1 . Outdoor Football @ Braywick
Tue, Mar 8, 9: 00 P. M.
A friendly kick about, open to all levels. Different players each week. Newcomers welcome.
We book the pitch (球场) when we hit the minimum of 8 “yes” RSVPs (回复), which we need to do by the day before.
The cost is £ 4 to £ 6 each, depending on how many sign up (£ 50 for the pitch, divided by the number of players)
DONT BE LATE! We need to be there, changed and ready for kick - off at 9: 00 P. M. If the game is ever cancelled, we will let those who have already RSVP “yes” know.
LOCATION: Toby Carvery Stafferton Lodge
PLEASE BRING:
• Suitable boots for the outdoor 3G pitches. Artificial grass (AG) football boots are strongly recommended as the best option for the surface.
• Some cash — up to £ 6, as explained above.
RSVPTERMS AND CONDITIONS!
• When you RSVP “Yes”, we book a spot on the pitch for you. The organizer is charged for the pitch unless they cancel it at least 48 hours before the game.
• If you change your RSVP to “No” less than 48 hours before play or you are a “No Show” and nobody is able to take your spot, you will be asked to pay the price as if you took part.
BRINGING GUESTS:
You are more than welcome to bring 1 or 2 friends to play (but only if you add “+1” or “+2” to your RSVP, so that we don’t end up with too many players).
1. What is the deadline for the booking of the pitch?| A．Mar 5. | B．Mar 6. | C．Mar 7. | D．Mar 8. |
| A．Arrive at the pitch at 9: 00 P. M. | B．Wear firm - ground boots when playing. |
| C．Bring at least £ 6 to the pitch. | D．Inform cancellation 48 hours ahead. |
| A．You still need to pay. | B．You can join the next game for free. |
| C．You will be fined for it. | D．You will be banned from the games. |
2 . Set on a sloped plot (山坡) above Prague in the city’s Troja district, Villa Sophia has no keys, no light switches and a piano that can play by itself. The house can close the windows when it rains and read aloud materials it has selected from the Internet, based on the owners’ interests.
“The house is like a brain,” said Michaela Pankova, who shares the home with her husband, Karel Panek, and their daughters. “It makes decisions for you based on previous experience.” The home, designed by the Prague-based firm Coll Coll, is intended to go beyond automated to autonomous. “As we say, if we have to control it ourselves, it’s not smart enough,” said Mr. Panek, a computer scientist.
The couple wanted no compromises in quality and efficiency. When they couldn’t find a technology that met their standards, Mr. Panek, the brain behind his home’s brain, designed his own system. While family members go about their daily lives, the system collects data and evaluates that data in real time, then comes up with solutions and implements (实施) them. It can accept deliveries when the family isn’t he, thanks to individual door from afar and valuation of the home’s external context. It can preheat the driveway to clear snow and ice(but only if it predicts its use, saving energy otherwise)and lock the doors.
Put energy home security and convenience aside, the system’s benefit is that in developing beyond a smart home system to a smart home it free the homeowner from the burden of constant control.
Mr. Panek calls himself a technology optimist, and Mrs. Pankova said it took her some time to wram up to the system. “In the beginning I wasn’t into the idea of living in an AI house,” she said. “During the time of the preparation and later the construction, I slowly started to be open to the idea.”
1. What can be inferred about the house from Paragraph 1?| A．It is located at the foot of a hill. | B．It operates automatically. |
| C．It frees the family from wind and rain. | D．It is poorly equipped with furniture. |
| A．Coll Coll. | B．Mrs. Pankova. | C．Mr. Panek. | D．The couple’s kids. |
| A．Picking up deliveries. | B．Saving energy. |
| C．Preheating the driveway. | D．Removing the task of constant control. |
| A．Apply to. | B．Adapt to. | C．Turn to. | D．Keep to. |
3 . Jonathan Jones, 12, was overcome with emotion after his principal, who is also color blind, let him
As soon as Jones put the glasses on, he appeared to be immediately
“I was feeling joy that I could
The boy’s mother posted a(n)
She wrote “After posting the video, we’ve been touched by how many
For Jonathan, with the new glasses comes a new
| A．borrow | B．polish | C．remove | D．adjust |
| A．disappointed | B．annoyed | C．surprised | D．embarrassed |
| A．calmed down | B．broke down | C．cheered up | D．woke up |
| A．mixing | B．painting | C．changing | D．exploring |
| A．finally | B．rarely | C．constantly | D．occasionally |
| A．tension | B．sadness | C．relief | D．shame |
| A．picture | B．article | C．video | D．introduction |
| A．moved | B．shocked | C．confused | D．entertained |
| A．loaning | B．costing | C．saving | D．collecting |
| A．wealthy | B．generous | C．competent | D．ambitious |
| A．limited | B．cheap | C．multiple | D．fashionable |
| A．find | B．produce | C．fix | D．afford |
| A．match | B．equip | C．replace | D．compare |
| A．treat | B．instruct | C．help | D．accompany |
| A．future | B．view | C．situation | D．record |
4 . Schools in the US and elsewhere are announcing bans on the recently released AI — powered ChatGPT out of fear that students could use the technology to complete their assignments. However, bans may be practically impossible given how difficult it is to detect when text is composed by ChatGPT. Is it instead time to rethink how students are taught and evaluated?
