1 . The spot of red was what first caught Randy Heiss's attention on December 16. He was biking on his ranch in Patagonia, Arizona, a town near the U. S. -Mexico border. Heiss walked toward it, and found on the grassland was a broken balloon with its string attached to a piece of paper.
“Dayami,” it read on one side, in a child's writing. It was a Christmas wish list, all in Spanish He suspected that a child had tried to send Santa Claus a Christmas wish list by balloon, something he used to do himself when he was a kid. And he wondered whether he could find the child who had sent this one.
It would be difficult, but based on the prevailing wind, Heiss was pretty sure where it came from—just across the border, the city of Nogales, Mexico.
Heiss then posted about his quest on Facebook, attaching photos, hoping his friends in Nogales might know the girl's family.
A few days passed with no leads. Heiss worried that time was running out before Chirstmas. On December 19. he sent a private Facebook message to Radio XENY. a radio station based in Nogales The next morning. Heiss awoke to a message from Radio XENY: They had located Dayami, an eight-year-old girl, and her family, who indeed lived in Nogales. “It just changed my entire day.” said Heiss. Having bought just about everything on Dayami's list and a few other toys, as they had learned that Dayami had a younger sister, Heiss and his wife. at the Radio XENY. met the family.
“Their eves were wide open with wonder.” Heiss said of the two sisters' reactions. “Like. ‘Oh my gosh, this really did work!’”
Not wanting to disappoint the girls who still believed in Santa Claus, Heiss and his wife told them they were “Santa's helpers”.
“It was a beautiful and healing experience for us...” Heiss said, “Since our only son died ten years ago, being around children at Christmas time has been absent in our lives.” Heiss said. “We now have friends for life. And, for a day, that border fence with its wire melted away.”
1. What did Heiss find when hiking on his ranch.| A．A Christmas wish list from a child | B．A mass of grassland. |
| C．A letter addressed to him. | D．A beautiful red balloon. |
| A．Examples. | B．Clues. | C．Suggestions. | D．Plans. |
| A．He wanted to make up for his lost son. |
| B．He wanted to make friends with Dayami. |
| C．He wanted to realize his childhood dream. |
| D．He didn't want to spoil Santa Claus for the girls. |
| A．Love knows no borders. | B．A bold attempt is half success. |
| C．God helps those who help themselves. | D．Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. |
2 . The first known dress, as well as the earliest known bar and restaurant in France, were identified this week. The discoveries, reported in the journal Antiquity, provide a glimpse of what early life was like in both ancient Egypt and southern France thousands of years ago.
The garment, which dates to around 3482 BC, is known as the Tarkhan Dress, and now looks like a shabby and dirty shirt. When new, however, the linen dress would have looked fashionable even today, as researchers determined it featured a natural pale gray stripe with pleated sleeves and bodice. Its edge is missing, so the original length of the dress is unknown.
"The survival of highly perishable textiles（纺织品）in the archaeological record is exceptional（例外的）, the survival of complete, or almost complete, articles of clothing like the Tarkhan Dress is even more remarkable," Alice Stevenson, head of the University College London（UCL）Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, said in a press release.
Now that the dress' age has been confirmed, it has been named Egypt's oldest garment and is the oldest known surviving woven garment in the world. To calculate its age. Michael Dee of the University of Oxford and colleagues measured a small Sample of the dress to determine how much radiocarbon remained in the linen. Linen is especially suitable for radiocarbon dating, according to the researchers, because it is made of flax fibers that grow over a relatively short time. The dress, currently on display at the UCI.
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, features wear and tear that date back to its earliest days. The researchers believe that a young teenager or a very slim woman wore it.
A separate study in the same journal reports the discovery of a hotel in southern France. At first the researcher thought that they had found a bakery, since they determined that the site once featured three huge ovens. They later, however, found that another nearby room across from a courtyard, had furniture lining its walls.
