3 . From the moon to Mars, scientists have been hunting for alien life in the solar system for decades.

However, Venus was not regarded as an ideal place because of its hot temperature and dry atmosphere. But a recent discovery of traces of a gas in the clouds of Venus has excited astronomers, as it may serve as a potential sign of life.

On Sept 14, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada announced that scientists have detected phosphine (磷化氢) in the clouds of Venus. Phosphine is a colorless, toxic gas that has an odor of garlic. Though toxic, it is viewed as a possible sign of life because on Earth the gas is made by microorganisms that live in oxygen-free environments.

“I was very surprised, stunned, in fact.” astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales and lead author of the research, told MSN. “There is a chance that we have detected some kind of living organism in the clouds of Venus.”

This layer of clouds is about 48 kilometers above the Venus surface, with its temperature ranging from 30 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit (about -1 to 93℃). Scientists have inferred that if life exists on Venus, this cloud deck is likely the only place where it would survive.

Scientists went through every possibility that could have led to the formation of phosphine gas in Venus’ clouds, including volcanoes, lightning strikes, small meteorites (陨石) falling into the atmosphere. But they ruled all of them out. It was concluded that there is no explanation for the existence of this gas in Venus’ clouds, other than the presence of life, USA Today reported.

Although the detection of phosphine is not strong evidence for life, this finding is great enough to change scientists’ view on Venus, which is thought to be a completely inhospitable planet.

What signs of life we looking for?

(1). Liquid water: It can dissolve a huge range of molecules needed for life and facilitate their chemical reactions.

(2). Mild temperatures: Temperatures higher than 122 ℃ will destroy most complex organic molecules, and make it almost impossible for carbon-based life to form.

1. What can we learn about phosphine from the text?

A．It has no smell at all.	B．It only exists on Venus.
C．It can be produced by microorganisms.	D．It is a sign of the existence of oxygen.

2. What can we infer from paragraphs 5 and 6?

A．Various living organisms have been detected on Venus.

B．The higher the cloud is above Venus, the warmer it is.

C．The cloud deck is rich in phosphine.

D．If life exists on Venus, it is likely in the cloud deck.

3. What did scientists conclude about the phosphine gas detected on Venus?

A．It could be formed as a result of the falling of meteorites.

B．It could be a sign that there is life in Venus’ clouds.

C．It could be caused by volcanoes and lighting strikes.

D．It proves that Venus is another hospitable planet.

4. Which of the following is true according to the text?

A．A newly detected gas may indicate possible existence of life on Venus.

B．Scientists found the most hospitable place on Venus.

C．The environment on Venus changed in favor of life.

D．Phosphine formed on Venus means alien life is present.

4 . Housing officials say that lately they are noticing something different: students seem to lack the will, and the skill, to deal with ordinary conflicts. “We have students who are mad at each other and they text each other in the same room,” says a teacher. “So many of our conflicts are because kids don’t know how to solve a problem by formal discussion.”

And as any pop psychologist will tell you, bottled emotions lead to silent discontent (不满) that can boil over into frustration and anger. At the University of Florida, emotional conflicts occur about once a week, the university’s director of housing education says, “Over the past five years, roommate conflicts have increased. The students don’t have the person-to-person discussions and they don’t know how to handle them.” The problem is most dramatic among freshmen; housing professionals say they see improvement as students move toward graduation, but some never seem to improve, and they worry about how such students will deal with conflicts after college.

Administrators guess that reliance on cell phones and the Internet may have made it easier for young people to avoid uncomfortable encounters. Why express anger in person when you can vent (发泄) in a text? “Things are posted on someone’s wall on Facebook like: Oh, my roommate kept me up all night studying,” says Dana Pysz, an assistant director at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s a different way to express their conflict to each other, consequently creating even more conflicts as complaints go public.” In recent focus groups at North Carolina State University, dorm residents said they would not even deal with noisy neighbors on their floor.

Administrators point to parents who have fixed their children’s problems in their entire lives. Now in college, the children lack the skills to attend to even modest conflicts. Some parents continue to interfere (干涉) on campus.

1. What is the main reason for many roommate conflicts?

A．Students are not good at reaching an agreement about the problems.

B．Students are not satisfied with each other.

C．Housing directors are not responsible for them.

D．Students are not strong-willed.

2. What do we learn from the second paragraph?

A．Students, especially freshmen, should bottle up their dissatisfaction.

B．Students in Florida sit down and have a person-to-person talk once a week.

C．Not all students are able to handle conflicts by the time they graduate.

D．The number of conflicts among roommates has decreased in the past five years.

