1 . Polar bears generally use sea ice to hunt (捕猎), but a newly discovered group has found another way. An isolated (与世隔绝的) population of polar bears has been discovered in a fjord (峡湾) in southeast Greenland, which is free of sea ice for most of the year. Polar bear generally need sea ice to survive, so the discovery is raising hopes that some kinds of the polar bears might survive the loss of sea ice caused by global warming.
Researchers found the population living in a fjord in the southeast Greenland, which is surrounded by mountains and an ice sheet to the west, and ocean to the east. The sea-ice coverage lasts for only around 100 days each year. With sea ice in the fjord becoming smaller because of global warming, the whole group were expected to die out by the end of this century.
But the isolated population has found a way to hunt without sea ice. The group, about 27 adult females, has been isolated from other polar bear populations along Greenland’s east coast for at least 200 years.
Tracking data from marked bears proves that they don’t move far. For example, when members of the group went out of the fjord, the ice on which they sat sometimes got caught in the rapid water flow. “Whenever this happened, they would get stuck and then, they would have to jump off, swim to the beach and walk back home empty-handed,” says lead author Kristin Laidre, an animal ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Though the researchers failed to video their hunting without sea ice, the existence of this small population in conditions of low sea-ice coverage suggests there is a chance that the population can survive, even as sea ice flows away to farther north each year.
1. What have the newly discovered polar bears found?| A．A place filled with ice sheets. |
| B．A way to hunt without sea ice. |
| C．A way to track sea ice flowing away. |
| D．An ice sheet caught in the rapid water flow. |
| A．They are being hunted by human. |
| B．They have lost their source of food. |
| C．They can’t stand the increasing heat. |
| D．The sea ice there is becoming smaller. |
| A．The bears can swim very far to hunt for food. |
| B．Kristin Laidre is negative about the future of the group. |
| C．Once the group went out of the fjord, they might get into trouble. |
| D．If the bears got caught in the rapid water flow, they wouldn’t go home. |
| A．Polar bear population can survive without sea ice |
| B．Sea ice is becoming smaller because of the global warming |
| C．Polar bear population may die out because of the global warming |
| D．A newly discovered polar bear population has been stuck in a fjord |
2 . In Yakutia, Siberia, temperatures drop to as low as -71℃. It is actually one of the coldest places on earth. Located a few hundred miles outside the Arctic Circle, The Republic of Sakha, also known as Yakutiya or Yakut-Sakhat, is now the largest republic in Russia.
Fur(毛皮) hats and thick coats are surely required. Thick fur boots, gloves, and anything else to avoid frostbite is highly encouraged.
People of Yakutia are so used to the cold that they even have an open air market where they can shop for meat and fish. The best part is that they don’t need those huge freezers to keep the meat. Sellers remain outdoors for the entire day in the freezing winds.
And if you think there’s no way to have fun in such a tough environment, think again. They love ice fishing and ice swimming. They actually take off all their clothes and put on their swimwear before swimming in the freezing waters.
It’s so cold outside that some people don’t need freezers anymore. Pipes are left outside as well since they cannot be laid out under the ground because of the hard soil. Other people make do with blocks of ice that they cut from the rivers for free water. Toilet duties are handled outside. Just be sure to do everything quickly.
It’s not always freezing as summer can hit +40℃ though it is short and dry. It is among the coldest cities in the world. Visitors need to do a lot of research and preparations before spending a few days in Yakutia, though it certainly is an interesting place to experience!
1. What can be learned from paragraph 1?| A．Yakutia is larger than Russia. |
| B．Yakutia is actually the coldest place on earth. |
| C．The temperature in Yakutia is always -71℃ in winter. |
| D．Yakutia is located a few hundred miles outside the Arctic Circle. |
| A．Frozen injury. | B．High fever. |
| C．Going out. | D．Falling down because of icy road. |
| A．Cut blocks of ice for water. |
| B．Sell fish and meat in open air. |
| C．Go ice fishing and ice swimming. |
| D．Handle toilet duties outside quickly. |
| A．In a science report. | B．On a tour website. |
| C．In a sports magazine. | D．In an entertainment newspaper. |
3 . The story of a 92-year-old book lover in a village of Chongqing has touched many recently, Sun Shiquan has collected more than 7,000 books over the past years and has offered a free local library to people there for years.
