Mosquitoes have an extraordinary ability to target humans far away and fly straight to their unprotected skin. Regrettably,mosquitoes can do more than cause an itchy(发痒的)wound. Some mosquitoes spread several serious diseases,including Dengue, yellow fever and malaria.

Over one million people worldwide die from these diseases each year. New research now shows how mosquitoes choose who to bite.

Mosquitoes need blood to survive. They are attracted to human skin and breath. They smell the carbon dioxide gas,which all mammals breathe out. This gas is the main way for mosquitoes to know that a warm-blooded creature is nearby.

But mosquitoes also use their eyes and sense of touch. Michael Dickinson is a professor at the California Institute of Technology. His research shows how these small insects,with even smaller brains,use three senses to find a blood meal.

Michael Dickinson’s team used plumes—a material that rises into the air of carbon dioxide gas into a wind tunnel. They then used cameras to record the mosquitoes. The insects followed the plume.

Then,the scientists placed dark objects on the lighter colored floor and walls of the tunnel. Mr Dickinson said,at first,the mosquitoes showed no interest in the objects at all.

“What was quite striking and quite surprising is that the mosquitoes fly back and forth for hours. These are hungry females and they completely ignore the objects on the floor and wall of the tunnel. But the moment they get a hit of CO2,they change their behavior quite obvi ously and now would become attracted to these little visual blobs (斑点).”

This suggested to the researchers that a mosquito’s sense of smell is more important in the search for food. Once mosquitoes catch a smell of a human or animal,they also follow visual signals.

1.What do mosquitoes mainly use to find their targets?

A. Sense of smell. B. Sense of touch.

C. Sense of sight. D. Smart brains.

2.The first response of the mosquitoes to the objects in the experiment is .

A. to fly to the dark ones

B. to catch and stick to them

C. to take no notice of them

D. to attach themselves to them

3.How can we avoid being attacked by mosqu itoes according to the text ?

A. Don’t let them see us.

B. Use dark objects to stop them.

C. Make them fly back and forth for hours.

D. Attract them to objects full of carbon dioxide gas.

4.What can be the best title for the text?

A. How Do Mosquitoes Survive?

B. Why Do Mosquitoes Need Blood?

C. How Do Mosquitoes Choose to Bite You?

D. Why Do Mosquitoes Attack the Human Being?

Attitudes Wired in Happy and Successful Brains

I’ve carefully examined happy and successful people from all different professions —actors, scientists, comedians, musicians, etc. They share very similar philosophies. Here are some of the fundamental attitudes and beliefs that contribute to their happiness and success:

This is one of the most commonly recited mottos in self-improvement. Individuals who see their mistakes and failures as a learning experience are much more prone to happiness and success.

When we adopt the belief that “failure is a part of learning,” we become more resilient and courageous in the face of new challenges.

Instead of avoiding situations where we may embarrass ourselves, we embrace these challenges in life, even when we know they can be risky and painful. When we do fail, we don’t see it as the end of the world, but a point to improve upon.

Many people are great at finding problems and being critical about their lives; however, they do this without ever suggesting a possible solution or alternative to their situation.

They complain about this and that, but they never take an active role to actually improve these things. They focus on problems not to learn from them or fix them, but to make excuses for why their lives are miserable and unpleasant.

I believe acknowledging problems in life is important. I don’t recommend that we ignore things in our life that disturb us or make us unhappy. However, it’s also important to think of ways we can actually respond to these problems and change our circumstances.

Ruminating over problems in our life without a plan to take action is not only a waste of time, but it makes us even more sad and depressed. If you’re going to be critical about something in your life, focus on the ways you can actually make a difference.

Happy and successful people are incredibly grateful for their lives and everything they have: their relationships, their home, their job, their possessions, their talents, their achievements, etc.

Although successful people are often thought of as always hungry and striving – always trying to improve things, achieve their goals, and make things better – this inner drive doesn’t take away from the fact they are very happy and content with their lives.

Gratitude is an irreplaceable characteristic of true happiness and success. Even if we achieve great things in life, without gratitude we often find ourselves empty and discontent. Make sure you take the time to reflect on how lucky you are as a person (I believe everyone can find something to be grateful for).

Happy and successful individuals know that we can learn a lot from other happy and successful individuals. Having peopled to look up to is a great resource for learning the beliefs and habits that contribute to other people’s success, and then modeling those beliefs and habits in our own lives.

If you want to improve a particular area of your life, then find a couple of people who already excel in that area of life. Study them. Ask them questions. Have them show you their technique and share their stories.

The more willing you are to learn from others, the more successful you will be. Talking and listening to others is one of the best ways to get more perspective into what you want to improve in life — and how you can do it.

