【推荐2】Gautam Shah had spent 20 years working in IT—and his whole life caring about nature. He saw advances in conservation that got mentioned only in science journals, “but the story lines within that data are amazing; they’re fascinating,” Shah says. ‘They’re absolutely things that can engage an audience. ”

Eager to use his techie skills for wildlife conservation, Shah—a National Geographic explorer—founded a game company called Internet of Elephants in 2016. The Kenya-based start-up designs digital experiences to tell real conservation stories based on real data. One example: Wildeverse, an improved reality mobile app like Pokemon Go, launched in April 2020. In the game, players can “track” apes (类人猿) by collecting environmental samples such as fruit and animal waste. Rather than putting lots of high-tech tricks in a game, Shah says, the company prioritizes (优先) telling an interesting, true story through whatever technology is best suited to it.

Shah believes that gaming has a unique ability to connect audiences with wildlife in a deep, personal way that will show much concern and advocacy. His goal is for Internet of Elephants to reach more than 50 million people by 2027.

Hopefully, he says, “we can create an entire industry where creating games and these types of digital experiences about wildlife conservation becomes as common things as creating a wildlife documentary. ”

1. We can learn from paragraph 1 that Gautam Shah ________.

A．has got a creative idea of doing something interesting

B．has found some amazing data in science journals

C．thought science journals should be amazing

D．had devoted his life to IT industry

2. Why did Gautam Shah found the game company?

A．To improve reality mobile apps.

B．To win more than 500 million online players.

C．To collect money for a wildlife conservation project.

D．To use digital experiences to promote wildlife protection.

3. What can the players do through the app Wildeverse?

A．Play high-tech tricks in the game.

B．Tell interesting, true stories about animals.

C．Find apes by following their movements.

D．Have “conversations” with many animals like apes.

4. Which of the following words can best describe Gautam Shah?

A．Considerate and ambitious.	B．Creative and responsible.
C．Caring and tolerant	D．Curious and generous.

【推荐3】Have you ever had the strong wish to open a book and stick your nose straight into the pages? The smell of old books can refresh any book lovers. We don’t know why, but it is just pleasant to us.

Describing the smell can be a challenge. And mere adjectives will likely be of little use to future generations of historians trying to record, understand or reproduce the scent (气味) of slowly destroyed books. Now, that task may have just become easier thanks to the Historic Book Odor Wheel (气味轮).

In one experiment, researchers asked visitors at the historic library to describe the scents they smelled. All the visitors selected words like “woody”, “smoky” and “earthy” from the list, and described the smell’s intensity (浓度) and pleasantness. In another experiment, the study authors presented visitors to the Birmingham Museum with eight smells — one of which was an unlabeled (未贴标签的) historic book scent and seven were non-bookish, such as coffee, chocolate, fish market and dirty clothes. The researchers then had those museumgoers describe the historic book smell. The top two responses? Chocolate and coffee. “You tend to use familiar associations to describe smells when they are unlabeled,” study author Cecilia Bembibre says.

The team even analysed the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) (挥发性有机化合物) in the book and the library. Using the data from the chemical analysis and visitors’ smell descriptions, the researchers created the Historic Book Odor Wheel to record the “historic library smell”. Main categories, such as “sweet/spicy”, fill the inner (内侧的) circle of the wheel; descriptors, such as “chocolate/cream”, fill the middle; and the chemical compounds likely to be the source with bad smells, like furfural, fill the outer circle. The researchers want the book odor wheel to be a tool that “untrained noses” can use to recognize smells and the compounds causing them, which could deal with historic book protectors’ concerns about material composition and historic paper protection. And hopefully, smells of the past can be reproduced in the lab someday and museums and historians can use it to rebuild a past we can no longer smell.

   
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?

A．To introduce the main topic.	B．To describe different book smells.
C．To show the author’s attitude.	D．To encourage people to read books.

