The students stand on a pier (码头) over the Harlem River in New York City. They stare down into the brown water. Their teacher, Mr. Rodman, pulls a long rope out of the river. Fastened to the end of the rope is a metal cage and inside are oysters (牡蛎). Taking turns, the students measure all the oysters, and then compare notes. The biggest oyster is over 2 inches long, much bigger than a healthy size for its age! They also measure the level of oxygen. As more oysters grow, the water should become clearer and hold more oxygen. Also, other animals should move in.
Oysters are soft-bodied animals, and share the underwater community with plants, fish, and other life. They are food for crabs and other animals. As new oysters grow, they attach their shells to older ones，forming big reefs with many small spaces where other animals live. Oysters eat algae (藻类). If algae grow too fast，they can decrease oxygen from the water-and even fish need oxygen to breathe!
But what happened to the oysters 100years ago in New York Harbor? Before then, lots of oysters lived in these waters. They were shipped to restaurants around the world. By the early 1900s, people were eating them faster than they could grow. Pollution was pouring into the waters. The harbor became seriously polluted. Since the 1970s, new laws have helped reduce poisonous waste. Some fish started to swim through again. But oysters were still missing-until recently.
The Billion Oyster Project began in 2014 to help bring oysters back to New York Harbor. The project has recruited (招募) more than 6,500 students at more than 100 middle schools and high schools to help grow, distribute, and study the oysters.
Finally, the students put the oysters back in the cage. Mr. Rodman lowers the cage into the river. In a few months, they will check the cage again. When the oysters are big enough, they will be moved to join a healthy reef in the middle of the harbor.
1. Why do students come to the pier over the Harlem River?| A．To do research. | B．To go fishing. |
| C．To buy oysters. | D．To clean up the river. |
| A．What oysters are like. | B．How oysters get fed. |
| C．Why algae grow fast. | D．What role oysters play. |
| A．People’s love of eating oysters boosted their numbers. |
| B．More oysters than before lived in waters in the 1900s. |
| C．Polluted water was partly to blame for the missing of oysters. |
| D．New laws in the 1970s were crucial to oysters’ recovery. |
| A．Oysters Raised in New York Harbor |
| B．The Harlem River Polluted Heavily |
| C．Nature’s Helpful Crew Brought Back |
| D．Teacher Devoted to Wildlife Protection |
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【推荐1】Everybody hates rats. But in the earthquake capitals of the world-Japan, Los Angeles, Turkey-rats will soon be man's new best friends.
What happens after an earthquake? We send in rescue dogs. Why? Because they can smell people. Dogs save lives. They help rescuers to find living people. But dogs are big and they can't get into small spaces. So now a new research project is using a smaller animal to save lives: the rat.
How does it work? First，the rat is trained to smell people. When this happens, the rat's brain gives a signal. This is sent to a small radio on its back, and then the rescuers follow the radio signals. When the rat's brain activity jumps, the rescuers know that someone is alive. The rat has smelled that person.
Although there are already robots which can do this job, rats are better. Christian Linster at Cornell University-New York says, “Robots' noses don't work well when there are other smells around. Rats are good at that.” Rats can also see in the dark.They are cheaper and quicker to train than dogs, and unlike robots, they don't need electricity!
The “rat project” is not finished, but Julie Ryan of International Rescue Corps in Scotland says, “It would be fantastic. A rat could get into spaces we couldn't get to and a rat would get out if it wasn't safe.” Perhaps for the first time in history, people will be happy to see a rat in a building (but only after an earthquake, of course).
1. In the world earthquake capitals, rats will become man's best friends because they can ______.| A．take the place of man's rescue jobs |
| B．find the position of people alive who are trapped in buildings |
| C．serve as food for people alive who are trapped in buildings |
| D．get into small spaces |
| A．the noise made by the rat | B．the rat's unusual behavior |
| C．the signal sent by the radio on the rat's back | D．the smell given off by the person |
| A．rats smell better than dogs |
| B．dogs don't need to be trained to smell people |
| C．robots' sense of smell can be affected by other smells around |
| D．rats can not see in the dark |
| A．nowadays rats have replaced dogs in searching for people |
| B．the “rat project” has been completed |
| C．people are now happy to see a rat in a building |
| D．at present people still use dogs and robots in rescues |
【推荐2】The Smithsonian National Zoo has confirmed that its six-week old giant panda is a male. The finding was announced on a zoo video earlier this week. Panda-keepers showed a painting in blue made by the baby’s father, Tian Tian.