Educators are starting to question what it means to assess student learning if an AI can write an essay or paper similar to, or even better than, a student would — and the teacher can’t tell the difference. Many teachers believe the time-honored learning tradition will be destroyed from the ground up by Chat GPT. The Los Angeles Unified School District in California first blocked the use of ChatGPT on networks and devices in December 2022.
However, removing technology from the classroom can mean undesirable consequences, such as creating more obstacles for students with disabilities, says Trust. Additionally, restricting the use of ChatGPT on school networks and devices can’t stop students from using ChatGPT at home and in libraries.
It is also unclear if anti-cheating software can reliably detect AI-assisted writing. OpenAI is working to develop a digital watermark that can help teachers and academics spot students who are using ChatGPT to write essays. Open AI’s attempts to watermark AI text, however, hit limits.
Instead of worrying about how ChatGPT could enable cheating, educators should ask what motivates students to cheat in the first place and work on developing relationships of trust, says Jesse Stommel at the University of Denver in Colorado.
“Talk to students really frankly about what ChatGPT’s capable of, what it’s not,” says Stommel. “Have students use it to write an essay about Jane Austen and gender dynamics, and then have them read that essay and peer review it and think about what ChatGPT gets right and wrong.”
1. What does the author suggest schools do?| A．Adjust teaching and assessment. |
| B．Meet different demands from students. |
| C．Prohibit the use of ChatGPT in classrooms. |
| D．Break with the traditional teaching method. |
| A．Dark future of ChatGPT. | B．Educators’ worrying concern. |
| C．Crisis of traditional learning. | D．Difficulty in telling AI’s writing. |
| A．Amused. | B．Hopeful. | C．Shocked. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．AI helps students tell right and wrong. |
| B．Students should write about famous writers. |
| C．Educators should guide students to use AI properly. |
| D．The trust between teachers and students is hard to form. |
5 . Polar bears are icons of the Arctic. Detailed monitoring of their populations is crucial for their conservation—but because polar bears are so difficult to find, we are missing critical data about population size. Scientists have now developed a new tool to help: DNA analysis using skin cells left in the bears’ footprints in the snow.
The scientists were inspired by the techniques that can be applied to tiny, degraded DNA samples. With these techniques, it isn’t necessary to physically capture bears, which can be stressful and dangerous for both bears and humans. Instead, the researchers can turn to the snow tracks of polar bears and look at sources of DNA left in passing—environmental DNA. "The tracks usually contain fresh cells, and the DNA is intact because of the cold’ storage’ temperature, "said Dr. Melanie Lancaster of the World Wide Fund, lead author.
The scientists collected snow from individual tracks made by Alaskan polar bears in the wild. Additional materials like hair and saliva(唾液)were sampled, confirming that the tracks provided accurate genotype(基因型) 24 wild polar bear tracks were sampled. The researchers melted and filtered the snow to collect environmental DNA, then carried out micro-satellite analysis. Although the concentrations (浓度)of DNA taken from trucks sampled in the wild were very low, 13 of the wild polar bear samples could be genotype, identifying 12 different individuals.
This technique has huge potential to inform conservation of these animals, to better understand their populations and behavior. Although the sampling has a lower success rate, ease of collection means that it can significantly expand sample sizes.
"We hope this method will be taken up by the polar bear research community, with the involvement of hunters, volunteers, and local communities, as a new way to collect information on polar bears, "said Lancaster. "We also hope the method will be expanded to other animals living in snowy environments. "
1. Why do scientists develop the new method?| A．To improve the environment in the Arctic. |
| B．To protect humans from the polar bears attack. |
| C．To find solutions to global climate change. |
| D．To gather essential data for monitoring polar bears. |
| A．Unknown. |
| B．Undamaged. |
| C．Unusual. |
| D．Unstable. |
| A．They tracked and caught polar bears in the wild. |
| B．They recorded the bears’ behaviors with cameras. |
| C．They analyzed DNA from polar bears’ snowy footprints. |
| D．They compared the polar bears’ genotype with other animals? |
| A．Disapproving. |
| B．Favorable. |
| C．Uncertain. |
| D．Suspicious. |
6 . Scientific educational toys can develop kid’s reasoning, problem-solving and critical thinking capacity and improve their hand-eye coordination (协调). But the most powerful thing is that the children will associate learning with fun. That means they will grow into adults with a thirst for knowledge and a highly developed set of skills for learning. Here are some of the best:
·Science Kit
You can guarantee two things if you buy your kids one: a lot of fun and a lot of mess. It’s a 20-piece kit that teaches the basics of chemical reactions. It’s recommended for kids aged 6 and above, with adult company. You don’t have to be a scientist, since there is an activity book with instructions for possible experiments.
