1 . Japan said Tuesday that it would start pouring treated radioactive water (放射性废水) from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean within two years. Officials in Tokyo said the water would be filtered and diluted (稀释) to safe levels first, but most locals remain firmly opposed to the plan. Protesters gathered outside Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s residence in downtown Tokyo to criticize the government’s decision.
More than a million tons of radioactive water is currently being stored at the Fukushima power plant in a massive tank farm big enough to fill 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The wastewater comes from water pumped in to cool the plant’s damaged reactors (反应堆). The government says it has simply run out of room to store all the water. The plan to dump the water into the ocean first came to light in the autumn of last year, when Japanese news reported anonymous (匿名的) officials said the decision had been taken.
On Tuesday, Suga said that after years of study, his scientific advisors had concluded that ocean discharge was the most possible way to cope with the wastewater. But the decision to pour Fukushima wastewater into the ocean has drawn fire from neighboring Asian countries and local fishermen along Japan’s coast.
China called the decision “extremely irresponsible,” and South Korea summoned (召唤) the Japanese ambassador in Seoul over the matter. “They told us that they wouldn’t release the water into the sea without the support of fishermen,” Kanji Tachiya, who leads a local cooperative of fisheries in Fukushima, told national broadcaster NHK ahead of the announcement on Tuesday. “We can’t support this move to break that promise and release the water into the sea unilaterally (单方面地).”
The actual release of water from the Fukushima plant will take decades to complete. Critics have called on Japan’s government to at least ensure that independent monitoring is in place to check the level of radiation in the poured water is safe for the environment.
1. How do most of the local people react to the plan?A.Indifferent. | B.Uncertain. | C.Supportive. | D.Disapproving. |
A.The wastewater is being stored in 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. |
B.It was last year that the plan was exposed to the public. |
C.Ocean discharge is the only way to deal with the wastewater. |
D.The plan has aroused anger in all the Asian countries. |
A.The plan is to pull the whole world into the disaster. |
B.It’s imperative that the plan should be carried out immediately. |
C.It’s safe and easy to pour the wastewater into the ocean. |
D.It’s unacceptable to pour the water into the ocean without fishermen’s permission. |
A.The Japanese government has checked the level of radiation in the poured water. |
B.Neigboring Asian countries agreed the decision to pour Fukushima wastewater into the ocean.. |
C.It will actually take the Fukushima plant long to release treated radioactive water. |
D.Independent monitoring of the water from the Fukushima plant aren’t necessary. |
2 . It happened on a rainy Saturday morning last month. My wife Catherine and I were driving along what some people called moose (麋鹿) alley. It was so
From then on, I often thought about the relationship between humans and
Certain philosophers and scientists keep repeating that if we don’t save animals, how we will be able to save ourselves. A better
A.cool | B.early | C.wide | D.quiet |
A.Unexpectedly | B.Suddenly | C.Fortunately | D.Obviously |
A.delay | B.keep | C.avoid | D.excuse |
A.shocked | B.lost | C.disappointed | D.injured |
A.stopped | B.thought | C.understood | D.tried |
A.worried | B.scared | C.sad | D.fine |
A.lands | B.wildlife | C.plants | D.roads |
A.exactly | B.silently | C.continually | D.mysteriously |
A.strange | B.recent | C.unusual | D.natural |
A.appearing | B.developing | C.decreasing | D.changing |
A.according to | B.instead of | C.because of | D.along with |
A.treatment | B.performance | C.world | D.knowledge |
A.way | B.law | C.will | D.hope |
A.shows | B.includes | C.predicts | D.protects |
A.escape | B.survive | C.refuse | D.select |
3 . A year back I received a full scholarship to attend the University of San Francisco. All of my hard work had paid off. My mom had spent a lot in my attending a private high school, so I made sure to push myself: I volunteered, joined different clubs, and graduated with honors.
