【推荐1】Currently, vegetarianism is increasingly popular, but it is still not the best option for many. If you may be contemplating removing meat from your diet but do not want to go completely meat-free,perhaps try going meat-free for just one day a week.

Sharon Palmer, a registered dietitian and author of Plant Powered for Life, discuses how "research consistently shows that plant based diets are linked with a lower risk of obesity, hypertension,heart disease ,type 2 diabetes and cancer.

She says, "Even going meatless one day a week can make a difference, as you increase all of those whole plant-foods beans, wholegrains, nuts, seeds, vegetables,fruits-and decrease more animal foods, in particular red and processed meat. A high intake of these foods has been linked with increased disease risk.”

Deciding to have a more plant-based diet also increases your intake of fiber, vitamins healthy fats and minerals. To help to do this，stocking your fridge with a variety of beans seasonable veggies , wholegrains, herbs, nuts and seeds is Palmer's secret to eating more plant-based meals.

Palmer's other recommendation is“plantifying”"your favorite dishes. "Just make your favorite dishes or meals plant-based,with a few changes. If you love Taco Tuesday, make your tacos veggie by skipping the meat and serving black beans or a vegetarian mushroom with tofu filling. If you love Indian food, skip the chicken masala and have chickpea masala instead. These will be foods you already love and are familiar with.”

Her biggest advice is to pick one day a week to follow through this and mark it on your calendar, "I love the Meatless Monday idea because people often start their best behaviour at the beginning of the week. . .However, there may be a better day of the week for you. So just plan it. " Palmer said.

1. What does the underlined words “contemplating" in Paragraph l most probably mean?

A．Stopping	B．Delaying
C．Resisting	D．Considering.

2. Why does the writer mention Sharon Palmer as a registered dietitian and author of a book?

A．To make us firmly believe Palmer’s advice.

B．To help us better understand Palmer 's theory.

C．To promote Palmer's popular book to readers

D．To let us the popularity of Palmer's advice.

3. Which of the following does Palmer advise to "plantify" your favorite dishes?

A．Trying going meat-free one day a week.

B．Stocking your fridge with whole plant foods.

C．Using vegetable filings, not meat for dumplings.

D．Planning a meatless day of the week as you like.

4. Which word best describes Palmer's advice?

A．Theoretical	B．Practical
C．Boring	D．Unrealistic.

【推荐2】Though diet and exercise are recommended as ways to improve health, new UC Riverside research in mice is the first to examine the long-lasting, combined effects of both factors when they are experienced early in life.

“Any time you go to a doctor with concerns about your weight, almost without fail, the doctor recommends that you exercise and eat less,” said researcher Marcell Cadney. “That’s why it’s surprising that most studies only look at diet or exercise separately. In this study, we wanted to include both,” he said.

The researchers found that early-life exercise led to reduced anxious behaviors and an increase in adult muscle and brain mass. When fed Western-style diets high in fat and sugar, the mice not only became fatter, but also grew into adults that preferred unhealthy food.

To obtain the findings, the researchers divided the young mice into four groups — those with access to exercise, those without access, those fed a standard, healthy diet and those who ate a Western diet. Mice started their diets immediately after weaning (断奶), and continued with them for three weeks until they reached adulthood. After an additional eight weeks of “washout”, during which all mice were housed without wheels and on a healthy diet, the researchers did a behavioral analysis and measured levels of several different hormones (激素).

One of those they measured, leptin, is produced by fat cells. It helps control body weight by increasing energy consumption and signaling that less food is required. Early-life exercise increased adult leptin levels in adult mice, regardless of the diet they ate. Previously, the research team found that eating too much fat and sugar as a child can change the microbiome (微生物群) for life, even if they later eat more healthily. Going forward, the team plans to study whether fat or sugar is more responsible for the negative effects they measured in Western-diet-fed mice.

This study offers great opportunities for health interventions in childhood habits. “Our findings may be related to understanding the potential effects of activity reductions and dietary changes associated with overweight,” said Marcell.

1. What is special about the new UCR research?

A．It finds the relation between health and diet.

B．It is the first to study the effect of exercise.

C．It takes both exercise and diet into account.

D．It gives equal importance to physical and mental health.

2. What may early-life exercise contribute to?

A．Stronger bones.	B．A peaceful mind.
C．A desire for healthy food.	D．The various microbiome for life.

3. What does the underlined word “leptin” in the last but one paragraph refer to?

A．A diet.

B．A mouse.

C．A behavior.

D．A hormone.

4. What can we learn from the last two paragraphs?

A．Early-life health habits matter.

B．It’s never too late to make a change.

C．A healthy body leads to a healthy mind.