Please add a comment at the bottom of this page or blog in our forum here. Please do not use apostrophes in your comments.

1.What does the underlined word “resilient” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A. depressed B. regretful

C. romantic D. flexible

2.The author thinks if one merely focuses on problems, he’ll ________.

A. find out a way to solve problems

B. ignore complaints about problems

C. use the problems as his excuses

D. acknowledge and solve problems

3.People with gratitude ________.

A. feel satisfied with his life

B. stop struggling in life

C. owe success to their own talents

D. reflect on their achievements

4.The successful people may possess the following attitudes EXCEPT ________.

A. gratitude and belief

B. courage and risk

C. willingness and luckiness

D. fortune and convention

5.Choose the following sub-headings for Parts ①②③ and ④.

a. Learn from others b. Show your gratitude

c. Focus on solutions d. Learn from failure

A. a b c d B. d c b a

C. d a b c D. a c b d

6.Which of the following can be used to support the concept “Show your gratitude”?

A. “He is a wise man who does not sigh for the things which he has not, but appreciates for those which he has.”

— Epictetus

B. “We think too small. Like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.”

— Mao Tse-Tung

C. “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

— Mark Twain

D. “Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved. Success is the hiding-place of failure; but who can tell when the turning-point will come?”

— Lao Tzu

根据短文内容,从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

Have you ever studied a subject or brainstormed an idea, only to find yourself with pages of information, but no clear view of how it fits together? This is where Mind Mapping can help you.

Mind Mapping is a useful technique that helps you learn more effectively, improves the way that you record information, and supports and enhances creative problem solving. By using Mind Maps, you can quickly identify and understand the structure of a subject. You can see the way that pieces of information fit together, as well as recording the raw facts contained in normal notes.1., as they help your mind recall and review.

Popularized by Tony Buzan, Mind Maps abandon the list format of conventional note taking.They do this in favor of a two-dimensional structure. A good Mind Map shows the 'shape' of the subject, the relative importance of individual points, and the way in which facts relate to one another.2.

1. Write the title of the subject you're exploring in the center of the page, and draw a circle around it.

2. As you come across major subdivisions or subheadings of the topic (or important facts that relate to the subject) draw lines out from this circle. Label these lines with these subdivisions or subheadings.

3. As you "burrow" into (挖掘) the subject and uncover another level of information (further subheadings, or individual facts) belonging to the subheadings, draw these as lines linked to the subheading lines.

4.3..

5. As you come across new information, link it in to the Mind Map appropriately.4..Sub-topics and facts will branch off these, like branches and twigs from the trunk of a tree. You don't need to worry about the structure you produce, as this will evolve of its own accorD.

5. .If you do any form of research or note taking, try experimenting with Mind Maps. You will find them surprisingly effective!

A. To draw a Mind Map, follow these steps:

B. Mind Mapping is an extremely effective method of taking notes.

C. They help you to associate ideas and make connections that you might not otherwise make.

D. A complete Mind Map may have main topic lines radiating in all directions from the center.

E.Then, for individual facts or ideas, draw lines out from the appropriate heading line and label them.

F.More than this, Mind Maps help you remember information

G.When created using colors and images or drawings, a Mind Map can even resemble a work of art!

My parents have certainly had their troubles, and as their child I’ll never know how they made it to 38 years of marriage.They loved each other, but they didn’t seem to like each other very much.Dad was too fond of his beer, and he talked down to Mom a lot.When she tried to stand up to him, a fight would unavoidably follow.

It was my dad’s disease that began to change things.The year 1998 was the beginning of a remarkable transformation for my family.My father, Jim Dineen, the always healthy, weightlifting, never-missed-a-day-of-work kind of dad, discovered he had kidney (肾) disease.

The decision to go ahead with a transplant for my father was a long and tough one, mostly because he had liver damage too.One physician’s assistant told him, “According to your file, you’re supposed to be dead.” And for a while, doctors mistakenly thought that he would need not just a kidney transplant, but a liver transplant too.Dad’s future hung in midpoint.

When the donor testing process finally began in the spring of 2003, numerous people, including me, my uncle Tom, and my mom, came back as matches of varying degree.But Mom was the one who insisted on going further.She decided to donate a kidney to my father.She said she was not scared, and it was the right thing to do.We all stepped back in amazement.

At last a date was chosen – November 11, 2003.All of a sudden, the only thing that seemed to matter Dad was telling the world what a wonderful thing Mom was doing for him.A month before the surgery, he sent her birthday flowers with a note that read, “I love you and I love your kidney! Thank you!”

