS because it sometimes goes wrong.
| A．There are quite a few situations showing the problems of using GPS. |
| B．That means that it is not really telling you about going to the wrong place. |
| C．This space-based system is an important tool for civil and commercial users. |
| D．But sometimes it sends you to the wrong place or leaves you completely lost. |
| E．They also contain timing problems related to when GPS commands are given. |
| F．Advances in technology play an active role in modernizing GPS in many ways. |
| G．To make GPS well used, you need a good understanding of how drivers and GPS work. |
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