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Even if families are less likely to sit down to eat together than was once the case, millions of Britons will none the less have partaken this weekend of one of the nation's great traditions: the Sunday roast. （1）a cold winter's day, few culinary pleasures can（2）it. Yet as we report now, the food police are determined that this（3）should be rendered yet another guilty pleasure（4）to damage our health.The Food Standards Authority (FSA) has（5）a public warning about the risks of a compound called acrylamide that forms in some foods cooked（6）high temperatures.This means that people should （7）crisping their roast potatoes, spurn thin-crust pizzas and only（8）toast their bread. But where is the evidence to support such alarmist advice? （9）studies have shown that acrylamide can cause neurological damage in mice, there is no（10）evidence that it causes cancer in humans.Scientists say the compound is "（11）to be carcinogenic" but have no hard scientific proof. （12）the precautionary principle, it could be argued that it is（13）to follow the FSA advice.（14）, it was rumored that smoking caused cancer for years before the evidence was found to prove a（15）.Doubtless a piece of boiled beef can always be（16）upon Sunday along side some steamed vegetables, without the Yorkshire pudding and no wine. But would life be worth living?（17）, the FSA says it is not telling people to cut out roast foods（18）, but to reduce their lifetime intake. However, their（19）risks coming across as exhortation and nannying. Constant health scares just（20）with no one listening.

Directions: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following pictures. In your essay, you should 1)describe the pictures briefly,2)interpret the meaning, and3)give your comments.You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)

Directions:Suppose you are working for the “Aiding rural Primary School” project of your university. Write an email to answer the inquiry from an international student volunteer, specifying details of the project.Write your answer on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not use your own name in the email. Use“ Li Ming” instead.Do not write address.(10 points)

It was only after I started to write a weekly column about the medical journals, and began to read scientific papers from beginning to end, that I realized just how bad much of the medical literature frequently was. I came to recognize various signs of a bad paper: the kind of paper that purports to show that people who eat more than one kilo of broccoli a week were 1.17 times more likely than those who eat less to suffer late in life from pernicious anaemia. (1) There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals which, when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press, generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms.Why is so much bad science published? A recent paper, titled “The Natural Selection of Bad Science”, published on the Royal Society's open science website, attempts to answer this intriguing and important question. It says that the problem is not merely that people do bad science, but that our current system of career advancement positively encourages it. What is important is not truth, but publication, which has become almost an end in itself. There has been a kind of inflationary process at work: (2) nowadays anyone applying for a research post has to have published twice the number of papers that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago. Never mind the quality, then, count the number.(3) Attempts have been made to curb this tendency, for example, by trying to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity into the assessment of an applicant's paper. This is the famed citation index, that is to say the number of times a paper has been quoted elsewhere in the scientific literature, the assumption being that an important paper will be cited more often than one of small account. (4) This would be reasonable if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favours.Boiling down an individual's output to simple metrics, such as number of publications or journal impacts, entails considerable savings in time, energy and ambiguity. Unfortunately, the long-term costs of using simple quantitative metrics to assess researcher merit are likely to be quite great. (5) If we are serious about ensuring that our science is both meaningful and reproducible, we must ensure that our institutions encourage that kind of science.

