1 . China’s Tianwen 1 Mars probe (探测器) conducted its fourth orbital correction on Friday evening, as the spacecraft makes ready for its arrival in orbit around Feb. 10, according to the China National Space Administration.
The name comes from the long poem Tianwen, meaning Heavenly Questions or Questions to Heaven, written by Qu Yuan, one of the greatest poets of ancient China. In Tianwen, this name conveys the Chinese nation’s steady effort in pursuing truth and culture of exploring nature and the universe. CNSA also unveiled ( 发 布 ) the logo of China’s planetary exploration missions, featuring the letter C, signifying China, international cooperation and capacity of entering space.
Tianwen I has flown for 197 days and more than 465 million kilometers on its journey to the planet. It is now around 184 million km from Earth and I. 1 million km from Mars. Depending on the two planets’ orbits, Mars is between 55 and 400 million km from Earth. Mars probe Tianwen I is seen in its first selfies in space on Oct. 1, 2020. The administration also published a black-and-white picture of Mars taken by Tianwen I, the first snapshot (抓拍的照片) from the Chinese craft.
Tianwen I, the country’s first independent Mars mission, was launched by a Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket on July 23 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, kicking off the nation’s planetary exploration program.
A successful landing would make China only the second nation to place a spacecraft on the Martian planet. China would also be the first to successfully orbit, land and deploy ( 部署) a vehicle in the same mission. According to experts, searching for signs of life on Mars will be the first and foremost scientific goal. China is open and inclusive in the development of its space technology not least because it believes that the exploration of outer space should help build a community with a shared future for mankind.
1. Why is Qu Yuan’s poem mentioned in the text?| A．To tell the origin of space exploration. |
| B．To describe space exploration vividly. |
| C．To highlight the importance of space exploration. |
| D．To show Chinese continuous struggle in space exploration. |
| A．function | B．development | C．operation | D．structure |
| A．To build a common future for man. | B．To prove our achievement in space research. |
| C．To discover signs of life on this planet. | D．To expand the understanding of the space. |
| A．Letter C Logo symbolizes creation between countries. |
| B．China was the first nation to land a spacecraft on Mars. |
| C．Tianwen I made its fifth orbital correction around Feb. 10. |
| D．Tianwen I started a new chapter in Chinese planetary exploration. |
2 . If your in-box is currently reporting unread messages in the hundreds or thousands, you might have a hard time believing the news: e-mail is on the decline.
At first thought, that might seem to be the case. The incoming generation, after all, doesn’t do e-mail. Oh, they might have an account. They use it only as we would use a fax machine: as a means to communicate with old-school folks like their parents or to fulfill the sign-up requirements of Web sites. They rarely check it, though.
Today’s instant electronic memos — such as texting and Facebook and Twitter messages — are more direct, more concentrated, more efficient. They go without the salutation (称呼语) and the signoff (签收); we already know the “to” and “from.” Many corporations are moving to messaging networks for exactly that reason: more signal, less noise and less time. This trend is further evidence that store-and-forward systems such as e-mail and voicemail are outdated. Instead of my leaving you a lengthy message that you pick up later, I can now send you an easily-read message that you can read — and respond to — on the go.
The coming of the mobile era is responsible for the decline of e-mail. Instant written messages bring great convince to people. They can deal with them at about any time: before a movie, in a taxi, waiting for lunch. And because these messages are very brief, they’re suitable for smart phone typing.
Does this mean e-mail is on its way to the dustbin of digital history? Not necessarily. E-mail still has certain advantages. On the other hand, tweets and texts feel ephemeral — you read them, then they’re gone, into an endless string, e-mail still feels like something you have and that you can file, search and return to later. It’s easy to imagine that it will continue to feel more appropriate for formal communications: agreements, important news, longer explanations.
So, e-mail won’t go away completely. Remember, we’ve been through a transition (过度) like this not so long ago: when e-mail was on the rise, people said that postal mail was dead. That’s not how it works. Postal mail found its smaller market, and so will e-mail. New technology rarely replaces old one completely; it just adds new alternatives.
1. What would the incoming generation like to do with their e-mail accounts?| A．Check bank accounts. | B．Send long messages. |
| C．Fill in some forms. | D．Communicate with their colleagues. |
| A．The possible reasons behind the decline of e-mail |
| B．The likes and dislikes of the young generation |
| C．The rapid development of e-communication channels |
| D．Evidence about the uncertain future of easily-consumed messages |
| A．Automatically-sending. | B．Randomly-written. |
| C．Hardly- recognized. | D．Shortly-appearing. |
| A．It’s too early to determine the decline of e-mail. |
| B．E-mail has reasons to exist with its own advantages. |
| C．E-mail, just like postal mail has come to its end. |
| D．We should feel sorry for the decline of e-mail. |
3 . Imagine a world where you move around in front of a personal computer in your own sound space. You listen to your favorite songs, play loud computer games or watch a movie — all without other people hearing the sound and without headphones.
