In 1926, a Frenchman named Niepce needed pictures for his business. But he was not a good artist. So he invented a very simple camera. He put it in a window of his house and took a picture of his garden. That was the first photo. The next important date in the history of photography was in 1837. That year, Daguerre, another Frenchman, took a picture of his reading room. He used a new kind of camera in a different way. In his picture you could see everything clearly, even the smallest thing. This kind of photo was called a Daguerreotype(银版照相). Soon other people began to use Daguerre’s way. Travelers brought back wonderful photos from all around the world. People took pictures of famous buildings, cities and mountains. In about 1840, photography was developed. Then photographers could take pictures of people and moving things. That was not simple. The photographers had to carry a lot of film and other machines. But this did not stop them, for example, some in the US worked so hard. Mathew Brady was a famous American photographer. He took many pictures of great people. The pictures were unusual because they were very lifelike. Photography also became one kind of art by the end of the 19^th century. Some photos were not just copies of the real world. They showed feelings, like other kinds of art.

How long are you willing to wait for a webpage to open before you start to lose your patience? Half a minute? A few seconds? Google engineers have discovered that even 400 milliseconds—as short as the blink* of an eye—is too long formostInternet users.

A millisecond is one thousandth of a second. People hardly notice such a small time difference, but it does cause them to stop searching, reported The New York Times. “Without question, nobody likes to wait,” said Arvind Jain, a Google engineer. “Every millisecond matters.”

Nowadays, millions of smart phones andcomputers are continually gathering and sending out information. With so many people downloading maps, sports videos, news and restaurant recommendations, you can get digital “traffic jams”. Meanwhile, users are expecting faster and faster service.

   Google found that if one website is 250 milliseconds slower than another website, then people will visit it less often. This is why technology companies are now competing to be the fastest. Google said people do expect different thingsfromdifferent websites because they realize not all loading times are the same. For example, a person will be more patient waiting for a video to load than for a search result like searching for maps.

    Even so, four out of five online users will click away if a video takes too long to load. This makes it difficult for video websites to choose between the quality of pictures and fast loading times.

    Trying to get a higher speed has always been part of the history of the Internet. In the 1990s, when the World Wide Web first started to become popular, it was very crowded and slow. People called it the “World Wide Wait”. But engineers managed to fight theproblemwith new inventions. They laid a lot offiberoptic cables* for sending in high speed. They improved software so it would work more smoothly. They placedcomputerservers all around the world to be nearer to users. All this increased speed.

Nowadays we can enjoy much faster Internet. Famous search engines such as Google and Microsoft’s Bing usually find search results in less than a second. However, in order to meet the requirement of Internet users, these tycoons* should never stop their steps.

Paper is one of the most important inventions of all time. The word “paper” comes from the word “papyrus” — a thin paper-like material made from the papyrus plant. It is believed that ancient Egyptians first used papyrus. In A.D. 105, a Chinese man named Cai Lun created paper by using pieces of old cloth, etc. For centuries, people all over the world used this Chinese way to make paper. In the early 19th century, Charles Fenerty, a Canadian man, invented a new way of papermaking using wood. Today, most of the paper we use is made from wood.

Paper money was invented in the 11th century in China. The government began using paper money because there wasn’t enough copper (铜) to make coins.

Today, it’s hard to imagine life without paper. We use paper to communicate in many different ways. We also use many important products which are made of paper. Take toilet paper for example. Many people believe that an American named Joseph Gayetty invented it in 1857. Walter Alcock, a British businessman, later had the idea of putting toilet paper on rolls (卷轴). In 1942, toilet paper became softer and St. Andrew’s Paper Mill in England began selling the first two-ply (两层的) toilet paper. Today two-ply toilet paper is the standard (标准) in many countries.

So can you imagine what life today would be like without this important invention?

根据材料内容选择最佳答案。

  We have heard about people who have special memories. Recently there has been a report about a woman from Australia who can remember almost every detail (细节) of all the events in her daily life.

