1 . I was the only kid in college with a reason to go to the mailbox, because my mother never believed in email or cell phones. I was literally waiting to get a letter to see how her weekend had gone, which was usually the warmest comfort for a girl of my age.
So when I moved to New York and got sucker-punched in the face by depression, I did the only thing I could think of. I wrote those same kinds of letters like my mother for strangers, and slipped them all over the city. I blogged about those letters and crazily promised if asked for a hand-written letter, I would write one.
Overnight, my inbox became this harbor of heartbreak — a single mother in Sacramento, a girl being bullied in Kansas, a 22-year-old immigrant, all asking me to write them and gave them a reason to wait by the mailbox. And this is how I initiated a global organization, fueled by those trips to the mailbox.
It is awesome. In fact, the thing about these letters is that most of them have been written by people who have grownup into a paperless world where some best conversations happen on a screen. We have learned to record our pain on to Facebook, and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less.
But it’s not about efficiency. And I could tell you about a woman whose husband was traumatized (受精神创伤) by his war experiences in Afghanistan and isolated himself, and her love letters slipped throughout the house eventually got him back to her. Or a man, who decides to take his own life, finally sleeps soundly with a stack of letters from strangers slipped beneath his pillow.
The scare the kinds of stories that convince me that letter-writing will always be needed even in these days, because it is an art now.
1. Why did the author share her experience in college?| A．To show her attachment to letters. |
| B．To convey her love for writing letters. |
| C．To prove how convenient it was to write letters. |
| D．To indicate how much she cared for her family. |
| A．The letters’ comforting effect on people. |
| B．Her intention of providing professional aid |
| C．The positive influence of modern technology. |
| D．Her mother’s fear of modern communication. |
| A．Digital generations still choose to handwrite letters. |
| B．People prefer to write strangers letters on the Internet. |
| C．So many people badly need hand-written letters to survive. |
| D．People post their sufferings and happiness on social media. |
| A．Family Letters Are Priceless |
| B．Love for Writing Never Declines |
| C．World Needs More Love Letters |
| D．Hand-written Letters Improve Efficiency |
2 . Common water plant could provide a green energy source. Scientists have figured out how to get large amounts of oil from duckweed, one of nature’s fastest-growing water plants. Transferring such plant oil into biodiesel (生物柴油) for transportation and heating could be a big part of a more sustainable future.
For a new study, researchers genetically engineered duckweed plants to produce seven times more oil per acre than soybeans. John Shanklin, a biochemist says further research could double the engineered duckweed’s oil output in the next few years.
Unlike fossil fuels, which form underground, biofuels can be refreshed faster than they are used. Fuels made from new and used vegetable oils, animal fat and seaweed can have a lower carbon footprint than fossil fuels do, but there has been a recent negative view against them. This is partly because so many crops now go into energy production rather than food; biofuels take up more than 100 million acres of the world’s agricultural land.
Duckweed, common on every continent but Antarctica, is among the world’s most productive plants, and the researchers suggest it could be a game-changing renewable energy source for three key reasons. First, it grows readily in water, so it wouldn’t compete with food crops for agricultural land. Second, duckweed can grow fast in agricultural pollution released into the water. Third, Shanklin and his team found a way to avoid a major biotechnological barrier: For the new study, Shanklin says, the researchers added an oil-producing gene, “turning it on like a light switch”by introducing a particular molecule (分子) only when the plant had finished growing. Shanklin says, “If it replicates (复制) in other species-and there’s no reason to think that it would not — this can solve one of our biggest issues, which is how we can make more oil in more plants without negatively affecting growth.”
To expand production to industrial levels, scientists will need to design and produce large-scale bases for growing engineered plants and obtaining oil — a challenge, Shanklin says, because duckweed is a non-mainstream crop without much existing infrastructure (基础设施).
