1 . The amount of sea ice surrounding Antarctica has reached its lowest level since modern records began, for the second year in a row. Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the ocean’s surface around the planet’s polar regions. It forms at much lower sustained temperatures than freshwater ice does, at around-1.8 degrees Celsius. Sea ice builds up during the winter until it reaches its maximum extent, and then melts (融化) away in the spring and summer until it reaches its minimum extent.
In Antarctica, where summer and winter are relative to the Northern Hemisphere, sea ice normally reaches its maximum extent in September when sea ice covers around 7 million square miles. At its minimum extent at the end of February, historically only around I million square miles remains. Last year the minimum sea ice extent was less than 772, 000 square miles, the lowest total since scientists began recording sea ice extent with satellites in 1979. On 21 February this year, that number had reduced to just 691, 000 square miles, which is roughly 40 per cent less than the average between 1981 and 2010.
The record-breaking minimum was expected after an extraordinarily hot January which was the seventh-warmest since records began 174 years ago. “By the end of January, we could tell it was only a matter of time until the record was broken,” said Will Hobbs, an Antarctic sea ice expert at the University of Tasmania and the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership. Antarctica’s minimum sea ice extent will likely continue to decrease in the coming decades as global temperatures rise as a result of human-caused climate change and more multiyear ice, which acts as a seed for new ice growth, melts away.
Sea ice is crucial for polar predators(捕食性动物) such as penguins in Antarctica and polar bears in the Arctic, which use the ice as a platform for hunting. But the sea ice also helps stabilise ice on Antarctica. “Lower sea ice extent means that ocean waves will pound the coast of the giant ice sheet，further reducing ice shelves around Antarctic,” said Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
1. What can we know about sea ice?| A．It can be seen on any ocean’s surface. | B．It forms at about -1.8 ℃. |
| C．It melts all the year round. | D．There is more sea ice than freshwater ice. |
| A．There are two seasons in Antarctica. |
| B．Scientists have been recording the change of sea ice. |
| C．Sea ice in Antarctica has been on decline in the past decades. |
| D．The ecology in Antarctica needs to be improved. |
| A．The earth becomes warmer. | B．Multiyear ice disappears completely. |
| C．Ocean waves destroy the giant ice sheet. | D．Human beings occupy Antarctica. |
| A．Human activities have caused global warming |
| B．Measures should be taken to stop sea ice decreasing |
| C．Sea ice is significant for polar animals |
| D．Antarctica’s sea ice reaches its lowest level since records began |
2 . Silence might not be deafening but it’s something that literally can be heard, concludes a team of philosophers and psychologists who used auditory illusion(听觉错觉) to reveal how moments of silence misinterpret people’s perception of time. The findings address the debate of whether people can hear more than sounds, which has puzzled philosophers for centuries.
The team adapted well-known auditory illusions to create versions in which the sounds of the original illusions were replaced by moments of silence. For example, one illusion made a sound seem much longer than it really was. In the team’s new silence-based illusion, an equally long moment of silence also seemed longer than it really was.
The fact that these silence-based illusions produced exactly the same results as their sound-based counterparts(对应物) suggests that people hear silence just like they hear sounds, the researchers said.
Like visual illusions that trick what people see, auditory illusions can make people hear periods of time as being longer or shorter than they actually are. One example is known as the one-is-more illusion, where one long beep(哔哔声) seems longer than two short continuous beeps even when they are equally long.
In tests involving 1, 000 participants, the team replaced the sounds in the one-is-more illusion with moments of silence, re-working the auditory illusion into what they called the one-silence-is-more illusion. They found the same results：People thought one long moment of silence was longer than two short moments of silence. Other silence illusions produced the same outcomes as sound illusions.
In the lab, participants were asked to listen to sounds induced by the noise of busy restaurants, markets and train stations. They then listened for periods when all sounds stopped abruptly, creating brief silences. The idea wasn’t simply that these silences made people experience illusions, the researchers said. It was that the same illusions that scientists thought could only be caused by sounds worked just as well when the sounds were replaced by silences.
