Kelydra Welcker has always loved the Ohio River, which flows by her hometown, Parkersburg. With a father who is a chemist and a mother who is a biologist, it seemed natural for Kelydra to learn how the world worked by doing scientific experiments.
At the age of six, Kelydra joined the Ohio River Cleanup campaign and came to realize how polluted the river was, which led her to set up her own lab later and study the chemicals in the river water. Kelydra was 15 when news broke about a chemical called C8, also known as APFO, in her town’s water supply that might cause cancer. She wondered what she could do to help.
Through repeated experiments, Kelydra created an inexpensive, reliable test for people in her town to measure the amount of APFO in water that they use at home. However, she didn’t just want to measure the problem—she wanted to solve it, so she continued to work on a way to remove APFO from the water.
Kelydra finally succeeded by using a device called an electrolytic cell (电解池), consisting of a dry cell battery and two electrodes (电极). Where did Kelydra get the high-quality electrodes for her experiment? They were her dad’s car wipers—minus the rubber attachments! Electrically charged, one of the electrodes became a stick that attracted the APFO in the polluted water. Then, Kelydra removed the stick and washed it off.
Using her invention, Kelydra developed a system people could use to treat their household drinking water. The system is being used by people in her community, and she hopes that it will be used more widely.
Kelydra went to college to study chemistry. “I hope to expand my horizons. I’m now looking at another chemical that may cause health problems.” She adds, “Technology helped create our problems and technology can help solve them. I want to be part of that effort.”
1. What can we learn about Kelydra from the first two paragraphs?A.She had a scientific mind. | B.She enjoyed exploring nature. |
C.She followed her parents’ path. | D.She wanted to practice medicine. |
A.Content. | B.Determined. | C.Grateful. | D.Relieved. |
A.To show the practical challenge. | B.To question Kelydra’s invention. |
C.To illustrate Kelydra’s creativity. | D.To explain the chemical principles. |
A.Teach chemistry in school. | B.Create new water treatments. |
C.Promote the application of chemicals. | D.Address health issues through technology. |
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【推荐1】Lens fogging (镜片起雾) has been troubling glasses wearers for as long as glasses have existed; it happens more often to those needing to wear masks (口罩). Researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland may have finally come up with a lasting solution to the problem that works whether someone is wearing a mask, or they’ve just come inside from the cold.
There’s no real mystery as to the foggy lenses. It happens when moisture (水分) in wet air, or from someone’s breath, hits a glasses lens that’s colder than said moisture, which then becomes obvious drops. It happens a lot in the winter, when people are coming in from the outside to warm places, or when people breathe out with masks, the warm, wet air goes upwards.
It’s also a problem that plagues car windows, making it hard for a driver to see. The simple solution here is to heat the windows. But adding electric heaters to glasses, which are designed to be lightweight and comfortable to wear, isn’t really a choice. So ETH Zurich researchers came up with another way to heat glasses lenses. They rely on a new type of glass coating that effectively does the same thing.
The coating is made from very thin gold in such small amounts that the added cost would be very small. The gold takes in a kind of light from the sun, causing glasses lenses to heat up to eight degrees. By doing this, it can prevent moisture in the air from forming on the glasses. The coating also cannot be seen by human eyes, not influencing people’s views. Because it’s so thin, the coating can even be applied to surfaces that are not flat.
But this method isn’t perfect. As the gold draws the energy it needs to heat lenses from the sun, the coating won’t do much good in the winter months, when it starts to get dark by late afternoon. But the researchers believe that even a small amount of electricity, like from a battery hidden away in the arms of a pair of glasses, would be enough. And with gold being one of the most valuable metals on earth and still in high demand, the researchers are looking for other metals to replace it.
1. What has annoyed glasses wearers for long?A.The need to wear masks. | B.Lenses being broken easily. |
C.Lenses often getting foggy. | D.Discomfort of wearing glasses. |
A.How to keep your glasses clear. | B.When moisture becomes drops. |
C.What weakness glasses have. | D.Why glasses get foggy. |
A.Changes. | B.Controls. | C.Troubles. | D.Measures. |
A.making the glasses reflective | B.using sunlight to heat the glasses |
C.smoothing the surface of the glasses | D.taking in the moisture on the glasses |
A.It’s limited by temperature. | B.It’s used on few surfaces. |
C.It’s not thin enough. | D.It’s energy-wasting. |
【推荐2】Many got sleepless nights after Sora amazed the world with its remarkable ability of creating videos directly from text instructions. Discussions about what the artificial intelligence model can do and make a difference continue.
Some said it could give a huge blow to traditional industries such as film and television making, looking forward to the day when a movie can be created right after a novel is put into the model. But others remain skeptical about how powerful the model can be in changing the landscape of AI application.
Developed by a group of young talent from Microsoft-backed company OpenAI, the text-to-video model can generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality.
Shen Yang, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, said, “Sora represents a revolutionary leap in the field of AI-generated content (AIGC).”
