Some children are natural-born bosses. They have a strong need to make decisions, manage their environment, and lead rather than follow. Stephen Jackson, a Year One student, “operates under the theory of what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine,” says his mother. “The other day I bought two new Star Wars light sabers (剑). Later, I saw Stephen with the two new ones while his brother was using the beat-up ones.”
“Examine the extended family, and you’ll probably find a bossy grandparent, aunt, uncle or cousin in every generation. It’s an inheritable trait,” says Russell Barkley, a professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. Other children who may not be particularly bossy can gradually gain dominance (支配地位) when they sense their parents are weak, hesitant, or in disagreement with each other.
Whether it’s inborn nature or developed character at work, too much control in the hands of the young isn’t healthy for children or the family. Fear is at the root of a lot of bossy behavior, says family psychologist John Taylor. Children, he says in his book From Defiance to Cooperation, “have secret feelings of weakness” and “a desire to feel safe.” It’s the parents’ role to provide that protection.
When a “boss child” doesn’t learn limits at home, the stage is set for a host of troubles outside the family. The overly willful and unbending child may have trouble obeying teachers or coaches, for example, or trouble keeping friends. It can be pretty lonely as the top dog if no one likes your bossy ways.
“I see more and more parents giving up their power,” says Barkley, who has studied bossy behavior for more than 30 years. “They bend too far because they don’t want to be as strict as their own parents were. But they also feel less confident about their parenting skills. Their kids, in turn, feel more anxious.”
1. Bossy children like Stephen Jackson ______.| A．make good decisions | B．show self-centeredness |
| C．lack care from others | D．have little sense of fear |
| A．inborn nature | B．developed character | C．accepted theory | D．particular environment |
| A．should give more power to their children | B．should be strict with their children |
| C．should not be so anxious about their children | D．should not set limits for their children |
| A．relaxed | B．skillful | C．hesitant | D．lonely |
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【推荐1】Giant pandas’ patches (斑块) are among the most interesting of mammals (哺乳动物): black ears and eye spots set against a white face. It has dark limbs (肢) and shoulders and a white neck and body.
Scientists have put forward several reasons for the animals’ appearance. They could be warnings. Or they could be used for hiding, communication or eye protection. To find out which ideas were correct, scientists compared the pandas’ fur to the dark and light coloring of 195 other land animals and 39 bear species, and then matched their patterns against environmental conditions and social behavior.
The scientists didn’t find a link between temperature and coat color, but they did find a connection between lighter colors and snow cover, suggesting that the giant pandas’ white markings help hide the animals in snowy environment. Meanwhile, their dark markings may help them in the forest. As a result, pandas evolved (进化) both colors.
But what about the face patches? The research shows that markings on wild animals’ heads are used to communicate and scientists suggest pandas may use their ears to signal warnings to some dangerous animals. The eye patches may help them identify one another.
1. How did the scientists study the pandas’ patches?| A．By making comparisons. | B．By raising questions. |
| C．By giving examples. | D．By listing numbers. |
| A．They change with different temperatures. |
| B．They can attract the attention of other animals. |
| C．They will disappear as time goes by. |
| D．They are a result of matching the environment. |
| A．To call on people to protect pandas. |
| B．To show people’s love for pandas. |
| C．To introduce the science behind pandas’ patches. |
| D．To explain the connection between pandas’ appearance and temperature. |
【推荐2】It seems there’s nowhere left to run from the microplastic (微塑料的) pollution. A small pilot study recently took microplastics from one of Europe’s most distant places, the French Pyrenees mountains, and found as many microplastics in the soil as you might expect from a big city like Paris.
The reason? The wind. Researchers now fear that our planet’s winds can pick up microplastics from about anywhere and transport them around the world, sometimes in large quantities. “We’d kind of expected it in a city getting blown around,” said Steve Allen from the University of Strathclyde in the UK, one member of the team. “But way up there? We expected to find some,” he said. “We didn’t expect to find so many.”
Microplastics are pieces smaller than a fifth of an inch that have broken down from larger pieces of plastic. The forces of nature don’t distinguish (区分) between materials like stones and rocks, and plastics. Wind and waves hit plastics and break them down just the same, making them into dust that can then get swept up by the gentle wind and into the atmosphere. It’s a continuing environmental concern, as more and more microplastics find their way into our food and air.
The fact that microplastics can be found in large numbers even in distant places is a sign that is has become a global pollution problem. Steve Allen and his team set up collectors 4, 500 feet up in the mountains for five months to trap plastic particles (粒子) as they fell to the Earth. The team found that an average of 365 plastic particles fell on their square meter collector daily. This included bits from plastic bags, plastic film and packaging material, among other plastic sources. Many of these materials were small enough to be breathed in without even realizing it. They’re in the air, and they’re everywhere.
