题目内容
Technology today has stolen away our voices and robbed our children of memories. I’ve been keeping count of how often people sing around the house these days. The fact is, they don’t.
My earliest memories are of my mother crooning lullabies(催眠曲) in a gentle low voice as she rocked each infant in turn. She said she “didn’t have a singing voice,” but her low, wavering alto will always mean comfort to me. Every time I have sat through the night with a feverish body or held a pre – schooler through a nightmare, the melodies returned, words appearing and disappearing like fragments of a dream but held together by the hum (低声吟唱)of love.
Today, young mothers are routinely presented with lullaby tapes at the baby shower. When baby cries, the idea goes, they will be able to switch on the high-tech audio system and the little one will drift off with the voices of strangers in his ears, perfectly on pitch. If I had my way, new parents would learn the songs themselves, throw out their stereos, and give their child the gift of their own sleepy voices through the midnight hours.
These days, when we go on a trip, my daughters take along tiny personal stereos and headphones. They are lost in their private worlds, and I can’t help wishing that at least here, in the car my girls would be forced to listen to their mother’s voice raised in lost – the – words again, sure I’m out-of-tune songs that they might then pass down to another generation. Those sophisticated earphones have robbed them of something I think every kid should carry from childhood car trips into adulthood.
I drove away from that party humming, and all the way home the good old songs kept tumbling out. Dammit (该死), I thought, why did I ever stop singing in the car and start turning on the radio instead? Why don’t I sign anymore while I’m doing the dishes? I’m going to yank those stereo wires right out of the wall when I get home. We’re going to sing grace before meals, sing coals around the piano, sing in the shower instead of switching on that waterproof radio that stol away our voices and our souls.
63.The author hates today’s technology because________
A.driving a car requires high concentration
B.children are learning pop songs from tapes
C.children have lost touch with good old songs
D.high – tech systems do not record the voices of aged people
64.The underlined sentence “the little one will drift off” in Paragraph 3 means that “________ ”.
A.the play of the high – tech system is of little use
B.the high – tech system will play on and on
C.the low voice will delight the baby
D.the baby will slowly go to sleep
65.To the author, the voices of strangers ________ .
A.are not familiar to the baby
B.lack the motherly love the baby needs
C.work better to stop the baby’s cry
D.surely sound more pleasant
66.What the author wishes to make her girls do is to________ .
A.help memorize the words while she is singing
B.take off their well – designed earphones
C.listen and learn the old songs from her
D.remember their childhood car trips
63.C 64.D 65.B 66.C
解析
Keeping a busy social life among lots of friends may keep people thinner than spending hours doing some exercises, according to scientists. They say that socialising and meeting with friends help increase levels of brown fat in the body which burns calories(卡路里)to produce heat.
Living in an exciting social environment was found to reduce fat in mice's belly by half over four weeks, even if they ate more. US researchers say that social excitement aids weight loss by turning white fat into brown. White fat stores calories and makes us fatter, while brown burns energy to produce heat. Turning white fat into brown is extremely difficult,normally
requiring long- term stay in cold conditions or exciting part of the body's nervous system.
However, scientists from Ohio State University now think that having a busy social life is an even more effective way of changing white fat into brown. The team came up with their theory by studying the effects of various living environments on mice. Those, who lived alongside a greater number of mice, had more space and toys to excite themselves and then lost far more weight over the course of the study than their “couch potato" fellows.
Study author, Dr Matthew During, whose team's findings appear in the journal Cell Metabolism, said, "I'm still amazed at the degree of fat loss that occurs." Explaining how new technology had threatened face-to-face socialising, he added, "It's not just a sedentary(久坐 的)lifestyle and high calorie foods, but an increasing lack of social activities." Co-author Dr Lei Cao said,"Loneliness is a potential factor for cancer and death; it's equal to cigarette smoking to a certain extent. Social activities are very vital.,,
【小题1】What information can we get from the first two paragraphs?
A.Brown fat stores calories and makes us fatter. |
B.It doesn't take long to turn white fat into brown. |
C.Social excitement helps gain more weight. |
D.Brown fat can burn energy to produce heat. |
A.Levels of brown fat can be increased by socialising. |
B.The mice lacking social life lose more weight. |
C.The research findings haven't been published so far. |
D.Dr Matthew During wasn't convinced of the result. |
A.the fat in mice's belly was reduced because of the relaxing environment |
B.a sedentary lifestyle and high calories foods influence people's social life |
C.surfing the Internet may influence people's face-to-face communication |
D.cancer and death are mainly caused for lack of social life |
A.Brown fat is beneficial to people's health. |
B.Socialising is unnecessarily important in people's daily life. |
C.White fat can be changed into brown fat. |
D.Socialising contributes to people's losing weight. |
Hundreds of students from around the world gathered in New York City last week for the Microsoft Imagine Cup finals. They came to present their ideas for using technology to solve world problems.
Microsoft education director Suzi Levine says the nine-year-old program began mainly as a competition to create technology.
SUZI LEVINE: "When we realized that students really actually want to have a purpose for what they're creating, we introduced the idea of inspiring them with the UN Millennium Development Goals and suggesting that they use those for their muse(灵感). "This past year we also rolled out something called the Imagine Cup Solve This library(创新杯求解计划知识库), where IGOs, NGOs and nonprofits can submit some of the technical challenges that they would like students to consider for their solutions."
Microsoft says over 350,000 high school and college students registered for this year's competition. Judges chose more than four hundred of them to attend the finals.
SUZI LEVINE: "One from Thailand was called NewKrean, where they created a Windows Phone 7 application that allows you to broadcast your location to your social network of friends so that you can be more easily rescued." They named their application Terra.
Suzi Levine says there were also ideas from Egypt inspired by the revolution that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak in February.
SUZI LEVINE: "One was to use Bluetooth as sort of a Twitter equivalent so that if the government shuts down the Internet, you actually can still have a massive social distribution."
Students competed in nine categories. For example, in software design the top prize of twenty-five thousand dollars went to Team Hermes from Ireland. The students developed a device for cars to collect information on road conditions, driving behavior and traffic incidents.
A team from Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University won first place in the embedded(内嵌的) development category. They developed a network of wireless devices to help plot the safest escape routes during a fire.
Next year's awards ceremony will take place in Australia. Registration for Imagine Cup twenty-twelve opened Friday. Also, Microsoft announced plans for a three million dollar program to help Imagine Cup winners further develop their projects.
【小题1】Which of the following is true ?
A.The program is sponsored by Microsoft. |
B.Next year, the awards ceremony will be held in New York City. |
C.Any high school or college student can attend the finals. |
D.The initial purpose of the program is to solve world problems using technology. |
A.The UN offers great help to the program. |
B.Microsoft sets up a library for the students who want to achieve their goals. |
C.IGOs, NGOs and nonprofits also provide help for the students. |
D.Microsoft takes effective measures to inspire the students. |
A. Abandoned | B.Supported | C.Drove away | D.Overturned |
A.They want to replace Bluetooth with Twitter. |
B.They want to combine Bluetooth with Twitter. |
C.They want to replace Twitter with Bluetooth. |
D.Twitter can still be used without the Internet. |