1 . Not all fat is created equal. The fat most people picture is known as white fat, since it looks white or white-yellow when you see it under the skin. But you’re also born with brown fat, which, unsurprisingly, looks brown.

Brown fat — found in the neck and shoulders of newborns — is metabolically (新陈代谢地) efficient, in that it burns lots of calories, which serves the purpose of keeping you warm (important for newborns). We lose most of our brown fat as we age. By age six, we have less than five percent of the brown fat we were born with; the fat we gain over time is almost all white fat. One of the major causes of shortened lifetime and illnesses like type 2 diabetes and many cancers is the increasing level of white fat. So scientists have long tried to find ways to activate that fat or turn white fat into brown fat.

However, one roadblock to using brown fat is that all the good stuff that brown fat does has to be programmed into the previously white fat, but that has proved doable. A group in Delaware has activated brown fat in a few women with an already approved medication. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) have put white fat in test tubes and turned it into brown fat. They then injected the brown fat into fat sheep. As hoped, the sheep with more brown fat got thin and lost their metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

The timetable for this game-changing ability to turn white fat to brown fat is predicted to be less than five years away after human studies start. If scientists find a way to replace white fat with brown fat, it will likely mitigate risks of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and brain disorder greatly and provide increased energy levels. That is, you become operationally younger. Bring it on!

What can we learn about brown fat from the research of UCPH?

A．It originates from white fat.	B．It can be activated by medication.
C．It may be the key to weight loss.	D．It has to work with white fat.

2 . Cheerleading squads (啦啦队) are known for their energy and athleticism, and always add fun and excitement to any event. Most cheerleading groups have young members, so this Arizona cheerleading squad certainly stands out. Sun City Poms, which only recruits (招募) members who are over 55, has distinguished itself as a cheerleading squad that brings joy to seniors and audiences of all ages.

Established in 1979, the team consists of women aged over 55 who live in Sun City, a retirement community in Arizona. This community of active seniors women are passionate about dancing, performing and staying active, and prove that there is no age limit to what you love to do. The team has become increasingly popular, and the members are known for their energetic performances at parades, festivals and events throughout the state.

Despite the demanding schedule, the women remain committed to the team. This cheerleading squad brings joy to seniors by keeping members physically fit, building friendships, and fostering a sense of community. The Sun City Poms currently has 30members and a handful of trainees, who can join after completing a three-month class, learning two routines, and proving they have what it takes.

On March 25, the group successfully held the “Celebrate the Poms” show, which drew a crowd of over 700 people. It even included a special number from “The Flops”, who count the husbands, friends and lovers of the Poms as members.

Zirbel, in her eighties, already has a lot of memories with the group and is ready to make more. She shared that in one event alone. She estimated that she walked about three miles. Despite the tiring schedule and off days, Zirbel is not about to leave the team anytime soon.

1. Why did Zirbel mention “three miles” in her sharing?

A．To prove her energetic daily life.	B．To indicate her tiredness of the work.
C．To show the effort involved in the event.	D．To complain about the stress of the training.

2. Which of the following sayings best suits the story?

A．No young or old learner is a teacher.

B．When is life enough to be idle and idle?

C．One year older, one more point of responsibility.

D．Although the violin is old, it can still play a good tune.

3 . Have you ever put off a project until the last minute even though you knew it would only take a few hours to complete? Studies suggest that when given a task, we think of how much time is available to complete the task instead of how much time we actually need. This mindset, or Parkinson’s Law as psychologists put it, results in wasted time and inefficient workflows.

One reason why this phenomenon happens lies in how people tend to approach tasks. By focusing on how much time we have to do something, we assume that the task will require that much time. Parkinson’s Law isn’t a magic formula (公式) or a fixed rule. But it is an observation you can use to help you become more productive. Let’s look at a few ways you can apply Parkinson’s Law to your life, get your to-do list checked off quicker, and spend less of the workday filling in time just to look busy.

As you get started, make a list of your tasks, and determine the amount of time it takes to complete them. If you can give yourself half that time to complete each task, you can avoid falling into the procrastination (拖延) trap.

Get better at judging time. Some tasks may be accurate to begin with, and some may be inflated if you are not used to using Parkinson’s Law. A timer is going to be very useful when you start doing this.

Avoid setting arbitrary deadlines and instead think about how long a task will realistically take to complete. While this might not be clear, consider past experiences as a guide.

While Parkinson’s Law is a phenomenon that can lead to wasted time and incompetence, it doesn’t have to be a problem if you’re aware of it. Using some of the strategies above, you can avoid falling victim to Parkinson’s Law and make the most of your time.

1. What can be inferred about Parkinson’s Law?

A．It improves productivity.	B．It leads to procrastination.
C．It results from a magic rule.	D．It contradicts personal judgment.

2. What would be the intention of the text?

A．To promote more efficient task management.

