1 . Welcome to our online event — Future of Food and Agriculture
What we eat and how we grow are changing. The need to feed a growing population, solve hunger and obesity, and avoid trashing the planet is driving the next food and agricultural revolution, New Scientist Live's Future of Food and Agriculture is an online event for everyone who cares what's on their plates.
Hear about the future of food from the world's leading scientists on the Main Stage. Dis-cover why robots and genetics are changing the face of agriculture on the Field Stage. From lab-grown meat to sustainable diets, discover what's coming to a plate near you on the Fork Stage.
World well-known speakers:
Neil Stephens: a researcher making lab-grown meat
Mark Lynas: a senior lecturer focusing on transforming crops with gene-editing
Tilly Collins: an entomologist making the case for adding eatable insects to our diets
Tim Spector: a microbiome expert overturning everything we know about diets, and a psychologist making food taste better by improving our senses.
Booking information:
Your ticket will give you access to the recording of the talks at this event which originally takes place on 28 October 2021. Access to the recordings will be available until 28 April 2022, when the talks finish. Tickets are only available in advance through Eventbrite. A ticket will cost an individual $ 30. But you'll enjoy a 15% discount if you buy more than three tickets at a time.
1. Who will lecture on artificial meat?| A．Neil Stephens. | B．Mark Lynas. | C．Tilly Collins. | D．Tim Spector. |
| A．It is intended for farmers. | B．It will last for half a year. |
| C．It will be hosted on four stages. | D．It is accessible online and offline. |
| A．$105. | B．$112.5. | C．$127.5. | D．$150. |
2 . The exact location from where Vincent van Gogh is likely to have painted his final masterpiece, perhaps just hours before his death, has been determined with the help of a postcard.
The scene in Tree Roots, a painting of trunks (树干）and roots growing on a hillside, was first spotted on a card dating from 1900 to 1910 by Van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institute Van Gogh. Following a comparative study of the painting, the postcard and the current condition of the hillside, researchers concluded that it was highly possible that the place where Van Gogh made his final brushstrokes had been unearthed.
The main trunk in the painting has survived the 130 years since the Dutch master’s death. It has long been believed that Van Gogh had been working on Tree Roots shortly before he took his own life with a shot to the chest. Andries Bonger, the brother-in-law of Van Gough's brother Theo, had described in a letter how the “morning before his death” Van Gogh had “painted a forest scene, full of sun and life” Van der Veen said, t4The sunlight painted by Van Gogh suggests that the last brushstrokes were painted towards the end of the afternoon.”
Teio Meedendorp, a senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, said the spot, some 150 meters from the hotel where Van Gogh had stayed the last 70 days of his life, would likely have been passed on a number of occasions by him. “The scene on the postcard shows very clear similarities to the shape of the roots on Van Gogh’s painting,” he said. “He must often have passed by the location when going to the fields behind the castle of Auvers, where he painted several times during the last week of his life and where he would take his own life.”
1. What is Tree Roots?| A．A trunk. |
| B．A hillside. |
| C．A drawing. |
| D．A postcard. |
| A．He had a close relationship with his brother. |
| B．What he drew in his paintings all came from real life. |
| C．He was working on his artwork shortly before killing himself. |
| D．He was so sick in his last days that he spent all the time in a hotel. |
| A．In the fields. | B．In a local hotel. |
| C．In the castle of Auvers. | D．In the scene on the postcard. |
| A．To remember a famous painter. Van Gogh. |
| B．To introduce Van Gogh's life and his works. |
| C．To describe the influence of Van Gogh in art. |
| D．To tell the place in Van Gogh’s last painting. |
3 . Are you interested in working with animals? Now here comes the chance. Kirby Wildlife Park has set up the unique Keeper Experience. The fantastic experience is available to anyone over the age of 18 who is reasonably fit. We regret that for health and safety reasons, people who are pregnant, in a wheelchair or suffering from illness cannot take part.
A typical day
9:15 Arrival
9:30 Health and Safety Briefing
10:00 Apes and Monkeys
While cleaning out enclosures(围场), you will find out how to enrich enclosures with novel items and new smells to stimulate the animals’ senses and imitate their natural environment.
12:00 Lunch
14:00 Big Cats
You will feed the cats and learn about their nutritional needs. The keeper will give you an introduction to how cats’ behavior can be read to get an idea of their welfare and health.
16:30 Meet the Team
Meet more of the staff and learn how you can get further involved with work at the park. Learn about our animal adoption plan, what it takes to be good keeper and where to obtain the right qualifications for a career in animal welfare.