1. Why is it difficult to determine the length of the garment?| A．Its bottom edge is gone. | B．It has broken into pieces. |
| C．Part of the bottom is missing | D．The edge of sleeves is missing. |
| A．Really in high quality. | B．Valuable and unusual. |
| C．Lasting for quite a long time | D．Being rotten or destroyed easily. |
| A．linen is especially suitable for radiocarbon dating |
| B．the dress proves to be the oldest woven one in the world |
| C．how radiocarbon in the linen is measured by the researchers |
| D．the researchers of University of Oxford knew the dress' age |
| A．TV series. | B．A book review. |
| C．A science report. | D．A fashion show. |
3 . When Chef Enrique Olvera opened his restaurant, Pujol, 13 years ago, his only goal was to have the best restaurant in the neighborhood. Olvera's budget was so small that he had to do all the things himself. But Pujol is now widely thought of as Mexico's finest restaurant and the 36th best in the world. He reached his position by making his cuisine 'fancier and fancier, and more complex' over time. Pujol now serves a tasting menu of sophisticated food that wouldn't look out of place even at New York's Momofuku Ko. To decode his rocket soar in world cuisine circus, Olvera insists on mixing elaborate, cutting-edge techniques with a strong emphasis on local ingredients to create a cosmopolitan cuisine that's at once international yet unmistakably Mexican, matching the direction of Mexico City itself.
A visit to the 48-seat Pujol reveals a space-age kitchen containing 27 cooks, with one making his fifth attempt to reshape the egg liquid and another coloring potatoes. Pujol tolerates any grotesque attempt a chef could imagine and the restaurant is the trial site for its staff. That makes Pujol a hot place to attract free labor. The chef has also thought more about bringing Mexican cooks home from the U.S. Many are returning to move past the glass ceiling that exists in America. “Despite the number of Mexicans working in U.S. restaurants, you rarely see a Mexican head chef in a New York kitchen,” said Olvera. “Then why not come back here to attract diners here for the most local but also novel dishes?”
And for foreign diners, Mexican restaurants have another wonder to offer. Just think that merely 30 dollars can sustain you for a 4-course feast in an ordinary Mexican restaurant and no one could resist the temptation. To achieve such high cost performance, Olvera states that you have to keep looking for and exploring with the simple ingredients from which to accomplish amazing dishes. “You always cherish where you come from, but there’s also the need for new sensations. Keep exploring with new ideas until you get a better dish.” After all, it’s the soul of modern cuisine.
1. Why has Pujol become so successful?| A．Because Olvera aimed low in the first place. |
| B．Because Olvera forms the habit of doing things by himself. |
| C．Because Olvera attracts excellent cooks from the U.S. |
| D．Because Olvera combines cooking skills with local characteristics. |
| A．forceful. | B．weird. | C．abstract. | D．painful. |
| A．Because Pujol provides them with high titles and salaries. |
| B．Because they find it hard to rise to senior positions in U.S. restaurants. |
| C．Because they cook Mexican food better than American food. |
| D．Because they refer to the high cost performance of the restaurants. |
| A．Momofuku Ko is a famous food critic. |
| B．Olvera relies totally on foreign cutting-edge cooking techniques. |
| C．Eating in ordinary Mexican restaurants is expensive. |
| D．One key to success in today’s restaurant business is continuous innovation. |
4 . It is good news that you didn't get hit by China's Tiangong-1 space station when it fell to Earth on April 1. The not-so-good news is that there's a lot more space debris (碎片) where that came from.All the same, you can take off your hard hat, because your chances of getting struck are extremely small.
At any moment, there are more than 500,000 pieces of space debris orbiting(沿轨道运行) Earth. Some are no bigger than a millimeter or two; others—like Tiangong-1, which was the size of a school bus—are a potential threat. But the reason why none of these presents a danger is that when satellites reach the end of their useful lives, they can be controlled and sent on dives to the middle of the ocean. It's when something goes wrong—when communications are lost or fuel is exhausted—that re-entry becomes a crapshoot (运气). That's what happened when NASA's Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979. Even in those situations, the odds are very much on safety's side. Roughly 70% of Earth's surface is water, and much of its landmass is unpopulated.
If you're still worried, take comfort in some numbers: in the long history of spaceflight, only one person has ever gotten on the wrong side of a piece of falling space junk.That was Lottie Williams of Tulsa, Okla, who was conked on the shoulder by a piece of a Delta II rocket in 1997. She was unhurt.
According to the Aerospace Corp, a nonprofit group that tracked Tiangong-1's fall, the likelihood of an individual being hit by space debris is less than 1 in 1 trillion.The European Space Agency says getting struck by lightning is 10 million times as likely as the 1-in-300 trillion odds of being hit by space debris.