As one of the leading scholars in AI research in China, Shen leads a team that studies the philosophy of AI. Until he learned about Sora, Shen was quite satisfied with his team’s AI-generated videos. A two-minute video on the Spring Festival produced by Shen’s team have recently won many likes on social media platforms. “Compared with the new model Sora, what we used are tools of the previous generation. There’s a huge gap in between,” said Shen.
As a frequent user of AI, Shen said the technology not only helps improve his productivity, but also benefits his daily life. His wife was suffering from cancer, and he used AI to assist in finding treatment, which has remarkably prolonged her life. He even wrote an award-winning science fiction novel using A.
However, new technologies do not mean good news to everyone. Many also concern about AI models’ safety issues since related regulations are lagging behind.
Sora is going to bring changes in many fields, including short video, film and television, news, games, advertising, education, and even industrial manufacturing, according to Shen. There is still much room to improve AI models. For instance, current AI models are not capable of drawing characters accurately and quickly. Shop signs lack meaning in Sora’s demo video showing a woman walking down a street in Tokyo. But these problems are believed to be solved as models update.
1. Which of the following might replace the underlined word in Paragraph 2?A.Push. | B.Strike. |
C.Warning. | D.Bonus. |
A.All people cannot benefit from the new AI technologies. |
B.AI model’s safety isn’t concerning despite lagging legal restrictions. |
C.The AI-generated videos by Shen Yang’s team were better than those created by Sora. |
D.The text-to-video model was developed by a group of young talent from Tsinghua University. |
A.Reserved. | B.Objective. |
C.Unconcerned. | D.Approving. |
A.Sora: An AI video. | B.Video Making: AI Models. |
C.Sora: A Powerful AI Tool. | D.Video Making: Future of AI. |
【推荐3】We’ve got a list of teen scientists from a variety of fields.
Jack Andraka
Jack Andraka created a biosensor for cancer that he says is 168 times faster, 26, 667 times less expensive and 400 times more sensitive than technology nowadays.
He’s the youngest person to have spoken in front of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Taylor Wilson
Taylor Wilson was the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion (核聚变). He was inspired by The Radioactive Boy Scout, a novel in which a kid tries and fails to build a nuclear reactor.
Taylor thought he could do better. Long story short, he wanted to build a small nuclear reactor. And he did it at the age of fourteen. He received a Thiel Fellowship, which gave him $100,000 to work on his own research.
Sara Volz
Sara Volz performed experiments in which she grew algaebased on their oil output for the purpose of growing them as biofuel (生物燃料). This research is especially important as the world continues to search for a way to lessen our dependence on non-renewable energy. She won the top prize of $100,000 in the Intel Science Talent Search.
Daniel Burd
Plastic usually takes thousands of years to decompose (降解), but this high school student Daniel Burd managed to do it in three months.
In an experiment, he mixed plastic bags and a special kind of dirt together, and found that they did decompose faster. He then performed tests to find the bacteria responsible for decomposing the plastics.
His solution only produces water and small amounts of carbon dioxide. He says it could easily be used elsewhere.
1. Who designed a medical instrument?A.Sara Volz. | B.Daniel Burd. | C.Jack Andraka. | D.Taylor Wilson. |
A.A novel by a kid. | B.Plastic pollution. |
C.Energy shortage. | D.A story book. |
A.It won him a $100,000 prize. | B.It is environmentally friendly. |
C.It was completed in three months. | D.It is widely used in everyday waste. |
A.Sara Volz is the youngest person to spoken in front of the Royal of Medicine. |
B.Plastic often takes hundreds of years to decompose. |
C.Two of them have won the same amount of money to continue their research. |
D.Daniel Burd’s solution will be hard to be used in our daily life. |
A.A guidebook. | B.A magazine. |
C.An advertisement. | D.A dictionary. |
【推荐1】With 830 students aged between 12 and 8, Lochaber High School, at Fort William, is one of the largest secondary schools in the Highlands, It covers a huge area and many of the students come from small communities (社区 ) and travel up to 40 km to get into school each day, In the past, the school covered a much larger area and many students had to stay in one of the school dormitories, or-if older to live with local families, but other high schools have opened in the West Highlands, so the catchment area(责任区域) for Lochaber High, though still very large, is not as large as it used to be. Students travel into school by car, by bus, or by special minibus each day, and some come on foot or by bike. Most students live in Fort William itself, or in one of the surrounding villages.
At the end of their high school life, and after getting higher or advanced higher grade exam results, most students decide to move on to some form of further education. Some students can remain, taking specialised courses at the West Highland college, but most leave home in Lochaber and go south or east to cities, Many young people in this area feel that there are not enough opportunities here, Going to a city certainly means new friends, a whole new lifestyle, and a more exciting night life.
Even though Fort William is, in a way, small and far away from cities, as far as I am concerned, it is a great place to live. There is a real community atmosphere(氛围)here, and many people know, or are related to, many other people. There is always something to do or see in Fort William and there is no excuse for being bored! But there is one thing that is certain for everyone, that is, Highland hospitality. It is still very real, very alive! People look forward to seeing you!
