1 . OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, had some big changes in its leadership (领导层) in November. It’s not just drama (戏剧性场面) of one company—it made people worried about the development of the field as a whole.
On Nov 17, OpenAI said on its website that Sam Altman, one of its founders and CEO, would leave. However, many workers didn’t agree with this. More than 700 out of about 770 OpenAI workers signed a letter to ask the company to bring Altman back. In just five days, Altman was back as company CEO again.
OpenAI was started in 2015 by Altman and others as a non-profit (非营利性的) research organization. They didn’t want to be driven by a need to make money. Instead, they wanted to make AI tools that could help everyone. In 2019, OpenAI changed a bit. They made a part of the company start to make money for investors (投资人). But the non-profit part keeps control of the business, even going so far to fire (开除) its top boss.
The different opinions of the board (董事会) members toward AI development might be one reason for the drama. According to The New York Times, the people who fired Altman are more worried about AI and called for more rules to keep it in check. Altman, however, saw the further development of AI as more important.
The OpenAI drama “shows how fragile (脆弱的) the AI ecosystem (生态系统) is right now”, Johann Laux, an expert in the UK, told AP. The ecosystem is about all kinds of things related to AI, such as technologies and regulations (监管). They need to keep up with the fast development of AI.
Also, according to AP, many experts think it should be governments, not big tech companies, to decide on rules for AI. Enza Iannopollo from research company Forrester said to AP that Altman’s return stopped the board from trying to introduce more rules about AI’s ethical (伦理的) problems. The lesson is that companies alone can’t make AI safe for everyone, Iannopollo said.
1. OpenAI was set up in the first place to _______.| A．develop helpful AI tools | B．make big money |
| C．build an AI ecosystem | D．control the AI field |
| A．he called for more rules on AI | B．he paid less attention to the rules on AI |
| C．he was against the development of AI | D．he sided with most investors |
| A．The profit-driven part. | B．The investors. | C．The non-profit part. | D．The government. |
| A．incomplete | B．strong | C．fast-growing | D．standing still |
| A．OpenAI will stop running without Sam Altman. |
| B．Competition is common inside big companies. |
| C．AI safety depends on the joint efforts of many sides. |
| D．Altman’s return will lead OpenAI to an uncertain future. |
Walking in the city is very different from walking in the park. A small psychology study suggests urban environments can slow your step and possibly increase your mental load.
The first of the two experiments in the new study focused on people’s way of walking and cognitive load. During this trial, participants were fitted with sensors and a dozen motion control cameras were set up to watch them repeatedly walk down a 15-metre room at their natural speed. The wall opposite them showed an image of either a nature scene or a city scene.
| A．A walk through nature does the opposite, though. |
| B．They said they couldn’t concentrate properly after walking. |
| C．After each, participants were asked to rate their discomfort. |
| D．The reason is that urban environments are more distracting. |
| E．The second dug into some higher-level cognitive processes. |
| F．The study includes two experiments with two different approaches. |
Appreciating where you live
欣赏你住的地方
I’ve always thought my house is in the worst possible place. I live on the edge of town. My little community of twenty-something houses is about 800 meters away from any other community.
Every night, my parents drive home along a rather lonely, forest-lined road to get home. It’s hard for me to carpool with classmates and their parents. But yesterday, I found it is fantastic to live where I do.
Yesterday, the whole state of New Jersey, where I live, experienced a snowstorm. When I woke up in the morning, my backyard was a blanket of snow. Everything seemed so clean, as if nature had decided to cover everything and started anew. As I stood by the glass door to have a look, a family of deer galloped past my yard. It was like a scene taken out of Bambi!
But that was just the beginning. My family keeps a package of bird feed next to the porch. Every now and then, my mom leaves some feed on the porch for birds to eat. Later that day, while I was eating lunch, I noticed a flash of red in front of the window. Two of the most brilliant cardinals sat on two wooden posts outside my window, pecking away at grains of feed. Their bright red coats stood in contrast to the whiteness outside. The scene took my breath away.
When my parents came home that night, I reported to them my findings from the day.
“You know,” my mom said, “If we lived anywhere else, you wouldn’t be able to see any of this.”