[A]These tools can help you win every argument—not in the unhelpful sense of beating your opponents but in the better sense of learning about the issues that divide people. Learning why they disagree with us and learning to talk and work together with them. If we readjust our view of arguments — from a verbal fight or tennis game to a reasoned exchange through which we all gain mutual respect, and understanding — then we change the very nature of what it means to “win” an argument.[B]Of course, many discussions are not so successful. Still, we need to be careful not to accuse opponents of bad arguments too quickly. We need to learn how to evaluate them properly. A large part of evaluation is calling out bad arguments, but we also need to admit good arguments by opponents and to apply the same critical standards to ourselves. Humility requires you to recognize weakness in your own arguments and sometimes also to accept reasons on the opposite side.[C]None of these will be easy but you can start even if others refuse to. Next time you state your position, formulate an argument for what you claim and honestly ask yourself whether your argument is any good. Next time you talk with someone who takes a stand, ask them to give you a reason for their view. Spell out their argument fully and charitably. Assess its strength impartially. Raise objections and listen carefully to their replies.[D]Carnegie would be right if arguments were fights, which is how we often think of them. Like physical fights, verbal fights can leave both sides bloodied. Even when you win, you end up no better off. Your prospects would be almost as dismal if arguments were even just competitions—like, say, tennis games. Paris of opponents hit the ball back and forth until one winner emerges from all who entered. Everybody else loses. This kind of thinking is why so many people try to avoid arguments, especially about politics and religion.[E]In his 1936 work How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote: "there is only one way... to get the best of an argument—and that is to avoid it." This aversion to arguments is common, but it depends on a mistaken view of arguments that causes profound problems for our personal and social lives—and in many ways misses the point of arguing in the first place.[F]These views of arguments also undermine reason. If you see a conversation as a fight or competition, you can win by cheating as long as you don't get caught. You will be happy to convince people with bad arguments. You can call their views stupid, or joke about how ignorant they are. None of these tricks will help you understand them, their positions or the issues that divide you, but they can help you win—in one way.[G]There is a better way to win arguments. Imagine that you favor increasing the minimum wage in our state, and I do not. If you yell, “yes,” and I yell, “No,” neither of us learns anything. We neither understand nor respect each other, and we have no basis for compromise or cooperation. In contrast, suppose you give a reasonable argument: that full-time workers should not have to live in poverty. Then I counter with another reasonable argument: that a higher minimum wage will force businesses to employ fewer people for less time. Now we can understand each other's positions and recognize our shared values, since we both care about needy workers.1. → 2.→ F→ 3.→ 4.→ C→ 5.

States will be able to force more people to pay sales tax when they make online purchases under a Supreme Court decision Thursday that will leave shoppers with lighter wallets but is a big financial win for states.The Supreme Court's opinion Thursday overruled a pair of decades-old decisions that states said cost them billions of dollars in lost revenue annually. The decisions made it more difficult for states to collect sales tax on certain online purchases.The cases the court overturned said that if a business was shipping a customer's purchase to a state where the business didn't have a physical presence such as a warehouse or office, the business didn't have to collect sales tax for the state. Customers were generally responsible for paying the sales tax to the state themselves if they weren't charged it, but most didn't realize they owed it and few paid.Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the previous decisions were flawed. “Each year physical presence rule becomes further removed from economic reality and results in significant revenue losses to the States,” he wrote in an opinion joined by four other justices. Kennedy wrote that the rule “limited states' ability to seek long-term prosperity and has prevented market participants from competing on an even playing field.”The ruling is a victory for big chains with a presence in many states, since they usually collect sales tax on online purchases already. Now, rivals will be charging sales tax where they hadn't before. Big chains have been collecting sales tax nationwide because they typically have physical stores in whatever state a purchase is being shipped to. Amazon.com, with its network of warehouses, also collects sales tax in every state that charges it, though third-party sellers who use the site don't have to.Until now, many sellers that have a physical presence in only a single state or a few states have been able to avoid charging sales taxes when they ship to addresses outside those states. Sellers that use eBay and Etsy, which provide platforms for smaller sellers, also haven collecting sales tax nationwide. Under the ruling Thursday, states can pass laws requiring out-of-state sellers to collect the state's sales tax from customers and send it to the state.Retail trade groups praised the ruling, saying it levels the playing field for local and online businesses. The losers, said retail analyst Neil Saunders, are online-only retailers, especially smaller ones. Those retailers may face headaches complying with various state sales tax laws. The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council advocacy group said in a a statement, "businesses and internet entrepreneurs are not well served at all by this decision.”1.The Supreme Court decision Thursday will（）.2.It can be learned from paragraphs 2 and 3 that the overruled decisions（）.3.According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, the physical presence rule has（）.4.Who are most likely to welcome the Supreme Court ruling（）.5.In dealing with the Supreme Court decision Thursday, the author（）.