That is the possibility presented by “sound beaming”, a new technology from Noveto Systems, an Israeli company. On Friday, the company introduced a desktop device that sends sound directly to a listener without the need for headphones or a special receiver.
Noveto Systems gave The Associated Press (AP) a chance to test its SoundBeamer 1.0 before its introduction. The AP’s Louise Dixon writes that listening to the device is like something from a science fiction movie.The sound seems so close that it feels like it is inside your ears while also in front, above and behind them.
Noveto expects the device will have many uses. Office workers could listen to music or conference calls without others hearing. People could play a game, a movie or music without waking up others in the same room. Because the device does not use headphones, it is possible to hear other sounds in the room clearly.
The device uses a 3-D sensing module that finds and follows the ear position of the listener. It sends ultrasonic waves (超声波) to create sound pockets by the user’s ears. The 3-D method creates sound on all sides of the listener, therefore the listeners feel completely transported into the scene.
By changing a setting, the sound can follow a listener around when he moves his head. It is also possible to move out of the sound beam's path and hear nothing at all.
While the idea of sound beaming is not new, Noveto was the first to launch the technology.
According to the chief executive officer Christophe Ramstein, a “smaller” version of the device will be ready for release to consumers next year.
1. What does the underlined word “possibility” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．The listener may put on music to block out other sounds. |
| B．The listener may hear sound only for him or her without using headphones. |
| C．The listener may enjoy songs or movies without being interrupted by others. |
| D．The listener may have the ability to pick up some special sounds. |
| A．Amazing. | B．Impossible. |
| C．Strange. | D．Meaningful. |
| A．It places the listener on the scene to hear the sound. |
| B．It fixes a sound beam’s path which can not be changed. |
| C．It follows the listeners around to send and receive sounds. |
| D．With 3-D tracking technology, it sends ultrasonic waves to the target listener. |
| A．To promote the SoundBeamer. | B．To introduce a new sound device. |
| C．To recommend new headphones. | D．To explain a technical phenomenon. |
4 . Elizabeth Spelke, a cognitive (认知的) psychologist at Harvard, has spent her career testing the world's most complex learning system-the mind of a baby. Babies might seem like no match for artificial intelligence (AI). They are terrible at labeling images, hopeless at mining text, and awful at video games. Then again, babies can do things beyond the reach of any AI. By just a few months old, they’ve begun to grasp the foundations of language, such as grammar. They’ve started to understand how to adapt to unfamiliar situations.
Yet even experts like Spelke don’t understand precisely how babies — or adults, for that matter — learn. That gap points to a puzzle at the heart of modern artificial intelligence: We're not sure what to aim for.
Consider one of the most impressive examples of AI, Alpha Zero, a programme that plays board games with superhuman skill. After playing thousands of games against itself at a super speed, and learning from winning positions, Alpha Zero independently discovered several famous chess strategies and even invented new ones. It certainly seems like a machine eclipsing human cognitive abilities. But Alpha Zero needs to play millions more games than a person during practice to learn a game. Most importantly, it cannot take what it has learned from the game and apply it to another area.
To some AI experts, that calls for a new approach. In a November research paper, Francois Chollet, a well-known AI engineer, argued that it’s misguided to measure machine intelligence just according to its skills at specific tasks. “Humans don’t start out with skills; they start out with a broad ability to acquire new skills,” he says. “What a strong human chess player is demonstrating is not only the ability to play chess, but the potential to fulfill any task of a similar difficulty.” Chollet posed a set of problems, each of which requires an AI programme to arrange colored squares on a grid (格栅) based on just a few prior examples. It’s not hard for a person. But modern machine-learning programmes-trained on huge amounts of data — cannot learn from so few examples.
Josh Tenenbaum, a professor in MIT's Center for Brains, Minds & Machines, works closely with Spelke and uses insights from cognitive science as inspiration for his programmes. He says much of modern AI misses the bigger picture, comparing it to a cartoon about a two-dimensional world populated by simple geometrical (几何形的) people. AI programmes will need to learn in new ways — for example, by drawing causal inferences rather than simply finding patterns. “At some point — you know, if you’re intelligent — you realize maybe there's something else out there,” he says.
