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题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通

湖北省襄阳市第四中学2020届高三上学期英语9月联考试卷

阅读理解

Flying High

    Barrington Irving landed his record-breaking light at age 23 and founded an educational nonprofit organization. His message for kids: "The only thing that separates you from scientists is determination, hard work and a strong liking for what you want to achieve." The secret, he believes, is having a dream in the first place.

    The moment of inspiration for Irving came at the age of 15 in his parents' bookstore. One customer, a professional pilot, asked Irving if he'd thought about becoming a pilot. "I told him I didn't think I was smart enough; but the next day he took me to the cockpit (驾驶舱) of the commercial airplane he flew and just like that I was hooked."

    To follow his dream, Irving Turned down a football scholarship to the University of Florida. He washed airplanes to earn money for a flight school and increased his flying skills by practicing at home on a $40 flight simulator (模拟) video game. Then another dream took hold: flying alone around the world. He faced more than 50 rejections for sponsorship before convincing some companies to donate aircraft components. He took off with no weather radar, no de-icing system, and just $30 in his pocket.

    After 97 days, 26 stops and dozens of thunderstorms, he touched down to a cheering crowd in Miami. "It was seeing so many young people watching and listening that pushed me into giving back with my knowledge an experience." Irving has been doing it ever since. He set up his non-profit organization, Experience Aviation (航空), aiming to increase the numbers of youth in aviation career. By bring challenging project-based learning, hands-on and other educational opportunities to school districts and local communities nationwide, the organization has excited the hearts and minds of youth. "We want to create chances for students to accomplish something amazing," he notes. Perhaps Irving's most powerful educational tool is the example his own life provides.

(1)、According to Irving, what is the most important in achieving success?
A、Meeting people to get sponsorship. B、Having something specific to accomplish. C、Communicating with different organizations. D、Getting chances to study technical knowledge.
(2)、What do we know about Irving in paragraph 3?
A、He finally raised enough money to keep going. B、he chose to reduce his budget as low as possible. C、He took on a further challenge while learning to fly. D、He got the most useful flying tips from video games.
(3)、Why did Irving set up his non-profit organization?
A、To become a well-known public figure. B、To start a business in other related fields. C、To set an example to the young to follow. D、To direct more youth to a career in aviation.
(4)、Which of the following best describes Irving as a pilot?
A、Caring. B、Demanding. C、Generous. D、Determined.
举一反三
阅读理解

    We humans spend about one-third of our lives asleep. This may sound like a lot of time, but it is not wasted. Sleep not only helps us stay healthy but it also helps our brains remember. Our brains need good sleep to remember what we do and learn during the other two thirds of our lives when we are awake.

    Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that sleep helps improve brain performance by shrinking(收缩)synapses in the brain. A synapse is the area where cells pass messages to other cells.

    Scientist Chiara Cirelli is a leader at the school's Center for Sleep and Consciousness. She told the reporter that sleep is when the human brain mixes information it has learned while awake into its general collection of knowledge. Meanwhile, the brain forgets unimportant details. This forgetting is important. It makes space for new learning and new memories.

    Cirelli said that the Centers research began with this hypothesis(假设): We sleep so that our brain can repair and refresh itself. She said the idea seems simple and reasonable. However, testing and discovering how it works has been extremely difficult.

    Synapses are only about 20-40 nanometers(纳米)wide. The team began their study by measuring the size of the synapses to look for changes in these already tiny spaces between nerve cells. Cirelli says the process(过程) is difficult because"all the actual measurements of the synapses have to be done by hand." The team had to wait until improvements in laboratory technology made it possible to see these tiny changes. A University of Wisconsin press release called the research a"huge job." Many research specialists worked for four years to photograph, rebuild and study certain areas of a mouse brain. The report also said the scientists measured 6,920 synapses.

    Cirelli says they found that our synapses shrink as our brains clean themselves during sleep. We wake up refreshed and ready to fill those synapses with new information. The research findings are the result of years of hard work at the University of Wisconsin Madison. The researchers published their findings in the journal Science.

阅读理解

    Times are a little tough at our house right now. Neither of us makes a lot of money, but years of experience have taught us how to walk between the raindrops and make it from one month to the next with a fair amount of grace. I cook a lot at home, more when we're facing difficult times. When I know that I have to keep us fed on not much money, I fall back on my grandmother's recipes. She taught me to cook.