1. What does the second paragraph talk about?| A．Different sizes of space debris and where they land |
| B．Causes of the space debris orbiting the earth |
| C．reasons for not fearing being hit by space debris. |
| D．Effects of space debris not diving to the ocean |
| A．struck | B．cooked | C．hurt | D．fell |
| A．Doubtful | B．Uncaring | C．worried | D．relaxed |
| A．Falling space debris: a threat to our life |
| B．Falling space debris: stop fearing being hit |
| C．Falling space debris: put on your hard hat |
| D．Falling space debris: get on the right side |
5 . After weeks of lockdown, the French are more eager than ever to get away from the breathless cities. But the busy traffic will also serve as a reminder of another annual summer trend here. The French have the unfortunate distinction of being the European champions for abandoning pets that have become too cumbersome for their summer trips. Animal shelters up and down the country are evidence of this unique and sad tradition.
Betty Loizeau has run a shelter just north of Toulouse for more than 20 years. “Owners call up to say where their pets can be found, or drop them off in boxes outside the shelter under the cover of darkness. The excuses they typically give are that they’re going on holiday, having a baby, moving house, or they have a new partner with allergies, ...”
For shelters like this one, it is the busiest time of the year. Between 100,000 and 200,000 pets are abandoned in France each year, with 60% of these incidents occurring over the summer. The figure is close to 16,000 in the UK.
“Pets are increasingly seen as an impulsive(冲动的) buy,” says Marina Chailland, a doctor who has studied the social relationship between the French and their pets.
“A certain breed(品种) of cat or dog is fashionable and owners want one, just like a new smartphone,” 
she says. “Of course, when it goes out of fashion they desert it for an upgrade a couple of years later, when a new breed is considered fashionable.” She also points to the issue of pets being given as gifts as a reason why so many are abandoned. “Often parents will get pets for their children and when they grow up and lose interest in them, out goes the pet.”
Over the summer, owners discover that hotels charge extra for animals or even ban them completely. This explains why you will often see frightened, lost, dogs wandering near freeway service stations or beach resorts.
1. What does the underlined the word “cumbersome” in para. 1 refer to?| A．Disturbing. | B．Enjoyable. |
| C．Disappointing. | D．Impressive. |
| A．In fact, the French don’t like pets at all. |
| B．There are various excuses for people abandoning pets. |
| C．Between 100,000 and 200,000 pets are abandoned in the UK each year. |
| D．Pets are admitted into the hotel for free in summer. |
| A．In spring. | B．In summer. |
| C．In fall. | D．In winter. |
| A．To explain why the French abandon the pets. |
| B．To explain how the French like a smartphone. |
| C．To explain why the French dislike pets. |
| D．To explain how costly a smartphone is in France. |
6 . The practice of drinking tea has a long history in China. According to a popular story. tea was discovered by Shennong in 2737 BC when a leaf from a nearby shrub（灌木）fell into the water Shennong was boiling. Tea is deeply woven into the history and culture of China.
The Chinese have a saying: “Firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea are the seven necessities to begin a day.” Though tea is the last on the list, we still can see its importance in daily life. A simple meal in Chinese is Cu Cha Dan Fan, which shows even a simple meal is finished with tea.
For the Chinese, tea drinking and tasting are not parallel. Tea drinking can help keep up one’s spirit while tea tasting has cultural meaning. Tea and tea sets should match the breeze, the bright moon, bamboo and so on. All these show the goal of Chinese culture: the harmonious（和谐的）unity of human beings with nature.
Similarly, tea-drinking habits differ in different parts of China. Generally. flowering tea is popular in northern China; green tea is preferred in eastern China, and black tea is fit for people in Fujian and Guangdong. Green tea is the most popular type of tea drunk in China. Green tea usually loses its flavor（味道）within a year while the flavor of black tea can remain for several years. As a result, black tea has long been traded worldwide. It still accounts for over ninety percent of all tea sold in the West. At present, tea is commonly seen in Chinese restaurants and grocery shops worldwide.
1. Why does the author use the Chinese saying in Paragraph 2?| A．To show the tea’s role in Chinese culture. |
| B．To express the author’s love for tea. |
| C．To show the history of tea. |
| D．To explain the Chinese saying. |
| A．Different. | B．Strange. | C．Ordinary. | D．Equal. |
| A．It suits people in Fujian and Guangdong. |
| B．It tastes better than green tea. |
| C．Its flavor can be kept for a long time. |
| D．Its flavor is preferred by the West. |
| A．The development of tea drinking in China. | B．The culture of tea in China. |
| C．The popularity of tea drinking in China. | D．The history of tea in China. |
7 . If there's one place outside Argentina that can match its sadness over Diego Maradona's death, it's in the Italian city Naples. While Maradona, who was born in Lanus, Argentina, but raised in Villa Fiorito, a poor town to the south of Buenos Aires, was respected around the world as perhaps the greatest football player ever, in Naples he was more than that.