    Rebecca Sharrock, 25, is one of just 80 people worldwide who have been identified(确定) as having Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory ( HSAM,超级自传体记忆症). It means she can remember every small event-which most people would forget with in (在......以内) days-as if it had happened just minutes ago.

    "I remember my mum putting me in the driver's seat of a car and taking a picture of me when I was 12 days old,” she said. " That's my earliest memory. I remember every day since then. I can't tell all the dates exactly because I was too young to understand calendars, but I remember what I did that very day, what the weather was like and so on.”

     Rebecca can also re-experience taste. If she's eating something that she doesn't like, she thinks about Black Forest cake, her favorite food, and the memory will be so strong that she can nearly "taste” it.

     However, sometimes her memories prove (证明) to be painful. Because they're not just events that she remembers. "When I relive（再体验) memories, the feelings return, too,” Rebecca said. "For example, I remember falling over when I was three at my grandparents' house and hurting my left knee. Talking about it now, I feel painful in my left knee. "

     "At night, I have to sleep with the radio/recorder and a soft light on,n she added. "1f it's too dark or quiet, my mind would be filled with all these memories and I can't sleep. "

   More and more Chinese people care for their own health. I come from England. I came to China five years ago. I began to learn cooking Chinese food from my father. When I was fifteen, I began to help my mother in the kitchen. My father is a very famous cook in Beijing. So he taught me many things about cooking. In the past three yeas, I never stopped learning cooking. When I saw a book called The disease eating out can be gone back again by eating (《把吃出来的病再吃回去》), I began studying the book. The writer of the book is Zhang Wuben(张悟本). He said he was a famous nutritionist (营养师)and well-known traditional Chinese doctor. He asked the people to eat eggplant (茄子)and gram (绿豆). In China, Zhang Wuben's book has been popular in the past few years.      

My father was invited to talk about the book in May, 2010. A large number of Chinese people believe they should eat eggplant and gram to be healthy. I have visited a lot of Chinese restaurants in Beijing and studied hundreds of restaurant menus.  

I talked to lots of doctors about eating and nutrition (营养). They thought that Zhang Wuben's words violated the science. He told a lie. The fact is it's important for us to eat a balanced diet and not just to eat eggplant and gram.

One day Mrs. Wilson went shopping with Tracy and Ben. They went to the supermarket in the new shopping centre.

   “Why do you buy things here?” Tracy wanted to know.“Because they are cheaper here than at the corner store near our home，” Mrs. Wilson said，“Help me check the prices, please.”

     The Wilsons were not rich and Mrs. Wilson was always careful with her money. She looked carefully at the price of things. She bought lots of things in the supermarket. When they got home, the children said,“We don’t think you saved money by going to the supermarket.”

   “Of course I did,” Mrs. Wilson said.“Everything was cheaper there.”

   “We know，” the children said，“but we came home by taxi because we had too much to carry. The taxi fare was more than the money that you saved！”

    Mrs.Wilson added everything up. Her children were right.

   “Well done，” she said，“next time we’ll do the shopping nearby.”

根据短文内容，选择正确答案,并将其代号填入题前括号内

Computers are useful machines. They can help people a lot in their everyday life. For example, they can help people save much time, and they can help people work out many problems they can’t do easily. Our country asks everyone to learn to use computers except the old people.

Today more and more families own computers. Parents buy computers for their children.

They hope computers can help them improve (提高) their studies in school. Yet many of the children use computers to play games, to watch video or to sing Karaoke, instead of studying. So many teachers and parents complain (抱怨) that computers can not help children to study but make them fall behind. So computers are locked by parents in the boxes.

In some other countries, even some scientists hate computers. They say computers let millions of people lost their jobs or bring them a lot of trouble.

Will computers really bring trouble to people or can they bring people happiness? It will be decided by people themselves.

One day Peng Xianzhe learned he would go to the Mashan School in Guizhou. The 16-year-old boy tried to imagine how serious the drought was for the students at that school. However, he realized it was more serious than he had imagined when he saw the sign“DON’T wash clothes with water，or you will be punished（惩罚）.”

