1 . Sophia Gholz is an award-winning children's book author, music lover. and magic seeker. Sophia enjoys writing fiction with humor and heart. When writing nonfiction, she pulls on her love of science and her family background in ecology.
Her book, The Boy Who Grew a Forest, shares the true story of Jadav Payeng, a man in India who single- bandedly planted an entire forest over the course of his lifetime. When he was younger, Jadav Payeng was shocked by the destruction of his island home. So he took matters into his own bands and began planting one seed at a time. Jadav's forest is now over 1300 acres and provides a home to many animals, some endangered. Jadav is still planting today and his hard work has now been celebrated around the world.
To write this story, Sophia got to know more about Jadav Payeng and his forest through a documentary film called Forest Man. Influenced by her father, a forest ecologist and a scientist, she grew up learning about the importance of trees and the natural world. When she heard about a man on a m1ssion to reforest an entire island on his own, she was drawn to this story.
As for research, most of her research was done online. She read every news article that she could find about Jadav and listened to every interview. Then she reached out to several people who had met or interviewed Jadav as well, including the producer of his short documentary film.
She hopes that The Boy Who Grew a Forest lights a spark in everyone who reads it to go out and care for our beautiful planet. She'd love young readers to be inspired to plant or to learn more about animal habitats, biodiversity and science in general.
1. What is the second paragraph mainly about?| A．A story on how to plant trees. | B．Endangered animals in the forest. |
| C．Destruction of Jadav's island home. | D．A book introducing a tree- planting hero. |
| A．He has quit planting recently. | B．He is known to many people. . |
| C．He was an actor of Forest Man. | D．He planted trees with his family. |
| A．Humorous and skilled. | B．Creative and outgoing. |
| C．Determined and diligent. | D．Controversia1 and helpful. |
| A．To encourage research on wildlife. | B．To describe a boy's farming experience. |
| C．To stress the importance of planting trees. | D．To advocate the action to protect the earth. |
2 . It might seem strange to be making predictions about 2021, but one thing is clear: technology has been affected just as much as every other part of our lives. Another clear thing is that today’s most important technology trends will play a big part in helping us deal with and adapt to the many challenges facing us. From the shift to working from home to new rules about how we meet and interact in public spaces, technology trends will be the driving force in managing the change.
One of the major technology trends that are likely to play out this year is 5G and enhanced connectivity. Each successive advance in mobile connectivity from 3G onwards has unlocked new use cases for the Internet. 3G made web browsing and data-driven services useful on mobile devices, 4G led to the growth of streaming video and music platforms as bandwidths (宽带) increased, and 5G, similarly, will open more doors in terms of what is possible.
5G means that services relying on advanced technologies such as augmented (增强的) reality and virtual reality, as well as cloud-based gaming platforms like Google’s Stadia, become a practical thing, anywhere at any time. They also threaten to make cable and fiber-based (光纤) networks redundant, with their need for us to be tied to a particular location.
In short, 5G and other advanced, high-speed networks make other new technologies available anywhere, any time. A great example is Norwegian fishery operator Salmar that uses a 5G network to automate the care and feeding of its fish. Image recognition algorithms (算法) are used to detect which fish are over or under-feeding, and automatically distribute food and medicine needed to keep them healthy. Initiatives like this will become increasingly important during 2021, where businesses look to increase automation across their workforces.
1. Which of the following is highly influenced by 5G technology?| A．Data-driven services. | B．Streaming video. |
| C．Music platforms. | D．Google’s Stadia. |
| A．Useful. | B．Unnecessary. | C．Expensive. | D．Special. |
| A．To show the development of Norwegian fishery. |
| B．To explain how to keep fish healthy. |
| C．To present the application of 5G technology. |
| D．To propose new initiatives for businesses. |
| A．Different predictions of technology trends. |
| B．Successive advances in mobile technology. |
| C．One of the technological highlights of the year. |
| D．The driving force in managing changes. |
3 . Every day, it seems that some new algorithm (算法) enables computers to diagnose a disease with unprecedented accuracy, renewing predictions that computer's will soon replace doctors. What if computers could replace patients as well? If virtual humans could have replaced real people in some stages of a coronavirus vaccine trial, it could have sped development of a preventive tool and slowed down the pandemic. Similarly, potential vaccines that weren't likely to work could have been identified early, reducing trial costs and avoiding testing poor vaccine candidates on living volunteers. These are some of the benefits of “in silico medicine”, or the testing of drugs and treatments on virtual organs or body systems to predict how a real person will respond to the therapies.