I was so excited to start a new life. I had totally packed two weeks and wanted to go to college at once before it was time to leave.
Soon enough, the big day came, but it wasn’t like what I had thought. The first two weeks were the most difficult days of my entire life. Every night I would cry myself to sleep.
I was so homesick (想家) and I didn’t know how to deal with my broken heart. To distract myself, I threw myself into my studies and I applied for a lot of jobs. In any remaining free time, I started forcing myself to the gym. I wanted to keep every part of my day busy so I wouldn’t think how lonely I felt.
Soon after, I began to limit food, and then I became worse. Finally, I went to see a doctor. When the doctor weighed me, I was crazy about the number of my weight. So I continued to lower my goal, and convinced that controlling this number was the solution to my homesickness. But when I was told that I had no choice but to spend time on my studies. I quickly started recovery in my mind.
How could I do? I told myself that school was what I was best at. I decided to get rid of my homesickness and took exercise actively. My first term of college had passed by at last and I had gotten straight A’s. That’s why I want to share my story—to help other students feel less lonely.
1. How was the author during the two weeks before she left for the college?A.She was as normal as before. |
B.She couldn’t wait to leave for the college. |
C.She was afraid to leave her home. |
D.She didn’t enjoy her mother’s company. |
A.Her weight. | B.Her diet. |
C.Her homesickness. | D.Her bad study habit. |
A.achieve my dream | B.earn money by myself |
C.improve my studies | D.take my attention away |
A.To look back at her past middle school life. |
B.To help girls to lose weight. |
C.To help lonely college students. |
D.To increase her own confidence. |
4 . A few days before New Year 1944, Patricia Krueger received a telegram from the U. S. Army. She hoped it would contain a belated birthday greeting from her husband, an army flight engineer, Charles Krueger, whom she had not heard from for 2 weeks. Instead, the message said he wasn’t coming home: His B-29 had been lost and he was later declared MIA (missing in action). Their son, John Krueger from Middleton, Wisconsin, is still in tears when he recounts this story.
Decades later, the military continues to work to bring back the remains of soldiers like Charles Krueger. The job of finding them falls to DPAA (Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency), created in 2015 after critics charged that the previous MIA search process was slow, and behind on innovations in science and technology. Between 1973 and 2014, the remains of only 1,849 missing service member s were returned to their families; in 2021, the agency accounted for the remains of 141 MIAs; according to DPAA figures.
To accelerate the work, Congress gave DPAA the authority to develop public-private partnerships with scientists and groups outside the government. “Teaming up with academic scientists introduces new ways of thinking,” says military historian Michael Dolski. “Working with partners allows us to tap into their technologies and capabilities in ways that we just can’t maintain.”
For scientists, the work is more than technically satisfying. “It’s the most rewarding aspect of my career,” says Mires, a scientist working with the agency. “In other archaeology sites I’ve worked on, the history is remote,” he says. “Here, you’re doing something not for a thing, but for a person, and all the people they touched.”
1. What was the telegram about in paragraph 1?A.A New Year dinner. | B.Krueger’s disappearance. |
C.A birthday greeting. | D.John Krueger’s memory. |
A.Because DPAA wants to continue the search. |
B.Because it took long and lacked creativeness. |
C.Because the work was stopped by the military. |
D.Because 141 MIAs’ remains were found in 2021. |
A.Patient. | B.Critical. | C.Doubtful. | D.Approving. |
A.A long search for MIAs. | B.Achievements of DPAA. |
C.Assistance from science. | D.Consequences of wars. |
5 . Is It Worth Buying Organic Food?
Organic food, grown without artificial chemicals, is increasingly popular nowadays. Consumers have been willing to pay up to twice as much for goods with organic labels (标签). However, if you think paying a little more for organic food gets you a more nutritious (有营养的) and safer product, you might want to save your money. A study led by researchers at Stanford University says that organic products aren’t necessarily more nutritious, and they’re no less likely to suffer from disease-causing bacteria, either.
