Elderly people have a higher chance of suffering from illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. One common health problem that affects them is Alzheimer’s disease, which affects a person’s memory, behavior, and thinking. Because of memory loss and behavioral changes, people with Alzheimer’s may slowly become unable to take care of themselves, eventually requiring constant care from family members or caregivers.
There is no cure for Alzheimer’s at the moment—drugs can only treat its symptoms.
But technology can improve the lives of those living with the condition by making it easier for them to go about their daily activities. For example, tracking devices placed in watches or jewelry can monitor where a person is. Automated reminders can also be stored in motion sensors and placed around the house. When a sensor detects movement, it can play a recorded voice message to remind the person to lock the door or turn off the stove.
Alzheimer’s disease is a huge challenge, but we may be getting close to finding a solution. In the future, it might be possible to treat Alzheimer’s without using drugs. A team of researchers in Australia has created a form of technology that can send sound waves into the brain. These sound waves help to clear waste in the brain that contributes to Alzheimer’s. The team has tested their technology and found that it helped to restore memory in 75 percent of mice. Work on the technology isn’t complete, but, if successful, it could prevent memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s. This really does fundamentally change the understanding of how to treat this disease and researchers foresee a great future for this approach.
1. Alzheimer’s is a disease that mainly affects the ____.| A．muscles | B．blood | C．brain | D．heart |
| A．Tracking devices. | B．Automated reminders. |
| C．Sending sound waves into the brain. | D．Restoring memory. |
| A．Helps to cure. | B．Helps to cause. | C．Helps to worsen. | D．Helps to prevent. |
| A．Elderly people will begin to face many challenges. |
| B．Society should provide enough healthcare to elderly people. |
| C．There’s a need to better understand the cause of Alzheimer’s. |
| D．Technology might solve some problems of people with Alzheimer’s. |
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【推荐1】If you were on the street in Mexico today you might think you were in an operating room, surrounded by doctors. You could see many concerned people with masks (口罩) trying their best to stop the swine flu (猪流感). And the masks aren’t only being used in Mexico. A friend of mine traveling from New York City to Florida was given a mask and a pair of gloves just after he reached the airport. And another friend went to get a haircut only to be faced with a hairdresser wearing a mask!
But do the masks really work? Is covering your nose and mouth the key to stopping the swine flu? To find out the truth, ABC’s reporter Sharyn Alfonsi talked with germ (细菌) expert Dr. Elaine Larsen. It turns out that when you sneeze (打喷嚏) the air coming out of your mouth at a speed of one hundred miles per hour carries germs which can travel anywhere around you and make people around you infected (被感染).
However, whether you become infected actually depends on the weather. As Sharyn reported, when you sneeze, the germs leave your body in small drops of water coming out of your mouth. If the weather is wet, the wet air will make the small drops bigger and heavier and they drop down towards our feet. If this happens, we won’t become infected. But if the air is dry, those small drops can float higher up, making it possible for them to touch someone else’s nose, mouth or their mask.
Larsen says the masks can stop the germs well but after a few hours, they start to get wet, holding a lot of germs they come across and causing you to breathe them in. The masks do work, but the key to stopping the germs is changing your masks often.
1. According to Para.1, in Mexico you can see that ____.| A．the patients are treated in the open air |
| B．some doctors work in the street |
| C．people speak little to each other in the street |
| D．many people wear masks in the street |
| A．breathing | B．Speaking |
| C．touching others | D．sneezing |
| A．sick people will be infected | B．germs can spread very far |
| C．germs spread very quickly | D．few people will be infected |
| A．the mask will be old and worn out | B．you’ll love the feeling of wearing it |
| C．germs will be kept away from you | D．it will be easy for you to be infected |
| A．Keeping the masks dry. | B．Changing the masks often. |
| C．Choosing very thick masks. | D．Wearing big masks. |
【推荐2】The common cold is the world's most widespread illness, which is plagues(疫病) that flesh receives.
