As many people hit middle age, they often start to notice that their memory and mental clarity are not what they used to be. We suddenly can't remember（1）we put the keys just a moment ago, or an old acquaintance's name, or the name of an old band we used to love. As the brain（2）, we refer to these occurrences as “senior moments.”（3）seemingly innocent, this loss of mental focus can potentially have a(n)（4）impact on our professional, social, and personal（5）.

Neuroscientists, experts who study the nervous system, are increasingly showing that there's actually a lot that can be done. It （6）out that the brain needs exercise in much the same way our muscles do, and the right mental （7）can significantly improve our basic cognitive（8）. Thinking is essentially a （9） of making connections in the brain. To a certain extent, our ability to （10） in making the connections that drive intelligence is inherited. （11）, because these connections are made through effort and practice, scientists believe that intelligence can expand and fluctuate （12）  mental effort.

Now, a new Web-based company has taken it a step （13） and developed the first “brain training program” designed to actually help people improve and regain their mental （14）.

The Web-based program （15） you to systematically improve your memory and attention skills. The program keeps （16） of your progress and provides detailed feedback （17） your performance and improvement. Most importantly, it （18） modifies and enhances the games you play to （19） on the strengths you are developing—much like a(n) （20）  exercise routine requires you to increase resistance and vary your muscle use. 

Among the annoying challenges facing the middle class is one that will probably go unmentioned in the next presidential campaign: What happens when the robots come for their jobs?
Don't dismiss that possibility entirely. About half of U.S. jobs are at high risk of being automated, according to a University of Oxford study, with the middle class disproportionately squeezed. Lower-income jobs like gardening or day care don't appeal to robots. But many middle-class occupations — trucking, financial advice, software engineering — have aroused their interest, or soon will. The rich own the robots, so they will be fine.
This isn't to be alarmist. Optimists point out that technological upheaval has benefited workers in the past. The Industrial Revolution didn't go so well for Luddites whose jobs were displaced by mechanized looms, but it eventually raised living standards and created more jobs than it destroyed. Likewise, automation should eventually boost productivity, stimulate demand by driving down prices, and free workers from hard, boring work. But in the medium term, middle-class workers may need a lot of help adjusting.
The first step, as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in The Second Machine Age, should be rethinking education and job training. Curriculums — from grammar school to college — should evolve to focus less on memorizing facts and more on creativity and complex communication. Vocational schools should do a better job of fostering problem-solving skills and helping students work alongside robots. Online education can supplement the traditional kind. It could make extra training and instruction affordable. Professionals trying to acquire new skills will be able to do so without going into debt.
The challenge of coping with automation underlines the need for the U. S. to revive its fading business dynamism: Starting new companies must be made easier. In previous eras of drastic technological change, entrepreneurs smoothed the transition by dreaming up ways to combine labor and machines. The best uses of 3D printers and virtual reality haven't been invented yet. The U.S. needs the new companies that will invent them.
Finally, because automation threatens to widen the gap between capital income and labor income, taxes and the safety net will have to be rethought. Taxes on low-wage labor need to be cut, and wage subsidies such as the earned income tax credit should be expanded: This would boost incomes, encourage work, reward companies for job creation, and reduce inequality.
Technology will improve society in ways big and small over the next few years, yet this will be little comfort to those who find their lives and careers upended by automation. Destroying the machines that are coming for our jobs would be nuts. But policies to help workers adapt will be indispensable.
1.Who will be most threatened by automation?
2.Which of the following best represents the author's view?
3.Education in the age of automation should put more emphasis on（  ）.
4.The author suggests that tax policies be aimed at （  ）.  
5.In this text, the author presents a problem with（  ）.

The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional “paid” media—such as television commercials and print advertisements—still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers passionate about a product may create “owned” media by sending e-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Web site. The way consumers now approach the broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media.
Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For earned media, such marketers act as the initiator for users' responses. But in some cases, one marketer's owned media become another marketer's paid media—for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend, which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies' marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned.
The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them.
If that happens, passionate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the company's response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.
1.Consumers may create “earned” media when they are（  ）.
2.According to Paragraph 2, sold media feature （  ）.  
3.The author indicates in Paragraph 3 that earned media （  ）.  
4.Toyota Motor's experience is cited as an example of （  ）.  
5.Which of the following is the text mainly about ? 