D．Dietary habits make a difference to children’s behavior

【推荐1】It’s the middle of winter, and the prospect of warm sunny days is a long way off. For some of us, it’s the most depressing time of year, where daylight is limited and the weather is often miserable-this is when the winter blues set in.     1    

The shorter days and longer nights can make us feel down, and that can cause us to eat more and exercise less.     2    Those people who suffer this seasonal mood swing more seriously are described as having seasonal affective disorder — or SAD for short. It’s a type of depression with a seasonal pattern caused by a lack of light and is thought to affect the part of the brain that rules sleep, appetite, mood and activity levels.

Jenny Scott-Thompson is one person who was diagnosed with SAD. She said, “I struggled with periods of tiredness and sadness.     3     ” She was prescribed (开处方) light therapy, which involved sitting in front of a light box. As well as going outside during daylight hours, this is believed to help anyone who is affected by the winter gloom.

Although having more light is an obvious cure, antidepressants (抗抑郁药) can help those with more severe depression by artificially elevating the amount of serotonin (五羟色胺) in the brain. But this isn’t suitable for everyone.     4     Laura Keyes says, “It can be helpful to think about how to adapt your eating and exercise patterns to the change of season, just as this happens in nature with plants and animals adapting. ”

    5     However, accepting winter and thinking positively may energize us. Writing for the BBC Social website, Esther De La Ford asks “ What if we explored what this phase of winter has to offer us, instead of grieving (悲伤) those things that it is taking away ? ” She suggests we use this time for rest, reflection, slowing down, stillness and renewal. Maybe this might stop us longing for summer.

A．It might sound easier said than done.

B．So what can be done to lift our spirits?

C．How can you adapt to the winter season?

D．Some fear loneliness during long dark months.

E．It made me feel comfortable under a light box.

F．Many of us can try to just change our attitude.

G．It was too much for what was going on in my life.

【推荐2】It’s hard to turn down hamburgers, French fries, potato chips and all of the other junk food that seem to call out to us. However, eating too much junk food can harm your body, particularly if you’re between the ages of 10 and 19.

“Junk food shapes adolescent brains in ways that impair (损害) their ability to think, learn and remember. It can also make it harder to control impulsive (冲动的) behaviors, said Amy Reichelt, a brain and nutrition specialist at Western University, Canada. “It may even increase a teen’s risk of depression and anxiety.”

Reichelt and two other researchers reviewed more than 100 studies, including their own, about how poor food choices can impact adolescent brains. They found adolescents are more sensitive than any other age group to processed foods with a lot of fat and sugar as their brains are not yet fully formed.

Adolescent brains are still developing the ability to assess risks and control actions. The prefrontal cortex (前额皮质) is the part of the brain that tells us we shouldn’t eat chips all the time and helps us resist that urge. However, this region is the last to mature — it doesn’t fully develop until we are in our early 20s.

Meanwhile, teen brains get more buzz (兴奋) from rewards. The parts of the brain that make us feel good when we do something pleasurable — like eating tasty foods — are fully developed by the teen years.

In fact, these regions are even more sensitive when we are young. That’s because dopamine (多巴胺), a natural chemical that lifts our mood when we experience something good, is especially active in adolescent brains.

Therefore, the teen brain has two strikes against it when it comes to resisting junk food. “It has a heightened drive for rewards and reduced self-regulation,” said Reichelt.

Reichelt and her team conducted their own study using mice, whose brains develop much like our own. They discovered that the “teenage” mice that had a high-fat diet performed worse on memory tests than those eating a normal diet. Researchers said the high-fat diet may make the mice’s prefrontal cortex work less effectively.

So, what’s the best way to say no to junk food? Researchers suggest exercise. When we exercise, the brain’s reward system becomes less sensitive to food cues (线索). Exercise also triggers the body to make a protein that helps brain cells grow and boosts connections between the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions. The prefrontal cortex thus can work better to help us make wise decisions and control our impulses.

1. What is the purpose of the first two paragraphs?

A．To figure out what junk food is.

B．To explain the dangers of junk food.

C．To show how junk food affect the brain.

D．To analyze why junk food is hard to resist.

2. What makes it harder for young people to resist junk food according to the study?

A．Processed food makes them sensitive.

B．It is hard to control impulsive behaviors.

C．Their still-developing prefrontal cortex.

D．The low level of dopamine in their brains.

3. What did the study on mice prove?

A．Our mood could suffer from eating junk food.

B．High-fat diets may negatively affect our creativity.

C．The brain of a mouse is similar to that of a person’s.

D．High-fat diets can harm our ability to process information.

4. How does exercise help us according to the last paragraph?

A．It reduces the desire for junk food.

B．It activates the brain’s reward system.

C．It helps the prefrontal cortex work better with dopamine.

D．It makes the body produce a protein that controls our impulses.

5. What column of the newspaper is the article probably taken from?

A．Fashion.

B．Technology.

C．Health.

D．Entertainment.

