1 . Last year, I started the journey of being a remote product designer. The thought of a flexible (灵活的) schedule, a comfortable home office, and the escape from the
However, the
One day, I tried
This incident (事件) marked the
| A．dramatic | B．severe | C．previous | D．crowded |
| A．appealing | B．annoying | C．challenging | D．confusing |
| A．direction | B．safety | C．freedom | D．responsibility |
| A．duties | B．awards | C．problems | D．expectations |
| A．concerns | B．reliefs | C．updates | D．intentions |
| A．tied | B．inspired | C．guide | D．introduced |
| A．reply | B．relax | C．react | D．read |
| A．adapted | B．limited | C．related | D．addicted |
| A．counted | B．repeated | C．watched | D．followed |
| A．tidying up | B．putting aside | C．fitting into | D．getting back |
| A．lazy | B．tired | C．rude | D．mad |
| A．mix | B．success | C．balance | D．value |
| A．distance | B．memory | C．beginning | D．training |
| A．promise | B．excuse | C．answer | D．change |
| A．maintain | B．ease | C．remove | D．regain |
2 . Each year, the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest—at area about the size of Iceland — because of cutting down trees. At that rate, some scientists predict the world’s forests could disappear in 100 to 200 years. To handle it, now researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have pioneered a technique to generate wood-like plant materials sin a lab. This makes it possible to “grow” a wooden product without cutting down trees.
In the lab, the researchers first take cells from the leaves of a young plant. These cells are cultured in liquid medium for two days, then moved to another medium which contains nutrients and two different hormones (激素). By adjusting the bormone levels, the researchers can tune the physical and mechanical qualities of the cells: New the researchers use a 3D printer to shape the cell-based material, and let the shaped material grow in the dark for three months. Finally, the researchers dehydrate (使脱水) the material, and then evaluate its qualities.
They found that lower bormone levels lead to plant materials with more rounded, open cells of lower density (密度), while higher hormone levels contribute to the growth of plant materials with smaller but denser cell structures. Lower or higher density of cell structures makes the plant materials softer or more rigid, helping the materials grow with different wood-like characteristics. What’s more, it’s to be noted that the research process is about 100 times faster than the time it takes for a tree to grow to maturity!
Research of this kind is ground-breaking. “This work demonstrates the great power of a technology,” says lead researcher, Jeffrey Berenstab. “The real opportunity here is to be at its best with what you use and how you use it. This technology can be tuned to meet the requirements you give about shapes, sizes, rigidity, and forms. It enables us to grow’ any wooden product in a way that traditional agricultural methods can’t achieve.”
1. Why do researchers at MIT perform the research?| A．To grow more trees. | B．To reduce tree losses. |
| C．To protect plant diversity. | D．To predict forest disappearance. |
| A．Its scientific origins. | B．Its theoretical basis |
| C．Its usual difficulties. | D．Its main processes |
| A．They are better than naturally grown plants. |
| B．Their growth speed determines their characteristics. |
| C．The hormone levels affect their rigidity. |
| D．Their cells’ shapes mainly rely on their density. |
| A．It uses new biological materials in lab experiments. |
| B．It has a significant impact on worldwide plant growth. |
| C．It revolutionizes the way to make wooden products. |
| D．It challenges traditional scientific theories in forestry. |
3 . I was driving on the freeway when I saw the sign. It
Suddenly, I
A Russian man came up to my window and said hello. Before I could say too much, he and his three sons were already
It was past midnight and they easily could have decided that AAA would
At first, I was a little
After nearly 45 minutes of hard work when my car was finally free, they didn’t even
| A．warned | B．encouraged | C．promised | D．taught |
| A．slow | B．average | C．normal | D．top |
| A．missed out | B．came upon | C．looked for | D．pulled off |
| A．removing | B．burning | C．destroying | D．breaking |
| A．properly | B．casually | C．creatively | D．comfortably |
| A．proposing | B．continuing | C．starting | D．claiming |
| A．urged | B．joined | C．stopped | D．left |
| A．handle | B．improve | C．revise | D．clarify |
| A．preparations | B．appeals | C．impressions | D．attempts |
| A．typical | B．unique | C．different | D．difficult |
| A．approached | B．forgiven | C．protected | D．freed |
| A．concerned | B．cautious | C．awkward | D．confused |
| A．analysis | B．dynamic | C．definition | D．truth |
| A．play | B．walk | C．stay | D．glance |
| A．moved | B．recovered | C．dashed | D．slid |
4 . A food-tech startup in New York has developed technology to preserve food for months without a fridge and artificial preservatives(人工防腐剂). To cut down millions of tons of food waste worldwide, it also may transform agriculture in developing countries where refrigerated shipping containers and trains are rare or expensive.
