1 . Experts are warning about the risks of extremely picky(挑剔的)eating after a teenager living on a diet of chips and crisps developed lasting sight loss. Eye doctors in Bristol cared for the 17-year-old after his sight had gone to the point of blindness. Tests showed he had serious vitamin deficiency(缺乏). Dr. Denize Atan, who treated him at the hospital, said, “His diet was basically a portion of chips from the local fish and chip shop every day. He also used to snack on crisps and sometimes white bread and ham, and not really any fruit and vegetables.”

The teenager saw his doctor at the age of 14 because he had been feeling tired and unwell. At that time he suffered from vitamin B12 deficiency, but he did not stick with the treatment or improve his poor diet. Three years later, he was taken to the Bristol Eye Hospital because of progressive sight loss.

He was not overweight or underweight, but he had lost minerals from his bones, which was really quite shocking for a boy of his age. In terms of his sight loss, he met the standards of being blind. “He had blind spots right in the middle of his sight,” said Dr Denize Atan, “That means he can’t drive and would find it really arduous to read, watch TV or recognize faces.”

Dr Denize Atan said that parents should learn about the harm that can be caused by picky eating, and turn to experts for help. For those who are concerned , she advised, “It’s best not to be anxious about picky eating , and instead calmly introduce one or two new foods with every meal.” She said multivitamin tablets can supplement(补充) a diet, but cannot take the place of eating healthily. “It’s much better to take in vitamins through a varied and balanced diet,” she said, adding that too many certain vitamins , including vitamin A, can be harmful ,“so you don’t want to overdo it.”

1. What does Dr Denize Atan imply in paragraph 1?

A．The diet of the boy is not balanced.

B．Fruit and vegetables are rich in vitamins.

C．Picky eating is common among teenagers.

D．The cause of the boy’s disease is unknown.

2. Why did the boy go to see his doctor at the age of 14?

A．To improve his poor diet.

B．To get some help to lose weight.

C．To be treated for his discomfort.

D．To slow down his progressive sight loss.

3. What does the underlined word “arduous” in paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Important.

B．Easy.

C．Necessary.

D．Difficult.

4. What does the last paragraph mainly talk about?

A．Reasons why the boy is seriously ill.

B．Suggestions for the boy’s family to care for him.

C．Advice for parents worried about picky eating.

D．Ways of taking in enough vitamins and minerals.

2 . Avi Loeb, a scientist, believes that we are not alone in the universe. The belief fits with Loeb’s alien (外星的) spaceship theory that at least one alien spaceship might be flying over the orbit (轨道) of Jupiter, which won the international attention last year.

Astronomers in Hawaii found the first known interstellar (星际的) object in late 2017. It was a bit of light moving so fast past the sun that it could only have come from another star. Almost every astronomer on the planet was trying to figure out how the object, called “Oumuamua” got to our far-away, part of the Milky way galaxy. “One possibility is that ‘Oumuamua’ is debris (碎片) from an advanced technological equipment,” Loeb said. “Technology comes from another solar system just showed up at our door.”

“‘Oumuamua’ is not an alien spaceship,” Paul Sutter, another scientist wrote. He suggested Loeb was seeking publicity. Most scientists think “Oumuamua” is some sort of rock. They think it could be an icy wandering comet.

Loeb says that “Oumuamua’s” behavior, means it can’t be a block of rock shaped like a long photo. He thinks it's more likely an object that’s very long and thin, perhaps like a long pancake or a ship’s sail. Loeb says that if someone shows him evidence that contradicts his beliefs, he will immediately give in.

Loeb believes himself a truth-teller and risk- taker in an age of very safe, too-quiet scientists. “The worst thing that can happen to me is that I would be relieved of my management duties, and that would give me even more time to focus on science,” Loeb says. He said he wouldn’t mind giving up all the titles he had and returning to the Israeli farming village where he grew up.

1. What does Loeb say about “Oumuamua”?

A．It is an icy comet.

B．It looks like a long photo.

C．It is actually some sort of rock.

D．It may come from another alien civilization.

