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Every year, many inventions are introduced to the world. Some help us solve problems. Others make life easier, or more fun. Here are four of last year's best inventions.
LUMI was designed for music lovers. “We hope that LUMI can help people who have just started learning how to play music,” says the inventor Will MacNamara. The small Eumi keyboard lights up, allowing users to know which keys to press. And with the LUMI app, users can learn their favorite songs.
Millions of people around the world have to face the problem of unsafe food. Marc Oshima says his indoor farming technology can help. Instead of growing in dirt, crops grow in reusable cloth. The plants are watered with mist. This requires 95% less water than field farming.
For people who are blind, the ORCAM MYEYE 2 could be a game changer. It might also prove useful for people with reading difficulties. Described as “talking glasses”, it can read text aloud. Amnon Shashua invented the technology.
Christine Schindler is an engineer. She wanted to help stop the spread of foodborne illnesses, so she created PATHSPOT. It uses light to scan（扫描）a person's hands for harmful germs. Restaurant workers hold their hands under the scanner. Then the scanner decides whether they should be rewashed.
1.LUMI was designed for________.
A.indoor farmers B.music lovers
C.blind people D.restaurant workers
2.Who is the inventor of the ORCAM MYEYE 2?
A.Will MacNamara. B.Marc Oshima.
C.Amnon Shashua. D.Christine Schindler.
3.Where can we probably read this passage?
A.A medical website. B.A travel guide.
C.A school notice. D.A science magazine.
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This Family Keeps Their Community Warm by Cutting Firewood for Those in Need
Washington is home to lots of trees—it is the Evergreen State, after all—— and it has lots of fireplaces and wood-burning heaters too. But what if you lived there and couldn’t cut wood or couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it? Luckily, Shane McDaniel and his twin sons, Harrison and Henry McDaniel, are happy to help. The three men cut truckloads of wood—then give it to those m need.
The idea actually started as a father-son relationship project, Shane told msn.com. “I cut wood with my dad. He just loved doing it, " said Shane. He wanted to pass along that feeling, so he and the twins spent the summer cutting. The result was a great wall of wood piled up （堆积）around their house. To buy that much it would cost about $10,000.
It was too much for the McDaniels to use themselves, and when the weather turned cold that November, Shane started thinking of others. He posted online: "IF YOU ARE IN NEED OF FIREWOOD AND CANNOT AFFORD IT, PLEASE PM [personal message] ME! ... If you know someone who BURNS WOOD, please help me and my boys make sure NO ONE GOES COLD IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD, The response（反应）was immediate. One man offered to donate （捐赠）a wood-burning stove. Others raced over to Shane's house with more wood. One woman, noticing the photo of the McDaniels, started to feel warm in other ways: "I don't need the wood. But I am truly happy for what you have done! ”
Single mom Katelyn Ticer, 29, and her four-year-old daughter depended on a wood-burning stove as their only way of heat, so it was so good to receive a truckload of firewood from the McDaniels. "To get that much wood brought me to tears/' she told msn.com. “ So much stress and worry is off my shoulders. I couldn't be more thankful.
Shane is ready to help more people. “Giving is the reward”, he said. "It has nothing to do with how well it’s received; it's about how much it’s needed.”
1.What did Shane and his sons do to help their neighbors?
A.They gave firewood to those in need. B.They bought wood-burning stoves.
C.They raised about 10,000 dollars. D.They paid someone to cut wood.
2.What happened after Shane posted messages online?
A.His family received lots of presents. B.Some people quickly offered to help.
C.Lots of wood piled up around their house, D.The weather suddenly turned freezing cold.
3.What did Shane think of what he had done to help others?
A.Being needed drives us to give. B.Love is not giving but receiving.
C.Helping others is just helping ourselves. D.It’s better to help people fish than to give them fish.
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It Is Never Too Early to Think—and Communicate—like a Scientist
Who is a scientist and what is his job? A chemist doing experiments? A geologist out studying rocks? When most people think about science, they imagine characters making discoveries or finding cures （治疗方法）for new diseases. However, these leave out an extremely important part of the scientific process: communicating—sharing the results of that work.
Imagine if someone discovered something important about a disease. Other scientists need to understand the work well enough to use these new developments to make even more discoveries in the future. The public, too, needs to understand how these discoveries might influence their lives. But none of this will be possible if the work is not shared. Being a scientist goes far beyond the moment of discovery.
Without clear communication, scientists would not be able to use the work that has already been done. So how do scientists tell others about the work that they have done? How do they make sure that everything that they share is as clear and correct as possible?