He was born in Pipa Village in Xiuqi Town of Chongqing’s Chengkou County. Being a bookworm as a child, he read all kinds of ancient books including the Four Books and the Five Classics. In the 1950s, he became one of only a handful of local college graduates and later served as a middle school teacher in the county.
He started to collect books in 1983 and gradually built a collection of many kinds over more than 40 years. Among his holdings is a precious set known as the Si Ku Quan Shu, dating back to Qing Dynasty. It is one of the only seven copies in the country.
Wearing glasses, Sun reads for more than three hours every day. Now he has finished reading most of his collections. Speaking of her father, Sun Ziyu, said, “My father has a habit of making notes on each book. He makes a mark whenever he stops reading so that he can carry on reading from where he left off.”
Village official Liu Jiao said, “Many children in the village love to visit Sun and listen to his stories.” She said the elderly man has earned respect from the whole village. People call him “Teacher Sun” and children call him “great-grandfather”.
Sun Ziyu said her father also writes poems and prose(散文) in his spare time and enjoys reading his works to the family. She said under her father’s influence, family members take the time to read together and exchange views. “That’s their favorite part,” she said.
“My father has loved reading for a lifetime,” Sun Ziyu said. “Reading is his meat and drink.”
1. What can we know from the first two paragraphs?| A．Mr Sun was born in a rich family. |
| B．There was only one free library in Xiuqi Town. |
| C．Mr Sun has been a book lover since childhood. |
| D．It was easy for children to get educated in the 1950s. |
| A．Colorful. | B．Valuable. | C．Demanding. | D．Enormous. |
| A．Mr Sun’s reading habit. | B．Mr Sun’s life experiences. |
| C．Mr Sun’s writing hobby. | D．Mr Sun’s book collections. |
| A．A person with talent. | B．A person worthy of pity. |
| C．A person with disability. | D．A person worthy of respect. |
4 . Breathtaking Must-See Alaskan Parks, Preserves and Landmarks
Aniakchak
National Monument & Preserve, King Salmon, AK
This frighteningly beautiful park is home to a 6-mile-wide caldera(火山喷口) formed over 3,500 years ago. Because of bad weather and rough path, however, it’s one of the least visited locations in the National Park System With only 134 recorded visits in 2014.
Alagnak
Wild River, King Salmon, AK
Take in the scenic views of the beautiful Alaska Peninsula as you go across the rough waters of the Alagnak Wild River. With an almost untouched landscape, Alagnak is home to a high number of brown bears and is famous for an abundance of prized sportfish, making it the most popular fishing destination in southwest Alaska.
Denali
National Park & Preserve, Denali Park, AK
Founded in 1917, Denali National Park (formerly Mount McKinley National Park) was the world’s first national park established to conserve wildlife. Features of the park include six million acres of untouched terrain, an abundance of wildlife such as grizzlies and caribou and the highest peak in North America at 6,193 meters: Denali.
Bering Land Bridge
National Preserve, Nome, AK
The first settlers of the Americas travelled not by boat, but by foot from modern-day Asia by way of the Bering Land Bridge. Once home to mastodons, mammoths(猛犸象) and other ice age animals, what remains of this ancient “bridge” now houses a thriving(兴旺的) Alaska population and offers insight into the day-to-day lives of prehistoric humans.
