What is it in the picture? Is it an eggplant? In fact it’s a tomato, a purple tomato. The special kind of tomato was created by making changes to its DNA. Besides the unusual color, what’s really special about the tomato is that it has very high levels of antioxidants.
Antioxidants are found naturally in plants like blueberries, blackberries and red cabbages. Scientists believe antioxidants may help people fight against some illnesses. But tomatoes naturally only have a small amount of antioxidants in them.
British scientist Cathie Martin has been working on developing purple tomatoes for years. She wanted to see if she could create tomatoes with lots of antioxidants by changing the DNA of a tomato plant.
Dr. Martin added two genes from a plant called a “snapdragon”. Soon her plants were producing small purple tomatoes with lots of antioxidants. Even better, the tomatoes remained fresh almost twice as long as normal tomatoes.
Dr. Martin and some other scientists created a company. The company tested its tomatoes on mice that were likely to get cancer. The mice who were fed the purple tomatoes lived about 30% longer than the mice who were fed common tomatoes. Though that’s good news, tests on mice don’t always show what influence on humans will be like.
In recent years, Dr. Martin and her company have been working to get the agreement to grow and sell the purple tomatoes in the US. On September 7, the US government agreed. Dr. Martin and her company plan to introduce the tomatoes at farmers markets across the US in 2023. They also hope to sell the seeds to people who want to grow their own.
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To bring in the subject. |
| B．To lead to a discussion. |
| C．To compare two vegetables. |
| D．To show the writer’s opinion. |
| A．To help British farmers. |
| B．To make tomatoes healthier. |
| C．To change the color of tomatoes. |
| D．To see how the DNA of a tomato changes. |
| A．They are much bigger. |
| B．They don’t go bad easily. |
| C．They are better for the environment. |
| D．They have a shorter growing season. |
| A．The purple tomatoes are not safe for humans to eat. |
| B．The mice got cancer after eating the purple tomatoes. |
| C．The company has decided to do tests on other animals. |
| D．The influence of the purple tomatoes on humans is not clear. |
2 . ① Going to the cinema is fun. However, in a time when technology has afforded us home video streaming services such as Netflixhy and Hulu, many people choose to stay at home to have fun. And they believe cinemas are going to have problems. Though those services might have a bad influence on the cinemas, I don’t believe the cinemas are going away anytime soon.
② As we all know, staying at home to watch films can save your money because the tickets for cinemas aren’t cheap. Besides, you can lie comfortably on a big sofa to watch films. And generally you can watch films for as long as you want. And you don’t need to worry that others will be angry when you laugh aloud.
③ But the cinema has the low lighting, the big screen, the surround sound etc. War movies especially benefit from being watched in cinemas. You can experience the war better and more closely. As well as war movies, action movies and superhero movies are also much better when seen on the big screen.
④Besides, you can enjoy the time with your friends and family when going to see a good movie. Therefore, you’d better not just watch a movie at home and then go to bed. you can hang out with your friends and share your latest news face to face based on going to see a movie together.
⑤Anyway, we are lucky enough to live in a time that benefits people who love to go out and those who love to stay at home. Netflix and other services will always be there for those who prefer to stay at home. But going to the cinema offers better experience, and it helps cinemas create more jobs. It’s a win-win. So why not see a cool movie at your local cinemas?
1. What influence do home video streaming services seem to bring?| A．Cinemas will soon disappear. |
| B．Cinema business is getting hurt. |
| C．Cinemas begin to offer better services to customers. |
| D．Films have become much funnier than before. |
| A．not all films are always interesting as well as popular |
| B．people can watch different kinds of films when free |
| C．cinemas should show different films at different times |
| D．some films are more amazing when watched in cinemas |
| A．To persuade us to join outdoor activities as often as possible. |
| B．To present the advantage of watching films at home. |
| C．To show us the reasons for the decline of theater. |
| D．To advise people to go to the theater. |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
3 . On Dec. 9, 2021, three Chinese astronauts gave a science lecture 400 kilometers above Earth. Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu, who are working abroad the Tiangong space station, showed millions of students their life there. They also did some fun science experiments. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Use it or lose it
The human body grows with the pull of Earth’s gravity. But in space, our bones and muscles don’t need to sustain our body’s weight. This will cause bone and muscle loss. NASA says that astronauts can lose up to 20 percent of their muscles after just a couple of weeks. That is dangerous because they will be too weak to work.
