Cycling Tours in Europe & Asia
Cycling the Balkans
Duration: 15 days
The Balkans offers a mix of beautiful countryside, fast-developing cities and historic towns. Our first ride ends at the UNESCO town of Ohrid on the vast lake of the same name. There are a few stops along the way to visit or see places of interest.
Cycling the Italian and Swiss Lakes
Duration: 8 days
The Italian lakes of Como and Maggiore are famed for both their wonderful scenery and their wealthy residents. This is a fascinating area to discover on two wheels with excellent roads that closely follow the winding shores. The Villa del Balbianello with its beautiful Italian gardens may look familiar, having been seen in international movies such as Bond's Casino Royale.
Self-Guided Cycling in the Douro Valley
Duration: 7 days
This cycling holiday in the Douro Valley will make you familiar with magical surroundings, delicious cuisine and some of the world's finest wines. The ride begins in Castelo Rodrigo, a village close to where Portugal borders Spain, and home to an ancient caste. You'll cycle through vineyards and visit the famous Port wine estates (庄园).
Exploring Sri Lanka by Bike
Duration: 8 days
Being an island, Sri Lanka is incredibly diverse. Exploring on two wheels is the best way to see this rural country and to experience the way of life of its friendly people. We travel from ancient cities to the hill county towns of Kandy and Nuwara Eliya before ending the trip on the beaches of the beautiful south coast.
1.What's special about the Balkans tour?
A.It has fantastic island scenery. B.It is hosted by the Ohrid government.
C.It's a continuous ride with no stops. D.It combines history and the present.
2.What can you do on the Douro Valley tour?
A.Visit Spanish gardens. B.Enjoy the beaches of the south coast.
C.Pick grapes in the vineyards. D.Acquire knowledge of wines.
3.Which route would appeal to a movie fan?
A.Self-Guided Cycling in the Douro Valley. B.Cycling the Italian and Swiss Lakes.
C.Exploring Sri Lanka by Bike. D.Cycling the Balkans.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
My mum is about to have a spinal (脊柱的) operation. The operation is relatively minor, but does carry a risk of paralysis. Friends and family have reacted to this news by taking in such pessimistic terms that Mum has come to label this kind of talk as “psychological theft”. It occurs when other people increase your anxiety rather than provide comfort.
Last week Mum went to the post office and ran into Geoff who works for the local school. “How are you?” he asked. “Not great,” she replied. “I’ve been having some trouble with my back and I’m going to need an operation.” “Oh, the back is the most dangerous place to operate on!” he responded. “My mum had that and she was in terrible pain. Make sure you get all your affairs in order before you go under the knife—it takes months to get over it!” Geoff’s intention had been benign (美好的). He’d given his own mother’s story to show sympathy. However, Mum only heard pain, danger, knife, and months.
In the past few weeks, Mum’s mates and colleagues have told her stories about how their Auntie Trisha, who had just received an operation, was left speechless after hearing that she required a rapid follow-up operation; and how their neighbour, who had only a minor operation, never walked again.
It’s really not that difficult to think of alternative things they could have said that would be equally true, but more beneficial to bear. “The specialists in our hospitals are among the best in the world. It’s amazing what they can do these days!”—that’s a good one. “You’re going to feel much better afterwards.” —that’s another.
I’m not suggesting patients should be sheltered from the reality of the risks they’re taking. But if the decision to have an operation can’t really be avoided, what’s the purpose of underlining the drawbacks? It’s just common sense to say: “Get well soon, and how can I help?”
1.What does “psychological theft” in paragraph 1 refer to?
A.The negative comments. B.Psychological disorder.
C.The comforting words. D.Physical disability.
2.How might the author’s mum have felt after hearing what Geoff said?
A.Sympathetic. B.Relieved.
C.Grateful D.Worried.
3.How did the author explain his idea in the text?
A.By using examples. B.By analysing causes.
C.By following time order. D.By discussing research findings.
4.What lesson does the author want to teach us?
A.Treat patients with adoration.
B.Communicate more with other patients.
C.Be well-prepared for unavoidable operations.
D.Find an appropriate way to comfort patients.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
Are you likely to suffer from loss of memory from time to time? Smart cameras can now remind you.
Khai Truong at the University of Toronto in Canada and his colleagues have created a smartphone app that records interactions with household objects. The system involves barcode-like (像条形码的) markers that the user sticks to objects whose use they would like to track.