2. What does the underlined word “contradicts” in paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Searches for.	B．Depends on.
C．Turns to.	D．Goes against.

3. What do you think of Loeb?

A．He is foolish.

B．He is unsatisfied with his titles.

C．He is a firm believer in scientific truth.

D．He is uncertain about his career future.

4. What’s the best title for the text?

A．Have Aliens Paid a Visit in Spaceships?

B．Do We Really Know about Space Theory?

C．Scientists Are Working on High Technology

D．Astronomers Are Encouraging Space Travel

3 . Coca-Cola is to test a paper bottle as part of a longer-term goal to get rid of plastic from its packaging entirely. The prototype (样本) is made by a Danish company from an extra-strong paper shell that still contains a thin plastic liner (衬垫). But the goal is to create a 100% recyclable, plastic free botte capable of preventing gas escaping from carbonated (碳酸) drinks. The barrier must also ensure no fibers get into the liquid.

That may have a risk of changing the taste of the drink — or potentially can't meet the requirements of health and safety checks. But industry giants (巨头) are backing the plan. Coca-Cola, for example, has set a goal of producing zero waste by 2030. Coca-Cola was ranked the world's number one plastic polluter by charity group Break Free From Plastic last year, closely followed by other drink-producers Pepsi and Nestle.

The Paper Bottle Company, or Paboco, is the Danish firm behind the development of the paper-based container. Part of the challenge has been to create a structure capable of standing the forces exerted by carbonated drinks — such as cola and beer — which are bottled under pressure. On top of that, the paper needs to be mouldable to create distinct bottle shapes and sizes for different brands and take ink for printing their labels.

After more than seven years of lab work, the firm is now ready to host a trial in Hungary this summer of Coca-Cola's fruit drink Adez. Initially, this will involve 2,000 bottles distributed via a local retail chain.

But it is also working with others. Absolut, the vodka maker, is due to test 2,000 paper bottles of its own in the UK and Sweden of its pre-mixed, carbonated raspberry drink. And beer company Carlsberg is also building prototypes of a paper beer bottle.

Michael Michelsen, the firm's commercial manager, says the bottles are formed out of a single piece of paper-fiber-based material to give them strength.

1. What is the longer-term goal of Coca-Cola company?

A．To stop using plastic in its packaging.

B．To produce drinks of alternative tastes.

C．To expand business in European countries.

D．To use paper bottles with a thin plastic liner.

2. What can be inferred from the text?

A．Coca-Cola has very strong competitors.

B．Some industry giants are in favor of plastic free packaging.

C．Carbonated drinks are facing stricter health and safety checks.

D．The paper bottle company is under pressure from environmentalists.

3. What does the underlined word “mouldable” in Paragraph 3 mean?

A．Being hard to be printed on.

B．Being able to be strengthened.

C．Being able to be made into different shapes.

D．Being able to be mixed with other materials.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．Coca-Cola Takes the Lead to Go Green

B．Paper Bottles Are in Place for the Market

C．Drink Industry Is Turning to Paper Bottles

D．Paper Bottle Companies Spring up Worldwide

4 . Children's average daily time spent watching television or using mobile device increased from 53 minutes at 12 months old to more than 150 minutes at 3 years old, according to an analysis by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Children aged 7 were more likely to spend the highest amount of screen time if they had been in bad home-based childcare or were born to first-time mothers.

“Our results indicate that screen habits begin early,” said Edwina Yeung, an investigator in National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), “This finding suggests that interventions to reduce screen time could have a better chance of success if introduced early.”

In the research, mothers of 4,000 children responded to questions on their kids' media habits when they were 12, 18, 24, 30, and 36 months of age.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends avoiding digital media exposure for children under 18 months of age, introducing children 18 to 24 months of age to screen media slowly, and limiting screen time to an hour a day for children from 2 to 5 years of age. In the current study, researchers found that 87% of the children had screen time exceeding these recommendations. However, while screen time increased throughout infancy, after 8 years of age, screen time fell to under 1. 5 hours per day. The researchers believe this decrease relates to time consumed by school-related activities.