1. What do most students of Lochaber High School do after graduating?A.Go abroad. | B.Enter colleges. |
C.Go to work. | D.Stay at Lochaber. |
A.To meet their old friends. | B.To live a more peaceful life. |
C.To find more opportunities. | D.To escape from reality. |
A.The boring life in Fort William. | B.The communities of Fort William. |
C.The nice living atmosphere of Fort William. | D.Something to do or see in Fort William. |
A.The quality of being honest. | B.Friendly behavior towards guests. |
C.Trust based on much experience. | D.Unfair and often painful feeling. |
【推荐2】To promote employees’ creativity, managers should consider offering a set of rewards for them to choose from, according to a new study by management experts at Rice University.
The study, co-authored by Jing Zhou, Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management and Psychology at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, is the first to systematically examine the effects of reward choice in a field experiment, which was conducted in the context of an organization-wide suggestion program.
“Organizations spend a lot of resources and make a great deal of effort in designing incentive (激励的) plans that reward the employees who exhibit creativity at work,” Zhou said. “Our results showed that the effort may be a bit misplaced. Instead of discovering one reward type that is particularly effective at promoting creativity, what is more effective is to provide the employees with the opportunity to choose from several reward types, if they submit one or more ideas that are among the top 20% most creative ones.”
Workers in the study were given a range of options: a financial reward for the individual employee or their team, a self-discretionary (自己自由决定的) reward such as getting priority to select days off, or a donation the company made to a charity selected by the employee. Those choices had positive, significant effects on the number of creative ideas employees thought up and the creativity level of those ideas.
The studies also found that rewards aimed at helping others, such as making a donation to a charity, might be especially powerful. But for less-creative employees, alternative rewards that benefit those in need might actually lower creativity and should be avoided.
The researchers also found that the choice of rewards developed creativity by raising the employees’ belief in their ability to be creative. Alternative rewards also had a powerful impact on promoting the creativity of employees who earlier had scored high on an assessment of creative personality characteristics.
1. Why was the study conducted?A.To promote employees’ creativity. |
B.To discover and reward creative employees. |
C.To set an example to other organizations. |
D.To examine the effects of different reward choices. |
A.It’s ambitious to examine the effects of reward choice. |
B.It’s necessary to confirm which reward is the most effective. |
C.It’s advisable to let employees choose their own favorite reward types. |
D.It’s inappropriate to choose from the top 20% most creative employees. |
A.Financial reward. | B.Assessment priority. |
C.Occupation promotion. | D.Charity donation. |
A.Choice of rewards promotes creativity |
B.Financial rewards can motivate employees |
C.Use resources effectively to promote creativity |
D.Effects of rewards on employees can’t be ignored |
【推荐3】The ability of music to evoke (唤起) specific, often powerful feelings is no secret to anyone who has listened to Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No.5”, Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child”, the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated”, Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” or any of the other countless compositions that have found their way onto Western playlists in the past few centuries.
The emotional effects of music are the point, of course. They are also the subject of a fast-growing field of research around the world in which scientists are exploring the nature of the many “subjective experiences” — such as joy, sadness, anxiety and calmness — that music evokes.
In a recent set of experiments, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and their colleagues sought to determine if the feelings that people experience when listening to music “show evidence of universality”. They compared and analyzed how more than 2,800 U. S. and Chinese study participants responded to 2,168 (mostly Western) samples of instrumental music. The team identified 13 distinct and very specific feelings that the Chinese and U. S. subjects shared when listening to music, despite their cultural differences.
The music used in the research, described in the paper as “the richest set of Western music samples ever studied,” included classical, pop, rock, indie, hip-hop, R&B, country, film soundtracks, and more. An additional 189 sample of traditional Chinese music was also used. In all, the researchers gathered 375,230 judgments of the samples from the study participants.
In the first experiment, subjects listened to Western music samples (each of which was just five seconds long) and reported on the specific feelings they evoked, choosing responses from a list of 28 “categories of subjective experience” provided by the researchers. Terms on the list included “victorious/heroic”, “sad/depressing”, “joyful/cheerful”, “awe-inspiring/amazing” and “dreamy”. The team then used data-driven statistical modeling to identify the 13 shared experiences. The second experiment, which included the Chinese music, involved broad evaluations of the samples by participants—such as whether the subjects liked or disliked them or found them exciting or not. A central finding of the study, the researchers write, is that specific feelings “drive the experience of music” more than the broader features.
1. Why does the author mention these songs in the first paragraph?A.Because they all have strong musical emotional effects. |
B.Because their loop playback rates are very high. |
C.Because they have all become world-renowned songs. |
D.Because they have won countless awards. |
A.Music can directly express people’s true emotions. |
B.Music should have a variety of styles. |
C.Music will easily ease people’s various emotions. |
D.Music can produce significant emotional effects. |
A.People’s taste in music. |
B.Differences in Chinese and Western Music. |
C.The universal feelings of different music. |
D.The great influence of music on people. |
A.In the first experiment, people shared their experiences with each other. |
B.In the first experiment, people chose how they felt from a list provided by the researchers. |
C.In the second experiment, people need to write down the types of songs. |
D.In the second experiment, people need to sing the songs. |