1 . In the magnificent range of mountains of northern California, 42 radio telescopes point towards the stars, scanning for signs of life. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence （SETI） Institute has been listening for a signal here since it was founded in 1984. Jill Tarter, its co — founder, says the programmed aim is not just to communicate with remote civilisations. It is also to remind human beings of its own modest, fragile （脆弱的）place in the universe. Thus, for the first time, SETI is cocking its ear towards Earth to look for a signal that can be sent into space to represent the species.
Felipe Perez Santiago, a Mexican musician and composer, has an idea of what might work.Since songs, like the human voices, are common to all languages and nations, he and Ms. Tarter have designed the “Earthling Project”-a call to people everywhere to upload extracts （精华）of song that he plans to melt into a collective human chorus. An initial composition will be launched into space this summer, recorded on a virtually indestructible disk. Future plans and dreams include an eventual landing on Mars.
Human music has been sent to the heavens in 1977. Distant beings can in theory already enjoy Peruvian panpipes, a Navajo chant, Bach, Beethoven and more. But no previous offering, and perhaps no composition undertaken anywhere, has tried to encompass the entire diversity of human song.
Mr. Santiago says he is thrilled about bringing together contributors from around the globe. Unlike other recordings sent into space, says Mr. Santiago, “Everyone's invited. You don't have to be one of the main composers of our history like Beethoven, just someone singing in their shower.” Download the “Earthling Project" app, sing up to three songs of 30 seconds each, and your voice will be sent into the sky.
1. Why does SETI look for a signal to be sent into space?| A．To stand for species on the earth. |
| B．To scan for other liveable planets. |
| C．To respond to the call of the universe. |
| D．To stress the importance of the earth. |
| A．It is a world music organization. |
| B．It intends to create a human chorus. |
| C．It tries to develop a universal language. |
| D．It aims to search for signals from space. |
| A．Include. | B．Appreciate. |
| C．Work out. | D．Relate to. |
| A．To inspire people to become composers. |
| B．To call on people to protect our planet. |
| C．To encourage people to explore space. |
| D．To invite people to join a programme. |
2 . Don’t teenagers hate being treated like children? Shouldn’t we accept that they are growing up? Yes, of course, they are growing up and may want to change things about their habits or activities, but parents trying to be “supportive” and encourage these changes often do more harm than good.
For example, you and the rest of your family are heading up to the mall for hours. Your teenage daughter Laura has shown resistance to being seen with you in public recently, so you decide not to persuade her to come with you. This seems like a very respectful thing to do that takes into account her feelings and opinions, but when you return she is upset. What went wrong? Well, many things could have gone wrong while you were away. She could have been caught up in friend drama, boy drama, or any other kinds of drama. Or she could be feeling hurt. Maybe she really didn’t want to go to the mall with you, but maybe you should have at least talked with her about it. Even knowing that you wanted to spend time around her probably would have felt good.
Some people say that this is an unreasonable expectation for parents to be “enabling” their kids to demand constant attention and validation (确认). I say, spending 30 extra seconds to make sure your children know you care about them is only “enabling” them to have a part of the self-worth they are so lacking at this time in their lives.
Expecting them to be removed and emotionally distant from you only re-enforces the idea that they should be. Always give them the choice to be an independent teen or your baby girl. When they need a break from the high school soap opera, you will both be glad you didn’t close that door.
1. Which can replace the underlined word “resistance” in Para. 2?| A．agreement | B．hesitation | C．interest | D．unwillingness |
| A．Teenagers need to be respected. |
| B．Teenagers want to be independent. |
| C．Teenagers are not mature enough. |
| D．Teenagers are changeable in character. |
| A．Teenagers’ self-worth is ignored. |
| B．Teenagers’ privacy is not respected. |
| C．Parents ignore teenagers’ feelings and opinions. |
| D．Parents are too busy to notice teenagers’ presence. |
| A．Analyse the real cause of the case. |
| B．Add some background information. |
| C．Try to find a solution to the problem. |
| D．Introduce a new topic for discussion. |
3 . As the effects of climate change become more disastrous, well-known research institutions and government agencies are focusing new money and attention on an idea: artificially cooling the planet, in the hopes of buying humanity more time to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
That strategy, called solar climate intervention (干预) or solar geoengineering, involves reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space — abruptly reducing global temperatures in a way that imitates the effects of ash clouds flowing out from the volcanic eruptions. The idea has been considered as a dangerous and fancied solution, one that would encourage people to keep burning fossil fuels while exposing the planet to unexpected and potentially threatening side effects, producing more destructive hurricanes, wildfires floods and other disasters.
But. as global warming continues, producing more destructive hurricanes, wildfires floods and other disasters, some researchers and policy experts say that concerns about geoengineering should be outweighed by the imperative to better understand it, in case the consequence of climate change become so terrible that the world can’t wait for better solutions.
