1 . Returning to a book you’ve read many times can feel like drinks with an old friend. There’s a welcome familiarity - but also sometimes a slight suspicion that time has changed you both, and thus the relationship. But books don’t change, people do. And that’s what makes the act of rereading so rich and transformative.
The beauty of rereading lies in the idea that our bond with the work is based on our present mental register. It’s true, the older I get, the more I feel time has wings. But with reading, it’s all about the present. It’s about the now and what one contributes to the now, because reading is a give and take between author and reader. Each has to pull their own weight.
There are three books I reread annually The first, which I take to reading every spring is Emest Hemningway’s A Moveable Feast. Published in 1964, it’s his classic memoir of 1920s Paris. The language is almost intoxicating (令人陶醉的)，an aging writer looking back on an ambitious yet simpler time. Another is Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm, her poetic 1975 ramble (随笔) about everything and nothing. The third book is Julio Cortazar’s Save Twilight: Selected Poems, because poetry. And because Cortazar.
While I tend to buy a lot of books, these three were given to me as gifs, which might add to the meaning I attach to them. But I imagine that, while money is indeed wonderful and necessary, rereading an author’s work is the highest currency a reader can pay them. The best books are the ones that open further as time passes. But remember, it’s you that has to grow and read and reread in order to better understand your friends.
1. What does the underlined word “currency” in paragraph 4 refer to?| A．Debt |
| B．Reward |
| C．Allowance |
| D．Face value |
2 . When someone has deeply hurt you, it can be extremely difficult to let go of your grudge. But forgiveness is possible－and it can be surprisingly helpful to your physical and mental health. Indeed, research has shown that people who forgive have more energy, better appetite (胃口) and better sleep pattern. “People who forgive show less anger and more hopefulness,”says Dr. Frederic Luskin, who wrote the book Forgive for Good. “So it can help save on the wear and tear on our body and make people feel more energetic.”
So when someone has hurt you, calm down first. Take plenty of breaths deeply and think of something that gives you pleasure: a beautiful scene in nature, someone you love. Don’t wait for an apology. “Many times the person who hurt you may never think of apologizing,” says Dr. Luskin. “They may have wanted to hurt you or they just don’t see things the same way. So if you wait for people to apologize, you could be waiting a very long time.” Keep in mind that forgiveness does not necessarily mean accepting the action of the person who upset you. Mentally going over your hurt gives power to the person who brought you pain. Instead, learn to look for the love, beauty and kindness around you. Finally, try to see things from the other person’s perspective. You may realize that he or she was acting out of ignorance(无知), fear, even love. To achieve the perspective, you may want to write a letter to yourself from that person’s point of view.
1. The underlined word “grudge” in the first paragraph most probably means ________.| A．anger | B．forgiveness |
| C．understanding | D．pity |
| A．Forgiveness keeps yourself from being hurt. |
| B．Forgiveness helps stay mentally healthy. |
| C．Forgiving others does good to your health. |
| D．Forgiving yourself is the biggest challenge. |
| A．Try to figure out why you get hurt. |
| B．Writer a letter to the person who hurt you. |
| C．Persuade yourself to accept what others have done to you. |
| D．Think about pleasant things and forget about the hurt. |
| A．people seldom want to apologize |
| B．we’d feel worse accepting others’ apology |
| C．we are not patient enough |
| D．people don’t mean it when they apologize |
3 . 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. |
| A．Searches for. | B．Depends on. |
| C．Turns to. | D．Goes against. |
| 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. |
| 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 |
4 . It appears to fit with most people's experience: how Christmas seems to come around quicker every year? Questionnaires by psychologists have shown almost everyone feels time is passing faster now compared to when they were half or a quarter as old. Most strikingly, lots of experiment have shown that, when older people are asked to guess how long the time is, or to ‘reproduce’ the length of periods of time, they guess a shorter amount than younger people.
In 1877, Paul Janet suggested the proportional theory, where a child of 10 feels a year as I 10 of his whole life while a man of 50 as 1/50, so the subjective sense of the 50-year-old man is that: these are insignificant periods of time which gallop.
There are also biological theories. The speeding up of time is linked to how our metabolism (新陈代谢)gradually slows down as we grow olden Children's hearts beat faster than They breathe more quickly. With their blood flowing more quickly, their body clocks “cover” more time within the space of 24 hours than ours do as adults. On the other hand, older people are like clocks that run slower than normal, so that they lag behind, and cover less than 24 hours.