The modeling begins by feeding anatomical data drawn from noninvasive (非侵入式) high- resolution imaging of an individual's actual organ into a complex mathematical model of the mechanisms that govern that organ's function. Algorithms running on powerful computers resolve the resulting equations and unknowns, generating a virtual organ that looks and behaves like the real thing.
In silico clinical trials are already underway to an extent. Heart Flow Analysis, for instance, enables clinicians to identify CAD (冠心病) based on CT images of a patient's heart. The Heart Flow system uses these images to construct a fluid dynamic model of the blood running through the coronary blood vessels, thereby identifying abnormal conditions and their severity. Without this technology, doctors would need to perform an invasive operation to decide whether and how to intervene. Experimenting on digital models of individual patients can also help personalize therapy for any number of conditions and is already used in diabetes care.
The philosophy behind in silico medicine is not new. The ability to create and simulate the performance of an object under hundreds of operating conditions has been a cornerstone of engineering for decades, such as for designing electronic circuits, airplanes and buildings. Various obstacles remain to its widespread implementation in medical research and development.
The predictive power and reliability of this technology must be confirmed, and that will require several advances. Those include the generation of high quality medical databases from a large, ethnically diverse patient base that has both women and men; improvement of mathematical models to account for the many interacting processes in the body; and further modification of Al methods that were developed mainly for computer-based speech and image recognition and need to be extended to provide biological insights.
In recent years American and European regulators have approved some commercial uses of computer-based diagnostics, but meeting regulatory demands requires considerable time and money. Creating demand for these computer-based diagnostic tools is challenging as well. In silico medicine must be able to deliver cost-effective value for patients, clinicians and health care organizations to accelerate their adoption of the technology.
1. According to the text, “in silico medicine” might help ________.| A．discover the cause of an illness |
| B．quicken the creation of new medicine |
| C．recognize the symptoms of a disease earlier |
| D．avoid including unhealthy volunteers in trials |
| A．works effectively in CAD treatment |
| B．offers personalized therapies to patients |
| C．reduces the chances of invasive operations |
| D．builds models after identifying abnormal conditions |
| A．money and time from the regulators |
| B．replacement of old mathematical models |
| C．more proof of its effectiveness and dependability |
| D．progress in speech and image recognition technology |
| A．Looking to Al to End Experimental Study |
| B．In Silico Medicine Saved Millions of Lives |
| C．Exploring the Future of Algorithm in Medicine |
| D．Virtual Patients Could Revolutionize Medicine |
4 . The Rise of Voice Technology
Voice technology has come a long way. Just a few years ago, it would have been unusable. But now, those who follow the technology know that it has got considerably better.
Writing with your voice raises several interesting questions. How difficult is it actually? Human speech involves a lot more starting and stopping with errors and the need for repairing broken sentences than you may think. Even gifted speakers make mistakes. To turn the spoken word into reasonable writing requires lots of planning. You’ll need some kinds of notes or other organisers to make it work.
Another question turning speech into writing raises is the style. How would writing make the change that people speak their writing rather than type? Chances are that it would come up with many more short sentences and more concrete language, which is good. It would probably also rely on prepared phrases a lot more often, which is not available when you are speaking quickly.
To confirm this, a column was not written, but dictated (听写). It was composed from brief notes written down for structure only, and it was edited for length, with all of the original errors kept in. Here were the results. The first was that the literal accuracy was extremely high. There weren’t many cases where the software had heard one word incorrectly and written down another. But the other result was that the readability of this column was rather bad. Obviously, the blame is not with the technology at all, which turns out to be rather good. Speaking into writing relies on a better human brain than the one we currently possess. Writing is hard. There’s a reason it can’t be done at the speed of speech, in real time.
To clarify the matter, this time paragraph breaks were added after the whole writing. Punctuations (标点) had to be spoken aloud, and after a full stop, the first word in the new sentence was capitalized automatically. Some minor punctuation marks were added to make it clearer. To improve accuracy, people “trained” the software beforehand, reading a prewritten passage aloud. Actually it turns out to be more effective. All of these ensure the satisfactory completion of turning speech into writing.
Language is the most important tool for human interaction, and voice is one beautiful part of language. With the maturity of modern technology, it has given birth to a great change in the human-computer voice interaction.