【推荐3】A study confirmed that the cracks found on Mars’s surface last year by the Curiosity Rover are evidence of ancient lakes that likely dried up about 3.5 billion years ago. The new study provides further evidence of what the climate on the Red Planet may have been like in its ancient past.

The study, published online in Geology, proved that cracks on Mars’s surface previously photographed by Curiosity are dry mud cracks which could have only been formed when wet ground was exposed to the air. This conclusion was based on an analysis of a single area of rock known as “Old Soaker.”

Researchers used the Curiosity rover and information from its many tools including the Mars Hand Lens Imager, ChemCam Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer (LIBS) and the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) to study both the physical appearance and the chemistry of the rock, which is described as no bigger than a coffee table.

The analysis showed that cracks on the rocks were formed by exposure to air, rather than heat or the flow of water. In addition, the shape of the cracks suggests it experienced a single drying event on the planet, rather than getting wet and drying over repeatedly. The position of the cracks, closer to the center of the ancient lake rather than alongside it, also suggests that the lake levels changed often, rising and falling over time.

“The mud cracks are exciting because they help us to understand this ancient lake system,” lead study author Nathaniel Stein, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said, referring to the ancient lake system on the planet.

Scientists have known of the existence of ancient water on Mars for years. A 2015 NASA study that measured water in Mars’s atmosphere suggested that ancient oceans may once have had more water than our own Arctic Ocean. However, because the planet has less gravity and a thinner atmosphere than Earth, this water evaporated(蒸发) into space over the course of several billion years.

1. What is the Curiosity Rover?

A．An organization.	B．A scientist.
C．A planet.	D．A machine.

2. What do we know about the discovery on Mars?

A．The cracks are near the center of an ancient lake.

B．Mars was getting wet and drying more than once.

C．The lake level on Mars seldom changes over time.

D．The cracks on the rocks were formed by water flow.

3. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．Ancient water still exists on Mars now.

B．The gravity on Mars is stronger than that on Earth.

C．The atmosphere on Earth is thicker than that on Mars.

D．The ancient Arctic Ocean had more water than it has now.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Water on Mars.	B．A trip to Mars.
C．A study on Mars.	D．Cracks on Mars.

【推荐1】It is fashionable today to criticize Big Business, and there is one issue on which the many critics agree: CEO pay. We hear that CEOs are paid too much (or too much relative to workers) , or that they control others’ pay, or that their pay is insufficiently related to positive outcomes. But the more likely truth is CEO pay is largely caused by intense competition.

It is true that CEO pay has gone up---top ones may make 300 times the pay of typical workers on average, and since the mid-1970s, CEO pay for large publicly traded American corporations has, by varying estimates, gone up by about 500%. The typical CEO of a top American corporation-from the 350 largest such companies-now makes about $18.9 million a year.

While individual cases of overpayment definitely exist, in general, the determinants of CEO pay are not so mysterious and not so trapped in corruption (腐败). In fact, overall CEO compensation for the top companies rises pretty much in line with the value of those companies on the stock market.

The best model for understanding the growth of CEO pay, though, is that of limited CEO talent in a world where business opportunities for the top firms are growing rapidly. The efforts of Americans highest-earning 1 % have been one of the more dynamic elements of the global economy.

It’s not popular to say, but one reason their pay has gone up so much is that CEOs really have upped their game relative to many other workers in the U. S. economy.

Today’s CEO, at least for major American firms, must have many more skills than simply being able to “run the company.” CEOs must have a good sense of financial markets and maybe even how the company should trade in them. They also need better public relations skills than their predecessors, as the costs of even a minor slipup can cause a bad consequence. Then there’s the fact that large American companies are much more globalized than ever before, with supply chains spread across a larger number of countries. To lead in that system requires knowledge that is fairly incredible.

There is yet another trend: virtually all major American companies are becoming tech companies, one way or another. An agribusiness company, for instance, may focus on R&D in highly IT- intensive areas such as genome sequencing (基因组序列). Similarly, it is hard to do a good job running the Walt Disney Company just by picking good movie scripts and courting stars ； you also need to build a firm capable of creating significant CGI (计算机生成图像) products for cartoon movies at the highest levels of technical sophistication and with many frontier innovations along the way.

On top of all of this, major CEOs still have to do the job they have always done- which includes motivating employees, serving as an internal role model, helping to define and extend a corporate culture, understanding the internal accounting, and presenting budgets and business plans to the board. Good CEOs are some of the world’s most powerful creators and have some of the very deepest skills of understanding.