The giant panda was born on August 21. Male and female giant pandas look very similar when young, so the zoo did a genetic test to learn whether the newborn is male or not. The panda does not yet have a name. The zoo usually waits until giant pandas are 100 days old to give them a name. At the time, the zoo said the newborn was about the size of a stick of butter -about 12 centimeters long and weighing 110 grams. Now, black accounts for two-thirds of his color. And he has grown quickly. He measures about 35 centimeters long and weighs about 1.6 kilograms.
His mother Mei Xiang is much bigger, weighing about 105 kilograms. The birth was welcomed as rare and happy news during the COVID-19 health crisis, which forced the zoo to close for several months. After Mei Xiang’s pregnancy was announced in August, Internet traffic on the zoo’s popular Panda live video feed increased by 1,200 percent, zoo officials said. When the baby was born about a week later, traffic went so high that the video connection broke for many watchers. Zoo officials had to add bandwidth as a result.
“Something like this is kind of a miracle for us,” National Zoo Director Steve Monfort said at the time. “It lifts the spirits of my team and the whole world.” For now, the Panda-Camera is still the only way the public can see the pandas.
1. The purpose of the zoo doing a genetic test on the new-born panda is to ______.| A．make out its sex | B．do some research on gene |
| C．figure out who is its father | D．evaluate its health condition |
| A．He is keen on a stick of butter. |
| B．He is more white and black in color. |
| C．He was given a name the instant he was born. |
| D．He is about fifteen times the weight of its birth. |
| A．visiting the zoo in person | B．avoiding the traffic jam |
| C．watching live videos | D．making a contact with the zoo officials |
| A．How to bring up a baby panda. | B．Thrilling news of a panda’s birth. |
| C．Popular live video of a new-born panda. | D．The panda zoo paid much attention to by public. |
【推荐3】Dolphins appear to make a tasty meal for many predators (捕食性动物). And why? With an exceptionally high fat content, dolphins provide great nutrition for predators who track throughout the ocean. However, dolphins are more troublesome than it’s worth and most predators generally learn to avoid dolphin groups, including sharks. Like elephants, dolphins will circle protectively around the weak members of the group, and attack anything that approaches in a threatening manner. And they can kill sharks. Most predators take one look, and then just swim away.
Dolphins don’t worry a lot about being eaten. In general, their only real predator is the shark, and even then only the larger species of sharks dare to attack dolphins. Dolphins have evolved (进化) over a long time to be pretty tough, so in general even the most dangerous sharks stay away from them. Dolphin parts have been found in the bellies of killer whales, who will eat just about anything. In fact, dolphins and killer whales team up sometimes to catch some prey.
As with most edible (可以食用的) species today, the most dangerous threat is man. Sometimes, dolphins are killed not because they are a source of food, but because they prey on the same fish species as humans. Therefore, many fishermen have killed dolphins specifically because they think dolphins will ruin their catch.
Even more, there are some countries that eat cetaceans, including dolphins. In Japan, the meat of some dolphin species is seen as a delicacy, and can cost up to $25 a pound. In Peru and many other Latin American countries where the ocean has been largely short of fish due to overfishing or environmental conditions such as El Niño, fishermen have turned to catch dolphins and porpoises to sell in fish markets.
1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?| A．No ocean animals can attack dolphins. | B．Dolphins are not easy to deal with. |
| C．Dolphins often kill sharks. | D．Dolphins are quite low in fat. |
| A．People have ever found the evidence of killer whales eating dolphins. |
| B．Dolphins and killer whales have something in common concerning bellies. |
| C．Dolphins and killer whales join hands to hunt and feed. |
| D．Dolphins and killer whales are not similar in belly parts. |
| A．The number of dolphins is too large. |
| B．Dolphins are more delicious than other species. |
| C．Dolphins compete with humans on the same fish species. |
| D．Dolphins’ meat is the main economic source for some fishermen. |
| A．Dolphins cause overfishing. |
| B．Dolphins affect their way of living. |
| C．Dolphins are a source of delicious food. |
| D．There are not so many fish in the ocean as before. |
【推荐1】One of the problems damaging our planet is the number of things we throw away. Rubbish of all kinds is piling up in landfill and polluting our rivers and oceans. A more recent addition to the list of things we throw away is e-waste—electronic items that are broken and not recycled. Now solutions are being found to give this stuff a new life.