3. What is the attitude of Dana Pysz when he mentions roommates reveal their conflicts in the media?

A．Disapproving.

B．Indifferent.

C．Supportive.

D．Unclear.

4. What should parents do according to the passage?

A．They should be involved in their children’s life on campus.

B．They should deal with their children’s problems in their whole lives.

C．They should constantly contact the administrators of the college.

D．They should teach their children the skills to tackle the conflicts.

5 . Quietly sitting there reading, I found myself suddenly listening to the train guard’s announcements (通知). Train travelers will surely agree that when the guard (列车长) makes an announcement, whether it’s the recorded message or the guard’s message, few people listen to it, because it’s often quite dull or hard to understand. This one was different. I noticed that other passengers appeared to be listening, too. Not only that, everyone was smiling!

Why was so much attention being paid to this message? As best I can recall the guard said something along these lines, “Good Morning Ladies, Gentlemen and Children, this is the 7: 35 a.m. from Penrith to Central and you’ll be pleased to know that we are right on time. And what a lovely morning it is in Sydney today. The sun is shining, birds are singing, and all’s right with the world. I trust you have a great day wherever you’re going. Thanks for catching my train this morning and I hope to see you again soon.”

Quite a few people (obviously previous strangers) started talking to one another about the guards excellent message and how good it had made everyone feel. I started thinking about this, and then I found the young guard and said “Were you the guard on the 7: 35 a.m. from Penrith?” The guard seemed a bit stunned at first, replying, “Yes, yes.” “Well, I really appreciate your announcement. Thank you for your extremely good message, which gave me and the other passengers such a good start to the day. Please keep doing it.” I said.

There are two messages for me in what happened that day. Firstly, when people are happy in their work, it shows in what they do and say. Secondly, the story attaches much importance to the benefits that accumulate (积累) from thanking people for something they’ve done, particularly when it’s not expected. Can you imagine the conversation that guard would have when he got home?

1. Why do few train travelers listen to the announcements?

A．The messages are unattractive.

B．The guard’s voice is not clear.

C．They usually feel sleepy.

D．They are absorbed in books.

2. What does the underlined word “stunned” in Paragraph 3 mean?

A．Patient.	B．Frightened.
C．Surprised.	D．Excited.

3. What might the guard talk about with his family when he got home?

A．The beautiful weather.	B．The recorded message.
C．The train from Penrith.	D．The unexpected appreciation.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．An Intelligent Guard.

B．A Boring Train Story.

C．A Different Train Announcement.

D．A Lovely Morning in Sydney.

6 . People who give, live longer, studies have shown. Now, a new study by University of Michigan shows that why people volunteer—not whether they volunteer—is what really counts.

For the study, Konrath and colleagues analyzed data collected in 2008 and 2012 aiming at the same random samples of 3,376 people. Overall, they found that just 2.3 percent of those who once worked as volunteers had died, compared to 4.3 percent of non-volunteers. They further found that how much people volunteered mattered as well—only 1.8 percent of regular volunteers died, compared with 2.5 percent of occasional volunteers.

But what really made a difference were people’s motives for volunteering. The researchers asked people to rate how important they found various reasons for volunteering, and they found that the more important people rated reasons such as feeling pity for people in need, the more likely they were to be alive. Those who rated motives related to personal benefit as more important were more likely to have died, and just as likely to die as those who didn’t volunteer at all. These reasons included volunteering because they enjoyed the social contact, to escape their own problems, or to explore their own strengths.

Konrath says the current findings suggest it may be a poor idea to encourage people to volunteer because it’s good for them. “Volunteering is increasingly being encouraged in schools and organizations. Some groups say that it’s okay to want benefits for yourself, and encourage people to think of volunteering as an exchange for personal interests. Some groups emphasize the health benefits received through volunteering.” Konrath added, “Of course, it’s reasonable for volunteers to expect benefits for themselves. But the potential health benefits of volunteering are significantly reduced if self-benefit becomes a person’s main motive.”

1. What does the new study mainly find?

A．How we volunteer makes sense to others.	B．How often we volunteer makes a difference.
C．Whether we volunteer decides our well-being.	D．Why we volunteer has an impact on our health.

2. How did the researchers do the study?

A．By analyzing statistics.	B．By rating volunteers’ performances.
C．By doing lab experiments.	D．By grouping participants randomly.

3. Which of the following motives will probably contribute to a longer life?

A．To develop abilities.	B．To make more friends.
C．To help the poor people.	D．To solve personal problems.

4. What is the last paragraph mainly about?

A．Practical suggestions on further studies.	B．A further explanation of the current findings.
C．Potential applications of the research method.	D．A reasonable doubt about the research results.