1. Compared to an advanced AI programme, a baby might be better at _______________.| A．labeling images | B．identifying locations |
| C．playing games | D．making adjustments |
| A．Stimulating. | B．Measuring. | C．Beating. | D．Limiting. |
| A．AI is good at finding similar patterns |
| B．AI should gain abilities with less training |
| C．AI lacks the ability of generalizing a skill |
| D．AI will match humans in cognitive ability |
| A．What is exactly intelligence? |
| B．Why is modern AI advanced? |
| C．Where is human intelligence going? |
| D．How do humans tackle the challenge of AI? |
5 . According to a recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research, both the size and consumption habits of our eating companions can influence our food intake. And contrary to existing research that says you should avoid eating with heavier people who order large portions(份), it's the beanpoles with big appetites you really need to avoid.
To test the effect of social influence on eating habits, the researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, 95 undergraduate women were individually invited into a lab to ostensibly(表面上)participate in a study about movie viewership. Before the film began, each woman was asked to help herself to a snack. An actor hired by the researchers grabbed her food first. In her natural state, the actor weighed 105 pounds. But in half the cases she wore a specially designed fat suit which increased her weight to 180 pounds.
Both the fat and thin versions of the actor took a large amount of food. The participants followed suit, taking more food than they normally would have. However, they took significantly more when the actor was thin.
For the second test, in one case the thin actor took two pieces of candy from the snack bowls. In the other case, she took 30 pieces. The results were similar to the first test: the participants followed suit but took significantly more candy when the thin actor took 30 pieces.
The tests show that the social environment is extremely influential when we're making decisions. If this fellow participant is going to eat more, so will I. Call it the “I’ll have what she's having” effect. However, we'll adjust the influence. If an overweight person is having a large portion, I'll hold back a bit because I see the results of his eating habits. But if a thin person eats a lot, I'll follow suit. If he can eat much and keep slim, why can't I?
1. What is the recent study mainly about?| A．Food safety. | B．Movie viewership. |
| C．Consumer demand. | D．Eating behavior. |
| A．Big eaters. | B．Overweight persons. |
| C．Picky eaters. | D．Tall thin persons. |
| A．To see how she would affect the participants. |
| B．To test if the participants could recognize her. |
| C．To find out what she would do in the two tests. |
| D．To study why she could keep her weight down. |
| A．How hungry we are. | B．How slim we want to be. |
| C．How we perceive others. | D．How we feel about the food. |
6 . Race walking shares many fitness benefits with running, research shows, while most likely contributing to fewer injuries. It does, however, have its own problem.
Race walkers are conditioned athletes. The longest track and field event at the Summer Olympics is the 50-kilometer race walk, which is about five miles longer than the marathon. But the sport’s rules require that a race walker’s knees stay straight through most of the leg swing and one foot remain in contact (接触) with the ground at all times. It’s this strange form that makes race walking such an attractive activity, however, says Jaclyn Norberg, an assistant professor of exercise science at Salem State University in Salem, Mass.
Like running, race walking is physically demanding, she says, According to most calculations, race walkers moving at a pace of six miles per hour would burn about 800 calories(卡路里) per hour, which is approximately twice as many as they would burn walking, although fewer than running, which would probably burn about 1,000 or more calories per hour.
However, race walking does not pound the body as much as running does, Dr. Norberg says. According to her research, runners hit the ground with as much as four times their body weight per step, while race walkers, who do not leave the ground, create only about 1.4 times their body weight with each step.
As a result, she says, some of the injuries associated with running, such as runner’s knee, are uncommon among race walkers. But the sport’s strange form does place considerable stress on the ankles and hips, so people with a history of such injuries might want to be cautious in adopting the sport. In fact, anyone wishing to try race walking should probably first consult a coach or experienced racer to learn proper technique, she says. It takes some practice.
1. Why are race walkers conditioned athletes?| A．They must run long distances. |
| B．They are qualified for the marathon. |
| C．They have to follow special rules. |
| D．They are good at swinging their legs. |
| A．It’s more popular at the Olympics. |
| B．It’s less challenging physically. |
| C．It’s more effective in body building. |
| D．It’s less likely to cause knee injuries. |
| A．Getting experts’ opinions. |
| B．Having a medical checkup. |
| C．Hiring an experienced coach. |
| D．Doing regular exercises. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Objective. |
| C．Tolerant. | D．Conservative. |
7 . Ernest Gaines, the son of sharecroppers (佃农), was born in January 15, 1933 on the River Lake Plantation near the small village of Oscar, Louisiana. He attended school for kids more than five months out of the year. But that was more education than his family before him had received. He would say later in life that his ear for the stories of his elders was developed as he wrote letters for adults who couldn’t read or write.