Have you ever wondered why we don’t devote more farmland to growing fruits and vegetables since they’re much more nutritious? The reason is food’s spoilage(变质). Farther Farms’ unique CO₂ pasteurization(巴氏杀菌法) technology is a simple fix that can spin out packaged foods ’shelf life at room temperature. Their first choice was French fries which would normally need to be frozen to survive trips between production facilities and supermarkets. They can’t be pasteurized like other goods. Instead, Farther Farms puts them into special packaging and fills it with specially made CO₂, preventing damage from bacteria.
Growing up in India in a farming family, co-founder Vipul Saran developed Farther Farms as a student at Cornell University. His familiarity with the costs and the trouble of moving agricultural products from farms into towns and cities before they spoiled influenced his development of the technology.
“The whole goal is, basically, how we can look into new food processing technologies that can allow us to create value-added food products from these easily spoilt food products, which avoids the need and the dependency on freezing as much as possible,” Saran said.
Rather than packaging apples or potatoes in a plastic bag, the Farther Farms tech is ideal for value-added food products, not only because they require packaging of some kind, but also because they earn farmers more money. Rather than needing to transport them by refrigerated boxcar or shipping container, Farther Farms would ship them at any temperature, thus allowing food producers of all kinds to reach the maximal number of markets.
1. What can be learned about the new technology?| A．It improves food safety standards. | B．It’s used for reducing food waste. |
| C．It strengthens the cold chain in India. | D．It simplifies the food production process. |
| A．Check. | B．Limit. | C．Lengthen. | D．Damage. |
| A．By heating the food before packaging. | B．By freezing the food as early as possible. |
| C．By recycling special packaging materials. | D．By filling food packaging with special CO₂. |
| A．It reduces the storm damage to their crops. |
| B．It expands the market and increases their income. |
| C．It offers them more farmland available for food production. |
| D．It makes them gain more professional agricultural knowledge. |
5 . When you have to cancel your Thanksgiving plans due to the spread of the COVID-19, you may find yourself craving companionship as much as that pumpkin pie. That’s because parts of the brain respond to loneliness much like they react to hunger, according to a study in Nature Neuroscience.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scanned the brains of 40 healthy, social young adults after 10 hours of either fasting (禁食) or social isolation (隔离). They found that after being alone, participants’ neurological responses to social signals were similar to hungry people reacting to food — that is, certain areas of the brain linked to desire were turned on to start working.
For an isolated person, a picture of people laughing together caused the same areas of the brain to light up as when a hungry person looked at a big plate of pasta.
“Just like hunger is an unpleasant sensation that motivates us to seek out food and thirst motivates us to seek out water, loneliness is a biological need that motivates us to reconnect to others,” Holt-Lunstad told Insider.
Researchers were surprised to find that people who were prevented from socializing became much more focused on that need, and less reactive to hunger. As their loneliness increased, they became less responsive to images of food.
These latest findings suggest that the relationship between food and loneliness might be more complicated than we thought, despite the popular opinion of stress-eating to cope with social isolation. More research is needed to understand the complex ways people deal with loneliness.
Studies like this can help scientists understand how the brain processes loneliness, and possibly reduce the negative consequences. However, although loneliness may be similar to hunger, fixing it isn’t as easy as serving someone a hearty dinner because people are unique and they need varying levels of social interactions to meet their needs.
1. The underlined word “craving” in the first paragraph can be replaced by .| A．avoiding | B．desiring | C．preferring | D．ignoring |
| A．to find their brain responses to both loneliness and hunger |
| B．to provide explanations for their feeling lonely and hungry |
| C．to find how loneliness can have a negative impact on health |
| D．after they have been hungry and socially isolated for 10 hours |
| A．Hunger is an unpleasant sensation. |
| B．Hunger and thirst motivate us to feed ourselves. |
| C．Socializing is supposed to be basic human need as it is. |
| D．The effects of loneliness on health are comparable to other factors. |
| A．Loneliness may be fixed just as hunger is satisfied. |
| B．Situations of loneliness are complicated and hard to cope with. |
| C．Scientists have understood how the brain processes loneliness. |
| D．Loneliness is such a common and serious problem that we all have to suffer. |
6 . A new study in the journal of Tourism Analysis shows frequent travelers are happier with their lives than people who don’t travel at all.
Chun-Chu Chen, an assistant professor at Washington State University, conducted a survey to find out why some individuals travel more frequently than others and whether or not travel and tourism experiences have a lasting effect on happiness and wellness.
Additionally, participants in the survey who reported regularly traveling at least 75 miles away from home also reported being about 7% happier when asked about their overall well-being than those who reported traveling very rarely or not at all. The results of his analysis show individuals who pay more attention to tourism-related information and frequently discuss their travel plans with friends are more likely to go on regular vacations than those who aren’t constantly thinking about their next trip.
