1 . Widespread descriptions of animals in pop culture could actually be hurting the animals’ survival chances in the wild, new research suggests.
Franck Courchamp of the University of Paris-Sud was interested in the idea of “appeal”in animals. He wanted to know: What species do people consider appealing? And what are the influences of being appealing on populations in the wild?
In a research published this month, Courchamp and other researchers list the top 20 appealing species. Most of the animals identified as appealing are large mammals living on land. Coming in first place were tigers, followed by lions, elephants, giraffes, panthers, pandas, cheetahs, polar bears, wolves, and gorillas. However, at least half of the interviewees didn’t realize that five of the top ten most appealing species are threatened. It is paradoxical that we haven’t been able to protect the species we care about the most.
The study also found that we are flooded with images of these creatures, even as they are becoming fewer in the wild. The study suggests that too much of imagination might be creating a “virtual(虚拟的) population” of the animals in peoples’ minds, making them believe there are far more individuals in the wild than is exact.
The study authors suggest that companies who benefit from the use of these images should set aside a small percentage of their profits for protection efforts and informational campaigns. “That would be not only something fair, but that would be something that could bring a win-win situation for them,” Courchamp says. It could bring them positive public relation, for example. Besides, if a company’s mascot(吉祥物) goes extinct, that could hurt them from a marketing point, Courchamp says. But not enough companies are “truly concerned about the protection of the species that they work on,” he adds.
1. It can be inferred that the widespread images of animals in pop culture ________.| A．leads people to forget the less appealing animals |
| B．makes a false impression of the animals’ real situation |
| C．raises people’s wildlife protection attention and efforts |
| D．brings a win-win situation for both animals and companies |
| A．It is important to protect these endangered species. |
| B．It is natural to regard the large mammals as attractive. |
| C．It is terrible that the species are dying out at an alarming speed. |
| D．It is strange that people’s thoughts contrast with their behaviors. |
| A．giving examples | B．making definition |
| C．making comparisons | D．using numbers |
| A．Neutral. | B．Supportive. |
| C．Dissatisfied. | D．Positive. |
2 . I had moved to Japan for a long- term client consulting engagement. After a few days in a Tokyo hotel I moved to an apartment. After being moved in by my colleagues, it was time to get dinner. I found a pizza deliver flyer in my mailbox, and decided to simply order a pizza as. I might have the previous week in Manhattan. The phone call to Cali Pizza was easier than anticipated and while waiting for the pizza I set about unpacking.
Unfortunately, after 45 minutes no pizza. I figured that my “easy” call really wasn’t and that I would need to make alternate plans for dinner. While thinking about what to do next, my phone rang. It was Cali Pizza calling to say that they could not find my apartment based on the address that I had given them. Once it was determined that I had provided an incorrect address, the clerk on the phone asked me to describe what I could see from my window. After some back and forth they seemed satisfied that they knew where I was.
A few minutes later the pizza arrived, This is when my “customer delight” experience took over. First, the delivery person apologized repeatedly for being late, then he showed me the small blue metal plate on my building with the correct address, and finally he refused to accept payment for the pizza because he was late. Net result: one delighted customer (me), and frequent orders from Cali Pizza during my two-year stay in Japan.
Such “customer delight” experiences become stories I have used to illustrate what it means to truly delight a customer.
1. What did the writer do first after he moved in the apartment?| A．Deliver flyers. | B．Place an order. |
| C．Call his colleagues. | D．Set about unpacking. |
| A．The number on the flyer was inaccurate. |
| B．The clerk was unfamiliar with the address. |
| C．The wrier provided an inaccurate address. |
| D．The pizza was sent to a wrong address. |
| A．Disappeared. | B．Dominated. | C．Promoted. | D．Decreased. |
| A．It’s never easy to settle down in a new city. |
| B．A delayed delivery may result in good profit. |
| C．One can’t be too careful when placing an order. |
| D．A short-term loss of benefit may reward a lot. |
3 . Since the day the car and the airplane coexisted people have dreamed of combining them into one all purpose, go — anywhere, do — anything vehicle. However, there are a lot of reasons why cars and airplanes have yet to join forces.
