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For some people, music is no fun at all. About four percent of the population is what scientists call “amusic.” People who are amusic are born without the ability to recognize or reproduce musical notes (音调). Amusic people often cannot tell the difference between two songs. Amusics can only hear the difference between two notes if they are very far apart on the musical scale.
As a result, songs sound like noise to an amusic. Many amusics compare the sound of music to pieces of metal hitting each other. Life can be hard for amusics. Their inability to enjoy music set them apart from others. It can be difficult for other people to identify with their condition. In fact, most people cannot begin to grasp what it feels like to be amusic. Just going to a restaurant or a shopping mall can be uncomfortable or even painful. That is why many amusics intentionally stay away from places where there is music. However, this can result in withdrawal and social isolation. “I used to hate parties,” says Margaret, a seventy-year-old woman who only recently discovered that she was amusic. By studying people like Margaret, scientists are finally learning how to identify this unusual condition.
Scientists say that the brains of amusics are different from the brains of people who can appreciate music. The difference is complex, and it doesn’t involve defective hearing. Amusics can understand other nonmusical sounds well. They also have no problems understanding ordinary speech. Scientists compare amusics to people who just can’t see certain colors.
Many amusics are happy when their condition is finally diagnosed (诊断). For years, Margaret felt embarrassed about her problem with music. Now she knows that she is not alone. There is a name for her condition. That makes it easier for her to explain. “When people invite me to a concert, I just say, ‘No thanks, I’m amusic,’” says Margaret. “I just wish I had learned to say that when I was seventeen and not seventy.” (335 words)
1.Which of the following is true of amusics?
A．Listening to music is far from enjoyable for them.
B．They love places where they are likely to hear music.
C．They can easily tell two different songs apart.
D．Their situation is well understood by musicians.
2.According to paragraph 3, a person with “defective hearing” is probably one who __________.
A．dislikes listening to speeches
B．can hear anything nonmusical
C．has a hearing problem
D．lacks a complex hearing system
3.In the last paragraph, Margaret expressed her wish that __________.
A．her problem with music had been diagnosed earlier
B．she were seventeen years old rather than seventy
C．her problem could be easily explained
D．she were able to meet other amusics
4.What is the passage mainly concerned with?
A．Amusics’ strange behaviours.
B．Some people’s inability to enjoy music.
C．Musical talent and brain structure.
D．Identification and treatment of amusics.
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(268 words)
1.According to Warranty Limitations, a product can be under warranty if __________.
A. shipped from a Canadian factory B. rented for home use
C. repaired by the user himself D. used in the U.S.A.
2.According to Owner’s Responsibilities, an owner has to pay for __________.
A．the loss of the sales receipt B．a servicer’s overtime work
C．the product installation D．a mechanic’s transportation
3.Which of the following is true according to the warranty?
A．Consequential damages are excluded across America.
B．A product damaged in a natural disaster is covered by the warranty.
C．A faulty cabinet due to rust can be replaced free in the second year.
D．Free repair is available for a product used improperly in the first year.
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A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.
“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.
They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.
While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.
Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”
(392 words)
1.The difficulty the team of engineers met with while making the robotic fly was that __________.
A．they had no model in their mind
B．they did not have sufficient time
C．they had no ready-made components
D．they could not assemble the components
2.It can be inferred from paragraphs 3 and 4 that the robotic fly __________.
A．consists of a flight device and a control system
B．can just fly in limited areas at the present time
C．can collect information from many sources
D．has been put into wide application
3.Which of the following can be learned from the passage?
A．The robotic flyer is designed to learn about insects.
B．Animals are not allowed in biological experiments.
C．There used to be few ways to study how insects fly.
D．Wood’s design can replace animals in some experiments.
4.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
A．Father of Robotic Fly
B．Inspiration from Engineering Science
C．Robotic Fly Imitates Real Life Insect
D．Harvard Breaks Through in Insect Study
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A study of more than five million books, both fiction and non-fiction, has found a marked decline in the use of emotional words over time. The researchers form the University of Bristol used Google Ngram Viewer, a facility for finding the frequency of terms in scanned books, to search for more than 600 particular words identified as representing anger, dislike, fear, joy, sadness and surprise.
They found that almost all of the categories (类别) showed a drop in these “mood words” over time. Only in the category of fear was there an increase in usage.
“It is a steady and continuous decrease,” said Dr Alberto Acerbi. He assumed that the result might be explained by a change in the position occupied by literature, in a crowded media landscape. “One thing could be that in parallel to books the 20th century saw the start of other media. Maybe these media—movies, radio, drama—had more emotional content than books.”
Although both joy and sadness followed the general downwards trend, the research, published in the journal PLOS One, found that they also exhibited another interesting behaviour：the ratio (比率) between the two varied greatly, apparently mirroring historical events.
During the Roaring Twenties the joy-to-sadness ratio reached a peak that would not occur again until before the recent financial crash. But the ratio plunged at the height of the Second World War. Nevertheless, the researchers held a reserved opinion about their claim that their result reflected wider social trends. In the paper, they even argue that the reverse could be true.
“It has been suggested, for example, that it was the suppression (压抑) of desire in ordinary Elizabethan English life that increased demand for writing ‘filled with romance and sex’… perhaps,” they conclude, “songs and books may not reflect the real population any more than catwalk models reflect the average body.”
(Note：Answer the questions or complete the statements in NO MORE THAN TEN WORDS.)
1.A study of more than five million books indicated a decline in “mood words” over time except
2.According to Dr Alberto Acerbi, one reason for the drop of “mood words” in books may be that
3.What were the two periods when the joy-to-sadness ratio was at its highest?
4.While the researchers found some changes in the use of “mood words” in books, they werenot sure that