·Mini Terra Kit
You don’t have to wait for the sun to come out to teach kids about the natural world. This all-inclusive kit is a miniature garden that simulates a natural environment by using a powerful LED light. It includes a terrarium jar, light-up jar lid, Micro USB charger, and all the natural ingredients to get started. It also has a simple instruction booklet that you can work through with your kids.
·Gravity Run
This classic is not just about building a structure and watching the marbles go up and down. The games are designed for kids aged 8+ to develop spatial awareness, planning, and reasoning. With 60 challenges (beginner to expert), this award-winning game can be enjoyed by all the family. The expert levels are actually quite challenging, so be prepared for some failures.
·WeRo Kit
This prize-winning robot toy features over 840 pieces, a WeRo Move Hub, Interactive Moto, and a Distance Sensor. You can build it into 5 completely different robots, meaning endless fun for the kids and even adults. Once they’ve built the character of their choice, they can programme it to perform countless tasks including walking and talking on its own.
1. What is the greatest strength of scientific educational toys?| A．Training young scientists. |
| B．Stimulating learning desire |
| C．Developing hand-eye coordination. |
| A．Science kill | B．Mini Terra Kit. |
| C．Gravity Run. | D．WeRo Kit. |
| A．It has different levels. |
| B．It is the only prize-winner. |
| C．It requires parental guidance. |
| D．It involves programming skills. |
7 . One man’s trash is another man’s treasure is absolutely the case in Turkey where garbage collectors started collecting books that have been thrown away and ended up opening a library.
It started when garbage man Durson Ipek found a bag of abandoned books when he was working and then it snowballed from there. Ipek and other garbage men started gathering the books they found on the streets that were ready for landfills (垃圾填埋地) and as their collection started to grow, so did word of mouth. Soon, local residents started donating books directly. The library was initially available only to the garbage employees and their families to use but as the collection grew, so did public interest and the library was opened to the public in 2017.
“On the one hand, there were those who were leaving these books on the streets. On the other hand, others were looking for these books,” Ankaya mayor Alper Tasdelen told CNN. “We started to discuss the idea of creating a library from these books. When everyone supported it, this project happened.”
All the books that are found are sorted and checked for condition. If they pass, they go on the shelves. Today, the library has over 6,000 books that range from fiction to nonfiction and there’s a very popular children’s section that even has a collection of comic books. An entire section is devoted to scientific research and there are also books available in English and French. The collection has grown so large that the library loans books to schools and educational programs.
“Village school teachers from all over Turkey are requesting books,” Tasdelen told CNN. The government has to hire a full-time employee to manage the library.
This library is incredibly popular. It is frequently filled with the children of the city’s workers and students from nearby schools. There is a waiting room set up for readers and chess boards for the people who visit the library. You can even enjoy a cup of tea in the waiting room.
1. What does the underlined word “snowballed” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Declined quickly. | B．Grew slowly. | C．Developed rapidly. | D．Worsened steadily. |
| A．Its great popularity. | B．Its potential significance. |
| C．Its huge collection of books. | D．Its wide variety of readers. |
| A．To raise people’s awareness of recycling. | B．To classify and check the donated books. |
| C．To expand the social influence of the library. | D．To meet the huge demand from rural teachers. |
| A．It’s an excellent place to enjoy tea. | B．It’s crowded with readers every day. |
| C．It needs to improve its management. | D．It provides a very considerate service. |
8 . This year saw the publication, in stages, of the sixth report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—a report which was depressing reading for many climate scientists, and in some ways offered a ray of hope.
Why depressing? Because the report confirmed what scientists have been saying for years: that human activity, particularly in the form of emissions (排放) of greenhouse gases, is responsible for the warming in the past few centuries, and that unless such emissions are greatly reduced, we will soon bring about our entire ecosystem’s destruction.
The report concluded that 1.5°C of global warming over the next couple of hundred years is already “baked in”. This makes the goals outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement—that nations agreed to keep warming below 2°C, and hopefully below 1.5°C-much harder to meet. Worse still, the IPCC report was followed later in the year by the COP27 summit (峰会), described by Prof Dann Mitchell, as “a complete failure, other than some commitment to loss and damage.”
And the ray of hope? The IPCC’s sixth report was broader in approach than previous studies—looking in-depth for the first time at the role played in warming by short-term greenhouse gases such as methane(甲烷), for instance.