In the 1930s, the psychologist Hudson Hoagland found body temperature causes different perceptions of time. Once, when he looked after his ill wife, he noticed she complained he'd been away for a long time even if only away for a few moments. Therefore, Hoagland tested her perception of time at different temperatures, finding the higher her temperature, the more time seemed to slow down for her, and that raising a person's body temperature can slow down his sense of time passing by up to 20%.
Time doesn't necessarily have to speed up as we get older though. It depends on how live our lives, and how we relate to our experiences.
1. What do the questionnaires and experiments find?| A．Time now is shorter than before. |
| B．Aging makes people think slowly. |
| C．The old feel time flies faster than the young. |
| D．The old value time more than before. |
| A．Fly swiftly. | B．Pause briefly. |
| C．Move slowly. | D．Pass stably. |
| A．A kid with slower metabolism. | B．A child with low body temperature. |
| C．A grown-up feeling freezing. | D．An adult with a high fevel. |
| A．How time flies! | B．To live a full life! |
| C．Why time passes at different speeds? | D．How to save more time? |
5 . Standing on the ruins（废墟）after the fire where his house had been, Peter Ruprecht admitted that he was not sure how or when to rebuild. He was still shocked by what Australia's increasingly changeable climate had already delivered: first a drought, then a destructive bush fire, then a foot of rain from a storm.
"It's unstoppable," said Mr. Ruprecht, a former dairy farmer. "We speak about the warmth of Mother Nature, but nature can also be vicious and wild and unforgiving."
Australia's' hellish（地狱的）fire season has eased（缓和）, but its people are facing more than a single disaster. With floods destroying homes not far from where fires recently spread, they are facing a cycle of what scientists call "compound extremes": one climate disaster strengthening the next.
Warmer temperatures do more than just dry out the land. They also heat up the atmosphere, which means clouds hold more moisture（水汽）for longer periods of time. So droughts get worse, giving way to fires, then to heavy rains that the land is too dry to absorb.
Many Australians in disaster zones complain that their government, after ignoring climate change for years, has not yet to draw up recovery plans that are clear and that take future threats into account.
At the same time, the economic costs of a changing climate are rising quickly. Philip Lowe, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, warned recently that Australia was already paying a price, and that it would only go up.
1. Why Peter Ruprecht is mentioned in the beginning?| A．To arouse readers' pity. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To stress the problem. | D．To call on readers to help. |
| A．grateful | B．advanced | C．responsible | D．forcible |
| A．Government inaction. | B．Warmer temperature. |
| C．The lack of money. | D．No recovery plans. |
| A．guidebook. | B．A travel journal. | C．A news report. | D．A book review. |
6 . Those who want to set up office in the garden as temperatures rise should think twice or put a hat on. A new study shows that sunshine could diminish brain power, making it harder to make the right judgments.
Working in hot temperatures is already known to cause hyperthermia — a rise in body temperature — which can cause physical exhaustion. But now scientists say prolonged exposure of the head to the sun also affects the brain's ability to function properly.
The study by university teams in Denmark and Greece said workers could be damaging their brains by working in hot, sunny conditions. Eight healthy, active males aged between 27 and 41 took part in the research. The brain function test consisted of four different computer-based maths and logic tasks that relied on precise calculations. Four heat lamps were positioned to radiate either on the lower body or the back, side and top of their heads. Professor Lars Nybo of the department of nutrition, exercise and sports at the University of Copenhagen, said, “This study provides evidence that direct exposure to sunlight — especially to the head — impairs motor and cognitive performance.”
The decline in motor and cognitive performance was observed at 38. 5 degrees. Researchers said those exposed to sunlight for long periods should cover their heads. Professor Andtreas Flouis, of the FAME Laboratory in Greece, said: “It is of great importance that people working or undertaking daily activities outside should protect their head against sunlight.”
Drops in mental performance caused by sunshine could also mean drivers were more likely to make mistakes on the road, Andtreas Flouis suggested.
1. What does the underlined word “diminish” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Weaken. | B．Improve. |
| C．Achieve. | D．Change. |
| A．To light up the night. |
| B．To give off heat. |
| C．To warm the offices. |
| D．To increase the difficulty of tasks. |
| A．Useless. | B．Doubtful. | C．Narrow. | D．Meaningful. |
| A．Wearing a hat. |
| B．Reducing workload. |
| C．Having a medical examination. |
| D．Doing exercises regularly. |
7 . Biofuels (生物燃料), gained from plants and animal matter, are a key solution to the environmental problems caused by fuels like coal. “Bioalcohol (生物酒精) is the most common biofuel and is produced by sugars found in materials such as corn. With some engine redesigned, it can be used directly by cars, buses, etc.,” says Professor Daniel Tan, “12 percent of transport fuel could come from biofuels, especially bioalcohol, by 2030.”