7 . For some time, psychologists have been studying how personality traits affect health and health-related choices. Not surprisingly, they have found that people blessed with innate conscientiousness, meaning that they are organized and predictable, usually eat better and live longer than people who are disorderly. They also tend to have immaculate offices.

What has been less clear is whether neat environments can produce good habits even in those who aren’t necessarily innately conscientious. To find out, Dr. Vohs and her colleagues at the University of Minnesota conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, a group of college-age students were placed in a messy or a neat office and asked to dream up new uses for Ping-Pong balls. Surprisingly, those in messy spaces generated ideas that were significantly more creative, according to two independent judges, than those in offices where stacks of papers and other objects were neatly arranged.

The result was something of a surprise, says Dr. Vohs, the leader of the study. Few previous studies found much virtue(美德) in disorder. The broken window theory, proposed decades ago, holds that even slight disorder and neglect can encourage indifference and poor discipline.

But in the study by Dr. Vohs, disordered offices encouraged originality and a search for novelty. In the second experiment, students were given the choice of adding a health “boost” to their lunchtime juice that was labeled either “new” or “classic”. The students in the messy space were far more likely to choose the new one; those in the tidy office generally chose the classic version. “Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition,” Dr. Vohs and her co-authors conclude in the study, “which can produce fresh insights.”

The implications of these findings are also practical. “My advice would be, if you need to think outside the box for a future project,” Dr. Vohs says, “then let the chaos (杂乱) rise and free your imagination. But if your primary goal is to eat well or to go to the gym, pick up around your office first. By doing this, the naturally messy can acquire some of the discipline of the conscientious.”

1. The underlined word “immaculate” in paragraph 1 probably means ______

A．messy

B．tidy

C．terrible

D．comfortable

2. Which of the following can best explain the broken window theory?

A．Chaos causes chaos.	B．Misfortune may be an actual blessing.
C．Bad news has wings.	D．When a door shuts, a window opens.

3. Which of the following will Dr. Vohs probably agree with?

A．More virtue exists in organized people.

B．Creativity results from tidiness and discipline.

C．Disorderly surroundings help to create new ideas.

D．Workers’ good habits guarantee the success of a project.

4. What can we conclude from the study results?

A．The naturally neat people tend to be very creative.

B．A messy office will cause quite low working efficiency.

C．Environments can affect people’s way of thinking and behavior.

D．People’s personalities are determined by their working environments.

10 . Due to social events in recent years, the relationship between social media and teenagers mental health has been under heated discussion.

On Sept 30 a British court decided that content on social media platforms contributed to the depression of 14-year-old Molly Russell. Russell interacted with 2,100 posts related lo pessimistic, self-harm in the six months, leading up to her depression, reported the Observer website.

The correlation has also been proved by science. A study in 2019 showed that the frequent use of social media by teenagers can lead to a decrease in their mental health.

So, how can we make sure that teenagers won’t get hurt while using social media? Chan, 18, from the University of Macao shared her experience. Chan said that she once came across short videos romanticizing mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. She immediately reported them to the platform.

But she said that the users’ power to regulate videos is still limited. “It is ultimately the responsibility of the social media platforms to filter out content that is potentially harmful.” She also noticed that the age of social media users has become increasingly younger. Society should pay attention to this, she said. “Since it’s not possible to cut off access to social media for younger users, why not introduce a ‘supervision mode’ with which parents can regulate the content to be viewed by teenagers beforehand?” she said.

Wu Chengyu, 18, studies at Tianjin Experimental High School. He said that several years ago he came across a game that lures teenagers to self-abuse and depression. He quickly chose to ignore it so he wouldn’t be influenced. This is the same way he reacts when exposed to negative content on social media.

In Wu’s opinion, teenagers today should improve their social media literacy (素养), telling real from fake and good from bad. “Also, everyone can be a content creator on social media.” he said, “We should all strengthen our awareness of ethics”.

1. What led to Russell’s depression according to a British court?

A．Her interaction with others online.

B．Negative information on social media platforms.

C．Short videos she watched on the Internet.

D．Her addiction to online posts.

2. Which of the following statements does Chan probably agree with?

A．The number of younger Social media users should be limited.

B．Parents should monitor the content to be viewed by teenagers in advance.

C．A supervision mode ought to be introduced by parents.

D．It is the responsibility of the society to romanticize mental illnesses.

3. Who should be ultimately responsible for removing negative content according to Chan?

A．Parents.	B．Social media platforms
C．Content creators.	D．Social media platforms.

4. What does Wu suggest teenagers should do?

A．Use social media wisely.	B．Reduce social media usage.
C．Stay away from online games.	D．Learn more about social media.