Many millions of tons of televisions, phones, and other electronic equipment are discarded each year, partly because it’s cheaper to replace them than fix them, but also because we lack the skills to repair them. A UN report claims the 50 million tons of e-waste produced every year will more than double to 110 million tons by 2050, making it the fastest growing waste stream in the world.
However, there's a growing trend for repair events and clubs which could be part of a solution to the growing amount of electrical and electronic junk. The BBC visited a Restart Project in London, which is one of many found around the world. One of its volunteers, Francesco Calo, said that "this project allows you to reduce waste, make the life of objects longer, and it helps people who cannot afford to get rid of items that have developed a fault. ''
As many electrical items contain valuable metals, another idea is e-waste mining. An experiment at the University of New South Wales involves extracting(提取)these materials from electrical items. It’s thought that doing this could be more profitable than traditional mining. With phones typically containing as many as 60 elements, this could be part of the solution to our appetite for new technology.
These projects make total sense — collection of e-waste for recycling are ''stagnating'' (停滞不前的) or even ''decreasing'' according to Ruediger Kuehr of the United Nations University. And in countries where there is no legislation(立法), much of it is just thrown away. However, the European Union, for example, is trying to deal with the problem by insisting that manufacturers have to make appliances longer-lasting and will have to supply spare parts for machines for up to 10 years.
1. What does the underlined word ''discarded'' in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．recycled | B．thrown away | C．dealt with | D．produced |
| A．It helps people to use their electronics longer in order to reduce waste. |
| B．It collects all kinds of electronic items that are broken. |
| C．It encourages people to get rid of items that have developed a fault. |
| D．It is one of the famous clubs in the world. |
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. | C．Neutral. | D．Critical. |
| A．Giving the rubbish a new life | B．The fastest growing waste stream |
| C．Solving the problem of e-waste | D．The importance of recycling |
【推荐2】Chinese researchers have found that the knife fish in the Yangtze River, once endangered by overfishing, is recovering thanks to a fishing ban（禁令）.
Monitoring data from different sections of the Yangtze shows that knife fish resources have been continuously recovering since 2019 when measures were taken to protect the fish, said Yang Jian, researcher with the Freshwater Fisheries Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences.
The knife fish was known as “the first delicacy in the Yangtze,” and its population saw a sharp decrease due to overfishing and damage of its natural habitat（栖息地）. China banned the productive fishing of this species in 2019 and a 10-year fishing ban took effect in the Yangtze in 2021.
Since 2014, Yang Jian and his team have been monitoring a part of the Yangtze-connected Poyang Lake, an area for the knife fish to lay eggs. Yang said that from 2019 to 2021, the average number of knife fish caught by every observation unit in the area is 67 times that recorded during the period from 2014 to 2018.
The average length and weight of knife fish collected in 2021 was 27.2 cm and 91.4 grams respectively, an average increase of 41 percent and 37.55 percent compared to those collected from 2019 to 2020.
Yang Jian added that areas inhabited by knife fish have been increasing along the Yangtze, and the species was recently found in places such as Dongting Lake and the Ganjiang River where there had been no trace of the fish for more than ten years.
1. What can we learn from the discovery of the researchers?| A．The number of the knife fish is increasing. |
| B．China did very little to protect the knife fish. |
| C．China passed a ban forbidding feeding the knife fish. |
| D．Researchers only monitor the same section of the Yangtze River. |
| A．The globe is getting much warmer. | B．The knife fish lay less eggs than before. |
| C．There is less water in the Yangtze River. | D．Overfishing and destruction of its habitat. |
| A．About 34 grams. | B．About 57 grams. | C．About 66 grams. | D．About 125 grams. |
| A．A medical report. | B．A newspaper. | C．A biology textbook. | D．A fashion magazine. |
【推荐3】More cycling, better public transport and car bans… Places all over the world are taking a range of measures to lower traffic pollution.
