1 . Google has announced plans to stop supporting tools designed to follow Internet users across the web in order to target them with specific advertising.
Such tools are known as cookies-small data files that are stored on an Internet user's computer as they browse （浏览）different websites. This data can be read by web servers to identify web browsing behaviors of the user. Cookies make it possible for users to avoid having to repeatedly enter their user names and passwords to get access to websites they use often. But the use of cookies raises major privacy concerns, with critics saying a user's browsing history should not be recorded just to target them with ads.
Google announced in 2020 it had decided “to remove support for third-party cookies" from its Chrome browser. In another online announcement, Google repeated this promise, saying it will not build new tools to replace current cookie technology.
In explaining its decision, Google referred to a Pew Research study that found 72 percent of Americans feel that almost all of what they do online is tracked by advertisers. Google's decision to remove third-party cookies also followed increasing efforts to protect privacy in Europe and the United States. Google said the current Internet advertising model needs to change to answer “the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used.”
In January, however, Google's plan was questioned by British competition regulators. The country's Competition and Markets Authority announced it had launched an investigation into whether the changes would give Google an unfair advantage over competitors in Internet advertising. The agency said it received objections to the plan from Marketers for an Open Web, a league of technology and publishing companies. The group accuses Google of “abusing its dominant position” by attempting to create a new advertising model.
In its latest statement, Google said, “We will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.”
1. According to the text, what do you know about cookies?| A．Cookies are inconvenient for web users. |
| B．The users should repeat their passwords to enter websites. |
| C．Google uses Cookies to monitor the web users' private life. |
| D．The tracks of the web users can be followed by the web servers. |
| A．To use a alternative tool. |
| B．To get more personal information, |
| C．To respond to concerns about privacy. |
| D．To create a fair Internet advertising platform. |
| A．It was organized by an agency of the US. |
| B．All people don't accept the Google's plan. |
| C．Google has the biggest advantages on the Internet. |
| D．Marketers for an Open Web is in favor of the Google's plan. |
| A．Privacy should be protected. |
| B．Google will change advertising model. |
| C．There should not be many advertisements on the web. |
| D．Cookies will be removed from Google for privacy protection. |
2 . Masks that helped save lives during the coronavirus pandemic(流行病) are proving a deadly danger for wildlife, with birds and marine creatures trapped in the incredible number of abandoned facial coverings littering on animal habitats.
Single-use surgical masks have been found thrown around pavements, waterways and beaches worldwide since countries began demanding their use in public places to slow the pandemic's spread. Macaques(猕猴) have been spotted chewing the straps(带子) off old and deserted masks in Malaysia a potential choking danger for the little monkeys. And in an incident that captured headlines in Britain, a gull(海鸥) was rescued in the city of Chelmsford after its legs became tangled（缠结）in the straps of a disposable mask for up to a week. The animal welfare charity was alerted after the bird was spotted motionless but still alive, and they took it to a wildlife hospital for treatment before its release.
The biggest impact may be in the water.More than l. 5 billion masks made their way into the world's oceans last year. accounting for around 6,200 extra tons of marine plastic pollution, according to environmental group OceansAsia. ? Already there are signs that masks are worsening threats to marine life. Conservationists in Brazil found one inside the stomach of a penguin after its body was washed up on a beach, while a dead pufferfish(河豚) was discovered caught inside another off the coast of Miami.
Masks and gloves are "particularly problematic" for sea creatures，says George Leonard, chief scientist from U. S. -based NGO Ocean Conservancy. "When it takes those plastics hundreds of years to break down in the environment, they form smaller and smaller particles," he added, "those particles then enter the food chain and impact entire ecosystems."
Fortunately, there has been a shift towards greater use of reusable cloth masks as the pandemic has worn on，but many are still choosing the lighter single- use varieties.Campaigners have urged people to throw away them properly and remove the straps to reduce the risk of animals becoming trapped. Oceans Asia has also called on governments to increase fines for littering and encourage the use of washable masks.