2. People usually describe unlabeled smells by __________.

A．using adjectives	B．linking them with food smells
C．analyzing chemical components	D．connecting them with familiar things

3. What is the function of the “Historic Book Odor Wheel”?

A．To test different smells.	B．To store book smells.
C．To describe smells.	D．To collect history books.

4. What might the study be used for in the future?

A．Creating a whole new smell.

B．Improving people’s sense of smell.

C．Getting rid of bad smells of old books.

D．Reproducing smell of historic books.

【推荐1】What will restaurants look like in the future? What would your dinner taste like if a robot cooked it? A robot restaurant in Tianjin may give you the answers.

Covering an area of over 400 square meters with a total of 112 seats, the X Future Restaurant is a robot restaurant opened in November 2018. The restaurant has amazed customers with its fully-automated (全自动的) technology, which covers every step of the dining experience, from ordering to cooking to serving the dishes and even taking payment.

Entering the restaurant, one can order dishes by simply scanning (扫描) the QR codes on the table. There are over 40 choices of dishes. After taking the order, “robot cooks” prepare dishes using fixed time, temperature and ingredients designed by famous Chinese cooks.

“As the cooking is controlled by a computer system, the taste and quality of dishes can be good,” said Li Xiaokui, manager of the X Future Restaurant.

Robots also complete the delivery of dishes. Without following any designed route, the robot waiters serve meals thanks to automated driving technology, which helps each robot timely change its route when something is in the way.

These eye-catching technologies have received wide praise from customers. “The dishes taste surprisingly good. I couldn’t believe that they were made by robots, especially dishes that were difficult to cook” one customer said. “The application of robots has increased our efficiency (效率) and cut down our costs,” Li said, “I think robot restaurants will develop fast and have a bright future.”

1. What do we know about the X Future Restaurant?

A．It covers over 112 square meters with 400 seats.

B．Robot waiters deliver dishes following fixed routes.

C．Customers could enjoy fully-automated services.

D．Robot cooks design dishes by themselves.

2. The dishes in the X Future Restaurant are _________.

A．prepared by human cooks	B．ordered by scanning QR codes
C．not accepted by customers	D．not easy for robots to prepare

3. What is Li’s attitude toward the future of robot restaurants?

A．Hopeful.

B．Doubtful.

C．Puzzled.

D．Worried

4. What is the best title for this text?

A．Robots Are Helpful in Many Restaurants.

B．Robots Cook Delicious Dishes like Humans.

C．A Robot Restaurant Was Opened in Tianjin.

D．The X Future Restaurant Has Become Popular.

【推荐2】Cortana, Alexa, Siri, These are names of robotic voices that are often programmed on electronic tablets. They also become default (默认) identities for people with speech disorders who rely on technology to communicate. Now some speech scientists are developing personalized voices to reflect the broader diversity of the people who use them. To do it, they are tapping into a vast network of volunteers who are donating their voices to share with people who can’t speak.

The effort to build an international “Human Voicebank” has attracted more than 17,000 volunteers from 110 countries, including Priyanka Pandya, a 16-year-old from Columbia, Md., who plans to spend her winter vacation recording a string of sentences into her computer “To be able to give somebody the gift of voice, I think that’s really, really powerful,” she said.

“Everyone has a voice,” said Rupal Patel, founder of Vocalic, the company that started the voicebank. “Even people who are unable to speak have sounds that are unique to them.” Her company designs personalized voices by recording the unique sounds of the user, and then mixing them with 6 to 10 hours of recordings from a voice donor, matched   by age, gender and region. The company is developing voices now for its first 100 customers.

Also, people’s voices change. The company is looking for donors who are willing to record their voices, and then record them again a few years later, as they get older.

Some of the first customers say they are happy with the results, John A. Gregoire was one of the first customers to receive a personalized voice from Vocalic last December. The voice came eight years after he developed ALS (肌萎缩侧索硬化症) and more than six years have passed since his voice became unintelligible to everyone except his wife and youngest son. “Having a distinctive voice is like getting something back that was stolen.” John said.