1. What can people get from duckweed firsthand?| A．Plant oil. | B．Stable biodiesel. |
| C．Sustainable water. | D．Natural heat. |
| A．Options for renewable energy. |
| B．Reasons for engineering genes. |
| C．The potential of revolutionary energy source. |
| D．The approach to avoiding agricultural pollution. |
| A．Industrial levels. | B．Unique design. |
| C．Academic research. | D．Basic facilities. |
| A．Duckweed Power | B．Duckweed Production |
| C．Genetic Engineering | D．Genetic Testing |
3 . P. H. Hanes, founder of HanesBrands, came up with retail price in the 1920s. That allowed him to use ads in publications across America to discourage distributors from unfairly raising the price of his knitted underwear. Even today many American shopkeepers stick to manufacturers’ recommended prices, as much as they would love to raise them to offset the inflationary (通货膨胀) pressures on their other costs. A growing number, though, resort to more complicated pricing techniques.
Getting retail price right can be tricky. Set prices too high and you risk losing customers; set them too low and you leave money on the table. Retailers have historically used rules of thumb, such as adding a fixed margin (差额) on top of costs or matching what competitors charge. As energy, labour and other inputs go through the roof, they can no longer afford to treat pricing as an afterthought. To gain an edge, shopkeepers have been turning to price-optimisation systems.
At their core are mathematical models that use deal data to estimate price flexibility—how much demand increases as the price falls and vice versa—for thousands of products. Price-sensitive items can then be discounted and price-insensitive ones marked up. Merchants can fine-tune the algorithms (算法) to prevent undesirable outcomes.
These systems are becoming cleverer thanks to advances in artificial intelligence(AI). The latest crop of AI-powered ones can spot patterns and relationships between multiple items. Makers of pricing software are incorporating new data sources into their models, from customers’ tweets to online product reviews, says Doug Fuehne of Pricefx, one such firm. In February Starbucks, a chain of coffee shops, boasted about its use of analytics and AI to model pricing “on an ongoing basis”. US Foods, a food distributor, praised its pricing system’s ability to use “over a dozen different inputs” to boost sales and profits.
What pricing systems do not do is lead unavoidably to higher prices. Matt Pavich of Revionics, another pricing-software firm, calls this misconception “one of the biggest misunderstanding” about products like his. Sysco, a big food distributor which rolled out new pricing software last year, is a case in point. The firm says the system allows it to lower prices on “key value items”—as price-sensitive bestsellers are known in the trade—and raise them on other products. It can thus increase profits by expanding sales while maintaining margins.
1. What does the expression “leave money on the table” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Do not match the competitor’s prices. | B．Do not maintain a reasonable sales and profits. |
| C．Do not address the pressure on extra expenses. | D．Do not reach an agreement in price negotiation. |
| A．Setting fixed prices for all products. | B．Adjusting prices based on demands. |
| C．Constructing discount models by AI. | D．Capitalizing on customers’ social media data. |
| A．It hits the sweet point. | B．It cuts a long story short. |
| C．It runs counter to its target. | D．It compares apples and oranges. |
| A．Fair or Unfair Price: Not a Question for AI |
| B．Price Setting AI: Maintaining Great Balance |
| C．Retail Price Evolves: From Experience to Science |
| D．Technological Business: Companies Use AI to Set Prices |
4 . Lobb and Jafri were queuing up for a lunchtime workout on Pier (码头) 15, overlooking the East River, when Lobb froze. What he saw was a person
Approaching the
On the pier, a crowd had gathered. From somewhere, the onlookers
With the two men pushing from below and the crowd pulling from above, the victim was pulled onto the pier. Both men, thoroughly
| A．crying | B．swimming | C．floating | D．playing |
| A．rail | B．ship | C．gym | D．platform |
| A．desperate | B．frightened | C．insensible | D．nervous |
| A．life coach | B．rescuer | C．onlooker | D．emergency services |
| A．upward | B．off | C．around | D．forward |
| A．hand | B．back | C．head | D．stomach |
| A．supported | B．raised | C．downgraded | D．located |
| A．cells | B．organs | C．tissues | D．muscles |
| A．disabled | B．uncooperative | C．immobile | D．misshapen |
| A．tore | B．produced | C．imported | D．organized |
| A．circled | B．fixed | C．loaded | D．worked |
| A．exhausted | B．abstracted | C．depressed | D．satisfied |
| A．undoubtedly | B．nearly | C．fortunately | D．obviously |
| A．took in | B．turned over | C．pull away | D．set forth |
| A．appreciated | B．emphasized | C．recognized | D．learned |
5 . There are a lot of good and logical reasons not to say what you think, especially when others disagree. Offending people isn’t nice, and it can lead to social consequences. Nodding along might seem practical or charitable, despite the fact that you are screaming disagreement on the inside. However, the true act of charity is to say what you really think. Your committing to complete honesty can be an act of love.
