研究发现，流言对于人们的自尊来说有积极意义。积极的小道消息让人们意识到社会竞争的激烈，有利于他们促进自身发展和提高，而消极的流言则让他们对这个糟糕的社会环境警醒，增加他们的自我保护意识以免成为流言的受害者。

 “聪明人”调查中心通过研究发现，苹果直板电脑已经成为6至12岁的孩子们的最爱，已经超过了他们对迪士尼乐园，麦当劳快餐的喜爱。平板直板电脑为孩子们提供游戏，电子书，电视节目，视频，作业等，成为他们童年生活中的必备品牌。

白宫特勤处处长皮尔森因为最近白宫安保方面连续出现失误宣布辞职。9月15日，冈萨雷斯翻越门廊进入白宫，如入无人之境。奥巴马总统访问亚特兰大时，一位有前科的保安人员竟携带枪支与总统一同乘坐电梯。这一连串的失误说明特勤处内部管理的混乱。陷入舆论漩涡的皮尔森不得不做出辞职的决定。

为表彰为中国经济及社会做出贡献的外国友人，中国在北京人民大会堂给外国友人授予“友好奖”。

【语篇解读】本文属于报告类说明文，介绍了国际非营利组织ORBIS给盲人所做的帮助和贡献，进而来宣传ORBIS，且呼吁人们为ORBIS捐款来帮助更多的盲人。       Close your eyes foe a minutes and imagine what life would be like of you had a hundred dollars less. Also imagine what it would be like spending the rest of your life with you eyes closed. Imagine having to read this page, not with your eyes but with your finger-tips.With existing medical knowledge and skills, two-thirds of the world’s 42 million blind should not have to suffer. Unfortunately, rich countries posses most of this knowledge, while developing countries do not.ORBIS is an international non-profit organization which operates the world’s only flying teaching eye hospital. ORBIS intends to help fight blindness worldwide. Inside a DC-8 aircraft, there is a fully-equipped teaching hospital with television studio and classroom. Doctors are taught the latest techniques of bringing sight back to people there. Project ORBIS also aims at promoting peaceful cooperation(合作) among countries.       ORBIS tries to help developing countries by providing training during three-week medical programs. ORBIS has taught sight-saving techniques to over 35,000 doctors and nurses, who continue to cure tens of thousands of blind people every year. ORBIS has conducted 17 plane programs is Chinaso far. For the seven to ten million blind in China ORBIS is planning to do more for them. At the moment an ORBIS is working on a long-term plan to develop a training center and to provide eye care service toShanxiProvince. ORBIS needs your help to continue their work and free people from blindness.       For just US $38,you can help one person see; for $380 you can bring sight to 10 people; $1,300 helps teach a doctor new skills; and for $13,000 you can provide a training programme for a group of doctors who can make thousands of blind people see again. Your money can open their eyes to the world. Please help ORBIS improve the quality of life for so many people less fortunate than ourselves. 

【文章大意】本文是一篇新闻报道，报道了伦敦最新的摩天大楼the Shard的建造所带来的争议。一部分人认为这是对传统的传承，但也很多人都反对这栋大楼，说它并没有向一个好的方向改变。 London’s newest skyscraper (摩天大楼) is called the Shard and it cost about 430 million pounds to build. At a height of almost 310 metres, it is the tallest building in Europe. The Shard has completely changed the appearance ofLondon. However, not everyone thinks that it is a change for the better.The Shard was designed by the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano. When he began designing the Shard for London, Piano wanted a very tall building that looked like a spire (尖顶). He wanted the glass surfaces to reflect the sky and the city. The sides of the building aren’t regular. So the building has an unusual shape. It looks like a very thin, sharp piece of broken glass. And that is how the building got the name: the Shard. Piano says that the spire shape of the Shard is part of a greatLondontradition. The shape reminds him of the spires of the churches of London or the tall masts (桅杆) of the ships that were once on the river Thames.The Shard has 87 floors. At the top, there is an observatory. At the moment the building is empty, but eventually there will be a five-star hotel. There will also be top quality restaurants, apartments and offices.Before building work began, a lot of people didn’t want the Shard though the plans were approved. Now they are still unhappy about the Shard. Some critics say that such a tall skyscraper might be good in a city likeNew York, but not inLondon. They say that the best thing about the Shard is its spire shape. But that is the only thing. There is no decoration, only flat surfaces. The Egyptians did that 4,500 years ago. They also think the Shard is too big forLondon. It destroys the beauty of the city.Other critics don’t like what the Shard seems to represent. They say that the Shard shows howLondonis becoming more unequal. Only very rich people can afford to buy the expensive private apartments and stay in the hotel. But the people who live near the Shard are among the poorest inLondon. So the Shard seems a symbol of the division in society between the very rich and the poor.The Shard now dominates theLondonskyline. It is not certain, however, that ordinaryLondoncitizens will ever accept it as a valuable addition to the city. 