One way to cool the earth is by injecting aerosols (气溶胶) into the upper layer of the atmosphere. where those particles reflect sunlight away from the earth. That process works, according to Douglas MacMartin, a researcher at Cornell University.
“We know with 100% certainty that we can cool the planet,” he said in an interview. What’s still unclear, he added, is what happens next. Temperature, MacMartin said, is an indicator for a lot of climate effects. “What does it do to the strength of hurricanes?” he asked, “What does it do to agriculture production? What does it do to the risk of forest fires?”
Another institution funded by the National Science Foundation will analyze hundreds of simulations of aerosol injection, testing the effects on weather extremes around the world. One goal of the research is to look for a sweet spot: the amount of artificial cooling that can reduce extreme weather events without causing broader changes in regional rainfall patterns or similar impacts.
1. Why do researchers and government agencies work on cooling the earth?| A．To prevent natural disasters. | B．To win more time to reduce gas emissions. |
| C．To imitate volcanic eruptions. | D．To encourage more people to bur fossil fuels. |
| A．More volcanoes will throw out. |
| B．More solar energy will go into space. |
| C．More disasters will endanger the future of the world. |
| D．People will keep burning fossil fuels to keep warm. |
| A．He thinks more research remains to be done. |
| B．He is optimistic about the effect of cooling the earth. |
| C．He is concerned about the reduction in agriculture production. |
| D．He disapproves of the practice of solar climate intervention. |
| A．The rainfall pattern of a region. |
| B．The modest drop in temperature. |
| C．The number of extreme weather events. |
| D．The injection amount of aerosol. |
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 . We recognize our friends’ faces. And we’re not alone. Many social animals can identify individuals of their own species by features of their faces. That's important, because they need to be able to change their behavior depending on who they meet. And a recent research has shown that some species of monkeys, birds, and domesticated (家养的) animals can even tell different faces apart by looking at photographs alone.
Ethologist Léa Lansade of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment did an experiment to find out how well horses can recognize individual people in photographs.
She and her team first taught the horses how to “choose” between two side-by-side pictures by touching their noses to a computer screen. The horses were then shown photos of their present keeper alongside faces of unfamiliar humans. They had never seen photos of any of the people before. The horses correctly identified their current keeper and ignored (忽视) the stranger’s face about 75%of the time. In fact, even though the horses didn't get it right every single time, they were at least as correct in picking out their earlier keeper as they were at identifying their present one.
The results suggest that not only can horses differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar human faces, they also naturally understand that photographs are two dimensional representations (二维呈现) of real life, without any other intimations such as smell or sound. And they’re even better at this than our oldest animal parter, the domestic dog.
In addition, horses seem to have a strong long-term memory for human faces, like their long lifespan and history of domestication. In future experiments, the researchers would like to test whether looking at photos of people that they have had bad experiences with in the past might cause horses to act anxious or even avoidance. So maybe think twice before doing anything that might give a horse a long face.
1. Why did researchers show the horses both the keeper’s photos and the strangers’?| A．To find out what horses would do in the experiment. |
| B．To see why horses could recognize the keeper in the pictures. |
| C．To test whether horses could recognize the strangers in pictures. |
| D．To study to what degree horses can make out different people in pictures. |
| A．Clues. | B．Differences. |
| C．Photographs. | D．Senses. |
| A．Whether horses can live longer than other animals. |
| B．Whether horses can remember human's faces for a long time. |
| C．Whether horses can show their emotions at the sight of photos. |
| D．Whether horses are better at recognizing photos than other animals. |
| A．To talk about animals’ species. |
| B．To explain animals’ facial features. |
| C．To show animals’ behaviour for adaptation. |
| D．To introduce animals’ ability to identifying faces. |
6 . The concept of ownership comes so easily to humans that even preschoolers have got it. Robots, on the other hand, often struggle to grasp such abstract concepts. Now a well-mannered robot that can make it has been programmed.
“Teaching robots ownership-related etiquette (礼仪) is really, really worthwhile,” says Matthias Scheutz, a computer scientist at Tufts University. "We can't just send out robots who are unaware of who owns what... If I instruct a robot to ‘build a fence’, and it goes to the neighbor’s and starts ‘stealing’ boards, that's not what we have in mind.”
The new socially conscious robot can learn who owns what from clear statements as well as its own observations. The robot learns its code of conduct (行为准则) from direct orders and generalizing from specific examples. For instance, if the robot is told not to touch several objects that it knows belong to specific people, the robot will deduce that, as a general rule, it shouldn’t touch owned objects.
