Step into Wonderland and follow any of the many tracks around Kinabalu Park. Even though it is the most explored and studied place in Borneo, new discoveries of rare plants are frequently being made here.

    So take a map and set off on your own or follow Park Naturalists as they take you on guided path walks andpoint out the various wonders. There are also visual shows advertising rare plants and animals here. If you are afirst time visitor, sign up for these shows and you’ll be excited when you find yourself identifying the same plantsand animals on your walks or during your climb up Mt. Kinabalu.

    Mt. Kinabalu Botanical Garden is one of the biggest attractions at the park, which started in 1981. This 5-acregarden is an excellent collection of different kinds of plants on the mountain, as plants from all over the park have

been replanted here. There are hotels, inns and chalets at Kinabalu Park to suit one’s budget. For more information, click www.sabahtourism.com.

   21. It can be learnt that _______.

   A. Mt Kinabalu is a more explored and studied area than Borneo

   B. there’re still some unknown rare plants in Kinabalu Park

   C. Mt Kinabalu Botanical Garden attracts visitors due to its long history

   D. visitors should follow the Park Naturalists so as not to get lost

22. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

   A. Botanical Garden and Butterfly Farm open at the same time.

   B. Guided Nature Walk is a favorite of first time visitors.

   C. Slide Show is unavailable unless it is arranged in advance.

   D. Visitors can have access to Night Walk anytime they wish.

23. If a couple visit the Park with their son aged 19, how much will they pay?

   A. $30.     B. $40.     C. $50.     D. $60.

    Like many new graduates, I left university full of hope for the future but with no real idea of what I wanted to do. My degree, with honors, in English literature had not really prepared me for anything practical. I knew I wanted to make a difference in the world somehow, but I had no idea how to do that. That’s when I learned about the Lighthouse Project.

   I started my journey as a Lighthouse Project volunteer by reading as much as I could about the experiences of previous volunteers. I knew it would be a lot of hard work, and that I would be away from my family and friends

for a very long time. In short, I did not take my decision to apply for the Lighthouse Project lightly. Neither did my family.

   Eventually, however, I won the support of my family, and I sent in all the paperwork needed for the application. After countless interviews and presentations, I managed to stand out among the candidates and survive the test alone. Several months later, I finally received a call asking me to report for the duty. I would be going to a small village near Abuja, Nigeria. Where? What? Nigeria? I had no idea. But I was about to find out.

   After completing my training, I was sent to the village that was small and desperately in need of proper accommodation. Though the local villagers were poor, they offered their homes, hearts, and food as if I were their own family. I was asked to lead a small team of local people in building a new schoolhouse. For the next year or so, I taught in that same schoolhouse. But I sometimes think I learned more from my students than they did from me. Sometime during that period, I realized that all those things that had seemed so strange or unusual to me no longer did, though I did not get anywhere with the local language, and returned to the United States a different man. The Lighthouse Project had changed my life forever.

24. What do we know about the author?

  A. His university education focused on the theoretical knowledge.

  B. His dream at university was to become a volunteer.

  C. He took pride in having contributed to the world.

  D. He felt honored to study English literature.

25. According to Paragraph 2, it is most likely that the author __________.

  A. discussed his decision with his family

  B. asked previous volunteers about voluntary work

  C. attended special training to perform difficult tasks

  D. felt sad about having to leave his family and friends

26. In his application for the volunteer job, the author ___________.

  A. participated in many discussions

  B. went through challenging survival tests

  C. wrote quite a few papers on voluntary work

  D. faced strong competition from other candidates

27. What can we infer from the author’s experiences in Nigeria?

  A. He found some difficulty adapting to the local culture.

  B. He had learned to communicate in the local language.

  C. He had overcome all his weaknesses before he left for home.

  D. He was chosen as the most respectable teacher by his students.

                     Does happiness have a scent?

    When someone is happy, can you smell it?

    You can usually tell when someone is happy based on seeing them smile, hearing

    them laugh or perhaps from receiving a big hug. But can you also smell their happiness?

    Surprising new research suggests that happiness does indeed have a scent, and that the

    experience of happiness can be transmitted through smell, reports Phys.org.

    For the study, 12 young men were shown videos meant to bring about a variety of emotions while researchers gathered sweat samples from them. All of the men were healthy and none of them were drug users or smokers, and all were asked to abstain from drinking or eating smelly foods during the study period.

    Those sweat samples were then given to 36 equally healthy young women to smell, while researchers monitored their reactions. Only women were selected to smell the samples, apparently because previous research has shown that women have a better sense of smell than men and are also more sensitive to emotional signaling—though it’s unclear why only men were chosen to produce the scents.

    Researchers found that the behavior of the women after smelling the scents—particularly their facial expressions—indicated a relationship between the emotional states of the men who produced the sweat and the women who sniffed them.

  “Human sweat produced when a person is happy brings about a state similar to happiness in somebody who breathes this smell,” said study co-author Gun Semin, a professor at Koc University in Turkey.

    This is a fascinating finding because it not only means that happiness does have a scent, but that the scent is capable of transmitting the emotion to others. The study also found that other emotions, such as fear, seem to carrya scent too. This ensures previous research suggesting that some negative emotions have a smell, but it is the first time this has proved to be true of positive feelings.

    Researchers have yet to isolate exactly what the chemical compound for the happiness smell is, but you might imagine what the potential applications for such a finding could be. Happiness perfumes, for instance, could be invented. Scent therapies(香味疗法) could also be developed to help people through depression or anxiety.