This year marks exactly two centuries since the publication of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley. Even before the invention of the electric light bulb, the author produced a remarkable work of speculative fiction that would foreshadow many ethical questions to be raised by technologies yet to come.Today the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) raises fundamental questions: “What is intelligence, identify, or consciousness? What makes humans humans?” What is being called artificial general intelligence, machines that would imitate the way humans think, continues to evade scientists. Yet humans remain fascinated by the idea of robots that would look, move, and respond like humans, similar to those recently depicted on popular sci-fi TV series such as “West world” and “Humans”.“Just how people think is still far too complex to be understood, let alone reproduced,” says David Eagleman, a Stanford University neuroscientist. “We are just in a situation where there are no good theories explaining what consciousnesss actually is and how you could ever build a machine to get there.” But that doesn’t mean crucial ethical issues involving AI aren't at hand. The coming use of autonomous vehicles, for example, poses thorny ethical questions. Human drivers sometimes must make split-second decisions. Their reactions may be a complex combination of instant reflexes, input from past driving experiences, and what their eyes and ears tell them in that moment. AI “vision” today is not nearly as sophisticated as that of humans. And to anticipate every imaginable driving situation is a difficult programming problem.Whenever decisions are based on masses of data, “you quickly get into a lot of ethical questions,” notes Tan Kiat How, chief executive of a Singapore-based agency that is helping the government develop a voluntary code for the ethical use of AI. Along with Singapore, other governments and mega-corporations are beginning to establish their own guidelines. Britain is setting up a data ethics center. India released its AI ethics strategy this spring.On June 7 Google pledged not to “design or deploy AI” that would cause “overall harm,” or to develop AI-directed weapons or use AI for surveillance that would violate international norms. It also pledged not to deploy AI whose use would violate international laws or human rights.While the statement is vague, it represents one starting point. So does the idea that decisions made by AI systems should be explainable, transparent, and fair. To put it another way: How can we make sure that the thinking of intelligent machines reflects humanity's highest values? Only then will they be useful servants and not Frankenstein's out-of-control monster. 1.Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is mentioned because it（）.2.In David Eagleman's opinion, our current knowledge of consciousness（）.3.The solution to the ethical issues brought by autonomous vehicles（）.4.The author's attitude toward Google's pledge is one of（）.5.Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

Grade inflation—the gradual increase in average GPAs (grade-point averages) over the past few decades— is often considered a product of a consumer era in higher education, in which students are treated like customers to be pleased. But another, related force—a policy often buried deep in course catalogs called “grade forgiveness”—is helping raise GPAs.Grade forgiveness allows students to retake a course in which they received a low grade, and the most recent grade or the highest grade is the only one that counts in calculating a student's overall GPA. The use of this little-known practice has accelerated in recent years, as colleges continue to do their utmost to keep students in school (and paying tuition) and improve their graduation rates. When this practice first started decades ago, it was usually limited to freshmen, to give them a second chance to take a class in their first year if they struggled in their transition to college-level courses. But now most colleges save for many selective campuses, allow all undergraduates, and even graduate students, to get their low grades forgiven.College officials tend to emphasize that the goal of grade forgiveness is less about the grade itself and more about encouraging students to retake courses critical to their degree program and graduation without incurring a big penalty. “Untimely,” said Jack Miner, Ohio State University's registrar, “we see students achieve more success because they retake a course and do better in subsequent contents or master the content that allows them to graduate on time.”That said, there is a way in which grade forgiveness satisfies colleges'own needs as well. For public institutions, state funds are sometimes tied partly to their success on metrics such as graduation rates and student retention- so better grades can, by boosting figures like those, mean more money. And anything that raises GPAs will likely make students- who, at the end of the day, are paying the bill-feel they've gotten a better value for their tuition dollars, which is another big concern for colleges.Indeed, grade forgiveness is just another way that universities are responding to consumers' expectations for higher education. Since students and parents expect a college degree to lead a job, it is in the best interest of a school to turn out graduates who are as qualified as possible—or at least appear to be. On this, students' and colleges' incentive seem to be aligned.1.What is commonly regarded as the cause of grade inflation?2.What was the original purpose of grade forgiveness?3.According to Paragraph 5, grade forgiveness enable colleges to（）.4.What does the phrase "to be aligned" (Para.6) most probably mean?5.The author examines the practice of grade forgiveness by（）.

Financial regulators in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of big banks. Starting next year, any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10 years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing. The main purpose of this “clawback” rule is to hold bankers accountable for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institution. Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit: more long term decision-making not only by banks but also by all corporations, to build a stronger economy for future generations.“ Short-termism” or the desire for quick profits, has worsened in publicly traded companies, says the Bank of England's top economist, Andrew Haldane. He quotes a giant of classical economies, Alfred Marshall, in describing this financial impatience as acting like “Children who pick the plums out of their pudding to eat them at once” rather than putting them aside to be eaten last.The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain, he notes, has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades. Transient investors, who demand high quarterly profits from companies, can hinder a firm's efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty. This has been dubbed "quarterly capitalism" In addition, new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities, quicker use of information, and thus shortens attention spans in financial markers. "There seems to be a predominance of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing," said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in speech this week.In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to defer performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year, slightly helping reduce “short-termism”. In its latest survey of CEO pay, The Wall Street Journal finds that "a substantial part” of executive pay is now tied to performance.Much more could be done to encourage “long-termism,” such as changes in the tax code and quicker disclosure of stock acquisitions. In France, shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company.Within companies, the right compensation design can provide incentives for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all stakeholders. Britain rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interest in their performance, not just for the short term but for the long term.1.According to Paragraph 1, one motive in imposing the new rule is the（） .2.Alfred Marshall is quoted to indicate（）.3.It is argued that the influence of transient investment on public companies can be（）.4.The US and France examples are used to illustrate（）.5.Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

