The behavior of a building's users may be at least as important as its design when it comes to energy use, according to new research from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). The UK promises to reduce its carbon emissions (排放)by 80 percent by 2050, part of which will be achieved by all new homes being zero carbon by 2016. But this report shows that sustainable building design on its own—though extremely important—is not enough to achieve such reductions: the behavior of the people using the building has to change too.

The study suggests that the ways that people use and live in their homes have been largely ignored by existing efforts to improve energy efficiency, which instead focus on architectural and technological developments.

“Technology is going to assist but it is not going to do everything,”explains Katy Janda, a UKERC senior researcher, “consumption patterns of building users can defeat the most careful design.” In other words, old habits die hard, even in the best designed eco home.

Another part of the problem is information. Households and bill payers don't have the knowledge they need to change their energy use habits. Without specific information, it's hard to estimate the costs and benefits of making different choices. Feedback(反馈) facilities, like smart meters and energy monitors, could help bridge this information gap by helping people see how changing their behavior directly affects their energy use; some studies have shown that households can achieve up to 15 percent energy savings using smart meters.

Social science research has added a further dimension, suggesting that individuals' behavior in the home can be personal and cannot be predicted—whether people throw open their windows rather than turn down the thermostat (恒温器) , for example.

Janda argues that education is the key. She calls for a focused program to teach people about buildings and their own behavior in them.

1.As to energy use, the new research from UKERC stresses the importance of ________.

A. zero carbon homes

B. the reduction of carbon emissions

C. sustainable building design

D. the behavior of building users

2.The underlined word “which” in Paragraph 2 refers to“________”.

A. their homes B. existing efforts

C. developments D. the ways

3.What are Katy Janda's words mainly about?

A. The importance of changing building users' habits.

B. The necessity of making a careful building design.

C. The variety of consumption patterns of building users.

D. The role of technology in improving energy efficiency.

4.The information gap in energy use________.

A. affects the study on energy monitors

B. brings about problems for smart meters

C. can be bridged by feedback facilities

D. will be caused by building users' old habits

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。

There is an old Spanish proverb which states, “Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week”. 1. I’d say, too many. Our dreams should not, and cannot wait. We have to go for them now! Here’s why.

1. 2.

Nobody likes to talk about death, but the reality is that everybody is going to die at one point. None of us know the day, or the hour. Therefore, today is all we have. Don’t go to your grave with unfulfilled dreams. Make the decision to go after every dream, big or small right now.

2. The world is waiting on your gift.

I know this may be hard to believe, but the world is waiting on YOU! Yes, YOU! 3. Sure, other people may be able to sing. But they’ll never be able to sing exactly like you. Sure other people can write, but they’ll never be able to write from the same perspective in which you write. Don’t deprive the world of your gift. It’s the oxygen that we need to survive. Thus, it is your responsibility to figure out exactly what your gift is, and use to better your life and the lives of those around you.

3. 4.

You can dream about writing the great American play that you want, but it’s never going to happen unless you actually put pen to paper. You can dream about finding a cure for cancer, but it will never happen unless you actually go to school to become equipped with the necessary tools to find that cure. 5. They require you to get your head out of the clouds, and actually do the work to make them happen. Get to it!

A. You can’t let fear win.

B. Tomorrow is not promised.

C. In other words, dreams don’t work unless you do.

D. How many times have we put off our dreams until tomorrow?

E. You were born into the world with a unique gift, which nobody on this earth can duplicate.

F. Possibilities you never knew existed are waiting on you.

G. Unless you take the first step, your dreams will never come true.

完形填空

阅读下面短文,从短文后各题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中,选出可以填入空白处的最佳选项,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

My class and I visited Chris Care Center in Phoenix, Arizona to comfort the old people who needed a little cheering up during the holiday season.

The first two _________ there were for persons requiring help in taking care of themselves. We sang _________ for them. They loved our sweet songs and the flowers that we left with them.

As we were _________ on the third floor for old people with Alzheimer (老年痴呆症), most of them _________ off at the walls or floor. However, one lady _________ my eye. She was sitting by the door, in a wheelchair, singing songs to herself. They weren’t the songs that we were singing, at least they didn’t _________ like that. As we got _________ with each festive song, she did as well. The louder we got, the louder she got. _________ she was singing, she was also _________ out to us with her hands and body. I knew that I should have gone over to her, but I thought that my _________ were to my students. People who worked at the care center could _________ to her, I thought. Just when I stopped feeling_________ about not giving her the attention she needed, one of my students, Justin, showed me what the holiday season is really about.

Justin also _________ the same lady. The difference between us is that he _________ on her needs, but I didn’t. During the last song, “Silent Night,” Justin walked over to her and held her hand. He looked this aged lady in her _________ and with his actions said, “You are important, and I will take my _________to let you know that.” This tired, elderly lady stopped singing and held his hand. Then she touched his cheek with the other hand. Tears began to fall down her face. No _________ can completely describe that touching moment.