1. What role do masks play during the coronavirus pandemic?| A．They keep people free of the pandemic |
| B．They make people look more mysterious. |
| C．They help reduce the speed of the pandemic's spread. |
| D．They are of great helpful to wildlife. |
| A．The animals lack enough food |
| B．T hey enjoy playing with the straps |
| C．The deserted masks put them in danger |
| D．It's time for people to protect the animals |
| A．Marine creatures are in trouble. |
| B．Masks and gloves will finally threaten the whole ecosystems. |
| C．The plastics are easy to break down. |
| D．The particles masks and gloves form are smaller and smaller. |
| A．Animal protection |
| B．Marine plastic pollution |
| C．How to reduce the risk of abandoned masks |
| D．The deserted masks endangering wildlife |
3 . In a study published in Nature Machine Intelligence, researchers at Ohio State University show how artificial intelligence（AI）can follow clinical trials to identify drugs for repurposing, a solution that can help advance innovative treatments.
Repurposing drugs is legal and not unusual. When doctors prescribe(开处方)drugs that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration(FDA)for purposes different from what is printed on the labels, the drugs are being used “off-label” Just because a drug is FDA-approved for a specific type of disease does not prevent it from having possible benefits for other purposes.
For example, Metformin, a drug that is FDA-approved for treating type 2 diabetes, is also used to treat PCOS(a disease of women), and other diseases. Trazodone, an anti-depressant with FDA-approval to treat depression, is also prescribed by doctors to help treat patients with sleep issues.
The Ohio State University research team created an AI deep learning model for predicting treatment probability with patient data including the treatment, outcomes, and potential confounders(干扰因素).
Confounders are related to the exposure and outcome. For example, a connection is identified between music festivals and increases in skin rashes(红疹). Music festivals do not directly cause skin rashes. In this case, one possible confounding factor between the two may be outdoor heat, as music festivals tend to run outdoors when the temperature is high, and heat is a known cause for rashes. When working with real-world data, confounders could number in the thousands. AI deep learning is well-suited to find patterns in the complexity of potentially thousands of confounders.
The researcher team used confounders including population data and co-prescribed drugs. With this proof-of-concept, now clinicians have a powerful AI tool to rapidly discover new treatments by repurposing existing medications.
1. What do we know about a drug used off-label?| A．It is sold without a label. |
| B．It is available at a low price. |
| C．Its uses extend beyond the original ones. |
| D．Its clinical trials are rejected by doctors. |
| A．are used off-label |
| B．treat rare diseases |
| C．result in sleep issues |
| D．are medical breakthroughs |
| A．They are possible treatments. |
| B．They are environmental factors. |
| C．They can be easily recognized in real-world data. |
| D．They should be taken into serious consideration. |
| A．AI examines benefits of existing drugs. |
| B．AI identifies off-label uses for drugs. |
| C．AI finds new drugs for common diseases. |
| D．AI proves the power of drug research. |
4 . As heat waves continue to ravage the planet, air conditioners are becoming more and more common. However, these "active" cooling devices are posing problems because the electricity consumption which most people are concerned about and the release of ozone-damaging chemicals worsen the greenhouse gas effect, resulting in the creation of heat islands and further thermal pollution. Therefore, "passive" cooling, which doesn't have such effects, has attracted considerable attention from both scientists and ordinary people in recent years.
In a recent study, a team of researchers from China and US presented an eco-friendly, low-cost smart coating to keep buildings cooler while consuming zero electricity. Infrared radiation-based passive cooling has been investigated since 2014, but challenges, mainly the expensive and unsustainable design, have greatly limited their large-scale and widespread application. Besides, the imbalance in cooling ability of these coatings during the day and night tends to lead to great day-night temperature differences as more heat is lost than gained at night.
The solution therefore requires a "smart" mechanism that can both enhance daytime cooling and minimize nighttime heat loss. To do this, the researchers created a new smart coating comprised of conventional building materials, including titanium dioxide nanoparticles, fluorescent microparticles, and glass microspheres that were engineered to reflect most of the sunlight. Specifically, the titanium dioxide particles effectively reflect sunlight through light scattering（撒播）while the fluorescent particles increase the amount of reflection by changing the absorbed sunlight into fluorescence emissions, which drive more heat away from the building. Meanwhile, the glass microspheres re-send mid-infrared broadband radiation, allowing not only heat loss, but allowing heat exchange to take place between the building and the sky.
The coating was tested on a model concrete building. Through this efficient heat exchange with the sky, daytime cooling was strengthened while nighttime cooling was reduced. The building's inside temperature was always maintained at around 26℃, even when the out-side temperature varied from 24℃ to 37℃ during the day. We believe this new coating will make it to commercialization soon, enabling a sustainable, passive cooling technology that could help to fight climate change and the global energy crisis.