Because of drought, the school has been short of water for a long time. Each student has only one bottle of water every day for washing and drinking. The drought has made the poor students much poorer.

Peng is a student from Beijing Chaoyang Foreign Language School. He took part in the school’s Rain & Bow Project from April 2 to 10.

The project idea came from Peng’s principal（负责人）. One day, she heard a sad story about Li Guoxian, a poor girl in the Mashan School，who stopped going to school because of drought. The principal started this project to help the school. In one day, 3，000 students made over 10，000 donations of water，books and clothes.

Peng and other four students went to the Mashan School and gave the donations with five teachers. They visited poor families, made surveys and had classes at the school.

Ding Zhentao，16，was worried about the school’s poor learning environment. “The blackboards and playground are too shabby to use，”Ding said.“Besides, there really aren’t enough teachers. A teacher has to teach both history and English, and even the cook is a class teacher.”

Although life isn’t easy, students at the school have a positive attitude(积极的态度）towards life and they are quite willing to learn. That’s what moved 16-year-old Chen Shi most.

“They sang their songs together as usual before class every afternoon. After class, the students asked us to tell them things about Beijing and our studies,” Chen said.“You can see the passion(热情）in them. I believe it will make a difference. Their futures will be bright.”

根据短文内容，选择正确答案。

Google developed a new photo app (应用程序)— Google Photos— for both the iPhone and Android. Recently, the app already has attracted (吸引) 200 million users. In an interview, Anil Sabharwal, who runs Google Photos, suggested ways Google Photos might continue to change and develop.

Smarter Storage(存储)

One of the app’s main purposes is to help people back up (备份) all of their photos. What’s more, it automatically (自动地) deletes photos you’ve already backed up to free up (释放) space on your mobile phone.“For lots of our users this is so useful because they always run out of space on their mobile phones,” Sabharwal said.

Sabharwal also pointed to a future in which Google might use high technology to decide whether a photo needs to be backed up at all before it’s deleted.

Google Assistant

Another important feature (特色) of Google Photos is Google Assistant. It will automatically find and group (分组) all your photos of beaches, for example. It will also group people together using face matching (人脸匹配) and people’s names. Then you can search“John at the beach” and find all your photos of John at the beach.

Smarter Sharing

The last key feature of Google Photos is sharing. The feature is designed so that anyone you share photos with can, in a single click (点击), automatically add those photos to their own mobile phones. Photos can easily be shared to other apps and services, like Facebook or Gmail.

One day Peng Xianzhe learned he would go to theMashan Schoolin Guizhou. The 16-year-old boy tried to imagine how serious the drought (干旱)was for the students at that school. However, he realized it was more serious than he had imagined when he saw the sign“DON’T wash clothes with water，or you will be punished（惩罚）.”

Because of drought, the school has been short of water for a long time. Each student has only one bottle of water every day for washing and drinking. The drought has made the poor students much poorer.

Peng is a student from Beijing Chaoyang Foreign Language School. He took part in the school’s Rain & Bow Project from April 2 to 10.

The project idea came from Peng’s principal（负责人）. One day, she heard a sad story about Li Guoxian, a poor girl in the Mashan School，who stopped going to school because of drought. The principal started this project to help the school. In one day, 3，000 students made over 10，000 donations（捐献） of water，books and clothes.

Peng and other four students went to the Mashan School and gave the donations with five teachers. They visited poor families, made surveys and had classes at the school.

Ding Zhentao，16，was worried about the school’s poor learning environment. “The blackboards and playground are tooshabbyto use，”Ding said.“Besides, there really aren’t enough teachers. A teacher has to teach both history and English, and even the cook is a class teacher.”

Although life isn’t easy, students at the school have a positive attitude(积极的态度）towards life and they are quite willing（乐意）to learn. That’s what moved 16-year-old Chen Shi most.

“They sang their songs together as usual before class every afternoon. After class, the students asked us to tell them things about Beijing and our studies,” Chen said.“You can see the passion(热情）in them. I believe it will make a difference. Their futures will be bright.”