One of my friends takes honesty to the extreme. He calls talks with others that get to the complete truth of things, even difficult admissions in views, “love conversations”. Once two people have such a conversation, his theory goes, they can understand each other and act accordingly. As a philosophical matter, my friend’s belief of “love conversations” is Kantian. The German philosopher Kant argued that lying to others prevents them from making choices based on the truth, which is contradictory with friendship and love.
In the 1990s, Brad Blanton argued when the truth is hard to accept, telling it can have costs, including social disapproval and broken relationships. But it is worth the consequences because it can reduce stress, deepen connections with others, and reduce emotional reactivity.
Both sides can’t be right here. Either Kant, Blanton, and my friend are embracing a faulty theory, or our society is missing a big opportunity for moral growth. You might say that little white lies are a society lubricant (润滑剂). They can even seem virtuous. After telling a white lie, I sometimes pat myself on the back, turning my evil into a virtue inside my own head. Some lies might make life easier, but they don’t necessarily make life happier. I wouldn’t want my wife to tell me what she thinks I want to hear, as if we were strangers avoiding conflict, and finding out that she had done so would make me feel distrusted and therefore hurt our relationship. I don’t want a stranger to tell me she likes my writing if she doesn’t, because unreal compliments make me suspicious.
1. What can we learn from “my friend” in Paragraph 2?| A．He admits other’s views with great honest. | B．He practices Kant’s philosophical theories. |
| C．He loves to discuss philosophy with others. | D．He prevents himself from difficult choices. |
| A．stressful and emotional | B．unacceptable and harmful |
| C．thoughtless but courageous | D．challenging but deserving |
| A．To distinguish his wife from a stranger. | B．To show his wife’s honesty and virtue. |
| C．To argue for the importance of frankness. | D．To stress avoiding suspicion in marriage. |
| A．Telling the truth can be an act of love. | B．The route to happier life lies in lies. |
| C．Little white lies are actually virtuous. | D．Our society is being corrupted by lies. |
6 . Akira Toriyama, one of Japan’s leading comics authors, whose manga (漫画) “Dragon Ball” achieved worldwide success with its mix of comedic characters and rousing martial arts battles, died on March 1. He was 68.
Mr. Toriyama’s body of work is recognizable far beyond Japan’s borders, having influenced generations of manga artists and cartoonists. His best-known work, “Dragon Ball”, follows a young boy named Son Goku who starts a journey to collect the seven magical balls that summon (召唤) a wish-granting dragon. Since its creation in the 1980s, it has spanned 42 volumes, sold millions of copies worldwide and become one of the most famous manga, inspiring television, film and video game adaptations.
Throughout his career, Mr. Toriyama said in a 2013 interview with the Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, he did not care if his work did anything besides entertaining its readers. He was, he suggested, unlike “other manga artists concerned about conveying moral messages”.
When “Dragon Ball” was first published in 1984, it was an immediate hit, becoming one of the best-selling manga series of all time. It sold more than 260million copies worldwide, according to Toei Animation, the studio that produced the anime adaptation. “Dragon Ball” was serialized in the Japanese magazine Weekly Shonen Jump until 1995. In the year after the series ended, the magazine lost about one million of its six million readers, according to “A History of Modern Manga”.
A productive manga artist, Mr. Toriyama did not necessarily have an appetite for this genre as a reader. “I have always had a hard time reading manga, including my own work,” he said in a 2018 interview with Kiyosu City Public Library. He led a private life and gave few interviews. In a 2013 interview with the Japanese singer and actress Shoko Nakagawa, he said that he did not even share all his work with his family. “To tell you the truth, no one in my family has ever seen ‘Dragon Ball’,” he said, laughing. “I am also a hikikomori,” he added, using the Japanese word for a recluse (隐居者). But his stories continued to reach fans around the world years after their creation.