Astronauts have different ways to prevent this. During the lecture, Zhai introduced a special uniform Ye was wearing. It’s called a “penguin suit”. There are many elastic bands inside the suit. Wearing it, astronauts use their muscles to stretch the bands. This keeps their muscles strong.
▲ .
During another experiment, Wang made a water film. Then she added more water drops onto the film to make it a water ball. This can never happen on Earth. Why?
We need to first understand the surface tension of water. It is like a “skin” of water. The “skin” is there because water molecules are drawn to each other. Most of the time, gravity is too strong and it breaks the “skin”. But with zero gravity in space, the “skin” stays strong and the water ball will not break.
Water in space acts differently from water on Earth in other ways. For example, water will not flow downward if you try to pour it into a cup. That’s why astronauts usually drink water through straws in sealed bags.
1. What can we learn about the lecture from space?| A．It is a part of the astronauts’ daily work. |
| B．It took place in the Tiangong space station. |
| C．It is one of the astronauts’ ways to ask for help. |
| D．It took place 500 kilometers above Earth. |
| A．astronauts | B．muscles | C．bones | D．bodies |
| A．Space water is valuable | B．Space water is different |
| C．Space water is important | D．Space water is common |
| A．To raise people’s interest in space exploration. |
| B．To explain the importance of space experiments. |
| C．To ask readers to do more science experiments. |
| D．To introduce the space lecture given by Chinese astronauts. |
Located at the foot of Datang Mountain in Changping District of Beijing, the China Aviation Museum is Asia’s largest museum displaying aircraft relics. The collection has about 200 aircraft of over 100 types and more than 700 examples of weapons and equipment. You can see some research materials and participate in many aviation activities in person.
Its mark which is up to 9 meters high is the first thing you will see when you walk into the China Aviation Museum. It is a milky white pillar holding a white single-seat light fighter plane which appears to soar in flight.
The China Aviation Museum is divided into three large exhibition areas: Cavern Exhibition Hall, Open-air Exhibition Area, and Integrated Hall.
The Cavern Exhibition Hall is in the south of the mark. In this hall, you can get a good knowledge of the world’s great aviation treasures from ancient to modern aircraft and equipment. These exhibits are placed on two sides in time sequence. The right side not only exhibits aircraft which are famous in Chinese aviation history, the left side is a series of modern aircraft produced by China.
As you walk to the north from the mark, you cannot miss the Open-air Exhibition Area. The Hero Avenue runs through it and divides the area into two parts. There is an artificial lake on the left of the Hero Avenue. On the southern side of the lake planes which were used specially for great people are displayed. The right side of the Hero Avenue exhibits fighter planes, radar and helicopters.
All the way down to the Hero Avenue lies the Integrated Hall. In this hall it displays 28 real aircraft, over 550 models of various aircraft, missiles, antiaircraft artillery, radar etc, more than 200 pieces of small cultural relics, 20 audio and video demo tablets, 12 sand table scenes and 1850 pictures and photos. On the west side of the Integrated Hall lays a CS field camp, where you can have an unforgettable experience.