Artificial intelligence (AI) expert Xuan Tan and colleagues at Yale found out how the robot reacts in experiments with blocks on a table. In one session, Tan played with only the red blocks, leading the robot to infer that these blocks belonged to the same person. When Tan instructed the robot to throw away everything on the table and the machine reached for a red block, Tan stopped the robot, saying, “That's mine.” Now aware that it should not throw Tan’s belongings, and assuming that the rest of the red blocks belonged to Tan as well, the robot cleared the table of everything but red blocks.
Later, when Tan's colleague Jake Brawer directed the robot to throw out a red block, the robot replied, "Sorry, I'm forbidden to throw it away if it's owned by Tan.” Though robots may have more difficulty understanding who owns what in situations filled with far more objects of much wider variety than blocks on a table. Scheutz called it a good "first attempt” at equipping robots with an appreciation of ownership.
1. What does the second paragraph focus on?| A．The way of teaching robots ownership. | B．The basics of the human-robot relationship. |
| C．The benefit of robots learning ownership. | D．The importance of robots learning code of conduct. |
| A．Conclude. | B．Admit. | C．Agree. | D．Doubt. |
| A．To train the robot. | B．To predict the robot’s move. |
| C．To test the robot's behavior. | D．To study the preference. |
| A．The robot knows how to obey. | B．The robot can learn who owns what. |
| C．The robot follows no wrong orders. | D．The robot can solve complex situations. |
7 . A review of 100 years of fossil evidence reveals that 100 million years ago part of the Sahara Desert was arguably the riskiest place on our planet,wih a concentration of large predatory(食肉的）dinosaurs unmatched in any comparable modern ecosystem on land. The analysis of fossils from theso-called Kem Kem beds shows the presence in the area of large-scale predatory dinosaurs,reptiles and other hunters, all living together in what was at the time a river system full of very large fish, rather than a desert.
Paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim, lead author of the study, said that the Kem Kem ecosystem was a highly enigmatic place,ecologically speaking, since typically ecosystems present a larger number of plant-eating animals than predators, and predators themselves will come in a variety of sizes,with one larger predator being dominant. In the Kem Kem beds,fossils of predators outnumber those of plant-eating dinosaurs, and several of the predators living together in the area, such as the Carcharodontosaurus, the Spinosaurus,the Abelisaur and the Deltadromeus, were as big as a Tyrannosaurus rex (T.rex) - one of the largest dinosaurs that ever lived. This is strange “even by dinosaur standards,” according to Ibrahim, since the T. rex, which was present in North America tens of millions of years later, was “the unarguable ruler of its ancient ecosystem.”
It is unlikely that the large predators in the Kem Kem ecosystem ate one another. What's more realistic, according to Ibrahim, is that they ate the abundant and supersized fish present in the area - fish like coelacanths"the size of a car” and sawfish that could reach 25 feet in length.
The study of the Kem Kem beds carried out by Ibrahim and a group of international researchers across the U.S., Europe and Africa draws attention to the importance of learning more about Africa,which remains paleontology's forgotten continent.It shows that African ecosystems"do not simply copy the ones we know from North America,Europe or other better-known places,"and it also reveals clues about what happens to life when dramatic changes in climate come into play.
1. What does the underlined word “enigmatic" in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Dangerous. |
| B．Peaceful. |
| C．Puzzling. |
| D．Remote. |
| A．The T.rex was the real ruler of the ecosystem. |
| B．There once lived dangerous supersized dinosaurs. |
| C．There was an underground river instead of a desert. |
| D．The number of plant-eating dinosaurs went beyond that of predators. |
| A．Sawfish once completely dominated North America. |
| B．Coelacanths were much larger than the Deltadromeus. |
| C．The Carcharodontosaurus and the Spinosaurus lived on fish. |
| D．The Abelisaur and the T. rex became extinct at the same time. |
| A．African ecosystems have their uniqueness. |
| B．Humans have caused great changes in climate. |
| C．Fossils of predators proved to be alien species. |
| D．The Sahara Desert was formed 100 million years ago. |
8 . “Do not tell anyone”. We often hear these words when someone tells us a secret. But keeping a secret is hard. We’re often tempted（引诱）to “spill the beans”, even if we regret it later.
According to the professor, Asim Shah, keeping a secret may well “become a burden”. This is because people often have an “eager and anxious urge（冲动）to share it with someone”. An earlier study, led by Anita, a scientist at the University of Notre Dame, US, suggested that keeping a secret could cause stress. People entrusted（托付）with secrets can suffer from depression, anxiety, and body aches, reported the Daily Mail.
Secrets are so often getting out. Why do people share them at all? Shah explained that people often feel that it will help them keep a person as a friend. Another reason people share secrets is guilt over keeping it from someone close to them. A sense of distrust can develop when people who are close do not share it with each other. “Keeping or sharing secrets often puts people in a position of either gaining or losing the trust of someone, ”according to Shah.