1. What can we know about the voicebank?

A．It collects all kinds of voices.

B．It is widely supported by public .

C．It helps to recognize special voices.

D．It is designed for people of all ages.

2. What does the underlined word “unintelligible” mean in the last paragraph?

A．Unclear.

B．Gentle.

C．Cold.

D．Unkind.

3. What could be the best title of the text?

A．Volunteers donate their voices to Vocalic.

B．Vocalic is devoted to building a voicebank.

C．Voicebank wins fame among with speech problems.

D．Voicebank can benefit people with speech problems.

【推荐3】Mankind’s most famous “eye in the sky” turned 30 this year, taking a beautiful image of “space clouds” to celebrate.

The Hubble Space Telescope, known to most simply as “Hubble”, was sent into space on April 24, 1990. The telescope, one of our best space exploration tools, uses a large mirror to collect light and direct it into a powerful digital camera. This allows it to see parts of outer space that are located 10 to 15 billion light-years away.

Each year on its birthday, the telescope takes a new image to celebrate. On its 30^th birthday, Hubble took an image titled “Cosmic Reef”. The picture shows two big clouds of cosmic dust and gas: the giant red nebula NGC 2014 and a smaller blue nebula called NGC 2020, according to Space. The title of the image comes from NGC 2014’s appearance, as it looks like a large reef of red coral.

Hubble has made many important discoveries over the last 30 years. For example, the telescope helped us discover four of Pluto’s five moons. This discovery made it possible to plan a mission for the New Horizons probe, which took never-before-seen images of Pluto in 2015. The telescope has also taken photos of pulsating stars. The regular pulses of light that come from these stars allow us to calculate the age of the universe, which is currently believed to be 13.7 billion years old.

But Hubble’s work is not done yet. It is expected to continue working through the 2020s, when it will be joined by its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, according to CNET.

1. What is the text mainly about?

A．How the Hubble Space Telescope works.

B．The Hubble telescope’s 30th anniversary.

C．How the Hubble Space Telescope has helped us explore space.

D．How scientists chose the follower of the Hubble telescope.

2. What can we learn from the passage about the Hubble Space Telescope?

A．It was the best space exploration tool.

B．It was designed to be in service for about 40 years.

C．It can see the whole outer space.

D．The James Webb Space Telescope will take place of it soon.

3. How is the telescope’s birthday celebrated each year?

A．By titling a new space picture.	B．By naming a new nebula.
C．By taking a new image of space.	D．By taking a new image of itself.

4. Where is the passage most likely to be found?

A．A magazine.	B．A novel.
C．A report.	D．An advertisement.

【推荐1】“Our aim is to take our art to the world and make people understand what it is to move,” said David Belle, the founder of parkour.

Do you love running? It is a good exercise, yet many people find it boring. But what if making your morning jog a creative one? Like jumping from walls and over gaps, and ground rolls? Just like James Bond in the movie Casino Royale? Bond jumps down from a roof to a windowsill and then runs several blocks over obstacles on the way. It is just because of Bond’s wonderful performances that the sport has become popular worldwide.

Yes, that’s parkour, an extreme street sport aimed at moving from one point to another as quickly as possible, getting over all the barriers in the path using only the abilities of the human body. Parkour is considered an extreme sport. As its participants dash around a city, they may jump over fences, run up walls and even move from rooftop to rooftop.

Parkour can be just as exciting and charming as it sounds, but its participants see parkour much more than that.

Overcoming all the obstacles on the course and in life is part of the philosophy behind parkour. This is the same as life. You must determine your destination, go straight, jump over all the barriers as if in parkour and never fall back in your life, to reach the destination successfully. A parkour lover said, “I love parkour because its philosophy has become my life, my way to do everything.”

Another philosophy we’ve learnt from parkour is freedom. It can be done by anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world. It is a kind of expression of trust in yourself.