1. What will you do in Aniakchak?| A．Visit and old bridge. | B．Know about caldera. |
| C．Shoot many wild animals. | D．Climb the highest peak in North America. |
| A．They are both right for fishing. |
| B．They both include untouched areas. |
| C．They are both famous for mammoths. |
| D．They both offer mountain climbing equipment. |
| A．Aniakchak. | B．Alagnak. |
| C．Danali. | D．Bering Land Bridge. |
5 . Jewel White, a 15-year-old student, gathers her books and signs herself out of a routine morning math class. She is not leaving school for the day, but is off to try some more challenging equations. This practice is not uncommon at Westmount Secondary School in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, where an unconventional learning approach is prevailing.
Westmount is one of the eight regular schools in the country where students work at their own pace and set their own direction, spending as much or as little time as they need on subjects. Teachers act as advisers. With the classroom teachers’ permission, students can sign out of a class to work on other materials or walk into another class to catch up on another subject. And every two weeks they make plans for their own learning time, with support from their adviser.
At a time when a shrinking student population is causing boards to close schools. Westmount sits at 30 percent overcapacity with 1,500 students. Its bursting number led education officials to consider expanding the program to other locations.
“If students are interested, we are going to do our best to provide that sort of programming,” said Todd White, chair of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.
When students like Jewel are not in a classroom, they can usually be found in the school’s learning commons, a study area for all students. There are teachers available to help, but generally students are working on their own assignments or projects.
Jewel said Westmount’s self-paced style caught her attention when she was looking at high schools. Westmount is not the school close to her home. She said at elementary school she would often cause trouble in class because she would complete her work early and not have much else to do. “I find this kind of academic environment in Westmount is a lot better for me,” she said. “I like the thought of being able to work faster or slower if needed.”
1. What does the word “prevailing” underlined in paragraph I mean?| A．Catching on. | B．Giving way. | C．Slowing down. | D．Causing trouble. |
| A．Complex but familiar. | B．Flexible and efficient. |
| C．Traditional and common. | D．Difficult but interesting. |
| A．Tolerant. | B．Doubtful. | C．Positive. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．It was a school closest to her home. |
| B．It provided too much homework for students. |
| C．Its learning atmosphere was not very satisfying. |
| D．Its students did not work as fast as Westmount. |
6 . These days, there’s a green version of just about everything. There are cars that run on electricity and alternative fuels, houses that are powered by solar energy and wind farms seemingly popping up on every open space from California to coastal Japan. Even drones (无人机) ate getting in on the action. The unmanned air vehicles are also being put to environmental uses around the globe.
The eye in the sky that they provide helps researchers better understand what’s going on with the natural world in which we live. For environmentalists and earth scientists, the flying machines can be sent way up in the air to record sweeping footage of a large area to track the impact of things like climate change, migration and the acts of cutting down and burning forest trees, which can be done without having to buy a helicopter, rent a plane or tape a video camera to a bird.
Sure, there’s plenty of satellite footage already out there, but drones let researchers accurately position the data set that they want to get a quicker, closer look at the area that they’re looking to monitor. In 2013, for example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent a drone into the Turrialba Volcano in Costa Rica to gather data about its emissions. The temperature, ash height and gas concentration information collected during the mission helped earth scientists determine which way the volcanic and potentially poisonous gas erupting from the volcano was moving and take steps to limit its environmental impact.
Similarly, Arctic researchers are using drones to help study temperature change and the melting of glaciers. They use drones equipped with infrared (红外线的) cameras to sweep into places that they may otherwise not be able to reach to monitor and collect data on the melting ice. The same flying machines may also eventually be used to transport other data collection tools into the wild.
1. How does the author lead in the topic of the text?| A．By giving examples. | B．By listing data. |
| C．By drawing a distinction. | D．By making assumptions. |
| A．The high safety. |
| B．The huge space. |
| C．The recovery capability after damage. |
| D．The ability to collect data at a high altitude. |
| A．Their production steps. |
| B．Their practical functions. |
| C．Their potential impacts on the atmosphere. |
| D．Their data set for motoring the environment. |
| A．Drones: Poisonous | B．Drones: Eco-friendly |
| C．Drones: Limited | D．Drones: Adaptable |
7 . Douglas Smith, n gardener from Hertfordshire. the U.K., recently set a new Guinness World Record for the most tomatoes grown on a single stem (茎), 1,269.
