Zebra crossings－the alternating dark and light stripes on the road surface－are meant to remind drivers that pedestrians may be trying to get across. Unfortunately, they are not very effective. A 1998 study done by the Department of Traffic Planning and Engineering at Sweden's Lund University revealed that three out of four drivers maintained the same speed or even speeded up as they were approaching a crossing. Even worse, only 5% stopped even when they saw someone trying to get across.

    Now a mother-daughter team in Ahmedabad, India has come up with a clever way to get drivers to pay more attention－a 3-D zebra crossing with an optical illusion (视错觉).

    Artists Saumya Pandya Thakkar and Shakuntala Pandya were asked to paint the crosswalks by IL&FS, an Indian company that manages the highways in Ahmedabad. The corporation was looking for a creative solution to help the city's residents to cross the busy accident-prone  (易出事故的) roads safely. Thakkar and Pandya, who had previously seen images of 3-D zebra crossings that gave drivers the illusion of logs(原木)of wood on the streets in Taizhou, China, decided to test if a similar way would work in India.

    Sure enough, in the six months that the 3-D crosswalks have been painted across four of the city's most dangerous highways, there have been no accidents reported! The artists say that while it may appear that the zebra crossing could cause the drivers to brake suddenly and endanger the vehicles behind, such is not the case. Because of the way the human eye works, the illusion is only visible from a distance. As they get closer, the painting looks just like any other ordinary zebra crossing. The creators hope that their smart design will become increasingly common throughout India and perhaps even the world. So let's look forward to it.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    I was never very neat, while my roommate Kate was extremely organized. Each of her objects had its place, but mine always hid somewhere. She even labeled (贴标签 ) everything. I always looked for everything. Over time, Kate got nearer and I got messier. She would push my dirty clothing over, and I would lay my books on her tidy desk. We both got tired of each other.

    War broke out one evening. Kate came into the room. Soon, I heard her screaming, "Take your shoes away! Why under my bed!" Deafened, I saw my shoes flying at me. I jumped to my feet and started yelling. She yelled back louder.

    The room was filled with anger. We could not have stayed together for a single minute but for a phone call. Kate answered it. From her end of the conversation, I could tell right away her grandma was seriously ill. When she hung up, she quickly crawled (爬) under her covers, sobbing.

    Obviously, that was something she should not go through alone. All of a sudden, a warm feeling of sympathy rose up in my heart. Slowly, I collected the pencils, took back the books, made my bed, cleaned the socks and swept the floor, even on her side. I got so into my work that I even didn't notice Kate had sat up. She was watching, her tears dried and her expression one of disbelief. Then, she reached out her hands to grasp mine. I looked up into her eyes. She smiled at me. "Thanks."

    Kate and I stayed roommates for the rest of the year. We didn't always agree, but we learned the key to living together: giving in cleaning up and holding on.

    China Merchants Bank Co Ltd has teamed up with ride-hailing major Didi Kuaidi to provide automobile financing and expand its reach in China's booming mobile payment industry.

    The two have inked a comprehensive partnership, which includes a strategic investment by the former in the latter. Under the partnership, CMB will become the first bricks-and-mortar bank that can offer in-app credit card payments to Didi users. At present, users of Didi can only choose third-party payment solutions like WeChat Payment and Alipay to pay cab fares.

    Zhao Ju, vice-president of CMB, said the cooperation with Didi was an important step in its mobile Internet finance strategy. “CMB's mobile payment is going to enter a new chapter by leveraging Didi Kuaidi's vast user base,” he said.

    According to a report by China Internet Network Information Center earlier this month, Didi holds 87.2 percent of China's private car hailing market. The company said it has received 1.43 billion car-hailing requests on its platforms in 2015, which means 1.43 billion payments were made via smartphones.

    CMB is expected to use Didi to reach the core users of China's mobile payment market. Jean Liu, president of Didi, said many of the expats prefer payment by credit card rather than Alipay or WeChat. “The new partnership will help improve service quality and customer loyalty,” she said. The investment makes CMB part of Didi's existing investors, including Tencent Holdings Ltd, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and China Investment Corporation. Both of the companies declined to reveal the actual amount of the investment.

    Liu, who showed up on Tuesday for the first time in public after her treatment for breast cancer, said the cooperation with CMB is for the long run and “the capital investment is only part of it”.