1. Where can you find this article most probably?| A．A news report. | B．An autobiography. |
| C．A manga introduction. | D．A funeral speech. |
| A．It is classical. | B．It is engaging. |
| C．It is advanced. | D．It is educational. |
| A．A thickened size of each issue. | B．A leading magazine worldwide. |
| C．A period of increase in readership. | D．A record holder in manga history. |
| A．Unworldly and genuine. | B．Imaginative and flexible. |
| C．Innocent and well-informed. | D．Knowledgeable and courageous. |
7 . BOOKS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE
Susie Dent is Britain’s most-loved word expert. She has two new books: Interesting Stories About Curious Words (John Murray) and Roots of Happiness (Puffin), both available now.
Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain Fournier
This was the first book that really stopped me in my tracks. I lapped up its romantic but melancholy (忧郁的) story of the dreamy world between childhood and adolescence. I’ve never found as acute a description of longing as I did here, and for many things: for the mysterious castle, for love, and for freedom. It is an mysterious and dreamy book. What adds to the magic is that this was the only story that Fournier wrote—he died on the front line in the early months of the First World War.
The Oxford English Dictionary
If I could take just one book to a desert island it would (of course) be the complete Oxford English Dictionary —all 20 volumes. It may sound predictable, but the OED is anything but. In its pages you’ll find comedy, passion, tragedy, and thousands of hidden stories. Even the simplest of words have had quite a journey— “nice”, for example, has gone from meaning “stupid” to “pleasant”. Add to that a host of words that have unaccountably disappeared when—to my mind—we could really do with them, and you have entertainment forever. And which of us hasn’t met an “ultracrepidarian”: one who loves to talk about something they know nothing about?
Maus and Maus II by Art Spiegelman
The graphic novels Maus and Maus Ⅱ by the American cartoonist Art Spiegelman are not easy reads, but they’re important ones. They’re really a tale within a tale, in which the narrator (叙述者) interviews his father about his experiences of the Holocaust and his liberation from a concentration camp. Here the Nazis are drawn as cats, and Jews are mice. Overarching it all is an unforgettable tale of a son’s relationship with his broken father. Given that German has always been my first love, it felt necessary to read these books. Spiegelman takes the unspeakable and gives it an immediacy I’ll never forget.
1. What is the probable purpose of this text?| A．To recommend and classify. | B．To encourage and enrich. |
| C．To introduce and inform. | D．To memorize and alarm. |
| A．It inspires her to write stories. | B．It helps her describe something particular. |
| C．It fuels her passion for referring to a dictionary. | D．It entertains her with the development of language. |
| A．German geography. | B．Unexplained tales. |
| C．Adapted life story. | D．Parent-child relationship. |
8 . Seven-year-old Everett Botwright is a bright, imaginative kid. Like many children on the autism spectrum (自闭症), he also
There was only one
The
Kraft Heinz Canada donated $10,000 to autism charities,
The
| A．starts | B．deals | C．struggles | D．agrees |
| A．thrilled | B．annoyed | C．satisfied | D．worried |
| A．engaged | B．interested | C．disappointed | D．involved |
| A．food | B．idea | C．book | D．movie |
| A．goal | B．reason | C．solution | D．problem |
| A．toys | B．boxes | C．cards | D．packages |
| A．still | B．obviously | C．actually | D．probably |
| A．denied | B．received | C．answered | D．issued |
| A．help | B．treatment | C．advice | D．permission |
| A．advertisement | B．photo | C．request | D．video |
| A．local | B．traditional | C．social | D．technical |
| A．broke in | B．took off | C．came off | D．flooded in |
| A．sharing | B．broadcasting | C．composing | D．printing |
| A．sold | B．packed | C．collected | D．delivered |
| A．next | B．classical | C．regular | D．special |
| A．bought | B．designed | C．chose | D．released |
| A．heavy | B．other | C．limited | D．beautiful |
| A．daily | B．final | C．monthly | D．official |
| A．paying | B．translating | C．printing | D．signing |
| A．luck | B．Internet | C．good | D．dream |
9 . Some of our planet’s power pollinators (传粉昆虫) may have originated tens of millions of years earlier than scientists once believed. In a study published July 27 in the journal Current Biology, a team of researchers traced bee family back over 120 million years to the ancient supercontinent Gondwana (冈瓦纳大陆). While looking deeper into bee history, the team found evidence that bees originated earlier, diversified faster, and spread wider than previously suspected, putting together pieces of a puzzle on the origin of these pollinators.