Today we live in a world where GPS systems, digital maps, and other navigation apps are available on our smart phones. _1_ of us just walk straight into the woods without a phone. But phones _2_ on batteries, and batteries can die faster than we realize. _3_ you get lost without a phone or a compass, and you _4_ can’t find north, a few tricks to help you navigate _5_ to civilization, one of which is to follow the land. When you find yourself well _6_ a trail, but not in a completely _7_ area, you have to answer two questions: Which _8_ is downhill, in this particular area? And where is the nearest water source? Humans overwhelmingly live in valleys, and on supplies of fresh water. _9_, if you head downhill, and follow any H2O you find, you should _10_ see signs of people. If you’ve explored the area before, keep an eye out for familiar sights—you may be _11_ how quickly identifying a distinctive rock or tree can restore your bearings. Another _12_: Climb high and look for signs of human habitation. _13_, even in dense forest, you should be able to _14_ gaps in the tree line due to roads, train tracks, and other paths people carve _15_ the woods. Head toward these _16_ to find a way out. At night, scan the horizon for _17_ light sources, such as fires and streetlights, then walk toward the glow of light pollution. _18_, assuming you’re lost in an area humans tend to frequent, look for the _19_ we leave on the landscape. Trail blazes, tire tracks, and other features can _20_ you to civilization.

Write an essay of 160 一 200 words based on the following drawing. In your essay, you should1)describe the drawing briefly;2)explain its intended meaning, and then 3)give your comments.You should write neatly on ANSWER SHEET 2.(20 points)

A foreign friend of yours has recently graduated from college and intends to find a job in China. Write him an email to make some suggestions.You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your own name at the end. Use "Li Ming Open" instead.You do not need to write the address.(10 points)

WWII was the watershed event for higher education in modern democratic societies.（1）Those societies came out of the war with levels of enrollment that had been roughly constant at 3%-5% of the relevant age groups during the decades before the war. But after the war, great social and political changes arising out of the successful war against Fascism created a growing demand in European and American economies for increasing numbers of graduates with more than a secondary school education. （2）And the demand that rose in those societies for entry to higher education extended to groups and strata that had not thought of going to university before the war. These demands resulted in a very rapid expansion of the systems of higher education, beginning in the 1960s and developing very rapidly though unevenly in the 70s and 80s. The growth of higher education manifests itself in at least three quite different ways, and these in turn have given rise to different sets of problems. （3）There was first the rate of growth: in many countries of Western Europe the numbers of students in higher education doubled within five-year periods during the decade of the sixties and doubled again in seven, eight, or ten years by the middle of the 1970s. Second, growth obviously affected the absolute size both of systems and individual institutions. And third, growth was reflected in changes in the proportion of the relevant age group enrolled in institutions of higher education. Each of these manifestations of growth carried its own peculiar problems in its wake. For example a high growth rate placed great strains on the existing structures of governance, of administration, and above all of socialization. When a very large proportion of all the members of an institution are new recruits, they threaten to overwhelm the processes whereby recruits to a more slowly growing system are inducted into its value system and learn its norms and forms. When a faculty or department grows from, say, 5 to 20 members within three or four years, （4）and when the new staff are predominantly young men and women fresh from postgraduate study, then they largely define the norms of academic life in that faculty and its standards. And if the postgraduate student population also grows rapidly and there is loss of a close apprenticeship relationship between faculty members and students, then the student culture becomes the chief socializing force for new postgraduate students, with consequences for the intellectual and academic life of the institution—this was seen in America as well as in France, Italy,West Germany, and Japan. （5）High growth rates increased the chances for academic innovation; they also weakened the forms and processes by which teachers and students are inducted into a community of scholars during periods of stability or slow growth. In the sixties and seventies of the last century, European universities saw marked changes in their governance arrangements, with the empowerment of junior faculty and to some degree of students as well. They also saw higher levels of student discontent, reflecting the weakening of traditional forms of academic communities.