The latest results, published in the Annuals of Internal Medicine, suggest that buyers may be wasting their money. “We did not find strong evidence that organic food is more nutritious or healthier,” says Dr. Crystal Smith-Spangler from Stanford. “So consumers shouldn’t assume that one type of food has a lower risk or is safer.”
For their new study, Smith-Spangler and her colleagues conducted a review of two categories of research, including 17 studies that compared health outcomes between consumers of organic against traditional food products, and 223 studies that analyzed the nutritional content of the foods, including key vitamins, minerals and fats.
While the researchers found little difference in nutritional content, they did find that organic fruit and vegetables were 20% less likely to have chemicals remaining on the surfaces. Neither organic nor traditional foods showed levels of chemicals high enough to go beyond food safety standards. And both organic and traditional meats, such as chicken and pork, were equally likely to be harmed by bacteria at very low rates. The researchers did find that organic milk and chicken contained higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, a healthy fat also found in fish that can reduce the risk of heart disease. However, these nutritional differences were too small, and the researchers were unwilling to make much of them until further studies confirm the trends.
Organic food is produced with fewer chemicals and more natural-growing practices, but that doesn’t always translate into a more nutritious or healthier product. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) states that “Whether you buy organic or not, finding the freshest foods available may have the biggest effect on taste.” Fresh food is at least as good as anything marketed as organic.
1. The new research questions whether organic food ________.A.should replace traditional food |
B.has been overpriced by farmers |
C.is grown with less harmful chemicals |
D.is really more nutritious and healthier |
A.organic food could reduce the risk of heart disease |
B.traditional food was grown with more natural methods |
C.both organic and traditional food they examined were safe |
D.there was not a presence of any forms of bacteria in organic food |
A.Organic chicken and pork. |
B.Organic milk and chicken. |
C.Traditional chicken and pork. |
D.Traditional fruit and vegetables. |
A.Doubtful. | B.Positive. | C.Unconcerned. | D.Approving. |
6 . Seba Stephens is only 10 years old, but he’s a very talented musician. Seba and his family live in Memphis, Tennessee — a place famous for
Before he turned three, he wanted drums for his birthday. His parents weren’t
But soon Seba grew
In 2020, Everett got special
A.scenery | B.architecture | C.music | D.culture |
A.suddenly | B.hardly | C.especially | D.absolutely |
A.scared | B.worried | C.happy | D.sure |
A.doubted | B.realized | C.agreed | D.suggested |
A.junior | B.professional | C.advanced | D.special |
A.excited | B.guilty | C.patient | D.upset |
A.moment | B.lesson | C.chance | D.choice |
A.setting aside | B.giving away | C.paying for | D.laying out |
A.held | B.picked | C.raised | D.signed |
A.challenges | B.blame | C.debates | D.competition |
A.Therefore | B.However | C.Instead | D.Otherwise |
A.encouragement | B.comment | C.permission | D.attention |
A.continue | B.stop | C.avoid | D.mind |
A.trials | B.efforts | C.observations | D.attitudes |
A.honor | B.position | C.experience | D.certificate |
7 . Professor Kuniyoshi L. Sakai from the University of Tokyo is an enthusiastic musician, as are many of his colleagues. Inspired by a mode of musical training known as the Suzuki method, which is based on ideas of natural language acquisition (获得), Sakai and his team decided to explore common neurological (神经系统的) aspects of learning music and language.
“In the field of neuroscience, it is well established that there are areas of the brain that deal specifically with language, and even specialized regions that correspond to different aspects of language processing, such as grammar,” said Sakai. “We wondered if training using the Suzuki method might lead to activity in such areas, not when using language, but when engaging with music.”