They have very different needs, like the number of wheels. The four wheels on a car distribute its weight and provide traction and stability. A 3-wheeled car is much more likely to roll when taking a turn at high speed. But airplanes have 3 wheels because when they're on the ground they don't need to take turns at speed, so a 4th wheel would just be unnecessary weight. Tricycle wheel arrangements are also better suited to landing in crosswinds.
Aircraft also have other needs like wings. Whether they're fixed wings like an airliner or rotary wings like a helicopter, to generate enough lift they have to be much larger than the restricted freeway lanes and parking spaces would allow. So most designs for flying cars have wings that are either detachable （可拆卸的）or foldable.
That hasn't stopped some people from trying, and now one Dutch company, PAL-V, thinks their Liberty design has made flying cars a practical reality.
In 2005, the company discovered the work of another Dutch company, Carver, which made 3-wheeled cars that leaned like motorcycles. As for generating lift, PAL-V chose a rotary design called autogyro. Unlike a helicopter, the rotor （旋转翼）of an autogyro is unpowered in flight. Instead, the air flowing over it causes it to spin and generate lift. Autogyros also have short takeoff and landing requirements, so setting one down in an emergency is less dangerous than in a fixed-wing aircraft.
The Liberty received road certification in Europe in October of 2020, hoping to deliver to their first customers starting in 2022.
1. What can be learned from Paragraph 1?| A．Flying cars have long been dreamed of by humans. |
| B．The coexistence of cars and airplanes satisfies people. |
| C．The car and the airplane are less popular nowadays. |
| D．Cars and airplanes were invented at the same time. |
| A．To compare vehicles like cars and airplanes. |
| B．To explain the functions of wings and wheels. |
| C．To present two major problems to be solved. |
| D．To show the basic rules of vehicle designs. |
| A．It can be controlled more easily. |
| B．Its take-off needs less space and time. |
| C．It consumes less power when flying. |
| D．Its landing is less dangerous in emergency. |
| A．Europe gives Liberty a warm welcome. |
| B．Flying cars will replace the other vehicles. |
| C．Liberty can be seen globally once marketed. |
| D．PAL-V succeeds in making flying cars a reality. |
4 . California bums every year. But among a record-breaking heatwave, 2020 is the worst burning year yet. As of the September 2020, more than 7,600 fires burned over 2.5m acres of land. The season ran for more than several months.
That fits a long-term trend, for California's wild fires are getting steadily worse. Large fires in the 2010s burned 6.8m acres on average, up from 3.3m acres in the 1990s. The fire season in 2020 lasted nearly three months longer than it did in the 1970s. Over the past decade, the state has spent an average of $3.7bn a year fighting fires. Add the cost of rebuilding, treating victims and restoration, and that is perhaps a tenth of the total cost.
The reason is a double blow of climate change and development. More homes are being built next to forests, in what experts call the "wild-land-urban interface" (WUI). A 2018 study estimated that roughly a third of American homes were in the WUL Pricey housing has pushed people in California onto cheaper land close to the wilderness. At the same time, climate change is lengthening the dry season, which stores up fuel for fires. In California, a “huge drought" -- in which dry years become more common and wet ones scarcer (稀少)-- is making matters even worse.
Since neither trend shows much sign of turning around, people on America's west coast will have to learn to co-exist with more and more frequent fires. It’s not that different to building on an earthquake active region," says Max Moritz, a wildfire expert at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He suggests that houses should be built near water or open agricultural lands, which can offer a useful barrier.
1. How does the second paragraph develop?| A．By giving examples. |
| B．By analyzing causes. |
| C．By providing statistics. |
| D．By following time order. |
| A．People can get closer to nature. |
| B．California advocates forest development. |
| C．Low-income people can't afford urban houses. |
| D．Climate change has made the dry season longer. |
| A．Life is hopeless for people on America's west coast. |
| B．Great potential danger goes with the houses in WUL |
| C．Wildfire experts should study where to build houses. |
| D．People should live away from earthquake active regions. |
| A．To instruct. | B．To warn. | C．To persuade. | D．To inform. |
5 . Early when I was having my first go at being a father, our family lived in Philadelphia, and near our house there was a small playground where boys gathered for ball games. My son loved playing sports, but he was unprepared for what developed as his friends grew older.