 【语篇解读】文章通过讲述人们总是为减肥设立目标却又无法成功的事例告诉人们，凡事只关注“输出”即结果而不注重输入过程的重要性，是错误的。借此告诉人们要养成采取实际行动的习惯。 Choosing the Right Resolution (决定)     Millions of Americans began 2014 with the same resolution they started 2013 with, a goal of losing weight. However, setting weight loss as a goal is a mistake.     To reach our goal of losing weight --- the output, we need to control what we eat --- the input (输入). That is, we tend to care about the output but not to control the input. This is a bad way to construct goals. The alternative is to focus your resolution on the input. Instead of resolving to lose weight, try an actionable resolution: “I’ll stop having desert for lunch,” or “I’ll walk every day for 20 minutes.” Creating a goal that focuses on a well-specified input will likely be more effective than concentrating on the outcome.     Recently a new science behind incentives (激励), including in education, has been discussed. For example, researcher Roland Fryer wanted to see what works best in motivating children to do better in school. In some cases, he gave students incentives based on input, like reading certain books, while in others, the incentives were based on output, like results on exams. His main finding was that incentives increased achievement when based on input but had no effect on output. Fryer’s conclusion was that the intensives for inputs might be more effective because do not know how to do better on exam, aside from general rules like “study harder”. Reading certain books, on the other hand, is a well-set task over which they have much more control.      As long as you have direct control over your goal, you have a much higher chance of success. And it’s easier to start again if you fail, because you know exactly what you need to do.      If you want to cut down on your spending, a good goal would be making morning coffee at home instead of going to a cafe, for example. This is a well-specified action-based goal for which you can measure your success easily. Spending less money isn’t a goal because it’s too general. Similarly, if you want to spend more time with your family, don’t stop with this general wish. Think about an actionable habit that you could adopt and stick to, like a family movie night every Wednesday.      In the long run, these new goals could become a habit. 

【文章大意】根据UKERC的最新研究发现房屋居住者的行为和房屋的设计在环保节能方面一样重要。文章号召人们要注意自己的生活习惯即消费质量，进而来达到节能环保的作用。         The behaviour of a building’s users may be at least as important as its design when it comes to energy use, according to new research from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). The UK promises to reduce its carbon emissions (排放）by 80 percent by 2050, part of which will be achieved by all new homes being zero-carbon by 2016. But this report shows that sustainable building design on its own — though extremely important- is not enough to achieve such reductions: the behaviour of the people using the building has to change too.    The study suggests that the ways that people use and live in their homes have been largely ignored by existing efforts to improve energy efficiency (效率)，which instead focus on architectural and technological developments.“Technology is going to assist but it is not going to do everything,” explains Katy Janda, a UKERC senior researcher, “consumption patterns of building users can defeat the most careful design.” In other words, old habits die hard, even in the best-designed eco-home.Another part of the problem is information. Households and bill-payers don’t have the knowledge they need to change their energy-use habits. Without specific information, it’s hard to estimate the costs and benefits of making different choices. Feedback (反馈) facilities, like smart meters and energy monitors, could help bridge this information gap by helping people see how changing their behaviour directly affects their energy use; some studies have shown that households can achieve up to 15 percent energy savings using smart meters.Social science research has added a further dimension (方面), suggesting that individuals’ behaviour in the home can be personal and cannot be predicted 一 whether people throw open their windows rather than turn down the thermostat (恒温器) , for example. Janda argues that education is the key. She calls for a focused programme to teach people about buildings and their own behaviour in them. 