The findings establish a new way to study the perception of absence, the team said.
1. Why did the researchers adapt auditory illusions?| A．To measure the length of silence. | B．To create silence-based illusions. |
| C．To correct the original illusion. | D．To prove the advantage of silence. |
| A．People mishears the length of beeps. |
| B．1, 000 participants get different results. |
| C．The pause between two beeps is hard to sense. |
| D．Moments of silence seem longer than those of sounds when they are equally long. |
| A．Drowned by. | B．Reduced to. | C．Caused by. | D．Compared to. |
| A．Are sounds tricky? It has scientific basis. |
| B．Is silence gold? Science gives us the answer. |
| C．Auditory illusion? It exists just as visual illusion. |
| D．The sound of silence? Research indicates people hear it. |
3 . There was a time when the solar industry was considered dead money. It was too expensive, too inefficient, and too inconsistent to be a good alternative energy source for anything, let alone your home or office.
But those days are long gone. Today, solar energy represents the future of our planet’s energy needs because it’s cheap, efficient, consistent, and most importantly, clean.
Solar energy costs have dropped by more than 70% over the past 10 years, and solar energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the United States. Let that sink in for a moment.
Better yet, the drivers of these cost declines—economies of scale and technological improvements powered by Moore’s Law and Wright’s Law-are lasting, and therefore, solar energy is going to get even cheaper. Indeed, these forces are so powerful in the solar industry that they have their own law-Swanson’s Law-which states that the price of solar modules (组件) decreases by about 20%for every doubling in global solar capacity.
For what it’s worth, the US Department of Energy believes solar costs can and will fall by another 60% in 2030. So, solar energy is the cheapest way to power things today.
Meanwhile, solar panels have become very efficient at turning light from the sun into usable energy. Back in 1992, researchers at the University of South Florida created a thin-film solar cell with 15.9% efficiency—and that was considered a breakthrough at the time. These days, though, your average silicon (硅) solar cells sport efficiency rates above 20%. That’s standard. And manufacturers have created prototypes (原型机) that are getting 30% efficiency, while some research efforts have even managed to achieve near 50% efficiency in certain lab tests.
At the same time, these solar systems have become dramatically more consistent. One of the biggest disadvantages for solar energy in the early 2000s was its intermittency (间歇性) —the sun doesn’t shine every day, so what do you do when it’s cloudy? Well, that’s why big batteries exist.
1. What can we learn from paragraph 4?| A．The worldwide popularity of solar energy. |
| B．The rapid increase in global solar capacity. |
| C．The contents of Moore’s Law and Wright’s Law. |
| D．The contributors to the decline in solar energy costs. |
| A．To indicate the variety of solar cells. |
| B．To prove the wide use of solar cells. |
| C．To show the improvement of solar cells. |
| D．To compare the size of different solar cells. |
| A．Positive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Uncaring. | D．Worried. |
| A．The wide use of solar power. | B．The alternative to solar power. |
| C．The disadvantage of solar power. | D．The storage of solar power. |
4 . Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime. She was known around the world for using poetry to increase understanding about black culture in America.
Her poems described conditions among the poor, racial inequality and drug use in the black community. She also wrote poems about the struggles of black women. She was an expert at the language of poetry. She combined traditional European poetry styles with the African American experience.
In her early poetry, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about the South Side of Chicago. The South Side of Chicago is where many black people live. In her poems, the South Side is called Bronzeville. It was A Street in Bronzeville that gained the attention of literary experts in 1945. Critics praised her poetic skill and her powerful descriptions of the black experience during the time. The Bronzeville poems were her first published collection.
In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She won the prize for her second book of poems called Annie Allen. Annie Allen is a collection of poetry about the life of a Bronzeville girl as a daughter, a wife and mother. She experiences loneliness, loss, death and being poor. Ms Brooks said that winning the prize changed her life.