After years together laughing and playing, several of the boys grew angry and unkind. Finally, they turned on my son, leaving him out of their games.
At first, I tried to encourage him so he would give the playground another go. But one Saturday morning I told him he could not come into the house. “You have to figure this out,” I said. “I’ll stay with you as long as you need, but I cannot let you just give up.” He cried. I kept saying: “You can do it.”
Did I do the right thing? Even now I’m not sure. He did go back to the playground. But while teaching him to stand up for himself, was I also passing along the prejudice that a boy should override his pain and never back down from a fight?
Research has found high school boys are more likely than girls to have been in a fight in the past year and boys are more likely to have been victims of violence.
When I was young, I went to an all-boys high school where the bigger and more violent guys ruled. One spring, after a school dance, a fight broke out. One of them, an older boy others said was “crazy,” was kicking another boy, who was seriously injured that night.
I have never forgotten that. As a psychologist, I have spoken with many young men who have had similarly sad experiences, and I have heard from many parents about the influence on their sons. When having stressful experiences like these, boys often pull away from their families.
The parents, understandably, feel anxious, but what they can do, must do, for their sons is never underestimate the power of listening to them, knowing them, and standing by them.
1. How did the author’s son feel during his first years on the playground?| A．Proud. | B．Happy. | C．Unprepared. | D．Unwelcome. |
| A．He comforted him. | B．He went there with him. |
| C．He pushed him forward. | D．He had a talk with the other boys. |
| A．To show the harm of violence. | B．To show violence is inborn in boys. |
| C．To show fighting is common in boys. | D．To show uncontrolled violence at school. |
| A．Leave them alone. | B．Set a good example for them. |
| C．Teach them never to give up. | D．Understand and support them. |
6 . You go to the coffee shop and take your coffee to go. You enjoy your drink, and then throw the paper cup in the garbage. Or do you put it in the recycling? I's confusing. A lot of us—people everywhere—are using to-go cups these days. A recent report said that there are 600 billion cups-billion with a ‘b’- that are produced and sold globally on an annual basis So that`s a lot, " say Christy Slay with The Sustainability Consortium. Starbucks alone says it contributes 1 percent of those disposable cups: That's an estimated 6 billion cups a year.
To help reduce those numbers. Starbucks and McDonald's are launching a three-year project to build a better cup: one that's both fully recyclable and compostable. Here's the big problem with the paper one you get there and in other coffee shops. “They look like paper, but they actually have a thin layer of plastic on the inside,” Slay says. That plastic coating keeps the cups from leaking. The problem is that it also makes the cups really hard to recycle, and only a few facilities in the world can do it.
A few companies have already rolled out compostable coffee cups. But Dylan de Thomas with The Recycling Partnership says there is a problem with those cups, too. "Typically they're compostable in industrial settings, so not your backyard compost that you and I might have, but at fairly technically advanced composting facilities." There aren't a lot of those facilities around, either.
So why exactly, in the 21st century, is it so hard to produce a better paper cup? "It's not necessarily very technically hard, though there are technical problems to overcome to make something recyclable and compostable, says Bridget Croke with Closed Loop Partners, a firm working to build what they call a circular economy. It's a fancy way of talking about turning waste into value. Almost anything is technically recyclable, Croke says. "But recycling is a business, and if materials can't move through the recycling system and be turned into a product that has value, they're not functionally recyclable.”
1. What are people puzzled at about the paper cup?| A．How to deal with the used one. | B．Why people reject it carelessly. |
| C．What makes it hard to compost. | D．Why Starbucks uses so many cups. |
| A．It helps make the cup more portable | B．It makes the cup easily recyclable. |
| C．It prevents the water from escaping | D．It promotes the extended use of the cup. |
| A．Its future is promising | B．It is not a profitable business. |
| C．technical problems are unsolvable | D．A more recyclable cup will be put into the market. |
| A．How can we design a better paper cup? |
| B．Why is it so hard to recycle paper cups? |
| C．What can we do to lessen the need of paper cups? |
| D．What damage do paper cups cause to our environment! |
7 . “If music is the medicine of the soul, let it play on,” said a famous person. I think he said so probably because he had got some help from music. Music has some strange functions. Medical scientists have found that a person who feels stressed can actually listen to a certain kind of music and become relaxed.