In the movies and on television, artificial intelligence is typically depicted as something sinister that will upend our way of life. When it comes to AI in business, we often hear about it in relation to automation and the impending loss of jobs, but in what ways is AI changing companies and the larger economy that don't involve doom-and-gloom mass unemployment predictions?A recent survey of manufacturing and service industries from Tata Consultancy Services found that companies currently use AI more often in computer-to-computer activities than in automating human activities. One common application? Preventing electronic security breaches, which, rather than eliminating IT jobs, actually makes those personnel more valuable to employers, because they help firms prevent hacking attempts.Here are a few other ways AI is aiding companies without replacing employees:Better hiring practicesCompanies are using artificial intelligence to remove some of the unconscious bias from hiring decisions. “There are experiments that show that, naturally, the results of interviews are much more biased than what AI does, ” says Pedro Domingo, author of The Master Algorithm: How the quest for the Ultimate learning Machine Will Reambe Our World and a computer science 1.（） One company that's doing this is called Blendoor. It usesanalytics to help identify where there may be bias in the hiring process.More effective marketingSome AI software can analyze and optimize marketing email subject lines to increase open rates. One company in the UK, Phrasee, claims their software can outperform humans by up to 10 percent when it comes to email open rates. This can mean millions more in revenue. 2.（） These are “tools that help people use data, not a replacement for people,” says Patrick H. Winston, a professor of artificial intelligence and computer science at MIT.Saving customers moneyEnergy companies can use AI to help customers reduce their electricity bills, saving them money while helping the environment Companies can also optimize their own energy use and cut down on the cost of electricity. Insurance companies, meanwhile, can base their premiums on AI models that more accurately access risk. “Before, they might not insure the ones who felt like a high risk or charge them too much,” says Domingos, 3.（）Improved accuracy“Machine learning often provides a more reliable form of statistics which makes data more valuable,“ says Winston. It “helps people make smarter decisions.” 4.（）Protecting and maintaining infrastructureA number of companies, particularly in energy and transportation, use AI image processing technology to inspect infrastructure and prevent equipment failure or leaks before they happen. “If they fail first and then you fix them, it’s very expensive,” says Domingo's.“ 5."（） .”

From the early days of broadband, advocates for consumers and web-based companies worried that the cable and phone companies selling broadband connections had the power and incentive to favor affiliated websites over their rivals'. That's why there has been such a strong demand for rules that would prevent broadband providers from picking winners and losers online, preserving the freedom and innovation that have been the lifeblood of the Internet.Yet that demand has been almost impossible to fill — in part because of pushback from broadband providers, anti-regulatory conservatives and the courts. A federal appeals court weighed in again Tuesday, but instead of providing a badly needed resolution, it only prolonged the fight.At issue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the latest take of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on net neutrality, adopted on a party-line vote in 2017. The Republican-penned order not only eliminated the strict net neutrality rules the FCC had adopted when it had a Democratic majority in 2015, but rejected the commission's authority to require broadband providers to do much of anything. The order also declared that state and local governments couldn't regulate broadband providers either.The commission argued that other agencies would protect against anti-competitive behavior, such as a broadband-providing conglomerate like AT&T favoring its own video-streaming service at the expense of Netflix and Apple TV. Yet the FCC also ended the investigations of broadband providers that imposed data caps on their rivals' streaming services but not their own.On Tuesday, the appeals court unanimously upheld the 2017 order deregulating broadband providers, citing a Supreme Court ruling from 2005 that upheld a similarly deregulatory move. But Judge Patricia Millett rightly argued in a concurring opinion that “the result is unhinged from the realities of modern broadband service,” and said Congress or the Supreme Court could intervene to “avoid trapping Internet regulation in technological anachronism.”In the meantime, the court threw out the FCC's attempt to block all state rules on net neutrality, while preserving the commission's power to preempt individual state laws that undermine its order. That means more battles like the one now going on between the Justice Department and California, which enacted a tough net neutrality law in the wake of the FCC's abdication.The endless legal battles and back-and-forth at the FCC cry out for Congress to act. It needs to give the commission explicit authority once and for all to bar broadband providers from meddling in the traffic on their network and to create clear rules protecting openness and innovation online.1.There has long been concern that broadband provides would（）.2.Faced with the demand for net neutrality rules, the FCC（）. 3.What can be learned about AT&T from Paragraph 3?4.Judge Patricia Millett argues that the appeals court's decision （）. 5.What does the author argue in the last paragraph?

