Before I studied psychology，I used to think that people would laugh when funny things occurred. While I was right about that，I discovered there are lots of other psychological reasons that make people laugh other than the funny part of a joke. When someone laughs at a joke，there will usually be more than one reason that makes him laugh-and the more reasons there are，the more powerful the joke will be.

I was attending a stand-up comedy show in Egypt，and when the man started to make fun of pedestrians crossing streets，everyone laughed their head off. The main reason why those people strongly laughed was that almost all of them felt angry with pedestrians who crossed streets carelessly. The joke wasn't only funny，it also made the audience feel that they were right about being angry at those pedestrians. That is，people were laughing because of both the funny joke and the happiness experienced as a result of the psychological support they got.

The better a joke makes a person feel，the more it includes other psychological factors，and the more the person will like it. For example，if you envy one of your friends，and someone tells a joke that is funny and，at the same time，makes your friend seem stupid，then you will probably laugh at it louder than if you weren't jealous（嫉妒的）of him.

In short, we not only laugh when we hear something funny, but also laugh when we experience some kind of happiness that results from the other psychological factors involved in the joke. I strongly discourage making fun of anyone or belittling someone to make someone else laugh. All I want to explain is that if your joke supports a person's emotions, he will certainly like it a lot.

【小题1】What did the author find out after studying psychology?

A．Only good jokes make people laugh.

B．Many reasons lead to people laughing.

C．Funny things can make people laugh.

D．Laughter can make people healthy.

【小题2】Why did the audience laugh at the pedestrians?

A．Because they played a trick on the pedestrians.

B．Because the pedestrians behaved in a funny way.

C．Because they could feel the pedestrians' happiness.

D．Because their emotions were approved of by the show.

【小题3】What does the underlined word "belittling" probably mean？

A．Speaking highly of.	B．Getting close to.
C．Looking down on.	D．Feeling content with.

   Driverless technology will soon enter another major global industry: shipping. Several companies recently announced plans to launch self-sailing ships to improve safety and efficiency.

One of them is the Norwegian chemical company Yara International. Yara has teamed up with another Norwegian company, Kongsberg, to build an autonomous goods ship expected to be launched next year.

Kongsberg developed the ship's electrical technology and autonomous control systems. The ship is fully electric to reduce air pollution. It is designed to carry goods containers normally transported by truck. This means the ship will also improve road safety by replacing about 40, 000 truck trips a year. The company plans to operate the ships by far-away control beginning sometime next year. By 2020, the ships should be loading and sailing themselves. While Yara's ships will be limited to Norway at first, the company plans to greatly expand its autonomous shipping operations in the coming years.

Another company putting a high priority（优先）to self-sailing ships is the world's largest mining company, Australia's BHP Billiton. The company's Vice President of Freight, Rashpal Bhai, recently spoke about the technology in a website post. Bhatti believes automation will be one of the biggest changes for shipping in the future. He said, "Autonomous ships offer important opportunities to improve safety and provide more effective results to the supply chain of the sea. "He added that self-sailing ships could become a reality within the next decade.

Rolls-Royce, the British automobile and engine manufacturer（制造商）, is also developing unmanned（无人驾驶的）shipping technologies. Oskar Levander is the company's head of operations at sea. He said in a conference last year, "This is happening. It's not if, it's when. "

Levander said these autonomous ships could be controlled by far-away operators from anywhere. He added, "Because these ships will be designed to be unmanned, they can be built smaller, more efficient and environmentally friendly. "

【小题1】Why have several countries announced plans to produce self-sailing ships？

A．To save money.

B．To develop electrical technology in ships.

C．To compete in autonomous control systems.

D．To make shipping more effective and less risky.

【小题2】What do Oskar Levander's words suggest in Paragraph 4？

A．It is too early to make autonomous ships.

B．The supply chain of the sea will be busier.

C．People are more concerned about autonomous ships.

D．Unmanned shipping technologies are becoming more mature.

【小题3】What would be the best title for the text?

A．Automation in Sail

B．Self-sailing Ships in Use

C．Automation in Some Fields

D．Automation in Imagination

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Exposure to sunlight produces vitamin D in our skin. This is 【小题1】 we call vitamin D the “ sunshine vitamin”. Vitamin D is good 【小题2】 everybody. In fact, research shows this “sunshine vitamin” could help women with breast cancer live longer.