1. According to the passage, which helps to turn speech into writing in terms of style?| A．There is careful planning in advance. |
| B．Errors and broken sentences are avoided. |
| C．People type words as fast as they say them. |
| D．The writing contains more prepared phrases. |
| A．processing errors in a column. |
| B．adding minor punctuation marks. |
| C．increasing the number of brief notes. |
| D．integrating short paragraphs in writing. |
| A．human brains are responsible for poor dictated writing. |
| B．writing with voice promises to improve the quality of writing. |
| C．writing is an unnatural act that can hardly be learned and improved. |
| D．technology has a long way to go in the human-computer voice interaction. |
| A．Why people fully intend to turn speech into writing. |
| B．What role voice technology plays in improving readability. |
| C．Where the human-computer voice interaction is at an advantage. |
| D．How voice technology enables the change from speech into writing. |
5 . Humans have little difficulty recognizing one another. And we know that no two faces are exactly alike. Even identical twins have slightly different faces. Each human face is truly unique, and now we've invented machines that are able to recognize faces for numerous purposes.
Governments, employers and security and police services are increasingly using facial recognition technology. This allows them to quickly confirm an individual's identity. Systems are becoming so advanced that a wanted criminal can instantly be picked out of a crowd of thousands of people. All that's required is an image in a database to compare with the image of any number of people in a crowd. Ordinary people, too, are using facial recognition to unlock their phones, their computers and other devices.
Personal facial recognition protection has several benefits. It is instantaneous, and it relieves us of the need to memorize passwords. However, a device will require a password in the rare event that it doesn't, for whatever reason, recognize the user's face.
There are numerous concerns about the use of facial recognition. Primarily, the concern is that it threatens privacy. The installation of more and more cameras in public and private places is now part of everyday life. This means people can be observed and recognized wherever they go. Cameras may make public spaces safer, but keeping law-abiding(守法的) citizens under constant watch is disturbing to many.
In the age of the coronavirus and the widespread wearing of masks, facial recognition systems are having some difficulty. A mask covers many of the facial data points used by recognition software to confirm a person's identity. In response, facial recognition systems are being trained to use less facial data. That could affect how dependable it is as a method of identity detection.
1. What's the author's purpose of writing Paragraph 2?| A．To further explain the importance of facial recognition. |
| B．To describe the powerful functions of facial recognition. |
| C．To list in detail various advantages of facial recognition. |
| D．To state the unique advanced features of facial recognition. |
| A．The cameras may be occasionally out of order. |
| B．Too many cameras disturb people's daily life. |
| C．People's personal life might be exposed to others. |
| D．The cameras make law-abiding citizens feel stressful. |
| A．Getting more accurate with less information. |
| B．Becoming faster with more facial data. |
| C．Protecting personal information if necessary. |
| D．Responding more quickly to unexpected events. |
| A．The wide popularity of facial recognition. |
| B．The rapid development of facial recognition. |
| C．The benefits of facial recognition. |
| D．The introduction to facial recognition. |
6 . Not long ago, Linda Khan was sitting by a hospital bed in Houston, feeling ill at ease. Beside her lay her father who needed a heart surgery. The two of them had engaged in nothing but depressing small talk. Then, her eye fell on a pile of books. She picked up one, and started to read it out loud. "Right away it changed the mood and atmosphere," she says. Reading gave the daughter a way to connect with her father. Listening allowed the father travel on the sound of his daughter's voice into a place where he felt himself again. “From then on," Khan says, “I always read to him."
In a 2010 survey in the United Kingdom, elderly adults who joined weekly read-aloud groups reported better concentration, less anxiety, and an improved ability to socialize. The survey authors owed these improvements in large part to the “rich, varied diet of serious literature" that group members consumed, with fiction encouraging feelings of relaxation and calm, poetry fostering focused concentration, and narratives giving rise to cognitive (认知的) thoughts, feelings, and memories. In truth, almost any kind of reading to another person can be beneficial.
Readers get rewards too. For Neil Bush, the late-life hospitalizations of his famous parents, George H. W. and Barbara Bush, became opportunities to repay a debt of gratitude. “When I was a kid, they would read to me," he said. With his parents in and out of care, “We've been reading books about Dad's foreign policy and, more recently, Mom's autobiography." Bush went on, his voice thick with emotion, “And to read their amazing life to them has been a remarkable blessing to me, personally, as their son."