She was right.
I always dreamed of living and working in a large city when I grow up. But now, I also cherish the quiet beauty that a suburban backyard offers.
1. Why did the writer use to think his house was in the worst possible place?| A．Because it was too big. | B．Because it was too small. |
| C．Because it was too far away. | D．Because it was too close to a store. |
| A．It rained heavily in the morning . | B．There was a snowstorm in the whole state. |
| C．The sky was clear and the sun was shining. | D．There was a thunderstorm in the afternoon. |
| A．He thinks his house is in the worst possible place. |
| B．He is indifferent about where he lives. |
| C．He cherishes the quiet beauty that his suburban backyard offers. |
| D．He is planning to move to a larger city. |
| A．When it was hard for them to carpool with classmates. |
| B．When their parents drove home on a lonely, forest-lined road. |
| C．When they saw a family of deer on their street. |
| D．When their mom reminded them that they would not see these things if they lived in a city. |
| A．In the forest. | B．Along the lonely road. | C．On the window. | D．Behind the community. |
Never too old to learn
活到老学到老
Very few of us become smooth in another language by studying it in high school.
I went to university and then moved across the country, had a hard job, married and raised children. I made an effort to keep the little bit of French that I learned in school, but finally realized that this was pointless. I fully realized that new languages are best learned when young, and that our abilities in that regard go down with age.
However, just before my 50th birthday, I signed up for French classes. After I was tested to see which group I belonged in, I was placed at almost the starting level. When I looked around at my first Saturday morning class, I was struck by how many of the students were learning French as a third, fourth, or even fifth language. I used to think it was impossible to learn a new language, but some people can learn them easily. I discovered that some language skills weaken as we get older.
While I’d always thought of myself as a quick learner, that was no longer the case. I learned new words very slowly. What I learned one week seemed to slip away as soon as I learned the next skill. I looked up the same words and language structures over and over again.
Now, a couple of years in, I can listen to the news in French and catch 90 percent of it on the first try, read a novel if the language is not too difficult, and hold up my end of a conversation if it doesn’t go too fast.
I can still achieve many things, who knows what?
I’ve learned so much beyond grammar and vocabulary. I’ve met people from around the world and all walks of life who have the courage to make fools of themselves in order to learn something new. I’ve been taught by patient teachers from many corners of the world, including France, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Africa.
Listening to the news as it is presented to the people of France, I have a new understanding of how something can look completely different from another view. I’ve learned that a language is not just a set of words, but a way of thinking.
But most of all, I’ve learned that it really is never too late to learn something new.
1. When did the writer first realize that new languages are best learned when young?| A．In high school. | B．In university. | C．After moving across the country. | D．After having children. |
| A．They were all beginners. |
| B．They were all older than the writer. |
| C．They were all learning French as a second language. |
| D．They were all learning French as a third, fourth, or fifth language. |
| A．It was easy for everyone. | B．It was impossible for everyone. |
| C．It was easy for some people. | D．It was impossible for the writer. |
| A．Remembering new words. | B．Understanding grammar. |
| C．Speaking with native speakers. | D．Reading scientific novels. |
| A．It is easier for young people to memorize new vocabulary. |
| B．Old people are less patient with themselves to learn new things. |
| C．Our abilities to learn a language go down with age. |
| D．Young people are more motivated to learn new languages. |
Celebrate beauty of Lantern Festival
庆祝元宵节
Many traditional Chinese festivals remind us of the aromas of special foods. As zongzi are to Dragon Boat Festival and mooncakes are to Mid-Autumn Festival, yuanxiao—sweet dumplings made of sticky rice flour—are special to Lantern Festival.
Lantern Festival falls on the 15th of the first lunar month, marking the end of the Spring Festival celebrations. This year, it falls on March 2.
Apart from the round-shaped yuanxiao, another beloved part of the celebration is the lanterns, which come in almost every possible size and shape. In old times, riddles were pasted onto them so that people could try to solve them while looking at the beauty of the lanterns. However, both tradition and handicraft have become less popular among young people.