Booking and cancellation
The Keeper Experience is available on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays throughout the year, and must be booked at least fourteen days in advance. Full payment is needed when booking.
Cancellations must be made more than one week before the event, or you won’t receive a full refund.
1. What can you do in Keeper Experience in Kirby Wildlife Park?| A．Bathe animals. | B．Buy an animal |
| C．Feed apes and monkeys. | D．Create natural environment for animals. |
| A．At 9:30 | B．At 10:00 |
| C．At 14:00 | D．At 16:30 |
| A．It is available to any healthy adult. |
| B．It should be booked at least two weeks in advance. |
| C．It offers free chance to people to work as keepers. |
| D．It will give a full refund after receiving cancellations. |
4 . As spring arrives, farmers around the world are making decisions about what crops to plant and how to manage them. In the U. S., farmers typically have big data to help make these decisions. These data have a clear upside. They make farms more productive. In the U.S., the past five years have seen a series of good harvests for both corn and soybean. A big part is generated by effectively using data to produce more food from the same amount of land, seed and fertilizer.
In the poorer parts of the world, however, the picture is much different. Many farmers are guided only by their history with the land and their community's traditions. Their skills and knowledge are impressive, but they suffer from a poverty of data. They rely on technical advisors for advice from governments and academic centers who often have very little knowledge of the local area. For seeds and fertilizers and other materials used in the field, they rely on companies that lack data on how their products will perform in the local conditions.
About 10 years ago, East African officials and their development partners started to explore why so few smallholder dairy farmers made profits from growing demand from urban consumers. Surveys of farmers in the region suggested poor access to veterinary(禽畜的) care and breeding assistance. An effort to provide these services has helped farmers get more milk.
Data would matter little if farming was easy and the paths to productivity were obvious. But in reality, agriculture is a complex mix of many factors, including climate, biology, chemistry, physics, economics and culture—all of which vary from region to region. In this situation, good data is necessary.
1. How has big data benefited American’s farmers?| A．By producing more seeds and fertilizer. |
| B．By helping the farmers to make decisions. |
| C．By informing the farmers to plant crops earlier. |
| D．By increasing the amount of land for farming. |
| A．Big data. | B．Farming skills. | C．Technical guidance. | D．Farming materials. |
| A．To show that East Africa relies heavily on diary farming. |
| B．To illustrate cooperation between countries was a great success. |
| C．To serve as an example of how data helps farmers in poor areas. |
| D．To prove that city people in East Africa didn't like drinking milk. |
| A．Many changeable factors have influence on farming. |
| B．The American farmers can't decide what they will plant. |
| C．East African dairy farmers were experienced in raising cows. |
| D．The technical advisors in poor areas know the local areas well. |
5 . Online Events at Natural History Museum in December
Dinosaur Activities for Families
Catch up on our Nature Live Program and find out everything about dinosaurs with Museum scientist Paul Barrett. You can learn to bake tasty biscuits with footprint-shaped holes. You can also follow our simple instructions to draw a cartoon T-Rex and read on to find out how artists bring dinosaurs to life with their pictures.
Dates: All day and every day.
The Science of Whale Earwax
What can a whale’s earwax tell us about its life, health and the quality of the oceans over many decades? Join Museum researcher Richard Sabin to discover some of the fascinating ways we study whales, and how vital museum collections are in helping us to understand and conserve these amazing animals.
Date: December 28 (12:00-12:45)
Darwin’s Fossils
Join Museum scientist Lorna Steel to discover how Darwin’s study of fossils shaped his scientific thinking. You can ask questions while the talk is happening. Head to the video on YouTube and type your question into the chat box during the broadcast.
Date: December 24 (10:30-11:15)
Love Naturally
Attracting a mate can be a tricky business for any species. How can birds do it? Have a night with Lates Online. Take a drink, turn on your computer, and join researcher Juan Camilo on the Friday of every week. You can explore the wilder side of dating. And you can rewatch past Lates Online events on the Museums YouTube channel.
Time: From 19: 30.
1. What can you learn to do in the Dinosaur Activities for Families?| A．Make a dinosaur cartoon. | B．Preserve dinosaur footprints. |
| C．Bake dinosaur footprint cookies. | D．Make a sculpture of dinosaur. |
| A．Asking orally face to face. | B．Entering your questions in the chat box. |
| C．Mailing your questions to the museum. | D．Broadcasting your questions in the chat room. |
| A．Paul Barrell. | B．Lorna Steel. | C．Juan Camilo. | D．Richard Sabin. |
6 . A United Nations report released Monday said that almost 690 million people--1 in 9 of the world's population—suffered from hunger last year, a major downward change of previous estimates.