1. The underlined word participate in paragraph 1 means ________.| A．join | B．take | C．fill | D．hand |
| A．The Hero Avenue | B．Integrated Hall |
| C．Open-air Exhibition Area | D．Cavern Exhibition Hall |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
| A．The visitors can play CS games in the Open-air Exhibition Area. |
| B．The planes used for great people are on the southern side of the lake. |
| C．The single-seat light fighter plane held by a pillar is the museum’s mark. |
| D．There are more than 200 types of aircraft in the China Aviation Museum. |
| A. The Grand Canyon National Park of the US is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. It’s best-known for its size and depth. It shows beautiful wild flowers. | |
| B. If you like animals, you’ll like the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. The “Big Five” live there. They are the lion, the African elephant, the African leopard, the black rhinoceros and the African buffalo. | |
| C. Green Island in Taiwan is an island in the Pacific Ocean with clear blue water around. Green Island has a lot of places of interest that make it a place where people like to go: seaside, a clean white beach, seawater and hot springs. | |
| D. Fraser Island is in Queensland, Australia. It is a very important and strange island because it is completely made of sand. The sand makes unusual shapes and some of the sandy rocks have different colors. | |
| E. Windsor Castle is a famous castle in England. It is a fantastic place to visit with the family. Kids will love pretending to be a king or a queen for a day. But you can’t take any photos inside the castle. |
How much heat can dancers produce? Can the heat energy be stored or used? The SWG3 Arts Center in Glasgow, Scotland used a system called Bodyheat, which can use body heat of the dancers as a source of energy.
In the Arts center, there are some air collectors taking in the heat produced by dancers. The heat goes through pipes and travels into 12 holes which are 200 meters below the ground. These holes connect to a large underground rock that can store the heat energy like a thermal battery. When the heat energy is needed, the system then moves it to areas that need warming. The heat energy can be turned into usable electricity. People can use it to charge phones or heat water. Besides, some hot air cools in the underground and it then can be sent to cool down the people in the arts center through pipes.
When a person is just standing, he is producing about 100—150 watts of energy. When he starts dancing at a medium pace, he might be producing about 250 watts. So the harder people dance, the more heat energy they create. Data shows that the arts center has reduced the output of CO2 by 70 metric tons each year since it used Bodyheat. It has also saved a lot of money on energy bills.
During COP26 conference in Glasgow in November, Bodyheat was shown. The system stored the heat from visitors and used it to power lights and heating. Bodyheat is thought to be a really good system. It may help solve the energy problem in the UK by producing more energy, so the UK will probably not depend on buying energy from other countries.
Now, SWG3 plans to turn off their gas boilers and use Bodyheat to provide energy for all their heating. The hope is that by 2025, SWG3 will not let CO2 go into the air. The managing director of SWG3 said. “Bodyheat is a good way to deal with climate change. If we can make it work here, there’s no reason why we can’t take it to other places across Europe and other areas, not just here in Scotland and the UK.”
1. Bodyheat is a system that ______.| A．gets energy from dancers’ heat | B．helps dancers produce much heat |
| C．solves the problems of dancers | D．records how much heat dancers use |
①The heat energy is stored in a rock.
②The heat goes underground through pipes.
③The air collectors take in the heat.
④The heat energy is turned into electricity.
| A．③①④② | B．③②①④ | C．②③④① | D．②①③④ |
| A．It has helped save the energy cost greatly in the UK. |
| B．It was improved during COP26 conference in Glasgow. |
| C．It has reduced 70% of the CO2 output in the arts center. |
| D．It’s thought to be helpful in solving the UK’s energy problem. |
| A．Dancing is a Road to the World | B．Bodyheat Changes the Way of Danciny |
| C．Dancing Helps Save the Planet | D．Bodyheat Has Become a Great Power |
Kakadu is the largest national park in Australia, covering almost 20, 000 square kilometers. The large area includes amazing forests and endless wetlands, which make Kakadu a wonderland to wildlife. More importantly, Kakadu is an Aboriginal living cultural landscape.