The most widespread mistake of all is that colds are caused by cold. They are not. They are caused by viruses(病毒) passing on from person to person. You catch a cold by coming into contact, directly or indirectly, with someone who already has one. If cold causes colds, it would be reasonable to expect the Eskimos to suffer from them forever. But they do not. And in isolated Arctic regions explorers have reported being free from colds until coming into contact again with infected people from the outside world by way of packages and mail dropped from airplanes.
During the First World War soldiers who spent long periods in the trenches(战壕), cold and wet, showed no increased tendency to catch colds.
At the Common Cold Research Unit in England, volunteers took part in Experiments in which they gave themselves to the discomforts of being cold and wet for long stretches of time. After taking hot baths, they put on bathing suits, allowed themselves to be with cold water, and then stood about dripping wet in drafty room. Some wore wet socks all day while others exercised in the rain until close to exhaustion. Not one of the volunteers came down with a cold unless a cold virus was actually dropped in his nose.
If, then, cold and wet have nothing to do with catching colds, why are they more frequent in the winter? Despite the most pains—taking research, no one has yet found the answer. One explanation offered by scientists is that people tend to stay together indoors more in cold weather than at other times, and this makes it easier for cold viruses to be passed on.
1. How many examples does the writer offer to support his argument?| A．3 | B．4 | C．5 | D．6 |
| A．they are working in the isolated Arctic regions |
| B．they are writing reports in terribly cold weather |
| C．they are free from work in the isolated Arctic regions |
| D．they are coming into touch again with the outside world |
| A．They suffered a lot. | B．They never caught colds. |
| C．They often caught colds. | D．They became very strong. |
| A．Colds are not all caused by cold. |
| B．The Eskimos never suffer from colds. |
| C．People suffer from colds just because they like to stay indoors. |
| D．It's uncertain why people are more likely to catch colds in the winter. |
| A．The experiments on the common cold. |
| B．Some treatments for the common cold. |
| C．The continued spread of common colds. |
| D．The reason and the way people catch colds. |
【推荐3】Your blood pressure is usually one of the first things that are measured when you go to see a doctor. Not only high blood pressure, but also low blood pressure can lead to health problems. How do you recognize low blood pressure?
Normal values
If your blood pressure is probably normal, you’ll feel comfortable. Even if your values are very low, this doesn’t mean that you experience any complaints. Do you experience the following problems — dizziness, seeing black spots, light-headedness or fainting?
Possible causes
Low blood pressure is troublesome in most cases, but it is not a sign of a potential disease. Women are more likely to suffer from low blood pressure. Besides, certain medicines can lower blood pressure.
Treatment and tips
| A．Symptoms of low blood pressure |
| B．The comfort and normal blood pressure |
| C．Try to reduce the time spent in taking a bath |
| D．If so, your blood pressure might be too low |
| E．The treatment depends on what its cause is |
| F．First of all, it is important to know what a normal blood pressure looks like |
| G．If you have been very sick and have thrown up |
【推荐1】Meteorites (陨石) can offer clues about what the early solar system was like. But finding them is far from difficult. Now, some scientists are turning to drones (无人机) and machine learning to help spot freshly fallen meteorites much more efficiently. “A team of six people on a meteorite-hunting expedition can search about 200,000 square meters per day,” says Seamus Anderson, a planetary scientist in Australia.
Around 2016, Anderson began toying with the concept of using drones to take pictures of the g round to look for meteorites. That idea blossomed into a Ph.D. project. In 2022, he and his colleagues reported their first successful recovery of a meteorite spotted with a drone. They’ve since found four more meteorites at a different site. Drone-based searches are much faster than the standard search way. “You’re going from about 300 days of human effort down to about a dozen or so,” he says.