Her next work was a novel written in 1953 called Maud Martha. Maud Martha received little notice when it was first published. But now it is considered an important work by some critics. Its main ideas about the difficult life of many women are popular among female writers today.
By the end of the 1960s, Gwendolyn Brooks’s poetry expanded from the everyday experiences of people in Bronzeville. She wrote about a wider world and dealt with important political issues.
1. In the next part, the author would most probably talk about .| A．the difficulties Gwendolyn Brooks would meet |
| B．the poems related to political issues |
| C．the awards Gwendolyn Brooks gained |
| D．the racial inequality the black had to face |
| A．providing examples |
| B．using statistics |
| C．comparing opinions |
| D．describing her experiences |
| A．She mainly wrote about the struggles of black women. |
| B．She was good at using the language of poetry. |
| C．Her writing skills were a little worse than her ability. |
| D．Her poems were mainly about the African experience. |
| A．The life of Gwendolyn Brooks. |
| B．The poems of Gwendolyn Brooks. |
| C．The understanding about black culture. |
| D．The struggles of black women. |
5 . English is full of colourful phrases to describe shyness. Someone shy might be called shrinking violet or a wallflower, while for especially nervous types we have the curious expression: they wouldn’t say “boo” to a goose.
None of these are traditionally seen as positive descriptions, even if you like geese. In a culture of go-getting high achievers, shy people don’t come first. Or that’s what the self-help industry would have you believe. Bookshops are filled with vital tomes (大部头书籍) that promise to help beat social fears and find success in life, love and business. That is why one book, Shrinking Violets: A Field Guide to Shyness, bucks the trend. It became a sudden success across English-language media recently for its new take-on shyness.
Author Joe Moran says that despite struggling with shyness and longing for loneliness all his life, being shy can also be “a gift”. Freed from the constant urge to participate and compete in social situations, people are liberated to look at the world in new ways, and gain fresh insights.
Indeed, many of the world’s great thinkers and artists are introverts (内向的人). Scientists Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein preferred their own company; actress Keira Knightley often finds herself tongue-tied at parties; and Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling claims she used to be too nervous to even borrow a pen.
Moran told BBC Future, “I think shyness probably does turn you into an amateur anthropologist (人类学家), really — you are more likely to be an observer.”
So, while extroverts make all the noise, they don’t necessarily have the best ideas.
If you’re shy, you’ve probably known this for a long time. You just don’t shout about it.
1. Why did the author mention many famous shy people?| A．To point out the harm shyness brings. |
| B．To disconnect shyness and success. |
| C．To show the reasons for shyness. |
| D．To prove shyness contributes to science. |
| A．Opposed. | B．Indifferent. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Critical. |
| A．praised for his grace |
| B．admired for his character |
| C．laughed at for his shyness |
| D．told off for his nervousness |
| A．Goes against the trend and succeeds. |
| B．Changes the public idea completely. |
| C．Becomes unpopular and unaccepted. |
| D．Becomes the major concern of people. |
6 . “Don’t worry; be happy” is more than just song lyrics (歌词). A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging, but it is unclear how optimism impacts health. When it comes to dealing with day-to-day stressors, such as household chores or arguments with others, a new study has found that being more or less optimistic did not make a difference in how older men emotionally reacted to or recovered from these stressors. However, optimism appeared to promote emotional well-being by limiting how often older men experience stressful situations or changing the way they interpret situations as stressful.
“This study tests one possible explanation, assessing if more optimistic people handle daily stress more constructively and therefore enjoy better emotional well-being,” said corresponding author Lewina Lee. PhD, clinical psychologist at the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at the VA Boston Healthcare System and assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.
The researchers followed 233 older men who first finished an optimism questionnaire; 14 years later, they reported daily stressors along with positive and negative moods on eight consecutive (连续不断的) evenings up to three times over an eight-year span. The researchers found more optimistic men reported not only lower negative mood but also more positive mood. They also reported having fewer stressors which was unrelated to their higher positive mood but explained their lower levels of negative mood.