People are, on the whole, poor at considering background information when making individual decisions. At first glance this might seem like a strength that （1） the ability to make judgments which are unbiased by （2） factors. But Dr. Uri Simonsohn speculated that an inability to consider the big （3） was leading decision-makers to be biased by the daily samples of information they were working with. （4）, he theorised that a judge （5） of appearing too soft （6） crime might be more likely to send someone to prison （7） he had already sentenced five or six other defendants only to forced community service on that day.

To （8） this idea, he turned to the university-admissions process. In theory, the （9） of an applicant should not depend on the few others （10） randomly for interview during the same day, but Dr Simonsohn suspected the truth was （11）.

He studied the results of 9,323 MBA interviews （12） by 31 admissions officers. The interviewers had （13） applicants on a scale of one to five. This scale （14） numerous factors into consideration. The scores were （15） used in conjunction with an applicant’s score on the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, a standardised exam which is （16） out of 800 points, to make a decision on whether to accept him or her.

Dr Simonsonh found if the score of the previous candidate in a daily series of interviewees was 0.75 points or more higher than that of the one （17） that, then the score for the next applicant would （18） by an average of 0.075 points. This might sound small, but to （19） the effects of such a decrease a candidate would need 30 more GMAT points than would otherwise have been （20）.

On a five to three vote, the Supreme Court knocked out much of Arizona's immigration law Monday—a modest policy victory for the Obama Administration. But on the more important matter of the Constitution, the decision was an 8-0 defeat for the Administration's effort to upset the balance of power between the federal government and the states.
In Arizona v. United States, the majority overturned three of the four contested provisions of Arizona's controversial plan to have state and local police enforce federal immigration law. The Constitutional principles that Washington alone has the power to “establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization” and that federal laws precede state laws are noncontroversial. Arizona had attempted to fashion state policies that ran parallel to the existing federal ones.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court's liberals, ruled that the state flew too close to the federal sun. On the overturned provisions the majority held that Congress had deliberately “occupied the field,” and Arizona had thus intruded on the federal's privileged powers.
However, the Justices said that Arizona police would be allowed to verify the legal status of people who come in contact with law enforcement. That's because Congress has always envisioned joint federal-state immigration enforcement and explicitly encourages state officers to share information and cooperate with federal colleagues.
Two of the three objecting Justice—Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas—agreed with this Constitutional logic but disagreed about which Arizona rules conflicted with the federal statute. The only major objection came from Justice Antonin Scalia, who offered an even more robust defense of state privileges going back to the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The 8-0 objection to President Obama turns on what Justice Samuel Alito describes in his objection as “a shocking assertion of federal executive power”. The White House argued that Arizona's laws conflicted with its enforcement priorities, even if state laws complied with federal statutes to the letter. In effect, the White House claimed that it could invalidate any otherwise legitimate state law that it disagrees with.
Some powers do belong exclusively to the federal government, and control of citizenship and the borders is among them. But if Congress wanted to prevent states from using their own resources to check immigration status, it could. It never did so. The administration was in essence asserting that because it didn’t want to carry out Congress's immigration wishes, no state should be allowed to do so either. Every Justice rightly rejected this remarkable claim.
1.Three provisions of Arizona's plan were overturned because they（  ）.
2.On which of the following did the Justices agree, according to Paragraph 4?
3.It can be inferred from Paragraph 5 that the Alien and Sedition Acts （  ）.  
4.The White House claims that its power of enforcement （  ）.  
5.What can be learned from the last paragraph?

In Cambodia, the choice of a spouse is a complex one for the young male. It may involve not only his parents and his friends,（1）those of the young woman, but also a matchmaker. A young man can（2）  a likely spouse on his own and then ask his parents to （3）the marriage negotiations, or the young man's parents may make the choice of a spouse, giving the child little to say in the selection. （4）, a girl may veto the spouse her parents have chosen. （5）a spouse has been selected, each family investigates the other to make sure its child is marrying（6）a good family.

The traditional wedding is a long and colorful affair. Formerly it lasted three days, （7）by the 1980s it more commonly lasted a day and a half. Buddhist priests offer a short sermon and （8）  prayers of blessing. Parts of the ceremony involve ritual hair cutting, （9）cotton threads soaked in holy water around the bride's and groom's wrists, and （10）a candle around a circle of happily married and respected couples to bless the （11）. Newlyweds traditionally move in with the wife's parents and may（12）with them up to a year,（13）they can build a new house nearby.