In the study, an international team of scientists would be in sequence and compared genes from over 200 bee species. They then compared these bees with the traits from 185 different bee fossils and extinct fossils to develop an evolutionary history and genealogical model for how bees have historically been spread around the world. The team was able to analyze hundreds of thousands of genes at a time to make sure that the relationships they inferred were correct.
“This is the first time we have broad genome-scale data for all seven bee families,” study co-author and Washington State University entomologist Elizabeth Murray confidently said in a statement. Earlier studies established that the first bees potentially evolved from wasps (黄蜂), transitioning from predators up to collectors of pollen and nectar (花蜜). According to this study, bees arose in the dry regions of western Gondwana during the early Cretaceous period, between 145 million years ago to 100.5 million years ago.
“There’s been a long-time puzzle about the origin of bees,” study co-author and Washington State University entomologist Silas Bossert said in a statement. “For the first time, we have statistical evidence that bees originated on Gondwana. We now know that bees are originally southern hemisphere insects.” The team found evidence that as new continents formed, the bees moved northward. They continued to diversify and spread in parallel partnership with flowering plants called angiosperms. The bees later moved into India and Australia and all major bee families appear to have split off from one another before the beginning of the Tertiary period (65million years ago).
1. What’s the purpose of bee history researchers do research on?| A．To discover the origin of these pollinators. |
| B．To find out some reasonable proofs. |
| C．To know much about our planet. |
| D．To study the life of bee species. |
| A．in danger. | B．in need. | C．in order | D．in favor. |
| A．Unbelievable. | B．Reliable. | C．Positive. | D．Negative. |
| A．The earliest home of bees may be in Gondwana. |
| B．The world’s earliest bees were found in India and Australia. |
| C．The researchers are going on doing research on bee families. |
| D．The researchers get a lot evidence to prove their research. |
10 . Sometimes science advances at a snail’s pace, but in this case that’s a good thing: researchers have created a soft material that combines polymers with liquid metal, demonstrated in a snail-like robot. Developers say this electrically conductive gel(凝胶) could be used to make self-healing electronic circuits and biological monitors for measuring heart and muscle activity-and maybe even lead to robot nervous systems.
The complex substance can stretch and is soft like living tissue. If it breaks or tears, the edges can be touched together, and the material’s molecular bonds quickly re-form without any additional heat or chemical treatment. And crucially its developers say, it is the first such material that also conducts electricity.
These abilities could lead to wire-free medical monitors as well as fully soft robots. “For my research, one thing that’s really big is, ‘How do you put multiple functions into a single material?’” says Lillian Chin, who develops soft robotic components as part of her own research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Existing soft-bodied robots, she says, often require at least some rigid metals and silicon(硅)components. But soft, flexible living tissues can perform multiple tasks; muscles, Chin notes, both move our bodies and provide electrical feedback about that movement to our brains.
For a recent study in Nature Electronics, the researchers used their new material to connect motors to power sources in two basic machines: a snail-like soft robot and a toy car. The material’s self-healing ability helped these simple circuits(电路) be easily reequipped. For example, the team cut the car’s power-carrying gel “wires” and shifted their connections to power both movement and a small light fixed in the bottom.
1. What’s the function of the conductive gel?| A．To make a soft material. |
| B．To connect material and metal. |
| C．To restore robot nervous systems. |
| D．To produce electronic and biological monitors. |
| A．Being connected. | B．Providing heat. |
| C．Conducting electricity. | D．Handling chemical. |
| A．The good benefits of the single material in her study. |
| B．Multiple functions of the single material. |
| C．The movement from human bodies in her study. |
| D．The massive tasks done in her study. |
| A．Its soft ability. | B．Its helpful ability |
| C．Its wireless ability. | D．Its self-healing ability. |