The study authors classified the children into two groups based on how much their aver- age daily screen time increased from age 1 to age 3. The first group, 73% of the total, had the lower increase, from an average of nearly 51 minutes a day to nearly an hour and 47 minutes a day. The second group, 27% of the total, had the higher increase, from nearly 37 minutes of screen time a day to about 4 hours a day. Higher levels of parental education were associated with the lower odds of inclusion in the second group.

1. Which of the following is a reason for children's addiction to the media?

A．Low economic level.	B．Poor family education
C．The media's attraction.	D．The shortage of parents' love.

2. What's Edwina's advice?

A．To stop children using the media.	B．To help parents care for children well
C．To reduce children's screen time earlier	D．To increase intervention to children

3. How did the author develop the main body of the text?

A．By giving some examples.	B．By showing some data.
C．By analyzing some reasons.	D．By concluding some results.

4. What does the underlined word "odds" in the last paragraph mean?

A．Probability.

B．Price.

C．Cost.

D．Income.

5 . In recent years, Ethiopia has become a regional leader in solid waste management. Last year, the country transformed the landfill (垃圾填埋场) in Addis Ababa into a new waste-to-energy plant, the first such project on the continent. The plant incinerates up to 1, 400 tonnes of waste every day, about 80 percent of the city's rubbish, supplying the capital with 25 percent of its household electricity needs.

However, despite these important steps, challenges remain in Ethiopia. Although the country has permitted the Basel, Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions, laws and policies for environmentally sound management of hazardous (有害的) wastes are still not effective in pre- venting littering waste illegally.

To help Ethiopia meet these challenges, the Chemicals and Waste Management Program is supporting the country with a three-year project to enhance its capacity for sound management of hazardous wastes.

In the initial stages, a project management unit will be formed, made up of many representatives from government departments and private organizations. This unit will be responsible for reviewing and assessing Ethiopia's current legal system, which, despite numerous advances in recent years, does not specifically target the recycling of hazardous waste. Once legal gaps are identified, the project will seek to update existing policies and strategies.

Many people in Ethiopia are not aware of the possible effect of environmental damage and the need to report such crimes to the police. To resolve this pressing issue, Ethiopia will be conducting a series of capacity-building activities, including creating awareness-raising programs, training trainers and providing equipment.

Ethiopia will also work to establish a national mechanism for chemicals and waste management by engaging government departments and civil society groups. Authorities will also make budgetary provisions (预算拨款) in national, regional and institutional planning to ensure funding for these activities is sustainable even after the project's completion.

1. Which can replace the underlined word “incinerates” in paragraph 1?

A．Produces.

B．Burns.

C．Gathers.

D．Absorbs.

2. What's the main problem of Ethiopia in waste management?

A．The relevant laws are not sound.	B．The shortage of workers is severe.
C．The pollution level is too high.	D．The funds are not sufficient.

3. What will Ethiopia do to help the natives protect the environment?

A．Restrict their environmental movement.	B．Call on them to start some programs.
C．Reward them with budgetary provisions.	D．Raise their environmental awareness.

4. What does the text mainly talk about?

A．Ethiopia is facing serious environmental problems.

B．Ethiopia has achieved success in waste management.

C．Ethiopia is putting efforts into waste management.

D．Ethiopia has reduced environmental pollution levels.

6 . A new study has found that animals feign（假装）death for long periods of time in order to escape capture from their predators. How long they are motionless depends on the circumstances, but they can wait out their predators for quite a long time when their lives are in danger.

Animals stay still to avoid capture for different lengths of time. “Most intriguingly, Charles Darwin recorded a beetle that remained motionless for 23 minutes. Antlions, our favorite study creature in this regard, set a record of 61 minutes,” says lead author Nigel R. Franks from the University of Bristol.