But a 2016 study of biofuels said, “Bioalcohol presently is mostly produced with food crops. Altogether, the environmentally-friendly biofuels rely on about 2-3 percent of the global water and land used for agriculture, which could feed a large number of hungry people.”
Energy experts have therefore been trying to deal with the problem. Recent research led by an international team found that the agave (龙舌兰) plant might offer a way out. This plant tends to be the right bioalcohol source to supersede others such as sugarcane (甘蔗) and corn.
Daniel Tan explains that the agave can be grown in unfavorable conditions and is not a major food crop. “It can grow in areas that lack water and rainfall without being watered by farmers, and it does not compete with food crops or put demands on limited water. This kind of useful plant is recently being grown in Australia. It can survive Australia's hot summers,” he says.
The study finds that sugarcane produces just a little more fuel per square meter each year than the agave. However, the agave outperforms sugarcane in a range of areas, including pollution to the earth, and water using. The agave uses 69 percent less water than sugarcane and 46 percent less water than corn for the same amount of fuel produced. As for corn，it produces less fuel per square meter each year than the agave.
However, Daniel Tan states: “The first generation of bioalcohol from the agave recently faces a big competition from oil, whose recent low price makes it far more attractive to customers. Without some policy support from the government, bioalcohol production from the agave faces big challenges.”
1. What can we learn about bioalcohol from the first paragraph?| A．It is popular among customers worldwide. |
| B．It is a kind of biofuel made from artificial matter. |
| C．It helps vehicles' engines stay in good condition. |
| D．It can play a big role in making transport fuel green. |
| A．Take the place of. | B．Take advantage of. |
| C．Get away from. | D．Get along with. |
| A．It improves the local weather. | B．It keeps the water in the ground. |
| C．It produces plenty of food for humans. | D．It puts low demands on growing environment. |
| A．Reduce the price of oil. | B．Make some favorable policies. |
| C．Expand agave bioalcohol's production. | D．Introduce competition into agave bioalcohol market. |
8 . Have you ever seen the scene in which a person is being tested by a polygraph(测谎仪)? Do you think it’s likely to tell if a person is really lying by analyzing his/her handwriting? For ages experts have been analyzing and trying to break the code of handwriting characteristics in order to detect an individual’s personality characters, or in most cases, judge their innocence in the case of a crime. Although this science has often gone the way of pseudoscience(伪科学), researchers are now discovering that with the aid of a computerized tool, handwriting characteristics can be measured more effectively. A study in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology shows that handwriting tests could give polygraphs a challenge for lie detection.
The study was headed by Gil Luria and Sara Rosenblum at the University of Haifa, Israel. The researchers used a computerized tablet that measured the physical properties of the subject’s handwriting, which are difficult to consciously control. They worked with 34 volunteers, who wrote truthful and false paragraphs on paper using a wireless electronic pen with a pressure sensitive tip. A computerized system measured pressure and stroke(笔画) duration, both on the paper and in the air. Spatial(空间的) measures, such as stroke length, height and width were also tracked. And the scientists found significant differences in pressure and spatial measures when an individual was in the process of writing deceptive statements compared with the truth.
“When we lie, our brains work hard to make sure we get the story right and come off as truthful,” said Gil Luria, the leading scientist of the research. “Law enforcement officials try to tap into that effort, for example with polygraphs, to find out if a suspect is telling the truth. But such stress tests are beatable and forbidden in court. In this case, handwriting tests could be a competitor to the familiar, but unreliable lie detector.”
The investigators say they need to affirm this initial result and compare the technique with polygraphs and other lie detection tools. But perhaps in the future even a written claim of innocence could turn out to be a real confession(招供).