It took a boy to_________ me, a man, about kindness and love. Justin’s example of a complete, selfless attitude toward another was a _________that I will never forget. He was the teacher that day, and I consider myself _________ to have witnessed his lesson.

1.A. rooms B. buildings C. groups D. floors

2.A. bravely B. beautifully C. shyly D. madly

3.A. gathering B. meeting C. singing D. dancing

4.A. glared B. shut C. stared D. paid

5.A. looked B. hurt C. escaped D. caught

6.A. sound B. hear C. appear D. feel

7.A. higher B. nearer C. faster D. louder

8.A. As B. Because C. Since D. Though

9.A. moving B. coming C. reaching D. spreading

10.A. interests B. abilities C. responsibilities D. feelings

11.A. speak B. attend C. object D. compare

12.A. guilty B. sure C. afraid D. scary

13.A. feared B. noticed C. helped D. avoided

14.A. called B. insisted C. acted D. kept

15.A. tears B. hands C. face D. eye

16.A. body B. time C. flower D. cheek

17.A. expressions B. poems C. words D. songs

18.A. teach B. waste C. cause D. help

19.A. message B. activity C. lesson D. class

20.A. clever B. foolish C. lucky D. right

When other nine-year-old kids were playing games, she was working at a petrol station. When other teens were studying or going out, she struggled to find a place to sleep on the street. But she overcame these terrible setbacks to win a highly competitive scholarship and gain entry to Harvard University. And her amazing story has inspired a movie, “ Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story”, shown in late April.

Liz Murray,a 22-year-old American girl, has been writing a real-life story of willpower and determination. Liz grew up in the shadow of two drug-addicted parents. There was never enough food or warm clothes in the house. Liz was the only member who had a job. Her mother had AIDS and died when Liz was just 15 years old. The effect of that loss became a turning point in her life. Connecting the environment in which she had grown up with how her mother had died, she decided to do something about it.

Liz went back to school. She threw herself into her studies, never telling her teachers that she was homeless. At night, she lived on the streets. “ What drove me to live on had something to do with understanding, by understanding that there was a whole other way of being. I had only experienced a small part of the society,” she wrote in her book Breaking Night.

She admitted that she used envy to drive herself on. She used the benefits that come easily to others such as a safe living environment, to encourage herself that “next to nothing could hold me down”. She finished high school in just two years and won a full scholarship to study at Harvard University. But Liz decided to leave her top university a couple of months earlier this year in order to take care of her father, who has also developed AIDS. “I love my parents so much. They are drug addicts. But I never forget that they loved me all the time.”

Liz wants moviegoers to come away with the idea that changing your life is “as simple as making a decision”.

1.The main idea of the passage is __________ .

A. how Liz managed to enter Harvard University

B. What a hard time Liz had in her childhood

C. why Liz loved her parents so much

D. how Liz struggled to change her life

2.In which order did the following things happen to Liz ?

a. Her mother died of AIDS.

b. She worked at a petrol station.

c. She got admission into Harvard University.

d. The movie about her life was put on.

e. She had trouble about finding a place to sleep.

A. b, a , e , c, d B. a , b , c , e , d

C. e , d, b , a , c D. b , e , a , d , c

3.What actually made her go towards her goal?

A. Envy and encouragement.

B. Willpower and determination .

C. Decisions and understanding.

D. Love and respect for her parents.

4.When she wrote “What drove me to live on … I had only experienced a small part of the society”, she meant that __________ .

A. she had little experience of social life.

B. she could hardly understand the society.

C. she would do something for her own life.

D. she needed to travel more around the world.

Four people in England back in 1953, stared at Photo 51,It wasn’t much—a picture showing a black X. But three of these people won the Nobel Prize for figuring out what the photo really showed –the shape of DNA The discovery brought fame and fortune to scientists James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. The fourth, the one who actually made the picture, was left out.

Her name was Rosalind Franklin.” She should have been up there,” says historian(历史学家) Mary Bowden.” If her photos hadn’t been there, the others couldn’t have come up with the structure.” One reason Franklin was missing was that she had died of cancer four years before the Nobel decision. But now scholars(学者)doubt that Franklin was not only robbed of her life by disease but robbed of credit by her competitors

At Cambridge University in the 1950s, Watson and Click tried to make models by cutting up shapes of DNA’s parts and then putting them together. In the meantime, at King’s College in London, Franklin and Wilkins shone X-rays at the molecule(分子). The rays produced patterns reflection the shape.

But Wilkins and Franklin’s relationship was a lot rockier than the celebrated teamwork of Watson and Crick, Wilkins thought Franklin was hired to be his assistant .But the college actually employed her to take over the DNA project.

What she did was produce X-ray pictures that told Watson and Crick that one of their early models was inside out. And she was not shy about saying so. That angered Watson, who attacked her in return, “Mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. Clearly she had to to go or be put in her place.”

