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The UK’s music festivals are world famous but there are plenty more to celebrate in the country.
Burns Night, Scotland
On 25 January. Scots celebrate the life and works of Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns by holding a special Burns Supper. This can be a casual gathering of friends or a huge formal dinner. Guests take it in turn to recite Burns’ poems or sing one of his songs.
Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye, Wales
For 10 days each May, the small town of Hay-on-Wye on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales is filled with writers, filmmakers, musicians, comedians, politicians, and people who come to hear them talk and exchange ideas. The festival celebrates great writing of all genres (体裁) and it all takes place in a tented village in the town.
Camp Festival, Dorset
As a branch of a festival held in Dorset, it’s one of the best family festivals in the UK. Held every year in the grounds of the historic Lulworth Castle in Dorset, the festival includes top live music acts but, as the organizers say, “kids are king” at Camp Festival, with a wide variety of entertainment, workshops and fun for kids. The 2020 Camp Festival takes place from 25 to 28 July.
Guy Fawkes Day or “Bonfire Night”
All over the UK on 5 November, the British light bonfires and set off fireworks in their back gardens or, more commonly these days, at organized events in public parks. They celebrate the Catholic Guy Fawkes’ failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November, 1605.
1.Which festivals are related to literature?
A.Burns Night and Hay Festival.
B.Hay Festival and Camp Festival.
C.Burns Night and Guy Fawkes Day.
D.Camp Festival and Guy Fawkes Day.
2.When does the festival most appealing to children take place?
A.In January. B.In May.
C.In July. D.In November.
3.What does Guy Fawkes Day celebrate?
A.A historical event.
B.A successful explosion.
C.An organized strike.
D.An impressive building.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
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I remember doing the household chores to help my mother when I was nine. I hated changing the vacuum cleaner (真空吸尘器) bag and picking up things the machine did not suck up. Twenty years later, in 1978, with this lifelong dislike of the way the machine worked, I decided to make a bagless one.
Easier said than done, of course. I didn’t realize that I would spend the next five years perfecting my design, a process that resulted in 5,127 different prototypes (样机). By the time I made my 15th prototype, my third child was born. By 2,627, my wife and I were really counting our pennies. By 3,727, my wife was giving art lessons for some extra cash, and we were getting further and further into debt. These were tough times, but each failure brought me closer to solving the problem.
In the early 1980s, I started trying to get licensing agreements for my technology. The reality was very different, however. The major vacuum makers had built a business model based on the profits from bags and filters (滤网). No one would license my idea, not because it was a bad one, but because it was bad for business. But soon after, the companies that I had talked with started making machines like mine. I had to fight legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic to protect the patents on my vacuum cleaner.
I was still in financial difficulties until 1993, when my bank manager personally persuaded Lloyds Bank to lend me $1 million. Then I was able to go into production. Within two years, the Dyson vacuum cleaner became a best-seller in Britain.
Today, I still embrace risk and the potential for failure as part of the process. Nothing beats the excitement of invention,
1.What drove the author to make a bagless vacuum cleaner?
A.His willingness to help mom.
B.His curiosity about machines.
C.His trouble in doing family chores.
D.His discontent with existing cleaners.
2.What does paragraph 2 mainly tell us?
A.The help from the author’s wife.
B.The financial problems of the family.
C.The tough process of the new invention.
D.The procedures of making a bagless cleaner.
3.Why did the companies refuse to license the author’s technology?
A.They thought they might suffer loss.
B.They considered it not good enough.
C.They faced legal problems themselves.
D.They had begun making such machines.
4.What lesson may the author learn from the experience?
A.Think twice before acting.
B.Failure is the mother of success.
C.Actions speak louder than words.
D.A good beginning makes a good ending.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
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Pigeons (鸽子) may be considered mice of the sky, but some scientists have found greater value in these urban birds: the blueprint for a new generation of flying machines.