Divorce is legal and easy to （14）, but not common. Divorced persons are （15）with some disapproval. Each spouse retains（16）property he or she（17）into the marriage, and jointly-acquired property is（18）equally. Divorced persons may remarry, but a gender prejudice （19）up: The divorced male doesn't have a waiting period before he can remarry（20）the woman must wait ten months.

        France, which prides itself as the global innovator of fashion, has decided its fashion industry has lost an absolute right to define physical beauty for women. Its lawmakers gave preliminary approval last week to a law that would make it a crime to employ ultra-thin models on runways. The parliament also agreed to ban websites that “incite excessive thinness” by promoting extreme dieting.
        Such measures have a couple of uplifting motives. They suggest beauty should not be defined by looks that end up impinging on health. That's a start. And the ban on ultra-thin models seems to go beyond protecting models from starving themselves to death—as some have done. It tells the fashion industry that it must take responsibility for the signal it sends women, especially teenage girls, about the social tape-measure they must use to determine their individual worth.
        The bans, if fully enforced, would suggest to women (and many men) that they should not let others be arbiters of their beauty. And perhaps faintly, they hint that people should look to intangible qualities like character and intellect rather than dieting their way to size zero or wasp-waist physiques.
        The French measures, however, rely too much on severe punishment to change a culture that still regards beauty as skin-deep—and bone-showing. Under the law, using a fashion model that does not meet a government-defined index of body mass could result in a $85,000 fine and six months in prison.
        The fashion industry knows it has an inherent problem in focusing on material adornment and idealized body types. In Denmark, the United States, and a few other countries, it is trying to set voluntary standards for models and fashion images that rely more on peer pressure for enforcement.
        In contrast to France's actions, Denmark's fashion industry agreed last month on rules and sanctions regarding the age, health, and other characteristics of models. The newly revised Danish Fashion Ethical Charter clearly states: “We are aware of and take responsibility for the impact the fashion industry has on body ideals, especially on young people.” The charter's main tool of enforcement is to deny access for designers and modeling agencies to Copenhagen Fashion Week (CFW), which is run by the Danish Fashion Institute. But in general it relies on a name-and-shame method of compliance.
        Relying on ethical persuasion rather than law to address the misuse of body ideals may be the best step. Even better would be to help elevate notions of beauty beyond the material standards of a particular industry.
1.According to the first paragraph, what would happen in France?
2.The phrase “impinging on” (Paragraph 2) is closest in meaning to（  ）.
3.Which of the following is true of the fashion industry?
4.A designer is most likely to be rejected by CFW for（  ）.  
5.Which of the following may be the best title of the text?

There will eventually come a day when The New York Times ceases to publish stories on newsprint. Exactly when that day will be is a matter of debate. “Sometime in the future,” the paper's publisher said back in 2010.
Nostalgia for ink on paper and the rustle of pages aside, there's plenty of incentive to ditch print. The infrastructure required to make a physical newspaper—printing presses, delivery trucks—isn't just expensive; it's excessive at a time when online-only competitors don't have the same set of financial constraints. Readers are migrating away from print anyway. And though print ad sales still dwarf their online and mobile counterparts, revenue from print is still declining.
Overhead may be high and circulation lower, but rushing to eliminate its print edition would be a mistake, says BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti.
Peretti says the Times shouldn't waste time getting out of the print business, but only if they go about doing it the right way.“ Figuring out a way to accelerate that transition would make sense for them,” he said, “but if you discontinue it, you're going to have your most loyal customers really upset with you.”
Sometimes that's worth making a change anyway. Peretti gives the example of Netflix discontinuing its DVD-mailing service to focus on streaming. “It was seen as a blunder," he said. The move turned out to be foresighted. And if Peretti were in charge at the Times? “I wouldn't pick a year to end print,” he said. “I would raise prices and make it into more of a legacy product.”
The most loyal customers would still get the product they favor, the idea goes, and they'd feel like they were helping sustain the quality of something they believe in. “So if you're overpaying for print, you could feel like you were helping,” Peretti said. “Then increase it at a higher rate each year and essentially try to generate additional revenue.” In other words, if you're going to make a print product, make it for the people who are already obsessed with it. Which may be what the Times is doing already. Getting the print edition seven days a week costs nearly $500 a year—more than twice as much as a digital-only subscription.
“It's a really hard thing to do and it's a tremendous luxury that BuzzFeed doesn't have a legacy business,” Peretti remarked. “But we're going to have questions like that where we have things we're doing that don't make sense when the market changes and the world changes. In those situations, it's better to be more aggressive than less aggressive.”
1.The New York Times is considering ending its print edition partly due to（  ）.
2.Peretti suggests that, in face of the present situation, the Times should（  ）.  
3.It can be inferred from Paragraphs 5 and 6 that a “legacy product” （  ）.  
4.Peretti believes that, in a changing world （  ）.  
5.Which of the following would be the best title of the text?

