Mr. Parker was born in a small village. His father was so poor that he couldn't send him to school. The boy had to help his parents to do some farming and learned English and maths by himself when he was free. Later on he was made to leave his home village and hoped to find a job in a city. And as soon as war broke out, he joined the army. He couldn't forget his terrible past and fought with the enemies bravely. So he became a general when he was fifty. He was honest and friendly to his soldiers and often punished those who tried to pocket a portion of the soldiers' pay (克扣军饷). And his soldiers liked him very much.

    Once Mr. Parker heard from a soldier. In the letter the young man said the food in their military camp was very bad and he wished the general could go to find out the reasons, the old man went there at once, without telling anybody. He went in the kitchen and examined everything carefully and found it was very dirty. Then he went in the soldiers' bedrooms and found there were a lot of fleas. He became angry and asked the soldiers, “What do you think of your food, young men?”

    The soldiers saw their officer standing by the general and said nothing Only a new soldier said, “Very bad, sir!”

    “What did you have for lunch today?” asked Mr. Parker.

    “A fried chicken, some fish and pork, a cake, six eggs and I had three cups of wine.”

    “Really?” Mr. Parker called out in surprise. “It's the King's lunch, I think!”

    “So do I, general,” said the young man. “But it's my birthday today. I paid three hundred dollars for them all in the restaurant!”

    Radar（雷达） is an electronic device that detects planes, ships, coastlines, landmarks, and even storm clouds. The name radar comes from the first letters of the words radio direction and ranging. As the human eye uses light waves to see, radar “sees” with radio waves. Without radar, planes could not land safely in bad weather and ships could not move safely in thick fog{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    In the 1800s it was discovered that radio waves could be reflected from objects. But scientists did not make great advances in radar research until the 1930s, when the world was threatened by war{#blank#}2{#/blank#}It has been used widely in almost every conflict since then.

    Echoes make it possible for radar to work. When a beam of radio waves is sent out, it strikes on an object and returns an echo. This echo is picked up by radar and recorded on a screen similar to television screen. On the screen an observer sees a flash, or a blip, that shows the direction and distance of the object{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Airport control towers use radar to guide planes in for safe landings. Almost all large ships depend on radar to prevent collisions with icebergs or other ships{#blank#}4{#/blank#}Weather forecasters “see” the size, direction, and speed of storms on radar screens. Astronomers can even use radar to measure accurately the distance to the moon. Thus, the device has generated major advancements.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Huge radar antennas have been installed all over the United States. They guard us against possible enemy attacks. We have ballistic—missiles (战略导弹)warning systems that can alert us to attacks when missiles are more than 1,000 miles away. Other radar systems warn us against enemy aircraft and even spying space satellites.

A. Police track speeders in radar-equipped cars.

B. These measurements are now highly accurate.

C. The device can be used in a wide range of fields.

D. During World War II many countries used radar effectively.

E. It is therefore especially valuable to shippers and travelers.

F. Today radar is used by commercial airliners and weather forecasters.

G. Strengthening national defense is one of radar's most important functions.

    Since 2013,Torobo, a robotic are designed to test the limits of artificial intelligence, has had one ambition—to be admitted to the University of Tokyo, one of Asia's top-ranked educational institutions. Although equipped with an extensive database of textbooks and other teaching materials, Torobo has repeatedly failed to obtain the university's required minimum 80% score in the National Center Test, a yearly standardized entrance examination adopted by Japanese universities. This year was no exception.

    In early November, Torobo, along with millions of Japanese high school students, took a mock(模拟的)exam to prepare for the all-important standardized test.

    Torobo's total score of 525 out of 950, which was higher than the national average, was enough for it to get admitted to many other influential Japanese universities.

    However, its standard score of 57.1%, though 14 points higher than in 2015, still fell short of the minimum required for the University of Tokyo.

    A closer analysis of the results showed that Torobo was able to draw from its database to solve knowledge-based questions and ones involving complex mathematical calculations, but it had a hard time thinking independently, failing to comprehend multiple sentences and phrases to arrive at the logical conclusions. This weakness was reflected in its shabby English scores.

    Fortunately, the robot's creators have decided to free Torobo from its four-year sufferings. Noriko Arai, professor of the University of Tokyo who heads the team, says, “From the present results, we are able to evaluate the possibilities and limits of artificial intelligence. From now on, we will grow its abilities in the fields where it is doing well and aim to improve them to levels that can be applied in industry.” So while Torobo will never graduate from the University of Tokyo, it can still look forward to a bright future!

    Around the world, 62 million girls are not in school. The White House's Let Girls Learn effort aims to change that.

    At 13, Hawa Abdulai Yorke left her family's home, in Ghana, Africa, to live with an aunt who promised to send her to school. Instead, the aunt put Yorke to work as her maid. Determined to go to school, Yorke returned home and began selling water in a nearby city to raise
money for her education. She did that for three years. What hurt most was that her father had the money to pay the school fees. But he chose to spend the money on a motorcycle.