“Maradona wasn't just a player. He represented the spirit of Naples for years," said president Corrado Ferlaino, who owned Napoli club when Maradona played there.
Upon hearing the news of his death, thousands of people in Naples poured out into the city's streets to honor Maradona and light candles in his memory. Many of them stood below huge pictures of their hero that cover the whole sides of buildings in the center of the city.
Naples official Luigi De Magistris immediately suggested that the city's San Paolo Stadium be renamed for Maradona—and ordered the stadium's lights be turned on all night even though there was no game being played there.
“Maradona is Naples. The passion for him here is known to everyone, De Magistris wrote on Twitter. "Because it was real love. A great love. Naples lost part of its soul today. You were, and will always be, an inspiration to all of us. Naples cries tonight.
Maradona, of course, already made Naples cry when his Argentina team defeated Italy in Naples in the 1990 World Cup semifinals. However, many Naples fans cheered for Maradona and Argentina——not their own country—during that game, because he was treated as God in Naples.
Maradona led Naples to a number of successes that have raised the spirits of the southern Italian city, which was left far behind by the country's football capitals of Milan and Turin. In 1987 , he led Naples to its first Italian Championship and repeated it in 1990. In 1989, he helped Naples win the UEFA Cup by beating VfB Stuttgart in the final with 2 to 1, Maradona scoring one of the goals.
1. Where did Maradona grow up?| A．In Lanus. | B．In Villa Fiorito. | C．In Naples. | D．In Buenos Aires. |
| A．He made a public speech to honor the city's hero. |
| B．He joined the people to light candles in his memory. |
| C．He immediately changed the name of the city's stadium. |
| D．He had the lights turned on all night in San Paolo Stadium. |
| A．Love. | B．Loss. | C．Success. | D．Spirit. |
| A．The scoring records in Maradona's career. |
| B．The people's sadness over Maradona's death. |
| C．Maradona's contributions to Naples' football games. |
| D．The Italians' anger over their defeat in the 1990 World Cup. |
8 . At Englands University of Plymouth, Professor Eduardo Miranda has been programming pairs of robots to compose music. Miranda's robots have simple “ vocal cords”(声带)and are programmed to sing and to listen to each other. The robots' unique warbling sounds (颤音) do not perfectly match the human voice, but each machine is exactly sharing music with the other in a new and unique way.
Each robot is equipped with speakers, software that mimics the human voice, a mouth that opens as it “sings,” a microphone for ears, and a camera for eyes. The robots also move. Miranda hopes that by studying his robot vocalists, he can discover something about how and why humans create, perform, and listen to music.
When the robots sing, first one robot makes six random sounds. Its partner responds with more sounds. The first robot analyzes the sounds to see if their sequences (序列)) are similar. If they are, it nods its head and commits the sounds to memory, and the second robot notices and “memorizes” the musical sequence, too. If the first robot thinks the sounds are too different, it shakes its head and both robots ignore the sounds. Then the process continues.
Miranda set up an experiment in which he left the two robots alone in his study for two weeks. When he returned, his little warblers had, by imitating each other, not only shared notes but combined them. The product of their cooperation was far from symphonic, but the robots had begun to combine the notes into their own self-developed “songs”.
With the help of his warbling robots, one of Miranda's goals is to create music that no human would ever compose. Miranda believes the robots are ideal for this purpose because they would not be influenced by any existing musical styles or rules.
1. Which is closest in meaning to the underlined word “mimics” in Paragraph 2?| A．Substitutes. | B．Interrupts. |
| C．Controls. | D．Copies. |
| A．They interacted with each other. |
| B．They ignored the unique sound. |
| C．They learned to sing better than humans. |
| D．They committed random sounds to memory. |
| A．Sing as well as humans do. | B．Create new styles of music. |
| C．Memorize a variety of music. | D．Promote traditional musical forms. |
| A．Future robots. | B．Special songs. |
| C．Music by robots. | D．Experiments by Miranda. |
9 . The negative health effects of sleep shortages during the week can’ t be changed by marathon weekend sleep sessions, according to a new study.