Up until last summer, the record for the most tomatoes grown on a single stem had stood unchallenged for over a decade. Then English farmer Douglas Smith set his sight on breaking it, thinking that he could grow more than 488 fruits on s single stem. He proved that last year, when he managed to break the old record by growing 839 tomatoes on a greenhouse -grown plant. It was quite an achievement, but he was only getting started, as only a few weeks later Douglas Smith broke his own record by growing no less than 1,269 tomatoes on a single stem.
Is Douglas Smith a gardening addict? He spends up to four hours a day in his back garden tending his plants, and has been working hard on becoming the best possible gardener the world has ever seen. To maximize his chances of setting a new world record, he read various scientific papers and even took soil samples to be tested in a laboratory. And in the end, they all paid off.
“I am over the moon,” Douglas said. “This year was only meant to be an experimental year to see which varieties would produce the most fruits and we had to fight with early blight (疫病), which put paid to a number of other tomato plants. I’m amazed by how many tomatoes were on the plant in the end.”
Growing 1,269 tomatoes on a single stem is only Douglas Smith’s latest achievement. In 2020, he grew a 20-foot-tall sunflower, and also set a new national record for the heaviest tomato, with a 3.106 kg tomato. He likes to run little experiments on other vegetables and crops, and he is currently experimenting on peas, aubergines and potatoes.
1. What can we know about Douglas Smith from paragraph 2?| A．He broke the old record twice. |
| B．He had planted the best tomatoes. |
| C．He thought breaking the record was easy. |
| D．He had worked to break the record for a decade. |
| A．Strict and tolerant. | B．Attractive and brave |
| C．Patient and hard-working. | D．Friendly and humorous. |
| A．A lack of money. | B．Skill shortages. |
| C．Building a laboratory. | D．Dealing with the blight. |
| A．The record’s significance. |
| B．Douglas Smith’s next plan. |
| C．The details about the heaviest tomato. |
| D．More information about Douglas Smith’s planting. |
8 . Guildford School of Acing (GSA) is a successful center for musical training. Our philosophy is based on your growth as an individual and your development as an artist within a highly disciplined whole.
About what you should do
We want you to view yourself as a potential artist who can compete and succeed in all aspects musical performance. To accomplish this, you will need to develop your professional awareness through a strict process of training.
About the content of the courses
We will guide you towards the development of a clear set of individual technical skills, with practical classes in group and individual singing, ballet, jazz and other forms of dance. Your skills are further developed through many exercises, scene work and project rehearsal (排练). Classes in dancing and singing are highly ranked alongside acting classes and projects, which enable you to become multi-skilled. Professional development classes by the guests selected from the contemporary musical industry ensure currency within your chosen field and enable you to maximize all employment opportunities.
About the test
A final show presentation in the West End Theatre helps you complete your change from a musical student to a professional performer. The result is your development into a highly disciplined individual and all-round performer who has both artistic skills and the ability to work in cooperation with others.
1. Who is GSA intended for?| A．Literature students. | B．Sports students. | C．Psychology students. | D．Musical students. |
| A．High school teachers. | B．University teachers. |
| C．Professional musical performers. | D．Professional composers. |
| A．Write an essay. | B．Put on a show. |
| C．Design a course. | D．Meet a performer. |
9 . Rescarchers in the US treated healthy mice with a form of gene therapy that refreshed older cells, making the animals more youthful according to biological markers that are used to measure the effects of ageing. Repeating the trick in humans is far from straightforward, but the findings will fuel interest in new therapiesthat aim to slow or reverse theageing process as a means of tackling age-related diseases such as cancers and Alzheimer’s.