1. Parkour has become popular throughout the world because of .

A．its founder, David Belle	B．the film, Casino Royale
C．its risks and tricks	D．the varieties of participants

2. The underlined word “obstacles” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to “ ”.

A．streets	B．objects
C．barriers	D．roofs

3. Which of the following is true of parkour?

A．It challenges human abilities.	B．It is a good but boring sport.
C．It needs special training.	D．It is a team sport.

4. Which of the following is the philosophy of parkour?

A．Sports and extremes.	B．Excitement and popularity.
C．Dreams and success.	D．Determination and freedom.

5. What can be the best title for the passage?

A．Overcoming Obstacles	B．Philosophies behind Parkour
C．Joining Us in Parkour	D．Getting to Know Parkour

【推荐2】As health care costs continue to rise, a growing number of companies are working out programs designed to keep their employees healthy.

Thomas Chapple is the senior vice president. “It’s really important to us because medical costs are going up like crazy, he says. This company spends more than 200 million a year on medical costs for its employees around the country. The best thing we have seen as a way to control the medical cost is individual fitness.”

We have a fitness center, “Shawn Flaherty, director of public relations for Freddie Mac.,” says, “We have a health benefits plan that encourages people to work out three times a week, get cholesterol (胆固醇) checks, as well as ‘not to smoke.’ If they do that, it will cost them less for the health benefits.”

Rachelle Clark works for Freddie Mac. “I feel great. You know the benefit is rewarding. I like to look good and feel healthy. I am just fortunate that I work for the company that provides some type of facility for the employees.”

While on-site fitness centers are popular, some companies pay membership fees at local gyms for employees. The companies also offer classes such as boxing, yoga and dancing. Employees see those health programs as a valuable benefit.

Tom Brook exercises five days a week. As a newspaper reporter he has a tight schedule, although Tom says it’s not that difficult for him to make time for a workout. “It is great. It is right here where we work,” says Tom, “So everybody gets a chance to use it whenever they want to. I have lost weight and never been in better shape.”

The programs may not be a magic cure for rising health costs, but they seem to have a positive impact on both employers and employees.

1. What’s the best way to cut the medical cost according to Shawn Flaherty?

A．To reduce the number of employees around the country.

B．To encourage the employees to work out to keep fit.

C．To set up fitness centers of their own.

D．To pay membership fees at local gyms for the employees.

2. Why does the writer cite (引用) what Rachelle Clark and Tom Brook say?

A．To explain how to use the fitness centers.

B．To show how effective physical exercise is.

C．To show the employees welcome the health programs.

D．To persuade more employers to set up health centers.

3. Which of the following best expresses the meaning of the underlined part?

A．The programs may not solve the health costs problem completely.

B．The programs may keep the health costs rising.

C．The programs may not cost a large amount of money.

D．The programs may cure all kinds of patients like magic.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．How difficult it is to reduce health care costs

B．Why and how companies encourage their employees to keep fit.

C．. What causes the health care costs to rise year by year.

D．How people keep healthy by doing exercise in their working places.

【推荐3】Every school has students who stand out for their abilities and their eagerness to learn. In Mexico, a school created a program to work with them. In 2019, both teachers Lotta Andersson and John Rennie got the idea to provide learning opportunities for students with a hunger for knowledge. They are English coordinators(协调员) in the school. “We want to have a program to inspire students who really have the abilities and the interests to learn more and continue accepting challenges,” Andersson said during a recent interview.

Students in the program, which was called Learning Challenges, met with the teachers about once a month. Andersson and Rennie would help us choose research topics. We then worked with the teachers to find books, interview subjects and Internet sources. While in Learning Challenges, I gave presentations on European culture and the fashion industry.

When asked what skills students had formed in the program, which ended in June 2020 because of the limits of a common disease. Andersson said, “They had learned to ask questions, be more open-minded and see things from different angles(角度). Also, they mastered the skills — reflecting more, acting actively, and learning not to put limits on themselves.”