While studies have sustained the idea of optimism as a resource that may promote good health and longevity, we know very little about the underlying mechanisms (机制). “Stress, on the other hand. is known to have a negative impact on our health. By looking at whether optimistic people handle day-to-day stressors differently, our findings add to knowledge about how optimism may promote good health as people age,” says Lee.
1. What may be affected by optimism according to the first paragraph?| A．People’s emotional well-being. | B．Older men’s ability to react. |
| C．The way people treat daily stress. | D．The way that optimism will be researched. |
| A．By making comparisons. | B．By analyzing possible results. |
| C．By presenting different opinions. | D．By showing the course and result. |
| A．Changed. | B．Supported. | C．Expected. | D．Repeated. |
| A．A course plan. | B．A travel brochure. |
| C．A health magazine. | D．A news report. |
7 . Avi Bendahan and Shijia Jiang are unlikely collaborators (合作者).
Jiang is a classically trained performer of Peking Opera, or Jingju. Bendahan is a local actor, dancer in Canada. He and Jiang together are the core (核心) of Jingju Canada, a theater company that adapts the ancient Chinese art in Montreal and across Canada.
“I really want people in the West to know Peking Opera,” says Jiang. The two are, in a sense, building an audience for the art form in and outside of the city’s Chinese community.
“Peking Opera is very strict, and hard to understand. They don’t speak Standard Chinese. No, they speak the Peking Opera dialect (方言),” Meng Rong, the leader of the Confucius Institute in Quebec says of the language used, which is comparable to Shakespearean speech. “You need to have special skills to understand.” As a result, the popularity of Peking Opera is fading (逐渐消失).
One of Jingju Canada’s approaches to that problem is to translate.
Their first show was 2011’s Crossroads.
“It was the first time Jingju Canada translated a Chinese opera show into English,” says Bendahan. “And it was the first time we created newish characters.”
Bendahan handles the translations. “The language is very hard for me,” says Jiang, referring to English. Jiang’ strong point in performance is combat — she trained in China as a wudan, a fighting woman.
But change, of course, presents challenges.
“They don’t want to lose the core things from Peking Opera,” says Rong. That's where Jiang’s other speciality (专长), besides combat, comes in. She was among the first in China to study the new‑for‑Jingju program of directing. “We learned new ways of directing,” she says. “We used music, dance, movies, and then put them together with Peking Opera.”
“Crossroads was very successful,” says Rong. “The audiences really loved it. And I think for every culture, if the nice part can be shown to the public, and everybody understands and everybody enjoys it, why don’t we do it?”
1. What is Jiang’s reason for working with Bendahan on Jingju Canada?| A．To help Bendahan study Chinese. |
| B．To develop her friendship with Bendahan. |
| C．To help foreigners know more about Peking Opera. |
| D．To perform Peking Opera in more Chinese communities. |
| A．Its boring settings. |
| B．Its outdated music. |
| C．Its unique language. |
| D．Its special characters. |
| A．She used a new method of directing. |
| B．She gave up her directing program. |
| C．She trained other performers. |
| D．She translated the text. |
| A．He's shocked. |
| B．He's satisfied. |
| C．He's doubtful. |
| D．He's thankful. |
8 . Paper cutting is a special form of folk art in China, with a history of nearly 1,500 years. The first paper cutting
In rural areas, paper cutting is
The main cutting
Wishes for wealth, health and longevity (长寿) are mostly
| A．puts back to | B．looks back to | C．dates back to | D．brings back to |
| A．creation | B．solution | C．revolution | D．impression |
| A．initial | B．visual | C．racial | D．rural |
| A．eventually | B．traditionally | C．possibly | D．fortunately |
| A．supposed | B．surprised | C．determined | D．disappointed |
| A．Moreover | B．However | C．Thus | D．Otherwise |
| A．ways | B．things | C．tools | D．books |
| A．requests | B．requires | C．increases | D．introduces |
| A．carelessness | B．instruction | C．comparison | D．separation |
| A．ever | B．still | C．always | D．even |
| A．received | B．expressed | C．improved | D．increased |
| A．comments | B．friends | C．influence | D．fortune |
| A．decoration | B．entertainment | C．invitation | D．preparation |
| A．put | B．attach | C．move | D．add |
| A．health | B．longevity | C．wealth | D．strength |
9 . Forgiving (宽恕) someone who has hurt you or let you down is never an easy thing. Several new studies, however, say that it could have a lot of health benefits (好处). When you think of forgiveness, you probably don’t think of it as being a health or medical problem. Studies from Stanford University, on the other hand, show that something like anger can change your well-being (健康).