    Yorke's story is familiar to girls growing up in Ghana. There, a girl's place is in the home. Educating girls is considered a waste of money.

    “It happens more than it should, where parents have money to send their girls to school but choose not to,” says Ryan Roach, a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, where nearly 55% of girls are not enrolled in secondary school. “Cultural beliefs say education is not a wise investment(投资)”

    The White House's Let Girls Learn is working to change this view of girls' education, in Ghana and in countries worldwide. First Lady Michelle Obama says parents have to be persuaded that girls' education is a better investment than marriage or household labor. A World Bank study backs that up. It shows that for every year of secondary-school education, a girl's earning power increases by 18%.

    Today, Let Girls Learn works in 13 countries, and there are plans to expand the program. Recently, Let Girls Learn hosted a 24-hour event at which girls in different parts of Ghana joined Peace Corps volunteers, tech experts, and university students to brainstorm creative solutions for the barriers to girls' education. Yorke's team came up with an idea for an app that sends a recorded message to parents' phones from a Ghanian celebrity about the benefits of girls 
attending school.

    Yorke, now 22, is about to finish high school. Thanks to Let Girls Learn, she plans to attend college and study computer science. She says working alongside women college students at the Let Girls Learn event strengthened her determination. “I'm focused on my books,” says Yorke. "I know if I study hard, I, too, can go to the university and live a happy life."

    What if we could replace oil with a fuel which produced no pollution and which everybody had equal access to? The good news is that we can, in fact, we are swimming in it -literally.

    Hydrogen is one of the building blocks of the universe. Our own sun is basically, a big，dense cloud of the stuff. And hydrogen can be used to create electricity for power, heat and light.

    The problem is that hydrogen is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It does not exist as a material on its own, but is always part of something else. So it has to be separated before it can be used.

    Most commercial hydrogen in use now is created from natural gas. As oil will start to run out in around the year 2030. It makes sense to produce as much hydrogen as possi­ble as soon as we can. But natural gas supplies will also begin to run out soon after. Another source is needed.

    Researchers are now using electricity to make water into hydrogen. Companies are working on the problem in their own areas. The first commercial hydrogen "fuel cells" for computers and mobile phones have already come on to the market Auto companies have also invested over US $2 billion in the production of hydrogen fuelled cars.

    The nations of a hydrogen fuelled planet would not fight over energy recourses. There would be a great reduction in pollution, the only by-product of creating hydrogen is pure drinking water something that is very scarce in many parts of the world. But that is not where the good news ends, once the costs of producing hydrogen have been brought down, it will possibly provide power for a third of the Earth's popula­tion that has no electricity.

    And electricity creates wealth. In South Africa over the last decade there has been a large programmer of electrification. Thanks to the programmer, people do not have to spend their days looking firewood to burn for heat and with electric light, they can work long into the night

Some scientists see radical changes in the way the human race co-operates. Hydrogen creates electricity, and is also created by it. With dual use fuel cells, everyone who consumes energy could also produce it. Late at night, a man drives home in London and connects his car into the "worldwide hydrogen web", which it supplies with electricity. A few hours later, a man in Beijing uses that electricity to power the hydrogen cell in his car. Hydrogen could be the first democratic energy source.

    Like all dreams of the future, it seems very far away. But the threat of war and terrorism in the Middle East has made governments and businesses more aware of the need to end oil dependency and spend more time and money on hy­drogen resource. So maybe the threat of war is not a completely bad thing for the future of the human race.

    Learning is so complex that there are many different psychological theories to explain how people learn. A psychologist named Albert Bandura suggested a social learning theory which shows that observation, imitation (模仿), and modeling play a primary role in this process.

    In Albert Bandura's opinion, people can learn through observation. Observational learning doesn't even necessarily require watching another person join in an activity. We can also learn by reading, hearing, or watching the actions of characters in books and films. However, just observing someone else's actions isn't always enough to lead to learning. Your own mental state also plays an important role in determining whether a behavior is learned or not. In addition, though in many cases, learning can be seen immediately when the new behavior is displayed, yet sometimes we can learn things even though that learning might not be immediately obvious, which means people can learn new information without showing new behaviors.

    Not all observed behaviors are effectively learned. Certain requirements need to be related to the observational learning process. For example, you need to be paying attention. Also your retention is an important part of observational learning as you need to pull up information later and act on it during the process. Once you've paid attention to the model and kept the information, it's time to actually perform the behavior you observed. Further practice of the learned behavior leads to improvement. Finally, you have to be motivated to imitate the behavior that has been modeled.

    Social learning theory have many real-world applications. For example, researchers employ it to look into and understand ways that positive role models can be used to encourage desirable behaviors. Besides, it's also applied in the field of education, and today, both teachers and parents recognize how important it is to model appropriate behaviors.