“While things like work, family life and friends play a bigger role in overall reports of well-being, the accumulation (积累) of travel experiences does appear to have a small yet noticeable effect on self-reported life satisfaction,” Chen said.
Participants in the study were asked about the importance of travel in their lives, how much time they spent looking into and planning future vacations, and how many trips they went on over a year. They were also asked about their life satisfaction. Out of the 500 survey participants, a little over half reported going on more than four pleasure trips a year. Only 7% of respondents did not take any vacations.
As travel restriction (限制) due to COVID-19 pandemic begin to relax in the future, the research could have important effects on both tourists and the tourism industry. Based on the results of the study, Chen said travel companies, resorts and even airlines, could launch social media campaigns, such as creating signs about the scientific benefits of vacation, to spark people’s interest in discussing their opinions about travel.
1. What is the benefit of frequent travelling according to the study?| A．Getting more tourism information. | B．Making more friends. |
| C．Bettering tourism industry. | D．Improving one’s well-being. |
| A．Why the professor carried out the study. |
| B．How the participants felt about the survey. |
| C．What the participants were interviewed about. |
| D．What the participants planned to do in the future. |
| A．Tourism industry should improve their service. |
| B．The results of the study will benefit tourism industry. |
| C．COVID-19 pandemic will be more serious in the future. |
| D．People will live a happier life after COVID-19 pandemic. |
| A．Travel more and be happier |
| B．Make good use of travelling |
| C．Prepare for the tourism development |
| D．Make travel plans with friends |
7 . Have you ever imagined an insect-inspired robot, which weighs less than a gram, could one day help out in surgery (外科手术)?
Scientists have designed this small, “insect-bot” called mCLARI that can control and even change its body shape as it travels in different environments to fit through gaps. It’s 2 centimeters long, weighs less than 0.97 grams and can travel at a speed of 6 centimeters per second.It’s the smaller, faster replacement to CLARI, which was designed by the same team.
“Because of the robot’s small size and ability to change shape, we expect usage of this technology in four important areas,” the lead author Kaushik Jayaram said. These include disaster (灾害) response , check on high-value objects, environmental monitoring and medical treatment.
“In the long term, we hope such robots will be used more widely in moving through human bodies and performing surgeries that can’t be easily done at present,” Jayaram said. With mCLARI, Jayaram’s team is moving closer to creating robots that can fit in different environments—just like the insects they’re inspired by.
The mCLARI robot has four legs and can move in narrow spaces by changing between running forward and side-to-side and can use different speeds in human bodies. Its legs are joined to its body through joints (关节), which enables mCLARI to change its body shape based on the environment it is in. For example, its legs can be lengthened up to 50% in certain spaces.
As follow-up work, the scientists want to give mCLARI more power and sensing ability while helping the surgeries. “We are also excited about understanding the effect of shape change on improving functions of robots,” Jayaram said. “And this is sure a great one-step forward of the technology. The robot will have entered the market by 2025 and will bring greater benefits to mankind, especially in medical treatment.”
1. What is paragraph 3 mainly about?| A．Possible application fields of the robot. | B．Different types of the robot. |
| C．Several important features of the robot. | D．Working process of the robot. |
| A．Valuable but uncontrollable. | B．Modern but high-cost. |
| C．Heavy and time-consuming. | D．Advanced and effective. |
| A．Worried. | B．Positive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Uninterested. |
| A．Jayaram: A Scientist Studying Robot Intelligence |
| B．mCLARI Is Already Widely Available in the Market |
| C．CLARI: A Robot Invented by Inspiration from the Insects |
| D．A Tiny Shape-changing Robot Will Help Perform Surgeries |
8 . “Why does grandpa have ear hair?” Just a few years ago my child was so curious to know “why” and “how” that we had to cut off her questions five minutes before bedtime. Now a soon-to-be fourth grader, she says that she dislikes school because “it’s not fiun to learm.” I am shocked. As a scientist and parent, I have done everything I can to promote a love of learning in my children. Where did I go wrong?
My child’s experience is not unique. Developmental psychologist Susan Engel notes that curiosity defined as “spontaneous (自发的)” investigation and eagerness for new information-drops dramatically in children by the fourth grade.
In Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science, Yale psychologist Frank C. Keil details the development of wonder — a spontaneous passion to explore, discover, and understand. He takes us on a journey from its early development, when wonder drives common sense and scientific reasoning, through the drop-off in wonder that often occurs, to the trap of life in a society that devalues wonder.
As Keil notes, children are particularly rich in wonder while they are rapidly developing causal mechanisms (因果机制) in the preschool and early elementary school years. They are sensitive to the others’ knowledge and goals, and they expertly use their desire for questioning. Children’s questions, particularly those about “why” and “how” support the development of causal mechanisms which can be used to help their day-to-day reasoning.