A student, Yihane Abed, conducted research on the sun, the moon, stars, planets, etc, while in Learning Challenges. “The skills I developed were teamwork and the ways to do research and give a good presentation,” she said.

Andersson and Rennie continue to help students pursue their love of learning. “The program doesn’t exist formally, but as an important part of the culture at school, it is still needed,” Andersson said. “There is much more difference, not only for students who need extra help, but also for those who are higher achievers.”

1. What’s the purpose of creating Learning Challenges?

A．To help some students learn more.

B．To guide students to work out successfully.

C．To raise students’ interest in visiting Europe.

D．To encourage English students to help others.

2. What is paragraph 3 mainly about?

A．Ways that students used in the program.

B．Abilities that students got from the program.

C．Difficulties that students met in the program.

D．Topics that students chose from the program.

3. Which kind of research did Yihane Abed conduct?

A．Teamwork.

B．Travelling.

C．The universe.

D．The fashion industry.

4. What does Andersson think of the program?

A．Hard.

B．Formal.

C．Necessary.

D．Traditional.

【推荐1】From the loss of wildlife to rising sea levels, we’re all well aware of the problems that climate change could cause.

But while it may seem like such issues won’t affect most of us directly, it looks like future generations could grow up without something that many of us now take for granted: chocolate.

According to an essay published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, changes to the climate in the regions that produce cacao – the plant from which chocolate is produced – may mean that it will soon become extinct.

Most of the world’s cacao grows in countries close to the equator(赤道), with over half of it growing in the African nations of Ghana and Ivory Coast.

It’s predicted that by 2050, climate change will have accelerated the rate at which temperatures in these countries rise, making it extremely difficult for cacao to grow there.

The problem doesn’t lie in increased heat, however, but in lower humidity (湿度), as it’s believed that rainfall will stay at the same level if the temperature rises.

“In other words, as higher temperatures squeeze more water out of soil and plants, it’s unlikely that rainfall will increase enough to offset the moisture(水分) loss,” Michon Scott, the essay’s author, wrote.

To help fight this problem, researchers from Berkeley University in the US are working on changing the DNA of cacao plants to allow them to survive in dryer conditions by using geneediting technology, according to US News.

In the meantime, US company Mars, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of chocolate products, announced in January that it would spend $1 billion (6.33 billion yuan) to help reduce the effects of climate change.

“This is a world issue, and it requires everyone to work together,” Mars spokesperson Barry Parkin told Business Insider.

The message here is that if we all do our part, we may be able to prevent some of the worst impacts of climate change. Or if we’re unlucky, chocolate will become a thing of the past.

1. What could make it hard for cacao to grow around the equator in the future?

A．the higher temperatures there

B．the higher humidity there

C．the increase in rainfall there

D．the moisture loss in the soil there

2. What did Barry Parkin suggest?

A．No man is an island.

B．Every little bit counts.

C．United we stand; divided we fall.

D．Wish for the best; prepare for the worst.

3. What can we learn from the passage?

A．UC Berkeley is trying to find a substitute for cacao.

B．Cacao can only be found in most African countries.

C．Climate changes can be controlled if we are lucky.

D．Mars will financially support the fight against climate changes.

4. What is the passage mainly about?

A．The origin of chocolate.

B．The future of chocolate.

C．The history of chocolate.

D．The ingredients of chocolate.

【推荐2】Lego is considering a brick rental scheme in an attempt to cut down on plastic waste.The Danish toymaker has promised to make all its bricks from sustainable sources by 2030 and is ploughing significant resources into finding alternatives.

Tim Brooks,vice-president responsible for sustainability,said the company was “totally open” to the idea of a product rental scheme but acknowledged that lost pieces could cause a significant problem.He said the rental scheme was “possible” but admitted there were some “technical barriers”,one of which is the complexity of some Lego kits (配套元件),many of which contain thousands of pieces.

“What are the chances of giving them to an eight-year-old child and getting them all back again?” Mr Brooks added.There is a lot of technical thinking that needs to be done.