However, the U.N agencies that produced the report—UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Food Programme (WFP)—warned that numbers remained on a worrying upward trend.
There were 687.8 million undernourished(营养不良的)people in 2019, up almost 10 million from 2018, and up almost 60 million from 2014, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, which is issued annually. Last year’s edition gave an extremely higher world hunger estimate of around 812 million for 2018. “Generally, there has been no change in the trend ... after steadily decreasing for decades, chronic hunger slowly began to rise in 2014 and continues to do so," they added.
The SOFI report said an additional 93 million to 132 million people could go hungry in 2020 as a result of the economic decline caused by COVID-19. The pandemic has disturbed food supply distribution, "making it even more difficult for the poorer population to have access to healthy diets," it said.
On current trends, world hunger numbers were expected to rise to 841.4 million in 2030, indicating that a "Zero Hunger" U.N development target set for that year is very much in danger. The agencies said “a key obstacle," to handling hunger was the relatively high cost of healthy and nutritious diets. "It is unacceptable that, in a world that produces enough food to feed its entire population, more than 1.5 billion people cannot afford a diet that meets the required levels of essential nutrients and over 3 billion people cannot even afford the cheapest healthy diet," they felt disappointed.
1. How is Paragraph 3 mainly developed?| A．By presenting figures. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By stating an argument. | D．By describing a survey. |
| A．The SOFI report is produced every other year. |
| B．A total of 93 million to 132 million people could suffer from hunger in 2020. |
| C．COVID-19 has a negative effect on the hunger problem worldwide. |
| D．Poor people have no access to healthy diets due to the pandemic. |
| A．World hunger numbers are still rising continuously. |
| B．The "Zero Hunger" target set for 2030 is hard to achieve. |
| C．There is no enough food to feed the whole world. |
| D．The relatively high cost of healthy and nutritious diets leads many people to be in hunger. |
| A．The report produced by U.N agencies. |
| B．690 million people worldwide living in hunger. |
| C．The worldwide hunger caused by COVID-19. |
| D．The approach to handling worldwide hunger. |
7 . A musical, School of Rock, which is played at the Winter Garden Theatre, is based on the 2003 hit movie starring Jack Black and opens on Broadway(百老汇).
“The central message of the story,” the show’s composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, said recently, “is about the driving force of music.” Lloyd Webber, who is behind such Broadway hits as Phantom of the Opera and Cats, runs a music education foundation. He is allowing schools to license the musical while it’s still on Broadway.
School of Rock tells the story of Dewey Finn, an ambitious rock star played by Alex Brightman. When Finn’s musical career hits a dead end, he gets a job as a teacher. While in the classroom, he encourages his fifth graders to form a rock band.
All of the actors play their own instruments during the performance. “If you say that you can do it, and you work hard enough, then you can do it,” said Evie Dolan, who learned to play bass for the role of Katie.
While the musical is very similar to the movie, lyricist Glenn Slater added new songs, including You’re in the Band and Stick It to the Man.
“I really love You’re in the Band,” said the musical’s director, Laurence Connor, “I love that moment when the audience sees the children pick up their instruments for the first time and really play, and find rock music for the first time.”
Bobby Mackenzie, who plays Tomika, said that the experience of expressing herself through music has been a pleasing one. When asked what advice she has for ambitious musicians, she said, “If it is really what you want to do, go for it. Work as hard as you can.”
1. What is the central message of the story about?| A．The driving force of music. | B．The development direction of Broadway. |
| C．The music composers’ interest. | D．The school education of music. |
| A．A rock star. | B．A teacher. | C．An actor. | D．A director. |
| A．Dewey Finn. | B．Evie Dolan. | C．Laurence Connor. | D．Bobbi Mackenzie. |
| A．Phantom of the Opera | B．School of Rock | C．You’re in the Band | D．Stick It to the Man |
8 . About the Irish Experience
The Irish Experience is a program for North American high school students. This program takes place over a four-week period in July. For two weeks the students will live in the beautiful university town of Cork in the South of Ireland. They will attend classes in an informal and relaxed atmosphere.
Traditional Irish music is alive in Cork City and can be heard most nights in some of the pubs in the city centre. There are several theatres in the city. A visit to one of these will be part of our schedule. Cork is also the gateway to the beautiful south-west part of Ireland and we will be taking in all the sights of West Cork and Kerry.