Paris
Paris bans cars in many historic central districts on weekends, places odd-even(单双日制的) bans on vehicles, makes public transport free during major pollution events and encourages car-sharing programs. A long section of the right bank of the river. Seine is now car-free and a monthly ban on cars has come into force along the Champs-Elysees.
The Netherlands
Politicians want to ban the sale of all petrol cars from 2025, allowing only electric of hydrogen vehicles. The new law will allow anyone who already owns a petrol car to continue using it. Most cities encourage bicycle use.
Freiburg
Freiburg in Germany has 500km of bike routes and a cheap and efficient public transport system. One town, Vauban, forbids people to park near homes and makes car-owners pay 18,000 for a space on the edge of town. In return for living without a car, people are offered cheaper housing, free public transport, and plentiful bicycle spaces.
Curitiba
The southern Brazilian city of two million people has one of the biggest and lowest-cost bus systems in the world. Nearly 70% of its people go to work by public transport and the result is pollution-free air and traffic-free streets.
Copenhagen
Copenhagen prioritizes(优先考虑) bikes over cars and now has more cycles than people. The city calculates that one mile on a bike is worth $0.42 to society, while one mile in a car is a $0.2 loss. Large parts of the Danish capital have been closed to vehicles for decades.
1. What will happen in Paris during major pollution events?| A．Historic central districts won’t allow cars in. |
| B．People can take public transport free of charge. |
| C．Car-sharing programs will raise money publicly. |
| D．People must obey the old-even traffic restrictions. |
| A．put 500km of bike routes into full use |
| B．completely forbid the use of petrol cars |
| C．only allow the sale of electric or hydrogen vehicles |
| D．own the biggest and lowest-cost bus system in the world |
| A．Park their cars around their homes. |
| B．Sell or buy parking spaces. |
| C．Occupy bicycle spaces. |
| D．Go to work by car. |
| A．Park and Curitiba. |
| B．Paris and Freiburg. |
| C．Curitiba and Copenhagen. |
| D．Freiburg and Copenhagen. |
【推荐1】Even if you are not into artificial intelligence, it is time to pay attention to ChatGPT. ChatGPT is an AI chatbot system that Open AI released to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can complete.
ChatGPT is built on top of the Open AI GPT-3 family of large language models. It lets you type natural-language clues and then offers conversational responses. It remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to form its next responses. It finds relevant information in its oceans of training data, and transforms that into texts.
You can ask it countless questions and often will get useful answers. For instance, you can ask it encyclopedic (百科知识的) questions like “Explain Newton’s laws of motion.” You can tell it “Write me a poem.” and when it does, say “Now make it more exciting.” You can ask it to write a computer program that will show you all the different ways you can arrange the letters of a word.
A few days after its launch, more than 1 million people were trying out ChatGPT. UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley estimated in February 2023 that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users in January, completing in 2 months what took TikTok about 9 months and Instagram two and a half years.
Many people fear that ChatGPT might help students cheat better. But as many other technology developments, it is not a simple black-and-white situation. Decades ago, students could copy encyclopedia entries and use computers and more recently, they have been able to use search engines and Wikipedia. ChatGPT offers new abilities for everything from helping with research to doing your homework for you.
Dustin York, an associate professor at Maryville University, hopes educators will learn to use ChatGPT as a tool and realize it can help students think critically. “Educators thought that Google, Wikipedia, and the Internet itself would ruin education, but they did not.” York said. “What worries me most are educators who may actively try to discourage the recognition of AI like ChatGPT. It is a tool, not a villain (反派).”