Lantern Festival was at its height in the Tang and Song dynasties. It was a day of great fun back then. In the evening, people went into the streets with all kinds of lanterns, watching lion or dragon dances, eating yuanxiao and setting off firecrackers.
The festival also provided a chance for unmarried young girls to go out freely in search of their true love, since they weren’t normally allowed to do so. The famous Song Dynasty poet Ouyang Xiu recorded this romantic tradition with the well-known line: “Atop the willow tree hangs the moon; my date comes in the evening soon.”
1. Besides eating yuanxiao, what other tradition is popular during Lantern Festival?| A．Setting off fireworks. | B．Solving riddles on lanterns. |
| C．Watching movies. | D．Eating mooncakes. |
| A．Tang and Song. | B．Ming and Qing. | C．Qin and Han. | D．Sui and Tang. |
| A．Fun and beauty. | B．Romance and poetry. | C．Explanation and education. | D．Food and drink. |
| A．To admire their stars. | B．To become a poet. | C．To search for true love. | D．To enjoy nice food. |
| A．月上柳梢头，人约黄昏后。 | B．床前明月光，疑是地上霜。 |
| C．海上生明月，天涯共此时。 | D．明月几时有，把酒问青天。 |
6 . You may not realize it, but you do it all the time. That is, begin with the end in mind. You draw up a plan before you build a house. You read instructions before you make a cake. You create an outline before you write a paper. It’s part of life.
Let’s have a begin-with-the-end-in-mind experience by using your imagination. Find a place where you can be alone. First, clear your mind. Don’t think about anything else. Then breathe deeply, and open your brain wide. Now, let’s come to the key part of the experience. In your mind, picture someone walking toward you about half a block away. At first you can’t see who it is. As this person gets closer and closer, you suddenly realize, believe it or not, it’s you. But it’s not you today, it’s you as you’d like to be one year from now. Now think deeply. Ask yourself the following questions:
What have you done with your life over the past year? How do you feel inside? What do you look like? Has your personality grown? Remember, this is you as you would like to be one year from now.
You can go back to reality (现实) now. If you actually tried this, you probably got in touch with your deeper self. You got a feel for what’s important to you and what goals (目标) you’d like to achieve next year.
________ First, you’re at important crossroads in life, and the paths you choose now can influence you forever. Second, if you don’t decide your own future, someone else will do it for you.
As Li Ping, a middle school student in Shanghai, discovered beginning with the end in mind is a powerful way to help turn your dreams into realities:
When I feel stressed, I’ve found it really helps me. I go someplace where I can be alone, and try to see the whole picture of my dream life—and then I begin to think about what I need to get there. This method started when I was a ninth grader, and today I’m making some of those pictures in mind become a reality.
1. Why does the writer mention the examples in Paragraph 1?| A．To explain making preparations is important. |
| B．To show making preparations is a part of life. |
| C．To teach people how to make daily preparations. |
| D．To show how much one loves making preparations. |
| A．Finding a quiet place and clearing your mind. | B．Taking a deep breath and opening your mind. |
| C．Imagining a younger self walking towards you. | D．Picturing what you want to achieve in the future. |
| A．What can you do to realize your dream? |
| B．How can we start to have an end in mind? |
| C．Why is it important to have an end in mind? |
| D．Who is going to help you choose paths in life? |
| A．Having an end in mind helps you achieve a goal. |
| B．Staying alone can help you deal with your stress. |
| C．Imagining a dream life is a way to relax your mind. |
| D．Creating a plan is the easiest way to realize your dream. |
7 . It’s hard to turn down junk food. However, eating too much is bad for your body, especially if you’re between the ages of 10 and 19. “Junk food shapes teenage brains in ways that make their ability to think, learn and remember weaker. It can also make it harder to control bad behaviors. It may even up a teen’s risk of mental (精神上的) problems,” said Amy Reichelt, a scientist at Western University, Canada.
Reichelt and two other researchers reviewed more than 100 studies about how poor food choices can make a big difference to teenage brains. They found teenagers are more sensitive (敏感的) than any other age group to foods with a lot of fat and sugar, as their brains are not yet fully formed.