Researchers publish their work in scientific journals（期刊）.These journals can be read by other researchers around the world. It is very important for these journals, and for the scientists who read them, to make sure that the research included is as correct as possible. In order to do that, articles given to scientific journals before publication first go through a process called peer review. Other scientists who do research in areas related to the work in an article are asked to read through it. Scientists also provide feedback to the writers. They bring up new questions the writer may not have considered, recognize limitations to the results being described, and also make sure that no mistakes were made during the process.
Frontiers for Young Minds is a scientific journal written for—and reviewed by young people. All of the articles in it are based on works already published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. However, while scientists are good at making sure that articles are understandable for other scientists, there are no better experts to make sure that something can be understood by young people than the young people themselves. By working together with an experts young reviewers read the article to see if any part of the article is hard to understands make it clear why the experiment was done in the way it was done and check whether the figures （数据）clearly explain the point of the article.
Basically, these young reviewers learn to think like scientists. It is never too early to start! Ask questions, learn new things, and don't forget the importance of communicating your findings.
1.What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?
A.What is required to be a good scientist.
B.Who should understand a scientist’s job.
C.Why sharing the results of scientific work is important.
D.How scientists make sure their work is clear and correct.
2.From the passage we can know that________.
A.scientists are good at working together with others
B.young people usually enjoy reading scientific journals
C.in peer review, other scientists bring up questions to readers
D.young reviewers help make articles in Frontiers for Young Minds more readable
3.What is the writer's main purpose in writing this passage?
A.To introduce how scientists do their jobs.
B.To offer practical advice on how to ask scientific questions.
C.To explain the effects of peer review on scientific journals.
D.To encourage young people to think and communicate like scientists.
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Why Wisdom （智慧）Doesn't Work as Well as We Think It Does
We relate wisdom to age. Most of us believe that gaining wisdom is like picking up stones on a path: the longer you're on the path, the more stones you'll collect.
It seems a reasonable inference, then, the older you are, the more wisdom you have. Older people usually make fewer careless mistakes, and they often know the best course of action in a given situation. But I think there's another explanation at play here, which we might consider in the light of what we know about human decision-making.
There are two different ways of decision-making: plans and habits. Here's an example of how these ways differ. If you’re driving somewhere for the first time, you'll need a plan. You will need to know whether to turn left or right, because you don’t already have that information stored away in your head. On the other hand, you don't need a plan when you're going somewhere familiar （熟悉的） because the order of steps that will take you there is stored as a habit. But if you find that the road is blocked by fallen trees, you’ll have to think about another way. Such a plan allows you to more easily deal with new situations, but they require a lot more attention.
The use of plans and habits changes over the course of our lives. A baby can't use habits to make decisions, because any situation she’s in will be a new one. As we build up a store of familiar situations, the more we can depend on habits. The older you are, the more likely your behavior is based on tried- and-true habits rather than fresh planning.
But what does this tell us about wisdom? Well, it suggests that wisdom is interactive, not static: it is a relationship between a person and their surroundings （环境），The reason that wisdom seems to come out so effortlessly from well-seasoned minds is that they have a store of habitual information about how to act in a given situation.
But it also makes a worrying prediction: if older people were put in a new situation, with which they had no familiarity, they wouldn't make better decisions than someone who is young. It is the same with mistakes. Older, seemingly wiser people make fewer mistakes because they're familiar with surroundings they often deal with. If you controlled for the familiarity of the situation, then people in different age groups would probably make the same number of mistakes. Younger people might even make fewer mistakes, because they are better at coming up with fresh plans.
While wisdom gives you expertise within a particular environment, it doesn't mean that you'll be able to generalize that to new experiences. It's not that we necessarily get wiser as we get older, but we put ourselves in fewer situations where we are likely to make mistakes.
1.What do we know about the two ways of decision-making according to the passage?
A.Using plans or habits to make decisions is an ever-changing process.
B.The use of plans and habits requires lots of attention and effort.
C.When going somewhere familiar, we need to work out a plan.
D.Younger people depend more on habits to make decisions,
2.What can we learn from the passage?
A.Younger people have a great advantage in becoming wiser.
B.Older people are better at making careful plans before action.
C.Older people seem wiser because they’ve stored more habitual information.
D.Younger people make more mistakes when they're in unfamiliar surroundings.
3.What does the underlined word “static” probably mean in Paragraph 5?
A.Uncontrolled. B.Unchanged. C.Increasing. D.Surprising.
4.What is the writer's main purpose in writing this passage?
A.To stress the importance of gaining wisdom.
B.To compare the two different ways of decision-making.
C.To call on younger people to learn more from older people.
D.To remind us to view the wisdom of older people reasonably.