Anderson and his workmates have used drones to search for meteorites in remote parts of Western Australia and South Australia. The team is tipped off about a fall site by networks of ground-based cameras that track meteoroids flashing through the Earth’s atmosphere. The researchers have to do a series of fun but difficult work before the hunt. They pack a four-wheel drive vehicle with drone and computer equipment, battery charging stations, generators, fuel, food, camping equipment, tables, chairs and much more. The drive to the fall site can take more than a day, often on rough or nonexistent roads. Anderson says, “You hope you don’t pop a tire.”
After arriving, the team flies its primary drone at an altitude of about 20 meters. Its camera takes an image of the ground once every second, and the scientists download the data every 40 minutes or so when the drone lands to receive fresh batteries. A typical day of flying can net over 10,000 images, which are then divided digitally into 100 million or so smaller sections. Those “tiles”, each 2 meters on a side, are fed into a machine learning algorithm (算法) that has been trained to recognize meteorites based on images of real land rocks which are spray-painted black.
1. Why do the scientists study meteorites?| A．To spot the planetary course. | B．To promote machine learning. |
| C．To test the functions of drones. | D．To explore the past of solar system. |
| A．Their barriers. | B．Their causes. |
| C．Their efficiency. | D．Their concept. |
| A．Fun and light. | B．Smooth and flexible. |
| C．Difficult and unpleasant. | D．Complicated and tough. |
| A．By dividing them in half. | B．By storing them for analysis. |
| C．By combining them into a picture. | D．By linking them with a digital printer. |
【推荐2】Smile, you’re on body cam
As camera technology gets smaller and cheaper, it isn’t hard to imagine a future where we’re all filming everything all the time, in every direction.
Would that be a good thing? There are some obvious potential upsides. If people know they are on camera, especially when at work or using public services, they are surely less likely to misbehave. Another upside is that it would be harder to get away with crimes or to escape from blame for accidents.
Body-cam data could also create a legal minefield. Arguments over the truth and interpretation of police footage(影像) have already surfaced. Eventually, events not caught on camera could be treated as if they didn’t happen. Alternatively, footage could be faked or doctored (伪造) to avoid blame or do wrong to others.
Of course, some people think that if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. But most people have done something embarrassing, or even illegal, that they regret and would prefer hadn’t been caught on film. People already remove their social media feeds or avoid doing anything wrong in public — for fear of damaging their reputation.
The always-on-camera world could even threaten some of the qualities that make us human. We are natural persons who enjoy talking about other people’s private lives and while those might not be desirable behaviours, they oil the wheels of our social interactions. Once people assume they are being filmed, they are likely to keep silent.
The argument in relation to body-cam ownership is a bit like that for guns: once you go past a critical threshold(临界值), almost everyone will feel they need one as an insurance policy. We are nowhere near that point yet- but we should think hard about whether we really want to say lights, body cam, action.
1. What does the underlined word “upsides” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．advantages. | B．rules. | C．shortcomings. | D．dangers. |
| A．Police footage can show the truth. | B．Events caught on footage are treated unfairly. |
| C．Police footage could be changed on purpose. | D．Footage should not be filmed by police. |
| A．People behave well with cameras on. |
| B．People’s private lives should be respected. |
| C．Talking about others’ private lives promotes social interactions. |
| D．People keep silent before cameras when talking about themselves. |
| A．We don’t need a critical threshold. | B．We should be cautious in adopting body-cam. |
| C．We need body-cam as an insurance policy. | D．We haven’t decided whether to take action. |
【推荐3】Warming seas across the globe are endangering coral reefs, a key ecosystem that supports marine life to live and thrive. As a possible way to preserve them from extinction, scientists have recently frozen and revived groups of adult corals for the first time, according to a recent study.
Freezing biological materials, or “cryopreserving” them, refers to keeping them in a deep freeze for long periods without affecting the cell’s viability (活性), according to the Science Times website. This method usually cools them to very low temperatures, commonly to -196 ℃. Since cells would normally die at such a low temperature due to the formation of ice inside, scientists need to monitor the freezing rate and choose the freezing medium carefully.