Financially, the disease was upsetting to them.So my sister and I were humbled and surprised when, shortly before his surgery day, Dad handed us a diamond jewelry that we were to give to Mom after the operation.He’d accumulated(积累) his spare dollars to buy it.

At the hospital on the day of the transplant, all our relatives and friends gathered in the waiting room and became involved in a mean euchre (尤克牌游戏) tournament.My family has always handled things with a lot of laughter, and even though we were all tense, everybody was taking bets on how long this “change of conduct” would last in my parents.

We would inform Dad that if he chose to act like a real pain on any particular day after the operation, he wasn’t allowed to blame it on PMS just because he’d now have a female kidney.

The surgeries went well, and not long afterward, my sister and I were allowed to go in to visit.Dad was in a great deal of pain but again, all he could talk about was Mom.Was she okay? How was she feeling? Then the nurses let us do something unconventional.As they were wheeling Mom out of recovery room, they rolled her into a separate position to visit Dad.It was strange to see both my parents hooked up to IVs and machines and trying to talk to each other through tears.The nurses allowed us to present the diamond jewelry to Mom so that Dad could watch her open it.Everyone was crying, even the nurses.

As I stood with digital camera in hand, I tried to keep the presence of mind to document the moment.My dad was having a hard time fighting back emotion, and suddenly my parents unexpectedly reached out to hold each other’s hands.

In my nearly 35 years of existence, I’d never seen my parents do that, and I was spellbound.I snapped a picture and later rushed home to make sure I’d captured that enormous, life-defining moment.After so many years of disagreement, it was apparent to me that they finally understood how much each loved the other.

1.From the first paragraph we can learn that _________.

A. Dad was fond of drinking

B. My parents got along well

C. Dad often beat Mom

D. Mom never obeyed Dad

2.The underlined part “Dad’s future hung in midpoint” in Para.3 suggests that _________.

A. Dad's life journey was on half way

B. Dad came to a critical moment in his life

C. Dad’s future was decided by doctors

D. Dad faced a tough decision in his life

3.Before the surgery, which of the following words can best describe the feeling of the families?

A. Worried and negative.

B. Anxious and helpless.

C. Nervous but optimistic.

D. Relaxed and positive.

4.Which of the following is TRUE according the passage?

A. Dad bought a diamond jewelry to Mom for their wedding anniversary.

B. Dad asked the nurse to visit Mom soon after the operation.

C. Despite a lot of pain, Dad was eager to know Mom’s condition soon after the operation.

D. On the day of the transplant, the families involved in a mean euchre tournament to relax themselves.

5.What’s in the writer’s photo?

A. Everyone was crying, even the nurses.

B. His parents were trying to talk to each other.

C. Dad watched Mom opening the gift.

D. His parents were holding each other’s hands.

6.What’s the best title for the passage?

A. Dad’s disease B. Mom’s decision

C. The Gift of Life D. The photo of hands

A classic joke goes like this: A nurse rushes into an exam room and says, “Doctor, doctor, there’s an invisible man in the waiting room.” The doctor says, “Tell him I can’t see him.”

Pretty simple, right?

Here’s how I tell it: “A nurse—her name is Joyce—feels a presence in the waiting room. She looks around but sees nothing. She jumps up from her desk, carefully replaces her chair, and runs down the lavender-hued hallway to the doctor’s office. She knocks on the door. No response. He’s not there. Where can he be? She continues down the hall, admiring a lithograph of an 18th-century Mississippi paddleboat along the way.” By this time, my audience has left, but I soldier on. “She bursts into the exam room and says, ‘Doctor, doctor!’ The doctor, I should mention, is a urologist with a degree from Ohio State, which is where my nephew …”

You get the idea. I’m an embellisher. I can’t leave a simple gag alone.

I’m not the only joke-challenged member of the family. My sister’s worse than I am. Her problem: She can’t remember them. “‘A nurse rushes into an exam room and says…’Uh, let me start all over again. ‘A nurse rushes into a waiting…’No, it’s not the waiting room. She just came from the waiting room. Let me start all over again. ‘A doctor rushes into…’ No, wait…”

My uncle’s different. He’s guilty of taking a perfectly fine joke and selling it as the second coming of Oscar Wilde, “Okay, this is a good one. Ready? No, really, ready? Okay, fasten your seat belts. Ready?‘A nurse…’Got it? A nurse? Okay, ready?‘A nurse rushes into an exam room and says, “Doctor, doctor, there’s an invisible man in the waiting room.”’ Now, this is where it gets funny. Ready?”

No one is ever ready, so they leave before he gets to the punch line.