To many people, reading to parents may seem so far outside the normal range of regular activities, and it may even feel odd and improper. However, there are still a lot many who brave the momentary strangeness of reading to elderly adults and both reader and listeners are, to borrow a phrase from Wordsworth, surprised by the joy of it.
1. What did reading offer to Linda and her father?| A．A way to establish a bond. | B．A way to travel together in reality. |
| C．A way to treat the disease. | D．A way to engage in learning. |
| A．Improvements in mental health. | B．Benefits of reading to others. |
| C．Changes in cognitive process. | D．Development of social skills. |
| A．Reading benefits more than the listener |
| B．Parents should red more to their kids. |
| C．Children should show their gratitude. |
| D．Reading to parents is children's duty |
| A．Improper and odd. | B．Abnormal but worthy. |
| C．Rewarding and joyful. | D．Interesting but unnecessary. |
7 . Ian McKenna was in third grade when he learned that many kids at his Austin school weren't getting enough to eat at home. He wanted to help, but local volunteer organizations turned him away, saying he was too young. So he decided to find his own solution. For years, he had been gardening with his mother, and they often distributed their extra vegetables to the neighbors. “Why not give the produce to a soup kitchen? Then I thought, I'm good at gardening," says McKenna, now 16. “Why not plant a garden at school, so that kids in need could take food home?"
McKenna persuaded his school to set aside space for a garden; then he asked the community for donations of seeds and equipment. Other students donated their time. Within months, McKenna's garden was producing lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash for students and their families. Now, seven years later, McKenna's Giving Garden project has expanded to five area schools in addition to his own backyard garden, and he has provided organic produce, enough for 25,000 meals, for Austin families.
For most of his gardening activities, McKenna wears the same T-shirt in different colors, with his personal motto on it: BE A GOOD HUMAN. To him, that means helping in any way you can, no matter what your age. "Even a smile might change someone's life," he says. “It lets them know that they are important. It can make their day."
When COVID-19 hit the U.S., McKenna redoubled his efforts, cooking up to 100 meals to distribute to the hungry on the weekends. When social distancing meant that volunteers couldn't work on community garden plots, he started offering online classes and a gardening hotline so families could grow at home. While gardening is his core focus, McKenna says he is always looking for new ways to help the hungry.
1. What caused Ian's decision to help the kids in his own way?| A．Being rejected by volunteer groups. | B．Being good at gardening. |
| C．A soup kitchen's support. | D．His mother's suggestions. |
| A．It helps students only. | B．It was started with joint efforts. |
| C．It is funded by schools. | D．It earns great profits every year. |
| A．Where there is a will, there is a way. | B．A small gesture makes a difference. |
| C．One good turn deserves another. | D．Love can break all the barriers. |
| A．Ian McKenna, Growing a Food Bank |
| B．Ian Mckenna, an Experienced Gardener |
| C．Giving Garden Project, an Impossible Mission |
| D．Giving Garden Project, a Universal Solution |
8 . Motion sickness is an uncomfortable feeling. The sickness it causes can strike people on an airplane, playing video games, or, commonly, when riding in a car. In a future where people may find themselves running around streets in self-driving vehicles, the problems could get worse.
We typically sense our physical position and movement in the world by relying on our eyes, the feeling we get in our body, and our inner ear. Motion sickness may develop when there's disagreement between what your eyes see and what your inner ear senses. If you're looking at your phone in a moving vehicle, your eyes see a stationary screen but your inner ear feels that you're moving. The result of that dissonance can cause sickness. The common-sense solution is to just stop looking at your phone, but some of the appeal of self-driving cars is that you could use the time to be productive or entertained by what's on a screen.
Researchers of a car-making company and a video game company have been studying ways to address these issues. And their solution uses an interesting medium: sound. The research had two goals: to explore if sound could help relieve motion sickness, and to help people trust self-driving cars more. They experimented with two different categories of sound: tips that tell passengers what's about to happen, and noises that alert passengers when the device has noticed something, like a pedestrian.
The most convincing experiment took place on a closed airport runway in Sweden, near Gothenburg, in August of last year. On that track, brave participants had to ride in the backseat of a car driven by a human and read from a tablet while the car navigated the course. With just 20 people, the study was small, but according to researchers, the presence of sound tips made people report that they felt less ill. Participants said the sounds helped prepare them physically, or adjust their bodies for what was about to happen.