Researchers in the US experimented with freezing pea-sized pieces of a common coral in Hawaii. After removing the microorganisms on the corals, they sealed the corals in metal containers filled with a chemical solution that partially dehydrated them and helped control ice growth. When the corals reached a temperature of around -200 ℃, the remaining water in the corals solidified into a glassy form. The corals were still alive, with their life-driving functions becoming extremely weak. After being cryopreserved for a few minutes, the researchers pulled the corals out and placed them in warm water. In two minutes, they started consuming oxygen — a sign of them staying alive.
Previously, researchers had already successfully cryopreserved coral larvae (幼虫), according to a study in 2018. However, the larvae can only be collected when corals lay eggs, which happens just a few nights each year. “That’s putting a lot of eggs in one basket, ” US marine scientist Li za Roger told Science News. This breakthrough offers more hope to the world’s corals, said Roger. However, there’s more work to be done. A few days after unfreezing, the corals became “stressed out” from the process and were killed by the bacteria they normally live in harmony with. The researchers are working on using antibiotics to help them survive for a longer period of time.
1. Why does the author mention the formation of ice inside?| A．To stress the importance of very low temperatures. |
| B．To inform a method of saving endangered coral reefs. |
| C．To introduce the challenge of keeping the cell’s viability. |
| D．To emphasize the difficulty of choosing the freezing medium. |
| A．Deformed. | B．Dewatered. | C．Deactivated. | D．Decomposed. |
| A．It is a successful practice. | B．It is an unreliable solution. |
| C．It happens occasionally every year. | D．It requires more advanced technology. |
| A．Developing new drugs. | B．Fighting against the bacteria. |
| C．Maintaining the corals’ health. | D．Expanding the collection of corals. |
【推荐1】Have you ever wished you could snuggle down under your blankets and stay there for the whole winter? Well, it turns out that humans may be able to hibernate (冬眠) like bears and other animals after all — and it could be good for us.
Hibernation is when animals go into a cave, tree hollow, or other cozy location and turn down some of the functions in their body. This helps them save energy when it's cold and there isn't much food to be found. When an animal is hibernating, its heart becomes less active and its body temperature drops. Grizzly and black bears don't eat, drink, or go to the bathroom when they're hibernating, while animals like bats and hedgehogs sometimes wake up to find food or move to another spot.
Although humans don't hibernate, scientists think we might have the ability to. Sandy Martin of the University of Colorado, says it is likely that the common ancestor of all mammals, including humans, was a hibernator. This means our bodies could still have the tools to allow us to hibernate.
One of those tools could be a natural chemical in our bodies called adenosine (腺苷), which sends messages to the brain to make mammals feel sleepy. Domenico Tupone from Oregon Health and Science University discovered that after boosting adenosine in rats' brains, their core body temperature fell — just like it falls in a hibernating animal. As Tupone pointed out, “Rats are similar to humans in terms of the internal circuitry（回路）of the brain. What we suspect is that this circuit is also present in humans, but we have lost the ability to trigger it.”
Researchers are trying to determine how to harness (利用) the power of hibernation to help humans. It's possible that hibernating could protect people from conditions such as heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and strokes. Doctors already deliberately lower people's body temperature to treat heart attacks. Hibernation could also help us lengthen life. A recent study of bats and marmots shows that when they hibernate, they age more slowly. Hibernation might even help astronauts travel further into space because they wouldn't need so much food on very long journeys.
1. What are animals like when they enter hibernation?| A．Their heartbeat slows down. | B．Their bodies function as normal. |
| C．Their body temperature rises. | D．Their breathing rate speeds up. |
| A．It stimulates the rat’s growth. | B．It helps mammals sleep. |
| C．It damages the circuitry of the brain. | D．It increases after a man gets sleepy. |
| A．Living a longer life. | B．Predicting heart disease. |
| C．Improving mental health. | D．Getting high-quality sleep. |
| A．Humans Were Hibernators Too | B．Adenosine: Secret of Hibernation |
| C．Hibernation: Solution to Human Diseases | D．Hibernating Could Be Good for Humans Too |
【推荐2】How do you refer to those people, things, and experiences that are wonderful? Are they cool? Perhaps they're rad? In the 1980s, you might have called them bad. What do all these interesting words have in common? They're all slang words. The word “slang” as an interesting beginning. It began as a word in northern England that was used to refer to the land under the control of a country. Over time, it was used to refer to the people who would advertise and sell goods in special places. Eventually, slang became the term used to describe the colorful, informal speech that these salesmen used to advertise their goods.