My father’s on Wall Street, so he hears all the jokes before they hit the Web. And he lets you know he knows them all by telling you all of them. He also knows that most people don’t like jokes. So he slips them in under the radar: “I was chatting with Ben Bernanke the other day. You know Ben, don’t you? The Fed chief? Anyway, we were reviewing the Fed’s policy on long-term interest rates, and he told me it had evolved into its current iteration only after a nurse rushed into an exam room and said, ‘Doctor, doctor, there’s…’ Hey, where are you going?”

My brother Mark understands that the secret to good joke telling is to know your audience. When he entertained my grandmother’s bridge club one evening, he made it a point to adapt the joke to them: “A beautiful blonde nurse rushes into a consulting room…”

No one in my family has ever finished this joke.

But as bad as it is not to be able to tell a joke, there’s something worse: not being able to listen to one. Take my cousin Mitch for example.

“Why couldn’t the doctor see him?” he asked.

“Because he’s invisible,” I said.

“Now, I didn’t get that. I thought the doctor couldn’t see him because he was with a patient.”

“Well, yeah, okay, but the fact that the guy was invisible…”

“Could the nurse see him?”

“No. She’s the one who said he was invisible…”

“How’d she know he was there?”

“Because he…”

“When you say he was invisible, does that mean his clothes were invisible too?” Here’s where I tried to walk away.

“Because if his clothes weren’t invisible,” Mitch said, stepping between me and the exit, “then the doctor could see him, right?”

“Yeah, but …”

“At least his clothes.”

“I guess…”

“Unless he was naked.”

“Okay, he was naked!”

“Why would he go to his doctor naked?”

Next time you see my family and someone is telling a joke, do yourself a favor: Make yourself invisible.

1.Which of the following is true according to this article?

A. No one in the writer’s family is good at telling jokes.

B. Mark is the best at telling jokes in his family.

C. Mitch is very sensitive to all kinds of jokes.

D. A typically classic joke should cover all the details.

2.What is inappropriate about Mark’s adaptation of the joke?

A. He knows the audience very well.

B. He shouldn’t have entertained a bridge club.

C. He shouldn’t have begun the story with a beautiful blond nurse.

D. He shouldn’t have told old people jokes.

3.Mitch stepped between me and the exit because __________.

A. he wanted to go out with me

B. he wanted to block my way out

C. he was trying to repay the situation in the consulting room

D. he wanted to show that the doctor could see the patient

4.Which is the best title of the passage?

A. Learn to Amuse Others

B. Where to Find a Doctor

C. How to Ruin a Classic Joke

D. A Story about a Funny Family

Ariau Amazon Towers

The Ariau Amazon Towers hotel lets you sleep in a tree house. Eight towers make up this hotel that offers over 300 rooms. If you really want to get into the spirit, book the Tarzan Suite which is large enough for a big family. You’ll be thirty feet up in the air and can travel between the towers through their wooden walkways.

Prices: starting at $300 one night for each person for a regular room and going all the way up to $3000 for the Tarzan Suite.

For more information, visit the website: http://www.ariautowers.com

The Ice Hotel

Every winter in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden, a special kind of hotel called the Ice Hotel is built. Each year, world-famous artists are invited to design and produce works of art from the ice, many of which can be found in the rooms. You’ll have your choice between hot or cold rooms, but you will be well advised to stay at least one night in a cold room for a true experience.

Prices: starting at $318 one night for each person for either a cold room or a warm one.

For more information, visit the website: http://www.icehotel.com

Propeller Island

Propeller Island City Lodge is a very special hotel that was designed by a German artist. Each room provides you with the possibility of living in a work of art. Every single piece of furniture in the thirty rooms of the hotel has been hand-made and each room is completely different. You’ll be able to choose a room based on your own personal tastes.

Prices: starting at just $91 a night, and an additional person for only 20 extra dollars.

For more information, visit the website: http://www.propeller-island.com

For information about other cool hotels in the world, visit the website:

http://www.bahamabeachclub.com

1.What is special about the Ariau Amazon Towers hotel?

A. You can sleep in tree houses.

B. You can choose any of the towers.

C. It is designed for big families.

D. Every room has a walkway.

2.For two persons spending a night in one of these hotels, they have to pay at least ______.

A. $111 B. $182 C. $600 D. $636

3.Which website should you visit if you want to find out whether there exists a hotel under the sea?

A. http://www.icehotel.com

B. http://www.ariautowers.com

C. http://www.propeller-island.com

D.http://www.bahamabeachclub.com

4.Which hotel would invite artists to come to work every year?

A. Propeller Island City Lodge.

B. Ariau Amazon Towers.

C. The Ice Hotel.

D. Bahama Beach Club.

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