A machine that takes sweat-laden (浸满汗水的) clothes and turns the sweat into drinking water is in use in Sweden. The machine makes the clothes turn round quickly, heats them to remove the sweat, and then passes the steam through a kind of special material to make purified water.

Since it has been brought into use, its creators say more than 1000 people have drunk others’ “sweat” in Gothenburg. They add the liquid is cleaner than local tap water.

The device was built for the United Nations’ child-focused charity UNICEF to promote a campaign highlighting the fact that 780 million people in the world lack access to clean water.

The machine was designed and built by the engineer Andreas Hammar, known locally for his appearances on TV tech show “Mekatronik”. He said the key part of the sweat machine was a new water purification part developed by a company named HVR.

“It uses a technique called membrane distillation (膜蒸馏),” he told the BBC. “We use a special kind of material that only lets steam through but keeps bacteria, salts, clothing fibers and other things out. They have something similar to the International Space Station, but our machine is cheaper to build. The amount of water it produces depends on how sweaty the person is, but one person’s T-shirt typically produces 10ml, about a mouthful.”

The device has been put on show at the Gothia Cup-the world’s largest international youth football tournament. Mattias Ronge, chief executive of Stockholm-based advertising agency Deportivo, said the machine had helped raise awareness for UNICEF, but in reality had its limitations.

“People haven’t produced as much sweat as we hoped – right now the weather in Gothenburg is lousy,” Mattias Ronge said. “So we’ve equipped the machine with exercise bikes and volunteers are cycling like crazy. Even so, the demand for sweat is greater than the supply. And the machine will never be produced in large numbers, since there are better solutions out there such as water purifying pills.”

1.Which of the following is the disadvantage of the sweat machine?

A.The amount of water the machine produces is rather limited.

B.It takes too long for the machine to produce water.

C.It costs a large amount of money to build the machine.

D.The water processed by the machine is not clean enough.

2.UNICEF is mentioned in the text to ________.

A.show how the sweat machine works               B.show the importance of the United Nations

C.explain why the sweat machine was invented   D.tell us who invented the sweat machine

3.What did Mattias Ronge think of the sweat machine?

A.It could only be used in summer.                   B.It was not worth popularizing.

C.It did not work at all.                                    D.The water it produced tasted sweet.

4.The text is written mainly to tell us that ___________.

A.780 million people in the world lack access to clean water

B.a machine which turns sweat into drinking water is invented

C.a better solution to purifying dirty water is discovered

D.the pill which turns dirty water into clean water is produced

Languages have been coming and going for thousands of years, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers, small, tightly knit(联系) groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other. Some language experts believe that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just five to ten million people, they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.

Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, trade, industrialisation, the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education, especially globalisation and better communications in the past few decades, all have caused many languages to disappear, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.

At present, the world has about 6,800 languages. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages, often spoken by many people, while hot, wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers. Europe has only around 200 languages; the Americas about1,000; Africa 2 400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number(中位数) of speakers is a mere 6,000, which means that half the world's languages are spoken by fewer people than that.

Already well over 400 of the total of, 6,800 languages are close to extinction(消亡), with only a few elderly speakers left. Pick, at random, Busuu in Cameroon (eight remaining speakers), Chiapaneco in Mexico (150), Lipan Apache in the United States (two or three) or Wadjigu in Australia (one, with a question-mark): none of these seems to have much chance of survival.

1.What can we infer about languages in hunter-gatherer times?

A.They developed very fast.                             B.They were large in number.

C.They had similar patterns                              D.They were closely connected.

2.Which of the following best explains “dominant” underlined in paragraph 2?

A.Complex                  B.Advanced.                 C.Powerful                  D.Modern.

3.How many languages are spoken by less than 6,000 people at present?

A.About 6,800             B.About 3,400              C.About 2,400              D.About 1,200

4.What is the main idea of the text?

A.New languages will be created.

B.People's lifestyles are reflected in languages.

C.Human development results in fewer languages.

D.Geography determines language evolution.

It cannot be denied that we all want to succeed, whether it is in losing weight or learning the guitar. For those who have tried and failed, success seems difficult to understand. Why does one person succeed where another person fails? I have made a list of four habits to help set goals and achieve them.

Identify your core values

Finding your core values is in line with creating inner motivation. Sit and reflect on what you value most. Pick a handful of things and actually write them down. Remind yourself of your values every day, and reflect on whether you are honoring those values through your work.

Pick a goal and focus on it

Choose one goal to start something large enough that will give you a sense of accomplishment, while adjusting well to your core values. Focus is key here. The more focused you are on one goal, the higher chance you have of success.

If you perform a great many tasks at a time, you might never complete your projects because they will take far too long.

Set a deadline for success

To set a date or deadline for success is meaningful and necessary. Identify when you hope to achieve your goal. Keep it realistic, while not giving you too much time. By setting a time limit, you are making the process more real and planned.

Stick to your goal.

Failure can’t be avoided to some extent when you take risks, by its very definition, the desire to succeed means you are risking failure. Many people tend to give up far too early. Don’t fall into this trap! Remember your mindset (心态) earlier. Know it will happen. A failure is merely you working out the details, and learning what works and what doesn’t. Use failure. Treat it as a good thing, and march on!