Birds can transform the shape of their wings by fanning out their feathers or moving them closer together. Those adjustments allow birds to cut through the sky more flexibly than rigid drones (无人机). Now, using new insights into exactly how pigeons ‘joints control the spread of their wing feathers, researchers have built a robotic pigeon. This research paves the way for creating more light aircraft, says Dario Floreano, a roboticist in Switzerland not involved in the work.
“What’s really cool about this robot is that you can make adjustments in a robotic wing that you could never do when studying flight in a bird”, says David Lentink, an engineer and biologist at Stanford University. A controllable robotic pigeon solves that problem. In flight tests, Lentink’s team observed that bending only the fingers of one wing eased the robot into a banked turn-offering the first evidence that birds may sometimes use just their fingers to direct in flight. In a second study, Lentink’s group used their robotic wing design to confirm another insight into bird flight: how gaps are prevented from forming between feathers on extended wings.
This is the best set of robotic wings yet for testing how birds adjust their flight feathers to move through the air, says Tyson Hedrick, a biomechanist. But “there’s plenty of room for improvement.” For instance, a future flying robot could include a shoulder joint to investigate how waving a bird’s wings up and down influences flight, he says.
1.What is the newly-found worth of pigeons?
A.They help study other species.
B.They protect other urban birds.
C.They provide proof of mice’s harm.
D.They inspire a new aircraft.
2.What is Dario Floreano’s attitude to the research?
A.Negative. B.Positive.
C.Neutral. D.Critical.
3.What do the underlined words “that problem” in paragraph 3 refer to?
A.Pigeons in flight can hardly be observed.
B.People can’t make adjustments in birds’ wings.
C.It is difficult for pigeons to make a banked turn.
D.Pigeons fail to control the spread of their wing feathers.
4.Where does the text probably come from?
A.A travel journal.
B.A travel brochure.
C.A science fiction.
D.A science magazine.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
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Is there a link between social media and depression? Do Facebook and Instagram have a negative impact on your mental health? It’s complicated.
Sometimes, looking through Instagram just makes you feel bad. You try not to envy your friends, but they always seem to be traveling somewhere cool, eating something fancy, or looking cute in perfect just-rolled-out-of-bed hair. On the other hand, there are times when you laugh at funny memes (表情包), catch up with old friends, and feel happy to belong to fun social media communities, Clearly, social media isn’t all bad.
People are increasingly suspect that there’re the potential problems of social media. Things like cyberbullying, screen addiction, and being exposed to endless filtered images (美颜) that make it impossible not to make comparisons between yourself and others often make the news. In July, a big study came out in the journal JAMA titled “Association of Screen Time and Depression in Adolescence.” This big headline seems to confirm what a lot of people have been saying-screen time is horrible for young people.
The study followed over 3800 adolescents over four years as part of a drug and alcohol prevention program. Part of what the investigators measured was the teens’ amount of screen time, including time spent on social media, as well as their levels of depression symptoms. One of their main findings was that higher amounts of social media use were associated with higher levels of depression. That was true both when the researches compared between people and compared each person against their own mental health over time.
Case closed? Not so fast. Before we end the debate once and for all, let’s take a closer look at this and other studies. Let’s ask ourselves: what exactly is the relationship between social media use and depression? It turns out there are several warnings.
1.Why do people sometimes feel bad when looking through Instagram?
A.They feel unbalanced.
B.They can travel nowhere.
C.They don’t look perfect.
D.They lack contact with old friends.
2.Why is the article in journal JAMA mentioned?
A.To comment. B.To suggest.
C.To prove. D.To explore.
3.Which may agree with the findings of the study?
A.Teens’ amount of screen time is limited.
B.Depression is related to social media use.
C.It is not easy to tell reasons for depression.
D.Social media use contributes to mental health.
4.What’s the best title of the text?
A.How to reduce depression?
B.Shall people reduce screen time?
C.Does social media cause depression?
D.Why is it time to give up social media?
难度: 中等查看答案及解析