Researchers said that since stress comes as a result of some events in life such as starting a new family, starting a new business and starting a new job, one can actually listen to good music and feel good because good music touches humans in a positive way. Music helps you forget these events that make you worried and remember the important events that once happened in your life.
Depression(抑郁症) is a disease caused by stress, smoking, social problems, etc. Depression is also caused by difficulties such as failure in business. Depression may bring us weakness, headaches and loss of concentration. Good music makes one remember happy moments or days. If you play music about love, it makes you feel like falling in love again though you may have had several upset experiences. And such good feelings make you healthy.
Anxiety is another health problem that can be controlled by music. Anxiety is one of the side effects of some major health problems such as liver cancer and breast cancer. Good music makes you feel relaxed and relieves the pain caused by these diseases and you will feel better. Good music also makes you sleep better, and you need to know that sleep puts your body in a healthy condition. Good sleep takes away the effects of stress, depression and anxiety from a person.
1. What do you know about music according to the famous person in Paragraph 1?| A．Music can treat many kinds of diseases. |
| B．Music can help you keep mentally healthy. |
| C．Music can take the place of medicine in treating illness. |
| D．Music can make you remember things that happened in the past. |
| A．By letting people have a good sleep. | B．By making people think positively. |
| C．By showing something new to people. | D．By making people focus only on important things. |
| A．Stress | B．Depression. | C．Anxiety. | D．Upset |
| A．The benefits of listening to music to health. |
| B．Stress can bring us many kinds of diseases. |
| C．Some diseases have something to do with music. |
| D．Tips for us to live a healthy and comfortable life. |
8 . The art of psychologically controlling people so that they give away secret or sensitive information is known as social engineering. These are non-technical attacks, which rely on fooling people into ignoring regular safety procedures. People involved in this criminal act either target individuals for things such as bank information and passwords, or they might target the employees of entire organizations for sensitive company information, which they can then use to make a lot of quick money on the market.
The use of social engineering has increased greatly, because it’s much more difficult to hack (非法侵入) into someone’s software / password than it is to win their trust and make use of them to gain information that’s wanted. No matter how technically good the safety chain might be, information is always easy to attack if people with the information are easy to influence.
Methods of social engineering are various. For instance, the criminal uses some form of physical media like a CD, which is given a legal but interesting label. It’s then purposely left in a place like a restroom or elevator, where it’s sure to be found by someone. When any person finds the CD, he / she is expected to get curious about the label and the data it contains. However, on inserting the CD into a computer, they unknowingly install malware (恶意软件) into the system, which could give the attacker unlimited access, not only to that computer, but also to the company’s internal network.
Social engineering attacks are difficult to prevent completely. However, to make it difficult for social engineers and discourage them from attacking, some preventive measures need to be taken. For example, using advanced systems of security and different passwords for different accounts is very important. Regularly checking personal data and account details and making necessary upgrades to security are very helpful. More importantly, make sure that employees are trained to politely question people they don’t know, about their presence in the office building, and make sure that regular sessions (会议) and talks about security issues are held, so the problem of social engineering is always fresh in the minds of the employees.
1. According to the author, social engineering _____.| A．is a good skill | B．helps keep secrets |
| C．discourages employees | D．could probably break the law |
| A．More people are faced with social engineering. |
| B．Social engineering is popular in few countries. |
| C．It’s very easy to hack into someone’s software. |
| D．Social engineering has attracted wide attention. |
| A．makes a to-do list | B．gives an example |
| C．offers an argument | D．makes a comparison |
| A．The causes of social engineering. | B．The effects of social engineering. |
| C．The ways to prevent social engineering. | D．Different types of social engineering. |
9 . Forget spending the whole night studying for the exam. There’s another way to cram (突击式学习) for tests. New research by scientists at Northwestern University in Chicago shows people can actually learn while they’re asleep.