Unfortunately, as Keil notes, “adults greatly underestimate young children’s causal mechanisms.” In the book, Wonder, Keil shows that we can support children’s ongoing wonder by playing games with them as partners, encouraging question-asking, and focusing on their abilities to reason and conclude.
A decline in wonder is not unavoidable. Keil reminds us that we can accept wonder as a desirable positive quality that exists in everyone. I value wonder deeply, and Wonder has given me hope by proposing a future for my children that will remain wonder-full.
1. What is a common problem among fourth graders?| A．They upset their parents too often. | B．They ask too many strange questions. |
| C．Their love for fun disappears quickly. | D．Their desire to learn declines sharply. |
| A．They control children’s sensitivity. | B．They slightly change in early childhood. |
| C．They hardly support children’s reasoning. | D．They develop through children’s questioning. |
| A．By monitoring their games. | B．By welcoming inquiring minds. |
| C．By estimating their abilities. | D．By providing reasonable conclusions. |
| A．A book review. | B．A news report. | C．A research paper. | D．A children’s story. |
9 . I used to believe that only words could catch the essence of the human soul. The literary works contained such distinct stories that they shaped the way we saw the world. Words were what composed the questions we sought to uncover and the answers to those questions themselves. Words were everything.
That belief changed.
In an ordinary math class, my teacher posed a simple question: What’s 0.99 rounded to the nearest whole number? Easy. When rounded to the nearest whole number, 0.99=1. Somehow, I thought even though 0.99 is only 0.01 away from 1, there’s still a 0.01 difference. That means even if two things are only a little different, they are still different, so doesn’t that make them completely different?
My teacher answered my question by presenting another equation (等式): 1= 0.9, which could also be expressed as 1=0.99999.... repeating itself without ever ending.
There was something mysterious but fascinating about the equation. The left side was unchangeable, objective: it contained a number that ended. On the right was something endless, number repeating itself limitless times. Yet, somehow, these two opposed things were connected by an equal sign.
Lying in bed, I thought about how much the equation paralleled our existence. The left side of the equation represents that sometimes life itself is so unchangeable and so clear. The concrete, whole number of the day when you were born and the day when you would die. But then there is that gap in between life and death. The right side means a time and space full of limitless possibilities, and endless opportunities into the open future.
So that’s what life is. Objective but imaginative. Unchangeable but limitless. Life is an equation with two sides that balances itsef out. Still, we can’t ever truly seem to put the perfect words to it. So possibly numbers can express ideas as eually well as words can. For now, let’s leave it at that: 1= 0.99999... and live a life like it.
1. What does the author emphasize about words in paragraph 1?| A．Their wide variety. | B．Their literary origins. |
| C．Their distinct sounds. | D．Their expressive power. |
| A．The repetition of a number. | B．The way two different numbers are equal. |
| C．The question the teacher raised. | D．The difference between the two numbers. |
| A．Measured. | B．Composed. | C．Mirrored. | D．Influenced. |
| A．The Perfect Equation | B．Numbers Build Equations |
| C．An Attractive Question | D．Words Outperform Numbers |
10 . Whistler Travel Guide
Snow-capped peaks and powdered steeps; sparkling lakes and rushing waterfalls; challenging hiking routes and inviting restaurants — Whistler’s offerings suit every season.
Things to doThe entire town displays the ski-chic atmosphere, hosting dozens of ski and snow board competitions and festivals annually. In the warmer months, more outdoor enthusiasts come out to play. Visitors can try hiking or cycling up the mountains. While Whistler is an ideal vacation spot for the active types, other travelers can enjoy the local museums and art galleries filled within formative exhibits. Plus, there are family-friendly activities and attractions like summer concerts, along with plenty of shopping options.
When to visitThe best times to visit Whistler are from June through August and between December and March.
How to get aroundThe best ways to get around Whistler are on foot or by bike. Or, you can take the shuttlebuses from Whistler Village, which transport visitors to Lost Lake Park and the Marketplace. Meanwhile, having a car will allow you the freedom to explore top attractions like Whistler Train Wreck and Alexander Falls without having to spend a lot of cash on a cab.
What you need to know●Whistler receives feet of snow each year. If you’re driving in winter, slow down and make sure to rent or come with a reliable SUV.
●Snowslides are likely to occur on Backcountry routes, so only advanced skiers should take to this off-the-map area.
●Whistler’s wilderness is home to many black and grizzly bears. Keep your distance and do not feed them.
1. What are active travelers recommended to do in Whistler?| A．Bike up the mountains. | B．Host ski competitions. |
| C．Go shopping at the malls. | D．Visit museum exhibitions. |
| A．Whistler Village. | B．Lost Lake Park. | C．The Marketplace. | D．Whistler Train Wreck. |
| A．Driving a rented SUV. | B．Feeding grizzly bears. |
| C．Exploring the wilderness. | D．Skiing on Backcountry routes. |