In the late 1940’s, at the age of 15, his family moved to the northern California where he could do something that had been forbidden in the South: visit a library. Ernest later attended San Francisco State University. Then he returned to Louisiana in 1963, inspired by James Meredith’s bid to enroll in the then-all-white University of Mississippi. He took it as a sign that the South was changing and that he could be part of that change. “As I’ve said many times before, the two greatest moves I’ve made were on the day I left Louisiana in 1948, and on the day I came back to Louisiana in 1963,” he said.
Less than 10 years later, in 1971, he published the novel that brought him attention, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman which told the story of a black woman born as a slave who lives long enough to witness the civil rights era. Ernest would later say that the fictional Jane was modeled after his disabled great-aunt, Augustine Jefferson, who could not walk, but was strong enough to raise a family. Another novel, A Gathering of Old Men, published in 1983, was made into a movie in 1987. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993 for his novel A Lesson Before Dying. A number of his stories and essays were gathered in the 2005 collection Mozart and Leadbelly.
His permanent residence in Louisiana was a house that he and his wife built on land that was once part of River Lake Plantation. Ernest talked about his home, “If Auntie could sit here with me, or my stepfather who took me away from here, or my uncle George, who used to take me to those old beat-up bars in Baton Rouge — if I could, I’d just buy him a good glass of Gentleman Jack, and we could sit here and talk. Oh, I wish I could do that.”
1. How did Ernest benefit from writing letters for adults?| A．It inspired great love for writing in him. |
| B．It made him enter the university successfully. |
| C．It laid the foundation for his writing of his elders. |
| D．It promoted his communication with his families. |
| A．Ernest got the freedom of education in California. |
| B．Ernest’s departure and return influenced his life a lot. |
| C．James helped him apply to University of Mississippi. |
| D．Ernest’s experience in the South affected him greatly. |
| A．Mozart and Leadbelly. | B．A Lesson Before Dying. |
| C．A Gathering of Old Men. | D．The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. |
| A．He misses his relatives. | B．He hopes to leave again. |
| C．He cherishes his childhood. | D．He loves drinking and chatting. |
8 . A new study from MIT has found that piano lessons have a very specific effect on kindergartners’ ability to distinguish different pitches (音高), which translates into an improvement in distinguishing between spoken words. However, piano lessons did not appear to provide any benefit for overall intelligence, as measured by IQ, attention span (注意力集中时间), and working memory.
The 74 children participating in the study were divided into three groups: one that received 45-minute piano lessons three times a week; one that received extra reading instruction for the same period of time; and one that received neither of these. All children were 4 or 5 years old and spoke Mandarin as their native language.
After six months, the researchers tested the children on their ability to distinguish words based on differences in vowels (元音), consonants (辅音), or tone (音调). Better word distinguishing usually comes with better phonological awareness – the awareness of the sound structure of words, which is a key part of learning to read.
Children who had piano lessons showed a significant advantage over children in the extra reading group in distinguishing between words that differ by one consonant. Children in both the piano group and extra reading group performed better than the third group when it came to distinguishing words based on vowel differences.
The researchers also used electroencephalography to measure brain activity and found that children in the piano group had stronger responses than the other children when they listened to a series of tones of different pitch. This suggested that a greater sensitivity to pitch differences is what helped the children who took piano lessons to better distinguish different words, Desimone says.
“That’s a big thing for kids in learning language: being able to hear the differences between words,” he says. “They really did benefit from that.”
In tests of IQ, attention, and working memory, the researchers did not find any significant differences among the three groups of children.
Desimone says he hopes the findings will help to convince education officials who are considering abandoning music classes in schools not to do so.
1. What do we know about the study?| A．The participants were divided into four groups. |
| B．All the participants spoke English as their native language. |
| C．The participants were tested after a period of six months. |
| D．The ages of the participants ranged from 4 to 15 years. |
| A．Children in the piano group had better awareness of the differences among words. |
| B．Children in the piano group performed better in the IQ test. |
| C．Children in the extra reading group had better awareness of sounds. |
| D．Children in the extra reading group performed better in the IQ test. |
| A．The ability to imitate certain sounds. |
| B．The ability to tell the differences between sounds. |
| C．The ability to remember new sounds and words. |
| D．The ability to relate sounds to real objects. |
| A．To have more music classes in schools. |
| B．Not to end music classes in schools. |
| C．To provide more types of musical instruments to schools. |
| D．Not to force students to study music if they are unwilling to. |
9 . The unusual whistle language used as a means of communication by villagers in the remote and mountainous northern Turkey has been added to the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The language is a highly developed high-pitch system of whistling to communicate in rugged (崎岖的) areas where people mostly cannot see each other. It can allow people to communicate across great distances, up to 5 kilometers. Compared with other similar whistle languages in Spain’s Canary Islands, in Mexico, or in Greek villages, it has a higher tone and larger vocabulary.