Antlions are members of large group of insects. Antlion larvae（幼虫）dig pits in loose soil and then aggressively attack ants and other small insects that fall into the sandy pits. In another study, researchers dug sandpits to understand the physics of how antlion larvae build their pits. As part of their research they needed to weigh the individual larvae. When they put them onto the microbalance scale to weigh them, they noticed that the larvae remained motionless for long periods of time. “This made it ‘piece of cake’ to weigh them but it aroused researchers’ curiosity, ‘What on earth were they playing at?’” Franks says.

The researchers found that the amount of time the antlions remained stationary after being disturbed was unpredictable and was often quite lengthy. In researching other animals, they found that how long they wait to move again can depend on factors such as hunger and temperature, but it always varies.

This unpredictability is absolutely crucial for their survival, Franks says. For example, if a bird visits these antlion pits and the larvae “play dead”. the birds will fly around the antlions to see if they move. “Imagine if antlions always remained immobile for 5 minutes. In such case, the predator could look for alternate prey（猎物）and then return to its original one when the time is up,” he says. “If that happened, it would be a short life for the predictable death-feigner.” But because the time is unpredictable, the birds leave and go find something else to eat. The predators turn their attention from the unmoving prey that no longer catches their eye to something nearby that is a better alternative.

1. What is the new study about?

A．Animals’ hunting skills.

B．Animals’ living conditions.

C．Animals’ self-protecting behavior.

D．Animals’ means of communication.

2. Why did the author mention another research in paragraph 3?

A．To introduce a new topic for discussion.

B．To offer supporting data for the discovery.

C．To make a comparison between the two studies.

D．To provide some background information on the study.

3. What does the underlined word “stationary” probably mean in paragraph 4?

A．Unmoving.

B．Alarmed.

C．Energetic.

D．Peaceful.

4. How do antlions take advantage of playing dead according to the last paragraph?

A．By scaring away predators.

B．By distracting predators’ attention.

C．By staying still for an uncertain amount of time.

D．By waiting for predators to eat something else

7 . When he was two years old, Ben stopped seeing out of his left eye. His mother took him to the doctor and soon discovered he had cancer in both eyes. After possible treatments failed, doctors removed both his eyes. For Ben, vision was gone forever.

But by the time he was seven years old, he had developed a technique for feeling the world around him: he clicked with his mouth and listened for the returning echoes. This method enabled Ben to determine the locations of open doorways, people, parked cars, garbage cans, and so on. He was echolocating: bouncing his sound waves off objects in the environment and catching the reflections to build a mental model of his surroundings.

Echolocation may sound like an improbable feat for a human, but thousands of blind people have perfected this skill, just like Ben did. The event has been written about since at least the 1940s, when the word ''echolocation" was first invented in a science article titled “Echolocation by Blind Men , Bats, and Radar.”

How could blindness give rise to the amazing ability to understand the surroundings with one's ears? The answer lies in a gift on the brain; huge adaptability.

Mother Nature filled our brains with flexibility to adapt to circumstances. Just as sharp teeth and fast legs are useful for survival, so is the brain's ability to reset, which allows for learning, memory, and die ability to develop new skills.

In Ben's case, his brain's flexible wiring repurposed his visual cortex for processing sound. As a result, Ben had more neurons available to deal with listening information, and this increased processing power allowed Ben to interpret soundwaves in shocking detail. Ben's super-hearing proves a more general rule: the more brain area a particular sense has, the better it performs.

1. How did Ben “see” after he had his eyes removed?

A．By using a walking stick.	B．By asking others for help.
C．By inventing a new system.	D．By echolocating surroundings.

2. What does the underlined word “feat” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Skill.

B．Task.

C．Sense.

D．Invention.

3. What can we learn from Ben's case?

A．He laughs best who laughs last.	B．Actions speak louder than words.
C．God shuts one door but he opens another.	D．Man becomes learned by asking questions.

4. In which column of a magazine can we read this passage?

A．Culture Shock.	B．Human Biology.
C．Scientific Technology.	D．Environmental Protection.

9 . An international group of electronic music composers is taking beats from the dance club to jungles and forests and back, all to help save nature's greatest singers. A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean is a new album that includes the sounds of endangered birds. The album will come out next month, whose proceeds will go directly towards efforts to save birds.