When cartoon book characters like the Incredible Hulk get angry, they change colours and often gain special power. In the real world, anger is less clear and may be more dangerous. That’s why Professor Fred Luskin, founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project and writer of Forgive for Good, says holding on to anger and hatred can harm your physical and mental health. Two new studies seem to show the same idea.
The studies find that people who are able to forgive feel less stress, less back pain, and less sadness or hopelessness. They also have fewer headaches, lower blood pressure, and fewer problems on sleeping.
So it doesn’t matter if your anger is caused by the traffic or other things. Learning to let it go is important. Techniques such as deep breath or thought can help. Or just ask yourself if it’s worth hurting yourself by staying angry with someone else.
Forgiveness does not mean that you simply accept what happened and say it’s OK. Instead, it’s a way of making peace with yourself about what happened in the past.
1. The writer of the passage tries to make his point clear by .| A．mentioning some studies | B．sharing his own experience |
| C．raising some questions | D．mentioning some health problems |
| A．show how to control oneself |
| B．introduce a famous professor |
| C．support his point on anger and hatred |
| D．tell the readers cartoon characters are powerful when they get angry |
| A．It’s not easy to know if you are angry. |
| B．People who are able to forgive feel less tired. |
| C．It’s hard to forgive someone who hurts you. |
| D．You can let your anger go by breathing deeply. |
| A．Forgiving Others Is Hard | B．Anger Is Bad for Health |
| C．Learning to Forgive Is Important | D．Forgiveness Is Good for Health |
10 . The Double-Seventh Day refers to the seventh day of the seventh month on the Chinese lunar calendar.
In ancient times, the Double-Seventh Day was a festival especially for young women. Girls, whether from rich or poor families, would put on their holiday best to celebrate the annual meeting of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. Parents would place an incense burner (香炉) in the courtyard and lay out some fruit as offerings. Then all the girls in the family would kowtow to Niu Lang and Zhi Nu and pray for ingenuity (灵巧).
In the Tang Dynasty about 1,000 years ago, rich families in the capital city of Chang’an would set up a decorated tower in the courtyard and name it the “Tower of Praying for Ingenuity”. They prayed for various types of ingenuity. Most girls would pray for outstanding sewing or cooking skills. Girls and women would gather together in a square and look into the star-filled night sky. They would put their hands behind their backs, holding a needle and thread. At the word “start”, they would try to thread the needle. Zhi Nu, the Weaver Girl, would bless the one who succeeded first. The ladies would also show off their fried cookies made in many different shapes. They would invite the Weaver Girl to judge who was the best. In the past these were important virtues for a woman.
1. The Double-Seventh Day is usually celebrated on ________.| A．July the seventh |
| B．New Year’s Day |
| C．the 7th day of the 7th month on the Chinese lunar calendar |
| D．the meeting day of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl stars |
| A．best food | B．best skills | C．best clothes | D．best ingenuity |
| A．a good marriage | B．meeting the Cowherd or the Girl Weaver |
| C．high officials | D．outstanding sewing and cooking skills |
| A．who was the winner in the compition of threading the needle |
| B．whose family had a tower to pray in |
| C．who kowtowed to Niu Lang and Zhi Nu for ingenuity |
| D．whose family lay out most fruit as offerings |