Teenage brains are still developing the ability to notice risks and control actions. The prefrontal cortex (前额皮质) is the part of the brain tells us we shouldn’t eat chips all the time and helps us control ourselves. However, this part doesn’t fully develop until we are in our early 20s. At the same time, teen brains get more excited from prizes. The parts of the brain that make us feel good when we do something happy—like eating tasty foods—are fully developed by the teen years.
As a result, the teen brain has two hits against it when it comes to refusing junk food. Reichelt and her team did an experiment using mice, whose brains develop much like our own. They discovered that “teenage” mice that had high-fat foods performed worse on memory tests than those eating normal foods.
So, what’s the best way to say no to junk food? The answer is exercise. When we exercise, the brain becomes less sensitive to food, besides this, it also helps our brains grow and become better able to make wise decisions.
根据材料内容选择最佳答案。
1. What does the first paragraph mainly talk about?
| A．What junk food is. | B．Why teenagers like junk food. |
| C．How junk food harms teen brains. | D．How food helps human brains develop. |
| A．Because their brains are fully developed. |
| B．Because they need energy for their development. |
| C．Because they have a low level of excitement in their brains. |
| D．Because they are more sensitive to the joy that junk food offers. |
| A．We get more excited while eating junk food. |
| B．High-fat foods could harm our ability to deal with information. |
| C．Human brains develop at a slower speed than the brains of mice. |
| D．High-fat foods could make mice behave better at performing arts. |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
| A．An instruction. | B．An interview. | C．A poem. | D．A story. |
Back in Brisbane, Australia, for the Christmas break, I found myself in a public transport dead zone. Bikeless, 7 kilometers from where I was meeting friends and unwilling to get a taxi, I decided to borrow an electric scooter. The trip took far longer than it would have by bike, mainly because of a major spill halfway there. A rock, hit at speed, is a terrible thing: weeks later, I still had the red knees of a primary schooler.
In the UK, they are legal (合法的) only on private land, but the Department for Transport is discussing how to control them on public roads and pathways, with the possibility for legalization later this year. Other cities that have e-scooter rental programs have had problems in the early period. In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo described the situation last year as messy. She has announced that the city is reducing its number of e-scooters to 15,000 and plans to create laws forbidding them from pavements (人行道). France has put into force laws limiting e-scooter speeds to 25 kilometres per hour.
Similar to dockless (无桩的) hire bicycles, e-scooters are parked on pavements and people leave them up trees or throw them into rivers. Wild treatment shortens their lifetime, which is bad for both profitability (盈利) and the environment. Analysis suggests that the average e-scooter’s lifetime is just three months.
I think e-scooters are an basic part of the effort to make city transport greener. They are seen as a key to the “last mile” problem—a potential way to reduce transport jam by rapidly getting someone to their final goal. Cars can take up 28 times the space of a person riding a bicycle. As far as the environmental effect goes, recent research suggests that e-scooters are not as green as walking or cycling, but they are still better than cars. And though there are still many reports of serious accidents, scooting is about as safe as cycling. Stephen Gossling at Lund University in Sweden has suggested we build car-free “micromobility” streets, where cyclists, pedestrians (行人) and e-scooters could share the road. He thinks this will reduce accident risks and invite more vulnerable (易受伤害的) traffic participants, such as children, to become active transport users. If more e-scooters mean fewer cars on roads, an improvement in local air quality is also a likely result. When 20 kilometers of roads in central London closed for World Car-Free Day last September, the air quality was greatly improved according to the report.
1. What does the underlined part “a major spill” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．A serious fall. | B．A sudden illness. | C．A legal reaction. | D．A terrible breakdown. |
| A．They are illegal on pavements. | B．They are already out of fashion. |
| C．They are facing more limits. | D．They are more common on private land. |
| A．They are not as safe as cycling. | B．They always cause the traffic jams. |
| C．They are as green as cycling or walking. | D．They play a big role in the “last mile” problem. |
| A．To set up more care-free days. | B．To invite more cyclists to use e-scooters. |
| C．To get vulnerable pedestrians off the road. | D．To separate cars from e-scooters on the road. |
9 . As people all over the world struggled with higher levels of stress, depression and anxiety this past year, many turned to their favorite comfort foods: ice cream, pizza, hamburgers. But studies in recent years suggest that the high-sugar and high-fat foods when we are stressed or depressed, as comforting as they may seem, are the least likely to be good for our mental (精神上的) health. Instead, whole foods such as vegetables, fruit, fish, eggs, nuts may be a better bet.