As Franklin’s competitors, Wilkins, Watson and Crick had much to gain by cutting her out of the little group of researchers, says historian Pnina Abir-Am. In 1962 at the Nobel Prize awarding ceremony, Wilkins thanked 13 colleagues by name before he mentioned Franklin, Watson wrote his book laughing at her. Crick wrote in 1974 that “Franklin was only two steps away from the solution.”

No, Franklin was the solution. “She contributed more than any other player to solving the structure of DNA . She must be considered a co-discoverer,” Abir-Am says. This was backed up by Aaron Klug, who worked with Franklin and later won a Nobel Prize himself. Once described as the “Dark Lady of DNA”, Franklin is finally coming into the light.

1.What is the text mainly about?

A. The disagreements among DNA researchers.

B. The unfair treatment of Franklin.

C. The process of discovering DNA.

D. The race between two teams of scientists.

2.Watson was angry with Franklin because she .

A. took the lead in the competition

B. kept her results from him

C. proved some of his findings wrong

D. shared her data with other scientists

3.Why is Franklin described as “Dark Lady of DNA”?

A. She developed pictures in dark labs.

B. She discovered the black X-the shape of DNA.

C. Her name was forgotten after her death.

D. Her contribution was unknown to the public.

4.What is the writer’s attitude toward Wilkins, Watson and Crick?

A. Disapproving. B. Respectful.

C. Admiring. D. Doubtful.

E-reading and e-books are slowly conquering the world. Compared to traditional paper books, e-books in some schools and universities attract more interest because the information flow seems much easier to manage and comes in a greatly higher quantity.

Japan is known for the reform-minded attitude towards the gadget(精巧装置)world and for the fact that it is one of the first countries that encouraged in the educational system the emailing of homework.

The digital textbook looks like the logical step in the world of learning. It is natural but it is also completely untraditional.

The plan of the largest publishing companies to get in line with the trend is to save a large quantity of paper and make the kids become interested in learning using a cool gadget. Many USA universities and colleges have made students be used to the procedure of downloading the courses and of course the procedure involves interactive software and also the chance of using the computer.

The traditional education system is still unwilling when it comes to giving up books. The standard approach of information taught out of a book and Shakespeare read out of an old school novel makes studying English as traditional as it can be.

In a world where kids would rather see the movie than read a book, the digital age has brought along a completely different flavor to reading. Bringing that flavor in school will make teaching a greener and also a completely different matter.

1.Why are e-books so popular in the world?

A. It’s cheap to buy.

B. It’s effective to use.

C. It’s convenient to bring.

D. It’s the latest fashion.

2.Which of the following words can best take the place of the word “reform-minded” in the second paragraph?

A. Old-fashioned. B. Aggressive.

C. Rejecting. D. Progressive.

3.In America, the students are encouraged to .

A. apply the procedure of downloading the courses

B. communicate with their teachers using computers

C. research some interactive software for their studies

D. do their homework in computer instead of in paper

4.What’s the author’s attitude to the digital textbooks?

A. Being against. B. Being for.

C. Not mentioned. D. Being neutral.

Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had ever heard about tea. People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like, mainly because tea was very expensive. It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford to have it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity. Some of them were not sure how to use it. They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves. Then they served them mixed with butter and salt. They soon discovered their mistake but many people used to spread the used tea leaves on bread and give them to their children as sandwiches.

Tea remained scarce and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company began to bring it direct from China early in the seventeenth century. During the next few years so much tea came into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it.

At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea. Until then tea had been drunk without milk in it, but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevigne decided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added. She found it so pleasant that she would never again drink it without milk. Because she was such a great lady that her friends thought they must copy everything she did, they also drank their tea with milk in it. Slowly this habit spread until it reached England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk.

At first, tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening. No one ever thought of drinking tea in the afternoon until a duchess(公爵夫人)found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or four o’clock stopped her getting “a sinking feeling” as she called it. She invited her friends to have this new meal with her and so, tea-time was born .

1.This passage mainly discusses .

A. the history of tea drinking in Britain

B. how tea became a popular drink in Britain

C. how the Britons got the habit of drinking tea

D. how tea-time was born

2.Tea became a popular drink in Britain .

A. in the sixteenth century

B. in the seventeenth century

C. in the eighteenth century

D. in the late seventeenth century

3.We may infer from the passage that the habit of drinking tea in Britain was mostly due to the influence of .

A. a famous French lady

B. the ancient Chinese

C. the upper(上层的) social class

D. people in Holland

 0  133741  133749  133755  133759  133765  133767  133771  133777  133779  133785  133791  133795  133797  133801  133807  133809  133815  133819  133821  133825  133827  133831  133833  133835  133836  133837  133839  133840  133841  133843  133845  133849  133851  133855  133857  133861  133867  133869  133875  133879  133881  133885  133891  133897  133899  133905  133909  133911  133917  133921  133927  133935  151629 

违法和不良信息举报电话:027-86699610 举报邮箱:58377363@163.com

精英家教网