As a historian who's always searching for the text or the image that makes us re-evaluate the past, I've become preoccupied with looking for photographs that show our Victorian ancestors smiling (what better way to shatter the image of 19th-century prudery?). I’ve found quite a few, and – since I started posting them on Twitter – they have been causing quite a stir. People have been surprised to see evidence that Victorians had fun and could, and did, laugh. They are noting that the Victorians suddenly seem to become more human as the hundred-or-so years that separate us fade away through our common experience of laughter.Of course, I need to concede that my collection of "Smiling Victorians" makes up only a tiny percentage of the vast catalogue of photographic portraiture created between 1840 and 1900, the majority of which show sitters posing miserably and stiffly in front of painted backdrops, or staring absently into the middle distance. How do we explain this trend?During the 1840s and 1850s, in the early days of photography, exposure times were notoriously long: the daguerreotype photographic method (producing an image on a silvered copper plate) could take several minutes to complete, resulting in blurred images as sitters shifted position or adjusted their limbs. The thought of holding a fixed grin as the camera performed its magical duties was too much to contemplate, and so a non-committal blank stare became the norm.But exposure times were much quicker by the 1880s, and the introduction of the Box Brownie and other portable cameras meant that, though slow by today's digital standards, the exposure was almost instantaneous. Spontaneous smiles were relatively easy to capture by the 1890s, so we must look elsewhere for an explanation of why Victorians still hesitated to smile.One explanation might be the loss of dignity displayed through a cheesy grin. “Nature gave us lips to conceal our teeth,” ran one popular Victorian saying, alluding to the fact that before the birth of proper dentistry, mouths were often in a shocking state of hygiene. A flashing set of healthy and clean, regular "pearly whites" was a rare sight in Victorian society, the preserve of the super-rich (and even then, dental hygiene was not guaranteed).A toothy grin (especially when there were gaps or blackened teeth) lacked class: drunks, tramps, and music hall performers might gurn and grin with a smile as wide as Lewis Carroll's gum-exposing Cheshire Cat, but it was not a becoming look for properly bred persons. Even Mark Twain, a man who enjoyed a hearty laugh, said that when it came to photographic portraits there could be “nothing more damning than a silly, foolish smile fixed forever”.1.According to paragraph 1, the author's posts on Twitter（）.2.What does author say about the Victorian portraits he has collected?3.What might have kept the Victorians from smiling for pictures in the 1890s?4.Mark Twain is quoted to show that the disapproval of smiles in pictures was（）.5.Which of the following questions does the text answer?

Last year marked the third year in a row that Indonesia’s bleak rate of deforestation has slowed in pace. One reason for the turnaround may be the country's antipoverty program.In 2007, Indonesia started phasing in a program that gives money to its poorest residents under certain conditions, such as requiring people to keep kids in school or get regular medical care. Called conditional cash transfers or CCTs, these social assistance programs are designed to reduce inequality and break the cycle of poverty. They're already used in dozens of countries worldwide. In Indonesia, the program has provided enough food and medicine to substantially reduce severe growth problems among children.But CCT programs don't generally consider effects on the environment. In fact, poverty alleviation and environmental protection are often viewed as conflicting goals, says Paul Ferraro, an economist at Johns Hopkins University.That's because economic growth can be correlated with environmental degradation, while protecting the environment is sometimes correlated with greater poverty. However, those correlations don't prove cause and effect. The only previous study analyzing causality, based on an area in Mexico that had instituted CCTs, supported the traditional view. There, as people got more money, some of them may have more cleared land for cattle to raise for meat, Ferraro says.Such programs do not have to negatively affect the environment, though. Ferraro wanted to see if Indonesia’s poverty-alleviation program was affecting deforestation. Indonesia has the third-largest area of tropical forest in the world and one of the highest deforestation rates. Ferraro analyzed satellite data showing annual forest loss from 2008 to 2012 — including during Indonesia's phase-in of the antipoverty program — in 7,468 forested villages across 15 provinces and multiple islands. The duo separated the effects of the CCT program on forest loss from other factors, like weather and macroeconomic changes, which were also affecting forest loss. With that, “we see that the program is associated with a 30 percent reduction in deforestation,” Ferraro says.That's likely because the rural poor are using the money as makeshift insurance policies against inclement weather, Ferraro says. Typically, if rains are delayed, people may clear land to plant more rice to supplement their harvests. With the CCTs, individuals instead can use the money to supplement their harvests.Whether this research translates elsewhere is anybody's guess. Ferraro suggests the importance of growing rice and market access. And regardless of transferability, the study shows that what's good for people may also be good value of the avoided deforestation just for carbon dioxide emissions alone is more than the program costs.1.According to the first two paragraphs, CCT programs aim to （）.2.The study based on an area in Mexico is cited to show that （）.3.In his study about Indonesia, Ferraro intends to find out （）.4.According to Ferraro, the CCT program in Indonesia is most valuable in that （）. 5.What is the text centered on?