Historically, nutrition research has paid much attention to how the foods we eat influence our physical (身体上的) health, rather than our mental health, though. Over the years, large population studies have found that people who are asked to follow a Mediterranean diet for three months had greater reductions in symptoms of depression after three months compared to a control group. Public health professors around the world have started encouraging people to take and use lifestyle behaviors like exercise, sound sleep, a heart-healthy diet and avoiding smoking that may reduce inflammation (发炎) and have advantages for the brain. Individual clinicians (临床医师) are already including nutrition into their work with patients. Dr. Drew Ramsey, a clinical professor at the Columbia University, begins his meetings with new patients by exploring their diet. He asks what they eat, learns their favorite foods, and finds out if foods that he considers important for the connection are missing from their diets, such as plants, seafood.
Dr. Ramsey said he didn’t want people to think that the only factor involved in brain health is food. “Lots of people get their food exactly right, live very active lives, and still have many troubles with their mental health,” he said. But he also teaches people that food can be empowering. “We can’t control our genes,” he said. “But we can control how we eat, and that gives people actionable things that they can do to take care of their brain health on a daily basis.”
1. What do previous (以前的) nutrition studies mainly pay attention to?| A．How our diets influence our mental health. | B．How our diets influence our physical health. |
| C．How our mental health influences our diets. | D．How our physical health influences our diets. |
| A．They try to satisfy their patients’ needs. |
| B．They are questioning public health professors. |
| C．They want to prove the value of healthy diets. |
| D．They have accepted the findings of large population studies. |
| A．Some connection lives between our diets and mental health. |
| B．People can control their genes as well as how they eat. |
| C．People living active lives will not have mental problems. |
| D．Eating a healthy diet is going to cure depression. |
10 . Growing up, I thought math class was something to be endured, not enjoyed. I disliked memorizing formulas (公式) and taking tests, all for the dull goal of getting a good grade. One of my teachers told my mother that I was “slow”. But my problem wasn’t with math itself. In fact, when a topic seemed particularly interesting, I would go to the library and read more about it.
By high school, no one told me that I could become a professional mathematician. What I wanted to do then was to play college football. My goal was to get an athletic scholarship to attend a Big Ten school.
The chances of that happening were very low. But that didn’t stop my coaches from encouraging me to believe I could reach my goal, and preparing and pushing me to work for it. They made video tapes of my performances and sent them to college coaches around the country. In the end, a Big Ten school, Penn State, did offer me a scholarship.
I wish math teachers were more like football coaches. Students are influenced by more than just the quality of a lesson plan. They also react to the passion of their teachers and the engagement of their peers and they try to achieve a sense of purpose. They get advantages from detailed and exact instructions and constant feedback (反馈).
Until I got to college, I didn’t really know what mathematics was. I still thought of it as laborious (耗时费力的) calculations. Then my professor handed me a book and suggested that I should think about a particular problem. It wasn’t easy, but it was attractive. My professor kept giving me problems, and I kept chasing them, even though I couldn’t always solve them immediately. The mathematical research I was doing had little in common with what I did in my high school classrooms. Instead, it was closer to the math and logic puzzles I did on my own as a boy. It gave me the same sense of wonder and curiosity, and it rewarded creativity. I am now a Ph.D candidate (候选人) in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
1. Why did the writer think math class in school was “something to be endured” before entering college?| A．Because he wasn’t interested in math. |
| B．Because his math teachers didn’t care to push him. |
| C．Because he was too smart and talented for math class. |
| D．Because he was training hard for an athletic scholarship. |
| A．was busy looking for math problems to solve |
| B．studied on his own just as he was in high school |
| C．met with laborious calculations in his studies |
| D．began to realize what mathematics really is |
| A．Interest is the best teacher | B．Be the best — you can make it |
| C．Math, taught like football | D．Once your teacher, always your teacher |