1. How did Steve Allen like the finding?
| A．It was interesting. | B．It was surprising. |
| C．It was boring. | D．It was disappointing. |
| A．How the microplastics come into being. | B．How the microplastic pollution appears. |
| C．How the wind makes the pollution serious. | D．How the wind spreads the microplastics. |
| A．It is difficult to collect them. | B．They all come from big cities. |
| C．They are part of the air we breathe. | D．It is impossible to know their source. |
| A．Plastics have been found in the distant areas. |
| B．Plastics are proved to do great harm to the soil. |
| C．The microplastic pollution is worse in big cities. |
| D．Wind is carrying microplastics around the world. |
【推荐3】Just three days after being diagnosed with COVID-19 in September 2022, Joanne Hort realized she’d lost her sense of smell when she couldn’t taste some orange juice. “I panicked, and ran to the bathroom and started trying to smell my perfume, but there was nothing,” she said. Hort’s experience is now quite a common story.
Around 86 per cent of people who have had COVID- 19 experience a change in their sense of smell. For most, it’s short-lived but for one in every five, particularly the over-40s, the damage takes over six months to resolve.
This epidemic of smell loss, a condition known in medical terms as anosmia (嗅觉缺失), has focused attention back on the sense that biologist Charles Darwin once described as “of extremely slight service to mankind”. Almost 150 years after he said that, we now know that Darwin was wrong — very wrong. “Research has discovered more than 600 genes in the human body associated with the sense of smell,” explains sensory expert Professor Eugeni Roura from Australia’s University of Queensland. “That’s around three per cent of the whole genome (基因组) associated with just one system. That’s huge and shows that the sense of smell is actually extremely important to the human body.”
So how do we smell? It happens when odour molecules in the air hit nerves in the lining of the nose. These send signals to the olfactory organ (嗅觉器官), the part of the brain that interprets smell. The olfactory organ makes up around five per cent of the human brain. It’s estimated that it can discriminate between a million different odours, such as various spices, sourness, sweetness, etc. Each of us has a unique sense of smell and the strength of our unique smell is related to the genes. Other factors further determine how sensitive your sense of smell is.
1. What’s the function of paragraph 1?| A．Introducing the topic of the passage. | B．Presenting a unique statement. |
| C．Providing some background information. | D．Describing the painful life of Joanne. |
| A．Charles Darwin is a terrible biologist. |
| B．Sense of smell is unimportant to us humans. |
| C．Eugeni Roura agrees with Darwin's opinion of sense of smell. |
| D．Many genes in the human body are associated with the sense of smell. |
| A．Recognize. | B．Understand. | C．Admire. | D．Reflect. |
| A．Measures to improve the sense system of our body. |
| B．Other factors determining the sensitiveness of our sonso of smell. |
| C．The relationship between our unique smell and the genes in our body. |
| D．The olfactory organ’s huge influence on our brains and nerves of the nose. |
【推荐1】To study the behavior of wild animals, scientists routinely tag them with solar-powered GPS location trackers. But such devices’ battery capacity limits how long they operate, often bringing an early end to vital conservation work. Solar-powered trackers break easily, making them a poor choice for devices strapped to larger mammals—and they don’t work for night creatures.
So biologist Rasmus Worsoe Havmoller of the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues turned to another abundant power source: kinetic energy generated by an animal’s movements. It is also lighter and cheaper to make than its battery-powered counterparts. The design “is creative and exciting,” says Mark Hebblewhite, a habitat ecologist at the University of Montana. The proof-of-concept kinetic tracker works by means of a magnetic pendulum (摆钟) that swings around a copper coil, generating electricity as it moves.
Their kinetic tracker, which Havmoller’s team recently tested on domestic dogs, a wild pony and a European bison, could theoretically survive for the entire life span of an active animal. The dogs and bison in the study were active enough to create the energy to transmit one location signal per day for 14 days and 17 days, respectively. One of the wild pony’s trackers lasted at least 146 days but didn’t produce enough power for daily transmissions, the researchers reported in PLOS ONE. The limited power generated by the animals’ movements means the technology isn’t ready for prime time just yet, says ecologist Emily Studd of British Columbia’s Thompson Rivers University, who wasn’t involved in the study.
When researchers want to keep close tabs on animals, they often need GPS fixes more than once a day. But Studd says that “with a bit more development, this could be a game changer for wildlife animal research and monitoring.”