Researchers have long known that routine sleep deprivation(缺乏) can cause weight gain and increase other health risks, including diabetes. But there are still some people who hope that shutting off the alarm on Saturday and Sunday will repay the weekly sleep debt and remove any ill effects.
The research, published in Current Biology, ruins those hopes. Despite complete freedom to sleep in and nap during a weekend recovery period, participants in a sleep laboratory who were limited to five hours of sleep on weekdays gained nearly three pounds over two weeks and experienced metabolic disruption(代谢紊乱) that would increase their risk for diabetes over the long term. While weekend recovery sleep had some benefits after a single week of insufficient sleep, those gains were wiped out when people returned right to their same sleep schedule the next Monday.
“If there are benefits of catch-up sleep, they’ re gone when you go back to your routine. It’ s very short-lived,” said Kenneth Wright, who oversaw the research. “These health effects are long-term. It’ s kind of like smoking once was—people would smoke and wouldn’ t see an immediate effect on their health, but people will say now that smoking is not a healthy lifestyle choice. I think sleep is in the early phase of where smoking used to be.”
Wright said that the study suggests people should prioritize sleep—cutting out the optional “sleep stealers” such as watching television shows or spending time on electronic devices. Even when people don’t have a choice about losing sleep due to child-care responsibilities or job schedules, they should think about prioritizing sleep in the same way they would think about a healthy diet or exercise.
1. What had the researchers already known before doing the new research?| A．The actual benefits of weekend recovery sleep. |
| B．Harm to health caused by the lack of routine sleep. |
| C．People’ s habit of shutting off the alarm during holidays. |
| D．The relationship between body weight and sleep amount. |
| A．call on smokers to completely abandon smoking |
| B．advise people to go to sleep when they want to smoke |
| C．show people have known the harm brought by smoking |
| D．show people will someday notice the bad effects of sleep deprivation |
| A．Putting tasks in order of importance. |
| B．Getting more than enough of something to deposit it. |
| C．Cutting down something that is not necessary any more. |
| D．Treating something as being more important than others. |
| A．Weekend catch-up sleep is a lie. |
| B．Bad sleep habits are harmful to health. |
| C．Smoking is not the worst thing to health. |
| D．A new study has an unexpected discovery. |
10 . After a year at sea, 16-year-old Laura Dekker can finally say, “Mission accomplished!” Last month, she finished a daring trip around the world aboard her 38-foot boat, Guppy. Dekker, who is from the Netherlands, traveled more than 30,000 miles all by herself. She is the youngest person ever to sail around the globe alone.
Dekker had wanted to lake on this challenge when she was even younger. She first tried to set sail at the age of 13, but a court in the Netherlands stopped her. They said that she was too young to make such a risky trip by herself. But Dekker insisted she had the navigation skills and patience of an adult sailor.
She finally took off on January 20, 2011. During her trip, Dekker battled loneliness, storms, and worries about pirates. But she also got to surf, scuba dive, and started a new hobby: playing the flute. Although Dekker didn’t spend all of her time at sea—she stopped at ports along the way—she did spend her 16lh birthday on the open ocean. To celebrate, she ate doughnuts for breakfast.
But Dekker didn’t sail into the record books. Guinness World Records and the World Sailing Speed Record Council no longer recognize records for “youngest” sailors. They dropped the category in 2009 to discourage children from attempting such dangerous feats (壮举). But that didn’t stop Dekker，who was born on a yacht during a seven-year world voyage undertaken by her parents.
Dekker doesn’t mind that she won’t hold an official record. She says it was a personal goal, and she is happy she achieved it.
“I am not disappointed at all that Guinness World Record won’t recognize my attempt.” Dekker wrote on her website. “I did not start on my trip to achieve any record…I did it just for myself.”
1. Dekker wasn’t allowed to sail at the age of 13 because .| A．people were concerned about her safety |
| B．she didn’t learn any sailing skills well |
| C．she had to continue her study at school |
| D．she didn’t have enough patience for long trips |
| A．Failed. | B．Completed. |
| C．Continued. | D．Started. |
| A．set a higher sailing standard for teen sailors |
| B．stop children entering Guinness World Records |
| C．encourage parents to sail with their children |
| D．prevent children making dangerous attempts |
| A．A New Guinness World Record in Sailing |
| B．A New Sailing Standard for Teen Sailors |
| C．A Teen Girl Sailing Alone Around the World |
| D．The Youngest Sailor in Guinness World Records |