Language develops continuously over time. New words and new meanings for old words come out as people try to express themselves in new, creative ways, both in speaking and writing. Slang allows people to be funny, clever, different, friendly, or even secretive. Over recent years, many slang words have come from three sources: popular music, politics, and the Internet. Popular music, especially rap and hip hop, has led to many slang words as singers come up with increasingly creative ways to express themselves. For better or worse, some words have taken on new meanings.
Perhaps the biggest source of slang words, however, is the Internet. In today's world, that fact should surprise no one. Whether it's the changing nature of technology itself or a quickly-changing trend, the Internet provides ideas for new slang words more than anything else does. It also helps those words to be introduced into our minds and change our language more rapidly than ever be-fore. Thanks to the popularity of the Internet and especially social media, a new slang word can appear and be known worldwide in a matter of weeks, if not days, rather than months or years as in the past.
1. What do we know about the words mentioned in Paragraph 1?| A．They are all very common. | B．They are all different dialects. |
| C．They all have the same meaning. | D．They all refer to interesting things. |
| A．They offer new ideas to singers. |
| B．They can show users' creativity. |
| C．They are used more in speaking than in writing. |
| D．They give people new ways to express themselves. |
| A．It is fast and wide. | B．It is harmful. | C．It is long-lasting. | D．It is indirect. |
| A．The power of language | B．Where do slang words come from? |
| C．How can we correctly use slang words? | D．The influence of the Internet on slang words |
【推荐3】BEST CULTURAL FESTIVALS IN THE WORLD
If you’re planning on hitting a cultural festival this year, make sure you check out the background information about some of them.
BURNING MAN (NEVADA, USA)
Burning Man started in 1986, when Larry Harvey and Jerry James built a 8-foot-tall wooden figure and dragged it to San Francisco’s Baker Beach. They lit it on fire and thus one of the world’s strangest, wildest parties was born. It takes place from the last Sunday in August to Labor Day, with an emphasis on freedom, creativity, and self-expression.
CARNIVAL (RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL)
Arguably the biggest festival in the world, Brazil’s Carnival is widely considered “the greatest show on Earth”. The event takes place in February or March, attracting nearly 5 million people who’re baking in the heat each year. There are annual samba competitions for the celebration, and the carnival parades are usually the stuff of legend.
ICE & SNOW SCULPTURE FESTIVAL (HARBIN, CHINA)
Located in Northeast China, Harbin receives some seriously cold winter winds blowing over from Siberia. So why would any healthy person want to visit for this month-long Chinese festival, which officially starts on January 5. Because it’s home to the largest ice sculptures in the world, and the celebration takes over the entire city. Activities in the area during the festival include touring ice lantern exhibitions and swimming in the river’s cold waters.
KING’S DAY (AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS)
The rest of the world could learn a thing or two from the Netherlands about properly celebrating the national governor’s birthday. King’s Day is now officially celebrated on April 27 and includes an official government ceremony followed by sporting competitions and family-friendly celebrations. The great climate also makes for ideal conditions for a country-wide flea market you have to see to believe.
1. Which festival can people attend in August?| A．Burning Man. | B．Carnival. |
| C．Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival. | D．King’s Day. |
| A．They share religious origins. |
| B．They attract visitors most at night. |
| C．They include underwater activities. |
| D．They are held in extreme temperatures. |
| A．It is celebrated around the world. |
| B．It ends with a wonderful ceremony. |
| C．It features an ice lantern exhibition. |
| D．It is in honor of the head of the country. |