The scientists drew on previous work by the Japanese Nobel winner Prof Shinya Yamanaka, who showed that a mixture of four molecules(原子)—known as Yamanaka factors—can turn adult cells into youthful stem cells that are capable of forming almost any tissue (组织) in the body.
Writing in the journal Nature Aging,the US team led by Jasper and Prof Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte at the Salk Institute in California and the San Diego Altos Institute, found that mice who received Yamanaka factors for several months were similar to younger animals in many ways, with their skin in particular showing signs of rejuvenation(恢复青春).
The experiments showed that rejuvenation was more effective when the therapy was given for a long time—7 to 10 months—starting when the animals were 12 to 15 months old, equal to age 35 to 50 in humans. Whén older animals, equal to 80 years old in human terms, were treated for one month, the scientists saw little impact.
Rather than using Yamanaka factors to rejuvenate aged humans, many scientists suspect that new drugs will be needed to partially reprogram cells safely and effectively. “In theory, biological age reversal or reduction could be possible. However, we are at very early stages where we need to understand the basic science behind it much better,” said Dr.Tamir Chandra, an expert in the biology of ageing at the University of Edinburgh.
1. Which of the following best describes the findings of the research?| A．Suspicious. |
| B．Tricky. |
| C．Amusing. |
| D．Inspiring. |
| A．They are made up of three molecules. |
| B．They can probably rejuvenate mice’s skin. |
| C．They were first found by a Japanese scientist. |
| D．They can become a part of mice’s body tissue. |
| A．The therapy given for a long time works better. |
| B．Humans may have better outcomes than animals. |
| C．The rejuvenation is more effective for people aged 12 to 15. |
| D．Older animals can live longer with the help of the treatment. |
| A．The researches are far from complete. |
| B．The process of growing old cannot be stopped. |
| C．The basic rule behind rejuvenation is fully understood. |
| D．The new drug has been put into use safely and effectively. |
10 . Check out our list of the new online movies of this week.
The Fastest Woman on Earth
Racer and TV personality Jessi Combs may be one of the most definitive examples of “those who shine the brightest burn the fastest.” Known as “the fastest woman on four wheels,” Combs’ biggest competition came from herself. The Fastest Woman On Earth looks to show how Combs was totally fearless in her seven-year fight to break land speed racing records.
Watch on HBO Max right now
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
We can all recite the story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus by heart. But does the average person know anything else about Mrs. Parks’ life? They will once they watch this new documentary The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. It turns out Mrs. Parks’ image in mass media was much softer than the truth. Based on Mrs. Rosa Parks’ true stories, this film looks to illustrate a whole lifetime by way of new interviews.
Watch it on Peacock right now
The Stranger
Cannes film festival selection The Stranger looks to bring some reputation to the world of Netflix movies. In it, Joel Edgerton stars as Mark, an experienced undercover policeman on a dangerous mission:going undercover to solve a missing persons case. The Stranger may be about an investigation, but its focus tightens on the relationships that form around this case. Mark gets close to prime suspect Henry Teague (Sean Harris),to pursue a lead, but the two soon form a friendship.
Watch on Netflix right now
Raymond& Ray
The topic of reunion at a funeral isn’t exactly new soil but Raymond & Ray looks to offer strong performances. Ethan Hawke plays Ray, the rude half-brother of the polite Raymond (Ewan McGregor), both of whom are spending time together as one of their father’s last demands in his will. They try to find their long-lost sister.
Watch on Apple TV Plus right now
1. On which streaming platform can we see the movie adapted from true stories？| A．HBOMax. | B．Peacock. | C．Nętflix. | D．Apple TV Plus. |
| A．Jessi Combs. | B．Sean Harris. | C．Joel Edgerton. | D．Ethan Hawke. |
| A．The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. | B．The Fastest Woman on Earth. |
| C．The Stranger. | D．Raymond & Ray. |