In the new study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, participants were given diagrams that showed them how to play two simple piano melodies, each 12 notes long. They spent an equal amount of time practicing playing each tune, and then took a 90-minute nap (小睡). While they slept, one of the melodies was quietly played on repeat for four minutes. As a result, upon awakening, the participants could accurately play the melody 4 percent more often than the melody that was not played while they slept, considering it resulted from just four minutes of “sleep-learning.”
“The re-activation (重新激活) process in the experiment is thought to affect a naturally occurring memory consolidation (巩固) process that normally happens over months (possibly years),” said Paul Reber, a psychologist at Northwestern and co-author of the study. So, besides piano songs, what kinds of information can you “cram” while asleep?
Clearly, resting your textbook near your dreaming head won’t do any good. “As long as the memory is tied to a specific type of sound, it looks like the sound can re-activate and strengthen the previously learned information,” Reber said. “It is possible that this effect would help with strengthening memories from a lecture and that it could even help speed up second-language learning.”
In other words, if you’re learning a foreign language, it may help to put on recordings of the language while you sleep. If you need to memorize information presented in a classroom lecture, it might also help to record the lecture and play it quietly at night.
1. The first paragraph serves as a(n) _____.| A．introduction | B．background | C．comment | D．conclusion |
| A．the participants had learned to write the piano melodies |
| B．the participants played each melody for about 90 minutes |
| C．the two melodies were basically of the same level of difficulty |
| D．the two melodies were played in turn while the participants slept |
| A．To tell us the importance of sleep. |
| B．To prove sleep-learning is possible. |
| C．To recommend a way for us to learn music. |
| D．To show that music can improve our memory. |
| A．Study music carefully. | B．Record the sound of sleeping. |
| C．Put a book beside our head. | D．Play recordings quietly. |
10 . Killer whales, or orcas, are known for their severe attacks on sea animals but they have never posed a threat to humans. However, since late July, the normally social animals have been intentionally attacking sailboats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal.
The strange behavior first surfaced on July 29, 2020, when a 46-foot boat was repeatedly attacked for almost an hour by nine orcas, causing the boat to rotate(旋转) 180 degrees and having its engine switched off. Since then, over 30 more similar incidents have been reported. On September 23, 2020, Spain's government banned boats of less than 50 feet in length from sailing in the 60-mile stretch of the Atlantic coastline between Ferrol and the Estaca de Bares Cape, where the attacks have been occurring.
Researchers across the world are trying to explain the orcas' behavior. Some believe it could be a result of the overfishing of the bluefish tuna - the orcas' primary food source -which has left the area's killer whales starving and unable to feed their babies. "I saw them look at boats carrying fish. I think they know humans are somehow related to food shortages, "says Ken Balcomb, senior scientist at the Center for Whale Research in Washington, USA. The environmentalists believe the sudden increase in boat traffic and fishing activities, after months of absence due to restrictions on human activity last spring, could also be contributing to the agitation.
However, Alfredo López, a biology professor in Galicia, Spain, thinks the attacks are defensive measures the orcas adopted to protect themselves against boat injuries. The researcher came to this conclusion after looking at the of the videos of a few incidents and noticing that two of the young killer whales involved had serious injuries. Hopefully, the experts will be able to find a way to restore the harmony between the animals and the humans soon.
1. What do we know about orcas in paragraph 1?| A．They are friendly to humans. | B．They have changed their behavior. |
| C．They are famous for hunting skills | D．They have met tough living conditions. |
| A．Ken Balcomb. | B．The environmentalists. |
| C．Alfredo López. | D．Spain's government. |
| A．The attacks. | B．Food shortages. | C．The overfishing. | D．Human activities. |
| A．How do killer whales attack humans? |
| B．Why Are Killer Whales attacking Boats? |
| C．How can we live in harmony with animals? |
| D．Why are boats banned from sailing on the sea? |
