单选题 Questions6-9 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题 Mass transportation revised the social and economic fabric of the American city in three fundamental ways. It catalyzed physical expansion, it sorted out people and land uses, and it accelerated the inherent instability of urban life. By opening vast areas of unoccupied land for residential expansion, the omnibuses, horse railways, commuter trains, and electric trolleys pulled settled regions outward two to four times more distant from city centers than they were in the premodern era. In 1850, for example, the borders of Boston lay scarcely two miles from the old business district; by the turn of the century the radius extended ten miles. Now those who would afford it could live far removed from the old city center and still commute there for work, shopping, and entertainment. The new accessibility of land around the periphery of almost every major city sparked an explosion of real estate development and fueled what we now know as urban sprawl. Between 1890 and 1920, for example, some 25,000 new residential lots were recorded within the borders of Chicago, most of them located in outlying areas. Over the same period, another 550,000 were plotted the city limits but within the metropolitan area. Anxious to take advantage of the possibilities of commuting, real estate developers added 800,000 potential building sites to the Chicago region in just thirty years—lots that could have housed five to six million people. Of course, many were never occupied; there was always a huge surplus of subdivided, but vacant, land around Chicago and other cities. These excesses underscore a feature of residential expansion related to the growth of mass transportation, urban sprawl was essentially unplanned. It was carried out by thousands of small investors who paid little heed to coordinated land use or to future land users. Those who purchased and prepared land for residential purposes, particularly land near or outside city borders where transit lines and middle-class inhabitants were anticipated did so to create demand as much as to respond to it. Chicago is a prime example of this process. Real estate subdivision there proceeded much faster than population growth.

单选题Many European countries have been making the shift to electric vehicles and Germany has just stated that they plan to ban the sale of vehicles using gasoline and diesel as fuel by 2030. The country is also planning to reduce its carbon footprint by 80-95% by 2050, 25 a shift to green energy in the country. Effectively, the ban will include the registration of new cars in the country as they will not allow any gasoline 26 vehicle to be registered after 2030. Part of the reason this ban is being discussed and 27 is because energy officials see that they will not reach their emissions goals by 2050 if they do not 28 a large portion of vehicle emissions. The country is still 29 that it will meet its emissions goals, like reducing emissions by 40% by 2020, but the 30 of electric cars in the country has not occurred as fast as expected. Other efforts to increase the use of electric vehicles include plans to build over 1 million hybrid and electric car battery charging stations across the country. By 2030, Germany plans on having over 6 million charging stations 31 . According to the International Business Times, electric car sales are expected to increase as Volkswagen is still recovering from its emissions scandal. There are 32 around 155,000 registered hybrid and electric vehicles on German roads, dwarfed by the 45 million gasoline and diesel cars driving there now. As countries continue setting goals of reducing emissions, greater steps need to be taken to have a 33 effect on the surrounding environment. While the efforts are certainly not 34 , the results of such bans will likely only start to be seen by generations down the line, bettering the world for the future. A. acceptance B. currently C. disrupting D. eliminate E. exhaust F. futile G. hopeful H. implemented I. incidentally J. installed K. noticeable L. powered M. restoration N. skeptical O. sparking

单选题 Directions: Nowadays, many universities offer mental health classes to their students. Write a composition entitled The Necessity of Mental Health Education for College Students. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

单选题Writing code is a terrible way for humans to command computers. Lucky for us, new technology is about to 27 programming languages as useful as Latin. Boston, New York, New Zealand and a whole lot of other places are going crazy for coding courses 28 by Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. It's 29 in tech circles to say so and might get me disinvited to parties with the cast of Silicon Valley, but learning a programming language could turn out to be 30 for most kids. We're approaching an interesting 31 : Computers are about to get more brainlike and will understand us on our terms, not theirs. The very nature of programming will shift toward something closer to 32 a new hire how to do his or her job. Using a made-up language to talk to computers goes back to the 1950s, when IBM scientist John Backus created FORTRAN (公式翻译). Since computers then had less processing power than an earthworm, it was much easier for humans to learn ways to give orders to computers than it was to get computers to 33 humans. Over the next six decades, programming languages got 34 sophisticated. But computers are still like Parisian waiters who refuse to listen if you don't speak French: They take direction only in their own language. Finally, it looks as if that will change. A couple of developments 35 how. One comes out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the military's science lab. Later this year, DARPA is going to 36 a program called MUSE (Mining and Understanding Software Enclaves). 'What we're trying to do is a paradigm shift in the way we think about software,' DARPA's Suresh Jagannathan tells Newsweek. A. backed I. launch B. boosted J. offensive C. comprehend K. prior D. fruitless L. prosperity E. illustrate M. render F. increasingly N. sponsored G. instantly O. transition H. instructing