    Under the partnership, CMB and Didi will cooperate on a wide range of initiatives on financial services and online-to-offline cooperation. Apart from the in-app credit card payments, the two companies are going to launch joint credit cards in late February and automobile financing services for Didi's car owners. CMB's branches across China are expected to help Didi recruit more drivers.

    “There is a lot of room for imagination in our partnership,” Li said, adding in future people may use their CMB credit card reward points to pay for the ride on Didi.

    Li Chao, an analyst with iResearch Consulting Group, said the partnership may not significantly boost CMB's mobile payment business. “Didi has educated the market for three years and its customers have formed the habit of paying by WeChat or Alipay. So I think CMB can only turn a very smart proportion of Didi users into its payment customer,” he said. “But the move shows that China's traditional banking industry is finally thinking out of the box and looking for outside partners in Internet finance competition,” he said.

    Statistics from Big-Data Research showed that more than 90 percent of China's 9.3 trillion yuan ($1.41 trillion) worth of third party mobile payment market is donated by Alibaba and Tencent.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    James Cleveland Owens was the son of a farmer and the grandson of black slaves. His family moved to Cleveland when he was 9. There, a school teacher asked the youth his name.

    "J.C. "he replied.

    She thought he had said "Jesse", and he had a new name.

    Owens ran his first race at age 13. After high school, he went to Ohio State University. He had to work part time so as to pay for his education. As a second year student, in the Big Ten games in 1935, he set even more records than he would in the Olympic Games a year later.

    A week before the Big Ten meet, Owens accidentally fell down a flight of stairs. His back hurt so much that he could not exercise all week, and he had to be helped in and out of the car that drove him to the meet. He refused to listen to the suggestions that he give up and said he would try. He did try, and the results are in the record book.

    The stage was set for Owens' victory at the Olympic Games in Berlin the next year, and his success would come to be regarded as not only athletic but also political. Hitler did not congratulate any of the African American winners.

    "It was all right with me," he said years later. "I didn't go to Berlin to shake hands with him, anyway."

    Having returned from Berlin, he received no telephone calls from the president of his own country, either. In fact, he was not honored by the United States until 1976, four years before his death.

    Owens' Olympic victories made little difference to him. He earned his living by looking after a school playground, and accepted money to race against cars, trucks, motorcycles and dogs.

    "Sure, it bothered me," he said later. "But at least it was an honest living. I had to eat."

    In time, however, his gold medals changed his life. "They have kept me alive over the years, "he once said." Time has stood still for me. That golden moment dies hard."

    "Hey, Bruno! Great to see you again, man!" Zeca shouted. "Come over here and meet the boys." But before Bruno could move he was frisked by two guards. He cringed as the men searched his body for hidden guns, knives or other weapons.

    "He's clean, boss," one of the men shouted out.

    Zeca introduced all the members of his gang, including the man who worked inside the printer's who was going to steal the exams. He then explained all the details of the plan. It seemed foolproof and nothing could go wrong.

    They all shook hands and quickly left.

    Bruno's heart was beating fast. He was anxious to get away from the gang and phone Clara. He raced down the hill. Then he stopped at the bottom and looked behind him. It was clear, no one was following him. He took out his phone and called Clara.

    "Hey, Clara. Listen." He was out of breath, panting heavily. "Everything went according to plan. To my plan, of course, not Zeca's!" he added, laughing excitedly.

……

    "This is amazing!" the police officer said, smiling broadly, as he looked at Bruno and Clara, who were sitting in front of him at the police station. "Well done! How did you manage to come up with such a brilliant idea?"

    "Thanks. I guess it was kind of clever." Bruno answered, acknowledging the compliment with a polite smile. He felt slightly embarrassed. "Believe it or not, the idea just popped into my head while I was taking a shower. I remembered I saw an advert once on the Internet for special spy-camera sunglasses. They have a tiny, hidden, built-in video recorder. Here they're only used by detectives and law enforcement agencies, but anybody can buy them on the Internet."

    When Bruno talked to Clara before his meeting with Zeca's gang, they both agreed it would be wrong to steal the exams, and help Zeca sell them to other people. But Bruno had worked out an ingenious plan to dounle-cross Zeca and stay out of trouble himself.

