How often do you use your car? Can you use your car less often? Do you know the following facts in the UK?
·About 50% of all car journeys are just for fun.
·Over 80% people go to work by car.
·25% car journeys are under two miles.
·70% car journeys are under five miles.
WALKING & CYCLING

Instead of using the car for short journeys, why not walk or ride a bicycle? Walking is the most popular form of exercise—it's healthy and it can save money. If you work nearby, try walking or cycling instead of driving. Walking your children to school gives them valuable road experience.
BUSES

Bus companies are using new buses: some run on new fuelswhich produce less pollution; some have easier access（通路）for disabled and old people. There are special traffic lanes (行车道)to make bus journeys easier. So do something to help solve the pollution problem—-let the bus take you to work and your children to school.
TRAINS

All car journeys, long or short, can be hard work. For some trips, it is wiser to take the train. Leave your car at home and walk, cycle or take a bus to and from the station. Train travel is fast, safe and comfortable. Train tickets are not always expensive.

阅读理解 阅读下列短文，选出最佳答案。

A science fiction flying car looks like a normal car, but it is an aircraft (飞行器) that anybody can fly directly from any place to another without using roads or runways. Science fiction writers have written about flying cars for a long time. But now flying cars will soon fly out of the world of science fiction into our real world. And the dream of the science fiction writers will soon come true.

    The first-known sky car is the FSC-1. The FSC-1 looks like an expensive sports car. You can drive the FSC-1 on the road like a normal car. If you touch a button, its wings and propeller (螺旋桨) fold out and then it can take off, fly and land as an airplane. The owners of the FSC-1 can choose if they want to drive or fly.

Another flying car or sky car is the Moller Skycar M400. Although you can't drive it on the roads, it is small and easy to fly and can take off and land like a helicopter (直升飞机). Urban Aeronautics' X-Hawk is another type of sky car. It is expected to be available for about $3 million.

    Just like any new technology, flying cars have taken a long time to be developed. But some experts think the technology is far from what people imagine when they are sitting in traffic. It still needs to be improved.

E

    Artificial intelligence（人工智能）, or AI in short, is the science of giving computers and machines ability to think and work like humans. AI scientists and engineers have made a lot of cool technologies.

    AI is rapidly catching up with the human ability to read faces. As a result, facial recognition（识别）is used a lot in the world. Chinese police use this technology to identify criminals（罪犯）.Once they caught a criminal when he attended a concert. It also checks the ID of ride-hailing（网约车）drivers and lets people pay for things with a smile.

    AI is also used in self-driving cars, which are believed to be the future of driving. Most drivers may wave or nod at passers-by to let them cross the street, but self-driving cars don't have this ability. Carmakers are testing a light signal system to help them "speak" to humans. The system can show what self-driving cars will do. For example, if a driverless car is yielding（让路）, it will flash two white lights side to side. A rapidly flashing light tells passers-by that the car is about to speed up.

    Service Robots also show you know powerful AI is. Imagine this—you come back home from school and your robot housekeeper is waiting for you at the door. After dinner, he teaches you to play the piano, just like a real music teacher. Such thoughts will soon happen in the real world. In the future, more and more service robots will become good home helpers.

    AI is so powerful that it can help human beings and even replace us in many jobs.

    Scientists found that moderate (适度的) noise can make people more creative, The New York Times reported.

    Scientists did tests on students. They divided them into four groups. They then asked the students to do certain tasks involving creative thinking. But each group did the task with different volumes (音量) of background noise. They found that students did best when working under moderate noise—70 decibels (分贝). This is about the same volume of background noise in a cafe. Students did worse in low noise (50 dB). This is the volume of a quiet room. They did the poorest when in a high-noise (85 dB) environment. This is the noise level in a factory.

    Moderate noise can distract (分心) people just enough so that they think more creatively. "It helps you think outside the box," Raci Mehta, a lead researcher in the study, said to the Business Standard. On the one hand, working in a very quiet place can strengthen our focus. But it also stops

    us from thinking abstractly (抽象).

    "This is why if you are too focused on a problem and you can't solve it," said Mehta, "you leave it for some time and then come back to it and you'll get the solution."

    However, the scientists said that when you need to do detailed things, like proofreading (校对) a paper, a quiet place is better than a noisy one.

    Earlier this year, China achieved a new milestone(里程碑) in space exploration(探索). On Jan 3, Chang'e 4 became the first space probe(探测器) in history to land on the far side of the moon, People's Daily reported.
    From Earth, we can only see one side of the moon. The other side has been a mystery. Scientists have long wondered what lies on this side of the moon.

    Chang'e 4 has sent back photos of the far side of the moon. It is also used to carry out experiments, such as growing seeds in a low-gravity(低重力) environment. The data(数据) collected from these experiments could be used to help us build a base on the moon in the future.

    The success of the Chang'e 4 mission(任务) is a main achievement for China's space program. It marks a new stage in China's deep space exploration, said Wu Yanhua, head of China National Space Administration.

    China launched(启动) its lunar(月球的) exploration program in 2004, naming it Chang'e. Chinese scientists set three goals —“orbiting(环绕运行), landing and sample(样本) returning”— referring to launching probes that could circle around the moon, touch down on its surface and bring lunar materials back to Earth.

    Chang'e 4 has realized the goal of landing. The third will be achieved during the Chang'e 5 mission, which is set to take place before the end of this year, China Daily reported.

    Following the success of the Chang'e missions, Chinese scientists are looking even farther into our solar system (太阳系). China's first Mars(火星) mission is expected to be carried out by 2020, Wu said.

    Why do we like drinking water from plastic bottles? Some people think it is healthy and clean. Others drink bottled water because it's easy—you can carry it around with you. In hot countries, like Greece, we often buy bottles of cold water in summer.

    However, making lots of plastic is not a good idea for many reasons. First of all, we need a lot of oil for plastic products. We usually use oil as a source(资源) of energy. If we reduced the number of bottles we made, we wouldn't need so much oil. Plastic bottles also pollute the environment. If we recycled all our plastic bottles, we wouldn't need so much space for rubbish dumps. But in Greece, we don't recycle much of the plastic we use. In 2006, Greeks recycled only about 10% of plastic waste. The rest became rubbish on land and in rivers and seas.

    So next time you want to throw away a plastic bottle in the litter bin, stop and think. If you recycled it, you would help the environment. But what can you do when there isn't a recycling bin near you? Well, there are lots of useful ways that you can use your bottles again. For example, an empty bottle makes a great piggy bank for your pocket money, and if you cut a bottle in half, you will have a plant pot. Go green! You can make a difference.