The whole project was born out of this idea of trying to combine birdsong, electronic music and conservation. A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean was organized by activist, music producer, Robin Perkins. He invited artists from each of the endangered birds 'homelands to build their own songs around the birds’ songs. There are contributions from ten artists in eight different countries.

First single Black Catbird was created by The Garifuna Collective, from Belize. Al Obando, guitarist and producer of the group, always took in national parks and viewed birds when on the road with the band. “There are no trails, and there are no signs there to tell you about what you reseeing,” Obando says. “So we're trying to do something for the birds and nature tourism.”

Another musician who responded to Robin's call is Tamara Montenegro, an artist from Nicaragua. She was shocked to hear of the serious situation of the Guardabarranco after being approached: “This beautiful creature I grew up adoring also faced the influence of the systematic human activities”. In response, she created a song inspired by this bird and the challenges it faces to live naturally.

The new album is the second edition, following on from A Guide to the Birdsong of South America, produced by Robin in 2015. That first album has raised, to date, over $15,000 benefitting conservation projects in South America. As with the first album, all of the money from the sales of the new album will support specific organizations, including Birds Caribbean.

1. What does the underlined word “proceeds” in Paragraph 1 refer to?

A．Profits.

B．Budgets.

C．Challenges.

D．Effects.

2. What do we know about Al Obando?

A．He created a hit single himself.

B．He was fond of observing birds.

C．He was the organizer of the new album.

D．He did a lot for birds in South America.

3. Why was Tamara astonished to learn of the Guardabarranco?

A．It was friendly to humans.

B．It was beautiful in appearance.

C．It was losing its living environment.

D．It was facing challenges from other birds.

4. What is the author's purpose in writing the text?

A．To collect money for a project.

B．To popularize electronic music.

C．To recommend some famous artists.

D．To introduce a new album of electronic music.

10 . Darrion Cockrell,who wasn't much of a student, has been named Missouri's Teacher of the Year-the state's highest honor for educators, becoming the first male since 2015 to capture the state's top award.

Cockrell-the child of a drug-addicted mother and a father who was killed when he was four years old-was in and out of the childcare centers and eventually became a gang(帮派) member. In his speech, he shouted out the special people who helped to guide him down the right path when he was going off the track.

He thanked his teacher Ken who provided him with life advice while he lived in a group home. "He taught me it's OK to be tough, but at the same time, it's OK to be sympathetic," Cockrell said. "He was like a father figure to me."

The teacher-affectionately known as "DC"-also expressed his gratitude for the football coach that adopted him when he was in the 7th grade and helped to change his whole perspective(视角) on life. "When I changed the way I looked at things, the things around me started to change," he said. "I had a lot of struggles and hurdles, and if not for those educators, I would not be here today."

Now, Cockrell hopes to make an impact on the students at Lindbergh Schools' Crestwood Elementary in St. Louis, where he's been teaching physical education since 2015. Among his many accomplishments at the school, the greatest one is his development of the “Crest-Fit”training program for teachers, students and parents.

"Missouri is fortunate to have so many high-quality educators, and Darrion will be a wonderful representative as our state's Teacher of the Year," Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven said in a statement. "He guides his students towards long-term physical and mental wellness, and the connections he has established will affect Crestwood children for years to come."

1. What was Cockrell's childhood like?

A．Peaceful.	B．Fortunate.
C．Promising.	D．Tough.

2. How did Cockrell's football coach help him?

A．He persuaded Cockrell out of the gang.

B．He put Cockrell in the childcare system.

C．He changed Cockrell's way of looking at things.

D．He recommended Cockrell to join a football club.

3. What does the underlined word “hurdles” in Paragraph 4 refer to?

A．Achievements.	B．Difficulties.
C．Experiences.	D．Opportunities.

4. What's Cockrell's major contribution according to Margie Vandeven?

A．His original teaching theory.

B．His effective training methods.

C．His influence on the students’ health.

D．His role as a model for the other teachers.