    When I was a kid, my twin brother and I spent long summer weeks and Christmas vacations with my mother's parents in the mountains of North Carolina. Rather than go hunting with my grandfather on mornings, I found myself more and more in the kitchen with my grandmother, watching her making a lemon cheese pie with her soft hands.

    My great-grandmother died when my grandmother was 11 years old. As the eldest daughter, she was expected to take on all of the housework while attending school. Throughout the Great Depression, she learned how to make a little food go a long way. Vegetables were cheap, so she cooked a lot of them, mostly only using small amounts of meat for seasoning. Roast beef was a twice-a-month luxury, but there was nothing she couldn't do with a chicken, every part of it. Nothing went to waste.

    Now I understand that her food was sacred (神圣的). I feel connected to my grandmother and to hundreds of years of family when I'm in my kitchen making country food. In the delicious smells is a long tale of victory over hard times, of conquering starvation of not just surviving, but finding joy and pleasure in every meal of every day.

From grandmother I learned to take real satisfaction in feeding people. My grandmother would beam with pleasure over a heavily laden table and say: "Do you know what this would cost at the restaurant?" I never knew what restaurant in particular she had in mind, but I knew that the question was totally not fair, because no restaurant anywhere can cook like a grandmother. But now, thanks to her guidance and years of practice, I can.

阅读理解

    The 67th Miss Universe beauty pageant (选美比赛) will take place December 16 in Bangkok, Thailand. The competition will include young women from around the world representing their countries. But one South American country, Chile, will not be represented by a native Chilean. Instead, Andrea Diaz, a native of Venezuela (委内瑞拉) will have that honor.

    Diaz grew up in Valencia, Venezuela. She began training as a model at age 12 at a school there. At 19, she won a pageant organized by her town's baseball team. As Diaz moved along her career path, she also moved away from home. She went first to Panama, and later to Mexico, for modeling jobs. In 2015, she settled in Chile, where most of her family members now live. The 27-year-old woman told the reporter, “I represent the new Chile. This is an inclusive (包容的) country where immigrants come in search of opportunities.”

    Thousands of people leave Venezuela each day to escape a lack of food and medicine in the country. Its economic crisis (危机) has created an almost 1 million percent inflation (通货膨胀) rate. Many beauty pageant hopefuls have left Venezuela and have found work in modeling and media fields. Diaz is one of several Venezuelan beauty pageant competitors representing countries other than their homeland.

    A recent Miss Earth pageant had two Venezuelan models who competed for other countries, including Jessica Russo. Russo represented Peru just one year after moving to the country. She said, “My dream of being a beauty queen is not going to stop just because I arrived in a new country.” The 22-year-old competitor did not make it into the Miss Earth finals. But she is not giving up. She says she hopes to one day win a competition for Peru, the country where her mother was born.

阅读理解

    There was a lot of news related to artificial intelligence, or AI, and machine learning. Among the stories were two dealing with direct competitions between humans and machines.

    In one competition, machines that used AI performed better than human beings in a high-level reading test. Two natural language processing tools beat human in the experiment. One of the tools was built by the American technology company Microsoft. The other was created by Chinese online seller Alibaba Group.

    In another competition, a computer took on humans in live, public debates.

    The event demonstrated how AI-powered computers are increasingly being developed to think ' and sound like humans. The organizer of the debates, U. S. technology company IBM, announced split results. It said a majority of those watching said they felt the machine had done more to improve their knowledge of the subject. But, the human got more praise for communicating their ideas.

    This year, we also explored the many ways AI and machine learning are now being used. For example, some U. S. judges use machine learning systems to help them decide when, and for how long, criminals should be jailed. The system uses computers to examine data from thousands of court cases.

    One fast-growing area of AI is facial recognition, which is increasingly being used for security purposes. Recently, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport became the first in the U. S. to permit passengers to use facial recognition technology to get on flights. A Chinese company showed off an AI system it developed to recognize individuals by body shape and walking movements. The system is already being used by Chinese police in Beijing and Shanghai.

    In addition, machine learning was used during 2018 to predict results of the World Cup soccer competition. The technology also created artwork that sold for a large amount of money. And it is being used to help farmer save time and money, while reducing environment-harming chemicals. Other technology systems are being used to follow farm animals and wildlife to collect information on their activities.

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