For their study, the team classified 98 Japanese secondary school students into three groups: Groups S and E were both musically trained from a young age, with Group S using the Suzuki method while Group E not, and Group L was either musically trained at a later age or not trained at all. All the students had their brains scanned and were requested to identify errors in some pieces of music played to them, which had errors in one of four musical conditions: pitch (音高),tempo (节奏), stress, and articulation (发音)。
During the exercises, Groups S and E showed more overall brain activity than Group L, especially under the pitch and articulation conditions. Furthermore, Groups S and E showed activity in very specific regions depending on the kind of error being tested for.
Interestingly, Group S showed some unique patterns of activation (激活) in areas of the right brain, associated with emotion and melody, under the tempo condition, supporting the ideas behind the Suzuki method.
“The striking observation was that regardless of musical experiences, the highly specific grammar center in the left brain was activated under the articulation condition. This might explain why everyone can enjoy music even if they aren’t musical themselves,” said Sakai. “Other researchers, perhaps those studying neurological characteristics of artistic experts, may be able to build on what we’ve found here. As for ourselves, we wish to dig deeper into the connection between music and language by designing novel experiments to find out more subtle details,” he added.
1. What does the first paragraph mainly tell us?A.The research background. | B.The significance of the research. |
C.Sakai’s comments on the Suzuki method. | D.Sakai’s previous scientific achievements. |
A.Whether the Suzuki method can bring out the best in students. |
B.Whether advanced language training can enhance musical skills |
C.Whether music training promotes activity in certain brain areas. |
D.Whether brain regions specialize in handling different aspects of language. |
A.Their performances under the tempo condition were alike. |
B.Their active brain regions changed with the errors in music. |
C.They received the same musical training before the research. |
D.They were better at handling stress and articulation than Group L. |
A.They were uncertain about their findings. |
B.They were unsatisfied with their experiments. |
C.They’ll begin to study the neurological features of artistic experts. |
D.They’ll further explore the link between music and language. |
8 . Scientists have identified two minerals never before seen on Earth in a meteorite (陨石) weighing 15.2 metric tons. The minerals came from a 70-gram slice of the meteorite, which was discovered in Somalia in 2020, according to a news release from the University of Alberta.
Chris Herd, the curator (馆长) of the university’s meteorite collection, received samples of the space rock so he could classify it. As he was examining them, something unusual caught his eye—some parts of the samples weren’t identifiable by a microscope. He then turned to Andrew Locock, head of the university’s Electron Microprobe Laboratory, since Locock has experience of describing new minerals.
“The very first day he did some analyses, and he found two new minerals in there,” Herd said in a statement. “That’s extraordinary. Most of the time it takes a lot more work than that to say there’s a new mineral.”
One mineral’s name: elaliite, comes from the space object itself, which is called the “EI Ali” meteorite since it was found near the, town of EI Ali in central Somalia. Herd named the second one elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, an outstanding professor in that university’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and the principal investigator of NASA’s upcoming Psyche mission. “Lindy has done a lot of work on how the cores of planets form,” Herd said. “It makes sense to name a mineral after her.”
Locock’s work went perfectly smooth for a reason. Similar minerals had been synthetically (合成地) created before, and therefore, he was able to match the composition of the newly discovered minerals with their human-made counterparts, according to the University of Alberta release. “It’s just accidental that a researcher will find a mineral in a meteorite that hasn’t been known before, and then that the same compound (化合物) has been created previously by materials scientists,” said Alan Rubin,a meteorite researcher.
Meanwhile, the researchers are still analyzing the minerals to find out what the conditions were in the meteorite when the space rock formed.