Breast cancer 【小题3】 (patient) who have high blood levels of vitamin D have a 【小题4】 (good) prognosis (预后) than women who don’t. Researchers found that these women had less aggressive cancers. They were also 30 percent less likely 【小题5】 (die) from the cancer or to get it again.

Besides fighting breast cancer, vitamin D helps the body in other ways. It controls how the body absorbs calcium. It also makes sure the body’s immune system works 【小题6】 (normal) .

Getting enough vitamin D 【小题7】 (be) important for the normal growth of bones. If you don’t get enough, you are at risk of developing osteoporosis, a disease 【小题8】 makes your bones fragile, brittle, or easy to break.

Vitamin D may help reduce your risk of developing heart disease, according to a 2008 study 【小题9】 (publish) in the journal Circulation. And, it may also help protect you against getting the flu.

Other studies have shown that vitamin D might help people 【小题10】 (suffer) from depression.

   You'll probably never go to Mars or sing on the stage with The Rolling Stones. But if virtual reality （VR）ever lives up to its promise, you might be able to do all these things - and many more - without even leaving your home.Unlike real reality, virtual reality means simulating（模拟）bits of our world. Apart from games and entertainment, it's long been used for training airline pilots and surgeons and for helping scientists to figure out difficult problems such as the structure of protein molecules（蛋白质分子）. Then how does it work?

Close your eyes and think of virtual reality and you probably picture something like this:a man wearing a wrap-around headset and data gloves wired into a powerful workstation or supercomputer. What distinguishes VR from an ordinary computer experiences the nature of the input and output. While an ordinary computer uses things like a keyboard, a mouse, or speech recognition for input, VR uses sensors that detect how your body is moving. A PC displays output on a screen while VR uses two screens （one for each eye） , surround-sound speakers, and maybe some forms of touch and body feedback as well.

VR has been routinely used by scientists,doctors, engineers, architects, archaeologists, and the military for about the last 30 years. Difficult and dangerous jobs are hard to train for. How  can you safely practice taking a trip to space, making a parachute jump, or carrying out brain surgery? All these things are obvious candidates for virtual reality applications.

Like any technology, virtual reality has both good and bad points. Critics always raise the risk that people may be addicted to alternative realities to the point of ignoring their real-world lives, but this criticism has been leveled at everything from radio and TV to computer games and the Internet. Like many technologies, VR takes little or nothing away from the real world: you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

【小题1】According to the passage, virtual reality means ____________ .

A．imagining beautiful things in our mind

B．creating something that doesn't exist

C．creating an environment that seems real

D．cloning something that has died out

【小题2】What equipment do we probably need for virtual reality?

A．A keyboard, a headset and a supercomputer.

B．A headset, data gloves and speech recognition.

C．A headset, data gloves and a supercomputer.

D．A keyboard, a mouse and speech recognition.

【小题3】Paragraph 3 is mainly about ____________ .

A．the principles of virtual reality

B．the applications of virtual reality

C．the history of virtual reality

D．the study team of virtual reality

【小题4】What is the writer's attitude towards VR?

A．Appreciative.	B．Cautious.
C．Skeptical.	D．Indifferent.

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Over the centuries, there have been a few people who plan the future of the world for a living and they 【小题1】 (call) futurologists.

Hundreds of futurologists will gather at Newcastle University to hold a seminar about the future. Many people will attend the seminar with dreams of starting new enterprises 【小题2】 (base) on the predictions they will hear. I clicked 【小题3】 the websites of a few futurologists and got several predictions.

【小题4】 (short), computers will become handier. Then all of us can use our voices to control computers such as downloading files 【小题5】 updating computers just by saying a few words. By 2015, garments will have been made of new materials that will remain stainless 【小题6】 you spill on them, and they will never get old and worn. By 2025, there will have been no 【小题7】 (starve), no people who have to live on welfare, no discrimination, no conflict and people 【小题8】 (live) in peace and equality. By 2030, tiny, insect-like robots may be sent around the cells of our bodies 【小题9】 (assess) our health , which will have made it possible for us to live for at least 150 years. By 2050, we will be linking our brains to the much 【小题10】 (smart) computers and a huge database₉ and a new type of electronic human might have developed!