1. What is paragraph 1 mainly about?| A．The capacity of solar-powered GPS location trackers. |
| B．The limitations of solar-powered GPS location trackers. |
| C．The importance of conservation efforts for wild animals. |
| D．The challenges faced by scientists in tagging wild animals. |
| A．The copper coil. |
| B．The kinetic tracker. |
| C．The tagged animal. |
| D．The solar-powered tracker. |
| A．The dogs had a low level of activity. |
| B．The kinetic tracker often functions improperly. |
| C．The research needs more scientists to get involved. |
| D．High levels of activity may lead to consistent transmissions. |
| A．Trackers and Animals Can Coexist |
| B．New Wildlife Trackers Run on Animal Power |
| C．Kinetic Trackers Outperform Solar-powered Trackers |
| D．Technology Progress Contributes to Wildlife Conservation |
【推荐2】With almost all big employers in the United States now using artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in their hiring processes, the public is considering some urgent questions: How can you prevent discrimination in hiring when a machine is keeping the discrimination? What kind of methods might help?
Some 83% of employers, including 99% of Fortune 500 companies, now use some form of automated tools as part of their hiring process, said the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s ( EEOC) chair Charlotte Burrows, at a hearing on Tuesday. She said everyone needs to speak up on the debate over these technologies. “The risks are simply too high to leave this topic just to the experts.”
Last year, the EEOC issued some guidance around the use of cutting-edge hiring tools, noting many of their shortcomings. The agency found that resume( 简历) scanners which prioritize keywords and programs which evaluate a candidate’s facial expressions and speech patterns in video interviews can create discrimination. Take, for example, a video interview that analyses an applicant’s speech patterns to determine their ability to solve problems. A person with a speech problem might score low and automatically be screened out. The problem will be for the EEOC to root out discrimination or stop it from taking place.
The EEOC is considering the most appropriate ways to handle the problem. It’s agreed that inspections are necessary to ensure that the software used by companies avoids intentional or unintentional discrimination. But who would conduct those inspections is a more challenging question. Each option presents risks, Burrows pointed out. A third party may turn a blind eye to its clients, while a government-led inspection could potentially stop innovation.
In previous remarks, Burrows has noted the great potential that AI decision making tools have to improve the lives of Americans, but only when used properly. “We must work to ensure that these new technologies do not become a high-tech pathway to discrimination,” she said.
1. What does Burrows suggest people do?| A．Make their own voice heard. | B．Follow the experts’ suggestions. |
| C．Stop using AI in hiring processes. | D．Watch debates about technologies. |
| A．By scanning keywords. | B．By evaluating resumes. |
| C．By analyzing personalities. | D．By assessing speech patterns. |
| A．High expense. | B．Unfair results. |
| C．Age discrimination. | D．Innovation interruption. |
| A．Favourable. | B．Disapproving. | C．Cautious. | D．Doubtful. |
【推荐3】The pandemic-caused lockdown(封锁) threw up many trends, but one that shows no sign of dwindling(减少) is “cottagecore”.
So, what is cottagecore all about? Cottagecore is a social media trend seen as a romanticized explanation of countryside living, where cottage-dwellers can make homemade jam and live off the land.
Naomi Stuart, who documents her countryside dream on her cottagecore Instagram page, says, “Since lockdown, the trend has become far more popular with people who look for rural properties when they work from home. Gorgeous images on social media of living in the countryside have sold the dream that life out in the sticks is less stressful. And it is. I share my cottage life as I hope it will give people a little insight into what living in a small village surrounded by the countryside is like. Peace and quiet, the sounds of nature, no road noise, cows and sheep in the nearby fields, horse riders and dog walkers going by. For me, it is the perfect de-stress cure for everyday stresses and strains that we all have.”
With COVID-19 grounding most of the world, “home” has taken on a new meaning. And as we make sense of our new normal, the focus is being placed firmly on living a simple and slower life.
Cottagecore is a concept that anyone can embrace. Look at decorating your home in a traditional, old-fashioned style and take up skills such as drying flowers, spending time growing vegetables and enjoying time in the evening by candlelight with loved ones. The interpretation of cottagecore spans a variety of ideas, from slow fashion to home decor(装饰), home cooked meals, and gardening.
1. What do the underlined words “in the sticks” in paragraph 3 probably mean?| A．In the forests. | B．In the country areas. |
| C．In the unfurnished houses. | D．In the abandoned buildings. |
| A．It tends to decline during the lockdown. |
| B．It is a way to keep away from COVID-19. |
| C．It shows the good of living in the countryside. |
| D．It is interpreted as an old-fashioned way of life. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Skeptical. | C．Opposed. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．Cottagecore— a trend of a peaceful life |
| B．Cottagecore—a way to deal with Covid-19 |
| C．Cottagecore—a new lifestyle hard to adopt |
| D．Cottagecore— a necessary experience for the young |