1. Which of the following has contributed to CEO pay rise?

A．The growth in the number of cooperation

B．The general pay rise with a better economy

C．Increased business opportunities for top firms

D．Close cooperation among leading economics

2. Compared with their predecessors, today’s CEOs are required to ________.

A．foster a stronger sense of teamwork

B．finance more research and development

C．establish closer ties with tech companies

D．operate more globalized companies

3. The meaning of the underlined word “slipup” (line 5, paragraph 4) is close to ________.

A．operation	B．success
C．mistake	D．promotion

4. The most suitable title for this text would be ________.

A．CEOs Are Not Overpaid	B．CEO Pay: Past and Present
C．CEOs’ Challenges of Today	D．CEO Traits: Not Easy to Define

【推荐2】I began cycling in 2004 when I was a poor student. It was dangerous, sure, but cycling is the fastest, cheapest point-to-point form of transport in Melbourne. I own a car now, but that’s just for transporting the baby or groceries.

I hate driving. So it’s been quite encouraging watching the growth in cyclist numbers over the past decade. It is estimated that 10,000-plus cyclists enter the CBD (Central Business District) each day, taking pressure off public transport. But as more people take to cycling as a mode of transport, the number of cyclists seriously injured or killed keeps climbing. And that is a sign that our infrastructure (基础设施) is still not good enough.

Melbourne was once a dream for cyclists-flat, long, wide roads, with plenty of paths along rivers. Now, cycling can be deadly, with roads dominated by cars. I have a friend who broke her back and was lucky to escape paralysis, and others with broken bones. In my time riding, I’ve been forced off the road by a truck, cut off by four-wheel drives, and told to get off the road.

These things don’t exactly happen to trams and buses, those other slow coaches on Melbourne’s roads. No—drivers reserve a particular savagery (残暴行为) for cyclists. And that’s a sign of exactly one thing: inadequate infrastructure.

We shouldn’t need to be taught how to coexist in the same narrow space. Drivers and cyclists should be kept apart. The present debate over how to minimize “dooring” is a distraction.

Dooring is not a legal problem. You cannot legislate (制定法律) it away. Designing bike paths so riders are channelled between moving cars and parked cars is deadly. All it takes is one daydreaming driver to fling open the door and you are gone. That’s what happened to the young university student James Cross.

This year, there are to be new anti-dooring lanes (车道) built on Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, where Cross died in 2010. But these lanes are not safe. Cyclists must still pass between two rows of cars.

1. What does the underlined word “that” in Paragraph 2 refer to?

A．Some people hating driving.

B．More people choosing to cycle.

C．More cyclists having accidents.

D．Distracted driving happening a lot.

2. What is the main idea of Paragraph 3?

A．Many people are bad at cycling.

B．There are many cars in Melbourne.

C．Melbourne was once very beautiful.

D．It’s dangerous to cycle in Melbourne.

3. Which was the major cause of James Cross’ death according to the author?

A．Deadly bike paths.

B．A driver’s mistake.

C．Cross’ carelessness.

D．An outdated legal system.

4. What is the purpose of the text?

A．To tell a personal story.

B．To encourage readers to cycle.

C．To criticize rude driving behavior.

D．To stress the necessity of safe bike paths.

【推荐3】Imagine that one day you live in a highly immersive (身临其境) virtual world. You can go to a virtual concert, take a trip online, view or create artworks and try on or buy digital clothing. Amid a pandemic like COVID-19, instead of seeing teachers and classmates on a video call screen, you could join them in a virtual classroom. This may help you understand the concept, metaverse.

The term metaverse refers to a shared virtual 3D world in which people can access via the Internet. Currently, most virtual spaces look more like the inside of a video game than real life. However, metaverse’s made the digital spaces more realistic by the use of virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR, 增强现实).

Metaverse was first used in Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash in 1992. The novel is about Hiro, a pizza delivery man by day and a VR superhero by night who lives in an online universe called The Metaverse. “He is in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his glasses and pulling into his earphones,” the novel says of the city that everyone pops into in VR. The idea rings in many other works, for example, in Ready Player One directed by Steven Spielberg.

In recent years, metaverse has become the latest popular word to capture the tech industry’s imagination so much that one of the best-known Internet platforms is renamed to embrace the futuristic idea-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that he changed his company’s name to Meta.

Tech companies are also dedicated to exploring metaverse-related products. Facebook has launched meeting software for companies, called Horizon Workrooms, to use with VR headsets. The headsets cost $300 or more, putting the metaverse’s most cutting-edge (尖端的) experiences out of reach for many. For users who can afford it, they can enter the virtual worlds created by different companies. Fans of metaverse see it as the next stage in the development of the Internet.

So, do you expect the coming of metaverse?

1. What can be inferred about metaverse?

A．It is a video game like real life.

B．It is a parallel universe imagined by scientists.

C．It gives us a real life in a virtual world.

D．It can protect yourself from a pandemic.

2. Why did Facebook CEO use Meta as his company’s name?

A．Metaverse has become more popular.

B．He lives in a virtual world every day.

C．Facebook is the best-known Internet platform.

D．He has accepted the idea of metaverse.