标题：The Quiet Power of Urban Green Spaces

正文：
For most of human history, cities were built for density rather than for calm. Streets existed to move goods and people, squares to gather crowds, and parks, where they existed at all, were private luxuries reserved for the wealthy. Only in the nineteenth century did reformers begin to argue that ordinary residents deserved green space within walking distance of their homes.

Their argument was partly moral and partly medical. Physicians of the era noticed that outbreaks of disease spread fastest in the crowded, airless districts where trees were scarce, and they concluded, correctly but for the wrong reasons, that fresh air itself was protective. The great urban parks of the Victorian age were therefore justified as public health infrastructure rather than as decoration.

Modern research has largely vindicated the reformers, if not their reasoning. Dozens of studies now link access to green space with lower levels of stress hormones, better sleep, and faster recovery after surgery. One widely cited experiment found that hospital patients whose windows faced trees were discharged almost a day earlier, on average, than patients who looked out at a brick wall.

The mechanisms remain contested. Some researchers emphasise attention, arguing that natural scenes rest the directed concentration that city life steadily depletes. Others point to social effects, noting that well-kept parks encourage casual encounters between neighbours who would otherwise never speak. A third group holds that greenery simply signals safety, and that the benefit lies in what the presence of trees implies about a neighbourhood rather than in the trees themselves.

Whatever the explanation, the policy implication is unusually clear. Green space is not a decorative addition to a finished city; it is part of the infrastructure that makes dense living tolerable. Cities that treat parks as optional extras tend to discover, sooner or later, that they have made an expensive mistake.

题目：
1. What does the author suggest about parks before the nineteenth century?
A. They were designed mainly to protect public health.
B. They were generally available only to wealthy people.
C. They were considered essential to city planning.
D. They were built to move goods more efficiently.
答案：B
2. Why did nineteenth-century physicians support the creation of urban parks?
A. They believed that fresh air prevented disease.
B. They wanted to raise the value of nearby property.
C. They had proved that trees absorb pollution.
D. They were instructed to do so by city reformers.
答案：A
3. What does the hospital experiment mentioned in Paragraph 3 illustrate?
A. Surgery is more successful in older buildings.
B. Patients recover faster when they can see nature.
C. Hospital design has little effect on recovery.
D. Trees reduce the noise level inside hospitals.
答案：B
4. According to Paragraph 4, one explanation for the benefits of greenery is that it
A. removes pollution from the surrounding air.
B. signals that a neighbourhood is safe.
C. increases the market value of nearby housing.
D. encourages residents to exercise outdoors.
答案：B
5. What is the author's attitude towards cities that treat parks as optional extras?
A. Sympathetic.
B. Neutral.
C. Critical.
D. Uncertain.
答案：C


标题：The Cost of Always Being Reachable

正文：
Twenty years ago, leaving the office meant leaving your work behind. A colleague who needed you after six o'clock simply had to wait until morning. Today the same request arrives as a message that glows on a screen beside your bed, and the expectation of an immediate reply has quietly become part of ordinary employment.

The change is rarely written into contracts. It appears instead in small habits: the laptop carried on holiday, the phone checked during dinner, the apology offered to a partner for answering an email. Because nothing is formally demanded, nothing can be formally refused, and workers who protect their evenings may be quietly judged less committed than those who do not.

Some employers have begun to push back. A few have adopted rules that forbid internal messages outside working hours, and early evidence suggests that staff sleep better and report fewer symptoms of exhaustion. The rules work not because they prevent emergencies, which remain rare, but because they remove the ambiguity that made every silence feel like a risk.

题目：
1. How does the author describe the change in working life?
A. It has been written into most employment contracts.
B. It has spread through habits rather than formal rules.
C. It affects only workers in senior positions.
D. It has reduced the total amount of work done.
答案：B
2. Why may employees hesitate to ignore evening messages?
A. They are paid extra for answering them.
B. They fear being seen as less committed.
C. They are required to reply within an hour.
D. They enjoy the work more than their free time.
答案：B
3. According to the passage, why do the new rules help?
A. They make emergencies much less frequent.
B. They remove the uncertainty about when a reply is expected.
C. They shorten the total working week.
D. They allow managers to monitor their staff.
答案：B


标题：What Maps Leave Out

正文：
Every map is an argument. To draw a coastline is to decide which bays matter and which can be smoothed away; to name a district is to decide whose version of the city will appear in print. Cartographers have known this for centuries, yet the authority of the finished image makes its choices unusually hard to notice.

Consider the roads that vanish. A map designed for drivers will show a motorway in confident orange and reduce a footpath to a dotted line, or omit it entirely. The landscape has not changed. What has changed is the question the map was built to answer, and the answers it quietly makes unavailable.

Reading a map critically therefore does not mean distrusting it. It means asking what it was made for, who commissioned it, and what it would look like if drawn for somebody else. A map that survives those questions is a great deal more useful than one that is merely accurate.

题目：
1. What does the author mean by saying that every map is an argument?
A. Maps always contain factual errors.
B. Maps reflect decisions about what to include.
C. Maps are written by historians rather than geographers.
D. Maps are designed to persuade people to travel.
答案：B
2. What happens to a footpath on a map designed for drivers?
A. It is shown more prominently than a motorway.
B. It may be reduced to a dotted line or left out.
C. It is renamed after the nearest road.
D. It is drawn in the same colour as the motorway.
答案：B
3. What does the author recommend?
A. Rejecting maps that are not perfectly accurate.
B. Asking what a map was made for and for whom.
C. Using only maps produced by public bodies.
D. Drawing your own maps whenever possible.
答案：B