How can the train operators possibly justify yet another increase to rail passenger fares? It has become a grimly reliable annual ritual: every January the cost of travelling by train rises, imposing a significant extra burden on those who have no option but to use the rail network to get to work or otherwise. This year's rise, an average of 2.7 per cent, may be a fraction lower than last year's, but it is still well above the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation.Successive governments have permitted such increases on the grounds that the cost of investing in and running the rail network should be borne by those who use it, rather than the general taxpayer. Why, the argument goes, should a car-driving pensioner from Lincoln shire have to subsidize the daily commute of a stockbroker from Surrey? Equally, there is a sense that the travails of commuters in the South East, many of whom will face among the biggest rises, have received too much attention compared to those who must endure the relatively poor infrastructure of the Midlands and the North.However, over the past 12 months, those commuters have also experienced some of the worst rail strikes in years. It is all very well train operators trumpeting the improvements they are making to the network, but passengers should be able to expect a basic level of service for the substantial sums they are now paying to travel. The responsibility for the latest wave of strikes rests on the unions. However, there is a strong case that those who have been worst affected by industrial action should receive compensation for the disruption they have suffered.The Government has pledged to change the law to introduce a minimum service requirement so that, even when strikes occur, services can continue to operate. This should form part of a wider package of measures to address the long-running problems on Britain's railways. Yes, more investment is needed, but passengers will not be willing to pay more indefinitely if they must also endure cramped, unreliable services, punctuated by regular chaos when timetables are changed, or planned maintenance is managed incompetently. The threat of nationalization may have been seen off for now, but it will return with a vengeance if the justified anger of passengers is not addressed in short order.1.The author holds that this year's increase in rail passengers fares （）.2.The stockbroker in Paragraph 2 is used to stand for（） .3. It is indicated in Paragraph 3 that train operators （）.4. If unable to calm down passengers, the railways may have to face（）.5. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

Fluid intelligence is the type of intelligence that involves short-term memory and the ability to think quickly, logically, and abstractly in order to solve new problem. It （1）in young adulthood (between the ages of 20 and 30), levels out for a period of time, and then （2）starts to slowly decline as we age. But （3）aging is inevitable, scientists are finding out that certain changes in brain function may not be.One study found that muscle loss and the （4）of body fat around the abdomen, which often begin in middle age and continue into advanced age, are associated with a decline in fluid intelligence. This suggests the （5） that lifestyle factors, such as the type of diet you follow and the type and amount of exercise you get throughout the years to maintain more lean muscle, might help prevent or （6） this type of decline.The researchers looked at data that （7）measurements of lean muscle, abdominal fat and subcutaneous fat (the type of fat you can see and grab hold of) from more than 4,000 middle-to-older-aged men and women and （8）that data to reported changes in fluid intelligence over a six-year period. They found that middle-aged people （9）higher measures of abdominal fat（10）worse on measures of fluid intelligence as the years（11）.For women, the association may be（12）to changes in immunity that resulted from excess abdominal fat; in men, the immune system did not appear to be （13）. Future studies could （14）these differences and perhaps lead to different（15）for men and women.（16） there are steps you can （17）to help reduce abdominal fat and maintain lean muscle mass as you age in order to protect both your physical and mental（18）. The two most generally recommended lifestyle approaches are maintaining or increasing your （19）of aerobic exercise and following a Mediterranean-style （20） that is high in fiber from whole grains, vegetables, and other plant foods and eliminates highly processed foods. If you carry extra belly fat, speak with your health care provider to determine a plan that is best for you.

Write an essay of 160─200 words based on the picture below. In your essay, you should1) describe the picture briefly,2) interpret the meaning, and3) give your comments.Write your answer neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.

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