We’ve been covering standing desks for a long time now because experts agree that sitting all day is killing us. We want to be productive while also keeping our bodies healthy. Over the years, there have been several solutions to this from fixed standing desks to adjustable ones, portable desks to ones that change into shelves.
However, the most high tech and elegant solution has to be this new smart desk called The Stir Kinetic Desk. The desk learns your daily behaviors and moves between a sitting and standing height regularly throughout the day to keep you moving without interrupting your work flow.
You can program specific sitting and standing intervals or let the desk set the schedule. If you tend to sit while returning emails in the morning, but always want to stand during that afternoon conference call, the desk will learn those regular habits and adjust the schedule to fit them. Of course, the desk can always be manually lowered or raised by using the touch screen on the lower left comer of the desk.
When switching positions, the desk gently dips and rises to let you know that a change is coming up. If you’re not ready to switch positions at that time, you can tap the touchscreen to stay sitting or standing for a while longer.
The built-in touchscreen also keeps track of your daily sitting and standing times and tells you how many calories you’ve burned. You can even set goals for how long or often you want to stand. The desk also works with fitness devices like the FitBit to track your movements.
All of that smart tech doesn’t come cheap though. The M1 desk, which is the everyday model, runs a steep $2,990, while the more executive model with added features, the F1, goes for$4,190.
While expensive, it’s worth thinking of how much time we spend at our desks. Much like a good mattress(床垫), a good desk that works with you is worth the investment. Hopefully in a few years these smart, integrated desks will be more common and less expensive.
1.The Stir Kinetic Desk has been designed to_______.
A. help users with their work
B. keep users moving all the time
C. get users to exercise while working
D. remind users of their working schedule
2.Which is the feature of the touchscreen of the desk?
A. It can tell users when to change positions.
B. It can track users’changes of positions.
C. It can keep users in a fixed position.
D. It can detect users’ health condition.
3.Which of the following can best describe the desk?
A. Productive but challenging.
B. Convenient but unaffordable.
C. Complex and impractical.
D. Multi-functional and intelligent.
4.What does the author intend to tell us in the last paragraph?
A. To spend money on such a desk is rewarding.
B. We should get such a desk as soon as possible.
C. It won’t be long before the desk is widely used.
D. Desks play a very important role in our daily life.
The world’s richest man might seem to have it all, but Bill Gates has one regret. The self-made billionaire said he felt stupid for not knowing any foreign languages.
Speaking in his third Ask Me Anything question-and-answer session for online forum Reddit(红迪网), the Microsoft founder said that he wished he spoke French, Arabic or Chinese.
He said: “I took Latin and Greek in high school and got A’s and I guess it helps my vocabulary. I keep hoping to get time to study one of these—probably French because it is the easiest. I did Duolingo for a while but didn’t keep it up.”
Gates, who is worth $79.3 billion, praised Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for surprising an audience in Beijing when he spoke fluent Chinese. “Mark Zuckerberg amazingly learned Chinese and did a Q&A with Chinese students—unbelievable, isn’t it?” he said.
This isn’t the first time for Gates to admit his regret over language. He also showed his habits at home and personal insights.
Last February, Gates said he likes to do the dishes himself—to his own special standards every night and also told the interviewer that his wife, Melinda, would likely want Samuel L. Jackson to play her husband in a biopic(传记片).
He also admitted that he would pick up a $100 bill if he found it on the street.
As he took the top spot on Forbes(福布斯)28th Annual Billionaires list last year for the fourth time, he said he is pretty basic when it comes to so ending on clothes and food, but that he enjoys investing in shoes and racquets(球拍)when he plays tennis.
When asked a life lesson he had to learn the hard way, the billionaire said staying up too late is a habit he is still trying to break. “Don’t stay up too late even if the book is really exciting. You will regret it in the morning. Pam still working on this problem,” he said.
1.Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?
A. An Interview with Bill Gates B. How Bill Gates Succeeded
C. Bill Gates’ Regret D. The Richest Billionaire
2.The underlined part in Paragraph 8 may actually mean that_____.
A. it is important to lay a good foundation of life
B. food and clothing are basic needs for people’s life
C. he doesn’t spend much money on food and clothes
D. he never cares about buying food and clothing
3.What advice did Bill Gates give?
A. Avoid staying up too late. B. Be a good language learner.
C. Do the dishes yourself at home. D. Pick up the $100 bills in the streets.
4.Which of the following is true according to the passage?