    Perhaps the most surprising result of the study, however, is our broadened understanding of how emotions get communicated, and also how our own emotions are potentially managed through our social context and the emotional states of those around us.

28. What is the main finding of the new research?

  A. Men produce more sweats.

  B. Negative emotions have a smell.

  C. Pleasant feelings can be smelt out.

  D. Women have a better sense of smell.

29. The underlined part “abstain from” in Paragraph 3 probably means _________.

  A. avoid          B. practice      C. continue     D. try

30. What is the application value of the new research?

  A. Perfumes could help people understand each other.

  B. Some smells could be developed to better our mood.

  C. Perfumes could be produced to cure physical diseases.

  D. Some smells could be created to improve our appearance.

31. We can learn from the last paragraph that ___________.

  A. happiness comes from a scent of sweat

  B. positive emotions can deepen understanding

  C. people need more emotional communication

  D. social surroundings can influence our emotions

   We are not who we think we are.

   The American self-image is spread with the golden glow of opportunity. We think of the United States as a land of unlimited possibility, not so much a classless society but as a place where class is mutable—a place where brains, energy and ambition are what count, not the circumstances of one’s birth.

    The Economic Mobility Project, an ambitious research led by Pew Charitable Trusts, looked at the economic fortunes of a large group of families over time, comparing the income of parents in the late 1960s with the income of their children in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Here is the finding: The “rags to riches” story is much more common in Hollywood than on Main Street. Only 6 percent of children born to parents with family income at the very bottom move to the top.

    That is right, just 6 percent of children born to parents who ranked in the bottom of the study sample, in terms of income, were able to bootstrap their way into the top . Meanwhile, an incredible 42 percent of children born into that lowest are still stuck at the bottom, having been unable to climb a single rung of the income ladder.

    It is noted that even in Britain—a nation we think of as burdened with a hidebound(守旧的) classs ystem—children who are born poor have a better chance of moving up. When the studies were released, most reporters focused on the finding that African-Americans born to middle-class or upper middle-class families are earning slightly less, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than did their parents.

    One of the studies indicates, in fact, that most of the financial gains white families have made in the past three decades can be attributed to(归功于) the entry of white women into the labor force. This is much less true for African-Americans.

    The picture that emerges from all the quintiles, correlations and percentages is of a nation in which, over all, “the current generation of adults is better off than the previous one”, as one of the studies notes.

    The median income of the families in the sample group was $55,600 in the late 1960s; their children’s median family income was measured at $71,900. However, this rising tide has not lifted all boats equally. The rich have seen far greater income gains than have the poor.

Even more troubling is that our nation of America as the land of opportunity gets little support from the data. Americans move fairly easily up and down the middle rungs of the ladder, but there is “stickiness at the ends”—four out of ten children who are born poor will remain poor, and four out of ten who are born rich will stay rich.

32. What did the Economic Mobility Project find in its research?

  A. Children from low-income families are unable to bootstrap their way to the top.

  B. Hollywood actors and actresses are upwardly mobile from rags to riches.

  C. The rags to riches story is more fiction than reality.

  D. The rags to riches story is only true for a small minority of whites.

33. It can be inferred from the undertone(潜台词) of the writer that America, as a classless society, should________.

  A. perfect its self-image as a land of opportunity

  B. have a higher level of upward mobility than Britain

  C. enable African-Americans to have exclusive access to well-paid employment

  D. encourage the current generation to work as hard as the previous generation

34. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

  A. The US is a land where brains, energy and ambition are what count

  B. Inequality persists between whites and blacks in financial gains.

  C. Middle-class families earn slightly less with inflation considered.

  D. Children in lowest-income families manage to climb a single rung of the ladder.

35. What might be the best title for this passage?

  A. Social Upward Mobility.     B. Incredible Income Gains.

  C. Inequality in Wealth.     D. America Not Land of Opportunity.

    The ancient Chinese game Go is considered one of the most complicated strategy games. Winning the game was seen as a test of human creativity. That is, until a machine found a way to do it better. AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence (AI) machine built by Google, won its first match against South Korean Lee Sedol on March 9. Still digesting his loss, Lee said during the post-game press conference, “  36   ”

    But that was just the beginning. In the following week, AlphaGo outperformed Lee in another three matches.   37

    Some people have been arguing that AI is harmful to the human race.   38    Similarly, UK scientist Stephen Hawking once warned that the “development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”.

    So are we really on the verge(边缘)of living in the world shown in the Terminator(终结者)sci-fimovies? “Not quite,” answered The Economist. After all, it’s hard to get computers to apply their knowledge to everyday situations. “  39   ” Thomas Johnson said, founder of an AI toy company. “But for a robot, to walk up and down hills requires so many complicated decisions to be made in real time, and it’s really difficult to do.”

    As The Economist put it: “We have a long way to go before AI’s abilities truly begin to approach the human brain, despite how powerful the technology can be when focusing on a single task.”

    Meanwhile, John Mark off of The New York Times argued that researchers should build artificial intelligence that aims for “intelligence augmentation (增加)” (IA) in which computers make people more effective.

    He wrote: “  40    Since technology depends on the values of its creators, we can make choices using technology to improve the world.”

    A. Many robots fell over like little kids learning to walk.

    B. We take for granted things like balance and vision.

    C. Eventually, our fate is in our own hands.

    D. So what is next for AI and humanity?

    E. That made the five-match score 4-1 in favor of AlphaGo.

    F. In 2014, US businessman Elon Musk said at an MIT conference that developing the technology is

    calling up a “demon(魔鬼)”.

    G. I am in shock; I admit that.