1. What is the virtue of passive cooling?| A．It is simple to design. | B．It uses no chemicals. |
| C．It is smart. | D．It uses no power. |
| A．It was hard to design. |
| B．Its material was hard to produce. |
| C．Its heat loss and cooling are imbalanced. |
| D．It wasn't tested on a model concrete building. |
| A．Metal. | B．System. | C．Platform. | D．Building. |
| A．The principle of air-conditioning. |
| B．The differences between active and passive cooling. |
| C．A new coating to keep buildings cool without electricity. |
| D．A new building to maintain its inside temperature without electricity. |
5 . When we are children, the summer holidays seem to last forever, and the wait between Spring Festivals feels like an eternity. But later, we may find that the time just seems to fly by, with weeks, months and entire seasons disappearing from a blurred calendar at a fast speed. Why does time seem to pass faster as we get older?
According to the Daily Mail, our brains degrade as we get older. That diminish the amount of information we can deal with in a single day. “The human mind senses time changing when the perceived images change,” Adrian Bejan from Duke University, US, told the Daily Mail. “The present is different from the past because the mental viewing has changed, not because somebody’s clock rings.”
Infants, for example, move their eyes much more often than adults because they’re processing images at a faster rate. They deal with a large amount of information and do many things in a single day. This makes them feel like a single day lasts for a long time. However, as people get older, fewer images are processed in the same amount of time. Therefore, older people receive less information during a day than younger people. This causes things to seem as though they’re happening more quickly.
Apart from the degradation of our brains, some psychological reasons also make us experience time differently. People may measure time by the number of memorable events that can be recalled within a certain period. When we think about our youth, we may remember a life packed with first-time activities, for example, our first time traveling without our parents, or our first date. We experienced these events so vividly that time then seems to us to have passed very slowly. According to David Eagleman of the Baylor College of Medicine in the US, recalling these memories makes us feel like they took forever. Many adults find life is routine and sometimes dull. For this reason, when they look back, they might feel like there are not many exciting things to remember. Therefore, time seems to be moving faster to them.
1. What does the underlined word “diminish” in the second paragraph probably mean?| A．get worse | B．stay unchanged |
| C．go up | D．cut down |
| A．Infants and adults process information in different ways. |
| B．The more information people process per day, the quicker time seems to be. |
| C．How much information people deal with varies with age. |
| D．Adults can hardly deal with any information. |
| A．Youth is the best time to enjoy some first time activities. |
| B．Young people’s lives are much more interesting than older. |
| C．childhood memories are too precious to forget. |
| D．psychological reasons make us experience time differently. |
| A．To tell us that life passes by quickly for adults. |
| B．To explain why life speeds up when we grow older. |
| C．To show us that adults’ lives are not as exciting as children. |
| D．To introduce us the difference between adults and children. |
6 . Every year, the Joint Mathematics Meeting brings more than 5,000 math lovers together. It’s the largest math meeting in the world. In January 2019, mathematicians flew to the meeting in Baltimore, Md. , to learn about new ideas and talk about their work. Many even came to admire the latest in mathematical art.
The meeting included an entire art exhibition. Visitors felt amazed at sculptures made from metal, wood and folded paper. One was based on a supersized Rubik’s cube. Many like triangles, were arranged in strange and surprising sizes and colors. The collection also included drawings and paintings inspired by the study of numbers, curves（曲线）and patterns.
Art and math may seem like a strange pairing. People usually experience art through their senses. They see a painting or listen to music. If this art moves them, they will have an emotional（情感上的）response. Working at math problems is usually viewed as something you think about—not feel. But connections between the two fields reach far back in time. Sculptors and architects in some ancient civilizations included numbers and math ideas into their works.
“A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns,” wrote British mathematician G. H. Hardy in 1940. If a mathematician’s patterns are more permanent, he continued, “It is because they are made with ideas.”
Henry Segerman is a mathematician and artist. When he was in high school, in England, he was good at math and art. But he had to choose. “I went in the math direction back then,” he says. He thought it difficult to succeed as an artist.