“Reducing carbon emissions is always the best approach: stop the problem at its source,” said Mitchell. “But we also need other approaches to help with this. Methane is important, but it’s so short-lived-that’s why we haven’t been so bothered when compared with CO,.”
The IPCC working groups showed potential adaptation paths, and they are the other things we can do in terms of fighting climate change and relieving its worst effects, rather than simply reducing carbon emissions. This would include taking measures such as switching to a more plant-based diet (to reduce methane emissions), controlling population growth, reducing financial inequality and developing means by which we might remove CO, that’s already in our atmosphere, rather than simply preventing it being released.
1. Which of the following can best describe the sixth report by IPCC?| A．Seemingly contradictory. | B．Wholly promising. |
| C．Particularly hopeless. | D．Exceptionally new. |
| A．out of date. | B．to the full. |
| C．under discussion. | D．in progress |
| A．It has been long regarded as a major source of global warming. |
| B．Its role in global warming had been overlooked before the report. |
| C．Its boost to global warming is as much as other greenhouse gases. |
| D．It is considered as a new approach to reducing global warming. |
| A．2. | B．3. | C．4. | D．5. |
9 . After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art
25 March-13 August 2023
Rooms 1 to 8
Explore a period of great change when artists broke with established tradition and laid the foundations for the art of the 20th and the 21st centuries.
The decades between 1880 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 were a complex, energetic period of artistic questioning, searching, risk-taking and innovation.
The exhibition celebrates the achievements of three giants of the period: Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and follows the influences they had on younger generations of French artists and on wider circles of artists across Europe.
With over a hundred works by artists ranging from Picasso to Mondrian and a selection of sculptures by artists including Rodin and Camille Claudel, the exhibition follows the creation of a new, modern art, free of convention, taking in Expressionism and Abstraction. ‘The exhibition includes some of the most famous works of art created during these decades. Important loans come to the exhibition from institutions and private collections worldwide.
Ticket prices
Free for Members
Priority booking open for Members.
Join today to get early access to tickets, plus enjoy the exhibition in advance on 24 March.
Standard admission
On sale from 15 February
From £ 24 Monday-Friday
From £ 26 Saturday and Sunday
A maximum of six tickets can be booked in the same deal. For larger group bookings please email.
We recommend allowing 50-60 minutes for your visit to the exhibition.
1. What is the probable theme of the exhibition?| A．Convention. | B．Modern Art. |
| C．Western Art. | D．Impressionism. |
| A．£ 24. | B．£ 48. | C．£ 52. | D．£ 26. |
| A．A textbook. | B．A guidebook. |
| C．A travel journal. | D．A research report. |
10 . One aspect of the clean-energy change will happen inside buildings. Many homes and businesses burn natural gas for heating and cooking. Natural gas gives out greenhouse gases as well as other pollutants that can harm health. Gas appliances (家用电器) can be replaced by electric versions and tap into clean electricity.
Panama Bartholomy is the director of the Building Decarbonization Coalition. His group, based in Petaluma, Calif., focuses on limiting gas emissions indoors. “We assume the electric grid (输电网) is getting cleaner over time, which it is. So, we want more and more of our heating to come from electricity.”
It’s much easier to make these types of transitions when governments recommend them, says Beth Miller. She is an ecologist and consultant with Good Company. Based in Eugene, Ore., it helps companies and communities reduce their carbon footprint. Some states are already taking steps to make these changes. On September 22, for instance, California decided it would ban the sale of gas-fired space heaters and water heaters by 2030.
After homes and businesses make the switch to electric alternatives, they will be more comfortable, says Bartholomy. They will be safer and cleaner, too, he adds. Instead of a gas furnace(燃气炉), an electric heat pump could both heat and cool a home. Gas heaters and stoves won’t be pumping pollution into a home’s air. And cooks will have even more control on a modern electric cooker than on a gas stove says Bartholomy.
Getting natural gas out of your home is probably the largest positive impact you can have for the planet, Bartholomy says. “We all need to fight for a livable climate. There is no way to meet our climate goals while still burning gas in buildings. For a livable future, we must take measures to stop burning natural gas, though we know we have a long way to go.” And the bonus: It now looks like doing that should also save people a lot of money.
1. What is the clean energy change?| A．Using natural gas for heating. | B．Using natural gas to boil water. |
| C．Using electric cookers at home. | D．Using electric lights inside buildings. |
| A．Promises. | B．Plans. | C．Changes. | D．Decisions. |
| A．Homes will be safer. | B．Gas stoves will be replaced soon. |
| C．Homes’ air will have more pollutants. | D．Cooks prefer to use traditional cookers. |
| A．Clean-energy Change | B．Electricity Use |
| C．Make Use of Natural Gas | D．Save Your Money at Home |