1. What did Chris Herd do after he found something unusual?A.He sought external support. | B.He weighed the meteorite again. |
C.He carefully preserved the samples. | D.He examined the rock with a microscope. |
A.The weight and volume of the meteorite. |
B.The significant value of minerals in the meteorite. |
C.Locock’s quick identification of two new minerals. |
D.Locock’s professional analyses of the rock samples. |
A.To indicate the place where the meteorite was found. |
B.To show the major component of the meteorite. |
C.To remind people of who discovered the rock. |
D.To honor Lindy’s contributions to science. |
A.The existence of similar artificial minerals. |
B.The regular composition of the new minerals, |
C.His rare ability to create new materials in labs. |
D.His extensive cooperation with materials scientists. |
9 . Astronaut Neill Armstrong, the first man on the moon, passed away at 82. He commanded the Apollo 11spacecraft that landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, and has been best remembered by saying “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.
Armstrong was born Aug 5, 1930, on a farm in western Ohio. He took his first airplane ride at the age of 6 and developed an interest in aviation (航空) that pushed him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel. As a boy, he took flying lessons and was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver’s license.
Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aircraft engineering but was called to work with the US Navy in 1949 and flew 78 fight tasks. Armstrong was accepted into NASA’s astronaut class in 1962. He was a support commander for the Apollo 8 task in 1968. In that flight, Commander Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and BiIIAnders circled the moon 10 times, and got ready for the moon landing seven months later.
On July 20, 1969, an estimated 600 million people—a fifth of the world’s population watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.
Parents crowded with their children in front of the family television. absorbed by what they were witnessing. Farmers gave up their duties at night, and drivers pulled off the highway and checked into hotels just to see the moonwalk. Television-less travelers in California ran to their cars to catch the word on the radio. Afterward, people walked out of their homes and stared at the moon, in awe of what they had just seen. Others watched through telescopes in hopes of spotting the astronauts.
“I can honestly say-and it’s a big surprise to me that I have never had a dream about being on the moon.” he once said.
Armstrong married Carol Knight in 1994, and the couple lived quietly in Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb. He had two adult sons from a previous marriage.
1. What’s the purpose of the text?A.To introduce the first man to land on the moon. |
B.To tell people Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. |
C.To illustrate an estimated 600 million people witnessed the event in history. |
D.To explain the saying “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. |
A.Armstrong circled the moon 10 times. |
B.Armstrong was called to work with the US Navy. |
C.Armstrong gave lectures in NASA’s astronaut class. |
D.Armstrong conducted experiments in a homemade wind tunnel. |
A.Surprised. | B.Astonished. | C.Disappointed. | D.Overjoyed. |
A.Armstrong got his driver’s license at 16. |
B.Armstrong took his first airplane ride at a very young age. |
C.Armstrong had a childhood dream about being ont he moon. |
D.Armstrong married Carol in 1994 and then had two sons. |
10 . Nixon, 59 years old, was born and grew up in St. Petersburg. Each morning, he sits on a bench, watches the sunrise, and connects with
Eight years ago, he decided to begin each day from a bench (a kind of chair) with an impressive view of the St. Petersburg waterfront (圣彼得堡海滨), because it made him feel calm and
About a year later, a woman stopped to say hello, and she said something that
Instead of staring straight ahead at the waterfront, Nixon started
No matter what problem a person wants to
Nixon was always happy to listen, and he listens without
And at that moment, she truly wasn’t.
1.A.teenagers | B.relatives | C.strangers | D.neighbors |
A.peaceful | B.excited | C.proud | D.surprised |
A.formed | B.changed | C.developed | D.supported |
A.agreed | B.realized | C.imagined | D.remembered |
A.pointing | B.laughing | C.shouting | D.smiling |
A.joining | B.noticing | C.leaving | D.praising |
A.say | B.face | C.hear | D.create |
A.fame | B.success | C.marriage | D.privacy |
A.health | B.hobbies | C.kids | D.job |
A.give up | B.calm down | C.speak up | D.slow down |
A.emotion | B.consideration | C.judgment | D.interest |
A.guide | B.teacher | C.friend | D.workmate |
A.hugged | B.greeted | C.competed | D.satisfied |
A.secrets | B.worries | C.happiness | D.silence |
A.sad | B.alone | C.stressed | D.hopeless |