In your lifetime, you have many opportunities to succeed. While in the process you may encounter (遭遇) plenty of failures, but on condition that you stick to the four habits above, you will be absolutely successful sooner or later.

1.You would have a better chance to succeed if you _________.

A.reflect on your goal more                              B.are more concentrated on a goal

C.are more eager to succeed                              D.try your best to avoid failure

2.Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A.People are all eager to succeed in life.

B.Realizing core values can make inner motivation.

C.You are bound to succeed if you follow the four habits.

D.failure is sometimes not a bad thing.

3.What does the underlined word “it” in the passage refer to?

A.detail.                      B.Failure.                     C.Goal.                        D.Success.

4.The best title for the passage could be _________.

A.Four Habits to Help You Succeed                  B.Make the right decision

C.Failure is the mother of success                      D.Find the core values of success

Imagine that you’re the creator and show runner of the newest comedy show on television. Only it isn’t so popular yet, and your live Studio audience isn’t giving you the big laughs the show deserves. Do you film the show all over again, hoping that this time the audience will laugh? Or is there another option for making a joke sound funnier than it was received?

Sweeten(改善) the sound by adding a laugh track! “Sweetening,” or the addition of sound effects such as laughs, screams, and other audience-produced noises to the audio track of a TV show, has been used since the 1940s to produce the appearance, or rather the sound, of an engaged and entertained response to a show’s comedy. Laugh tracks came into existence as not only a solution, and sometimes replacement, for an unengaged live audience but also as a way to engage an at-home audience into a more-traditional, public, and theater like experience. Adding a laugh track to a television show makes the viewers at home feel much less like they’re sitting on a couch staring at the television screen and much more like they’re in a room full of laughing happy people to varying degrees of success.

Though the art of sweetening has risen and fallen in popularity over the past 60 years, credit for its creation and continued use is owed to laugh-track pioneer and sound engineer Charles Douglass. Douglass was the first to develop, in 1953, a machine for producing “canned laughter”, accessible at the push of a button or pull of a lever (操纵杆). Despite being artificial, sensibly edited laugh tracks are found by television studios to bring about a positive audience response, as their use is usually accompanied by higher ratings and increased audience memory. Though some television audiences may disagree with the value of the laugh track, the cheerful and repetitive sound holds a permanent place in the history and future of television comedy.

1.The author uses the first paragraph to         .

A.introduce the topic “sweetening”                    B.seek solutions for the problem

C.point out a way of making comedies               D.arouse readers’ interest in comedies

2.What effect does a laugh track produce?

A.The creation of a show.                                 B.Funnier sound in a show,

C.More engaged live audience                           D.Communication among TV viewers.

3.What’s the author’s attitude towards the use of the laugh track?

A.Doubtful.                 B.Positive.                   C.Neutral (中立的).      D.Uncertain,

4.What does the passage mainly talk about?

A.The reason for using laugh tracks.                  B.The brief history of laugh tracks.

C.The development of TV comedies.                 D.The way to improve television shows.

One in five women and one in eight men are becoming more tired and less productive, according to a new Australian study on mobile phone use.

Led by the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, researchers surveyed 709 mobile phone users across the country aged 18 to 83 and asked them a series of questions based on a similar study 13 years ago. Identifying a phenomenon “technoference (科技干扰)”, researchers discovered a significant increase in people blaming their devices for “losing sleep, becoming less productive and even getting more aches and pains”.

According to the study's lead author Dr Oscar, the issue is so bad that 24 percent of women and 15 percent of men are now considered to be “problematic mobile phone users”. “When we talk about technoference we're referring to the everyday intrusions (侵入)and interruptions that people experience due to mobile phones and their usage,” he said. “Our survey found technoference had increased among men and women. For example, self-reports relating to the loss of sleep and productivity showed that these negative outcomes had significantly increased during the last 13 years. This finding suggests that mobile phones are potentially increasingly affecting aspects of daytime functioning due to lack of sleep.”

Compared to a 2005 study, “technoference” issues for 18- to 24-year-olds experienced a surprising 40.9 percent rise, while those aged 25 to 29 also recorded a dramatic increase of 23.5 percent.

Oscar said that with the number of smartphone users around the world expected to surpass 2.5 billion before the end of this year, the problem of "technoference" could get even worse. “The speed and depth of smartphone take-up makes our population particularly vulnerable to some of the negative consequences of high mobile phone use,” he said. “Rapid technological innovations have led to dramatic changes in today's mobile phone technology, which can improve the quality of life for phone users but also result in some negative outcomes.”

1.How are people affected by technoference according to the text?

A.It makes people addicted to communicating online.

B.It pushes people to work at a fast pace.

C.It causes people to sleep less at night.

D.It brings negative outcomes to people of all ages.

2.Which group are most influenced by smartphones?

A.Young women.         B.Young mea.              C.Children.                  D.Seniors.

3.What does the underlined word "vulnerable" in paragraph 5 probably mean?

A.Widely spread.          B.Deeply devoted.         C.Easily hurt.               D.Absolutely accustomed.

4.What does the text mainly talk about?

A.The increasing side effects of smartphones.     B.Ways to solve technoference problem.

C.Smartphones and people's happiness.              D.The popularity of smartphones.