1. What does Paragraph 2 mainly tell us about ChatGPT?| A．Its language model. | B．Its design inspiration. | C．Its working principle. | D．Its development process. |
| A．Chat with users. | B．Perform security checks. |
| C．Write a computer program. | D．Do homework for students. |
| A．To present the creativity of AI. | B．To show the profit from ChatGPT. |
| C．To stress the popularity of ChatGPT. | D．To compare social media apps with ChatGPT. |
| A．ChatGPT — a useful AI tool | B．Advanced AI — our loyal servant |
| C．ChatGPT — advantages and disadvantages | D．A smart app — think twice before trusting it |
【推荐2】An online supermarket company—Ocado in the UK, has recently showed a robotic hand that can pick fruits and vegetables！
When an embryo (胚胎) is in the womb, the very first sense it develops is touch. The sense of touch is also the one that lasts the longest-as we get older and our vision and hearing begins to weaken, touch still remains. Humans use their touch to protect themselves, to create emotional relationships with other people, and to experience pleasure. Can you imagine life without it?
The sense of touch comes from a network of nerve endings and special touch receptors on the surface of the skin. While there are different kinds of touch receptors (感受器), they help us judge pressure, texture and vibrations (震动), They are located in our fingertips, palms, soles of our feet, face, lips and tongue.
When we touch something, the mechano—receptors perceive the touch and through a network of nerves, send signals to the brain. This informs the brain about the location of the touch, the amount of force used, and the speed at which it was used.
Several different techniques have been tried in the past to create such a robotic hand-using three fingers. But this latest design by SoMa copies the human hand. The gripper (夹具) is made up of flexible materials which grasp onto the thing based on its size and shape. Then air pressure is used to control the movement of the robotic fingers to pick objects safely and without causing damage.
The next step would be for the robot to judge how ripe the fruits and vegetables are, and apply pressure accordingly. Members of the research team are currently working on adding computerized vision to the robots, so that they can see what they are gripping.
Does all this mean robots can replace people? According to Ocado, it helps improve productivity by removing some of the repetitive tasks done by humans.
1. What is focused on in the second paragraph?| A．The important role of touch. | B．The origin of touch. |
| C．The process of transporting touch. | D．The disappearance of touch. |
| A．They can see what they're taking hold of. |
| B．They can touch humans using three fingers. |
| C．They can grasp things according to their shapes and sizes. |
| D．They can tell whether the fruits and vegetables are ripe. |
| A．Robots will replace people sooner or later. |
| B．Humans can't do repetitive work in the future. |
| C．Humans have great difficulty in improving productivity. |
| D．Robots will be good helpers to humans in repetitive tasks. |
| A．A Robotic Hand for Scientific Research | B．A Robot Made of Flexible Materials |
| C．A Sense of Touch for Robots | D．A Robotic Hand with a Gentle Touch |
【推荐3】Sleepiness and boredom lead to yawning (打哈欠), so it has long been believed that the action makes us feel more awake by stretching the muscles surrounding the lungs, or by bringing more oxygen to the blood and the brain. Yet in tests, breathing air with high levels of carbon dioxide or even pure oxygen made no difference to the frequency of yawns.
Another theory, proposed by the French physician Olivier, is that yawning improves the circulation of the fluid (液体) that surrounds the brain. As a result, we can focus better on a task. This might explain why athletes often yawn naturally before they compete.
Recently, though, a new explanation has appeared: Yawning is a way to cool the brain. Experiments led by Gordon Gallup at the University at Albany showed that people yawned far less when their head was cooled by a cold pack compared with holding a heated pack to their forehead The temperature of the brain rises when we are tired, so it is possible that yawning is a way to protect the brain from overheating due to tiredness.
But a strange thing is that when we see another person yawn, we catch it too. In other words, yawning is contagious.
How can we make sense of these different types of yawning? It’s possible that contagious yawning is something different, and might have a social purpose. Steven Palek and his colleagues at the University at Albany say that contagious yawning may be linked to our ability to understand what others want to do. If you are good at reading others’ facial expressions you are more likely to “catch” a yawn. Therefore, lonely people tend to be less affected by yawing, according to research by Atsushi Senju, now at Birkbeck, University of London.
So the simple act of yawning tursout to be surprisingly complex Has this research made you yawn yet?
1. Based on the theory of Olivier, yawning ________.| A．is caused by lack of sleep |
| B．contributes to concentration |
| C．is a way to bring more oxygen to the blood |
| D．increases the circulation of the fluid in lungs |
| A．Infectious | B．Influential |
| C． Attractive | D．Comfortable |
| A．By making comparisons. |
| B．By listing different figures. |
| C．By providing explanations. |
| D．By telling personal experiences. |