With the smartphone worn around your neck, the app automatically records a short video clip (片段) when a marked object comes into view. “The user is able to look through the application and see the last time they interacted with it,” says Truong. The app can help people track the state of objects - such as whether they locked a door or switched a light off - as well as routine actions. Ai present, it successfully records about 75 percent of interactions, but only works for fixed objects.
A similar but separate system can solve the problem. E. Akin Sisbot and Jonathan Connell at IBM Research in New York have invented a ceiling-mounted (安装在天花板上的) camera that monitors objects and people. It continuously watches an area, such as a tabletop in your home, tracking the placement of objects in relation to one another. It also remembers who first brought an object into the field of view as well as if anyone moved it afterwards. When asked, “Where is my wallet?” the system might respond, “It is next to the vase, under the magazines.”
The camera could also be used in factories or operating theatres to track vital tools, says Sisbot For now, the camera uses a depth sensor to spot things. It is limited to detecting objects thicker than 3 centimetres, meaning that it has trouble with thin objects such as a closed laptop placed flat on a table.
The accuracy of such smart camera systems may need to improve before they are widely adopted. “You've got to trust the technology for it to be of any comfort or reassurance” says Geoffrey Ward at the University of Essex in the UK.
1.How does the smartphone app mentioned in paragraph 2 work?
A.By recording the movement of marked objects.
B.By informing owners of potential dangers.
C.By switching off electricity automatically.
D.By scanning barcodes of household objects.
2.What is the limitation of the ceiling-mounted camera?
A.It hardly senses objects without barcode-like makers.
B.It fails to find objects thinner than 3 centimetres.
C.It is unlikely to make a sound.
D.It is unable to recognize movable objects.
3.What's Geoffrey Ward's attitude towards the smart camera systems?
A.Supportive. B.Ambiguous.
C.Concerned. D.Sceptical
4.What's the best title for the text?
A.New Smartphones Make Life Easier
B.Smart Cameras Help Increase Home Security
C.New Systems Help People with Memory Problems
D.Camera Designers Face New Challenges
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
Imagine that you found a wallet in the street containing a stranger 's contact details but no cash. Would you go out of your way to return it to its owner? Now imagine that the same wallet contained a few banknotes. Would that change your response? Alain Cohn of the University of Michigan and his colleagues have taken such behavioral economics around the world.
In different countries Dr. Cohn's research assistants entered public buildings like banks, museums and police stations. They handed in a fake wallet to an employee in the reception area, saying they had found it on the street outside, before making a hurried exit. Each wallet was a see-through plastic card case containing three identical business cards with a unique email address and a fake native's name, a shopping list and a key. Most importantly, some wallets also included $13.45, while some had no cash. Then, the team simply waited to see who would email the “owner” about returning the wallet.
In 38 of the 40 countries, the wallets with money in them were returned more often than those without: 51% compared with 40% for the cashless. While rates of honesty varied greatly between different countries, the difference within individual countries between the two return rates was quite stable around 11 percentage points. In addition, wallets containing a larger sum of money ($94.15) were even more likely (by about another ten percentage points) to be returned than those with less, although the “big money” experiment was done in only three countries.
With greater temptation (诱惑), then, comes greater honesty - at least when it comes to lost wallets and small cash. Interestingly, though, when Dr. Cohn and his team surveyed a sample of 299 volunteers, most of them predicted that the more money there was in a wallet, the more likely it was that it would be kept.
A certain doubt about the motivation of others is probably good for survival, so the response of the general population may be understandable. But is the warm inner satisfaction coming from “doing the right thing” also a powerful reason? As this study shows, such thought is real and universal
1.What does Dr. Cohn's research team try to find out?
A.How long it usually takes before a lost wallet is returned.
B.How people of different occupations react to lost w alts.
C.How people behave differently at public and private places.
D.How people respond to lost wallets of varying amounts of cash.
2.What is the second paragraph mainly about?
A.Work division in the team. B.Detailed arrangements.
C.Contents inside the wallets. D.Preparations made in advance.
3.What does Dr. Cohn's research find about rates of honesty?
A.They drop with bigger money. B.They vary from country to country.
C.They are quite the same globally. D.They are stable, unrelated to money.
4.From which is the text probably taken?
A.A research paper. B.A travel brochure.
C.A psychology magazine. D.An economy newspaper.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
As your teacher passes out the math test, your palms turn sweaty. You notice that your heart has begun to race. Glancing down at the page, you suddenly forget those operations on which you had drilled only a few days earlier. Do you perform all additions first in a complex calculation? 1. Suddenly, you start to doubt a lot of things that you know.