B．To criticize some wrong practice.

C．To define Parkinson’s Law.

D．To suggest a self-disciplined lifestyle.

5 . Languages like Italian or Finnish can be spelled more easily because each letter of the alphabet matches to one sound. Students studying these languages can have 90 percent reading accuracy after the first year. However, students even after years of learning English are still far below Italian or Finnish students in reading accuracy.

English started as a Germanic language. It is most closely connected to German and Dutch, especially in grammar and basic vocabulary. During the Norman invasion in the 12th century, Old English was spoken but French was used in government and legal documents. And Latin was used in religious and educational activities. As a result, more French and Latin words entered the English language. The printing press invented in the late 1400s helped to establish English spelling. The English of today is how the language was written at the time. However, the spoken language started to change in the 1500s with the pronunciation of all long vowels (元音). For example, “bite” was pronounced closer to “beet” in the 1400s, before changing through the years to its current sound. The effect was that the English language had old spellings, but new sounds.

......

How does the author lead to the topic of this text?

A．By making a classification.	B．By comparison.
C．By the calculation of an example.	D．By describing a process.

8 . Crime fiction books have been popular with readers for many decades-so popular, in fact, that at a recent London Book Fair sales of the genre (类型) overtook general fiction for the first time ever, a development that had been widely anticipated. Commercial success, of course, does not impress everyone and there are those who believe crime fiction should not be held in such high regard. Well-known in this group is Sebastian Franklin, who has argued that most crime fiction books look more like crossword puzzles than literature. However, increasingly this is a minority opinion as crime fiction is becoming recognized as a rich and dynamic literary genre in around the world.

Crime writing really came to the public’s notice in the 1920s and 1930s with the books of the British author Agatha Christie. Christie was a productive writer, publishing more than 60 detective novels over a 50-year period, beginning in 1920.

Without a doubt, there are certain elements that tend to be repeated in Christie’s books. The stories generally focus on a well-off circle of people, whose peaceful lives are thrown into chaos by an unexplained crime. The location is often a restricted space of some sort: a train, an island, a boat, or a village. This is quite different, for example, to the world of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who often has the entire city of London as his hunting ground.

The books are also action-packed just like today’s most popular thrillers (惊悚小说). Christie mastered the art of the page-turner: events unfold so quickly and unpredictably that we keep reading to find out what happens next. The most significant consequence is that it is so simple to overlook vital clues.

It is worth reading a Christie book a second time just to notice how carefully she hides crucial information about the criminal’s identity.

A survey of contemporary crime writing shows that Agatha Christie’s legacy (遗产) is more important now than at any time previously, at the very point when crime writing has become the most popular of all book genres.

1. What does the author intend to do in paragraph 3?

A．Contrast Christie’s different techniques.	B．Reveal a weakness of Christie’s writing style.
C．List some features of a typical Christie story.	D．Identify a famous writer important to Christie.

2. Which words will the author use to describe Christie’s books?

A．Lengthy but understandable.	B．Attractive and exciting.
C．Simple and loosely-organized.	D．Quickly-written but popular.

9 . Imagine you can open your fridge, open an app on your phone and immediately know which items will go bad soon. This is one of the applications that a new technology developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego would enable.

The technology combines a chip (芯片) integrated into product packaging and a software update on your phone. The phone becomes capable of identifying objects based on signals the chip sends out from specific frequencies, in this case Bluetooth or WiFi. In an industrial setting, a smartphone equipped with the software update could be used as a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader.

The work uses breakthroughs in backscatter (反向散射) communication, which uses signals already generated by your smartphone and re-directs them back in a format your phone can understand. Effectively, this technique uses less power than the latest technology to generate WiFi signals.

The custom chip, which is roughly the size of a grain of sand and costs only a few pennies to produce, needs so little power that it can be entirely powered by LTE signals, a technique for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices. The chip turns Bluetooth signals into WiFi signals, which can in turn be detected by a smartphone with that specific software update.

The technology’s broader promise is the development of devices that do not need batteries because they can harvest power from LTE signals instead. This in turn would lead to devices that are significantly less expensive that last longer, said Dinesh Bharadia, one of the paper’s senior authors.

“E-waste, especially batteries, is one of the biggest problems the planet is facing, after climate change,” Bharadia said.

For future research, the team will integrate this technology into other projects to demonstrate its capabilities, and they also hope to commercialize it, either through a startup or through an industry partner.

1. How does the chip interact with the phone?

A．By providing power for the phone.	B．By producing LTE signals for the phone.
C．By giving Bluetooth signals to the phone.	D．By sending WiFi signals back to the phone.

2. What is the potential of the technology according to Bharadia?

A．Reducing e-waste.	B．Making batteries cheap.
C．Supplying power to LTE signals.	D．Decreasing the cost of LTE signals.