The other two weeks will be spent at University College Dublin, a short bus ride from the centre of Dublin, one of the oldest capital cities in Europe with one of the youngest populations — almost 50% of the city`s people are under 25 years old. Staying at student apartments on the university campuses, students will have the opportunity to meet young people of many different nationalities.
The students will enjoy a true Celtic cultural experience and a sense of Irish history and culture through guided tours to various historical sites in Dublin—The Cliffs of Moher in County Clare and the Neolithic passage tombs in Newgrange, County Meath.
1. What can we learn about the Irish Experience?| A．It admits college students. | B．It is hosted by universities. |
| C．It`s a summer study abroad program. | D．It aims to advertise universities in Ireland. |
| A．They will visit a theatre. | B．They will study at West Cork. |
| C．They will play live music at a pub. | D．They will spend a whole night at a pub. |
| A．It is the oldest city in the world. | B．It has a very young population. |
| C．It attracts people under 25 years old. | D．It has people of different nationalities. |
9 . Apps can help any users, even those who are not students, get more organized and improve their work. Whether or not you are a student, here are some apps worth considering.
Quizlet
Quizlet is a study aid app. It is filled with flash cards on many subjects to study. Quizlet has links to subjects like: Arts & Literature; Languages & Vocabulary; Math & Science; History & Geography; Professional & Careers. The app has a mix of text, images and audio recordings, including pronunciation of words in different languages. Quizlet has games to play and tests to take. Cards are available on the app even when you are not connected to the Internet. Quizlet is available as a free app from Apple’s iTunes store.
Free Graphing Calculator App
The Free Graphing Calculator lets the user create up to four graphs(图表) at once, and lets users adjust the graphs for the best views. You can change measurements within the image easily using the app. The mathematics and science guide within the app can explain some important math or science ideas. The Free Graphing Calculator is free. Users can pay to remove the advertising.
PomoDone App
The PomoDone app can help divide time into blocks for work and for breaks. The app on the computer helps keep track of time blocks for each activity. The app will say when it is time to take a break and when it is time to get back to work. PomoDone can work with other apps and help the user keep track of one’s activities over long periods of time. The app is available for computers from the PomoDone website. The app is free. Paid extra features are available.
1. What kind of work can you use Free Graphing Calculator App to do?| A．Keep track of time blocks. |
| B．Remove the advertising for free. |
| C．Make a graph clearer. |
| D．Study Arts & Literature. |
| A．Free Graphing Calculator App. | B．Quizlet. |
| C．PomoDone App. | D．All of them. |
| A．They can be used to study English freely. |
| B．They can be used to divide time into blocks. |
| C．They can be used to explain some important maths. |
| D．They can be used to help users for free. |
10 . Exercise helps to keep us in good health. Doctors at the American Heart Association suggest getting at least 150 minutes of proper physical activity every week. Many people exercise for a few minutes every day or every other day. So, getting 150 minutes every week is easy.
But what about those times when you are sick? If you do not feel well, should you keep following your exercise habit? Following are the answers from health experts.
Edward R. Laskowski is a doctor at the Mayo Clinic. He and other experts have a general rule about exercising when you are sick. It is usually fine to exercise properly (not hard), he explains, if your symptoms are all “above the neck”. These signs may include a runny nose, sneezing or a sore throat.
Geralyn Coopersmith, a physical fitness trainer who has written several books on exercise offers similar advice. However, both Coopersmith and Dr. Laskowski suggest taking a break from exercising if signs of your illness appears “below the neck”. Pay special attention to symptoms such as chest congestion, bad cough or pain in the stomach.
There are other symptoms that can tell you to avoid exercise. They include a higher than normal body temperature, a sense of feeling very tired, and widespread muscle pain.
Both Coopersmith and Dr. Laskowski suggest listening to your body. If you feel really bad, take a break and let your body rest. If you don’t feel too bad, these experts both suggest cutting down the amount of exercise. For example, if you usually run, take a quick walk instead.
1. How long should people do exercise according to doctors?| A．No less than two and a half hours a week. | B．One hundred and fifty minutes each day. |
| C．At least a few minutes every day. | D．About 150 minutes every other day. |
| A．stop exercise | B．walk instead of run |
| C．ignore the symptoms | D．do less exercise |
| A．Taking good care of yourself. |
| B．Learning to take advice of your body. |
| C．Making decisions according to your physical condition. |
| D．Listening to music when exercising to keep healthy. |
| A．Warnings against exercise when you are ill. |
| B．Harmful results of exercise when you are ill. |
| C．Time for exercise when you are ill. |
| D．Professional suggestions on exercise when you are ill. |