If that sounds familiar, you might suffer from math anxiety. Or maybe not Even researchers who study this condition note that it can be surprisingly hard to define (下定义) math anxiety. 2. After all, it's not an officially recognized mental disorder in the way that depression is.
3. It asks things like “how anxious would you feel about being given a set of division problems to solve on paper”. Those who score high on these surveys about stress over making calculations related to numbers will be labeled math anxious.
In general, people who panic over their math skills tend to do worse in math classes than people who don't mind numbers. 4. “Just because you're math anxious, that doesn't always mean you're bad at math,” notes Rose Vukovic, an educational psychologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Math anxiety affects people of all ages. It can lead to poor performance in math classes. 5. Throughout life, this type of stress can stand in the way of mastering skills or projects in a host of areas that rely on calculations. But the good news is that the problem is manageable. Researchers are finding ways people can cope with this stress.
A.But that's not always true.
B.It has an unimaginable impact.
C.And its impacts don't end at graduation.
D.Oh, you know it—well you' re pretty sure, right?
E.To diagnose math anxiety, researchers conduct a questionnaire.
F.It's also hard to identify precisely how many people suffer from it.
G.Math anxiety has also been linked to negative emotions from the past.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
Luis Escobar, a coach at St. Joseph High in Santa Maria, was just looking for a fun idea to change the practice for his summer program. _______, he took 14 runners from his school to the local animal shelter, and paired them with 14 dogs.
“When I first _______ the idea there were a lot of eye rolls,” he said. _______, it is a group of high schoolers.
The group got a bit excited when they were told the run would _______ as part of their community service requirement that everyone at their high school has to meet. Then once the students saw the dogs, they immediately became just more _______.
“I wasn't sure who was more excited,” he said, “the _______ or the dogs.”
After a short _______, the group went for a mile and a half run. Escobar _______ the amazing practice and posted the video online - as he does with many of the different _______ he does with his team. It spread quickly and was ________ by millions of people on social media. There were thousands of ________ and it was quickly picked up by local news. Escobar was ________. “I wonder why this is happening,” he said. “I ________ everyone's looking for something good.”
Soon many coaches have called Escobar asking about how they can ________ similar runs with their teams. And a dog equipment company has donated new harnesses (背带牵引绳) to the ________ so the dogs can go for a more comfortable ________.
And there was more good ________. Fred, who ran with Josh, one of the 14 high school runners, became a ________ dog - his story had the happiest ending. After the run, Josh convinced his mom that their family needed to ________ him.
“Once he was just this little dog ________ in a metal cage,” Escobar said. “And now he's at home with Josh and his family.”
1.A.Otherwise B.Instead C.Therefore D.However
2.A.changed B.rejected C.presented D.knew
3.A.In particular B.In fact C.As usual D.After all
4.A.count B.adore C.possess D.occupy
5.A.ambitious B.thoughtful C.faithful D.enthusiastic
6.A.trainers B.employees C.kids D.teachers
7.A.hesitation B.introduction C.competition D.evaluation
8.A.filmed B.watched C.supported D.required
9.A.tricks B.games C.studies D.activities.
10.A.challenged B.shared C.researched D.blamed
11.A.comments B.refusals C.complaints D.demands
12.A.relaxed B.shocked C.disappointed D.embarrassed
13.A.declare B.guarantee C.guess D.prove
14.A.figure out B.get through C.respond to D.participate in
15.A.shelter B.community C.government D.family
16.A.job B.team C.run D.journey
17.A.news B.life C.experience D.practice
18.A.lovely B.wild C.clumsy D.lucky
19.A.trust B.adopt C.encourage D.comfort
20.A.wandering B.trembling C.thinking D.dancing
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处语言错误，每句中最多有两处。每处错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线(/)划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1.每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2.只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
Recently I took a part in a geography research activity, whose theme was environmental pollution and protection. We took variety pictures showing the present pollution conditions of our city. To our surprise, there are still a great number people doing silly things to our surrounding. Some people often throw rubbish whichever they like. Some cars gave off harmful gases and waste water is pouring into rivers by some factories. Worse still, people sometimes have to make his way through dusty winds as a result of the pollution. Through our research, we have come to realize what everybody must pay more attention to protect our environment and that some measures should be taken to protect it.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
假定你是李华，你的外国笔友Jeff得知你参加了你校学生会主办的“The Chinese Scientist I Admire Most”故事分享会，写信询问有关情况。请你回复邮件，内容包括：
1.感谢关注；
2.你的分享；
3.你的感想。
注意：1.词数100左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
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难度: 中等查看答案及解析