【语篇解读】本文通过叙述Dr Alecia Carter在狒狒身上进行的分组研究，显示了动物的性格在社会化的学习中起着很重要的作用。同样人类也与此相似，我们正是通过交换信息等社会学习活动而形成相关文化的。 Working with a group of baboons (狒狒) in the Namibian desert, Dr. Alecia Carter of the Department of Zoology, CambridgeUniversityset baboons learning tasks involving a novel food and a familiar food hidden in a box. Some baboons were given the chance to watch another baboon who already knew how to solve the task, while others had to learn for themselves. To work out how brave or anxious the baboons were, Dr Carter presented them either with a novel food or a threat in the form of a model of a poisonous snake.She found that personality had a major impact on learning. The braver baboons learnt, but the shy ones did not learn the task although they watched the baboon perform the task of finding the novel food just as long as the brave ones did. In effect, despite being made aware of what to do, they were still too shy to do what the experienced baboon did.The same held true for anxious baboons compared with calm ones. The anxious individuals learnt the task by observing others while those who were relaxed did not, even though they spent more time watching.This mismatch between collecting social information and using it shows that personality plays a key role in social learning in animals, something that has previously been ignored in studies on how animals learn to do things. The findings are significant because they suggest that animals may perform poorly in cognitive (认知的) tasks not because they aren’t clever enough to solve them, but because they are too shy or nervous to use the social information.The findings may impact how we understand the formation of culture in societies through social learning. If some individuals are unable to get information from others because they don’t associate with the knowledgeable individuals, or they are too shy to use the information once they have it, information may not travel between all group members, preventing the formation of a culture based on social learning. 

【文章大意】本文描述了泰国美丽的海滨度假胜地Huaplee。介绍了这里美丽的景色，可口的饭菜以及慢节奏的生活方式。 You’ve flown halfway around the world; you’ve sniffed out this place that nobody in Falongland or Thailandseems to have ever heard of; so what on earth is there to do here? You consider this question as you sink into an old wooden beach chair that holds you above the sand.It was a long journey fromBangkokto Huaplee. By the time you found the bus station and got yourself sorted out, it took almost as long as the flight from Falongland.Huaplee is located just south of Hua Hin, about two hundred kilometres fromBangkok, down the west side of theGulfofThailand. Not many tourists find this place, and the ones that do wonder if finding it has been their purpose all along.There’s an apparent laziness that surrounds you here. It’s what this place offers, and it’s free of charge. The small waves that tap the shoreline seem to slow everything down. You settle into your beach chair in preparation for a long rest. You sit there and watch the sea.It’s early afternoon, so the cook comes out and asks what you’d like to eat this evening. Before long he’s rushed off to the market to buy the ingredients for whatever it was that you ordered—every meal fresh and to order. No menu here.There is no poolside noise here but just that wonderfully warm, clear blue sea. There’s no street noise. The only sounds are the murmurs of nature.For now you just count your blessings (福祉), listing them in the sand with your toe (脚趾). You don’t have to worry about being late for work. You don’t have to do anything.The beach to your right stretches off to the horizon (地平线), slowly narrowing to nothingness only to re-emerge again on your left, now steadily widening until it covers the chair beneath you. Sand to your left and sand to your right; it’s unbroken, endless. No start, no end, just sand, sun, and peace. Step off it, and you re-enter the world of traffic, stress, work, and hurry.Normally you’re the type who can’t sit still for more than ten minutes, but you’re onHuapleeLazyBeachnow and, in the right frame of mind, it stretches all the way around the world.“How could it take me so long to find it?” you wonder.