1. What is the function of the two questions in the first paragraph?| A．Argument. | B．Conclusion. | C．Introduction. | D．Assumption. |
| A．The cause of the experiment. |
| B．The process of the experiment. |
| C．The result of the experiment. |
| D．The significance of the experiment. |
| A．responsible | B．illegal | C．believable | D．dishonest |
| A．The polygraph has many disadvantages. |
| B．Handwriting-based tool offers alternative lie detection method. |
| C．Computerized tools can distinguish a liar. |
| D．Handwriting-based tool matters a lot in finding a suspect. |
9 . Extreme athletes have been using wingsuits（翼装）to fly for many years. However, the pull of gravity makes it impossible to speed up or fly higher. To push past the limitations, Peter Salzmann teamed up with German car maker BMW. The result is an electrified wingsuit, which allows flyers to rise to higher altitudes at the speed of up to 186 miles per hour!
The 33-year-old professional wingsuit pilot first thought of creating the design in 2017, "At the time, I was developing suits for skydiving with a friend," he explains. "One evening after a day of testing, we threw out lots of ideas about how we could improve performance. One of them was a supporting motor-and it's an idea I just couldn't shake off. I found the idea of being able to jump from my local mountain wearing the wingsuit and land in my garden exciting."
To help with the process, Salzmann reached out to the experts at BMW's Designworks Studio. It took the team three years and multiple test jumps to perfect the design. The result is an updated version of wingsuit with two 5-inch propellers（螺旋桨）, Powered by a battery, the propellers can be controlled using an on/off switch and even stopped mid-flight using the emergency button, if the flyer encounters an airplane or a flock of birds.
On November 6, 2020, Salzmann, wearing his hi-tech suit, leaped from a helicopter from an altitude of 10,000 feet to soar around the mountain peaks. The expert pilot fired up the electric motors and rocketed forward, gliding above four mountain peaks. The task completed, the pilot opened his parachute（降落伞）and gently landed.
It is unclear if Salzmann and BMW plan to make the electrified wingsuits available to the general public. But, one can always hope!
1. What do we know about the new wingsuit?| A．It flies faster and higher. |
| B．It breaks away from gravity. |
| C．It's equipped with a car motor. |
| D．It has been used for many years. |
| A．What Salzmann's friend did to help him. |
| B．What Salzmann experienced in his career |
| C．How Salzmann became a professional pilot. |
| D．How Salzmann came up with the new design. |
| A．Press the emergency button. | B．Reach out to an expert. |
| C．Check the propellers. | D．Open the parachute. |
| A．Explore. | B．Search. | C．Fly. | D．Dig. |
10 . Sleep's Effect on the Brain's Performance
When you have a busy schedule, it can be easy to neglect your sleep because of the different items you want to get done on your checklist each day. Whether you stay up late responding to emails or cut your sleep short to exercise in the morning, lack of sleep can start to have a negative effect on the brain. Your sleep can affect your brain's performance in a few main ways.
When your brain doesn't have time to rest, it can slow down your ability to think quickly, as well as your reaction time. You may have difficulty trying to stay awake and become more alert, which can affect how well you make decisions. You may find yourself taking more risks than normal.
Studies also show that memory and sleep are closely linked, which means it can be difficult to recall certain details or facts if you fail to get at least seven hours of sleep each night. NREM (Non-Rapid-Eye-Movement Sleep) and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep are necessary for remembering basic facts to improve your efficiency and ability to perform different tasks. In particular, fragmented sleep can affect the memory even if you get seven to eight hours of sleep each night.
Those who are easy to suffer from migraines (偏头痛) are at a higher risk of developing a headache if they don't get consistent, quality sleep. Studies show sleep loss also increases the risk of diabetes. It affects the body's ability to release insulin, resulting in higher blood sugar levels. Your body also has more difficulty determining when it's full while eating, which can make it easy to consume more calories than you need throughout the day.
There are many ways your sleep can affect the brain's performance and impact every area of your life. Scheduling your sleep and creating a restful, comfortable setting in the bedroom can make it easier to feel relaxed and recharged.
1. What is the function of the first paragraph?| A．To stress what a busy life people live nowadays. |
| B．To warn the readers of the importance of sleep. |
| C．To show brain sometimes has poor performance. |
| D．To introduce the theme of the whole passage. |
| A．Your ability to drive safely will be influenced. |
| B．You can realize your mistakes in a short time. |
| C．Your ability to remember is likely to decline. |
| D．You can't carry out a few tasks at the same time. |
| A．Sound. | B．Broken. | C．Adequate. | D．Dreamless. |
| A．Sleep loss leads to the decline of insulin. |
| B．People fail to control the amount of intake. |
| C．People don't know the calories they need. |
| D．Sleep loss results in their poor appetite. |