“We are right at beginning of that.” Mr Brooks said Lego was exploring several ideas with a view to producing the highest value from products while consuming the least amount of resources.He said many would “probably never see the light of day” and there was no current plan to try a rental scheme.

Lego has come under increasing pressure to reduce its carbon footprint amid growing international alarm about the impact of plastic waste on the environment.It manufactures 19 billion pieces per year—36,000 a minute—that are made only of plastic while much of the internal packaging is also plastic.

So far,the only breakthrough has been the development of a line of bricks made from plant-based plastic sourced from sugarcane.The green trees,plants and flowers were first included in Lego sets late last year but account for only one or two percent of the total amount of plastic elements produced.Henrik Ostergaard Nielson,a production supervisor in Lego’s factory in Billund,told the New York Times last year,“We need to learn again how to do this.”

1. How will Lego cut down on plastic waste?

A．By considering a brick rental scheme.

B．By producing a new kind of toys instead of bricks.

C．By replacing common plastic with a renewable material.

D．By investing large amounts of money into market.

2. What does Tim Brooks expect of the product rental scheme?

A．It’ll cause certain serious problems.

B．It’ll be of great complexity.

C．It’ll require more mature technical skills.

D．It’ll involve much more kits of bricks.

3. What does the underlined word “many” in paragraph 4 refer to?

A．Ideas.	B．Values.
C．Products.	D．Resources.

4. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．Lego has to explore a new product to earn a profit.

B．A brick rental scheme has been put into mass production.

C．Plant-based plastic is environmentally friendly.

D．Lego is optimistic about the brick rental scheme.

【推荐3】Giant, krill-eating whales could grow even bigger if the size and availability of their prey (猎物）could keep up，a new study finds.

Whales are the heaviest animals to have ever lived on our planet. These marine giants evolved from dog-sized four-legged land creatures and grew nearly 10,000 times bigger in the past 50 million years or so, according to Nicholas Pyenson, head of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Creatures benefit from having a bigger size in a number of different ways, whether it’s not getting eaten by smaller creatures or having the ability to keep warm and travel great distances more efficiently. Still, some whale species are bigger than others, and they do have some limits to their size.

To find out what these limits are， researcher attached multisensor equipment to many types of whales. The researcher also assessed prey type and quantity using different methods. For baleen whale prey，they used acoustic(声学的) equipment to test the density (密度）of krill patches. For toothed whales, they looked at the size and quantity of squid(鱿鱼）beaks and otoliths (parts of the inner ear) found in the stomachs of beached whales.

Putting all the data together, they could determine how much energy the whales were likely to get back from the food. For toothed whales, the limiting factor seems to be the size of their prey. Sperm whales were found to feed mostly on medium-sized squid—possibly because there aren’t as many giant squid in the ocean. Baleen whales, like blue whales swallow massive mouthfuls of krill or other small creature. But these small creatures only appear in large concentrations for a few months per year in some areas ,which may be the limiting factor for the growth of the largest whales.

A researcher said that it ‘s not completely clear that baleen whales have finished growing. “Perhaps several million years into the future we’ ll see something even larger than a blue whale.”

1. What can we infer from the second paragraph?

A．Whales kept growing during evolution.

B．Whales evolved from dogs on the land.

C．Whales used to be four-legged fish.

D．The number of krill-eating whales would keep up.

2. How do whales benefit from their size?

A．They are more expert at traveling.

B．They can produce energy more easily.

C．They have better chances to survive.

D．They can be eaten by smaller creatures.

3. How did the researchers carry out the study?

A．Testing the density of whales with acoustic equipment.

B．Using different methods for different types of whales.

C．Calculating the amount of food in baleen whales’ stomachs.

D．Assessing the type and quantity of different whales.

4. What may stop whales from growing even bigger?

A．The amount of food.

B．The availability of equipment.

C．The size of their stomachs.

D．The concentrations of the whales.