Still, Segerman’s math studies led him into the visual areas of math, such as geometry. In 2015, Segerman and some math art friends created a virtual-reality artwork. Participants can put on a pair of VR goggles to float around and through four-dimensional shapes. Art makes it possible to interact（互动）with these shapes, which would be impossible to create in our three-dimensional world. As beautiful as it is to see, Segerman’s work also offers a new view on mathematical ideas.
1. What is special about the exhibits at the meeting?| A．They are made based on math ideas. |
| B．They reflect the long history of math. |
| C．They are art works with high technology. |
| D．They turn abstract art into specific math. |
| A．They’re experienced in different ways. |
| B．They seem extremely hard to appreciate. |
| C．They’ve been separated since ancient times. |
| D．They fail to bring about people’s responses. |
| A．one can’t easily succeed in science | B．math makes art easier to understand |
| C．math is actually the origin of fine art | D．math learning promotes the creation of art |
| A．Real artists will stand the test of math. |
| B．Artists make math become a kind of art. |
| C．Modern artists turn into mathematicians. |
| D．Math and art turns out a great combination. |
7 . While it’s no surprise that heavy drinking comes with health problems, women will experience more serious symptoms(症状) from alcohol - including an increased risk of alcohol-related death, according to a new study.
The researchers found that’s even more alarming considering the number of women who are drinking alcohol too much is on the rise, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Even though men are not only more likely to drink alcohol but also more of it, alcohol hits women harder. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that “gender differences in body structure and chemistry cause women to take in more alcohol, and take longer to metabolize and remove it from their bodies,” adding, “These differences also make it more likely that drinking will cause long-term health problems in women than men.”
Heavy drinking also impacts heart health. The CDC states that studies show women who drink overmore have a higher risk of damaging the heart muscle than men. Keith Humphreys, a professor studying alcohol drinking at Stanford University explains that, one of the reasons why alcohol has a more effect on women is because, on average, they weigh less than men. According to the NIAAA, “Alcohol resides predominantly in body water, and, women have less water in their bodies than men. This means that after a woman and a man of the same weight drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman’s blood alcohol concentration will tend to be higher, putting her at greater risk for harm.”But it’s not just about size. Research shows women also have fewer Alcohol Dehydrogenase Enzymes(脱氢酶), which help the body metabolize alcohol.
The U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans has suggested that when drinking alcohol, it should be done properly: up to two drink per day for women and one drink per day for men of legal drinking age.
1. What makes alcohol-related problems more serious?| A．Heavy drinking mainly affects women. | B．Women drink more alcohol than men. |
| C．More and more women drink alcohol. | D．Women often have health problems. |
| A．recognise | B．handle | C．melt | D．absorb |
①The low ability to metabolize alcohol. ②Gender differences
③Less water in bodies ④The weaker heart muscle
| A．①②③ | B．②③④ | C．①②④ | D．①③④ |
| A．Drinking too much causes serious results. |
| B．Men tend to absorb alcohol easily. |
| C．Alcohol affects women more than men. |
| D．It is dangerous for women to drink alcohol. |
8 . If English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven’t you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language?
According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles. The study also found the effects are greater, the younger people learn a second language.
A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of “early bilinguals” who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners.
Scans showed that grey matter density in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller the difference.
“Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language.” said the scientists. It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn.
Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and math skills. “Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible” he said, “You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas.”
The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of 2 and 34. Reading, writing and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better. “Studying a language means you get an entrance to another world,” explained the scientists.
1. The main subject of this passage is ________.| A．the strategy for learning a second language |
| B．men’s ability to learn a second language |
| C．how language leaning helps brainpower |
| D．the relationship between language learning and math study |
| A．suggest that language learning involves physical labor. |
| B．prove that one needs more practice when he(she) is learning a language |
| C．show that language learning is a process of accumulation |
| D．make people believe language learning helps grey matter work well |
| A．the earlier you start to learn a second language, the higher the grey matter density is. |
| B．there is no difference between a later second language learner and one knowing no second language. |
| C．the experience of learning a second language has an unknown effect on people’s brain |
| D．the ability to learn a second language is changing all the time |
| A．learning a second language is the same as studying maths |
| B．early learning of a second language helps in studying other subjects |
| C．Italian is the best choice for you as a second language |
| D．you’d better choose the ages between 2 and 34 to learn a second language |
9 . I have spent much of my time studying how children learn. Children come into the world beautifully designed to direct their own education. They are born by nature with powerful educative abilities, including curiosity, playfulness, sociability, attentiveness to the activities around them, desire to grow up and desire to do what older children and adults can do.