Kakadu has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 65, 000 years. The Aborigines are believed to be the first humans in Australia. Before non-Aboriginal people arrived, about 2, 000 Aborigines had lived in the Kakadu area. Later, many indigenous people died of illness or moved off their land. Now there are only about 500 Aboriginal people living there. However, their ancestors recorded the long history through rock art in Kakadu.
Kakadu National Park has one of the world’s largest collections of Aboriginal rock art. Most paintings can be found in caves. They show objects the Aborigines used, animals they hunted and activities they did. The first rock art is thought to be the direct print of hands, and plants such as grass, onto the rock. Later, around 15, 000 years before present, humans were shown on the rock, telling the activities and stories of the Aborigines. The rock art is well-kept and has great cultural value, and that’s why Kakadu appeared on the World Heritage List in 1981.
In order to make sure the rock art is not damaged by natural processes or human activities, the Aborigines work together with Parks Australia to manage Kakadu. But cultural tours are offered in Kakaduand. Visitors are welcome there. Whether visitors choose to enjoy a boat cruise, or a guided walk through the park, they will step back in time and have an adventure tour that they will never forget.
1. In the writer’s opinion. what is more important in Kakadu?| A．Its wildlife. | B．Its large size. |
| C．Its beautiful sights. | D．Its Aboriginal culture. |
| A．old | B．poor | C．local | D．foreign |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
| A．Aborigines try their best to protect it alone. |
| B．It was damaged by human activities after 1981. |
| C．Parks Australia records visitors’ adventure tour in it. |
| D．Visitors can learn about its culture in different ways. |
The Royal Mint has planned to open a new factory at Llantrisant in South Wales next year. It will deal with electronic waste (known as e-waste) to get precious metals for coins and gold bars. The factory will be the first of its kind in the world.
The Royal Mint is a government-owned company that makes coins for the UK and lots of other countries. Most of its coins are made from cheaper metals such as copper and tin, but the Mint sometimes makes coins and medals from precious metals like gold and silver. ________. Countries and banks like to keep gold bars. They are very valuable and their price doesn’t go up or down suddenly.
Since precious metals are so valuable, the Mint always thinks about how to get them. In the past, the precious metals used by the Mint mostly came from the ground. The process always cost much and took a long time. Now the Mint plans to make use of the large amounts of e-waste that is thrown away in the UK each year. Many electronic devices use small amounts of precious metals because they are good conductors of electricity. However, it is believed that only 20% of old electronics are recycled worldwide. In addition. wasted electronics are also a kind of danger, because when e-waste is buried in rubbish dumps”, metals and chemicals can leak out and pollute the environment.
Getting precious metals from e-waste is not as easy as we think. Till now, the Mint has sent e-waste abroad to more it down to get precious metals. But the new factory will use chemical reacuons to do the same job much more quickly with far less energy. The process can get 99% of the precious metals from plastic circuit boards within a few seconds and can provide the Mint with hundreds of kilograms of gold each year.
“We will see the Royal Mint become a leader in sourced precious metals.” said Anne Jessopp, the Mint’s boss. She added that the new factory would also help the UK deal with its own e-waste rather than send it to other countries.
1. What does the new factory plan to get from e-waste?| A．Plastic boards. | B．Electronic devices. |
| C．Gold coins. | D．Precious metals. |
| A．The Mint also makes gold bars. |
| B．The Mint also sells chemical products. |
| C．The Mint also produces much e-waste. |
| D．The Mint also offers electricity worldwide. |
| A．Most old electronics are recycled worldwide. |
| B．UK will help other countries deal with e-waste. |
| C．E-waste should be buried in rubbish dumps carefully. |
| D．Chemical reactions can help get metals from e-waste effectively. |
| A．Magic Discoveries in Nature | B．New Ways of Coin Production |
| C．Precious Gains from E-waste | D．Serious Problems on the Environment |
Recently, a group of Chinese scientists took things a step further by using 3D printing technology to create realistic models of human organs. In the past, it was challenging to create a single material that could print all human organs because they are very different from each other. The Chinese research team started by using hydrogel, a soft gel-like material, as the main material.