单选题 Wireless Charging May Take Place of Wired Charging A. Last month, it was revealed that Toyota had plans to release a plug-in electric Prius in 2016 that needed no plug at all to recharge, thanks to wireless technology from a U.S. company called WiTricity. The next day, Intel announced plans to release a completely wire-free personal computer by 2016—no power cord, no monitor cable, nothing. Nine days later, Starbucks announced that it would begin installing Duracell Powermat wireless charging pads in tables and counters in its stores across the United States. B. For wireless charging technology, the news headlines in June were, well, rather electric. (This is the part where you groan.) Look more closely, though, and you'll notice that wireless charging tech is poised to break through in the next few years, dramatically changing our relationship with our increasingly mobile, but still tethered, electronic devices. Thoratec, a healthcare company, is working with WiTricity on a wireless way to charge heart pumps and other medical equipment. Lockheed Martin, the aerospace and defense giant, is working on a laser-based system to recharge drones in mid-flight. The list goes on. C. The wireless power market is expected to explode from a $216 million in 2013 to $8.5 billion in 2018 globally, according to IHS Technology, a market research firm. Why, then, are most of us still wrestling with a pile of cords at home? 'The reality is that the overall wireless charging market for consumer electronics is in the very early stages,' says Kamil Grajski, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm and the founding president of the Alliance for Wireless Power, or A4WP for short, one of three groups working on the development of wireless charging technologies. D. Induction, the technology behind wireless charging, isn't new—it's been around for well over a hundred years. Here's how it works: an induction coil creates an electromagnetic field (on a charging dock of some kind) that comes in contact with another induction coil (attached to the device to be charged), transferring electricity to it. It's the same process used to juice up your electric toothbrush in its charging stand, Grajski says. E. But induction technology has limitations that have limited its mainstream appeal. It only allows for a single device to be charged per coil, making it clunky and relatively inefficient in today's multi-device world, and it requires precise placement of the device to be charged so that the coils are aligned in order to initiate and sustain the charging process. F. Proponents of inductive technology like Ran Poliakine, chief executive of Powermat, believe the key to increasing adoption of wireless charging lies not in figuring out the fastest or most efficient connection, but in making the technology available to people where they need it most. 'The issue we are trying to address is how we keep consumers charged throughout the day,' he says. 'The barrier to entry was relevancy. Where do we put the charging spots?' He added: 'The place you mostly need this service is outside your home and your office.' G. He has a point. Placing charging stations in Starbucks locations is one way to do that, saving customers from the inevitable outlet search that comes with a drawn-out session at the cafe. Placement in airports and hotels, also in the works at Powermat, are two more ways. (One thing people may not know about Powermat's charging stations: when used in conjunction with a cloud-based management system the company provides, a retailer can monitor who is at which station and for how long. Which means Starbucks could either give you the boot for squatting for six hours or beam you a coupon for a free refill to keep you there.) H. Another reason for the technology's slow adoption? A good old-fashioned standards war between industry groups. The Power Matters Alliance, or PMA, backs one type of induction standard and counts Duracell, Procter Gamble, Qualcomm, and WiTricity as members. The Wireless Power Consortium, or WPC, backs an induction standard called Qi (pronounced chee) and counts Hitachi, IKEA and Verizon as members. Some companies, such as Microsoft and Samsung, are members of both groups. I. The two standards use what is essentially the same technology but apply it with different specifications, creating problems for the companies that must embed the technology in their products. According to John Perzow, vice president of market development for WPC, 63 phones on the market today support the Qi standard, including those from Nokia, Google, and Sony. Meanwhile, Google Nexus and LG phones, among others, will have Powermat compatibility built into them. J. To up the ante, Powermat has plans to give away flee 'charging rings,' similar to those made by the Finnish firm PowerKiss it acquired last year, to Starbucks customers to encourage them to use in-store chargers. (It plans to sell them at retail for less than $10.) Meanwhile, the PMA struck a deal with A4WP in February to support its Rezence standard, which uses another kind of wireless charging technology called magnetic resonance. K. Both industry groups look to magnetic resonance technology as the likely second-generation standard for wireless charging, thanks to its ability to transfer larger quantities of energy and therefore support larger devices such as kitchen appliances. (The WPC says it is working on its own version of the tech.) The wireless PC that Intel demonstrated at Computex last month—you can see it in a video here—uses the Rezence standard. L. Magnetic resonance technology relies on resonant magnetic coupling, which creates a magnetic field around each coil that transfers power without having to align coils precisely. It can charge a device across small distances (about two inches) rather than requiring near-direct contact—a table can be retrofit with a charging pad attached underneath it instead of embedded in its surface. M. Magnetic resonance also allows more than one device to be charged at the same time. The Rezence standard uses the Bluetooth connection already present in many mobile electronics to detect the presence of a compatible charger. The technology is not yet on the market, but Grajski anticipates products using Rezence could be seen in stores as soon as this year. 'Some of the barriers are just getting the right players in industry to adopt the technology and make it available at a reasonable price,' he says. N. Still, two inches is two inches. What about beaming power across a room? That's where WiTricity comes in. Born out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007, the company continues to develop what Kaynam Hedayat, vice president of product management and marketing, calls 'highly resonant wireless power transfer' technology. O. Imagine an opera singer who can break glass with her voice—that's how the technology works, Hedayat says. 'Objects have a certain frequency by which they start vibrating,' he says. Tune a receiver and a device to the same frequency and they begin communicating with each other. 'The energy is only transferred to devices that are tuned to that frequency,' he says. This allows electricity to transfer over distances of up to four feet. 'With that, a lot of possibilities open up,' he adds. Such as charging vehicles or medical equipment wirelessly. 'Wires in hospitals are a big issue because yon have to sterilize every device,' Hedayat says. P. Or use in military applications, where robots in the field can be recharged while in position. Wireless charging tech could also help soldiers cut down on the nearly 40 pounds of battery that many soldiers carry on their backs, Hedayat says. And charging sensors on submarines would enable battery charging in deep-sea conditions, where it's unsafe to run wires. Q. For now, the wireless charging standards war rages on, and the technology remains a novelty at best. But it can't go on forever. Just as Wi-Fi became the standard protocol for wireless data exchange between computers, so shall one wireless charging standard emerge as the winner. Only then will we see what wireless charging is capable of. 'In four or five years, there will be one standard for wirelessly charging devices,' Hedayat says. 'You will forget about different adapters and connecters. You will find a hotspot and it's just going to work.'

单选题 Now listen to the following recording and answer questions16-18.