This amazing drive and ability to learn does not turn itself off when children turn 5 or 6. We turn it off with our compulsory system of schooling. The biggest, most lasting lesson of our system of schooling is that learning is work, to be avoided when possible.
The focus of my own research has been on learning in children who are of “school age”, but who aren't sent to school, or not to school as traditionally understood. I've examined how children learn in cultures that don't have schools, especially hunter gatherer cultures. I've also studied learning in our culture by children who are trusted to take charge of their own education and are provided with the chance and means to educate themselves. In these settings, children's natural curiosity and desire for learning continue firmly all the way through childhood and adolescence, and into adulthood.
In our culture today, there are many routes through which children can apply their natural drives and abilities to learn everything they need to know for a successful adulthood. More than 2 million children in the United States now base their education at home and in the larger community rather than at school, and an ever increasing proportion (比例) of their families have given up school-based approaches in favor of self- directed learning. These parents do not give lessons or tests, but provide a home environment that improves learning, and they help connect their children to community activities from which they learn. Some of these families began this approach long ago and have adult children who are now developing better in higher education and job- -hunting.
1. What is the author's attitude towards the system of schooling?| A．Disappointed. | B．Indifferent. | C．Serious. | D．Optimistic. |
| A．Children of school age dislike educating themselves. |
| B．Hunter gatherer cultures are better than the current culture. |
| C．Children's self- directed learning abilities last for a long time. |
| D．The author put focus on students in the schools. |
| A．Add some background information. | B．Provide some advice for the reader. |
| C．Summarize the previous paragraphs. | D．Offer additional related information. |
| A．Staying away from school becomes popular. | B．School- based learning damages our kids. |
| C．Children's learning abilities are amazing. | D．Self-schooling children develop better. |
10 . How the languages of the world appeared is largely a mystery. Considering that it might have taken thousands of years, it is attractive to see how deaf people can create novel sign languages unconsciously. Interestingly, children played an important role in the development of these novel languages. However, how exactly this happened has not been documented.
In a series of studies, researchers attempted to recreate exactly this process. Children were invited to stay in two different rooms and an online connection was set up between them.After a brief familiarization with the set- up, the researchers sneakily (偷偷地）turned off the sound and watched as the children found new ways of communicating that go beyond spoken language.
The children's task was to describe an image with different themes in a coordination game. With concrete things-like a hammer or a fork-children quickly found a solution by imitating the matching action, for example, eating, in a gesture. But the researchers repeatedly challenged the children with new, more abstract pictures. In the course of the study, the images to be described became more and more complex, which was also reflected in the gestures that the children produced. In order to communicate, the children invented separate gestures for actors and actions and began to combine them-thus creating a kind of small local grammar.
How does a language come into being? Based on the present study, the following steps appear reasonable: first, people create reference to actions and objects through signs that resemble things. The precondition for this is a common ground of experience between interaction partners. Partners also coordinate (配合）by imitating each other so that they use the same signs for the same things. The signs thus gain interpersonal and eventually common meaning. Over time, the relationships between the signs and things become more abstract and the meaning of the individual signs becomes more specific. Grammatical structures are gradually introduced when there is a need to communicate more complex facts. However, the most remarkable aspect of the current studies is that these processes can be observed under controlled circumstances and within 30 minutes.
1. How did the researchers carry out the experiment?| A．By making the communication in total silence. |
| B．By inferring to and copying the documented scene. |
| C．By observing children communicate face to face. |
| D．By listening secretly to the communication of children. |
| A．Show how to do different things with different tools. |
| B．Take several oral examinations on foreign languages. |
| C．Describe things to others without spoken languages. |
| D．Name some abstract objects which they have never seen. |
| A．Signs→Accepted meaning→Interpersonal meaning→Language |
| B．Interpersonal meaning→Accepted meaning→Signs→Language |
| C．Accepted meaning→Interpersonal meaning→Signs→Language |
| D．Signs→Interpersonal meaning→Accepted meaning→Language |
| A．The development of novel sign languages. |
| B．The first steps of the making of languages. |
| C．The role children play in creating languages. |
| D．The circumstances of languages coming into being. |