1. When does motion sickness usually happen?| A．Sleeping during travels. | B．Closing eyes on vehicles. |
| C．Driving vehicles speedily. | D．Riding in moving vehicles. |
| A．Confusion. | B．Potentiality. | C．Randomness. | D．Disagreement. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Optimistic. | C．Concerned. | D．Dissatisfaction. |
| A．A study of motion sickness. | B．Self-driving vehicles. |
| C．A convincing experiment. | D．The cause and handling of motion sickness. |
9 . Unless your parent is a head chef or bento box（便当盒）master, school lunch is usually nothing to write home about. For artist and father Dominick Cabalo, however, his son Nicholas’ lunches are an oil painting cloth for creativity. Cabalo makes carefully designed drawings on each of 12-year-old Nicholas’ paper lunch bags, usually representing popular lively characters and colorful superheroes.
Cabalo began drawing on the bags about three years ago to help Nicholas make new friends in elementary school. “I noticed he was a bit shy when it came to talking to others,” he said. “So by creating a piece of artwork to ‘break the ice’, kids would come up to him and start talking and hopefully a conversation, or better yet, a new friendship, would start.”
Though Nicholas is in middle school now, he still asks his dad to draw on the lunch bags, and will make requests for characters or drawings that he’d like to see on the next bag. Cabalo has drawn about 400 lunch bags in the past three years. He explained that the bags had really helped his son become more confident at school. “He’s broken out of his shell because of this, and I like to think that I had a hand in helping him do this with these bags.” he wrote.
Nicholas keeps most of the bags. “Some come back in better condition than others,” Cabalo said. “We may lose one due to the occasional wet sandwich or leaky drink, but that’s to be expected.” As for the bags that make it home undamaged, Cabalo posts their photos to social media. His favorites are the more time-consuming series of bags that can be joined up to create a larger image, such as the “Finding Nemo” triptych（三联画）.
1. What special feature makes Nicholas’ lunch bags distinguished?| A．Delicious food cooked by a head chef. |
| B．Beautiful oil paintings produced by artists. |
| C．Colorful superheroes drawn by Nicholas. |
| D．Lively characters drawn by the kid’s loving father. |
| A．To help his son to make new friends. |
| B．To make his son’s lunch bags attractive. |
| C．To encourage his son to be more confident. |
| D．To improve his son’s academic performance. |
| A．Friendly. | B．Noble. | C．Caring. | D．Gifted. |
| A．Cabalo draws popular lively characters and colorful superheroes for his son. |
| B．Dad’s special lunch bag drawings help his shy son come out of his shell. |
| C．Nicholas’ new friends in elementary school make him more confident. |
| D．Nicholas keeps the more time-consuming series of bags designed by his father. |
10 . When whales die and sink to the ocean floor, their bodies -known as whale falls -provide rich nutrients for other creatures of the deep.
Chinese scientists found a whale fall in the South China Sea during a recent scientific research voyage. It was the first time that Chinese researchers had run across this rare type of ecosystem. It was an important finding, showing China's progress in deep-sea exploration technology, Xie said, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University.
During the 22-day deep-sea exploration from March 10 to April 2. 60 scientists conducted 22 dives and successfully completed a number of scientific tasks. The research aimed to gather information about the key processes of typical seamount ecosystems in the Western Pacific: Ocean. The whale fall was found in a seamount 1,600 meters deep in the central South China Sea. Though the whale fall was only about 3 meters long, it was of great importance in understanding the sea ecosystems, Xie said.
There were dozens of white armored shrimp, red shrimp and several eels found near the whale fall. The eels were eating the tail muscles of the whale fall. This shows that the whale died not long ago and that the whale fall was still in the first stage of decomposition and thus had rare value for long-term observation, Xie said.
Like cold springs, whale falls are homes for creatures of the deep. In the northern Pacific Ocean, they have supported the survival of at least 12,490 kinds of organisms—classed in 43 species—and promote prosperity far beneath the surface, according to data from the university.
1. What do we know about the whale fall in the South China Sea?| A．It is found on March 10. | B．It is a rare sea ecosystem. |
| C．It is a kind of cold springs. | D．It is found 3 meters deep in the sea. |
| A．By giving data. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By giving definitions. | D．By making a contrast |
| A．Change | B．Disappearance. | C．Richness. | D．Tourism. |
| A．A deep-sea exploration led by China. |
| B．A whale fall found in the South China Sea. |
| C．China's progress in deep-sea exploration technology. |
| D．The protection of deep-sea biodiversity resources in China. |