Scientists use hydrogel and other materials for printing human organs. They have various hardness, such as our bones being the hardest and our brains being the softest. To copy the hardness of human organs, the researchers added metallic elements to the hydrogel and regulate their ratio. In this way, some models can be hard, like the bone, and some can be soft. However, the structure inside the human body is also unbelievably complicated, even in the same organ, different parts require different levels of hardness. To make sure the printing results are correct, the team used a specific technology called light-curing in the 3D printing process. A special light was placed under the printing machine, causing the gel to become strong right after it was printed.
________. They usually cannot be used for organ transplanting directly, because human cells are likely to recognize them as “enemies” and start to fight against them. These days, scientists are working on bio-printing: using 3D printing technology to build up various types of cells and materials layer by layer. After that, the printed product will be more acceptable to grow inside the human body. However, this method is in development, and experts are still on the way. They hope it will be used in the medical field within a few years, according to CNN.
These 3D printed organ models are used in various fields, such as testing medical tools and presenting operations. Compared to live organs and animal models, they are also ethically acceptable since they are man-made and printed. To some degree, they can help researchers develop new treatments more efficiently, due to their lower relative cost, commented the Alliance of Advanced Biomedical Engineering website.
1. In the past, what was the main challenge when printing human organs?| A．The cost of printing organs was too high to afford. |
| B．It was hard to use one material for different organs. |
| C．There were too many organs for researchers to print. |
| D．The printing technology was still in the development. |
| A．adding more gel in the process of printing |
| B．controlling the number of metallic elements |
| C．using light-curing technology while printing |
| D．putting a special light over the printing machine |
| A．However, the hydrogel materials are not perfect |
| B．The hydrogel materials are quite expensive to develop |
| C．Besides, the hydrogel materials have more advantages |
| D．The hydrogel materials have been applies in many ways |
| A．used as a main material | B．a hard material like metal |
| C．accepted by human bodies | D．invented by Chinese experts |
The United Nations has 6 official languages. Each of them has their own days with the aim to show the rich history and culture of each language. UNESCO first created Chinese Language Day in 2010 to celebrate Chinese as one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
The first Chinese Language Day was in 2010 on November 12th. But since 2011, it has been on the 20th of April. The date was chosen from Guyu (“Rain of Millet*”) to remember Cangjie. Cangjie is very important in ancient China who was believed to invent Chinese characters 5000 years ago. Legend* says that Cangjie had 4 eyes and he was good at observing*. He often watched the sun and the moon with his upper 2 eyes while watched mountains and rivers with the lower 2 eyes. His long-time observation inspired him to create the earliest written characters according to the shapes of things. When his work was over, it rained millet upon the earth.
This year’s Chinese Language Day was held in New York, under the theme of “Chinese Wisdom for a Green World” to provide Chinese wisdom and solutions for green and long-lasting development. World-famous writer Mr. Liu Cixin gave an online lecture to share his opinions on sustainable development and the protection of mother earth.
Chinese Language Day is an important carrier for Chinese learners, lovers, and users from all over the world to get close to Chinese. Nowadays, more than one sixth of world’s population speak Chinese as their first language— that’s more than any other population in the world! Learning Chinese is more like a key to knowing China and feeling the beauty of Chinese culture.
1. The Chinese Language Day was first created ________.| A．in 2011 | B．13 years ago |
| C．to celebrate Guyu | D．to remember Cangjie |
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
| A．The theme of this year is about how to be green in China. |
| B．Liu Cixin showed up in New York for the celebration this year. |
| C．The Chinese Language Day is important for people over the world. |
| D．More than 16 percent of world’s population are Chinese native speakers. |
| A．To tell a legend about Cangjie | B．To show the history Chinese. |
| C．To attract foreigners to come to China. | D．To introduce some facts of a special day. |