He added that talkative people could let secrets slip out. But this doesn’t mean that it is a good idea only to share secrets with quiet people. A quiet person may be someone who keeps everything inside. To tell such a person a secret may cause them stress, and make them talk about the secret.
Shah said that to judge whether to tell someone a secret, you’d better put yourself in their position, Think about how you would feel to be told that you mustn’t give the information away. Shah also recommended that if you accidentally give up someone’s secret you should come clean about it. Let the person know that their secret isn’t so secret anymore.
1. Why does the author say keeping a secret may “become a burden”?| A．Because people are born not to be able to keep secrets. |
| B．Because when people have secrets, their bodies ache. |
| C．Because keeping secrets is certain to cause depression. |
| D．Because keeping secrets could probably be harmful to health. |
| A．2. | B．3. | C．4. | D．5. |
| A．To fall by accident. | B．To let out secrets on purpose. |
| C．To spread secrets to everyone around. | D．To give away secrets unintentionally. |
| A．Quiet people are more likely to keep the secrets to themselves. |
| B．Sharing secrets helps establish friendship or get over the, sense of guilt. |
| C．Putting yourself in others’ shoes helps realize the importance of keeping secrets. |
| D．A person who is asked to keep a secret will suffer from psychological problems only. |
9 . Amazon is reportedly working on a free, ad-supported music offering as another option to its paid Amazon Music Unlimited and Prime Music services to better compete with Apple Music, Google Music and Spotify. According to Billboard, the free plan could go live as soon as possible. At this time, the service is only available in the US for users who request music by a trial version (HIA), but a full-fledged version of the free ad- based music service is expected to be launched sometime in the future.
Billboard reports that Amazon is now in talks to make an ad-based free level available for its music service. The company is expected to advertise the plan with its Echo speakers. By now, Amazon Music Unlimited runs $ 10 per month standalone (单机), the same as Apple Music and Sportify. Meanwhile Prime Music offers Amazon Prime members a more limited selection of content for no extra charge. A new ad supported free level would make Amazon the third music offering.
Billboard notes that it's not clear how many paying users Amazon currently has, though it may have been around 20 million last year for all of its services. In contrast, Apple Music reportedly hit 28 million paying users in the US alone, beaten by Spotify.
Amazon hasn't disclosed how many paying music users it has, but some reports last year estimated it counts over 20 million users across its offerings and expect it to gain steadily thanks to integration with its market-leading smart speakers.
But Spotify is still the market leader for global users when it comes to music services with close to 100 million users. Amazon’s move could attract more and more users.
1. What does the underlined word "full-fledged" in paragraph 1mean?| A．Modern. | B．Junior. | C．Powerful. | D．Perfect. |
| A．It wants support from users. |
| B．It has too many advertisements. |
| C．It would be the third biggest Music offering. |
| D．It will lose more free users. |
| A．Spotify. | B．Amazon. | C．Google Music. | D．Apple Music. |
| A．Amazon has the most piece of music. |
| B．Amazon will release a free music service. |
| C．Amazon will defeat Apple Music and Spotify. |
| D．Amazon has defeated Apple Music and Spotify. |
10 . GPS has completely transformed how we get around. But other animals have long had their navigation (领航) systems built right in.
“We know their eyes are quite sensitive to polarized (偏振的) light and the sky has a particular pattern of polarized light relative to the position of the sun,” Barbara Webb, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, says.
You can see polarized light firsthand if you take a pair of polarized sunglasses and spin them against the sky-the light passing through the glasses changes. Webb says the insects have polarization like that built into their many eyes. “You can think of it as having lots of sunglasses pointing in different directions.”
But Webb was curious whether there’s really enough information in the sky to give insects an accurate sense of direction. So her team built a sensor (传感器) modeled after a desert ant eye and put it under artificial light meant to simulate the sky. They then put that sensor into a model meant to model the brains of desert ants and other insects. And they found that with the insects’ sensing and processing equipment, they can likely sense direction down to just a couple degrees of error.
A system based on that of insects could someday be a cheap, low-energy choice to GPS. Insects have very tiny brains. A brain the size of a pinhead that’s using hardly any energy. And yet they’re still able to navigate better than we can with GPS, which is surprising. Webb is now working on building a robot that can use light to get its directions.
1. What can we learn from the text?| A．GPS is not accurate enough. |
| B．Insects have better eyes than humans. |
| C．Light changes passing through polarized sunglasses. |
| D．Insects have tiny brains that use no energy. |
| A．Pretend. | B．Cover. |
| C．Block. | D．See. |
| A．Insects can’t find their ways during nights. |
| B．Insects can find directions with little mistakes. |
| C．Insects always make mistakes finding directions. |
| D．Insects have sensing and processing equipment in their eyes. |
| A．Disappointing. | B．Interesting. |
| C．Amazing. | D．Confusing. |