A. Bill Gates is also the founder of Facebook
B. Bill Gates topped the list of Forbes 28 times.
C. Bill Gates was good at learning languages in high schoo1.
D. Bill Gates’ wife wants Samuel to play a game with Gates.
The International Painting Contest on Google’s homepage in 2015 may look pretty strange, but it spotlightings a very serious issue: clean water, which is unusual for an 11-year-old from Long Island.
Audrey Zhang, a fifth-grader from Levittown, N.Y, is the winner of this year’s Doodle 4 Google contest, rising to the top of some 100, 000 entries on the theme of “draw one thing to make the world a better place.”
Her piece, titled “Back to Mother Nature,” describes a detailed water-cleaning machine. Zhang worked with a team of artists at Google to animate(使……生动)her drawing.
“To make the world a better place, I came up with a transformative water purifier, a machine used to remove dirty or harmful substances,” Google quoted Zhang as saying. “It takes in dirty and polluted water from rivers, lakes and even oceans, then massively transforms the water into clean, safe and pure water. When humans and animals drink this water, they will live a healthier life.”
She created a whole world around the device—one populated by humans, a whale in a top hat and dragons.
Zhang, s piece is “so vivid and so rich and so full and so complete,’’ Google Doodle team leader Ryan Germick told the Washington Post. “Every leaf seemed to have life in it.”
Along with having her artwork featured on Google’s homepage, Zhang wins a $30,000 college scholarship. In addition, her school will receive a $50,000 Google for Education technology grant, and the company is donating $20,000 in her name to a charity devoted to bringing clean water to schools in Bangladesh.
On Sunday, the night before her work was revealed on net, Zhang told Newsday she was excited by the big win, but said she wouldn’t be awake when her art first went online at midnight.
“I have school-tomorrow, so I can’t stay up late,” she told the paper.
1.What’s the passage mainly about?
A. The winner and her work in the painting contest.
B. The team of artists at Google to animate drawings.
C. The painting contest of Google’s homepage in 2015.
D. The water-cleaning machine in the painting contest.
2.According to the passage, we know that______.
A. Audrey Zhang is creative and self-disciplined
B. a water-cleaning device was made in the contest
C. $50, 000 will be donated in Audrey Zhang’s name
D. Zhang’s piece was printed in all major newspapers
3.The underlined word in Paragraph l probably means “_____”.
A. put up with B. 1ook forward to
C. breakaway from D. focus attention on
你是高一年级的张洋，你的外教Anne打算暑假期间在四川旅游，请你给他写封邮件，内容包括：
1.推荐两个旅游目的地，并分别阐述理由；
2.感谢他一年来的教学；
3.期待下期的学习。
注意：1. 词数100左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear Anne,
Glad to know that you are planning to trip around Sichuan this summer vacation. ___________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
Best wishes!
Yours,
Zhang Yang
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（＼）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。
Dear Bruce,
I’m very excited to learn from that you will start an English magazine called New Babel. That sounds great and I definitely agree with you on that.
Some of the columns mention in the letter are really my cup of tea. “Cultural Express” gives us better understanding of the world. Unless people from different parts of the world have different value, it’s necessary to learn from each other. Apart from that, “Thoughts” is pretty good for us Chinese students to open our minds and practice their critical thinking. “Entertainment” is amazing! The stories about those popular celebrities are so attractively that we absolutely can’t miss this part. As is often the case, teenagers were fond of popular things.
Well, I can’t list less. I really look forward to read this magazine.
Yours,
Thomas
Two weeks ago, we reported about developments with 1. (electricity) planes and flying cars. That technology could bring change to commercial and personal travel. Last week, two 2.(company), Kitty Hawk and Uber, announced their plans to bring flying cars to reality. Sooner 3.you think, flying cars may appear in the skies. Imagine never 4.(have) to worry about traffic, stoplights, or road construction. A flying car could get somewhere much faster than one traveling by road.
Kitty Hawk is a start-up tech company supported by Google co-founder. Its first flying cars, 5.travel at a speed of up to 40 kilometers an hour, 6.(expect) to go on sale by the end of 2017. Uber expects to launch flying taxis in Texas and Dubai by 2020. 7.says its flying taxis could travel up to 241 kilometers an hour, with the travel time 8.(reduce) from 2 hours on the road to 15 minutes in the air between San Francisco and San Jose, California. Riders could use the Uber app 9.(book) a flying taxi to take them to their destinations. It is estimated that flying taxi travel will be much 10. (expensive) compared with road taxi travel.