This unusual form of communication, which dates some 500 years ago, to the Ottoman Empire, was born from sheer (纯粹的) necessity and widespread across the Black Sea regions.
But 50 years ago, it suffered the impact of the progression of technology and nowadays the rapid growth of cellular (蜂窝式) mobile systems has put this cultural heritage under serious threat.
For centuries, the language has been passed on from grandparent to parent, from parent to child. Now, though, many of its most proficient (精通的) speakers who use their tongue, teeth and fingers are aging and becoming physically weak. Young people are no longer interested in learning the language or in finding ways to update its vocabulary with new words, and in a few generations it may be gone for good.
“Our bird language is very convenient and efficient to communicate across the valleys. It has many benefits over yelling, which is bad for our throats.” said Avni Kocek, head of the bird village, adding that despite setbacks because of technology, “bird language is still used by many of us. Whistle language is transmitted from our elders to us and we have the duty to transmit it to our children. We are making efforts to keep our culture alive through the annual Bird Language Festival.”
Besides, the bird language has been required to be taught at primary schools since 2014 by district authorities in order to instill (灌输) the practice in younger generations.
1. What is the bird language’s advantage over other similar whistle languages?| A．It can send more messages to farther places. |
| B．It is used as a means of communication. |
| C．It is older and has a larger number of users. |
| D．It is a completely different system of whistling. |
| A．Other whistle languages are more effectively protected. |
| B．Young people find it too difficult to learn well enough. |
| C．Many of its most proficient speakers are growing old. |
| D．The necessity to use it in everyday life is disappearing. |
| A．Cellular mobile systems are not allowed in the area. |
| B．Bird Language Festival is celebrated every month. |
| C．It has become a subject at primary schools. |
| D．All parents are required to transmit it to their children. |
| A．The story of a bird Language Speaker |
| B．Preserving the Endangered Bird language |
| C．Celebrating the Bird Language Festival |
| D．The Disappearance of Bird Language |
10 . Hawaii could become the first state to ban sunscreens with chemicals that may harm the environment. So maybe you should pack a sunhat and long sleeves for the trip to Waikiki.
State lawmakers passed a bill banning sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate chemicals believed to cause harm to marine life and coral reefs (珊瑚礁). The bill will prohibit the sale and distribution of sunscreens with those chemicals on the island “without prescription from a licensed healthcare provider.”
“Amazingly, this is a first-in-the-world law,” Gabbard, who introduced the bill, told the Honolulu Star-advertiser. “when you think about it, our island heaven, surrounded by coral reefs, is the perfect place to set the golden standard for the world to follow. This will make a huge difference in protecting our coral reefs, marine life and human health.”
The bill will come into effect on January 1, 2021 if signed by Hawaii’s governor.
Critics of the bill question studies linking the chemicals to coral reef decay (腐烂) and say banning sunscreens should discourage people from wearing skin protection altogether, increasing skin cancer cases. Alexandra Kowcz, chief scientist of a research project, said the bill rests on a “limited body of scientific research.” Henry Lim, president of the American Academy of Dermatology Association, told US TODAY “a sunscreen ban could create significant confusion” about why wearing sunscreen is important. Plus, there aren’t many sunscreen options on the market without these chemicals.
“It is quite difficult to make good sunscreens that do not contain these chemicals based on the currently approved sunscreen active ingredients list in the U.S. ”said Lim.
At least one in five Americans will develop skin cancer in their life, according to the American Academy of Dermatology Association.
The only way to know if a sunscreen doesn’t contain oxybenzone and octinoxate is to check the label. A non-profit organization, which ranks sunscreen brands based on effectiveness and chemical composition, reports some sunscreens are environmentally friendly.
1. What do we know about the bill?| A．It has been supported by healthcare providers. |
| B．It is aimed at promoting tourism in Hawaii. |
| C．It will prohibit sunscreens of all kinds. |
| D．It may help to protect marine life and coral reefs. |
| A．The bill based on limited studies is misleading. |
| B．The ban will benefit people with skin cancer. |
| C．The chemicals are to blame for coral reef decay. |
| D．Sunscreens on the market should all be banned. |
| A．20% of people may suffer skin cancer in their life. |
| B．Checking the label helps to distinguish sunscreens. |
| C．Sunscreens are commonly ranked by market sales. |
| D．Making eco-friendly sunscreens is just impossible. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. |
| C．Objective. | D．Skeptical. |