    First of all, he had wisely agreed to go along with Zeca's plan, and go to the meeting with the gang of thieves. When he arrived at the hideout, they frisked him for hidden weapons, but no one ever imagined that Bruno was wearing sunglasses with a tiny built-in camera. Bruno had secretly videoed the entire meeting, making sure he had taken close-up shots of all the gang members. Their conversations with all the details of their plan had also been recorded.

    Then, as soon as he was sure that he wasn't being followed, he phoned Clara and together they went to the police with the camera and told them the whole story.

    "Thanks to this evidence we can finally catch Zeca and his entire gang red-handed," the police officer continued. "But we need you and Clara to help us. It's very important that you both continue to act as if nothing has happened. You must play along with whatever Zeca wants. We'll be following your every move from now on. Just do everything Zeca tells you to, OK?"

    The police then went to the printer's and spoke to the owner. He agreed to co-operate and they installed some hidden cameras there, too. The day of the theft they saw the thief copy the exam papers on Closed Circuit Television(闭路电视), but they did not arrest him yet.

    Then they waited until Zeca made the next move.

    Charles Dickens' joy at first arriving in Boston Harbor in 1842 reads like Ebenezer Scrooge's awakening on Christmas morning. Biographer Peter Ackroyd reports that he flew up the steps of the Tremont House Hotel, sprang into the hall and greeted a curious crowd with a bright "Here we are!" He took to the streets that twinkling midnight in his shaggy fur coat, shouting out the names on shop signs, pulling bell-handles of doors as he passed—excited with laughter—and even screamed with (one imagines) astonishment and delight at the sight of the old South Church. He had set at last upon the shores of "the Republic of my imagination."

    Though not quite 30, Dickens was a literary rock star, the most famous writer in the world, who landed like a conquering hero in a country swept up in an extreme "Boz-o-mania". He wrote to his best friend, John Forster, that he didn't know how to describe "the crowds that pour in and out the whole day; of the people that line the streets when I went out; of the cheering when I went to the theatre; letters of congratulations, welcomes of all kinds, balls, dinners, assemblies without end." When Bostonians renamed their city "Boz-town", New Yorkers determined to "outdollar…and outshine them". Their great Boz Ball boasted flags, flowers, a huge portrait of the author with a bald eagle overhead, 22 tableaux (场景) from the great author's works. "If I should live to grow old," Dickens said, "the scenes of this and other evenings will shine as brightly to my dull eyes 50 years hence as now." ①

    The Spirit of the Times wrote of it: "This most extraordinary, fashionable, brilliant, unique, eye-dazzling, heart-delighting, superb, foolish and ridiculous celebration…came off at the Park Theatre, New York, on Monday evening." But, the reporter predicted, "Such were silly-minded Americans, and such the ridiculous respect paid to a foreigner, who will probably return home and write a book abusing the whole nation for the excesses of a few fools." ②

    In fact, Dickens wrote two.

    ③ Apart from the country's great writers, he found Americans ill-mannered and invading his privacy. "I am so surrounded by people that I am exhausted from want of air." Dickens complained to Forster. "I go to church for quiet, and there is a violent rush to the neighborhood of the bench I sit in. I take my seat in a railroad car, and the very conductor won't leave me alone. I can't drink a glass of water without having a hundred people looking down my throat."

    ④ He disliked Americans' table manners and the tobacco spit everywhere he looked—on even the sidewalks of the nation's capital, where he found party politics corrupting everything, its leaders "the lice (虱子) of God's creation," and "despicable (卑鄙的) trickery at elections."

    Even worse, everyone wanted a piece of the action, from Tiffany's selling unauthorized copies of his bust (半身像) , to a barber selling locks of his hair. "I never knew what it was to feel disgust and contempt (蔑视)," Dickens said, "till I traveled in America." When he departed in June, he left behind all notions of an Arcadian realm he now regarded as "a vast counting house" full of nothing but "cheaters and bores." (See: A Christmas Carol.)

    Americans had soured on him, too. Dickens never missed an opportunity to accuse American publishers of openly pirating his novels to sell for mere pennies, with no recompense to the author at all. The press took offense. Within a month of his arrival, Dickens were laughed at for his "foppish" clothing and effeminate hair, described as "no gentleman," "a contemptible Cockney (伦敦佬)."