Could a hug a day keep the doctor away? The answer may be a resounding “yes!”（1）helping you feel close and（2）to people you care about, it turns out that hugs can bring a （3）of health benefits to your body and mind. Believe it or not, a warm embrace might even help you （4）getting sick this winter.

In a recent study （5 ）over 400 healthy adults, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania examined the effects of perceived social support and the receipt of hugs（6）the participants' susceptibility to developing the common cold after being（7）to the virus. People who perceived greater social support were less likely to come（8）with a cold, and the researchers（9）that the stress-reducing effects of hugging （10）about 32 percent of that beneficial effect. （11）among those who got a cold, the ones who felt greater social support and received more frequent hugs had less severe（12）.

“ Hugging protects people who are under stress from the（13）risk for colds that' s usually（14）with stress,” notes Sheldon Cohen, a professor of psychology at Carnegie. Hugging “is a marker of intimacy and helps（15）the feeling that others are there to help（16）difficulty. ”

Some experts（17）the stress-reducing, health-related benefits of hugging to the release of oxytocin, often called “the bonding hormone” （18）it promotes attachment in relationships, including that between mothers and their newborn babies. Oxytocin is made primarily in the central lower part of the brain, and some of it is released into the bloodstream. But some of it （19）in the brain, where it （20）mood, behavior and physiology. 

“The ancient Hawaiians were astronomers,” wrote Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii's last reigning monarch, in 1897. Star watchers were among the most esteemed members of Hawaiian society. Sadly, all is not well with astronomy in Hawaii today. Protests have erupted over construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), a giant observatory that promises to revolutionize humanity's view of the cosmos.
At issue is the TMT's planned location on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano worshiped by some Hawaiians as the piko, that connects the Hawaiian Islands to the heavens. But Mauna Kea is also home to some of the world's most powerful telescopes. Rested in the Pacific Ocean, Mauna Kea's peak rises above the bulk of our planet's dense atmosphere, where conditions allow telescopes to obtain images of unsurpassed clarity.
Opposition to telescopes on Mauna Kea is nothing new. A small but vocal group of Hawaiians and environmentalists have long viewed their presence as disrespect for sacred land and a painful reminder of the occupation of what was once a sovereign nation.
Some blame for the current controversy belongs to astronomers. In their eagerness to build bigger telescopes, they forgot that science is not the only way of understanding the world. They did not always prioritize the protection of Mauna Kea's fragile ecosystems or its holiness to the islands' inhabitants. Hawaiian culture is not a relic of the past; it is a living culture undergoing a renaissance today.
Yet science has a cultural history, too, with roots going back to the dawn of civilization. The same curiosity to find what lies beyond the horizon that first brought early Polynesians to Hawaii' s shores inspires astronomers today to explore the heavens. Calls to disassemble all telescopes on Mauna Kea or to ban future development there ignore the reality that astronomy and Hawaiian culture both seek to answer big questions about who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Perhaps that is why we explore the starry skies, as if answering a primal calling to know ourselves and our true ancestral homes.
The astronomy community is making compromises to change its use of Mauna Kea. The TMT site was chosen to minimize the telescope's visibility around the island and to avoid archaeological and environmental impact. To limit the number of telescopes on Mauna Kea, old ones will be removed at the end of their lifetimes and their sites returned to a natural state. There is no reason why everyone cannot be welcomed on Mauna Kea to embrace their cultural heritage and to study the stars.
1.Queen Liliuokalani's remark in Paragraph 1 indicates（  ）.
2.Mauna Kea is deemed as an ideal astronomical site due to （  ）.  
3.The construction of the TMT is opposed by some locals partly because（  ）.  
4.It can be inferred from Paragraph 5 that progress in today's astronomy（  ）.  
5.The author's attitude toward choosing Mauna Kea as the TMT site is one of（  ）.